The Last Threshold: Neverwinter Saga, Book IV Read online

  In that regard …

  Drizzt sighed and began to rise, thinking to return to his bed and Dahlia’s side. He changed his mind and remained at the window instead. He fell asleep in the chair, staring out at the city of Neverwinter, rising from the ashes, for the sight brought him comfort and hope.

  “Ye best be gettin’ him out o’ the city if ye’re wanting to keep him beside us,” Ambergris told Drizzt later that morning in the common room of the inn. The night had been cold, and the chill had found its way inside, so Ambergris threw another log on the fire.

  “Soon,” Drizzt assured her.

  “Boats’re putting out for the south every day,” Ambergris warned.

  The drow nodded absently as he stared into the flames.

  “Ye got him anxious, though I’m not for knowin’ how, but ye understand that one well enough to know that puttin’ him on the edge isn’t to hold for long, at least not in the direction ye’re hopin’!”

  Drizzt nodded again and wasn’t about to argue with the perceptive dwarf’s reasoning. He had teased Artemis Entreri with the promise of his jeweled dagger, but delays would likely turn intrigue into anger.

  An angry Artemis Entreri was not among the goals of Drizzt Do’Urden. “Today,” he heard himself telling Amber before he even considered the promise. “We’ll head out today.”

  He would forego his planned visit with Arunika, he decided then, for with Guenhwyvar back at his side, he did not need to seek her out. But he could not as easily turn away from the intriguing mystery they had discovered southeast of the city. He pictured the destroyed goblin encampment once more, the marks on one throat Dahlia had attributed to a vampire, the carnage at the tent he believed a trademark of another type of foe. Dahlia had insisted that they go back out in pursuit of the goblin killer, her eagerness for the hunt only increasing as the night had deepened.

  The elf woman entered the common room then, her expression revealing that she had not appreciated waking up alone in her bed.

  “When the others come down, find me in the square outside the market and we’ll set a rendezvous point north of the city,” Drizzt instructed the dwarf. He grabbed a couple of morningfeast buns from the tray set out and met Dahlia before she had crossed half the room.

  “Be quick,” Drizzt said to her. “The merchants are unfolding their wares, and we might find our best bargain if we are first to the kiosks.”

  Dahlia looked at him curiously.

  “Our time grows short,” Drizzt explained. “Let’s find your vampire.”

  Dahlia stood staring at Drizzt with hands on hips. He understood her confusion, for on their return trip to the city the previous night, when she had concocted the idea of purchasing some magical assistance to seek out a vampire, Drizzt had openly doubted her, had even ridiculed her a bit.

  Drizzt merely returned her doubting look with a nod, tossed her a small pouch of coins, and headed out of the inn.

  Within the hour, Andahar the unicorn thundered along the eastern road out of Neverwinter, heading into the rising sun, easily bearing Drizzt and Dahlia.

  At Dahlia’s bidding, Drizzt slowed the pace a bit. He glanced back at the woman, and at the curious, softly-glowing wand she pointed off at the forest to their right.

  “There,” she said, nudging the wand toward the trees.

  “So you trust in the merchant’s words and believe that wand?”

  “I paid good gold for it.”

  “Foolishly,” Drizzt muttered under his breath, but merely to lighten the mood. It had been his coin, after all.

  He turned Andahar aside and began trotting off across the small field leading to the tree line. The wand, so the merchant had explained, was imbued with a dweomer to detect undead creatures, of which there had been no shortage of late in this area, since Sylora had created the vile Dread Ring.

  Drizzt pulled Andahar to a stop and swung around to regard Dahlia directly, though she hardly seemed to note his glance, so intent was she upon the wand. “Why is this suddenly so important to you?” Drizzt asked.

  A startled Dahlia looked up at him. She paused for a few heartbeats before responding, “You think that letting a vampire run free is the valiant act of a good citizen?”

  “The forest is full of danger, with or without a vampire.”

  “So Drizzt Do’Urden wishes to leave such a stone unturned?” Dahlia quipped. “And here I was under the impression that you were a hero.”

  Drizzt put on a smirk, and was glad that Dahlia was verbally jousting in such a playful manner. There were times when Dahlia hinted that there could be much more between them, times when Drizzt dared hope that he could mold these new companions into a band worthy of his memories.

  Dahlia’s expression changed abruptly.

  “Indulge me,” Dahlia pleaded, in all seriousness.

  “You think it’s your old companion?”

  “Dor’crae?” Dahlia blurted, and her surprise was genuine, Drizzt could tell. “Hardly. I destroyed him, utterly and gladly! Don’t you remember?”

  Drizzt did remember, of course. Dahlia had battled Dor’crae, the dying dwarves beside them. She had driven him from the antechamber, already mortally wounded, only to fly under the deluge of the water elementals re-entering the primordial pit in Gauntlgrym. Under the assault of the rushing, magical waters, the vampire had seemingly been obliterated.

  So it wasn’t the thought of Dor’crae driving Dahlia, he then understood, and he suspected another angle to Dahlia’s desire to see this through. Perhaps she believed that this Effron creature, her son, was behind the attack.

  He found that he couldn’t follow his own thoughts down that road, however, given the reminder of Dor’crae’s last moments—for indeed, how could Drizzt ever forget that awful moment when he had come across the pit and into the antechamber to find his friends dead or dying beside Gauntlgrym’s all-important lever?

  “Then it cannot be him, and we should …” Drizzt started to say, but his eyes widened as he considered the scene at the lever immediately following the demise of Dor’crae. He recalled Bruenor’s last words to him, sweet and sad and forever echoing in his mind, of Bruenor fast dying, the light leaving his gray eyes, and of Thibbledorf Pwent …

  Thibbledorf Pwent.

  Drizzt thought of the torn tent in the goblin camp, the recognizable carnage. Vampire or battlerager, he and Dahlia had debated.

  All of those nagging thoughts coalesced, and Drizzt had his answer. He was right in his guess, and so was Dahlia.

  Without another word, he turned around and urged Andahar forward.

  “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear, but she needn’t have, for if he had been alone, Drizzt would have taken this very same course.

  They slowed when they entered the tree line, Drizzt picking his way carefully through the trees and tangled branches. They had barely entered the thicket when Dahlia’s wand glowed brighter and a wisp of blue-gray fog reached out from it, wafting into the forest before them.

  “Well, that is interesting,” Drizzt remarked.

  “Follow it,” Dahlia instructed.

  The foggy coil continued to reach out before them like a rope, guiding their way through the trees. They came past a stand of oaks, and near what they thought to be a boulder.

  Andahar pulled up suddenly and snorted, and Drizzt gasped in alarm, for it was no rock before them, but a large and strange beast, a blended concoction of magic run afoul.

  Part bear. Part fowl.

  “So we go north,” Afafrenfere remarked. “You know this place?”

  Artemis Entreri tossed his full sack over the back of the saddle and leaped astride his nightmare. “Only an hour’s ride up the road,” he explained.

  “Aye, and me friend here can run like no other,” Ambergris said. “But with me short legs, I’m thinkin’ I best be riding.”

  Entreri nodded, then merely walked his mount away and said over his shoulder, “A pity you’ve got no horse then, or pig.”

  Ambergris
put her hands on her hips and stared up at the man. “It’ll be takin’ us longer to get there, then,” she said.

  “No, it will take you longer,” Entreri corrected, and he kicked his mount into movement and leaped away, charging out Neverwinter’s northern gate.

  Brother Afafrenfere snorted and chuckled helplessly.

  “Aye,” Ambergris agreed. “If I had a better road afore me, I’d be walkin’ away.”

  “Better than … what?” the monk asked. “Do we even know what adventure Drizzt might have planned for us?”

  “We need to be keepin’ him close,” Ambergris explained. “Dahlia, and aye, that one, too,” she said, nodding toward the now-distant Entreri. “If Lord Draygo or Cavus Dun comes a’huntin’, I’ll be wantin’ the blades o’ them three between me and the shades.”

  Afafrenfere considered her words for a few moments, then nodded and started toward the northern gate.

  “Don’t ye outrun me,” the dwarf warned. “Or I’ll put a spell on ye and leave ye held and helpless in the forest.”

  The reminder of the unexpected assault in the bowels of Gauntlgrym had Afafrenfere turning around, glowering at the dwarf. “That worked once,” he replied, “but not again. Never again.”

  Ambergris laughed heartily as she came up beside him. “Best spell what e’er found ye, boy,” she said. “For now ye’ve got a finer life ahead o’ ye! A life of adventure, don’t ye doubt. A life o’ battle.”

  “Aye, and probably a life of battling my own companions,” he said dryly, and Ambergris laughed all the harder.

  That beast, an owlbear, didn’t rise up to meet them, and Drizzt calmed quickly, recognizing that it was quite dead.

  “Well now,” Dahlia said, sliding down from the unicorn’s back to stand beside the slain behemoth. And it was a behemoth, as large as a great brown bear, but with the head and powerful beak of an owl atop those powerful ursine shoulders.

  “Indeed,” Drizzt agreed as he slid down.

  Dahlia bent low beside the beast, ruffling the fur—the bloody fur—around its neck. “I expect that we’ve found our vampire’s most recent kill.”

  “A vampire killed an owlbear?” Drizzt asked skeptically and he, too, bent low and began inspecting the corpse, but not its neck.

  “So you admit that it was a vampire?” As she asked, Dahlia used both hands to pull the beast’s thick fur aside, to reveal the canine puncture wounds.

  “So it would seem,” Drizzt replied. “And yet—” He put his shoulder to the owlbear and nudged it over just a bit, then similarly parted the fur, to reveal a larger hole, a much deeper puncture. “I know this wound as well.”

  “Do tell.”

  “A helmet spike,” Drizzt could hardly get the words out. He thought again of the grisly scene beside the lever, thought of Pwent.

  “Perhaps a vampire and a battlerager are working together?”

  “A dwarf allied with a vampire?” Drizzt asked doubtfully. He had another explanation, but one he wasn’t ready to share.

  “Athrogate traveled beside Dor’crae.”

  “Athrogate is a mercenary,” Drizzt said, shaking his head. This wasn’t just any battlerager he was considering. “Battleragers are loyal soldiers, not mercenaries.”

  Dahlia stood and pointed her wand toward the forest once more. The mist reappeared and snaked away through the trees.

  “Well, let’s find out what’s going on, then,” Dahlia said.

  Drizzt dismissed Andahar and they moved into the forest on foot. For many hours they searched fruitlessly, Dahlia expending charge after charge of her wand. Many times, Drizzt put his hand to his belt pouch, but he knew that he shouldn’t bring in Guen, not for another day at least.

  “If we wait until nightfall, perhaps the vampire will find us,” Dahlia remarked later on, and only then did Drizzt realize that the sun had already passed its zenith and was moving lower in the west. He considered Dahlia’s words and the thought did not sit well with him. Guenhwyvar would be with them in the morning, and she would find their prey.

  So intrigued had Drizzt been by the possibilities swirling before him that he had forgotten one other detail of the day’s plans. He looked to the north, where their three companions waited, at his request. Artemis Entreri would not be pleased.

  “Where to now?” Dahlia asked.

  Drizzt turned back to the west. They were too far out, having passed into reaches of the forest that neither of them knew. “Back to Neverwinter,” the drow decided.

  “You would leave Entreri and the others out alone in the forest with a vampire about?”

  “If we’re not at their camp by twilight, they’ll return to the city,” Drizzt said absently. He could not focus on the others. This hunt, so suddenly, was more important. “Vampire.…” Dahlia said again, ominously.

  “We will find it tomorrow.”

  “You indulge me,” Dahlia remarked. “I like that.”

  Drizzt didn’t bother to explain his own interests, particularly when Dahlia moved closer, wearing an impish grin.

  “Vampire,” she said again with a wide smile, her eyes sparkling.

  Drizzt considered that grin, and wanted to share in her mirth at that moment, but found it impossible, for he was too troubled by the possibilities.

  Dahlia moved right in front of him and casually draped her arms around his shoulders, putting her face very close to his. “No argument this time?” she asked quietly.

  Drizzt managed a chuckle.

  “Vampire,” she said and her smile turned in a lewd direction. She shifted to the side and lunged for his throat, biting him playfully on the neck.

  “Still no argument?” she asked and she bit him again, a bit harder.

  “You are hoping for a vampire, I can see,” Drizzt replied, and it was hard for him to keep his thoughts straight at that particular moment. It was the first time they had touched, other than riding, since they’d left the darkness of Gauntlgrym. “I would hate to disavow you of your wishes.”

  Dahlia moved back to stare him in the eye. “Hoping?”

  “Hoping to be one, then,” Drizzt said, “apparently.”

  Dahlia, laughing, hugged him close. She brought her lips to his ear and kissed him softly, then asked, “Have you forgiven me?”

  Drizzt pushed her back to arms’ length and studied her face. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her, particularly when she wore her hair in this softer style, and with the war woad barely visible.

  “I had nothing to forgive.”

  “My kiss with Entreri?” Dahlia asked. “Your jealousy?”

  “It was the sword, playing on my insecurities, pressing my imagination to dark places.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it was?” she asked, and she reached over and brushed Drizzt’s long white hair from in front of his face. “Perhaps the sword was only exploiting that which it saw within you.”

  Drizzt was shaking his head before she had ever finished. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he repeated.

  He almost added, “Have you forgiven yourself?” but he wisely held that thought, not wanting to open anew the wound inflicted by the appearance of the young and twisted warlock.

  “Let’s go to Neverwinter,” Drizzt said, but now Dahlia was shaking her head.

  “Not yet,” she explained, and she led him to a mossy bed.

  Dahlia tapped Drizzt on the arm and when he looked up from his bowl of stew, nodded toward the tavern door.

  Drizzt was not surprised to see the three enter, nor was he caught off guard by Artemis Entreri’s dour expression. When the assassin noticed him, he led the other two straight through the crowd to the table.

  “Winter fast approaches,” Entreri said, pulling up a chair across from Drizzt.

  “The night is cold,” he added when Drizzt didn’t respond.

  “Good, then, that you decided to return to the city,” the drow replied casually.

  “Oh, grand,” Afafrenfere remarked to Ambergris off to the side. “I will so e
njoy watching these two beat each other to death.”

  The dwarf snorted.

  Drizzt, seeming unbothered by it all, went back to his stew, or tried to until Entreri’s hand snapped across the table and grabbed him roughly by the wrist.

  The drow lifted his gaze slowly to regard the man.

  “I don’t appreciate being left in a cold forest,” Entreri said evenly.

  “We got lost,” Drizzt replied.

  “How could you get lost?” Entreri asked. “You were the one who named the place of rendezvous.”

  “Our road took us to the east, to unfamiliar ground,” Dahlia interjected.

  “What road?” asked Entreri, still staring at Drizzt.

  Drizzt sat back in his chair as Entreri let go of his wrist. The drow glanced to the side and motioned to the other two to take a seat. He wondered where he should take this. He was pretty certain now who and what Dahlia and he were hunting. The question was: Did he want Artemis Entreri along on that hunt? The encounter, should it happen, was going to be difficult enough to control as it was, and how much more difficult would it become with the unpredictable and merciless Artemis Entreri in the mix?

  “What is your plan, drow?” Entreri asked.

  All four of the others, even Dahlia, looked to him for exactly that answer, and it was a good question.

  “You escorted me to the bowels of Gauntlgrym to be rid of that cursed sword,” Entreri said. “For that, I owe you.”

  Entreri looked to Dahlia, pointedly so. “Or owed you,” he clarified. “But no more. I waited where you asked, and you did not arrive.”

  “A great sacrifice,” Dahlia said sarcastically.

  Afafrenfere giggled and Ambergris snorted.

  Entreri turned his gaze from Dahlia to the other two before settling back on Drizzt.

  “You owed me nothing,” Drizzt answered that look. “Not before and not now.”

  “Hardly true,” said Dahlia.

  “To be rid of Herzgo Alegni, to be rid of Charon’s Claw”—he paused and looked directly at Dahlia“—to be rid of Sylora Salm—all of these things were good and right. I would have undertaken them had I been alone and the opportunity had come before me.”