“He burned down a house,” Harkle explained. “With a family inside.”

“And so he was punished,” Bidderdoo added.

“By being polymorphed into a rabbit?” asked Regis.

“At least they can’t hurt anyone in that state,” said Bidderdoo.

“Except for that one,” Harkle corrected. “The one with the big teeth, who could jump so high!”

“Ah, him,” Bidderdoo agreed. “That rabbit was smokepowder! It seemed as if he was possessed of the edge of a vorpal weapon, that one, giving nasty bites!” He turned to Drizzt. “Can I borrow your cat?”

“No,” the drow replied.

Regis growled with frustration. “You turned him into a rabbit!” he shouted, as if there could be no suitable reply.

Bidderdoo shook his head solemnly. “He remains happy and with bountiful leaves, brush, and flowers on the island.”

“Happy? Is he man or rabbit? Where is his mind?”

“Somewhere in between, at this point, I would expect,” Bidderdoo admitted.

“That’s ghastly!” Regis protested.

“Time’s passage will align his thoughts with his new body.”

“To live as a rabbit,” said Regis.

Bidderdoo and Harkle exchanged concerned, and guilty, glances.

“You killed him!” Regis shouted.

“He is very much alive!” Harkle protested.

“How can you say that?”

Drizzt put a hand on the halfling’s shoulder, and when he looked up to meet the drow’s gaze, Drizzt shook his head slowly, backing him down.

“Would that we could simply obliterate them all, that Longsaddle would know her days of old,” Bidderdoo mumbled and left the room.

“The task that has befallen us is not a pleasant one,” Harkle said. “But you don’t understand…”

Drizzt motioned for him to stop, needing no further elaboration, for indeed, the drow did understand the untenable situation that had descended upon his friends, the Harpells. A foul taste filled his throat and he wanted to scream in protest of it all, but he didn’t. Truly there was nothing to say, and nothing left for him to see in Longsaddle.

He informed Harkle, “We’re traveling down the road to Luskan and from there to Icewind Dale.”

“Ah, Luskan!” said Harkle. “I was to apprentice there once, long ago, but for some reason, they wouldn’t let me into the famed Hosttower. A pity.” He sighed profoundly and shook his head, but brightened immediately, as Harkle always did. “I can get you there in an instant,” he said, snapping his fingers in such dramatic fashion, waving his hand with such zest, that he knocked over a lamp.

Or would have, except that Drizzt, his speed enhanced by magical anklets, darted forward in a blur, caught the lamp, and righted it.

“We prefer to walk,” the drow said. “It’s not so far and the weather is clear and kind. It’s not the destination that matters most, after all, but the journey.”

“True, I suppose,” Harkle muttered, seeming disappointed for just a moment before again brightening. “But then, we could not have draggedSea Sprite across the miles to Carradoon, could we?”

“Fog of fate?” Regis asked Drizzt, recalling the tale of how Drizzt and Catti-brie wound up in a landlocked lake with Captain Deudermont and his oceangoing pirate hunter. Harkle Harpell had created a new enchantment, which, as expected, had gone terribly awry, transporting the ship and all aboard her to a landlocked lake in the Snowflake Mountains.

“I have a new one!” Harkle squealed. Regis blanched and fell back, and Drizzt waved his hands to shut down the wizard before he could fully launch into spellcasting.

“We will walk,” the drow said again. He looked down at Regis and added, “At once,” which brought a curious expression from the halfling.

They were out of Longsaddle soon after, hustling down the road to the west, and despite Drizzt’s determined stride, Regis kept pausing and glancing left and right, as if expecting the drow to turn.

“What is it?” Drizzt finally asked him.

“Are we really leaving?”

“That was our plan.”

“I thought you meant to come out of town then circle back in to better view the situation.”

Drizzt gave a helpless little chuckle. “To what end?”

“We could go to the island.”

“And rescue rabbits?” came the drow’s sarcastic reply. “Do not underestimate Harpell magic—their silliness belies the strength of their enchantments. For all the folly of Fog of Fate, not many wizards in the world could have so warped Mystra’s Weave to teleport an entire ship and crew. We go and collect the rabbits, but then what? Seek audience of Elminster, who perhaps alone might undue the dweomer?”

Regis stammered, logically cornered.

“And to what end?” Drizzt asked. “Should we, new to the scene, interject ourselves in the Longsaddle’s justice?” Regis started to argue, but Drizzt cut him short. “What might Bruenor do to one who burned a family inside a house?” the drow asked. “Do you think his justice would be less harsh than the polymorph? I think it might come at the end of a many-notched axe!”

“This is different,” Regis said, shaking his head in obvious frustration. Clearly the sight of a man violently transformed into a rabbit had unnerved the halfling profoundly. “You cannot…that’s not what the Harpells…Longsaddle shouldn’t…” Regis stammered, looking for a focus for his frustration.

“It’s not what I expected, and no, I’m not pleased by it.”

“But you will accept it?”

“It’s not my choice to make.”

“The people of Longsaddle call out to you,” Regis said.

The drow stopped walking and moved to a boulder resting on the side of the trail, where he sat down, gazing back the way they’d come.

“These situations are more complicated than they appear,” he said. “You grew up among the pashas of Calimport, with their personal armies and thuggish ways.”

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean I accept the same thing from the Harpells.”

Drizzt shook his head. “That’s not my point. In their respective neighborhoods, how were the pashas viewed?”

“As heroes,” Regis said.

“Why?”

Regis leaned back against a stone, a perplexed look on his face.

“In the lawless streets of Calimport, why were thugs like Pasha Pook seen as heroes?”

“Because without them, it would have been worse,” Regis said, and caught on.

“The Harpells have no answer to the fanaticism of the battling priests, and so they respond with a heavy hand.”

“You agree with that?”

“It’s not my place to agree or disagree,” said Drizzt. “The Harpells are the lid on a boiling cauldron. I don’t know if their choice of justice is the correct one, but I suspect from what we were told that without that lid, Longsaddle would know strife beyond anything you or I can imagine. Sects of opposing gods battling for supremacy can be terrifying indeed, but when the fight is between two interpretations of the same god, the misery can reach new proportions. I saw this intimately in my youth, my friend. You cannot imagine the fury of opposing matron mothers, each convinced that she, and not her enemy, spoke the will of Lolth!

“You would have me descend upon Longsaddle and use my influence, even my blades, to somehow alter the situation. But what would that, even if I could accomplish anything, which I strongly doubt, loose upon the common folk of Longsaddle?”

“Better to let Bidderdoo continue his brutality?” Regis asked.

“Better to let the people with a stake in the outcome determine their own fate,” Drizzt answered. “We’ve not the standing or the forces to better the situation in Longsaddle.”

“We don’t even know what that situation really is.”

Drizzt took a deep, steadying breath, and said, “I know enough to recognize that if the problems in Longsaddle are not as profound as I—as we—fear, then the Harpells will find their way out of it. And if it is as dangerous then there’s nothing we can do to help. However we intervene, one or even both sides will see us as meddling. Better that we go on our way. I think we are both unnerved by the unusual nature of the Harpells’ justice, but I have to say that there is a temperate manner to it.”