The Last Threshold

Chapter 20

The moments became an hour, the hours became a day, and Drizzt and Effron had nowhere to go. They broke out their packs in the small square of the magical cell, each side of which was no longer than a tall man’s height.

In their packs, they had food and water for several more days, but their inability to get anything beyond the magical bars had the cell smelling rank, but soon enough, even that faded into the background of monotony, as did the low humming sound of the lightning magic infusing the bars.

After one night, or perhaps it was a day, of fitful sleep, Effron awakened to find Drizzt inspecting the bars. Icingdeath in his hand, Drizzt eyed the joints where the bars met the ceiling and the floor, and he even dared prod at one.

The shock sent him flying backward, to crash into the opposite bars, which sparked angrily and threw him aside. Sitting on the ground, his long white hair dancing wildly with the charge, Drizzt took a series of deep breaths, trying to recover his sensibilities.

“Not very bright,” said Effron. “Amusing to watch, however.”

“There must be a way out of here.”

“Must there be?” the young tiefling asked. “Draygo Quick is a master in matters of imprisonment, I assure you. His menagerie is vast. I know of none who have escaped, humanoid or monster, and that includes your wondrous panther.”

“We are not in stasis,” Drizzt countered. “Are you so quick to surrender?”

That statement had Effron narrowing his gaze in anger. “You know nothing of me,” he said in a low and threatening tone. “Were I quick to surrender, I would have done so as soon as I knew who I was-and what I was! Do you know what it is to be an outcast, Drizzt Do’Urden? Do you know what it is to not belong, anywhere?”

Drizzt broke out in laughter and Effron couldn’t begin to sort out what the drow had found so funny. The tiefling watched as Drizzt crawled over to sit right in front of him.

“We seem to have time,” Drizzt said. “Likely quite a bit of time, unless your mother and the rest can find us.”

Effron studied the drow carefully, not sure what to make of him.

“Perhaps it is time we came to understand each other, for your mother’s sake,” Drizzt explained. “Let me tell you what I know of not belonging in my own home, or, as I thought for so many years, even in my own skin.”

Drizzt told him a story then, one that began two centuries before in an Underdark city called Menzoberranzan. At first Effron scoffed at the seemingly meager attempt to create a bond-what did he need with this drow, anyway? — but soon, the young tiefling found himself scoffing less and listening more.

He marveled at the drow’s descriptions of this decadent place, Menzoberranzan, and descriptions of his family in House Do’Urden, which seemed to Effron not so unlike life at Draygo Quick’s castle. Drizzt told of the drow schools of study-martial, divine, and arcane-and the inevitable accompanying indoctrination they entailed. Effron found himself so drawn into the winding ways of Menzoberranzan, his imagination walking those shadowy streets, that it took him a long while to realize that Drizzt had stopped talking.

He looked up at the drow, staring into those lavender eyes, reflecting back at him in the dim bluish light of the glowing bars.

Drizzt told him another story, one of a surface raid where his companions had slaughtered an elf clan. He described saving a young elf child by smearing her with her own dead mother’s blood.

Clearly affected by the memory, Drizzt’s voice grew very low, so he was obviously startled, straightening quickly, when Effron angrily interjected, “Would that you had been there before Dahlia threw me from the cliff!”

An uncomfortable silence followed.

“You have not made peace with her,” Drizzt said. “I had thought-”

“More so than my comment and tone would indicate,” Effron replied, and he meant it. He lowered his gaze and shook his head and admitted, “It is hard.”

“She’s a difficult person sometimes, I know,” said Drizzt.

“She loves you.”

Effron noted Drizzt’s wince, and came to think that perhaps the feeling wasn’t mutual-which explained a lot regarding Drizzt’s acceptance of Dahlia’s dalliance with Artemis Entreri, after all.

“I was much like you when I left Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt said, quickly regaining Effron’s attention. “It took me many years to learn to trust, and some time after that to recognize the beauty and love such trust can bring.”

He launched back into his story then, completing the tale of Menzoberranzan and completing, too, the tale of his own father and Zaknafein’s ultimate victory over the miserable priestesses of Lolth. He detailed his journey through the Underdark, the road that led him, at last, to the surface world.

By that time, growling stomachs interrupted the tales, and the two went to their stocks. But Effron bade Drizzt to continue his tale through the meal, and all the way until they lay down once more for sleep-where Drizzt left Effron’s imagination on the side of a cold mountain known as Kelvin’s Cairn, with a promise to tell him of the greatest friends anyone could ever hope to know.

And they had plenty of time for Drizzt to finish his stories, as the days drifted past and no one, not Draygo Quick or his minions, nor Dahlia and the others, came to see them.

Then it was a tenday, and Effron, too, had shared his own tales of growing up in the shadow of Herzgo Alegni, and under the harsh tutelage of Lord Draygo Quick.

And they ran out of food and water, and still they sat, in their own waste, and both came to wonder if Draygo had just sent them to this place to be forgotten and to die in the near darkness and the monotonous hum.

“Our friends were likely victorious, but they haven’t found us yet,” Effron posited at one point, his voice barely a whisper, for he had no strength for anything louder. “Lord Draygo would not just leave me here to die.”

Drizzt, lying on his back, wore his skepticism on his face.

“You were too important to him,” Effron explained, echoing what he had told Drizzt on Minnow Skipper’s return journey to Luskan. “He wouldn’t …”

Those were the last words Effron spoke to Drizzt in that cell, or at least, the last Drizzt heard.

When Drizzt awakened, he found himself in a different place, in a more typical dungeon cell with a dirt floor and stone walls. He was sitting against the wall, opposite the bars of the cell door, his arms chained up above his head, the other end of the chain spiked into the wall far above him.

It took Drizzt a while to sort out the changes in his situation, but one of the first things he came to recognize was not an encouraging thought: given his predicament and the change of venue, his friends had certainly not won out.

It was darker in here than in the other cell, the only light coming from the distant flicker of a torch set in a sconce on a wall many twists and turns from Drizzt’s location. Before him on the floor, Drizzt noted a plate of food, that sight reminding him of how desperately hungry he was.

A pair of rats poked around the plate, which Drizzt could not begin to reach with his chained hands. Instinctively, a feral movement even, Drizzt kicked out at the rodents, chasing them away-and looking at his own legs and feet made him aware that he was naked now. His thoughts could hardly register the implications of that, or of anything, though, as he hooked his feet and toes and dragged the plate in closer.

Still he could not reach it with his hands or his face, for he could not lower his hands below his shoulders. He tugged futilely against the chains for a few moments, but then, driven almost mad by his hunger, he merely scooped the meal with his dirty foot and used his great agility to bring it to his mouth.

He managed to force the dry and foul-tasting stuff down his parched throat, barely, but after a single swallow, he had tasted more than enough, and so he just slumped back and thought of the world beyond the grave.

He forced himself to fill his mind with notions of Catti-brie …

“It is humbling, is it not?” came a voice, from very far away it seemed.

Drizzt cracked open one eye, and flinched away in the brighter light. The torch was right outside his dungeon cell, in the hands of an old and wrinkled shade.

“How it must pain Mielikki to think of her favored child in such a predicament,” the old wretch taunted.

Drizzt tried to respond, but he hadn’t the strength to force any words past his parched and cracked lips.

He heard the scrape of metal as his cell door opened, then was handled roughly as more food was shoved into his mouth, followed by foul-tasting water.

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.

“To the detriment of all,” Draygo Quick continued. “Of course I would defend myself and my home-would you expect anything less?”

“It would need less defending if you were not a thief and kidnapper,” Drizzt retorted.

“Kidnapper? You walked into my home!”

“Of Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt clarified. “You stole from me something which does not belong to you.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Draygo. “The cat. As I said, you have stumbled into something apparently quite beyond you, but perhaps there is hope for both of us. I do not think that I will have need of the cat when we are done, so perhaps you will find her companionship again.”

The tantalizing carrot had Drizzt inadvertently leaning forward, before he realized the revealing posture and corrected himself, unwilling to let his thoughts go into the realm of false hope.

The Netherese lord would never let him go, he told himself, over and over again.

He would find himself repeating that silent mantra many times as Draygo Quick came to him each day, always with questions about Drizzt’s past, about the priestesses of Lolth and about his life on the surface while following the tenets of the goddess Mielikki and the ways of the ranger.

Drizzt resisted those questions at first, but his stubbornness couldn’t long hold, and some tendays later, he came to look forward to those visits.

For accompanying Draygo came the servants with his food, and that food greatly improved, and was fed to him far more tenderly and decently by a young shade, a child.

One day Draygo Quick arrived with a trio of burly guards. Two moved to flank Drizzt, reaching up for the chains as they did.

“If you struggle in the least, I will torture Effron to death before your eyes,” was all that Draygo Quick bothered to say, and he took his leave.

The guards put a black hood over Drizzt’s head and carried him from his cell, depositing him in a room somewhere within the castle above. They set him down in a chair, told him to remove the hood, to bathe and to dress.

“Lord Draygo will come to you soon,” one said as they departed.

Drizzt looked around at his new home, a well-furnished, clean, and warm room. His first thoughts went to the notion of escape, but he quickly dismissed that possibility. Draygo Quick had Effron, and Guenhwyvar, and where might he go, in any case?

The Netherese lord had told him that he had walked into something far above him, and Drizzt didn’t doubt the truth of that claim at all in that confusing time and place.