The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(51)

“Need I remind you that the last time we dealt with Farmer Stuyles, we wound up in a desperate battle in the forest against a legion devil and its minions?” Dahlia asked when Dorwyllan had departed.

“Ah, but that’s not soundin’ good,” Ambergris remarked.

Entreri snickered, drawing Drizzt’s gaze, and when he had it, the assassin pointedly shook his head and looked away.

“Stuyles and the others knew nothing about Hadencourt’s true identity,” Drizzt argued.

“You have to believe that, don’t you?” said Dahlia, and she snorted derisively.

The drow’s smile was no more, even though he believed his claims. These two, ever cynical, would not allow him to hold fast to hope. In their cynical view of the world, he was a foolish idealist, unable to face the harsh realities of life in the shadowy Realms.

It occurred to Drizzt that they could be right, of course. In fact, hadn’t that been the very weight he had been dragging along like a heavy chain around his ankles for years now, back far before Bruenor’s death, even?

“No,” he heard himself replying to Dahlia. He stood up from his seat, painted a determined expression on his face, and spoke clearly and loudly and with all confidence. “I say that because I know it to be almost certainly true.”

“Because the world is full of good people?”

Drizzt nodded. “Most,” he answered. “And forcing them into untenable choices is no way to measure morality. Stuyles and his band do not hunger for blood, but for food.”

“Unless there are more devils among them,” Dahlia interrupted. “Have you considered that possibility?”

“No,” Drizzt replied, but it wasn’t so much an admission as a denial of the entire premise.

Dahlia moved as if to respond, but chortled and looked to Entreri instead, and Drizzt, too, found himself turning to regard the assassin.

Entreri looked away from Dahlia and returned that look to Drizzt, and he nodded his support to Drizzt, albeit slightly.





“I could have killed you all,” Effron pointed out to the four battered and reeling highwaymen. “Be reasonable.”

“Ye put spiders under me skin!” said one man, the archer who had nearly killed Effron with the first shot.

Effron looked at him and grinned wickedly. “Are you sure you got them all out? Or are others even now laying their eggs?”

The man’s eyes widened in horror and he began scratching and rubbing his skin raw, as much as possible given the bindings Effron had placed upon all four, tying them together, back-to-back. The man’s frantic shuffling had his companion to either side shoving back with annoyance, to Effron’s great amusement.

“Not funny,” the woman insisted, wisps of black smoke still wafting from her clothing.

“You attacked me,” Effron replied. “Does that not matter? Am I to apologize for not allowing you to murder me?”

“We weren’t meaning to murder anyone!” the woman insisted.

Effron nodded at the frantic, whining archer. “His first shot would have slain me had I not come prepared with magical defenses.”

“He’s not so good a shot, then,” said one of the larger thugs.

“Just supposed to scare you,” the woman said.

“You would do well, then, to hire better archers. For this fool has surely doomed you.” Effron paused there and walked around to directly face the woman, who seemed the leader of the band, striking a pensive pose with the index finger of his good hand against his pursed lips. “Unless—” he teased.

“What do you want?” the woman demanded. “You already have our gear and our few coins.”

“Which I will happily give back,” the twisted warlock explained, “if you let me join your band.”

“Join?”

“Is that too difficult a concept for you to grasp?”

“You want to join in with us?”

Effron sighed profoundly.

“Why?”

“Why?” Effron echoed, then realized that he was acting much like the fool sitting before him. “I am without companionship in a land I do not know. I have no home and it is winter. I could have killed each of you—I still can do so, and quite easily—but to what gain? None to you, obviously, and merely a pleasurable diversion for me. Practically speaking, I am much better off with companions who know the lay of the land.”

“You’re a half-devil Shadovar, and a magic-user,” said the thug.

“Do you doubt my potential value?”

“But why?” asked the woman. “Surely you’ve got better opportunities before you.”

Effron laughed. “I don’t even know where I am. So take me in. You will find that my skills will help you with your little roadside endeavors, at the least.”

The woman started to answer, but bit back the response and looked past Effron, cueing him in to the new arrivals before one of them even spoke.

“It is not her call to make,” said a man’s voice.

Effron turned around to see a group moving into position all about, forming a semicircle around him and the captives.

“Ah, so you have friends,” he said to the woman.

“They’re going to kill ye to death!” the archer insisted.