The Last Threshold

Page 66

Drizzt stared at her blankly, hesitant to answer.
“Catti-brie?” she pressed. “Your beloved Catti-brie?”
“How’d it get out here?” Ambergris asked, looking all around. “Few been here in many years, I’m guessing.”
“None, more likely,” said Dahlia, staring still at Drizzt, her expression reflecting a deep and obvious discontent.
“Except when the forest is here, perhaps,” Artemis Entreri said, and Drizzt took another deep breath, feeling as if he might simply topple over—or wondering if Dahlia might leap over and throttle him, given her expression.
“It is likely nothing more than coincidence,” Drizzt said.
Artemis Entreri walked over and reached for the statue, but Drizzt kept it away.
“The foot,” Entreri said. “The right foot. Should I have to tell this to you?”
Drizzt slowly upturned the scrimshaw, looked at its underside, the clutched it tightly against his heart.
“The ‘R’ of Regis,” Entreri explained to the others.
“And how’re ye knowin’ that?” Ambergris asked.
“I have a long history with that one,” the assassin chuckled.
Drizzt locked stares with him. “What does it mean?”
Entreri shrugged and held out his hand, and this time, Drizzt handed the statue over. Entreri studied it closely. “It’s been lying out here for a long time,” he said.
“And there’s no forest to be seen,” Dahlia added, rather unkindly.
“And the day’s gettin’ long,” Ambergris remarked, looking back across the lake to the setting sun. “At least we’ll be sleeping under a proper roof this night, eh?” She glanced down at the lakeside cottage. “Such as it is.”
In reply, Drizzt rolled his pack off his back and let if fall to the ground.
Ambergris looked down at it, then back up to the stone-faced drow. “Like I was sayin’,” she said. “Another fine night out under the stars.”
Drizzt camped right there, sleeping on the very spot where he had found the figurine. None of his five companions went to the cottage, but rather surrounded him with their own bedrolls.
“Chasing ghosts,” Dahlia muttered to Entreri much later on, the two sitting off to the side, looking back at Drizzt. The night was not cold and the fire long out, but the half-moon had already passed overhead and they could see the drow clearly. He lay back on his bedroll, looking up at the multitude of stars shining over Lac Dinneshere. He still clutched the figurine, rolling it over in his nimble fingers.
“Chasing her, you mean.”
Dahlia turned on him.
“You can’t rightly blame him, can you?” Entreri went on against that stare. “These were his friends, his family. We’ve all chased our ghosts.”
“To kill them, not to make love to them,” Dahlia said and looked back at the drow.
Entreri smiled at her obvious jealousy, but wisely said nothing more.
At first he thought it Andahar’s barding, sweet bells ringing in the night, but as Drizzt opened his eyes, he came to understand that it was something more subtle and more powerful all at the same time, with all the forest around him resonating in a gentle and overwhelming melody.
All the forest around him …
When he had fallen asleep, he had done so watching the night sky and a multitude of stars, but now, from the same place, Drizzt could barely make out any such twinkling lights through the dense canopy above him.
He sat up straight, glancing all around, trying to make sense of it.
He was near a small pond that had not been there. He was near a small and well-tended cottage that had not been there, set against a low hill of hedgerows and flowers and a vegetable garden that had not been there. He pulled himself to his feet and considered his companions, all sleeping nearby, with one notable exception.
Drizzt moved to Dahlia and stirred her. “Where is Entreri?” he asked.
The elf woman rubbed a sleepy eye. “What?” she asked generally, her mind not catching up to the moment. She rubbed her eyes again and sat up, considered Drizzt somewhat blankly. “What is that music?” she asked, and then she looked around.
And then her eyes popped open wide indeed!
Artemis Entreri walked into view then and both regarded him curiously as he shrugged helplessly.
“No singer,” he said, helplessly shaking his head. “Just a song.”
He ended with a yawn, and eased back down to the ground.
“How far did you search?” Drizzt asked, but he too couldn’t suppress a yawn as he fought through the words, for a great weariness came rushing over him then.
He looked at Dahlia, but she had slumped back to the ground and seemed fast asleep.
Magic—powerful magic, Drizzt knew, for elves were generally immune to such dweomers of sleep and weariness. Drow, as well, and yet Drizzt found himself on his knees. He looked around, and tried to fight it.
His head was on Dahlia’s strong belly then, though he really wasn’t aware of the movement that had put him to the ground. All he knew was the song, filling his ears with sweetness, filling his heart with warmth, filling his eyes with the sandman’s pinch.
Dreams of Catti-brie danced in his thoughts.
Chapter 28: The Hero of Icewind Dale
HAIL AND WELL MET,” TIAGO BAENRE SAID TO THE GROUP OF GUARDS WHO had come running when the young warrior and his three dark elf companions approached Bryn Shander’s western gate. He smiled as he spoke, attempting to be disarming here, but the group surely didn’t relax in light of his tone and posture, for surely few cut a more impressive and imposing figure than Tiago Baenre. He wore black leather armor, studded with mithral and accented in swirling designs of platinum leaf. His belt was a cord of woven gold, tied at the hip and hanging down the side of his leg, like a tassel. His fine piwafwi was perfectly black, so rich in hue that it seemed as if the fabric had great depth, like peering hopelessly into a deep Underdark cavern.
But aside from the obvious fit and quality of his clothing, two other items quite clearly marked this drow as someone to be feared. Set in his belt, not in a scabbard but simply through a loop—for who would hide such magnificence as Vidrinath inside a sheath?—rested his amazing sword, its semi-translucent glassteel blade sparkling with the power of the inset diamonds, its curled hilt’s green spider eyes staring at the guards as if it served as some sentient guardian familiar to Tiago. Set on Tiago’s back, Orbcress was sized at that moment to be no more than a small buckler. Whatever its size, the shield spoke of powerful enchantments, for it seemed as if it were fashioned from a block of ice, and closer inspection revealed what seemed to be an intricate spider web encased within.
“Be at ease,” he told the guard more directly with his halting command of the common language of the surface. “I have come in search of a friend, and am no enemy to the folk of Ten-Towns.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” one of the guards asked, speaking more to her companions than to the visitors, but Tiago heard, and truly, no words had ever rung sweeter in his ears.
“He is here?”
“Was,” a different guard replied. “Went out to Easthaven a few days ago, and meant to move out east from there, from what I heard.”
“To where?” Tiago asked, and he tried hard not to let his disappointment show—and particularly not in the form of the anger that was suddenly bubbling up inside of him.
The guard shrugged and looked to his fellows, who similarly shook their heads or shrugged, having no answer.
“Not far, and not for long, likely,” replied the woman who had first spoken Drizzt’s name. “Might be to see the barbarian tribes, or might be to hunt. But he’s sure to return soon enough. Nowhere to go east of Ten-Towns.”
That calmed Tiago greatly. “Easthaven?” he asked as sweetly as he could manage.
“A day’s ride down the Eastway,” the woman answered.
Tiago turned to his companions, Ravel, Saribel, and Jearth, and all four wore perplexed expressions.
“To the east,” another guard explained, and he turned back and pointed down the boulevard straight into the heart of the city. “Straight through and straight out Bryn Shander’s eastern gate, to the east.”
“Night is upon us,” the woman explained. “You’ll be wanting lodging.”
Tiago shook his head. “I have arrangements elsewhere. This road, the Eastway, runs out from the other end of this city?”
“Aye,” several answered.
Tiago turned and started back the way he had come, the other three drow moving in his wake, not one of them offered a parting word, or looking back, except for Jearth, whose duty it was to keep the rear guard watch.
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” an excited Tiago whispered when they were out of earshot of the guards.
“Only days ahead of us,” Ravel agreed.
“With nowhere to run,” Saribel remarked, and all four dreamed of the glory they would soon know.
The small, flat-bottomed boat lurched and rolled, and the nervous captain looked at his three passengers, fearing they would punish him severely for the uncomfortable journey. But the seven of them, drow all, didn’t appear at all bothered by the rolling; so dexterous and balanced were they even in this unfamiliar environment that they barely shifted as the deck was jolted repeatedly by the shock of uneven waves.
The captain glanced at the drow more than they regarded him, which gave him some comfort at least. These were proclaimed friends of Drizzt Do’Urden, but something about their demeanor didn’t fit that description. Not that the captain knew Drizzt well, of course, having met him only once on this same ferry route, but the tales of the rogue drow were common about Ten-Towns, particularly Easthaven, which looked out onto the open tundra. Drizzt had been instrumental in forging the peace between Ten-Towns and the barbarian tribes a century before, and that peace held to this day, to say nothing of his legendary exploits in defeating the minions of the infamous Crystal Shard.
Even though few alive in Ten-Towns knew much of present-day Drizzt—indeed, only a couple of elves remaining in Lonelywood were even alive back in the time of Akar Kessell and the Crystal Shard—most would swing wide their doors for him. The nervous captain could hardly believe the same would be true for this particular group of grim-faced drow adventurers.
He was glad then, as he turned his craft around the last stony jut and into the shallow and somewhat protected cove on the lake’s eastern shore. He dropped the single sail and let the current take them, locking the wheel and moving to the anchor and long gangplank set forward. He could typically secure the landing very quickly, having years of practice, but this day, despite the frothing waters, the captain had them in place and with the bridge to the shore up and steady faster than ever before.
He moved far aside, to the front corner of the craft, as the contingent of drow headed away.
“This is the exact location where you left Drizzt?” asked Tiago, coming near the end of the line, with only Jearth behind him.
“Same spot,” the captain replied.
“A tenday ago?”