The Last Threshold tns-4

by R. A. Salvatore

  “How it must pain Mielikki to think of her favored child in such a predicament,” the old wretch taunted.

  Drizzt tried to respond, but he hadn’t the strength to force any words past his parched and cracked lips.

  He heard the scrape of metal as his cell door opened, then was handled roughly as more food was shoved into his mouth, followed by foul-tasting water.

  It happened again a short while later, then again sometime after that. Drizzt had little understanding of the passage of time, but it seemed to him that many days were drifting far, far behind him.

  Despite the filth and the wretched taste of the sustenance they were forcing upon him, the drow found his strength and sensibilities gradually returning. Then the old shade was there again, but inside his cell, standing before him.

  “What am I to do with you, Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “Lord Draygo Quick, of course,” Draygo answered. “And this is my castle, which you assaulted. By the laws of any land, I am well within my rights to kill you.”

  “I came for Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt replied, and he had to cough a dozen times in the span of that short response, from the dryness in his throat.

  “Ah, yes, the panther. You’ll not get her, of course, but then, you’ll likely never leave this place.” He paused and offered a sly look. “But then again, if you cooperate, then perhaps we will become great friends.”

  Drizzt couldn’t begin to sort out that comment.

  “Tell me, drow, who do you worship?”

  “What?”

  “Who is your god?”

  “I follow the tenets of Mielikki-you already said as much,” Drizzt replied in a hoarse whisper.

  Draygo Quick nodded and put a hand to his chin contemplatively. “Perhaps I would do better to ask, who worships you?”

  Drizzt stared at him curiously, and the old wretch chuckled, sounding almost as wheezy as Drizzt.

  “Of course you cannot answer,” he said. “We will talk again, and often, I promise,” Draygo Quick said, and with a nod, he turned and left the cell. “Grow strong once more, Drizzt Do’Urden,” he called over his shoulder. “We have much to discuss.”

  His cell door clanged shut and the torchlight receded. Drizzt watched the flickers trailing away down the outside hallway, then soon after heard another cell door scrape open, and the murmurs of the old warlock speaking once more.

  Effron?

  Drizzt leaned forward and craned his head-not to see anything, for that was obviously not possible, but to try to hear some of the words being spoken, if not the conversation itself.

  He couldn’t make anything out, but he heard a second murmuring voice, and recognized it as Effron’s. He slumped back, sorting his thoughts. He looked at his chains and promised himself that he would find a way out of them.

  Drizzt wasn’t a victim.

  Soon enough he would find his way out of this cell and to Effron’s rescue.

  That was his vow.

  “You were too confident!” Draygo Quick proclaimed to Effron, whose situation differed from Drizzt’s only in the fact that only one of his arms was chained. “But then, that was ever your failing, was it not?”

  Effron stared at him hatefully, but that only seemed to amuse the shade.

  “You thought you knew all of my tricks and traps, but of course, I am no fool,” Draygo went on. “Did you really believe that you could walk in here and simply steal away with the panther?”

  “It was not my choice.”

  “You led them here.”

  “I did,” Effron admitted.

  “Your loyalty is touching.”

  Effron lowered his gaze.

  “You have decided to wage war against me, and that is a foolish pursuit.”

  “No,” Effron immediately retorted, looking back up, staring Draygo Quick right in the eye. “No. I decided to travel with my mother, and I needed to blind you to our movements, but only by taking the cat. I would not go against you, but I would be done with you.”

  “Interesting,” Draygo Quick mumbled a few moments later, after digesting that information. “Let me tell you about your mother.…”

  Drizzt pulled hard against the unyielding chains when he heard Effron’s wailing from down the hall. At first he thought his companion was being tortured, but when that initial keening transformed into sobs, he realized it was something else.

  It didn’t take him long to figure out the implications of those sobs.

  “Where is Dahlia?” Drizzt demanded the next time Draygo Quick appeared in his cell, some days later, he believed, though he couldn’t be certain.

  “Ah, you have heard the weeping of your twisted companion,” Draygo Quick replied. “Yes, I am afraid that Dahlia and your other companions have met a most unfortunate end, and now stand as trophies in my hall.”

  Drizzt lowered his eyes, unable to even scream out in protest. He was surprised by how profoundly the news had hit him, surprised to realize how deeply he had come to value Dahlia’s companionship. Perhaps he couldn’t love her as he had loved Catti-brie, but she had become, at least, a friend.

  And it wasn’t just the loss of Dahlia that brought him pain in that moment, for his tie to his past, too, was gone. “Entreri,” he heard himself whispering, and he couldn’t deny the sense of loss.

  And so too with Ambergris, of whom he was quite fond, and Afafrenfere.

  “You have walked into something far beyond you, Drizzt Do’Urden of Menzoberranzan,” Draygo Quick said, and it surprised Drizzt to hear a sincere tone of regret in the Netherese lord’s voice. He looked back up, trying to find something in Draygo Quick’s expression to reveal the lie of his concerns, but he found no such thing.

  “To the detriment of all,” Draygo Quick continued. “Of course I would defend myself and my home-would you expect anything less?”

  “It would need less defending if you were not a thief and kidnapper,” Drizzt retorted.

  “Kidnapper? You walked into my home!”

  “Of Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt clarified. “You stole from me something which does not belong to you.”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” said Draygo. “The cat. As I said, you have stumbled into something apparently quite beyond you, but perhaps there is hope for both of us. I do not think that I will have need of the cat when we are done, so perhaps you will find her companionship again.”

  The tantalizing carrot had Drizzt inadvertently leaning forward, before he realized the revealing posture and corrected himself, unwilling to let his thoughts go into the realm of false hope.

  The Netherese lord would never let him go, he told himself, over and over again.

  He would find himself repeating that silent mantra many times as Draygo Quick came to him each day, always with questions about Drizzt’s past, about the priestesses of Lolth and about his life on the surface while following the tenets of the goddess Mielikki and the ways of the ranger.

  Drizzt resisted those questions at first, but his stubbornness couldn’t long hold, and some tendays later, he came to look forward to those visits.

  For accompanying Draygo came the servants with his food, and that food greatly improved, and was fed to him far more tenderly and decently by a young shade, a child.

  One day Draygo Quick arrived with a trio of burly guards. Two moved to flank Drizzt, reaching up for the chains as they did.

  “If you struggle in the least, I will torture Effron to death before your eyes,” was all that Draygo Quick bothered to say, and he took his leave.

  The guards put a black hood over Drizzt’s head and carried him from his cell, depositing him in a room somewhere within the castle above. They set him down in a chair, told him to remove the hood, to bathe and to dress.

  “Lord Draygo will come to you soon,” one said as they departed.

  Drizzt looked around at his new home, a well-furnished, clean, and warm room. His first thoughts went to the notion of escape, but he quickly dismissed that possibi
lity. Draygo Quick had Effron, and Guenhwyvar, and where might he go, in any case?

  The Netherese lord had told him that he had walked into something far above him, and Drizzt didn’t doubt the truth of that claim at all in that confusing time and place.

  PART IV

  Icewind Dale

  I found, to my surprise, that I had lost the focal point of my anger.

  The anger, the frustration, the profound sense of loss yet again remained, simmering within me, but the target of that anger dispersed into a more general distaste for the unfairness and harshness of life itself.

  I had to keep reminding myself to be mad at Draygo Quick!

  What a strange realization that became, an epiphany that rolled over me like a breaking wave against Luskan’s beach. I remember the moment vividly, as it happened all at once (whereas the loss of the focal point took many months). I rested in my chamber at Draygo Quick’s grand residence, relaxing in luxury, eating fine food, and with my own small wine rack that Draygo’s staff had provided, when I was struck dumb by my affinity toward Draygo Quick-or if not affinity, perhaps, then my complete absence of anger toward him.

  How had that happened?

  Why had that happened?

  This Netherese lord had imprisoned me in the most terrible of circumstances, chained in filth in a dark and rank dungeon cell. He hadn’t tortured me overtly, though the handling by his servants had often been harsh, including slaps and punches and more than a few kicks to my ribs. And wasn’t the mere reality of my incarceration in and of itself a manner of grotesque torture?

  This Netherese lord had set a medusa upon my companions, upon my lover, and upon my only remaining tie to those coveted bygone days. They were gone. Dahlia, Entreri, Ambergris, and Afafrenfere, turned to stone and dead by the machinations of Draygo Quick.

  Yet, we had invaded his home … that mitigating notion seemed ever-present in my mind, and only grew in strength, day by day, as my own conditions gradually improved.

  And that was the key of it all, I came to recognize. Draygo Quick had played a subtle and tantalizing game with my mind, and with Effron’s mind, slowly improving our lives. Bit by bit, and literally, at first, bite by bite, with improving food in terms of both quality and quantity.

  It is difficult for a starving man to slap the hand that feeds him.

  And when basic needs like sustenance dominate your thoughts, it is no less difficult to remember to maintain anger, or remember why.

  Tasty bites delivered with soothing words steal those memories, so subtly, so gradually (though every improvement felt momentous indeed), that I remained oblivious to my own diminishing animosity toward the old warlock shade.

  Then came the epiphany, that day in my comfortably-appointed room in the castle of Draygo Quick. Yet even with the stark recollection of the unfolding events, I found it impossible to summon the level of rage I had initially known, and hard to find anything more than a simmer.

  I am left to sit here, wondering.

  Draygo Quick comes to me often, daily even, and there are weapons I might fashion-of a broken wine bottle, for example.

  Should I make the attempt?

  The possibility of gaining my freedom through violence seems remote at best. I haven’t seen Effron in tendays and have no idea of where or how to find him. I know not if he is even still within the castle, or if he is even still alive. I have no idea of how to find Guenhwyvar, nor do I even possess the onyx figurine any longer.

  And even if I struck dead the old warlock and gained an escape from the castle, then what? How would I begin to facilitate my return to Faerun, and what would be there for me, in any case?

  None of my old friends, lost to the winds. Not Dahlia, or even Artemis Entreri. Not Guenhwyvar or Andahar.

  To strike at Draygo Quick would be the ultimate act of defiance, and one made by a doomed drow.

  I look at the bottles nestled in their diagonal cubbies in the wine rack now and in them I see that the promise of deadly daggers is well within my reach. Draygo Quick comes to me alone now, without guard, and even if he had his finest soldiers beside him, I have been trained to strike faster than they could possibly block. Perhaps the old warlock has magical wards enacted about him to defeat such an attack, perhaps not, but in striking so, I would be making a cry of freedom and a denial against this warlock who took so much from me, who imprisoned Guenhwyvar and cost me my companions when we came for her.

  But I can only shake my head as I stare at those potential daggers, for I will not so fashion the bottles. It is not fear of Draygo Quick that stays my hand. It is not the desperation of such an act, the near surety that even if successful, I would be surely bringing about my own demise, and likely in short order.

  I won’t kill him, I know.

  Because I don’t want to.

  And that, I fear, might be the biggest epiphany of all.

  — Drizzt Do’Urden

  Chapter 21

  MIGHT AS WELL DRINK

  Beniago’s eyes in the city were considerable, of course, but Luskan was a large place, with many thousands of citizens and hundreds, at least, of visitors, particularly this time of year when the weather favored the sailing ships and the merchant trade was in full swing.

  The reports filtering back to him over the last few days had caused concern for the Bregan D’aerthe agent. Drizzt had not been located, but other drow had-several, in fact. So many, in fact, that Beniago had come to wonder if Tiago and his Xorlarrin friends hadn’t created some minor invasion, or if Bregan D’aerthe had started to operate more openly, and without informing him.

  After eliminating that second possibility simply by asking Jarlaxle, Beniago had gone searching for answers.

  The first he found, at least, had proved somewhat confusing, but somewhat comforting as well.

  “They are not allied with Tiago,” he reported to Jarlaxle.

  “The group at the inn?”

  Beniago nodded.

  “The Xorlarrins, then,” Jarlaxle reasoned, for they already knew that there were a couple of males among the group, and of the arcane persuasion, it seemed.

  But Beniago shook his head. “These are not Xorlarrins, nor from Menzoberranzan at all.”

  “Then why are they here?”

  “I walk in the guise of a human,” Beniago replied. “Would you have me go and ask them? And after I do, would you bury me properly back in Menzoberranzan?”

  “Sarcasm,” Jarlaxle replied with a chuckle. “At last I have come to understand why I supported your ascent.”

  “Our next move?”

  “I will deal with these unknown dark elves presently,” Jarlaxle said. “I have word that Tiago is not in Gauntlgrym, nor are his ever-present companions, Ravel and Saribel Xorlarrin.”

  “You have spies in Gauntlgrym now? I am impressed.” Beniago dipped a sarcastic bow.

  “They are out hunting,” Jarlaxle explained.

  “On the surface hunting Drizzt, then.”

  “It would seem.”

  Beniago bowed again, more seriously now, understanding his role.

  “Tiago carries his new sword and shield, no doubt,” Jarlaxle said. “And is undisguised, I believe.”

  “He is too vain to wrap such magnificent items, particularly since they sing of his station,” Beniago agreed.

  “So find him.”

  Beniago nodded and left to do just that.

  “Aye, but she’s a tough life out there on the waves,” the crusty old dwarf, Deamus McWindingbrook, explained. He grabbed his belly as he finished and let fly a great belch.

  Ambergris giggled. “I been aboard, ye dope,” she replied. “I seen the water, and naught but the water, through the whole o’ me turn and to the curve o’ the horizon.”

  “Not many of our kin and kind who’d take to that sight,” remarked a third dwarf at the table, younger than the crusty old graybeard, but looking much like him both in weathering and because he was the other’s son-Stuvie by name. He wore a blue cap, flo
pped over to one side, while his father wore a similar stocking cap of red. The younger’s beard was yellow, as the older dwarf’s had been not so long ago, before the salt and the sun and the years had turned it.

  “Sailed to Baldur’s Gate,” Ambergris explained. She almost added in the rest of the itinerary, but wisely cut herself short, for she didn’t want to give too many clues as to her previous visit to the city. She wasn’t even using her name, appropriating instead the name of her cousin, Windy O’Maul.

  Cavus Dun might be looking for her, after all, or worse, Draygo Quick.

  And so it was that a journey out on the open seas seemed a fine idea to the dwarf at that time.

  “Bah, Baldur’s Gate’s an easy sail,” scoffed the younger of the McWindingbrooks.

  “Aye, but I ain’t been no lower on the Sword Coast,” Ambergris lied. “But I’m hopin’ to see the deserts o’ Calimport.”

  Both McWindingbrooks crinkled their faces in disgust at that.

  “Still!” Ambergris said with a laugh into their doubting expressions. “Ye can act like that because ye’ve seen it. But for meself, I ain’t seen nothing but the halls o’ Citadel Adbar, the road to Waterdeep, and the ports o’ Luskan and Baldur’s Gate. And I’m wanting to see more. Aye, so much more!”

  “It’d be good to have another kin and kind aboard,” Deamus admitted.

  “Aye, and better that she’s a she, and a pretty lass at that!” Stuvie added, and lifted his mug in toast.

  Ambergris was quick to clap her mug against his, enjoying the compliment, the sentiment, and the possibilities.

  She had to build her life anew. She had to escape all that was behind her, both emotionally and in practical terms. She had thought to return to Citadel Adbar, but given the news she would have to deliver, she realized that she wouldn’t be well-received, and particularly not if the leaders of that dwarven complex came to realize that she might be leading a hostile Netherese lord their way!