“No stew will ever be the same,” Regis muttered helplessly, for no man remained in the wood and rope prison.

The rabbit, white and fluffy, yipped and yammered, as if trying to form words that would not come. Then it leaped away, easily passing through the wide ropes as it scurried for the safety of the underbrush.

Spell completed, the werewolf snarled and howled as it spun on the intruders. But the creature quickly calmed, and in a voice too cultured for such a hairy and wild mein said, “Drizzt Do’Urden! Well met!”

“I want to go home,” Regis mumbled at Drizzt’s side.

A warm fire burned in the hearth, and there was no denying the comfort of the overstuffed chair and divan set before it, but Drizzt didn’t recline or even sit, and felt little of the room’s warmth.

They had been ushered into the Ivy Mansion, accompanied by the almost continual flash of lightning bolts, searing the darkness with hot white light on either side of the pond below. Shouts of protest dissipated under the magical explosions, and the howl of a lone wolf—a lonewerewolf—silenced them even more completely.

The people of Longsaddle had come to understand the dire implications of that howl, apparently.

For some time, Drizzt and Regis paced or sat in the room, with only an occasional visit by a maid asking if they wanted more to eat or drink, to which Regis always eagerly nodded.

“That seemed very un-Harpell-like,” he mentioned to Drizzt between bites. “I knew Bidderdoo was a fierce one—he killed Uthegental of House Barrison Del’Armgo, after all—but that was simply tor—”

“Justice,” interrupted a voice from the door, and the pair turned to see Bidderdoo Harpell enter from the hallway. He no longer looked the werewolf, but rather like a man who had seen much of life—too much, perhaps. He stood in a lanky pose that made him look taller than his six-foot frame, and his hair, all gray, stood out wildly in every conceivable direction, giving the impression that it had not been combed or even finger-brushed in a long, long time. Strangely, though, he was meticulously clean-shaven.

Regis seemed to have no answer as he looked at Drizzt.

“Harsher justice than we would expect to find at the hands of the goodly Harpells,” Drizzt explained for him.

“The prisoner meant to start a war,” Bidderdoo explained. “I prevented it.”

Drizzt and Regis exchanged expressions full of doubt.

“Fanaticism requires extreme measures,” the Harpell werewolf—a curse of his own doing due to a badly botched polymorph experiment—explained.

“This is not the Longsaddle I have known,” said Drizzt.

“It changed quickly,” Bidderdoo was fast to agree.

“Longsaddle, or the Harpells?” Regis asked, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping his foot impatiently.

The answer, “Both,” came from the hallway, and even the outraged halfling couldn’t hold his dour posture and expression at the sound of the familiar voice. “One after the other, of course,” Harkle Harpell explained, bounding in through the door.

The lanky wizard was dressed all in robes, three shades of blue, ruffled and wrinkled, with sleeves so long they covered his hands. He wore a white beret topped by a blue button that matched the darkest hue of his robes, as did his dyed beard, which had grown—with magical assistance, no doubt—to outrageous proportions. One long braid ran down from Harkle’s chin to his belt, flanked by two short, thick scruffs of wiry hair hanging below each jowl. The hair on his head had gone gray, but his eyes held the same luster and eagerness the friends had seen flash so many times in years gone by—usually right before some Harkle-precipitated disaster had befallen them all.

“The town changed first,” Regis remarked.

“Of course!” said Harpell. “You don’t think we enjoy this, do you?” He bounded over to Drizzt and took the drow’s hand in a great shake—or started to before wrapping Drizzt in a powerful embrace that nearly lifted him off the ground.

“It’s grand to see you, my old pirate-hunting companion!” Harkle boomed.

“Bidderdoo seemed to enjoy his work,” Regis said, cutting Harkle’s turn toward him short.

“You come to pass judgment after so short a time?” Bidderdoo replied.

“I know what I saw,” said the halfling, not backing down an inch.

“What you saw without context, you mean,” said Bidderdoo.

Regis glared at him then turned his judgment upon Harkle.

“You understand, of course,” Harkle said to Drizzt, seeking support. But he found little in the drow’s rigid expression.

Harkle rolled his eyes and sighed then nearly fell over as one of his orbs kept on rolling, over and over, in its socket. After a few moments, the discombobulated wizard slapped himself hard on the side of the head, and the eye steadied into place.

“My orbs have never been the same since I went to look in on Bruenor,” he quipped with an exaggerated wink, referring, of course, to the time he’d accidentally teleported just his eyes to Mithral Hall to roll around on Bruenor’s audience chamber floor.

“Indeed,” said Regis, “and Bruenor bids you to never do so in such a manner ever again.”

Harkle looked at him curiously for a few moments then burst out laughing. Apparently thinking the tension gone, the wizard moved to wrap Regis in a tight hug.

The halfling stopped him with an upraised hand. “We make peace with orcs while the Harpells torture humans.”

“Justice, not torture,” Harkle corrected. “Torture? Hardly that!”

“I know what I saw,” said the halfling, “And I saw it with both of my eyes in my head and neither of them rolling around in circles.”

“There are a lot of rabbits on that small island,” Drizzt added.

“And do you know what you would have seen if we hadn’t dealt harshly with men like that priest Ganibo?”

“Priest?” both Drizzt and Regis said together.

“Aren’t they all and aren’t they always?” Bidderdoo answered with obvious disgust.

“More than our share of them, to be sure,” Harkle agreed. “We’re a tolerant bunch here in Longsaddle, as you know.”

“As we knew,” said Regis, and it was Bidderdoo who rolled his eyes, though having never botched a teleportation like his bumbling cousin, his eyes didn’t keep rolling.

“Our acceptance of…strangeness…” Harkle started.

“Embrace of strangeness, you mean,” said Drizzt.

“What?” the wizard asked, and looked curiously at Bidderdoo before catching on and giving a burst of laughter. “Indeed, yes!” he said. “We who so play in the extremes of Mystra’s Weave are not so fast to judge others. Which invited trouble to Longsaddle.”

“You are aware of the disposition of Malarites in general, yes?” Bidderdoo clarified.

“Malarites?” Drizzt asked.

“The worshipers of Malar?” asked the more surface-worldly Regis.

“A battle of gods?” Drizzt asked.

“Worse,” said Harkle. “A battle of followers.”

Drizzt and Regis looked at him curiously.

“Different sects of the same god,” Harkle explained. “Same god with different edicts, depending on which side you ask—and oh, but they’ll kill you if you disagree with their narrow interpretations of their beast god’s will! And how these Malarites always disagree, with each other and with everyone else. One group built a chapel on the eastern bank of Pavlel. The other on the western bank.”

“Pavlel? The lake?”

“We named it after him,” said Harkle.

“In memoriam, no doubt,” Regis said.

“Well, we don’t really know,” Harkle replied. “Since he and the mountain flew off together.”

“Of course,” said the halfling who knew he shouldn’t be surprised.

“The blue-robed and red-robed onlookers at the…punishment,” said Drizzt.

“Priests of Malar all,” Bidderdoo replied. “One side witnessing justice, the other accepting consequences. It’s important that we make a display of such punishment to deter future acts.”