The Last Threshold

Page 44

Upon the empty room.
It wasn’t possible, he thought, for there was no other door, just a window …
Huervo spent a moment considering that, then rushed from the tavern and moved quickly around the side, into an alleyway. He came to the back corner of the building and carefully peeked around to the back alley.
It was empty, but he saw the window in question. He moved to the base of the wall under it, perhaps ten feet below the sill, but couldn’t get too close because of the clutter all around. None of it seemed disturbed. If they had come down from the window, they had done so with great care, even the dwarf.
The riddle made no sense, unless there was a secret door in the private room, perhaps. With that thought in mind, Huervo enacted another spell and levitated from the ground, carefully hand-walking his way up the wall to peek into the room. The fire burned low in the hearth, despite a well-stocked wood bin right beside the fireplace, and the candles set on the table had all been extinguished.
A secret door, then, he thought, and he meant to go back into the tavern and find a way to get into the room to investigate. He noted, though, that the window wasn’t nailed—or wasn’t any longer, at least, for the nails had been removed, quite recently, and lay on the inside of the sill.
Huervo hooked his fingers under the wood and gently slid it open, and from the ease of its lift, despite its obvious age, he understood that it had indeed been opened earlier, and not long ago.
But how had they left without disturbing the clutter in the alleyway below?
He started into the room, but paused, and on a hunch began to float up higher, walking the wall to the roof. He listened cautiously for a few moments, then peered over.
Nothing.
No, not nothing, he realized, for like many rooftops in Luskan, this one was a combination of angles and with only a few small flat areas, like the short expanse before him. And like most of the flat roof areas, this one was covered with small stones, and in that bed, Huervo noted footprints, where boots had recently disturbed the settled rocks.
He looked back down and all around. Had they come up here? Why? And if so, where had they gone?
He pulled himself over the edge and walked around the roof, looking for another doorway or window, or some hint of the path they had taken from here, if they had indeed come up here and moved on along the rooftops of the city.
He cast another spell, to detect any magic at play, and then he froze in place, and his heart stopped beating for a moment. For Huervo recognized this type of emanation above all others, and he knew.
Someone had been up here, within an hour’s time, and had opened a magical gate.
Huervo’s eyes went wide and he looked back down again, to the window, and he inspected the edge of the roof above it, and indeed found a spike angled under the end beam, from which a rope had likely been lowered.
The truth of the scene hit him hard. The drow and his friend had come up here, and from here, they had passed through a magical gate! He had lost them, cold. They could be anywhere in the world; they could be off this very plane of existence … he thought back to the conversation he had overheard, the one word, Shadowfell.
Huervo swallowed hard.
He floated back down the side of the building. He rushed into the tavern, and didn’t bother to ask permission before sprinting up the stairs and through the door of the private room.
The proprietor charged in right behind him, a group of patrons close behind.
“Where are they?” Huervo demanded.
But the man had no answers.
They searched the inn, roof to cellar, but the strange group—drow, elf, human, dwarf, and tiefling—was nowhere to be found.
He had lost them, and to the Shadowfell. Errtu the balor would not be pleased.
Chapter 16: Perpetual Gloom
ICAN FEEL HER,” DRIZZT REMARKED, AND HE HELD THE STATUETTE BEFORE his eyes. He looked to the side, to Effron, who nodded soberly.
“Don’t try to summon her,” the tiefling warned, “else you will alert Lord Draygo to our designs. Even here, perhaps especially here, he will see through Guenhwyvar’s eyes.”
Drizzt nodded and slipped the figurine safely away.
Dahlia watched the drow’s every move, recognizing the pragmatism that drove him. If it was pragmatism, she reconsidered, and not some moral code too stringent to ever let his emotions find some freedom. She had teased those emotions from him on occasion, though not recently, of course, and had lured him into places where he had allowed himself to live in the moment and to be free of whatever nagging little voice constantly held him back.
She wanted that again, she realized, and in her mind, she replayed the conversation with Artemis Entreri, where he had accused her of loving Drizzt.
Dahlia’s face grew tight as she pushed that unsettling thought aside and focused again on the drow’s actions and expressions. He wanted to call Guenhwyvar, she could see that. He knew there might be some chance that in this place, such a summons would break the panther free of the bonds Draygo Quick had enacted upon her.
But he wouldn’t. He would be patient. Too much was at stake for the disciplined Drizzt Do’Urden to let his desperation destroy it all. That was ever his strength, Dahlia knew, and his weakness.
“How far?” he asked.
Effron looked around, shaking his head. “The problem with utilizing a gate is location, for I dared not open one anywhere near to Gloomwrought or Lord Draygo’s castle. The worlds are aligned, but not perfectly.” He pointed to the far horizon. “Lord Draygo’s residence is outside of the city of Gloomwrought, and for that, we should be thankful. I would not walk the ways of Prince Rolan’s domain with this group.”
“We’re not for liking being seen with yerself, either,” said Ambergris, but she offered a playful wink with the retort.
“But nor can we walk the road approaching the city,” Effron went on. “Not with these two.” He pointed to the dwarf and the monk.
“Cavus Dun watches the road,” Afafrenfere agreed, and Effron nodded.
“A powerful troupe are they, and one with a vendetta.”
“Then how?” Drizzt asked.
Effron pointed farther to the south. “Roundabout, and through a swamp. There are lesser, little used roads, but travel will be difficult and dangerous.”
“How long?” Dahlia pressed.
“Three days?” Effron replied hesitantly.
“We have mounts,” Entreri reminded, but Effron shook his head.
“If you summon your nightmare here, you will likely lose control of the beast, and the same for the unicorn you ride. This is not the place for such toys, I warn.”
“So, three days walking,” said Drizzt.
Effron nodded. “That measures the actual time, but I warn you, it may seem a month to you, for you’re not acclimated to the realities of the Shadowfell.”
“Meself’s acclimated, and it’s seemin’ like a month already!” Ambergris said. “By the gods, I hate this place.” She looked at Afafrenfere. “To think that ye chose to be here them years,” she said, shaking her head.
“Now that I have been away, I begin to agree,” Afafrenfere answered, and the dwarf’s eyes popped open wide.
Dahlia regarded the two, and particularly focused on their appearance. When she had first encountered them, she had thought them shades, with dark hair and gray skin, but subtly, both had shifted in that appearance, in almost the reverse manner that a farmer’s skin might darken in the first tendays of spring. Still ruddy, as with most dwarves, it seemed as if a pall had been lifting from Ambergris of late, and even her hair had changed color, showing more reddish tints now. And Dahlia realized that for Afafrenfere, the reversion to something more fully human had been even more dramatic.
Dahlia only noted that now, for the change had been so gradual, but in this place of perpetual gloom, the monk appeared again much as he had when Dahlia had first seen him, and the abrupt reversion so clearly revealed the extent of the change.
“Every journey begins with a step, then,” said Drizzt, and he started off in the direction Effron had indicated.
Effron caught him by the arm quickly, though. “I would have you on the flank,” he explained. “And you,” he added, indicating Entreri, “on the other. This place is the stuff of nightmares, and it earns its name, I assure you.”
“Aye, and tell ’em why,” Ambergris said, and when Effron didn’t immediately respond, other than to look at the dwarf, she added, “The swamp’s full o’ dead things that won’t stay quiet. And they’re always hungry.”
Dahlia, Drizzt, and Entreri looked to Effron, who could only shrug. The drow nodded and moved out to the left flank, Entreri similarly moving out to the right. Effron took up the lead, Dahlia beside him, the dwarf and monk some distance behind.
“Why are you doing this?” Dahlia asked quietly when she was alone with her son.
Effron’s face grew very tight. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Is it hatred for this Lord Draygo?”
“No,” Effron answered even before thinking about it. It was true enough, though. “Draygo Quick has shown me more friendship than.…” He let it end there, hanging in the air between them.
“Don’t try to hurt him,” Effron warned. “Do not insinuate me into a fight between you and Lord Draygo.”
“Because you will side with him?”
“I don’t know,” came the answer once more.
Clearly uncomfortable, Effron pressed on faster, and Dahlia, after considering it for a moment, didn’t try to keep up.
She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain and confusion Effron was suffering at that time. His life’s journey was twisting and turning rapidly, and not entirely, if at all, of his own volition. Dahlia considered her own life’s road then, going from Szass Tam to this new horizon. She had faced a crisis in Gauntlgrym, a stark ethical and moral choice that would have broken her had she chosen differently. If she had pulled that lever to release the fire primordial and wreak devastation upon the land, then she would have succumbed wholly to the darkness that had followed her since that day Alegni had ravaged her, and more particularly since that subsequent date when she had thrown her son from the cliff. The dark wings of her own guilt would have enveloped her forever more, making her no better a creature than the loathsome Szass Tam himself.
How different her new road. But, indeed, it was now a journey of her choosing.
Could Effron say the same?
“A copper for yer thoughts,” Ambergris remarked, and Dahlia realized that lost in her internal dialogue, she had slowed her pace.
“They will cost you a bag of gold, a chest of jewels and gems, and a swift journey to a place of sunlight,” she replied.
“A ransom no good dwarf’d e’er pay!” Ambergris replied with a laugh.
Afafrenfere, coming up on the other side of Dahlia, joined in, but Dahlia could only manage a polite chuckle, her gaze remaining straight ahead, at the crooked back of the physically frail creature who led the way.
There was never much of a sun shining in the Shadowfell, but when night fell, the contrast seemed even more dramatic compared to the nightfall on Toril, for in the Shadowfell, sunset awakened more inhabitants than sunrise.