The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(100)

“It is more than that!” Parise pressed again.

“Then do tell,” Jarlaxle replied. He handed his empty glass across to the Netherese lord, and added, “As you refill my glass. Such fireside tales always sound better when thrown against a muddled mind.”

Parise took the glass and moved for the bottle, laughing as he replied, “Jarlaxle’s mind is never muddled.”

The drow merely shrugged yet again.

“Where is this going?” Jarlaxle asked. “Have you a vendetta against Drizzt Do’Urden, and fear to invoke the wrath of House Baenre?”

“Surely not!” his host replied emphatically—and to his surprise, Jarlaxle found that he believed the man.

“But I’m truly intrigued by this interesting Drizzt creature, and his relationship with the drow goddess.”

Jarlaxle’s blank expression aptly reflected the confusion in his mind at that most curious comment.

“Do you think it possible that she favors him, secretly?” Parise asked. “She feeds on chaos, after all, and he seems to create it—or surely he once did in the city of Menzoberranzan.”

Jarlaxle drained his glass in a single swallow and considered the words, and the potential implications of his forthcoming answer.

“I have heard this suggestion before, many times,” he said.

“He is given deference by the priestesses,” Parise suggested.

Jarlaxle offered another shrug. “In not hunting him down, in not demanding such of me and my band, then perhaps there is merit in that notion. And yes, that of course means that the goddess hasn’t instructed my sister and her peers to find him and properly punish him.”

He found himself nodding as he spoke, then looked Parise directly in the eye and finished, “Your thesis is quite likely correct. I have often thought it so. Drizzt would be an unwitting instrument of Lolth, to be sure, but then again, would that not be her typically cryptic way?”

The Netherese lord seemed quite pleased by that answer, and he couldn’t hide the fact behind his lifted glass of brandy.

From Jarlaxle’s perspective, the more important matter was whether or not such an outlandish claim would protect Drizzt from any revenge the Netherese might be planning.





SHATTERED



THE SHADOWS SERVED AS AN ALLY, BUT NONE OF THE SIX COMPANIONS felt particularly comforted by that reality. They crouched in the colorless brush in a copse of trees, looking up at a formidable structure: a grand house with a soaring tower, surrounded by an enormous stone wall, twenty feet or more in height. The castle of Lord Draygo Quick.

Drizzt’s heart sank as the time slipped past. When he had learned of Guenhwyvar’s imprisonment, his course seemed clear and direct. She was there, so there he must go, and let no obstacle prevent him from bringing her to freedom once more. But now that choice had met with a harsh reality, for what were they six to do against the formidability of this castle before them? Were they to storm the place and leave a wake of death and destruction on their way to the panther?

That seemed a foolish choice, for Effron had repeatedly reminded them that Draygo Quick could likely defeat all of them singlehandedly. And within Lord Draygo’s tower, the young tiefling had also warned, loomed many lesser warlocks training under the great lord, and a menagerie of dangerous pets Draygo could unleash upon them.

“Now what?” Artemis Entreri asked after so many uneasy moments had slipped past. Their trials through the swamp had been considerable, but compared to the obstacle standing before them, those seemed minor indeed. Pointedly, Entreri had asked the question mostly to Effron, and his tone showed that he was not pleased with the young warlock.

“I was asked to take you to Guenhwyvar, and so I have,” Effron replied.

“Then point her out,” the assassin replied coolly.

Effron lifted his hand toward the tower, angling it to point about two-thirds of the way up the seventy-foot structure.

“Is there a side door? A kitchen or servants’ entrance, perhaps, or even a waste chute?” Drizzt asked, and he desperately wanted to keep the conversation on point at that time. He hadn’t come this far to turn back, whatever the challenge before them, and they had known—though surely the formidability of Draygo Quick’s castle had put an exclamation point to the severity of the task—that retrieving Guenhwyvar would be no easy task.

“Inside the wall,” Effron replied. “But the only entrance to the grounds lies through the front gate.”

“Or over the wall,” said Drizzt.

“I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“Do tell,” Entreri said sarcastically, but he seemed to back off at the end of his dour remark, for now he had drawn the scowl not only of Drizzt, but of Dahlia.

Drizzt noted the assassin’s retreat, and the apparent source. Entreri hadn’t come along for Drizzt’s sake, he realized, but for Dahlia’s.

Once again, it occurred to Drizzt that he was not bothered by this.

Whatever the reason, he was glad that Entreri and Dahlia were here.

“The walls of many of the great estates of this region were created by the same masons and sorcerers,” Effron explained, his casual tone offering no satisfaction to Entreri’s attempt at sarcasm. “They are heavily enchanted to prevent such access.”

“Glyphs can be removed,” Ambergris said, but without much conviction.