The Last Threshold tns-4

by R. A. Salvatore

  “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, and 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.

  Chapter 10

  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.
<
br />   “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.

  “Who is on that boat?” Effron demanded of the dockworker. The tiefling warlock had arrived on the docks in time to watch Minnow Skipper glide out past Closeguard Isle. He had heard the rumors of some late arrivals to the ship’s crew, and now, from the docks of Luskan, it was becoming very clear that he had missed his prey by a matter of moments.

  So from an alleyway, he had assaulted and captured one of the men who had thrown out Minnow Skipper’s lines.

  “I don’t know you, Master!” the terrified dockworker replied.

  “You tell me now, or I will put spiders under your skin!”

  “Master!”

  Effron shook the fool roughly with his good arm, his eyes, one red, one blue, flaring with outrage.

  “K-Kurth’s ship,” the man stammered. “Under Ship Kurth’s flag.”

  “And who was on it?”

  “Twenty-three crew,” the man replied.

  “Tell me of the guards! The drow!”

  “Just one,” said the man. “Drizzt. And a dwarf and two men and a woman, an elf woman.”

  “Her name!”

  “Dahlia,” the man replied. “Dahlia who killed High Captain Rethnor, and Ship Rethnor’s all up and angry about her coming through Luskan under Kurth’s protection.”

  He continued to stammer on about the politics around it, but Effron was hardly listening at that point, staring out at the diminishing sails, watching his hated mother sail far, far from him.

  “Where are they bound?” he asked, but quietly now, his moment of outrage pushed aside.

  “Baldur’s Gate.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Down the coast,” the man said, and Effron scowled at him for the obvious, vague answer.

  “Down past Waterdeep. Couple, few hundred miles.”

  Effron let him go and he tumbled to the ground, and lay there, his arms up defensively in front of him.

  The tiefling warlock paid him no heed. Trying to suppress his anger, Effron reminded himself that he was unable to confront Dahlia anyway, under pain of reprisal from Draygo Quick. He had ways to travel quickly, and Baldur’s Gate was not too far.

  He left the alleyway, then left Luskan all together, trying not to worry that Minnow Skipper would sink with all hands lost. Dahlia could not be lost to him in this manner. The Sword Coast was rumored to be a dangerous place for any ship to sail, but surely one under the flag of Ship Kurth would be afforded some distance by most pirates.

  By the time he was back in the Shadowfell, Effron was shaking those fears away more easily. Not only would the flag of Ship Kurth help, he realized, but having Drizzt, Dahlia, and Artemis Entreri aboard was also a pretty good indicator that Minnow Skipper would get to her destination safely.

  Dahlia remained with Drizzt long after Afafrenfere and Ambergris had gone belowdecks in search of rum and dance, and long did the drow stand there at the prow, staring at the dark waters opening wide before him. He didn’t look back any longer, for there was no point, as Luskan was long out of sight, and the view behind resembled that before them.

  After a while, Dahlia moved up right beside him, and Drizzt draped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. He felt almost hypocritical as he did, though, for it occurred to him that he was only doing so because of the unsettling feelings he had been entertaining in the last hour. He could not continue to compare Dahlia to his beloved wife if he wanted to maintain any feelings beyond friendship for this elf.

  Minnow Skipper was not Sea Sprite, and Dahlia was not Catti-brie, and to Drizzt, those comparisons seemed a fitting analogy. But he pulled her tight against his side now, more for his benefit than for hers.

  Because he was afraid.

  He was afraid of continuing with her, knowing, and now admitting, the truth in his heart, and he was afraid of ending his relationship with her because he did not wish to walk
his road alone.

  “I’ve grown unused to you touching me,” Dahlia said after a few moments.

  “We’ve been busy,” Drizzt answered. “Momentous events.”

  Dahlia scoffed, clearly seeing right through his dodge. “Such victories we have known often led to carnal pleasures,” she remarked.

  Drizzt had no answer-none that he wished to openly express, actually-other than to pull her even tighter against him.

  “Entreri will leave us in Baldur’s Gate.” Drizzt was surprised that she chose that particular moment to change the subject.

  He looked at her carefully, but couldn’t read her expression.

  “He’s been making that threat since Neverwinter,” Drizzt replied.

  “He has his dagger now.”

  “The dagger was an excuse, and never the reason he didn’t leave.”

  “What do you know?” Dahlia turned, releasing herself from Drizzt’s arm.

  “Artemis Entreri is free again, but fears the chains of his memories,” Drizzt replied. “He doesn’t wish to become what he once was, and the only way for him to avoid that fate is to remain with us-with me, actually. He will find this excuse or that to justify his actions, for he would never give me credit or adulation, but he won’t leave us.”

  “In Baldur’s Gate,” Dahlia said.

  “Or back in Luskan, or back in Port Llast thereafter.”

  “You sound confident.”

  “I am,” Drizzt assured her.

  “About all of your companions? Then you are a fool,” she said, and with a little smirk that Drizzt couldn’t quite comprehend, Dahlia walked away.

  Drizzt turned back to the sea, and instead of letting himself fall back into his long-past adventures with Catti-brie and Captain Deudermont, he thought of his recent history, of the last wintry months. Dahlia’s remarks were true enough: rarely did he touch her any longer, or engage her in any but the most banal conversations. They were moving apart, and it was all Drizzt’s doing, subconsciously perhaps, but inexorably.

  The thought alarmed Drizzt, and for a brief moment, he blamed Entreri. Entreri’s empathy for and understanding of Dahlia’s trauma and deep emotional scar had forced Drizzt aside.