The Last Threshold: Neverwinter Saga, Book IV

by R. A. Salvatore

  Soon after, Dahlia returned to the table with two full bottles of feywine and a pair of glasses.

  “Planning a late night?” Entreri asked.

  “Let’s play a game.”

  “Let’s not. Go play with Drizzt.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of losing to me?”

  “Of losing what?”

  “Your superior attitude, perhaps.”

  Entreri laughed at her as she poured them both drinks. She lifted her glass in toast, and the assassin reluctantly followed suit and tapped the goblets together. He took just a sip, though, and Dahlia realized that she had put him on his guard, which was most decidedly not what she had in mind.

  “We could play for coins,” she said.

  “I have few. And I don’t care to seek work ashore.”

  “For items, then?”

  Entreri looked her over. “I might fancy that strange weapon you carry.”

  “And I would fancy your dagger.”

  Entreri shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not for any odds you might offer, Dahlia. I lost this once, but not again.”

  “Not that dagger,” she said with a mischievous look and a sparkle in her eye.

  Entreri’s expression did not soften—quite the opposite.

  “Go back to Drizzt,” he said evenly.

  Dahlia realized that she had pushed him too far. Was it a code of honor, she wondered? Was he afraid of Drizzt? That seemed far-fetched to her. Was Entreri, perhaps, really more of a friend to Drizzt than either of them cared to admit?

  “I need to talk,” she said, trying a different tact.

  “Go talk to Drizzt.”

  Dahlia shook her head. “He doesn’t understand.”

  “Then tell him.”

  Dahlia sighed and slumped at the man’s barrage of short, closed answers. “He knows, but he doesn’t understand,” she said, letting more emotion into her voice. “How can he? How could anyone who has not lived through the darkness?”

  Entreri seemed to have run out of snappy answers. He just sat there, arms still crossed, though he did mutter, “Menzoberranzan?” in answer to Dahlia’s assertion.

  Dahlia lifted her glass in a toast again, and to her surprise, he actually responded in kind. He took a deeper draw of the wine, so much so that she lifted the bottle and refilled both their glasses.

  Her subtle reminder of their shared trauma had touched him somewhere deep inside, she knew.

  “Have you ever found love?” she asked, and her tone reflected more sadness than anger.

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “The truth!” Dahlia spouted, coming forward. She slipped out of her chair to take a seat in one right beside Entreri. “The truth,” she said again more quietly. “You don’t know because you cannot be sure, because you are not sure what the word even means.”

  “Do you love Drizzt?” he asked.

  The question surprised her, and she blurted out, “No” before she really even considered it.

  Because Dahlia wasn’t here to consider such things. They didn’t matter. Dahlia was here to begin a string of events that would lead to the place she truly wished to be. And Artemis Entreri would carry her to that place like a fine steed.

  “It is a matter of convenience,” she explained.

  Entreri’s smile widened at that, and he drained his glass again, and this time refilled it of his own accord. “Does Drizzt know that?” he asked while pouring.

  “If I spent my days worrying about what that one knows or does not know about love, I would think of nothing else, I am sure. But it hardly concerns me. He cannot understand the truth of who I am, or of the place from where I came, so how deep might any love run with him.”

  She shifted closer to Entreri, put her face near to his and bade him, “Tell me about your early years.”

  He resisted, but his arms were no longer crossed.

  Dahlia would be patient. She could see the truth: The man was wracked by memories he had never shared, and his warrior’s stubbornness hadn’t put those dark days as far behind him as he would have liked.

  Dahlia saw him as vulnerable, and because of her own background, and because she had long seen the truth about herself, she knew how to wrestle free that vulnerability and take advantage of it.

  “Do you know why I wear such baubles on my ears?” she asked. Entreri looked at her curiously, studying her diamonds, the many clear ones on her left ear, the single black diamond stud on her right.

  “Former lovers,” she said, tapping her left ear.

  “Current on your right,” Entreri said, and he chuckled. “Black diamond for a drow, I see.”

  “I hope it doesn’t look awkward when I move it to my left lobe with the others,” she said.

  Entreri laughed at her.

  She poured more wine.

  “Will you listen to my tale?” Dahlia whispered.

  “I think I know most of it.”

  Dahlia looked around. “Not here,” she said. “I cannot.” She slid her chair back and stood up, drained her drink in one gulp, then similarly drained Entreri’s. She collected the bottles and glasses and looked at the man plaintively.

  “I need to tell it,” she said. “In full. I have never done that. I fear I’ll not be free until I do.”

  She looked across the room to the stairs leading to the rooms above, then back at Entreri, who, to her pleasant surprise, was rising from his seat. He stopped at the bar on their way, and collected two more bottles of the wine.

  Dahlia had been caught by her own net, she realized once they’d arrived in his room, and realized, too, that she didn’t care. So she told him all of it, of her trip that morning long ago to the river to fetch some water, of returning to her clan’s small village to find it full of Shadovar.

  With tears in her eyes, she told him of the rape, of watching her mother’s murder.

  They drank and they talked, and she began to pry at Entreri, and Entreri began to talk. He told Dahlia of his own mother’s betrayal, of being sold as a slave and taken to Calimport—and he nearly spat as he spoke that city’s name. He started to tell of his rise on the streets, but suddenly he stopped, and he looked at her with a puzzled expression.

  She swallowed hard.

  “Tell me about those other diamonds,” Entreri said. “The ones in your left ear.”

  “About those other lovers, you mean,” Dahlia said, and she let a hint of wickedness slip into her tone. But any hopes that Entreri was looking for a voyeuristic thrill were quickly dashed by the stern-faced assassin.

  “Which one represents Herzgo Alegni?” Entreri asked.

  Dahlia tried unsuccessfully to keep the startled look off her face. Why would he say such a thing? Particularly now?

  “I notice that you did not move any upon Alegni’s death,” Entreri said, and Dahlia realized that a long while had passed while she had chewed over Entreri’s previous comment. “You didn’t remove any, or shift any from one ear to the other. Why is that?”

  “You do not wish to hear,” Dahlia replied.

  “Should I be jealous? Or afraid?”

  “You do not seem to me to be the jealous type.”

  Entreri grinned back at her, a look that made her think that he knew a lot more about her macabre game with the diamond studs than he was letting on.

  “Herzgo Alegni was my rapist, never a lover,” she said evenly, and Entreri nodded and didn’t seem intimidated by her threatening tone, and seemed rather as if he’d expected that very answer and was glad of it.

  “And when will you move the black diamond?”

  Dahlia stared at him sternly, but didn’t reply.

  “The old swordsman’s rule, yes?” Entreri teased, and he took a drink, lifting a full glass with his right hand and draining it. He wiped his mouth with his left sleeve and said, “Dispatch with your right hand, dispose with your left.”

  Again Dahlia sat silent, digesting the assassi
n’s cutting insights. Of course, none of the diamonds represented the beast Alegni, but it was also true that all of them represented Herzgo Alegni. Those diamonds, this whole game, had been put in place because of him, after all. Taking her lovers was because of him, murdering her lovers was because of him, and because those lovers were not strong enough to win the necessary fight and end her own pain.

  And thus all of them served to satiate the woman, all of those lovers, one by one, getting Alegni’s just reward …

  But what about Drizzt, then, she wondered?

  They drank some more, and Dahlia made sure to get very close to Entreri as they sat on his bed, and made sure to turn just so, that she could afford him some tantalizing views of her blouse, unbuttoned low. And she made sure to touch him just so, to comfort him at first, then to tantalize him.

  And she realized that she was indeed having that very effect.

  “You deny it, but you love Drizzt,” Entreri said unexpectedly, throwing her back, but just a bit.

  “I am not with Drizzt,” she protested.

  “Because you love him, and he has pushed you away. Dahlia cannot accept that, can she?”

  “Do you really want to talk about Drizzt?” she said, determined not to get sidetracked.

  “Or are you, perhaps, jealous of him?” Entreri posed. “Jealousy, or simple admiration?”

  Dahlia sat back and stared at him incredulously.

  “Because he was stronger than you,” Entreri explained. “Because of his choices. I can assure you, from first-hand experience, that Drizzt’s homeland of Menzoberranzan is as bad as anything you have ever known—even the violation by Alegni.”

  “I do not think you can make such a claim.” Dahlia tried hard not to get angry.

  “A vile place. Horrid in every regard.”

  “And worse than anything I have known?”

  Entreri paused for a moment and seemed to be considering the question deeply, but then he nodded. “Or at least as bad. And Drizzt grew up there, betrayed always by his family.

  “As bad?” Dahlia said and she pointedly snorted. “Do you speak of my feelings for Drizzt? Jealousy? Admiration? Or of your own?”

  “No, it really is love for you, I think,” Entreri said, dodging. “I don’t blame you. Drizzt survived. Drizzt has thrived, where you have not.”

  “Where we have not,” Dahlia insisted.

  Entreri had no answer.

  They drank some more, and their talk turned to their current situation, but Dahlia would hear no further discussion regarding Drizzt, and indeed, when Entreri tried to bring up the subject of the drow, Dahlia fell over him, burying his words in a passionate, hungry kiss.

  And though she had intended to feign exactly this to reach her more important goal, that goal was nowhere in Dahlia’s mind, and her hunger wasn’t faked.

  She grabbed at his shirt and began unbuttoning it. He tried to protest, but half-heartedly, his objections no match for the feelings Dahlia stirred in him.

  Down the hallway a bit, a door cracked open, and a shadowy face peeked into the corridor, watching Entreri’s rented room.

  The sounds from within made clear what was happening behind that door, and it brought a scowl to the face of the watcher.

  Effron Alegni resisted his initial urge to charge into that other room and unload a barrage of devastating magic on the couple. He reminded himself of Draygo Quick’s warning, then pointedly reminded himself that Draygo’s cautions had been regarding Drizzt, not these two.

  So he could go in there and slay them in their distraction …

  But he didn’t.

  Effron closed the door, put his back to it, and took a deep and steadying breath.

  The slanted rays of morning slipped in through the dirty window, and fell upon fair Dahlia as she slept.

  Artemis Entreri watched her.

  He considered his next moves. He hadn’t used the pronoun “us,” hadn’t included himself in the group that would sail out of Baldur’s Gate on Minnow Skipper by accident, for he intended to do exactly that. The boat was going on to Memnon, after all, though Drizzt, Dahlia, and the others didn’t know it, and the closer Entreri could get to Calimport, the better, so he figured.

  But why?

  What was in Calimport for him, after all? Dwahvel was long dead—he had no more friends there than anywhere else in this miserable world.

  In truth, he had no friends at all.

  He looked at Dahlia.

  And he wondered.

  THE DESPERATE CHILD

  EFFRON WAS IN A FOUL MOOD AS HE MOVED TO BALDUR’S GATE’S DOCKS that next morning, in no small part because of his disgust with his mother and her bed-hopping. And with Artemis Entreri —Barrabus the Gray, no less—a man Effron had come to profoundly dislike in the time they had fought together under the command of Herzgo Alegni.

  The man who had leaped in and foiled Effron’s best attempt to catch Dahlia, and had cost the young tiefling greatly in both coin and reputation by stifling Cavus Dun’s ambush.

  He kept repeating Draygo Quick’s orders as a reminder of the clear boundaries the dangerous Netherese lord had enacted around him. But every recital came with a sneer.

  He moved down to the docks and found his informants. As always, it seemed, they appeared to be busy, both swabbing with mops this day, and it didn’t take Effron long to recognize that they weren’t actually accomplishing anything, again, as always with these two.

  The old gaffer nudged his partner when he noted Effron’s approach.

  “When?” Effron asked, moving up, and having no intention of remaining out there in the open for any length of time. After these two had reported to him on the disposition of Drizzt and Dahlia, he had tasked them with a simple question, and so he wanted a simple answer.

  But both men wore wide smiles, hinting at something more.

  “A tenday before she’s out, we’re hearing,” said the younger man.

  “Was supposed to be but three, but her Captain Cannavara delayed her,” added the older.

  Effron nodded and tossed a small pouch to the man, but both the old gaffer and his partner kept grinning slyly.

  “What more do you know?” Effron asked.

  “Ah, but that’s worth gold to ye,” said the old gaffer. “More than the first ye give us.”

  “Ah, then to you, it’s probably worth continuing to breathe,” Effron replied without the slightest hesitation, for he was in no mood for any nonsense from these two fools this day. He narrowed his eyes into a glare and with a low and even tone slowly repeated, “What more do you know?”

  The gaffer started a wheezing laugh, but his partner swallowed hard and patted him to silence, staring at Effron all the while—staring and obviously understanding that there was nothing overstated in the dangerous young tiefling’s threat.

  “They’re not back for Luskan,” the middle-aged swabby replied.

  “Who? Minnow Skipper?” Effron asked.

  “Aye, Memnon’s her next port of call, and then Calimport beyond that, if the season’s not too late. Won’t be putting in to Luskan until the first winter winds’re blowing hard from the Spine o’ the World.”

  The news knocked Effron back a step, his thoughts spinning. “How do you know this?” he managed to ask.

  “We got friends on the boat. Course we do,” said the old gaffer. “On all the boats.” He continued on to explain that he knew Minnow Skipper’s first mate and had crewed with the man many times over the years. He had asked about working his way back to Luskan, and was told of the upcoming southern journey.

  Effron was hardly listening, knocked fully off-balance by the surprising turn. Memnon? Calimport? He wasn’t even sure exactly where those places might be, but the one thing that certainly had come through to him was that once Minnow Skipper put out of Baldur’s Gate, his trail to Dahlia might fast grow very cold.

  He absently reached into his pouch and grabbed a handful of coins, some gold, some silver, and handed them over without ev
en counting them, then stumbled back along the wharves and into the city proper.

  He thought again of Draygo Quick’s warning regarding this band, but the orders didn’t resonate. Not then, not with his mother on the verge of slipping away, perhaps forever.

  He had wondered if it would come to this, of course. He slipped his hand inside his robes and felt the scroll tube he had stolen from Draygo Quick.

  Dare he?

  He was going to lose them. That unsettling notion walked beside Effron throughout the next few days, and drove him to pay acute attention to every detail of the movements of the companions, particularly, of course, of Dahlia. To that end, the warlock spent nearly as much time in his wraith-like form, hiding in crevices of cracked mortar and along the separations in the wooden walls of this inn or that.

  Dahlia was spending her nights with Drizzt again, but there was a level of unmistakable tension in their room when they were together. They shared a bed, but were hardly entwined, sexually or otherwise. She hadn’t told him about her encounter with Entreri, obviously, and Effron mused on more than one occasion that he might play that particular card if he got into trouble with the drow ranger.

  From what little he knew of the drow, he couldn’t imagine Drizzt Do’Urden forgiving such a transgression.

  He reminded himself that bringing any harm to Drizzt might not be a wise choice, given Draygo Quick’s insistence, and that divulging his information might well put the drow into a mortal battle against Dahlia and Entreri.

  Dahlia wasn’t often in the drow’s room otherwise, returning late every night, and leaving early in the day. Drizzt, on the other hand, spent most of his days in the inn, if not the room itself. Dark elves were not a common sight in Baldur’s Gate, after all, and so Effron could well understand Drizzt’s reluctance to wander around.

  It wasn’t hard for him to guess where Dahlia was going each morning, and he followed her movements closely, movements that almost always put her back near Artemis Entreri.