The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(128)

He kissed her, briefly, but he turned his lips away. “Effron, food for our friends!” he said exuberantly, injecting energy to cover up his revealing slip.

When he looked at Dahlia, though, he saw the pain there, and knew that his dodge had been unsuccessful. He hugged her tight again, but this time she broke the embrace and moved to take a seat in the wagon, pointedly on the other side of Effron and not beside Drizzt.

They were going to speak, and soon, Drizzt knew, and he wondered if his coming honesty with Dahlia would split the group apart. Perhaps it would, he realized, and so he knew that he owed it to her, to all of them, to have the conversation before they made the difficult journey to Icewind Dale.

The six moved off the wagon and to the campfire to share a hot meal then, but the talk about that fire was quite light, and often nonexistent, for in truth, they had little to talk about. Time had stopped for half the group, after all, and Drizzt and Effron’s tales of their imprisonment by Draygo Quick offered very little content.

Ambergris took the lead in the conversation after dinner, recounting the last moments of the battle and explaining how she came to find Jarlaxle.

That part of the dwarf’s story had Drizzt and Entreri perking up.

“Tiago Baenre,” Drizzt whispered when the dwarf described Jarlaxle’s rescue of her off the streets of Luskan. Given what he had been told by Athrogate, it made sense, and given that Tiago and his cohorts obviously knew the identities of Drizzt’s companions, the news made him change his mind about his present plans.

He would not speak honestly with Dahlia until they were all safely away, for her own sake.





Not far away from the group, another listened as best he could to their light chatter. Madigan Pruett served Ship Rethnor, and knew that his high captain would be anxious to hear any news of Dahlia.

But Madigan wasn’t sure that he’d relay this news to his Ship, for he had heard of another who had put out word on the street that he was looking for, and paying well for, any information that could be found regarding Drizzt Do’Urden.

Madigan Pruett had come out this night to deliver the last of Rethnor’s supplies for the caravan. Now with this profitable opportunity before him, he decided that he would sign on with the caravan, but only as far as the southern entrance to the pass through the Spine of the World, a couple of days of travel if the weather held.

Then he’d take his information to the man paying well, a visiting wizard named Huervo the Seeker.





A hundred miles to the southeast, and a thousand feet below the surface, Saribel Xorlarrin roused her brother, and the two went with all haste to Tiago Baenre’s private chamber.

Every night at her evening prayers, Saribel asked the handmaidens of the Spider Queen to guide her search, and on a more practical level, she had been charged with maintaining contact to the spies Tiago had set about Neverwinter, Port Llast, and other cities of the region.

“We must return to Luskan with all haste,” Ravel Xorlarrin explained to Tiago.

“The dwarf has been located?”

“Better,” said Ravel, and he looked to Saribel.

“Drizzt Do’Urden has surfaced, at long last,” she explained.

Elated but not surprised, Tiago had been expecting this news since his near capture of the dwarf known as Ambergris. He moved from his bed, took up his clothing and armor, and fabulous sword and shield.

“He is with his companions, then,” Tiago remarked.

“It would seem to be the case,” Ravel answered.

“Gather them all, then,” Tiago instructed, referring to the special force he had assembled for just this occasion, comprised of Ravel’s closest spellspinners and warriors, including Jearth, the weapons master of House Xorlarrin. “We will take no chances of missing the heretic rogue this time.”

“And House Xorlarrin will share in the credit?” Saribel dared to ask.

Tiago snapped a look at her, wearing a smile that he knew would surely unsettle the young priestess. He understood the source of her question: She would, after all, have to answer to her older and quite severe sister, Berellip, for her actions. Both Saribel and Ravel needed some assurance of gain for their House, given the risk they were putting forth.

“Share?” Tiago said with a dismissive laugh. “You will be mentioned prominently as the force I employed to carry out my great victory.”

He kept his tone condescending, but knew, of course, that these two, his lessers, would be satisfied with that.

And so they were.

The next night, a force of more than twenty-five drow and a handful of driders, led by mighty Yerrininae and his wife Flavvor, moved north along the tunnels out of Gauntlgrym.





The wagons rolled at a swift pace. The weather had been dry and the road proved clear and hard, no mud or ruts wearing on the wheels.

For the first time in many months, Drizzt rode Andahar, and he felt grand up there on the unicorn’s strong back, the wind in his long white hair. He put his hand to his belt pouch repeatedly, feeling the onyx figurine, longing for the day when he would call Guenhwyvar to his side once more.

“Patience,” he whispered, reminding himself that Guenhwyvar needed her rest. She would be there, Jarlaxle had assured him, and Jarlaxle was rarely wrong.

He urged Andahar on more powerfully, cantering up around the lead wagon, then riding off down the road at a gallop to scout the way ahead. He let the unicorn run for some time, caring not that he had moved out of sight of the lead wagon. He was free now, riding along a road to a place he had known as home.