The Last Threshold tns-4 Read online

  Dahlia looked at him as if he’d just grown a second head. “To survive,” she replied sarcastically.

  “Not so!” the drow countered. “We could have left the region to the primordial forces. We could have walked far away from these enemies.”

  “They would have followed.”

  “In body, or simply in your dreams?”

  “Both,” Dahlia decided. “Sylora would have tried to find us, and Alegni.…” She spat upon the ground.

  “And so our road has been determined by immediate needs.”

  Dahlia shrugged and continued to look rather unimpressed.

  “But what now?” he asked.

  “You’re not asking me,” Dahlia replied. “You’re merely preparing me for whatever road you deem worthy.”

  Drizzt could only laugh and shrug at that for many heartbeats. “I’m asking,” he said at length. “Asking you and asking myself.”

  “Let me know when you find an answer,” the elf woman replied and turned back to the north, toward Neverwinter.

  “A bit farther,” Drizzt said before she had gone more than a couple of steps.

  Dahlia stopped and turned. “Why?” she demanded.

  “Arunika the Seer,” Drizzt admitted. “I wish to speak with her again regarding Guenhwyvar.” He stared at her for just a moment longer, then turned and shrugged and moved along to the south. Dahlia was quick to catch up.

  “You might have told me that when we left,” Dahlia said.

  Drizzt merely shrugged. Did it even matter? He wasn’t even sure where Arunika’s house might be. Somewhere in the south, Jelvus Grinch had told him, but no one seemed to know precisely.

  On his previous meeting with her, after the defeat of the Shadovar in Neverwinter and before the journey to Gauntlgrym, the seer had claimed that she could sense no connection at all between the statuette Drizzt carried and the panther it was used to summon. Nothing had changed, as far as Drizzt could tell.

  Still, before he left this place, he had to try one last time. He owed that, and so much more, to his most loyal companion.

  With all of those thoughts stirring in his mind, Drizzt nearly walked right past a side trail marked by a recent passage of a large band, something the astute ranger would rarely miss. He spun around at the last moment and moved back to the side trail, bending low to examine the soft ground. Dahlia moved up beside him.

  “Not so old,” the elf woman remarked.

  Drizzt crouched lower, feeling the solidity of the ground, inspecting one clear print more carefully. “Goblins.” He stood and looked into the forest. Perhaps this side trail led to Arunika’s house, he thought. Had she been assailed by the filthy little beasts?

  If so, he’d likely find a bunch of dead goblins scattered about Arunika’s undamaged house. The woman was deceptively formidable, by all accounts.

  “Or Ashmadai,” Dahlia replied, referring to the devil-worshiping zealots who had formed Sylora Salm’s army in Neverwinter Wood. Since the fall of Sylora, this force had scattered throughout the region, or so the Neverwinter guards had told them.

  “Goblins,” Drizzt insisted. He took a few steps along the small trail, then looked back to Dahlia, who didn’t follow.

  “They could strike at any of the caravans coming up from Waterdeep before the winter snows,” Drizzt said, but Dahlia merely shrugged and seemed unimpressed.

  Her indifference stung Drizzt, but it was not unexpected. He understood that he had a long road ahead of him indeed if he ever hoped to encourage her to look out for the needs of others.

  She smiled, however, and took up her walking stick, the magical stave known as Kozah’s Needle, and moved past Drizzt, heading along the small trail, deeper into the forest.

  “We haven’t fought anyone in a tenday and more,” she remarked. “I could use the practice … and the coin.”

  Drizzt stared back at the road for some time as the elf woman moved away from him. There wasn’t much altruism flowing forth from her in words, but perhaps it was there nonetheless, buried under the chip that weighed upon her strong shoulders.

  She had returned to Gauntlgrym and the primordial, after all, and though she could pretend she had done so simply to strike back at Sylora Salm, Drizzt knew better. Guilt had driven Dahlia back to that supreme danger in that dark place. That guilt was wrought of her need to right the wrong she had helped facilitate, for she had played a role in freeing the monstrous fire being and thus a role in the catastrophe that had obliterated Neverwinter a decade before.

  Buried within Dahlia was compassion, empathy, and a sense of right and wrong.

  Drizzt believed that, though he feared that he believed it because he had to.

  A short while later, the sun still high overhead, Drizzt crouched low and peered through the tangle of branches before him. He held up his fist, signaling Dahlia to stay back. The goblins were ahead, not far, he knew, for he could smell them. Likely, they had set a camp just ahead, buried in the shadows of a grove of thick maples and a few boulders, for goblins did not like the sunlight and traveled only rarely in the daytime.

  He motioned for Dahlia to move off to the right flank, then held his breath as the elf woman started away, her footsteps crunching in the leaves. Was she even trying to be careful, Drizzt wondered? Or was she just being petulant?

  Drizzt shook his head, trying to let it go. The brown carpet of autumn lay thick about the ground. Even Drizzt, dark elf and skilled ranger, would have trouble moving silently in this region. So, no matter, he told himself. He drew Taulmaril, set an arrow, and crept ahead, trying to gain a better vantage. At last, he spotted the camp-or what was left of it.

  Drizzt stood up straight and glanced over at Dahlia, his expression telling her that she need not take care to be silent any longer. Someone, or something, had beaten them to the camp-and had destroyed the place and the inhabitants.

  Dead goblins lay scattered haphazardly about the ground, their shredded, bug-ridden blankets all around. Wisps of smoke still rose from several small logs, the remnants of a cooking fire, likely, which also had been thrown around in the apparent scuffle.

  Drizzt removed his arrow, placed it back into the quiver, and slid Taulmaril over his shoulder, as Dahlia appeared at the side of the camp. She came in with a wide smile on her pretty face, and Drizzt found himself unable to look away from her in the morning light-indeed, in a different light than he had known during their recent conversations.

  Her black, red-streaked hair was in that pretty bob again, bouncing lightly around her shoulders under her fashionable wide-brimmed black leather hat, its right side pinned up. The sun speckled down on her through the trees, dancing around the woman’s blue-dyed facial woad. In the morning light, those markings didn’t seem fierce to Drizzt, but somehow soft and even innocent, like freckles on a dancing child.

  The drow reminded himself that Dahlia was a master of disguise and manipulation. She was, in all possibility, manipulating him even then. But still, he could not pull his eyes away from her.

  She wore her black raven cape thrown back from her shoulders, with her white blouse unbuttoned low, to the tip of her black vest that stretched tight about her lithe torso. Her black skirt, cut short and angled, revealed much of her shapely legs-that which wasn’t covered by her tall black boots.

  She was the perfect blend of apparent innocence and promising sensuality-in other words, Dahlia was dangerous. And he would do well to always remember that, especially after their adventures with Artemis Entreri.

  But Drizzt couldn’t wrap his thoughts around Dahlia in any cohesive way. Not now, not ever. He watched her walk into the camp, casually prodding a dead goblin with Kozah’s Needle, still formed into a thick walking stick, four feet in length. All at once, she seemed sweet, sexy, and vicious, like she wanted to kiss him, or kill him, and as if it wouldn’t matter to her which it might be. How was that possible? What magic surrounded her? Or was it in his mind, Drizzt wondered?

  “Someone got here before us,” she sai
d.

  “It would appear so. Saved us the trouble.”

  “Stole our fun, you mean,” Dahlia replied with a wry grin. She drew a small knife from her belt. “They are offering a bounty on goblin ears in Neverwinter.”

  “We didn’t kill them.”

  “That will hardly matter.” She bent with the knife, but Drizzt stepped over and caught her arm, and brought her back up to stand before him.

  “They’ll want to know who, or what, did this,” the drow said. “Ashmadai? A Netherese patrol?”

  Dahlia considered his words for a moment, then glanced back down. “Well,” she said, “I know what did it, if not exactly who.”

  Drizzt followed her gaze to the dead goblin she had rolled. The way it had flopped had exposed its neck, showing two puncture wounds, as if made by fangs.

  “Vampire,” Dahlia remarked.

  Drizzt stared at the wound, seeking a different answer. Perhaps a wolf, he told himself, though he knew that to be ridiculous. A wolf would not have bitten a victim like that only to leave the throat intact. Still, the notion of another vampire was not something Drizzt wanted to embrace. He had seen more than enough of one such creature in the bowels of Gauntlgrym; indeed, Bruenor and Thibbledorf Pwent had been slain by just such a creature.

  “You cannot be sure,” Drizzt replied, and not just out of a desperate hope, for something seemed amiss to him. He moved to the side, where a broken tent lay tangled around a small branch.

  “I have some experience in these matters,” Dahlia said. “I know what such wounds look like.” Indeed, Drizzt suspected the same vampire, Dor’crae, who had attacked Bruenor in the anteroom to the primordial pit had been Dahlia’s lover.

  Drizzt tried hard not to focus on the recollection of Dor’crae. He tried to wash that thought away with the image of the pretty elf walking into the camp, tried to bury it under the sheer attraction the woman elicited in him.

  And when that didn’t work, he fell back on that pervading sense of detachment.

  Drizzt drew out a scimitar and used it to flip the torn tent aside, revealing more goblins, or more accurately, goblin parts, strewn on the ground before him. He studied the garish vision, the jagged tears in the clothing and skin. These were wounds better known to Drizzt, who had traveled beside just such a fighter for so many decades.

  “Battlerager,” he whispered, confused.

  “No,” Dahlia said. “I’ve seen these fang marks before …” Her voice trailed off as she walked over to him, as she noted, no doubt, the very different carnage at this section of the broken camp.

  “Vampire,” she insisted.

  “Battlerager,” Drizzt replied.

  “Must you always argue with me?” She asked the question casually, but Drizzt detected an undercurrent of true anger. How many times had that edge crept into Dahlia’s voice of late?

  “Only when you’re wrong.” Drizzt tossed her a disarming grin-and he realized it was likely the first lighthearted look he’d offered Dahlia since they’d left the bowels of Gauntlgrym, or more accurately, since he had seen Dahlia and Artemis Entreri share a passionate kiss. “I suppose that might seem like always to you,” Drizzt teased, determined to push past his own negativity and jealousy.

  Dahlia cocked her head. “Are you finished with your pouting at long last?” she asked.

  The question threw Drizzt off balance for a moment, for it seemed to him to be a matter of Dahlia projecting her own foul mood on him. Or perhaps it was a matter of Dahlia admitting that her own pouting-or grieving, or shock, or whatever combination it might be-needed to end.

  But the question teased Drizzt on a much deeper level, and likely more deeply than Dahlia had intended. Drizzt couldn’t deny the truth of her words.

  To Drizzt, Dahlia remained this great contradiction, able to tug his emotions any which way she desired, it seemed, as easily as she changed her hairstyle. But to Entreri … nay, her tricks would not work for her with Entreri. For Artemis Entreri knew her, or knew something of her, that went past the hairstyles, the clear skin or woad, her clothing, seductive or sweet. Before Drizzt, she had stood naked, physically, perhaps, but before Entreri, Dahlia had been naked emotionally, stripped to the core trouble that so haunted her.

  Drizzt had only glimpsed that briefly, in the form of a broken and twisted young tiefling warlock and Dahlia’s reaction to that creature, Effron.

  “What about you?” Drizzt replied. “You have said little in the tendays since we left Gauntlgrym.”

  “Perhaps I have nothing to say.” Dahlia clamped her jaw, as if she were afraid of what might come spilling out should she lose the tiniest bit of discipline. “I have the ears,” Dahlia said and began to walk away.

  He followed her out of the camp and into the forest once more, moving slowly and bending low, looking for broken stems or footprints. For a long while she walked, finally coming to rest in a sunny clearing where a single, half-buried stone provided a comfortable seat.

  Dahlia reclined, removed her hat, and ran her fingers through her hair, allowing the sunbeams to splash over her face.

  “Come along,” he bade her. “We must learn who or what killed those goblins. There’s a vampire about, so you claim.”

  Dahlia shrugged, showing no interest.

  “Or a battlerager,” Drizzt went on stubbornly. “And if it is the latter, then we would do well to find him. A powerful ally.”

  “So I thought of my vampire lover,” Dahlia said, and she seemed to take some pleasure when Drizzt grimaced at the reference.

  “Will we never speak of what happened in Gauntlgrym?” Drizzt asked suddenly. “The twisted tiefling accused you of murder.” Dahlia’s expression abruptly changed. She snapped a glare over him.

  Dahlia swallowed hard and did not turn her stare from Drizzt for an instant as he took a seat beside her.

  “He claimed Alegni was his father,” Drizzt pressed.

  “Shut up,” Dahlia warned.

  “He called you his mother.”

  Her eyes bored through him, and Drizzt expected her to reach out and claw at his face, or to explode into a tirade of shouted curses.

  But she didn’t, and that, perhaps, was more unsettling still. She just sat there, staring. A cloud passed overhead, blocking the sunlight, sending a shadow across Dahlia’s pretty face.

  “Implausible, of course, likely impossible,” Drizzt said quietly, trying to back away.

  Dahlia held perfectly still. He could almost hear her heartbeat, or was it his own? Many moments slipped past. Drizzt lost count of them.

  “It’s true,” she admitted, and now it was Drizzt who looked as if he had been slapped.

  “Cannot be,” he finally managed to reply. “He is a young man, but you’re a young woman-”

  “I was barely more than a child when the shadow of Herzgo Alegni fell over my clan,” Dahlia said, so very softly that Drizzt could hardly hear the words. “Twenty years ago.”

  Drizzt’s thoughts spun in circles, very easily coming to the dark conclusion of Dahlia’s leading words. He tried to respond, but found himself sputtering helplessly in the face of a horror so far beyond him. He thought back to his own youth, to his graduation at Melee Magthere, when his own sister had advanced upon him so lewdly, forcing him to run away with revulsion.

  For a moment, he thought to tell that tale to Dahlia, to try to claim some kinship to her pain, but then realized that his own experience surely paled beside her trauma.

  And so he sputtered, and finally he reached out a hand to her to pull her close.

  She resisted, but she was trembling. The tears that rolled from her blue eyes were formed in profound sadness, he knew, even as she issued a low growl to cover her weakness.

  But denial couldn’t hold, and anger couldn’t cover the scar.

  Drizzt tried to pull her close, but she spun away and scrambled to her feet, walking off a few steps, her back to him.

  “So now you know,” she said, her voice as cold as winter’s deepest ice. />
  “Dahlia,” he pleaded, rising and taking a step her way. Should he go to her and grab her, and crush her close against him, and whisper to her that she might let the pain flow freely? Did she want that? She didn’t seem to, and yet, she had let Entreri kiss …

  With a growl of his own, Drizzt dismissed that ridiculous jealousy. This wasn’t about him, wasn’t about his relationship with Dahlia, and surely wasn’t about her moments with Entreri. This was about Dahlia, and her pain so profound.

  He didn’t know what to say, or what to do. He felt like a child. He had grown up in a place of deceit and murder and treachery as a way of life, perhaps the vilest city in all the world, and so he thought that he had fully inoculated himself against the scars of depravity and inhumanity. He was Drizzt Do’Urden, the hero of Icewind Dale, the hero of Mithral Hall, who had fought a thousand battles and killed a thousand enemies, who had watched dear friends die, who had loved and lost. Ever level-headed, hardened to the dark realities of life …

  So he had thought.

  So he had lied to himself.

  This combination of emotions roiling within Dahlia was quite beyond him at that strange moment. This was darkness compounded in darkness, irredeemable and outside any comfort zones Drizzt might have constructed through his own less-complicated experiences. Dahlia had suffered something to her core, a violation beyond even an enemy’s sword, with which Drizzt could not empathize and of which Drizzt couldn’t even understand.

  “Come,” Dahlia bade him, her voice even and strong. “Let us find this killer.” She walked off into the forest.

  Drizzt watched her with surprise, until he recognized that she was now eager for the hunt for no better reason than to find an enemy to battle. The emotions Drizzt had stirred went too deep and Dahlia couldn’t find comfort in Drizzt’s hesitant embrace and awkward words, and so she needed to find someone, something, to destroy.

  He had missed his moment, Drizzt understood. He had failed her.