The Last Threshold tns-4

by R. A. Salvatore

  Effron mentally scolded himself and began his quiet spellcasting. With a last glance toward Dahlia, who was now several strides into the alleyway, he released his dweomers, his three dimensional form becoming that of a wraith once more.

  He walked into the seams of the stone building-he had wraith-walked this route many, many times, determining it exactly-and slithered along the course of the alleyway, passing Dahlia, who did not notice. Now beyond her, nearer the street, he waited, and that was the hardest part of all!

  Dahlia reached the corner and peered around, now in a low crouch, weapon in hand. Yes, weapon in hand, Effron thought, for she meant to do that which she had failed to do on the day of his birth.

  Effron slid out from the wall and resumed his normal form. He wanted to shout out at Dahlia, but couldn’t actually find his voice in that moment. He took out a jar and dumped its contents on the cobblestones. The tiny undead umber hulk began stomping toward its prey even before the miniaturization dweomer had worn away, like a large bug skittering down the alley. Just a few tiny strides from Effron, it began to grow, and its footsteps began to resound with a thunderous report.

  Dahlia leaped around, her eyes going wide, to Effron’s satisfaction.

  The umber hulk charged in, fully grown now, twice a man’s height and thrice a man’s girth, with huge clacking mandibles snapping at the air, and waving menacingly giant hooked hands that could dig through stone, let alone tender flesh.

  With trembling fingers, Effron brought forth the scroll tube. Dare he try? Or should he just kill her and be done with it?

  A lumbering swing of his pet never got near to hitting the quick elf, and she countered with a solid stab of her long staff right between the mandibles-and retracted the weapon far too quickly for those hooked weapons to snap shut on it.

  This was not an umber hulk, Effron reminded himself. It was a zombie, gigantic and imposing, but not nearly as clever, quick, or overpowering as it had been in life.

  And Dahlia, apparently, was already figuring that out. She struck and struck again with her powerful weapon, and another lumbering swing from the behemoth missed badly. The beast ducked low to snap at her, only to have her smash it several times atop the head. Effron could see her confidence growing. She had started with her long staff, no doubt to keep the powerful creature somewhat at bay, but now, obviously confident that this monster wouldn’t get close to hitting her, she broke Kozah’s Needle down to the twin flails and went into a spinning dance, using every step in the tight alleyway to buy her enough room to strike and retreat.

  For many heartbeats, Effron just watched the magnificence of this elf woman at her craft. She actually leaped to stand atop the monster’s thick arm on one low swing, rattled off a barrage of strikes with her weapons, and back-flipped away before the umber hulk zombie could respond.

  The young warlock heard his breath coming in gasps, and the shock of that, the shock of realizing that he was wasting time, that his moment was slipping quickly away, jolted him into action. He popped the end off the tube and slid out and unrolled the spell, and immediately fell into casting. The dweomer was far beyond his understanding, of course, and the probability was that he would waste the scroll to no effect, or worse, destroy himself in the futile attempt.

  But Effron didn’t let those doubts deter him, focusing instead on the situation before him, fast deteriorating.

  He was losing her!

  Again, Dahlia would get away, or would get to him and be rid of him, as she had tried once before.

  Anger drove him. Outrage drove him. He began the incantation, every symbol on the scroll crystallizing before him, every syllable he spoke a distinct denial that Dahlia would again escape him.

  He lost himself in that focus. Nothing mattered except the next word, the proper cadence, of the dweomer. Nothing else could matter, or all would be lost.

  He was halfway through, but he didn’t know it.

  Down the alleyway, Dahlia scored a solid hit and heightened it with a tremendous blast of lightning energy form Kozah’s Needle that threw the behemoth backward, to tumble to its back, but Effron didn’t know it.

  He pressed on. He got to the last line, the critical release, and as he spoke the last word, he peered over the top of the scroll.

  There stood Dahlia, staring back at him, staring back at her broken son, her arms limp at her sides, her jaw hanging open, her face a mask of shock, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.

  A metal plate appeared in the air and swung down to slam against the woman. A second appeared on the other side, knocking her back the way she had come. A third and a fourth showed, all swinging as if on a puppet master’s string. Dahlia tried to block, but they were too heavy and tossed her about with ease. She tried to dodge away, but there were too many, and the magic too coordinated.

  And they were moving closer together, barely swinging now, surrounding her fully, encasing her.

  Closing like a coffin.

  Effron called his umber hulk back and put the jar on the ground in its path. As it neared, the magic pulled it, instructed it, and shrunk it.

  As he scooped that caged pet up, Effron produced the other. The powerful dweomer, the Tartarean Tomb, now locked its plates around Dahlia, pressing in tight, holding her fast, despite her ferocious struggling. Even this great spell wouldn’t cage this fine warrior for long, Effron understood, and had understood during his careful planning, and now his final piece, the death worm, slithered into position.

  The tomb was not complete, the elf woman’s feet and lower legs showing beneath the bottom edge of the metal plates, and the necrophidius coiled around one of those legs and climbed up into the tomb with Dahlia.

  How she screamed!

  In horror at first, and then in pain as the death worm bit into her.

  She kept screaming, kept thrashing.

  “Just succumb,” Effron begged her in a whisper, for to his surprise, these cries of pain and terror no longer rang sweetly in his ears.

  “Just fall, damn you!” he shouted out against them, and as if on cue, the screaming stopped.

  Effron froze, barely able to catch his breath. The paralyzing bite of the necrophidius had finally taken hold, he realized.

  The coffin swayed and fell over.

  Effron whispered a command to his pet, telling it to stay in place, and to bite again if the woman stirred.

  “Now?” Effron heard behind him.

  “Fetch her,” he instructed his two dockhand henchmen without turning back to regard them. They ran past him, blankets in hand. “And take care!” he called after them. “Else I will surely obliterate you!”

  He walked to the street to the waiting cart his henchmen had brought up to the entrance to the alleyway. Some people were watching, but none approached, for in a place like Baldur’s Gate, a person who stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong most often had that nose ripped off.

  The gaffer and his comrade half-carried, half-dragged the metal coffin from the alley, and got it up on the cart with great effort, even dropping it once to the street.

  They rushed up onto the driver’s bench and urged the mule along.

  Effron went off the other way, not wanting to call attention to the cargo. He was several blocks away, circling around toward the docks and the empty boat, in whose hold he would claim his catch, before the weight of what he had done truly struck him.

  He had her.

  He had the woman who had thrown him from the cliff.

  He had her.

  He had the mother who had rejected him, and left him to a life of broken misery.

  He had her!

  Chapter 13

  THE PATIENCE OF A MONK

  "Well then find her,” Captain Cannavara said to Entreri.

  “Aye, or we’ll be leavin’ ye here, and won’t that be better for us?” added Mister Sikkal. He stood at Cannavara’s side, bobbing up and down on his bowed legs so that his head bounced stupidly. How Artemis Entreri wanted to put his recovered da
gger to good use at that moment!

  “I only came to tell you that we cannot find her,” Entreri remarked, addressing the captain directly, but throwing one warning glance at Sikkal as he did to keep the fool’s mouth shut. “Not to be lectured by either of you.”

  “Then you four will be aboard when we sail?” the captain asked.

  “No,” Entreri replied without the slightest hesitation-and he was surprised at his own certainty, though as he considered it, he couldn’t deny the truth. He would not leave Dahlia behind, would not leave Baldur’s Gate until he learned what had happened to her.

  “Minnow Skipper sails on the morning tide,” Cannavara declared.

  “Then you will explain to Beniago and High Captain Kurth why my friends and I returned to Luskan before you. You are on to Memnon, are you not?”

  The expression on Cannavara’s face, and on Sikkal’s as well, spoke volumes to Entreri before either had uttered a word-if either had been able to speak at that moment. As far as Cannavara knew, clearly, they had told no one of their course change, and from Sikkal’s point of view, likely he had done some whispering that might get him thrown to the sharks.

  “You think you know all the strands of the web,” the assassin quietly said. “That is a dangerous belief when dealing with … my associates.”

  His tone left little doubt in the two men as to whom he might be referring. Bregan D’aerthe or Ship Kurth, the two men facing him obviously assumed, given the blood then draining from their respective faces.

  Entreri used that moment to pull back his cloak and put a hand to the hilt of his fabulous dagger. Cannavara let out a little gasp at that, obviously recognizing it and remembering for the first time where he had seen that particular blade before.

  With a dismissive snort, Artemis Entreri turned and walked back down the gangplank.

  By the time he stepped onto the wharf, he had put the two men out of his thoughts, focusing again on the missing Dahlia. Half the night and half the day now, and not a sign of her.

  This was more than petulance, he knew.

  He was afraid.

  Ambergris and Afafrenfere walked the wharf slowly, taking their time on their way to Minnow Skipper. Drizzt and Entreri moved separately through the various neighborhoods of the city, checking every inn and tavern, and every alley, but the dwarf had resisted Afafrenfere’s calls to separate and cover more ground.

  “I got me an idea,” she announced to her partner, with one of her exaggerated winks, and she led him directly to these docks, where more than a score of ships were moored, some out on the water, others pulled up tight against the wharves.

  “You think she’s on one of these boats?” Afafrenfere asked when Ambergris’s destination became apparent.

  “She ain’t been out through any o’ Baldur’s Gate’s gates, from what them sentries’re saying.”

  “Dahlia could have easily gotten past them unnoticed.”

  “Aye, but to what end?” Ambergris asked. “Long roads to walk alone, and why would she, when there’s better ways to be long gone from Baldur’s Gate, eh?”

  “So you think she left of her own accord?”

  Ambergris stopped and turned to face him, hands on hips. “Well, say it out loud, then,” she remarked when Afafrenfere made no move as if to answer her look.

  “I think she was kidnapped, or murdered,” the monk said.

  “Things ain’t been so good between herself and Drizzt,” Ambergris said, an observation she and Afafrenfere had noted for the last few days, and even before that, out on the seas.

  “She wouldn’t leave like that,” Afafrenfere argued, shaking his head. “Not that one. Lady Dahlia does not run from a fight.”

  “Even from a lover’s quarrel?”

  That gave Afafrenfere pause, but only for a moment before he shook his head. He didn’t know Dahlia all that well, but in the months he’d spent with her, he believed that he had a fairly solid understanding of the elf’s motivations.

  “I’m only arguin’ with ye because I’m fearing that ye’re right,” Ambergris admitted.

  “Then why have you led me to the docks?”

  “If ye was to kidnap someone, to sell to slavers or to force to serve yerself, would ye be wanting to keep her in Baldur’s Gate with us friends o’ hers walking about?”

  “And if you murdered her, what better place to dump the body?” Afafrenfere came right back.

  “Aye, and let’s hope it’s not that.”

  Afafrenfere wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment. He hadn’t known much camaraderie in his life, other than his long relationship with Parbid. He hadn’t thought it possible when first they had left Gauntlgrym, when he had walked out of that complex under great duress and in the company of those who had killed his dear companion, but Afafrenfere had come to think of these four, even the drow who had slain Parbid, as more than mere companions. He enjoyed fighting beside them-to deny it would be a terrible lie.

  As he walked with his dwarf friend along those docks, he thought of a starry night far out at sea on Minnow Skipper. Unable to sleep, Afafrenfere had gone up to the deck. Drizzt was up there, distracted, standing at the prow and staring off at the sea and sky.

  Afafrenfere had moved up, quietly as was his nature, but before he addressed Drizzt, he realized that the drow was already engaged in a quiet conversation-with himself.

  Drizzt, this most curious drow rogue, was talking to himself, was using the serenity of the nighttime sea to sort through his thoughts and fears. And judging from his tone, the drow had already gone far around with his current subject and had found his answer, his words clearly reinforcing that which was in his heart.

  “So now I say again, I am free, and say it with conviction,” Drizzt had declared to no one but himself. “Because I accept that which is in my heart, and understand those tenets to be the truest guidepost along this road. The world may be shadowed in various shades of gray, but the concept of right and wrong is not so subtle for me, and has never been. And when that concept collides against the stated law, then the stated law be damned.”

  Drizzt had continued, but Afafrenfere had moved away, shocked, and not by the words, but by the exercise itself. Afafrenfere had learned similar techniques at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. He had learned to fall deeply into meditation, an empty state, and then to subtly shift that bottomless trance, to use that ultimate peace, into a quiet personal conversation to sort out his innermost turmoil. Not with spoken words, but certainly in a similar soliloquy to that which Drizzt was doing at the front of that boat on that dark night.

  That dark night had proven enlightening, for the monk had realized that this experience with these companions was very different than that which he had known in Cavus Dun. He had nothing as intense here as his relationship with Parbid, certainly, but there was another matter that he could not deny: unlike Ratsis, Bol, and the others of Cavus Dun-indeed, unlike Parbid, though Afafrenfere was afraid to admit that to himself-these companions would not leave him behind. Even Entreri, the surliest and most violent of the bunch, would not abandon him should they find themselves in a difficult place.

  Ambergris’s elbow drew the monk from his contemplations.

  “Remember them two?” the dwarf asked, barely moving her lips and so quietly that no one else could hear.

  Without being obvious about studying the pair, Afafrenfere tried to place them.

  “When we was first off the boat,” Ambergris prodded, and then he did indeed remember.

  And Afafrenfere also noted that the pair, an old gaffer and a middle-aged man, watched him and the dwarf with more than a passing curiosity yet again. He made a mental note of them, and looked at Minnow Skipper tied up not so far aside.

  “Yerself thinking what I’m thinkin’?” the dwarf asked.

  “I believe I am,” Afafrenfere whispered back, then in a louder voice, added, “And now I am without coin. I hope that Captain Cannavara will give me work until we put to sea once more.”

&n
bsp; The monk and the dwarf then boarded Minnow Skipper, and Afafrenfere didn’t even bother to ask the captain for any pay, but just remained on the boat, grabbing a mop and trying to look busy, when Ambergris headed back to rendezvous with Drizzt and Entreri.

  Simple patience stood as among the greatest lessons Afafrenfere had learned in his years at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, and he put that training to use now.

  He would get to know the movements of these two dockhands, given all the interest they seemed to be showing in him and his friends.

  After many frustrating hours of scouring the taverns of Baldur’s Gate, Drizzt headed across town to meet up with Artemis Entreri at the inn where the assassin was staying.

  His mixed feelings chased him along every step.

  Drizzt had an inkling of where Dahlia had been before she disappeared, and indeed, of where Dahlia spent most of her time apart from him.

  He didn’t know how far her relationship with Entreri had progressed. He had known for a long time that there was something between them, of course, an idea that the sentient sword Charon’s Claw had seized upon to turn Drizzt’s suspicions to a murderous rage against the assassin back in Gauntlgrym. Even when Drizzt had realized the sword’s intrusions, and had thus brushed them aside, he couldn’t deny that Claw had found a hold on him because of some very real jealousy that had been stirring in his thoughts.

  Dahlia had spent a lot of time with Entreri along the journey from Luskan; oftentimes, Drizzt had seen her working the lines of a sail right beside the man, and always the two were engaged in conversation.

  There might well be a spark there between them, one that went beyond their shared understanding of each other’s deep emotional scars.

  Drizzt would be a liar indeed if he claimed that the thought of Dahlia in a tryst with Entreri didn’t bother him.