The Last Threshold tns-4

by R. A. Salvatore

  They were going to speak, and soon, Drizzt knew, and he wondered if his coming honesty with Dahlia would split the group apart. Perhaps it would, he realized, and so he knew that he owed it to her, to all of them, to have the conversation before they made the difficult journey to Icewind Dale.

  The six moved off the wagon and to the campfire to share a hot meal then, but the talk about that fire was quite light, and often nonexistent, for in truth, they had little to talk about. Time had stopped for half the group, after all, and Drizzt and Effron’s tales of their imprisonment by Draygo Quick offered very little content.

  Ambergris took the lead in the conversation after dinner, recounting the last moments of the battle and explaining how she came to find Jarlaxle.

  That part of the dwarf’s story had Drizzt and Entreri perking up.

  “Tiago Baenre,” Drizzt whispered when the dwarf described Jarlaxle’s rescue of her off the streets of Luskan. Given what he had been told by Athrogate, it made sense, and given that Tiago and his cohorts obviously knew the identities of Drizzt’s companions, the news made him change his mind about his present plans.

  He would not speak honestly with Dahlia until they were all safely away, for her own sake.

  Not far away from the group, another listened as best he could to their light chatter. Madigan Pruett served Ship Rethnor, and knew that his high captain would be anxious to hear any news of Dahlia.

  But Madigan wasn’t sure that he’d relay this news to his Ship, for he had heard of another who had put out word on the street that he was looking for, and paying well for, any information that could be found regarding Drizzt Do’Urden.

  Madigan Pruett had come out this night to deliver the last of Rethnor’s supplies for the caravan. Now with this profitable opportunity before him, he decided that he would sign on with the caravan, but only as far as the southern entrance to the pass through the Spine of the World, a couple of days of travel if the weather held.

  Then he’d take his information to the man paying well, a visiting wizard named Huervo the Seeker.

  A hundred miles to the southeast, and a thousand feet below the surface, Saribel Xorlarrin roused her brother, and the two went with all haste to Tiago Baenre’s private chamber.

  Every night at her evening prayers, Saribel asked the handmaidens of the Spider Queen to guide her search, and on a more practical level, she had been charged with maintaining contact to the spies Tiago had set about Neverwinter, Port Llast, and other cities of the region.

  “We must return to Luskan with all haste,” Ravel Xorlarrin explained to Tiago.

  “The dwarf has been located?”

  “Better,” said Ravel, and he looked to Saribel.

  “Drizzt Do’Urden has surfaced, at long last,” she explained.

  Elated but not surprised, Tiago had been expecting this news since his near capture of the dwarf known as Ambergris. He moved from his bed, took up his clothing and armor, and fabulous sword and shield.

  “He is with his companions, then,” Tiago remarked.

  “It would seem to be the case,” Ravel answered.

  “Gather them all, then,” Tiago instructed, referring to the special force he had assembled for just this occasion, comprised of Ravel’s closest spellspinners and warriors, including Jearth, the weapons master of House Xorlarrin. “We will take no chances of missing the heretic rogue this time.”

  “And House Xorlarrin will share in the credit?” Saribel dared to ask.

  Tiago snapped a look at her, wearing a smile that he knew would surely unsettle the young priestess. He understood the source of her question: She would, after all, have to answer to her older and quite severe sister, Berellip, for her actions. Both Saribel and Ravel needed some assurance of gain for their House, given the risk they were putting forth.

  “Share?” Tiago said with a dismissive laugh. “You will be mentioned prominently as the force I employed to carry out my great victory.”

  He kept his tone condescending, but knew, of course, that these two, his lessers, would be satisfied with that.

  And so they were.

  The next night, a force of more than twenty-five drow and a handful of driders, led by mighty Yerrininae and his wife Flavvor, moved north along the tunnels out of Gauntlgrym.

  The wagons rolled at a swift pace. The weather had been dry and the road proved clear and hard, no mud or ruts wearing on the wheels.

  For the first time in many months, Drizzt rode Andahar, and he felt grand up there on the unicorn’s strong back, the wind in his long white hair. He put his hand to his belt pouch repeatedly, feeling the onyx figurine, longing for the day when he would call Guenhwyvar to his side once more.

  “Patience,” he whispered, reminding himself that Guenhwyvar needed her rest. She would be there, Jarlaxle had assured him, and Jarlaxle was rarely wrong.

  He urged Andahar on more powerfully, cantering up around the lead wagon, then riding off down the road at a gallop to scout the way ahead. He let the unicorn run for some time, caring not that he had moved out of sight of the lead wagon. He was free now, riding along a road to a place he had known as home.

  Andahar barely broke a sweat, thundering along with a smooth, long stride. Around a bend, they came to a long straightaway, lined with thick trees, and Drizzt allowed the unicorn to move to a full sprint. Nostrils flaring, breath heaving in tremendous bursts, Andahar seemed all too pleased to comply, and now the sweat did bead on the unicorn’s muscled flanks.

  Two-thirds of the way along the run, Andahar eased up, and Drizzt sat up straighter, rolling his body in perfect balance as the gallop became a canter, became a trot.

  Drizzt bent forward and patted Andahar hard on the neck, grateful for the joy of the run. He had just begun to urge the unicorn around when something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye, something large and black moving swiftly across the treetops.

  Drizzt pulled Andahar up fully, and even reached for Taulmaril, until he recognized the pursuit.

  A giant crow set down on the road in front of them, and the crow quickly became Dahlia, clad in her magical cloak.

  “You might have passed a horde of highwaymen without ever noticing them,” the elf scolded.

  Drizzt grinned at her. “The road is clear.”

  Dahlia stared at him doubtfully.

  “Fly along above the treetops, then,” the drow told her. “Shadow my ride and show me the error of my judgment.”

  Dahlia considered the words for a moment, then shook her head and started toward Drizzt. “No,” she explained, coming up beside him and lifting her hand for him to grasp. “I prefer to ride with you, behind you.”

  Drizzt pulled her up, and she came up very tight against him.

  “Or under you,” she whispered teasingly in his ear.

  Drizzt tensed.

  “If the road is clear, then they will not need us,” Dahlia said.

  But such a concern wasn’t the source of Drizzt hesitance.

  “What is it, then?” Dahlia said when he didn’t reply, and when he didn’t make any more intimate move toward her at all.

  “It has been a long time,” Drizzt started. “I spent months in the captivity of Draygo Quick.”

  “I would have traded places with you,” the elf who had been turned to stone sarcastically replied.

  “Would you?” Drizzt asked sincerely, and he glanced over his shoulder to look Dahlia in the face. “You were perfectly oblivious. In your mind and senses, there was no passage of time-tell me, when you were rescued, when you became flesh once more, did you think that months had passed? You said earlier that it seemed to you that you had gone in a blink from the entry hall to the catacombs, and instead of the medusa, you found Jarlaxle before you.”

  “It is no less unsettling,” Dahlia said and looked away.

  “Perhaps,” Drizzt admitted. “Nor is it a competition between us.”

  “Then why start one?” Her voice grew sharp.

  He nodded an apology. �
��The world has moved fast, and yet seems not to move at all,” he said. “I fear that I lost much of myself in those months with Lord Draygo. I have to find that first before I can even entertain-”

  “What?” Dahlia interrupted. “Before you can entertain making love to me?”

  “To anyone,” Drizzt tried to explain, but he realized that to be the wrong answer the moment the words escaped his lips, a point brought home only a heartbeat later as Dahlia slapped him across the face.

  She rolled down off the unicorn and stood in the dirt road, staring up at him, hands on hips, looking very much like she wanted to kill him, or wanted to fall to the ground crying, for what seemed an eternity to poor Drizzt.

  He didn’t know how to react, or what he might do, and finally it dawned on him to get down from Andahar and go to the woman. But as he lifted his leg to dismount, Dahlia held up a hand to ward him away. She turned and ran off a few steps, throwing her cloak up over her head as she went, and then she was a giant bird once more, flying back to the caravan.

  Drizzt closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping, his thoughts spinning, his heart pained. He couldn’t lead her on. He did not love her-not the way he had loved Catti-brie, and despite the words of Innovindil, that love remained the standard for him, haunting him and warming him at the same time.

  Perhaps he would never find such love again, and so be it, he decided.

  He turned Andahar around and started off slowly back the way he had come, reminding himself that he had to handle Dahlia properly, for her own sake. He could not give her what she desired, but the Baenres were hunting, and he could not let her run off alone.

  “I can hardly hear a word said to me,” Afafrenfere said to Drizzt a few days later, when the caravan at last broke free of the high-walled mountain pass, to come out into the tundra of Icewind Dale.

  “You will become accustomed to the wind,” Drizzt shouted back at him, and truly the drow was smiling. Hearing the eternal wind of Icewind Dale in his ears again proved to be great medicine to Drizzt Do’Urden, healing him of the doubts and malaise that had infected him in the months of his captivity. He pictured the lone rocky pinnacle of Kelvin’s Cairn, which was not quite visible yet above the flat plain, but soon would be, he knew. And that imagined view, the stars seeming as if they were all around him and not high above, brought to him an image of a smiling Bruenor, standing at his side in the dark night and the chill breeze. He thought of Regis, fishing string tied around his toe as he slept on the banks of Maer Dualdon.

  Aye, this was home to Drizzt, a place of physical cold and emotional warmth, a place where he had learned to trust and to love, and he couldn’t help but feel alive with the sound of the wind of Icewind Dale in his ears. He could hardly imagine the person he had become in the jails of Draygo Quick, so apathetic and hopeless.

  He looked back to the caravan, to Dahlia in particular, who rode on a wagon with Artemis Entreri pacing his nightmare nearby, speaking with her. Drizzt imagined them in each other’s arms, and hoped that it would become true. Because he could never truly return her love, he knew.

  Drizzt turned Andahar around and paced back to the lead wagon. “Bryn Shander?” he asked.

  “Aye, that’s where we’re bound.”

  “The roads will grow worse, for the melt is on, and the tundra mud is inevitable,” Drizzt explained. “Another tenday before us, likely, if the weather holds.”

  The driver nodded. “Been this way many times,” he explained.

  “My friends and I will escort you to Bryn Shander’s gates, but then I, at least, will turn away for Kelvin’s Cairn.”

  “You will get your pay.”

  Drizzt smiled. He hardly cared, and had only wanted to inform the caravan of his plans.

  “The Battlehammer dwarves for you, then?” the driver added, and Drizzt nodded. “I heard you were friends o’ them.”

  “Proud to be called such.”

  “We’ve a wagon of goods bound for Stokely Silverstream’s boys,” the driver explained, and Drizzt was glad to hear that name again. “Might be two. I’ll begin splitting up the goods when we camp tonight, sorting them that’s for the dwarves, and you can guard those wagons to the mountain.”

  Drizzt nodded again and moved up front with Afafrenfere. He paced Andahar a bit faster after that, his conversation making him anxious to walk the ways of Kelvin’s Cairn once more.

  The next morning, soon after they were on the road again, the tip of that small mountain came into view, and Drizzt’s heart leaped.

  Chapter 26

  THE SONG OF THE GODDESS

  The beer, the ale, and the honey mead flowed freely in the ball-room hall of Clan Battlehammer, beneath the rocks of Kelvin’s Cairn. Dain Stokely Silverstream led the toasts, one after another, for Drizzt and the others of the drow’s band, and so ridiculously effusive were the compliments that it didn’t take long for the companions to recognize that they were as much an excuse as a reason for drinking.

  Other than Drizzt, long a friend of the clan, Amber Gristle O’Maul got the bulk of the attention and praise, and truly, the female dwarf hadn’t felt so welcomed in a long, long while.

  Nor had she often found herself among so many peers in matters of holding one’s liquor.

  The celebration went on for many days, and both Drizzt and Dahlia were repeatedly pressed to recount their story of Gauntlgrym, describing the primordial, and most important of all, the fall of King Bruenor Battlehammer, patriarch and hero of the clan. The openness of Stokely and the others about the true identity of the dwarf who had gone by the name of Bonnego Battleaxe surprised Drizzt, and pleasantly so. The official story among the Battlehammer dwarves was that King Bruenor had died in Mithral Hall, decades before his actual demise, but this outpost of Battlehammers knew better, for they had been there, led by Thibbledorf Pwent, when King Bruenor, infused with the power of dwarf gods, had valiantly saved the day, heroically giving his own life in the process.

  They knew the truth of Bonnego, and Mithral Hall almost surely knew as well-and thus, knew too that the cairn in Mithral Hall marking the grave of King Bruenor was an empty pile of rocks. But they’d never publicly admit it.

  The absurdity of the open duplicity was surely not lost on Drizzt, but he found that he approved of the winks and nods, and that the Battlehammers celebrated the ultimate victory that had marked his dearest friend’s demise came as a sincere and warm comfort to him.

  “So how long’re ye for the dale?” Stokely asked Drizzt a tenday later, when the two found a private moment outside the mining complex on the lower trails of Kelvin’s Cairn.

  “Perhaps forever,” Drizzt answered, and he noted Stokely’s approving nod and grin. “I’ve nowhere else to go that I can fathom, for nowhere else feels so much like home.”

  “Sure that meself’s one to understand that! But I’m not thinkin’ yer friends’re of like mind. Amber, likely, and that monk fellow, but not so much th’other three, mostly that broken fellow.”

  “Are you so certain of that, or is it, perhaps, your own wishes to have Effron away?” Drizzt asked, and Stokely stiffened at the remark.

  “Well, he is demon spawn, or devil spawn, or whatever durned tieflings be,” the dwarf said uncomfortably.

  “And I am drow spawn,” Drizzt reminded.

  Stokely could only shrug. “We ain’t for kickin’ him out,” he said.

  Drizzt laughed. “We’ll not be staying here for long.”

  “Ye just said forever.”

  “Here at Kelvin’s Cairn,” Drizzt clarified. “Perhaps we’ll set up in Bryn Shander, or maybe Lonelywood would be more to our liking. Dahlia and Entreri aren’t overly comfortable with your tunnels.”

  Stokely narrowed his eyes.

  “Inviting as you’ve made them,” Drizzt quickly added, and he bowed to diffuse Stokely’s growing scowl. “Dahlia is an elf, after all, and Entreri-”

  “Not always a friend of the Battlehammers, eh?” Stokely interjected.

  “Thoug
h no longer an enemy, else I would never have brought him here. Indeed, were that the case, I would not be traveling with him.”

  “Well, ye go where ye’re needin’ to go,” Stokely said. “But if ye’re staying in the dale, then ye best be visitin’ me and me boys.”

  “Oftentimes,” Drizzt assured him.

  Later that same day, Drizzt, Dahlia, and Entreri rode out from Kelvin’s Cairn for Bryn Shander, where the drow hoped they could begin to lay their longer-term plans. Afafrenfere saw them off, but remained behind to keep an eye on Ambergris and her unrelenting libations. Effron too, surprisingly, had declared that he would remain behind, and Drizzt discovered that Stokely had asked the tiefling to do so, that the two of them could spend some time alone and Effron could better explain his heritage. That notion struck Drizzt profoundly, and reminded him that Battlehammer dwarves were not nearly as xenophobic as many of the races of Faerun. An open-minded Bruenor had long-ago befriended a rogue dark elf, after all, and now Stokely was apparently trying to carry on that tradition.

  Drizzt’s confidence that he had done well in leading his companions to this distant, seemingly-forlorn but ultimately-welcoming land only grew as he left the Clan Battlehammer complex.

  Dahlia rode upon Andahar behind Drizzt, but the added weight did little to hinder the powerful steed and the trio made Bryn Shander that same day, though after the sun had set and the chilly wind began to blow more strongly. The city’s gates were closed at the late hour, but the guards recognized Drizzt Do’Urden and were more than happy to grant him and his companions entrance.

  “When’s the caravan back to Luskan?” one asked as the strange and powerful mounts trotted between the western gate’s small guard towers.

  Drizzt shrugged, neither knowing nor caring. He dismounted from Andahar, bade Dahlia do the same, then dismissed the unicorn as Entreri released his nightmare.