The Last Threshold tns-4

by R. A. Salvatore

  A sharp left jab sped past the warlock’s uplifted arm, snapping his head back. A right cross followed, but much of its weight was blocked, inadvertently, by the rising arm of the staggering Effron. It hardly mattered, though, for Afafrenfere threw the right simply to half-turn Effron and open a hole in his defenses, and to get Afafrenfere’s own right foot forward. Now came the real attack, a sweeping left hook that flew around the warlock’s uplifted arm and cracked him across the side of the jaw, snapping his head to the side.

  Afafrenfere spun a tight circuit, lifting his trailing right leg up high, nearly clipping the beams of the low hold’s ceiling, and he brought that leg down and across, chopping the warlock across the collarbone, dropping him to his knees.

  The monk didn’t dare relent, understanding that a single spell from Effron could quickly reverse his fortunes. For some reason, though, Effron didn’t seem to be fighting back. Perhaps it had been the speed and brutality of the attack, but there seemed something more to Afafrenfere, some deeper resignation.

  If he had paused to consider that, Afafrenfere would have sorted it out, of course: the tiefling had been as overwhelmed by the confrontation with his mother as was Dahlia.

  Afafrenfere wasn’t about to take the chance that such apparent surrender would hold. He waded in, slapping away the meager attempt to block, then backhanded Effron in the forehead, driving the tiefling’s head back, opening a clear strike at the exposed neck. In the same movement, Afafrenfere set himself powerfully and lifted his right hand up behind him, fingers locked claw-like for the killing blow.

  Effron couldn’t stop it.

  Effron didn’t appear as if he wanted to stop it.

  Chapter 14

  SHADOWS OF TRUTH

  The gentle curvature of the watery horizon greeted every view from Minnow Skipper’s crow’s nest. Three days out of Baldur’s Gate, the ship found fair winds and following seas, and no land in sight and none wanted.

  None that Drizzt wanted, at least. He sat far above the deck, losing himself in the rolling waters, letting them take him gently into his own thoughts.

  He wanted to help Dahlia. He wanted to comfort her, to guide her through these days, but in truth, he had no idea what to say that would make any difference to the emotionally battered woman, particularly not with Effron tied to a chair in a sectioned-off part of the hold.

  Dahlia seemed a different person to Drizzt after Afafrenfere’s gallant rescue, and Effron seemed a different enemy. Neither showed much sign of life, the young warlock not offering anything in terms of resistance, the elf warrior not offering much of anything at all. Dahlia’s capture by her son and their long meetings had drained both of all energy, it seemed.

  Drizzt figured that if pirates boarded Minnow Skipper, both would simply surrender without lifting a hand to fight, and he could well imagine the shrug either might offer on the last steps off the plank.

  That notion had the drow glancing down at the deck. Dahlia was there among the crew, by the starboard rail, ostensibly stitching a torn sail, though at the rate she was going, a finger’s length tear might occupy her for the rest of the journey to Memnon.

  Drizzt’s gaze drifted farther aft, to the open bulkhead, where Ambergris had just appeared. The dwarf reached back and bent low, grabbing hold on Effron and helping him up into the open air, with Afafrenfere closely following.

  Amidships, Dahlia glanced back to look at the young tiefling, but she quickly looked down and went back to her task.

  Making busy work, Drizzt could see, trying to pretend that Effron wasn’t on the deck, or that he wasn’t on the boat at all.

  But Drizzt could see even that wouldn’t prove enough emotional insulation for Dahlia. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then gathered up her things and moved to the forward bulkhead, never looking back.

  Never looking back at Effron.

  “Effron,” Drizzt whispered from on high, and then it hit him, the simplest answer to the questions and doubts that had been pounding him for these many days. This wasn’t about the relationship he had with Dahlia, whatever that might be. This wasn’t about him at all. It was about that twisted tiefling leaning over the taffrail of Minnow Skipper.

  Drizzt couldn’t begin to decipher the many emotions that must be running through Effron and Dahlia, wrenched from hidden corners of their hearts by circumstance and the abrupt turn of events. But in this moment, finally, the drow came to realize that it was all right that he couldn’t understand.

  Because this wasn’t about him.

  Drizzt hopped out from his seat, catching a handhold and wrapping his ankles around the guide rope, then half sliding, half hand-walking his way quickly to the deck. With a last glance at the bulkhead through which Dahlia had gone-and brushing away his certainty that she was belowdecks speaking with, or at least sitting with, Artemis Entreri-Drizzt moved aft along the deck.

  “Hey now!” Mister Sikkal yelled at him. “Get yerself back at the lookout!”

  Drizzt didn’t even turn to regard the old first mate. He moved easily around the captain’s quarters and to the back, where the dwarf called a greeting to him.

  “Take my place at the crow’s nest,” he said to Afafrenfere when the monk also turned to greet him. “I won’t be long.”

  Afafrenfere glanced at Effron, who hadn’t even turned away from the sizzling foam in Minnow Skipper’s wake, who hadn’t even shown the slightest interest in anything other than the empty dark water. With a nod, the monk moved past Drizzt.

  “You can go with him,” the drow said to Ambergris.

  “I ain’t for climbin’ no durned dead tree pole!” the dwarf insisted.

  “Stay at the mast’s base, then.”

  Ambergris offered him a little grin. “Our deal with Cannavara says two’re to be with this Effron boy at all times, including meself and me silencing spells.”

  Drizzt motioned with his head in the direction Afafrenfere had gone.

  “I’ll be just around the corner, then,” the stubborn dwarf replied, and she walked past Drizzt and around the edge of the captain’s cabin, but there plopped down noisily and made a point of beginning a song, an old dwarf ballad of deep mines, thick silver veins, and a host of goblins in need of a bit of dwarf-style relocation.

  Drizzt moved up to Effron, but faced back at the captain’s cabin as he leaned against the taffrail.

  “Where will this go?” Drizzt asked Effron-asked his back, actually, since the tiefling was still leaning out over the taffrail, staring at the empty sea.

  “Do you know or do you care?” Drizzt pressed when Effron didn’t respond.

  “Why do you care?” came the curt reply.

  “Because I care for Dah … I care for your mother,” Drizzt replied, deciding to go there with Effron, straight to the relationship that was obviously causing him so much pain.

  The young tiefling’s response came as a derisive snort, which was not quite what Drizzt had expected.

  “Why would you doubt that?” Drizzt asked, still trying to remain calm and reasonable, trying honestly to coax Effron from his defensive shell. “Dahlia and I have been traveling together for many months now.”

  “Traveling and coupling, you mean,” Effron said, still not turning around.

  “That is our business.”

  “Is it Artemis Entreri’s?” the young tiefling asked, and now he did turn around, an unsettling grin spreading wickedly across his face.

  Drizzt couldn’t quite find the words to respond, not sure where Effron was going with this, yet afraid of where that might be.

  “The night I caught Dahlia, she had just left him,” Effron explained.

  Drizzt shrugged and wanted nothing more than to turn this conversation back to the more important topic, that of Effron and Dahlia.

  “She had just left his bed,” Effron pressed, and he seemed quite pleased with himself. “She stank of him.”

  It took all the self-control he could muster for Drizzt not to simply reach out and pu
sh the nasty young warlock over that taffrail and be done with him. Effron’s every word hit him like a dagger, and more pointedly so because he had known this truth already, though he hadn’t been able to admit it to himself.

  “I don’t understand why you and Entreri bothered to rent two rooms,” Effron continued. “You would save coin and time renting just one, don’t you think, with Dahlia lying between you?”

  He bit off his last word, and quite nearly a piece of his tongue, when Drizzt lost control for just the blink of an eye-long enough for Drizzt to deliver a stinging slap across Effron’s face.

  “Concern yourself more with your own predicament,” the drow advised. “Where will this all go? How will it end?”

  “Badly,” Effron spat back.

  “That is one choice, but only that, a choice.”

  “I’ll see her dead.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “You don’t know-” Effron started, but Drizzt cut him short.

  “It won’t free you of your burden,” Drizzt calmly assured him. “Your satisfaction will prove short-lived, and ever longer will your misery grow. This I know. Whatever else, whatever other details you think yourself privy to that I am not, matter not at all. Because this I know.”

  Effron stared at him hard.

  “Where will this all go?” Drizzt asked again, and he started off. And he knew that Ambergris has been listening to every word when she came around the corner before Drizzt had reached it.

  And he knew it by the look on the dwarf’s face, an expression of sympathy aimed at him.

  “Ask yerself the same,” the dwarf advised in a whisper as Drizzt walked by.

  Up above the deck in the crow’s nest, Drizzt was the first to spot land, a jutting mountain to the south east. Memnon was closer than that natural mound, Drizzt knew, though it was not yet visible, as Minnow Skipper neared the end of the second leg of her journey.

  He called down to Captain Cannavara, who looked up at him and nodded, as if expecting the call. “So keep your eyes to the horizons for pirate sails, drow!” he yelled back. “Here’s the channel they haunt!”

  Drizzt nodded, but thought little of it. There were no sails to be seen, and in truth, that irked Drizzt. He scanned as the captain had asked, and he hoped to see something, and was dismayed that he did not.

  Drizzt wanted a fight.

  He had spent the last two tendays wanting a fight. Since his confrontation with Effron, the drow had subconsciously wrung the blood out of his knuckles on many occasions, most often whenever Artemis Entreri was in view.

  He looked down at the deck now, forward, where Entreri was sitting and eating some bread. Dahlia wasn’t far from him, working the lines as the pilot tried to keep the sails full of wind.

  The two of them in the same frame stung him, and his imagination took him to dark places indeed. He shook it away and tried to rationalize, tried to find a distinction where Drizzt left off and Dahlia began. He didn’t focus on the claim he held on the woman as much as on the notion that any such claim was preposterous.

  Still, the drow found himself gnashing his teeth. The intersection of emotion and rational thought was not bordered by well-marked corners after all.

  “Memnon?” Dahlia asked Captain Cannavara after Drizzt’s call.

  “With the morning tide,” the captain replied.

  Dahlia glanced over at Entreri, and with alarm. It wasn’t just the notion of him leaving, as he had hinted, but more the coming conclusion to the situation with Effron. One way or another, something had to be resolved. Dahlia had hardly seen her son, willingly relinquishing control of him to Afafrenfere and Ambergris, though she doubted that much attention was even needed, given Effron’s obvious distress. The young warlock appeared as broken inside as out, now, and showed no signs of trying to lash out, or escape. Indeed, Ambergris had assured them all that Effron could have gotten away on several occasions, for he knew how to shadowstep. If he tried to execute such a maneuver to return to the Shadowfell, only immediate and overwhelming intervention could stop him, and surely over the course of tendays, there had been many such opportunities for Effron to escape.

  But now loomed Memnon, the next dock, and Cannavara had informed the crew that they would be in port for a tenday, perhaps two, as they executed some needed repairs to Minnow Skipper’s hull and masts.

  With a heavy sigh, Dahlia started for the hold.

  “Here now, girl!” Cannavara said to her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ve something I need to do.”

  “Not now, you don’t, unless you’re thinking that you need to work that line. We’re in pirate waters, the last run to Memnon, and we’re not to put aside our diligence until we’re fast tied to the long dock.”

  Dahlia turned away from the captain. “Entreri,” she called, and he looked back at her over his shoulder. She nodded to her post and gave a pleading expression and shrug.

  Artemis Entreri tore off another piece of bread and nodded, moving to replace her.

  Dahlia turned back to Captain Cannavara, who had already turned away to move on to other business.

  The elf pointedly did not look up at Drizzt as she moved to the open bulkhead of the aft hold.

  “Leave,” she instructed the dwarf and the monk as she descended.

  “Aye, but we’re too close to be takin’ such a gamble as that,” Ambergris warned.

  Dahlia didn’t blink, and didn’t regard the dwarf, her eyes locked on the small figure reclining in a hammock across the way.

  “Tie him, then,” Ambergris instructed the monk, but before Afafrenfere took a step toward Effron, Dahlia repeated, “Leave,” her tone leaving no room for debate.

  The dwarf and the monk exchanged looks and shrugs, and neither seemed to care much at that time.

  “Ye do what ye need do,” Ambergris offered, moving up to the deck behind her monk companion.

  “We are almost in port,” Dahlia said when she and Effron were alone in the small aft hold.

  He didn’t even look her way.

  “Memnon,” she explained, moving to a chair beside his hammock. “An exotic city, from what I have heard. Southern and very different from-”

  “Why would I care?” he interrupted, though he didn’t turn to regard her.

  “Look at me,” she bade.

  “Get out,” he replied.

  Dahlia moved in a rush, leaping up, grabbing Effron and yanking him so roughly that he tumbled out of his hammock to crash down to the floor. He came up at once, violence shining clearly in his distinct eyes, one tiefling red, one elf blue.

  “Sit down,” Dahlia commanded, motioning to a second chair.

  “Jump into the sea,” he replied.

  Dahlia took her seat anyway, and stared up at this half-elf, half-tiefling.

  “I need to tell you, and you need to listen,” she said quietly.

  “And then?”

  Dahlia shrugged.

  “And then you kill me?” Effron asked.

  “No,” Dahlia answered, her voice thick with resignation.

  “And then I kill you?”

  “Would that please you?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t believe him, but understood why he had to say that. “Then perhaps I will let you, or maybe I will just let you walk away.”

  Effron looked at her incredulously. “In Memnon?”

  Dahlia shrugged as if it didn’t matter and motioned again to the chair, but Effron remained standing.

  It didn’t matter. The elf woman took a deep breath. “For every moment since I learned who you truly were, in the bowels of Gauntlgrym, I have dreaded this,” she said, hardly able to keep her voice from cracking apart.

  “Dreaded? Your admission? Did we not already have this conversation, in the hold of another boat in dock at Baldur’s Gate?”

  “No,” she said, looking down in shame. “You already have my admission. You didn’t need it, because everything Herzgo Alegni has told you ab
out that day when he first caught sight of you is no doubt true. There would be no need for him to embellish my crime.” She gave a helpless snort. “I did it.”

  Dahlia took a deep breath, steeled herself, and looked Effron directly in the eye. “I threw you from the cliff. I denied your existence and wanted it … obliterated.” She took another deep breath to stop herself from simply falling over and dissolving on the floor. “I denied you. I had to.”

  “Witch,” he muttered. “Murderess.”

  “All true,” she said. “Do you even care why?”

  That comment knocked Effron off balance, it seemed, and Dahlia had expected as much. Effron hadn’t killed her, hadn’t even tortured her, when he had her at his mercy in the hold of the scow in Baldur’s Gate. Most of all, he yelled at her, and asked her questions that had no answers.

  But perhaps she had an explanation, and perhaps that was what the young warlock truly wanted.

  “I was barely more than a girl,” Dahlia went on. “It wasn’t so long ago, but it seems like an eternity. And still I remember the day, every moment, every step-”

  “The day you tried to murder me.”

  Dahlia shook her head and looked down. “The day Herzgo Alegni tore my body and my heart.” A sob shivered her, but she would not give it credence, would not allow herself to go there. Not now.

  She took another deep and steadying breath, and she determined to look him in the eye again, and was surprised when she at last glanced up to find him sitting in the chair across the way, staring back at her.

  “I went to the river to fetch some water,” she began. “That was my morning chore, and one I relished.” She gave a helpless little laugh. “To be out in the forest alone, in the sunshine and with the birds and the small animals all around. Could an elf lass ask for more?”

  Another uncomfortable laugh escaped her lips as she looked down once more.