The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(144)

“It’s true, then,” Ambergris said, staring at the gate, for of course these could not have been constructed in the tenday they believed they had been gone. Before the gate and just south of it, was a wide circle of blackness, surrounded by a rock wall and with a small stone statue of a drow warrior, sword and shield upraised.

“ ‘On this spot did Master Tiago slay the demon,’ ” Afafrenfere read from the plaque beneath it. “ ‘And the snows will cover it nevermore.’ ”

“We have all gone insane, then,” said Dahlia, shaking her head. “I have walked the planes to the Shadowfell, I have existed as a statue of stone, and now I have awakened from a slumber of eighteen winters? What madness this?”

She walked off a bit to the west and stood facing away from the others, hands on hips and head down.

“Madness indeed,” muttered Entreri.

“But if it’s all true, then Draygo Quick’s long lost interest,” Ambergris said, and she slapped Afafrenfere on the back and gave a great snort. “But why’s the long faces?” she asked of them all. “None had family now gone, eh? We come to the dale to be rid o’ Tiago’s hunters.”

“And Draygo’s eyes,” Effron reminded.

“Aye, and Cavus Dun, too,” said Afafrenfere.

“So fugitives we been, and now one long nap’s fixed it for us!” Ambergris said with a belly-laugh. “Slate’s as clean as an Icewind Dale snowstorm, and every road’s open!”

“You would dismiss this loss of time so easily?” Drizzt asked incredulously.

“Ye thinkin’ ye know anything I might be doing against it?” the dwarf replied. “It is what it is, elf, and what it is is a blessin’ more than any curse to any one o’ us! Least-ways, that’s what I be thinkin’!”

Effron nodded his agreement and managed a smile, as did Afafrenfere, but neither Entreri nor Drizzt could find the line of thinking to join in their relief, or whatever it was. The shock of this all had them both reeling, particularly Drizzt, who dropped a hand into his belt pouch and rolled a small piece of scrimshaw around in his fingers. They had found an enchanted forest, so it seemed obvious, and one where time had all but stopped through a long night’s slumber. He had heard the song of Mielikki, so he believed, and had found a reminder to a long-lost friend.

But what did it all mean? How did it all make any sense, and what implications might he draw?

Overwhelmed, Drizzt led the others away from Bryn Shander at a leisurely, meandering pace. They got into the foothills of Kelvin’s Cairn as night descended and, exhausted and overwhelmed, set their camp.

Drizzt didn’t know it, but it was the night of the Spring Equinox, the holiest day in the calendar of Mielikki, in the Year of the Awakened Sleepers.

Drizzt got the fire burning, and Ambergris brought it to great heights. At one point, the dwarf giggled that she would surely “turn the night orange.”

“Truly?” Effron replied. “I prefer purple!” With that, he cast a spell, and a colored bolt reached out from his fingers to the flames, his cantrip altering the color indeed—to purple.

“Bah for yerself and yer minor magic!” Ambergris huffed, and she cast her own enchantment, her divine magic overwhelming the warlock’s tricks.

“Oh, indeed!” said Effron, and he went right back at her, and the flames fought their battle, shifting hue in a wild dance for supremacy. It became a game to her and Effron, to the amusement of Afafrenfere, who kept feeding more kindling to the blaze.

Even ever-dour Entreri, sitting off to the side and polishing his dagger, couldn’t suppress a chuckle or two.

Because they were all free, Drizzt realized. This apparent and bizarre time-shift had only made the world a better place for these four fugitives. The dwarf and monk could go as they pleased with no fear of Cavus Dun, and for Effron and Entreri, the specter of Draygo Quick seemed lifted, and likely, too, the shadows of a hundred others with a vendetta against Artemis Entreri.

So, too, would this strange leap of years benefit Drizzt and Dahlia, he realized, but the elf warrior showed no mirth, sitting by herself, her expression grim, and glancing his way every now and again.

For Drizzt, there was just confusion. Had his sleep, had the enchanted forest, been a vision, a love letter to him from Mielikki? More likely, he realized, it had been a moment of closure. Awakening in the tiny secluded area of a land still grasped by the late winter signaled a farewell to Drizzt.

The forest was gone.

Somehow he knew that, in his heart and soul. The enchanted forest was gone, was no more, and so too were flown any ties to the world that had once been, before the Spellplague.

Thus, his past was gone, at long last.

He focused on that moment when the moon had opened his eyes, and thought it a passage. He thought of Innovindil (and stole a glance at Dahlia) and her insistence that an elf must live his life in shorter time spans, must reinvent his existence, his friends, his love, with each passing generation, to know vitality and happiness.

He glanced at Dahlia again, but his gaze inevitably lowered to his own hands, where he rolled a piece of scrimshaw over and over again.

By the time he looked back up, while the dwarf, monk, and warlock remained at play with the fire, Dahlia had gone to sit with Entreri, the two conversing privately.

Drizzt nodded, rose, and walked off into the night. He came to a high rock, overlooking Bryn Shander away to the southeast, and with the high peak of Kelvin’s Cairn to the northwest behind him. He stood there, the wind in his face and in his ears, remembering what was and pondering what might now be.