The Last Threshold: Neverwinter Saga, Book IV

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Or maybe she’s not properly returning to her Astral home,” Entreri offered.

  Drizzt snapped his head around to regard the assassin.

  “Still, she looks a bit better than she did when last she was at your side, so perhaps it will pass.”

  Drizzt wasn’t sure of that, but as he had no need of Guenhwyvar at that time, he gave her a hug and quickly dismissed her. Remembering Entreri was watching, he felt a bit embarrassed, but to his great surprise the man offered no judgment—no negative one, at least. Drizzt filed that in the back of his mind and thought again of shadow gates and his suspicions of where Guenhwyvar had been lost to him. He wondered if he might soon be visiting the Shadowfell after all.

  “Do you think Port Llast will thrive once more?” Drizzt asked a short while later.

  “Do you think I care?”

  Drizzt laughed and resisted the urge to blurt out “Yes!” He would allow Entreri his perpetual disaffection, for whatever purpose that might serve the man.

  “So when we retrieve your dagger, you will sail out of Luskan and give no further thought to me, or Port Llast.”

  “I give no thought to you now.”

  Drizzt laughed again and let it go, fully confident that Artemis Entreri would be riding beside him on the return journey to Port Llast.

  If they got that far, he reminded himself when he considered the task before him. He knew where Entreri’s dagger was, so he believed, but he wasn’t about to kill the only man who might broker the deal he needed for the sake of Port Llast in order to retrieve that dire blade!

  Thanks to their enchanted mounts, they reached Luskan the next night, and neither found any problem in secretly climbing over the wall. Drizzt knew that Beniago would be more than willing to meet with him. He got his bearings and led Entreri through the city’s alleyways.

  “I don’t know you,” Beniago remarked a short while later, having turned down the alleyway to the appointed spot where he expected to meet Drizzt, only to find a small man leaning easily on the wall of the alleyway, appearing rather bored.

  “That dagger you carry on your hip is mine,” the small man replied. “And I would have it back.”

  “I have carried this for many years.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “It is to me.”

  “I hardly remember.”

  Entreri kept his distance, but narrowed his eyes to let this man Beniago clearly see his building anger. “I will have it back.”

  “I cannot give it to you.”

  “Your corpse will not hold it so tightly, and if it does so, then I will merely chop off your fingers.”

  Beniago laughed, but betrayed a bit of concern with his posture and movements.

  “He really will kill you,” came a voice from above, and Beniago froze, and slowly looked up to see Drizzt Do’Urden sitting comfortably along a narrow ledge along the building to his left, legs outstretched before him, fingers locked behind his head as he rested against the structure’s chimney.

  “I have seen you fight, and witnessed this man, Artemis Entreri, in combat many times,” Drizzt went on. “You will hold your ground against him for a short while—perhaps longer because he knows to beware your dagger. But soon enough he will overwhelm you, and you’ll feel the killing blow before you ever see it coming.”

  “You betrayed me,” Beniago said. “You lured me out here to an ambush!”

  “Not so. Only so if you make it so.”

  “And I suppose your panther prowls nearby in case I try to flee.”

  “You know the way I prepare a battlefield,” Drizzt replied and dropped down easily from his perch, landing lightly in the alleyway just a few strides from Beniago. “But I did not lure you out here for any ambush, or indeed for any fight. It wasn’t until we saw you coming that my companion recognized your dagger as the one he carried many years ago.” The statement was true enough, though Drizzt left out the part that he and Entreri had known of the item, and indeed that was why he brought Entreri along.

  “I’ve grown quite fond of it,” Beniago replied.

  “More than you are fond of breathing?” Entreri asked.

  “It’s not worth it,” Drizzt said to the tall, red-headed man. “Artemis Entreri’s claim to the dagger is as legitimate as his ability to take it from you, should you choose that course.”

  Beniago looked from Drizzt to Entreri, then back to the drow. “I am a businessman,” he said.

  “I counted on that.”

  “Then what do you offer,” Beniago asked, and he looked to Entreri and remarked, before Entreri could, “in addition to my life?”

  “That which you once asked of me,” said Drizzt. “I, and Dahlia, and my friend Entreri here, can serve House Kurth quite valuably, from afar. We are in a position now to give High Captain Kurth a tremendous advantage over his peers.”

  “Pray tell,” Beniago prompted.

  “We come as emissaries of Port Llast.”

  Beniago appeared greatly surprised at that. “Port Llast? It is a name I am hearing more often in the last few tendays.”

  “And you will hear more of it in the future, I assure you,” said Drizzt. “The populace grows in number and in strength. They are reclaiming their city from the minions of Umberlee, and indeed have brought their city limits to water’s edge once more.”

  “It is a rival city to Luskan’s designs.”

  “No more,” said Drizzt. “The tides will not favor Port Llast. She will not rise as a trading port, but from her cold waters comes a bountiful harvest of shellfish and other delicacies, and fine rocks from her quarry. There is nothing in Port Llast to threaten Luskan, but plenty of opportunity for one wise enough to see far ahead.”

  “That would be Ship Kurth,” Beniago said.

  “That would be your choice,” said Drizzt. “And you would have the eyes you once claimed to want. My eyes, Dahlia’s eyes.”

  “Why? You don’t seem like the type who would throw in with Ship Kurth, as you made clear in our last encounter.”

  “I’m not, but is one crew better than another here in Luskan? I don’t intend to fight for you, nor to provide you anything you might use against undeserving innocents. But I expect that I can stay within my moral boundaries and still be of use to a … businessman.”

  “Persuasive,” Beniago admitted. “And so I would be a fool not to take that bargain. I assume that in exchange for this arrangement, Ship Kurth should not accede to any coordinated attacks on Port Llast from Luskan.”

  “Correct, and if you change your mind, understand that Port Llast is much better defended, and with far more capable hands, than her small size would indicate.”

  Beniago laughed at that unveiled threat.

  “Then we are agreed?” Drizzt asked.

  “I have to speak with my high captain, but it seems reasonable.”

  “And the dagger?” Drizzt asked

  “And your life?” Entreri interjected.

  “The deal is separate, I think,” said Beniago, “now that I understand that you won’t let your friend attack me. Without me, your tie to Ship Kurth is greatly diminished, of course, and since my associates know that I came out to find you at your request, if I turn up dead or missing they will be more likely to initiate an action against Port Llast, don’t you think?”

  “I’m growing bored,” Entreri warned, but Drizzt held up his hand to keep the dangerous man at bay.

  “We have prisoners from Luskan who assaulted a caravan bearing refugees to Port Llast,” he told Beniago. “They are unharmed, and are being treated well. We want no war with Luskan. They are from at least three of the other Ships, as well as one man from your own.”

  “And you will give them to me,” said Beniago, and Drizzt nodded.

  “Their rescue, by you, will buy you good will and capital, I expect.”

  Beniago considered it for a few moments, then nodded. “It’s a good start. But I need something else, an
d you are just the drow to do it. I have a ship of goods sailing for Baldur’s Gate as soon as winter fully breaks—perhaps four tendays. She will be well-armed and manned, a crack crew, but I would have some of my own mercenaries aboard her for extra protection of certain … interests I have on the boat.”

  “You ask me to run guard on a merchant ship?” Drizzt asked incredulously.

  “She will see no trouble on the seas.”

  “Then why—?”

  “There are things aboard I would have doubly protected, perhaps from other mercenaries aboard. But again, you will likely find no trouble. None in Luskan would move against Drizzt Do’Urden without more support than they might find on a small boat.”

  “Ship Rethnor might disagree with that assessment, particularly if Dahlia accompanies me.”

  “There will be no Rethnor agents aboard. I promise that much.”

  “My dagger?” asked an impatient Entreri.

  “It is a valuable dagger,” said Beniago. “I hate to part with it.”

  “You have no choice,” said Entreri, and he started forward.

  “Drizzt?” Beniago asked.

  “Deal,” said the drow.

  Beniago drew out the jeweled dagger, flipped it over, and handed it out hilt first to Entreri.

  “Do I ride with you back to Port Llast to retrieve the prisoners?” Beniago asked.

  “You haven’t a steed that can pace us,” Drizzt replied. “You, or your emissaries, ride out in two days. Our wagon with the prisoners should meet you on the road about halfway to the city.”

  Drizzt glanced at Entreri, who stood holding his jeweled dagger before him, staring at it, his expression filled as much with confusion as relief at having it back in his hand. Drizzt understood that; surely feeling the weight of the jeweled dagger again was evoking in Artemis Entreri a flood of memories, some good, many not so good.

  The two were back on the road soon after, riding hard to the south on their untiring mounts. Artemis Entreri didn’t utter a word all the way back to Port Llast.

  And Drizzt didn’t press him.

  THE TIP OF SEA SPRITE’S MAST

  MINNOW SKIPPER GLIDED OUT OF LUSKAN’S HARBOR, TURNING ABOUT Closeguard Isle to slip out into the strong spring currents. Standing at her prow, holding the guide rope, Drizzt watched the familiar sights drift past, for this was the skyline he had viewed for years and years on end in his younger days. All that was missing was the strange, treelike structure of the Hosttower of the Arcane, with its seemingly organic, spreading limbs.

  Drizzt wasn’t pleased with any view of Luskan now, though. He had never been overly fond of the harsh and often lawless place, particularly since the fall of Captain Deudermont, but for several years, he had called this port home. That had all been shattered, of course, but somehow, out here on the water, that most unpleasant memory, Deudermont’s death to Kensidan the Crow of Ship Rethnor, seemed to fade to a distant blur. Drizzt’s thoughts cascaded back beyond those darkest days to the years when he and Catti-brie had sailed with Deudermont aboard Sea Sprite out of this very harbor.

  A smile spread on the drow’s face as he remembered the thrill of the chase as Sea Sprite hunted down a pirate. He would stand ready on her deck, scimitars in hand, Catti-brie beside him with Taulmaril the Heartseeker, ready to rake the pirate’s deck and set the stage for Drizzt and Guenhwyvar to lead the boarding charge.

  The drow closed his eyes and let the wind and the brine rush about him, slowly turning his head this way and that to catch the thicker scents and better feel the heavier salty gusts. On one such movement, he opened his eyes briefly, enough to see the tip of the mast of an old wreck that had been driven up against the rocks in the south harbor.

  Sea Sprite.

  It was her mainmast, Drizzt knew, trailing down under the dark waters to the shattered hull of the destroyed ship. That any sizable portion of the schooner remained at all intact in the rough waters around Luskan was a testament to her wondrous design and workmanship, but that hardly comforted Drizzt as he stood at the rail, looking at the lost glory of Captain Deudermont.

  And Robillard, he recalled, the crusty ship’s wizard, a mage of considerable power and possessed of a tongue as sharp as his frequent lightning bolts. Robillard long served as Deudermont’s trump card at sea, for no wizard was more adept at splitting the beams of an enemy ship right at the waterline, or at filling sails with wind to speed Sea Sprite along.

  Robillard would likely be long dead now, Drizzt knew, and he wondered if the man had left this world in a blaze of fireballs and the hail of ice storms, slicking the deck of a pirate ship. That thought brought a grin back to Drizzt, as he remembered when Robillard had used that very tactic on one pirate vessel in heavy seas. How the pirate archers had pitched and tumbled, and nearly half the crew had slid into the open ocean, making for an easy catch.

  He thought of Thrice Lucky then, young Maimun’s ship.

  “Young Maimun?” Drizzt whispered aloud, for surely that one, too, was long gone from this world. He had taken up Deudermont’s mantle as the greatest pirate hunter of the Sword Coast, Drizzt had heard, after the fall of Luskan to the five high captains, and for years afterward, Drizzt had often heard the name Thrice Lucky whispered in taverns up and down the Sword Coast, most often in gratitude and with raised mugs from those abiding the law, and accompanied by curses from those who walked a less seemly road.

  Drizzt locked his gaze on Sea Sprite’s mast, showing in the low wake clearly whenever the waves rolled past.

  He gave a solemn nod to the proud vessel, to the noble crew and captain who had taken her so far for so long. It was a good memory, he decided. Good times with good friends doing good deeds.

  And the excitement, always that, with a pirate sail on every horizon, it seemed, and a crew ever ready and eager to take up the chase.

  “The finest ship to ever sail the Sword Coast,” Drizzt remarked when Dahlia walked up beside him, to find him still staring at the mast.

  “Not any more, it would seem,” she said flippantly.

  “Aye, a long tale, and one worth telling,” Drizzt replied. “And no better place to tell it than on a ship’s deck on the open waters, under the stars and with the lull of the ocean nodding truth to every word.”

  Dahlia draped her arms around Drizzt and he tensed up for just a moment, then forced himself to relax. Somehow that touch didn’t seem right to him. Not out here. Not on these same waters he had so often sailed with Catti-brie.

  “We’ve no private cabin, but we can find a private place,” the elf woman whispered into his ear. “Do you think the ocean will nod about that?”

  Drizzt didn’t answer, other than to offer a chuckle, a half-hearted one, and he understood that Dahlia had recognized it as such when she unwrapped her arms and stepped back from him. He turned to her, trying to find some way to soothe that unintentional sting, but he diverted it instead, seeing their three other companions moving to join them.

  “I’m not for knowin’ how these bowleggers take to this pitchin’ and rollin’ days on end,” Ambergris grumbled. She planted her feet wide and square, but even then the slightest pitches of Minnow Skipper had her stumbling side-to-side. That just made her dig her heels in harder, but to little positive effect.

  “You take the sea’s roll with your belly,” Afafrenfere explained to her, and he tapped his hard abdomen.

  “Ah, shut up afore I spray me breakfast all about ye,” said the dwarf.

  “You will get used to the motion of the sea,” Drizzt promised. “And when we put in to port, you’ll find your legs unsteady once more.”

  That brought a laugh from Afafrenfere, and from the dwarf, but Dahlia just stared at Drizzt, seeming more than a little wounded by his rebuff, and Artemis Entreri looked as dour as ever as he walked past Drizzt to the rail.

  “That one’s been sailin’ afore,” Ambergris muttered, shaking her head at Entreri’s smooth gait, for he didn’t miss a stride even when Minnow Skipper pitched unexpectedly
under the roll of one heavier wave.

  “Often, yes?” Drizzt asked, turning to face the man.

  “Too often,” said Entreri.

  “Then you know Baldur’s Gate?”

  “Every street.”

  “Good,” said Drizzt. “I know not how long we’ll dock there, but you’ll be our guide.”

  Entreri turned to look at him, to offer him a smirk. “Just long enough for Luskan to destroy Port Llast, I would expect. So not long at all.”

  That had the other four crowding in closer.

  “What’d’ye know?” Ambergris asked.

  “It merely occurs to me that Beniago conveniently arranged to get the five best fighters out of Port Llast all at the same time,” Entreri mused.

  “Ooo,” Ambergris groaned, apparently having not thought of that before.

  But Drizzt had. “Beniago asked only that I go in the deal for your dagger,” he said. “He could not have foreseen that I would bring you four along with me.”

  “But he knows now,” said Entreri.

  Drizzt snorted the uncomfortable thought away. “Luskan’s high captains cannot agree on which dock to use for a visiting lord without a street battle to settle it,” he said. “They couldn’t muster any sizeable force and march or sail on Port Llast in the few tendays we will be away. Nor would they begin to understand the level of power within the city any time soon, with or without us there.”

  Entreri looked at him and chuckled softly, his expression practically screaming the word “simpleton.” But he said nothing and walked away, back to the hatch and into the hold.

  “For my benefit alone,” Drizzt said to the remaining three, shaking his head dismissively at the departing man. He believed the truth of his hypothesis. Ever was Artemis Entreri trying to throw doubts into Drizzt; indeed, he seemed to derive some strange pleasure from doing so.

  Drizzt turned back to the sea, gave a last glance at Sea Sprite’s mast, then turned his gaze out to the wide-spreading waters before him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the briny smell and letting it take him back to better days and—he tried unsuccessfully to exclude Dahlia from the thought as it formed—to better company.