So last time, our heroes adventured through the wilderness, found a mean wizard, and have just had an encounter with a hook horror. A TALKING hook horror!



So we rejoin our heroes as the hook horror gets out its story. Apparently, it used to be a pech, which Belwar describes as "rock children". Actually, this is pretty funny:

“Rock children,” Belwar explained to him. “Strange little creatures. Hard as the stone and living for no other reason than to work it.”

“Sounds like a svirfneblin,” Drizzt replied.

Belwar paused a moment to figure out if he had been complimented or insulted. Unable to discern, the burrow-warden continued somewhat cautiously. “There are not many pech about, and fewer still that look like this one!” He cast a doubting eye at the hook horror, then gave Drizzt a look that told the drow to keep his scimitars at the ready.

Drizzt is funny when Salvatore lets him have a sense of humor. But anyway, this poor thing was a Pech, who got transformed into a hook horror by an evil wizard. Probably the guy we met earlier. Poor thing.

I'm a little disappointed by this, actually. I mean, it's still a good hook for a new companion, don't get me wrong. But there'd be something really poetic about Drizzt meeting a REAL hook horror, who'd learned to talk, and made friends with it.

It's been years since I read a monster manual, so I don't know if a hook horror would count as neutral, like most non-sentient animals, or evil, like most monsters. But if we can have a good member of an Always Chaotic Evil race, it'd be interesting to have a good monster as well.

Anyway, both Drizzt and Belwar have some knowledge about polymorph spells. Belwar's even seen it done, when gnomes have needed to infiltrate Menzoberranzan. And that fascinates me. Tell me more about these gnomish spies, Belwar! Do they turn into members of a slave race? Do they turn into drow commoners? I'm fascinated!

Belwar sadly changes the subject sheepishly. Anyway, the poor ex-Pech actually wishes that they'd kill it, because it can't feel stone anymore. It'd have been better off not saying anything, because now that they know that the pech is indeed a pech, Belwar wants to adopt it. Though he wisely warns Drizzt to keep his blades ready. Just in case.

So they go off to the lake, to talk more, and as they do, the hook horror/pech gets better and better at speech. It feels good to speak again, even if it's not his own language, and it feels like it's more of what it once was. Drizzt definitely appreciates that, what with his own berserker alter ego issue.

The hook horror wants to find the wizard. It's hard though, because it can't ask the stones where to go. It warns Drizzt and Belwar that it's not safe to be around, but Belwar and Drizzt are unconcerned. They point out their living-cave, which has a doorway too small for the hook horror to enter. It decides to rest.

Belwar gives it a name: Clacker. Which is good, I feel guilty calling it a hook horror. Clacker likes it, though we're told that it wishes it remembered its pech name, which "rolled on and on like a rounded boulder in a sloping passage and spoke prayers to the stone with each growling syllable."

I feel like that is both very poetic and very inconvenient for conversation.

Anyway, Drizzt and Belwar debate. Drizzt wants to enlarge the door so Clacker can rest safely with them. He thinks it's not safe outside. Belwar's more cautious, noting that a polymorph spell changes the body first, but eventually the mind follows. Clacker will, someday soon, start seeing them as a meal rather than as friends.

Drizzt though, is projecting:

Drizzt turned away. “His tale is familiar to me.”

“Not as much as you believe,” replied Belwar.

“I, too, was lost,” Drizzt reminded the burrow-warden.

“So you believe,” Belwar answered. “But that which was essentially Drizzt Do’Urden remained within you, my friend. You were as you had to be, as the situation around you forced you to be. This is different. Not just in body, but in very essence will Clacker become a hook horror. His thoughts will be the thoughts of a hook horror and Magga cammara, he will not return your grant of mercy when you are the one on the ground.”

It's an interesting question though. Drizzt is a drow. A race that, at this point in the Forgotten Realms, is always chaotic evil. One could suggest that this morality is as much a built in part of his species as Clacker's appetite will be a part of being a hook horror. I'm very glad that Forgotten Realms has moved away from that always chaotic evil idea for the drow - but one wonders if maybe a hook horror could be friendly too.

Drizzt is determined to find the wizard that cursed Clacker and force him to turn it back. Belwar points out that this dude is probably going to be pretty powerful, but he's a bleeding heart who adopted a drow, which Drizzt pretty shamelessly points out. So now they have a quest and a new friend!

There are inconveniences with their new friend though, as Clacker is prone to banging its claws on the walls. It also doesn't react well to being startled. The tapping at least is a coping mechanism - as a pech, it had spent many days tapping and shaping stone.

We're told that, as they travel together, both Drizzt and Clacker seem to benefit. Clacker, like Drizzt, is slowly regaining a lot of its old personality, just like Drizzt did as the hunter persona retreated. But Belwar is more concerned: Clacker's condition is caused by magic. And they're having trouble finding that wizard.

They do start finding his trail, though. Clacker has an emotional reaction to a cavern with a big hole in the ceiling. Apparently the wizard has a portable iron tower that he sets up where convenient. Even if it doesn't fit. Eventually, they actually find it:

A few days later, the three companions turned into a wide and high cavern, and far back from them, beside a rushing stream, loomed the wizard’s home. Again Drizzt and Belwar looked at each other helplessly, for the tower stood fully thirty feet high and twenty across, its smooth metallic walls mocking their plans. They took separate and cautious routes to the structure and were even more amazed, for the tower’s walls were pure adamantite, the hardest metal in all the world.

They found only a single door, small and barely showing its outline in the perfection of the tower’s craftsmanship. They didn’t have to test it to know that it was secure against unwelcome visitors.

Swanky!

Drizzt thinks they should ambush the wizard when he comes out. Clacker tries to force its way in in a rage, but to no avail. Then Belwar tries, with his awesome hammer hand. Sadly, he only manages some scratches and superficial burns.

Drizzt, scouting, locates some arrow slits and hears chanting within. He's able to disrupt the wizard's spell with a stone, and they run for it. But there's plan B!

“Magga cammara, dark elf, we cannot get in,” the svirfneblin prudently reminded Drizzt.

Drizzt pulled out the onyx figurine and held it against the arrow slit, blocking it with his body. “We shall see,” he growled, and then he called to Guenhwyvar.

The black mist swirled about and found only one empty path clear from the figurine.

“I vill keell you all!” cried the unseen wizard.

The next sound from within the tower was a low panther’s growl, and then the wizard’s voice rang out again. “I cood be wrong!”

Okay, I chuckled.

So, with some helpful persuasion by Guen, the wizard, Brister Fendlestick, welcomes them to his home. Apparently, he speaks drow. I thought that was established last chapter, but Drizzt may have forgotten. We're told that Drizzt isn't terribly impressed by his first human.

That said, he does turn out willing to change the pech back, albeit with some dismissive comments. Unfortunately...

“Oh, very vell, very vell!” the wizard spouted, throwing up his hands in disgust. “Wretched pech!” He pulled an immense book from of a pocket much too small to hold it. Drizzt and Belwar smiled to each other, thinking victory at hand. But then the wizard made a fatal mistake.

“I shood have killed him as I killed the others,” he mumbled under his breath, too low for even Drizzt, standing right beside him, to make out the words.

But hook horrors had the keenest hearing of any creature in the Underdark.

A swipe of Clacker’s enormous claw sent Belwar spiraling across the room. Drizzt, spinning about at the sound of heavy steps, was thrown aside by the momentum of the rushing giant, the drow’s scimitars flying from his hands. And the wizard, the foolish wizard, padded Clacker’s impact with the iron ladder, a jolt so vicious that it bowed the ladder and sent Guenhwyvar flying off the other side.

Oops.

So the wizard is dead now, leaving a "lump of gore" at Clacker's feet that is no longer recognizable. Poor Clacker comes back to himself, devastated. And somewhere along the way, his pronouns shift from it to he. That seems appropriate.

This part annoys me a little:

“Search it,” Belwar suggested, thinking that marvelous treasures might be hidden within. But Drizzt could not remain for another moment. He had seen too much of himself in the unbridled rage of his giant companion, and the smell of the bloodied heap filled him with frustrations and fears that he could not tolerate. With Guenhwyvar in tow, he walked from the tower.

I mean, I appreciate Drizzt's trauma, but I feel like there might well have been some kind of magical device or potion in there that could have helped? Drizzt had a brief education in Sorcere, that by Icewind Dale will make him a lowkey expert on things. Maybe they could have found something?

But instead, they head home, quiet and depressed, and thinking about how Clacker's murderous outburst is not very pech like, but is sadly in character for a hook horror.

The chapter ends here.