The Last Threshold

Page 53

It didn’t take him long to figure out the implications of those sobs.
“Where is Dahlia?” Drizzt demanded the next time Draygo Quick appeared in his cell, some days later, he believed, though he couldn’t be certain.
“Ah, you have heard the weeping of your twisted companion,” Draygo Quick replied. “Yes, I am afraid that Dahlia and your other companions have met a most unfortunate end, and now stand as trophies in my hall.”
Drizzt lowered his eyes, unable to even scream out in protest. He was surprised by how profoundly the news had hit him, surprised to realize how deeply he had come to value Dahlia’s companionship. Perhaps he couldn’t love her as he had loved Catti-brie, but she had become, at least, a friend.
And it wasn’t just the loss of Dahlia that brought him pain in that moment, for his tie to his past, too, was gone. “Entreri,” he heard himself whispering, and he couldn’t deny the sense of loss.
And so too with Ambergris, of whom he was quite fond, and Afafrenfere.
“You have walked into something far beyond you, Drizzt Do’Urden of Menzoberranzan,” Draygo Quick said, and it surprised Drizzt to hear a sincere tone of regret in the Netherese lord’s voice. He looked back up, trying to find something in Draygo Quick’s expression to reveal the lie of his concerns, but he found no such thing.
“To the detriment of all,” Draygo Quick continued. “Of course I would defend myself and my home—would you expect anything less?”
“It would need less defending if you were not a thief and kidnapper,” Drizzt retorted.
“Kidnapper? You walked into my home!”
“Of Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt clarified. “You stole from me something which does not belong to you.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” said Draygo. “The cat. As I said, you have stumbled into something apparently quite beyond you, but perhaps there is hope for both of us. I do not think that I will have need of the cat when we are done, so perhaps you will find her companionship again.”
The tantalizing carrot had Drizzt inadvertently leaning forward, before he realized the revealing posture and corrected himself, unwilling to let his thoughts go into the realm of false hope.
The Netherese lord would never let him go, he told himself, over and over again.
He would find himself repeating that silent mantra many times as Draygo Quick came to him each day, always with questions about Drizzt’s past, about the priestesses of Lolth and about his life on the surface while following the tenets of the goddess Mielikki and the ways of the ranger.
Drizzt resisted those questions at first, but his stubbornness couldn’t long hold, and some tendays later, he came to look forward to those visits.
For accompanying Draygo came the servants with his food, and that food greatly improved, and was fed to him far more tenderly and decently by a young shade, a child.
One day Draygo Quick arrived with a trio of burly guards. Two moved to flank Drizzt, reaching up for the chains as they did.
“If you struggle in the least, I will torture Effron to death before your eyes,” was all that Draygo Quick bothered to say, and he took his leave.
The guards put a black hood over Drizzt’s head and carried him from his cell, depositing him in a room somewhere within the castle above. They set him down in a chair, told him to remove the hood, to bathe and to dress.
“Lord Draygo will come to you soon,” one said as they departed.
Drizzt looked around at his new home, a well-furnished, clean, and warm room. His first thoughts went to the notion of escape, but he quickly dismissed that possibility. Draygo Quick had Effron, and Guenhwyvar, and where might he go, in any case?
The Netherese lord had told him that he had walked into something far above him, and Drizzt didn’t doubt the truth of that claim at all in that confusing time and place.
Part 4: Icewind Dale
I found, to my surprise, that I had lost the focal point of my anger.
The anger, the frustration, the profound sense of loss yet again remained, simmering within me, but the target of that anger dispersed into a more general distaste for the unfairness and harshness of life itself.
I had to keep reminding myself to be mad at Draygo Quick!
What a strange realization that became, an epiphany that rolled over me like a breaking wave against Luskan’s beach. I remember the moment vividly, as it happened all at once (whereas the loss of the focal point took many months). I rested in my chamber at Draygo Quick’s grand residence, relaxing in luxury, eating fine food, and with my own small wine rack that Draygo’s staff had provided, when I was struck dumb by my affinity toward Draygo Quick—or if not affinity, perhaps, then my complete absence of anger toward him.
How had that happened?
Why had that happened?
This Netherese lord had imprisoned me in the most terrible of circumstances, chained in filth in a dark and rank dungeon cell. He hadn’t tortured me overtly, though the handling by his servants had often been harsh, including slaps and punches and more than a few kicks to my ribs. And wasn’t the mere reality of my incarceration in and of itself a manner of grotesque torture?
This Netherese lord had set a medusa upon my companions, upon my lover, and upon my only remaining tie to those coveted bygone days. They were gone. Dahlia, Entreri, Ambergris, and Afafrenfere, turned to stone and dead by the machinations of Draygo Quick.
Yet, we had invaded his home … that mitigating notion seemed ever-present in my mind, and only grew in strength, day by day, as my own conditions gradually improved.
And that was the key of it all, I came to recognize. Draygo Quick had played a subtle and tantalizing game with my mind, and with Effron’s mind, slowly improving our lives. Bit by bit, and literally, at first, bite by bite, with improving food in terms of both quality and quantity.
It is difficult for a starving man to slap the hand that feeds him.
And when basic needs like sustenance dominate your thoughts, it is no less difficult to remember to maintain anger, or remember why.
Tasty bites delivered with soothing words steal those memories, so subtly, so gradually (though every improvement felt momentous indeed), that I remained oblivious to my own diminishing animosity toward the old warlock shade.
Then came the epiphany, that day in my comfortably-appointed room in the castle of Draygo Quick. Yet even with the stark recollection of the unfolding events, I found it impossible to summon the level of rage I had initially known, and hard to find anything more than a simmer.
I am left to sit here, wondering.
Draygo Quick comes to me often, daily even, and there are weapons I might fashion—of a broken wine bottle, for example.
Should I make the attempt?
The possibility of gaining my freedom through violence seems remote at best. I haven’t seen Effron in tendays and have no idea of where or how to find him. I know not if he is even still within the castle, or if he is even still alive. I have no idea of how to find Guenhwyvar, nor do I even possess the onyx figurine any longer.
And even if I struck dead the old warlock and gained an escape from the castle, then what? How would I begin to facilitate my return to Faerûn, and what would be there for me, in any case?
None of my old friends, lost to the winds. Not Dahlia, or even Artemis Entreri. Not Guenhwyvar or Andahar.
To strike at Draygo Quick would be the ultimate act of defiance, and one made by a doomed drow.
I look at the bottles nestled in their diagonal cubbies in the wine rack now and in them I see that the promise of deadly daggers is well within my reach. Draygo Quick comes to me alone now, without guard, and even if he had his finest soldiers beside him, I have been trained to strike faster than they could possibly block. Perhaps the old warlock has magical wards enacted about him to defeat such an attack, perhaps not, but in striking so, I would be making a cry of freedom and a denial against this warlock who took so much from me, who imprisoned Guenhwyvar and cost me my companions when we came for her.
But I can only shake my head as I stare at those potential daggers, for I will not so fashion the bottles. It is not fear of Draygo Quick that stays my hand. It is not the desperation of such an act, the near surety that even if successful, I would be surely bringing about my own demise, and likely in short order.
I won’t kill him, I know.
Because I don’t want to.
And that, I fear, might be the biggest epiphany of all.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
Chapter 21: Might as Well Drink
BENIAGO’S EYES IN THE CITY WERE CONSIDERABLE, OF COURSE, BUT LUSKAN was a large place, with many thousands of citizens and hundreds, at least, of visitors, particularly this time of year when the weather favored the sailing ships and the merchant trade was in full swing.
The reports filtering back to him over the last few days had caused concern for the Bregan D’aerthe agent. Drizzt had not been located, but other drow had—several, in fact. So many, in fact, that Beniago had come to wonder if Tiago and his Xorlarrin friends hadn’t created some minor invasion, or if Bregan D’aerthe had started to operate more openly, and without informing him.
After eliminating that second possibility simply by asking Jarlaxle, Beniago had gone searching for answers.
The first he found, at least, had proved somewhat confusing, but somewhat comforting as well.
“They are not allied with Tiago,” he reported to Jarlaxle.
“The group at the inn?”
Beniago nodded.
“The Xorlarrins, then,” Jarlaxle reasoned, for they already knew that there were a couple of males among the group, and of the arcane persuasion, it seemed.
But Beniago shook his head. “These are not Xorlarrins, nor from Menzoberranzan at all.”
“Then why are they here?”
“I walk in the guise of a human,” Beniago replied. “Would you have me go and ask them? And after I do, would you bury me properly back in Menzoberranzan?”
“Sarcasm,” Jarlaxle replied with a chuckle. “At last I have come to understand why I supported your ascent.”
“Our next move?”
“I will deal with these unknown dark elves presently,” Jarlaxle said. “I have word that Tiago is not in Gauntlgrym, nor are his ever-present companions, Ravel and Saribel Xorlarrin.”
“You have spies in Gauntlgrym now? I am impressed.” Beniago dipped a sarcastic bow.
“They are out hunting,” Jarlaxle explained.
“On the surface hunting Drizzt, then.”
“It would seem.”
Beniago bowed again, more seriously now, understanding his role.
“Tiago carries his new sword and shield, no doubt,” Jarlaxle said. “And is undisguised, I believe.”
“He is too vain to wrap such magnificent items, particularly since they sing of his station,” Beniago agreed.
“So find him.”
Beniago nodded and left to do just that.
“Aye, but she’s a tough life out there on the waves,” the crusty old dwarf, Deamus McWindingbrook, explained. He grabbed his belly as he finished and let fly a great belch.
Ambergris giggled. “I been aboard, ye dope,” she replied. “I seen the water, and naught but the water, through the whole o’ me turn and to the curve o’ the horizon.”