The Last Threshold: Neverwinter Saga, Book IV

by R. A. Salvatore

  The drow looked around, ensuring that no sails were anywhere to be seen, then slipped down from his perch. He noted Entreri’s eyes upon him, and those of Ambergris and Afafrenfere as well, as he walked across the deck to join the couple.

  “In all the time I have been with you, you have not summoned your panther,” Effron said.

  Drizzt eyed him curiously. “Guenhwyvar is not fond of the open waters,” he lied. “She growls at every pitch of the deck.”

  “Not once, through the whole of the season.”

  Drizzt swallowed hard and narrowed his eyes as he stared at the young tiefling. Effron was mistaken here, for Drizzt had called Guenhwyvar to his side several times, at night. But never for long, for the panther appeared more haggard, truly wounded now, and withering, as if her very life-force was fast fading from her corporeal form. “What do you know?” he asked.

  “She resides in the Shadowfell, not in the Astral Plane,” Effron said, and Drizzt’s eyes opened wide, and Dahlia gasped, as did Ambergris, who was not far away.

  “In the house of Lord Draygo Quick,” Effron explained.

  “She serves a Netherese lord?” Drizzt asked, clearly skeptical.

  “No,” Effron quickly said. “She serves him only when you call her to your side, for he sees through her eyes. He has watched you for many months through her eyes.”

  Drizzt looked at Dahlia, who could only shrug, obviously as much at a loss as was he.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I know where she is,” Effron said. “And I can get you to her.”

  My journey from Luskan to Calimport and back again proved, at the same time, to be the least eventful and most memorable of any voyage I have known. We encountered no storms, no pirates, and no trouble with the ship whatsoever. The activities on Minnow Skipper’s deck were nothing beyond routine throughout the entire journey.

  But on an emotional level, I watched a fascinating exchange play out over the tendays and months, from the purest hatred to the deepest guilt to a primal need for a resolution that seemed untenable in a relationship irreparable.

  Or was it?

  When we battled Herzgo Alegni, Dahlia believed that she was facing her demon, but that was not the case. In this journey, standing before Effron, she found her demon, and it was not the broken young tiefling, but the tear in her own heart. Effron served as merely a symbol of that, a mirror looking back at her, and at what she had done.

  No less was true from Effron’s perspective. He was not saddled with the guilt, perhaps, but surely he was no less brokenhearted. He had suffered the ultimate betrayal, that of a mother for her child, and had spent his lifetime never meeting the expectations and demands of his brutal father. He had grown under the shadow of Herzgo Alegni, without a buffer, without a friend. Who could survive such an ordeal unscarred?

  Yet for all the turmoil, there is hope for both, I see. Capturing Effron in Baldur’s Gate (and we will all be forever indebted to Brother Afafrenfere!) forced Dahlia and her son together in tight quarters and for an extended period. Neither found anywhere to hide from their respective demons; the focal point, the symbol, the mirror, stood right there, each looking back at the other.

  So Dahlia was forced to battle the guilt within herself. She had to honestly face what she had done, which included reliving days she would rather leave unremembered. She remains in turmoil, but her burden has greatly lifted, for to her credit, she faced it honestly and forthrightly.

  Isn’t that the only way?

  And greater is her release because of the generosity—or perhaps it is a need he doesn’t even yet understand—of Effron. He has warmed to her and to us—he revealed to me the location of Guenhwyvar, which stands as a stark repudiation of the life he had known before his capture in Baldur’s Gate. I know not whether he has forgiven Dahlia, or whether he ever will, but his animosity has cooled, to be sure, and in the face of that, Dahlia’s step has lightened.

  I observe as one who has spent the bulk of my days forcing honesty upon myself. When I speak quietly, alone under the stars or, in days former (and hopefully future), when I write in these very journals, there is no place for me to hide, and I want none! That is the point. I must face my failings most of all, without justification, without caveat, if ever I hope to overcome them.

  I must be honest.

  Strangely, I find that easier to do when I preach to an audience of one: myself. I never understood this before, and don’t know if I can say that this was true in the time of my former life, the life spent beside the brutally blunt Bruenor and three other friends I dearly trusted. Indeed, as I reflect on it now, the opposite was true. I was in love with Catti-brie for years before I ever admitted it. Catti-brie knew it on our first journey to Calimport, when we sailed to rescue Regis, and her hints woke me to my own self-delusion—or was it merely obliviousness?

  She woke me because I was willfully asleep, and I slumbered because I was afraid of the consequences of admitting that which was in my heart.

  Did I owe her more trust than that? I think I did, and owed it to Wulfgar, too. It is that price, the price the others had to pay, which compounds my responsibility.

  Certainly there are times when the truth of one’s heart need not be shared, when the wound inflicted might prove worse than the cost of the deception. And so, as we see Luskan’s skyline once more, I look upon Dahlia and I am torn.

  Because I know now the truth of that which is in my heart. I hid it, and fought it, and buried it with every ounce of rationale I could find, because to admit it is to recognize, once more, that which I have lost, that which is not coming back.

  I found Dahlia because I was alone. She is exciting, I cannot deny, and intriguing, I cannot deny, and I am the better for having traveled beside her. In our wake, given the events in Neverwinter, in Gauntlgrym, in Port Llast, and with Stuyles’ band, we are leaving the world a better place than we found it. I wish to continue this journey, truly, with Dahlia and Ambergris, Afafrenfere, and even with Effron (perhaps most of all, with Effron!) and even with Artemis Entreri. I feel that I am walking a goodly road here.

  But I do not love her.

  I determined that I did love her because of that which burned too hotly within my loins, and even more so because of that which remained too cold within my heart. I heard again Innovindil’s advice, to live my life in shorter and more intense bursts, to be reborn with each loss into a new existence with new and exciting relationships.

  There may be some truth to that advice—for some of the People, all of it might be true.

  But not for me (I hope and I fear). I can replace my companions, but I cannot replace those friends, and most of all, I cannot fill the hole left by the passing of Catti-brie.

  Not with Dahlia.

  Not with anyone?

  I have avoided sharing this truth because of Dahlia’s current emotional state. I believe Effron when he said that she sought Artemis Entreri’s bed. It did not surprise me, but what did surprise me was how little that information bothered me.

  Catti-brie is with me still, in my thoughts and in my heart. I’ll not try to shield myself from her with the company of another.

  Perhaps the passing of time and the turns in my road will show me the ultimate wisdom of Innovindil’s words. But there is a profound difference between following your heart and trying to guide it.

  And now my road is clear, in any case, and that road is to retrieve another friend most dear. I am coming for you, Guenhwyvar. I will have you by my side once more. I will walk the starry nights beside you.

  Or I will die trying.

  That is my pledge.

  —Drizzt Do’Urden

  TO THE HUNT

  MANY EYES SETTLED ON MINNOW SKIPPER AS SHE RODE THE TIDE INTO Luskan’s sheltered harbor.

  From the balcony of Ship Kurth’s command tower on Closeguard Isle, Kurth and Beniago regarded the incoming ship with very different perspectives, though High Captain Kurth didn’t know it, as he didn
’t know that the tall and lean red-haired man standing beside him was actually a dark elf serving Bregan D’aerthe.

  To High Captain Kurth, Minnow Skipper carried the promise of power for his ship beyond Luskan’s wall. With Drizzt and Dahlia and their companions in service to Ship Kurth, he would have the inside route to trade with Port Llast, and would have greater influence than his four competitors over events in the region surrounding Luskan.

  For Beniago, all of that was of secondary concern, if of concern at all. He had done as Kimmuriel had asked, but would the passage of a few months prove enough to throw Beniago’s cousin Tiago off of Drizzt’s trail?

  Unlikely, the drow-in-disguise realized, knowing Tiago as he did. Certainly things were going to play out between Tiago and Drizzt whatever Bregan D’aerthe tried to do, but the point, Beniago knew, was to delay that inevitable confrontation as long as possible so that Bregan D’aerthe could better influence it, and better decide on the direction in which they wanted to influence it. House Xorlarrin was making great progress in Gauntlgrym, by all accounts, and what that meant to the ever-logical and pragmatic Kimmuriel most of all was opportunity.

  The best course to exploit that opportunity, the fine line between the potentially dramatic conflux of interests, was, of course, the entire purpose of the mercenary and mercantile guild, Bregan D’aerthe. And it was their salvation, for in their successes, so too did they find respite from the priestesses of the Spider Queen. But in going after Drizzt, Tiago might well be going against the wishes of Matron Mother Quenthel, and against the wishes of Lady Lolth herself, and if Drizzt killed Tiago, would Quenthel hold Bregan D’aerthe responsible, since Bregan D’aerthe knew of the hunt?

  At that moment, Minnow Skipper in clear view, Beniago was glad that these choices fell to Kimmuriel and Jarlaxle, and not upon his own shoulders.

  There would be drow blood spilled over this, he knew.

  And he hoped, privately, that more than a bit of it would spill from the brash young Tiago.

  North of the isle and the keep of Ship Kurth, in a small and unremarkable tower set amid the rocky foothills of the Spine of the World, Huervo the Seeker paced nervously. He couldn’t see Minnow Skipper’s approach from the balcony of his rented tower, or at least, couldn’t tell one boat from another down at the docks, but he had heard reliable confirmation regarding their return.

  The wizard looked around at the shelves of books in the small library. Was there an answer here that he had overlooked? Was there something more, at least, that might protect him from the impending conversation he could not avoid?

  He found nothing, of course, for he had looked over these tomes a hundred times or more in the last two months.

  There was nothing. He had been deceived. He had played in fire and flames had burned him.

  With a heavy sigh, followed by a deep breath that brought strength back to his shaking legs, Huervo the Seeker moved to the circular stairwell and descended.

  The wretched imp sat on soft pillows at the side of the room immediately below the library, lounging like some grotesque parody of a southern Pasha, and feasting on the plump fruits Huervo had purchased a couple of days earlier.

  “Do you even taste them?” the wizard said with a scowl.

  “Juicy,” Druzil replied, and he chomped his fangs right through the skin of the melon and began to slurp noisily.

  Huervo stared at him hatefully, which only made the imp laugh. For Druzil was clearly confident that the upper hand would not change here.

  The imp pointed at the wizard, then motioned to the stairwell and giggled stupidly, melon juices squirting out between its jagged teeth.

  How Huervo wanted to cast a spell and obliterate the wretched little creature! This was all Druzil’s fault, after all. Huervo had summoned an imp, a dweomer he had cast a hundred times since his earliest days of practicing the arcane arts, back in the far south two decades earlier. He had gotten his title, the Seeker, because he had always been the most inquisitive of wizards, focusing his efforts on divination and summoning, ever seeking enchantments and answers in books, and when those tomes did not suffice, he asked for answers from the denizens of other planes. Bringing forth a minor demon or devil, or some other inter-planar traveler was nothing out of the usual for the Seeker.

  But this imp had come with a plan. Huervo had subsequently—and too late—realized it had been waiting for the summons with the ingredients to facilitate that nefarious chain of events, a tease regarding greater knowledge into the subject Huervo was researching: the name of another imp who held great secrets regarding that subject, and a secret pouch full of ingredients designed to strengthen an inter-planar gate. So Huervo had eagerly summoned the other imp, and Druzil had thrown its enhancements onto the building fires of that gate, and the other imp had not been an imp at all.

  There was no escape, the wizard realized. Not now, at least. Perhaps Drizzt and the drow’s friends would inadvertently facilitate Huervo’s freedom—they were rumored to be quite powerful, after all.

  But powerful enough?

  With a heavy sigh and another determined, steadying breath, Huervo went to the stairs once more, to descend to a place and a conversation he had never in his wildest nightmares envisioned.

  To speak to the balor in his cellar.

  The companions, now numbering six, sat around a table in a private room in a tavern in Luskan.

  “You will not even experience time the same way,” Effron remarked, continuing his primer on the Shadowfell for those of the group who had never ventured there. “The passage of time itself becomes more a measure of how deeply the shadows permeate your mind.”

  “Truly,” Afafrenfere said, and he seemed shocked by the revelation, or at least, by the succinct manner in which Effron had described it. “I was there for several years, but it seemed only a few tendays!”

  “Because ye was in love,” Ambergris said. “And that kept ye above the Shadowfell’s movements. For me ’twas th’other way. Every tenday felt akin to a year.”

  “You went there of your own volition,” Effron said.

  “I went as a spy,” Ambergris corrected. “That was me punishment for gettin’ caught doin’ wrong.”

  “A criminal?” Effron said. “Do tell.”

  “Nah.”

  “The Shadowfell,” the impatient Drizzt interjected, forcing the discussion back on track. He had no time for distraction. Effron knew the location of Guenhwyvar’s prison—nothing else mattered to Drizzt, and he would go to this place, the Shadowfell and the castle of this Netherese lord, and he would get the cat back. It was that simple.

  “I’m just trying to prepare you,” Effron said.

  “I’m more than ready.”

  “The others, then. You cannot understand the Shadowfell until you’ve walked her dark ways. The air itself is different, heavy, full of palpable gloom. For those unprepared, the weight of the place—”

  “Open the gate,” Drizzt instructed. “You said you could guide me, so do so. Whether the others come along or not is their choice, but I am going, and I am going now.”

  “Well, me and me monk friend ain’t a’feared o’ the place,” Ambergris said. “Lived there for years.”

  Drizzt listened to the dwarf, but his eyes were on Dahlia, who stared at him with an expression that resonated with hurt, as if the mere implication that she wouldn’t be accompanying him was ludicrous, and hurtful that he would ever think such a thing.

  “I owe you this much at least,” Artemis Entreri remarked, the shock of the words breaking the stare between the lovers, and indeed, both Drizzt and Dahlia turned to him with a bit of surprise.

  Entreri merely shrugged.

  Huervo the Seeker sat in the common room of that very inn, sipping his wine and trying to keep his gaze from too obviously falling upon the stairway that led up a half-flight to the back room where Drizzt and the others had gone for a private discussion.

  Occasionally, the mage rose and took a roundabout path to the bar
, passing beside the stairs in the hopes of catching some of the conversation. He did hear the sound of voices on those trips, but couldn’t make out more than a word or two. He had heard some mention of the Shadowfell, but given the broken tiefling creature, who was obviously thick with shadowstuff, that didn’t surprise him or alarm him very much.

  The night slid deeper, and the gathering at the tavern began to thin, and still the door remained closed at the top of that half-stair.

  Huervo took another trip to the bar. This time he heard nothing. He waited a bit beside the stair.

  No sound came forth from above. The thought of returning to the tower to admit to Errtu that he had lost track of the group was not a pleasant one.

  Glancing around to ensure that he had not been noticed, the wizard slipped deeper into the shadows behind the stair. He understood the risk, but weighing it against the certainty of what he would face back at the tower, he pressed on.

  He completed a spell of clairaudience, aiming it behind that door, and the sounds of the tavern dimmed immediately, as surely as if Huervo was in that very room. He expected a whispered conversation, or maybe even some snoring.

  He heard nothing, other than the diminishing din from beyond the room, from back down in the tavern.

  Growing concerned, the wizard cast a second divination, this one clairvoyance, and as he had put his ears in the room, so too did he now place his vision. As if he physically passed through the door himself, Huervo looked upon the room.

  Upon the empty room.

  It wasn’t possible, he thought, for there was no other door, just a window …

  Huervo spent a moment considering that, then rushed from the tavern and moved quickly around the side, into an alleyway. He came to the back corner of the building and carefully peeked around to the back alley.

  It was empty, but he saw the window in question. He moved to the base of the wall under it, perhaps ten feet below the sill, but couldn’t get too close because of the clutter all around. None of it seemed disturbed. If they had come down from the window, they had done so with great care, even the dwarf.