The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(108)

It happened again a short while later, then again sometime after that. Drizzt had little understanding of the passage of time, but it seemed to him that many days were drifting far, far behind him.

Despite the filth and the wretched taste of the sustenance they were forcing upon him, the drow found his strength and sensibilities gradually returning. Then the old shade was there again, but inside his cell, standing before him.

“What am I to do with you, Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Lord Draygo Quick, of course,” Draygo answered. “And this is my castle, which you assaulted. By the laws of any land, I am well within my rights to kill you.”

“I came for Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt replied, and he had to cough a dozen times in the span of that short response, from the dryness in his throat.

“Ah, yes, the panther. You’ll not get her, of course, but then, you’ll likely never leave this place.” He paused and offered a sly look. “But then again, if you cooperate, then perhaps we will become great friends.”

Drizzt couldn’t begin to sort out that comment.

“Tell me, drow, who do you worship?”

“What?”

“Who is your god?”

“I follow the tenets of Mielikki—you already said as much,” Drizzt replied in a hoarse whisper.

Draygo Quick nodded and put a hand to his chin contemplatively. “Perhaps I would do better to ask, who worships you?”

Drizzt stared at him curiously, and the old wretch chuckled, sounding almost as wheezy as Drizzt.

“Of course you cannot answer,” he said. “We will talk again, and often, I promise,” Draygo Quick said, and with a nod, he turned and left the cell. “Grow strong once more, Drizzt Do’Urden,” he called over his shoulder. “We have much to discuss.”

His cell door clanged shut and the torchlight receded. Drizzt watched the flickers trailing away down the outside hallway, then soon after heard another cell door scrape open, and the murmurs of the old warlock speaking once more.

Effron?

Drizzt leaned forward and craned his head—not to see anything, for that was obviously not possible, but to try to hear some of the words being spoken, if not the conversation itself.

He couldn’t make anything out, but he heard a second murmuring voice, and recognized it as Effron’s. He slumped back, sorting his thoughts. He looked at his chains and promised himself that he would find a way out of them.

Drizzt wasn’t a victim.

Soon enough he would find his way out of this cell and to Effron’s rescue.

That was his vow.





“You were too confident!” Draygo Quick proclaimed to Effron, whose situation differed from Drizzt’s only in the fact that only one of his arms was chained. “But then, that was ever your failing, was it not?”

Effron stared at him hatefully, but that only seemed to amuse the shade.

“You thought you knew all of my tricks and traps, but of course, I am no fool,” Draygo went on. “Did you really believe that you could walk in here and simply steal away with the panther?”

“It was not my choice.”

“You led them here.”

“I did,” Effron admitted.

“Your loyalty is touching.”

Effron lowered his gaze.

“You have decided to wage war against me, and that is a foolish pursuit.”

“No,” Effron immediately retorted, looking back up, staring Draygo Quick right in the eye. “No. I decided to travel with my mother, and I needed to blind you to our movements, but only by taking the cat. I would not go against you, but I would be done with you.”

“Interesting,” Draygo Quick mumbled a few moments later, after digesting that information. “Let me tell you about your mother.…”





Drizzt pulled hard against the unyielding chains when he heard Effron’s wailing from down the hall. At first he thought his companion was being tortured, but when that initial keening transformed into sobs, he realized it was something else.

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.