The Last Threshold

Chapter 23

"You should just let him go,”Jarlaxle said to Lord Draygo, the two standing in the checkerboard entry hall.

Draygo Quick put on an amused expression. He had just bid Jarlaxle farewell, after informing the drow that they had nothing further to discuss.

“You will better find your answers in that case,” Jarlaxle continued. “And truly, if Drizzt is so favored by one god or another, what gain to you to keep him prisoner?”

“You presume much,” Draygo Quick replied, a phrase he had thrown Jarlaxle’s way on several occasions. Indeed, in their hours together, the Netherese lord had never admitted that Drizzt was within his castle.

But Jarlaxle knew better, for Kimmuriel had found Drizzt, and the young tiefling warlock, as well, in separate locked rooms in the western wing of the castle. Kimmuriel had found the others, statues all, as well, in a room not far from this very spot.

“If I am errant in my suspicions, then of course-” Jarlaxle started.

“And you annoy me even more,” Draygo Quick continued. “Do be on your way, Jarlaxle, before I am tempted to speak with Lord Ulfbinder and nullify our agreement. Do not come to me again unless you are invited, or unless your request to pay a visit is accepted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, or even if you will not, I have much work to do.”

Jarlaxle bowed low. Draygo Quick acknowledged him with just a curt nod, and walked off across the floor to the doorway that would lead him to his tower and private quarters. Jarlaxle watched him, then glanced back at the sweeping stairwell in the rear of the hall, climbing up twenty feet and breaking left and right behind decorated railings.

No shortage of Shadovar guards stood up there, looking back at him, including one holding Taulmaril and another, amazingly, standing at the top of the staircase with one of Drizzt’s scimitars strapped to his hip.

He is taunting me, Jarlaxle thought, and in his mind, he could sense Kimmuriel’s discomfort as clearly as if the psionicist were standing beside him and groaning. Tell me when, Jarlaxle bade as Draygo Quick exited the room.

There are guards at the door in front of you, and more outside as well, Kimmuriel silently warned.

Jarlaxle bowed to the stern-faced sentries on the balcony, conveniently sweeping off his hat as he did.

Do not kill the lord, Kimmuriel telepathically cried.

Then guide my opening salvos properly, Jarlaxle replied. His hand slipped inconspicuously inside the hat, gripping the edge of the portable hole.

“I’ll not be using your door,” Jarlaxle announced to the guards as he turned back as if to exit the castle. “I have my own gate available.”

“Just be gone, as Lord Draygo instructed,” the guard commander on the stairs, the one with Drizzt’s scimitar, shouted down.

Jarlaxle smiled and pulled forth the portable hole, set his hat back on his bald head, and flipped the spinning and elongating hole in the general direction of the guards flanking the castle exit. The two widened their eyes in unison and hustled aside in fear, but the hole plopped down on the floor short of them without any overtly ill effects, and now seemed no more than an actual hole in the castle floor.

With the obvious distraction demanding the attention of all in the grand hall, Jarlaxle slipped his hand into a pouch and produced a small cube-and reminded himself that his brother Gromph had promised him all sorts of pain if he ruined this particular device.

Draygo is safely ascending his tower, Kimmuriel imparted.

Jarlaxle was already grinning, seeing the door sentries edging over to the curious pit, unable to resist the urge to peek in. The mercenary tossed the cube toward the door where Draygo Quick had exited, and turned back to the guards on the balcony.

“ ‘With abacus, by architect, by carpenter, and mason,’ ” he recited, sweeping his arm out with dramatic flourish, and at the same time tapping his House insignia to enact a spell of levitation and lift himself conveniently and prudently from the castle floor, he reiterated and elaborated his song:

With all the tools and knowledge of structural design,

“For shelter most beloved, for love of hearth and home

“To build your private castle, to whom would you consign?”

Act now, you peacock! Kimmuriel screamed in his thoughts, which only made Jarlaxle smile all the wider.

“Might I suggest that all the tools

“The mundane numbers and physical rules

“For the truly brilliant must remain

“No more than province of common fools.”

“A castle, and warmth, a true abode,

“For when one truly seeks a home,

“The wise call upon the greater souls

“Who wile their days with a nose in a tome.”

“What foolishness is this?” the guard on the stairs demanded.

“Foolishness?” Jarlaxle echoed as if wounded. “My friend, this is no such thing.” A yelp from behind him told Jarlaxle that the door guards had reached the edge of his pit and had glanced in. “Nay, this … this is Caer Gromph!”

Caer Gromph, the last two words of the incantation, rang with a different resonance than the playful mercenary’s chanting verse, for they spoke not to the audience, but to the magical cube Jarlaxle had tossed. Upon absorbing those command words, spoken in that manner, the magic of the cube awakened. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, though of course the floating Jarlaxle remained unperturbed above it, and Castle Draygo began to shake as Caer Gromph’s roots reached into the floor, as the cube transformed into an adamantine tower, designed to resemble the stalagmite towers of the drow Houses of Menzoberranzan.

Up it rose, and widened, crushing and splintering the floor and substructure of Castle Draygo with its roots, blowing out the wall and prodding up under the balcony as its unyielding walls stretched, its adamantine tip piercing the ceiling of the grand room nearly thirty feet above the floor. The Shadovar guards lurched and tumbled under the thunder of the magical creation. One of the pair peeked over the lip of the portable hole and tumbled in, and the other soon followed as a yochlol-like tentacle reached up and aided him in his descent, accompanied by a shriek from the guard and a hearty “bwahaha” from the supposed handmaiden.

A thing of beauty was Caer Gromph. Lined with balconies and a circular stair running its length, top-to-bottom, and edged in faerie fire accents of purple, red, and blue, it seemed as much a work of abstract art as a fortress. But a fortress it was, complete with lines of arrow slits and a magical gate inside, and the moment the construct expanded, Bregan D’aerthe archers poured through the magical portal inside and to their protected posts. Before the many Shadovar had even pinpointed the source of the earthquake, crossbow quarrels flew forth from those arrow slits, coated with that insidious drow poison.

One who was not cut down by either the shaking or the volley was the guard holding Taulmaril, and indeed, because of the way the balcony had buckled, the male shade found himself protected from the hidden drow archers. Regaining his footing, he leveled the powerful bow and took deadly aim at Jarlaxle, who floated in place hovering just above the floor below and watched the swordsman on the now-tilted stairs.

He would never see the enchanted arrow coming, the archer knew, and he pulled back and let fly, the arrow flying true to the hollow in Jarlaxle’s breast.

Draygo Quick was not amused as he tumbled backward down the circular stairs of his private tower. He collected himself quickly, hearing the doors above banging open and the frantic calls of his fast-approaching acolytes.

“Lord Draygo, what is it?” one cried, coming around the bend above him.

What, indeed, Draygo Quick wondered? What had that wretched drow done to him? Done to his castle?

The old warlock spun around and ran off the way he had come with surprising agility and energy for one of his age. He had barely gotten off the tower stairs and through the door to the anteroom, though, when he was met by another of his warlock acolytes, coming the other way, his face drained of blood, his eyes wide with horror.

“A … a tower, my lord!” the man screamed.

“The tower?” Draygo asked and glanced back the way he had come.

The acolyte shook his head frantically. “A tower!” he corrected, and he hustled back through the room’s other door, opening the way for Lord Draygo to see the black adamantine wall of Caer Gromph.

“By the gods,” Draygo Quick breathed. “Invasion.”

He called his acolytes together, bade them to form as one on and around the stairs, and to defend to the death his tower and quarters. Then he sprinted off, back up the tower stair, rushing to his private rooms to put out the call to war. He burst through the door to his inner room, and there he froze, stricken with shock.

For flanking the pedestal on which rested the cage of Guenhwyvar were two most unexpected and unannounced visitors, tall humanoids with three-fingered hands and heads that resembled the bulbous ugliness of an octopus.

One turned his way, those tentacles waggling, arms waving, and a blast of psionic energy assaulted the warlock and jumbled his thoughts. He tried to fight through, instinctively enacting his mental defenses-and indeed, the inner willpower of the powerful old warlock proved superior to the attack. As he unwound the scene before him, his vision refocusing, he found a second shock, and a second accompanying psionic blast, to see his prized glowing cage break apart and Guenhwyvar, six hundred pounds of feline power, appearing atop the pedestal, which toppled under her weight. Draygo Quick surely recognized the visceral hatred in the panther’s stare, and when she sprang, the warlock thought himself doomed.

But Guenhwyvar dissipated into mist in mid-leap, and that mist swirled and blew away, taking the beleaguered panther to her Astral home at long last.

Both illithids turned on Draygo Quick, and in the hands of the second, he saw the panther figurine. Both waved their ugly tentacles his way, and both similarly disappeared, into the ether.

Draygo Quick fell back, overwhelmed and terrified, full of fear and full of rage.

From the breaking railings came the dragonnettes, from the cracking ceiling came the castle gargoyles, and from the tower, in response, came a hail of drow fireballs, lightning bolts, magic missiles, and crossbow bolts.

Down below that level, the lightning missile slammed into Jarlaxle’s chest, the sparkling explosion lighting the room in a blinding flash, and before the drow’s vision had even recovered from that glare, a second hit right beside the first.

Jarlaxle looked down at his chest, then back at the archer, now with a third arrow leveled his way.

“You shoot well,” he congratulated, and the Shadovar, clearly confused and shocked and horrified, let fly again, and again his aim was true.

And again, Jarlaxle took the hit without any apparent ill effects. Indeed, he wasn’t even paying attention at that moment, reveling in the efficiency of his army, and the macabre beauty of smoking and burning forms of tiny dragons spinning down to the floor.

In leaped the swordsman, Twinkle up high and glowing fiercely. He brought it across in a powerful sweep, slashing the distracted Jarlaxle across the face.

But not a mark, not a speck of blood, showed in the blade’s deadly wake.

“Have you ever heard of a kinetic barrier?” the drow asked innocently.

The shade howled and lifted the blade to strike again, and Jarlaxle made no move to defend. The blade struck him just an instant after he merely touched the shade guard, and in that touch, he released all of the killing energy of the three bowshots and the first scimitar strike that had been captured by the kinetic barrier Kimmuriel had enacted over him.

The shade’s face fell in half. His chest exploded, once, twice, thrice, and he flew away behind a crimson cloud of his own spraying blood.

Twinkle did strike, but with minimal force, but still Jarlaxle was much relieved to realize that Kimmuriel still had his protective barrier in place.

The drow mercenary turned to the archer, a wry grin on his face. Jarlaxle dropped his levitation, touched down, leaped away and called forth the floating spell once more, his stride lifting him toward the distant balcony.

Frantically and foolishly, the archer fired off another shot, and another, and Jarlaxle felt the energy mounting around him once more.

A Shadovar body flew up out of the pit and plopped onto the floor. The second dead door guard followed closely, and both had been wrapped by one end of a fine elven cord.

Now the corpses served as anchors and out of the portable hole pit came Athrogate, no longer in the guise of a yochlol. The ferocious dwarf got his feet under him just as the castle’s outside door banged open and more guards charged in.

“Taked ye long enough!” the dwarf roared in glee, his morningstars sweeping across to send the nearest shade flying away.

Athrogate grunted a moment later, though, and looked down as his arm, and the handcrossbow bolt impaled there.

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Durned drow.”

The air around him buzzed with more such darts whipping all around, most striking home on those Shadovar standing before him.

“Poison,” slurred the closest, and Athrogate regarded him to see a bolt sticking out of the shade’s cheek, just under the poor fool’s left eye.

The dwarf reached up and tore the bolt free of the Shadovar’s face, flipped it over, and put it in his mouth, where he sucked on it hard. Wearing an inquisitive expression, he tossed the bolt aside to the floor and swirled the venom around in his mouth, nodding his agreement with the assessment.

“Aye,” he said after he spat out the poison and a wad of spittle. “And I’m bettin’ that one hurt.”

The Shadovar fell over to the floor, fast asleep. So did several others, but a few, at least, managed to fight through the waves of drow poison. Still, the poison slowed their movements and made their blocks and parries quite sluggish, and so Athrogate, who had of course built up a complete resistance to drow sleep poison in his decades beside Jarlaxle, waded through them with wild abandon, swatting them aside with his powerful morningstars.

Behind him, the drow warriors came forth from their fortress, though none moved to join the wild and unpredictable dwarf as he gleefully executed his own brand of carnage.

“Truly?” Jarlaxle asked incredulously as the archer put up Taulmaril for a point blank shot at him. He had already absorbed three other arrows on his journey to face this shade and showed no ill-effects.

The poor shade trembled so badly that the arrow slipped off the bow.

“Just give it over,” Jarlaxle said, holding out his hand. He noted, then, that the Shadovar wore, too, a fabulous mithral shirt he had seen before. “Oh, and my friend’s shirt, as well.”

To emphasize his point, Jarlaxle turned to meet the swoop of a gargoyle, and released all of the stored kinetic energy into the creature, which verily exploded under the weight of the blow, leaving no more than a burst of tiny stones flying around to shower the balcony and the room below.

“Truly?” he again asked the shade, who desperately tried to set another arrow.

The fool finally caught on, and handed over the bow with a hand shaking so badly that Jarlaxle had to work hard to suppress a laugh.

“And the mithral shirt,” he instructed. “And anything else you might possess that belonged to my imprisoned friends! Indeed, strip yourself naked then run around and collect all of their items, and I warn you that if any are missing, you will follow the fate of the gargoyle!”

The shade let out a little whimper, tossed a ring and some bracers atop the pile of clothing, then shuffled away, bowing with every step.

“All of them!” Jarlaxle shouted after him.

“Well met, Lord Draygo,” the drow said to the startled warlock after he materialized in Draygo Quick’s private room, right near where the illithids had been standing.

Draygo Quick eyed him both studiously and incredulously. The warlock considered his options, wondering mostly if those dangerous illithids were still around. There weren’t many creatures in the known multiverse that could unnerve Draygo Quick, but he counted the octopus-headed mind flayers among that group, to be sure.

The door behind him opened and one of his students gasped.

Draygo Quick held up his hand to keep the young warlock at bay.

“Bid her to close the door and be gone,” the drow instructed. “My associates and I have little time, and I would speak with you alone.”

“Speak?” Draygo Quick replied suspiciously.

“Lord Draygo, be reasonable here,” said the drow. “We are both businessmen, in the end.”

“Kimmuriel,” Draygo Quick breathed, and it all made sense to him. Kimmuriel Oblodra of Bregan D’aerthe was rumored to be a psionicist of considerable power, and that would explain his association with the mind flayers, the most psionically-gifted creatures of all.

“At your service,” Kimmuriel confirmed.

“At your service, you mean,” Lord Draygo replied. “You dare attack a lord of Netheril with such impudence? You dare enter my private quarters and steal from me, before my very eyes?”

“Your minion,” Kimmuriel prompted, motioning to the door.

“And if I choose to allow her to stay, perhaps to call in others?”

“Then I will fade away from here, and you will have nothing to show for the losses you have suffered this day,” Kimmuriel answered, and he held up the onyx figurine of the now-freed Guenhwyvar. “Alas, the considerable losses.”

The implication that there might be some gain to be found here was hard to ignore. “Be gone!” Draygo Quick snapped at his acolyte after mulling it over. Should it come to a fight, that one wouldn’t be of much help against this drow of such reputation, or against the illithids in any case, Draygo Quick knew.

“My lord!”

“Be gone!” Draygo Quick cried again.

“But the dark elves have taken the whole of the castle beyond this tower!” the woman cried. “And we are trapped here, blocked by an adamantine wall!”

Draygo Quick leaped up from his chair and spun angrily on the young female shade, his eyes wide and nostrils flaring. Rare were such outbursts from the composed and powerful lord, and this one had the desired effect, as the younger shade gave a squeal of terror and fled, slamming the door.

Draygo Quick took a few breaths to compose himself, then turned back to face Kimmuriel.

“How dare you?” he asked quietly.

“We have done you a favor, and the rewards will prove greater than the inconveniences we have caused,” Kimmuriel replied.

“By attacking my castle?”

“Indeed, to provide you proper cover to the lord of Gloomwrought and your peers for the loss of Drizzt and the others, for of course, that is why we have come. The damage to your abode is no doubt considerable-that is Jarlaxle’s way, I fear. His belief is that the best way to end any battle is to win it quickly, with overwhelming force, and so, as usual, he has.”

“If you think me defeated, you know little of Draygo Quick.”

“Please, Lord Draygo, remain reasonable,” Kimmuriel replied with clear condescension-or perhaps it was just supreme confidence, Draygo thought.

“Your castle can be repaired, and we will kill as few of the fools you employ as possible. So yes, there is a bit of inconvenience to you-but it need not be more than that, and surely not as tragic as it might become if you place your pride before your pragmatism.

“We have come at the behest of … well, let us just say that Lady Lolth will not be denied that which is hers. I doubt that you wish such a war as you might find if you follow the path of your pride.”

“Lady Lolth?” Draygo Quick asked, and he didn’t hide his intrigue. “For Drizzt?”

“It should not concern you,” Kimmuriel said.

“Then he is Chosen.”

Kimmuriel shook his head. “I make no such claim.”

“But Lady Lolth-”

“Has her own designs, and only a fool would pretend to understand those,” said Kimmuriel. “Nor does it matter. Here is my offer, and I will make it only this one time: Remain here in your private rooms while we finish our work. Stand down with your remaining forces-not that you have much choice in the matter, in any case. We will be gone soon enough.”

“With treasures,” Draygo Quick noted, and he nodded toward the onyx figurine.

Kimmuriel shrugged as if it should not matter.

“You wish to know whether Drizzt is favored by Mielikki or Lolth,” the drow said.

“You possess that knowledge?”

“I possess insights that go to the question you hope to clarify by garnering that knowledge,” Kimmuriel answered. “Indeed, I hold answers that will make the question of Drizzt Do’Urden’s allegiance or favor irrelevant to you.”

Draygo Quick swallowed hard.

“I have come from the hive mind of the illithids,” Kimmuriel explained, and Draygo swallowed hard again, for surely, if any creatures in the known multiverse had any answers to the fate of Abeir-Toril, it would be that group.

“So we have a deal?” Kimmuriel asked.

“You will finish and be gone? And what else?”

“You will hold to the agreement that Jarlaxle forged with Lord Parise Ulfbinder.”

“Nonsense!” Draygo Quick blurted. “You cannot wage war and smilingly sign a trade agreement in the same moment!”

“We did not wage war,” Kimmuriel corrected. “We came to retrieve that which does not belong to you-”

“Drizzt and his companions assaulted my castle! By my right of defense do I claim those spoils!”

“And in the process,” Kimmuriel continued, ignoring the rant, “we have saved you from the wrath of one far less merciful, or at least, of one far less interested in allowing you to continue to draw breath. This raid, Lord Draygo, has surely saved your life.”

Draygo Quick sputtered, unable to even find the words to strike back.

“But we do not expect your gratitude, just your good sense,” Kimmuriel continued. “We have provided you with cover, and I will offer to you an understanding of that which is happening between the Shadowfell and Toril beyond anything Drizzt Do’Urden might have provided.”

“So you have done me a favor, provided me cover and saved my life,” Draygo Quick said skeptically, “and you offer one more gift, and all in exchange for a few baubles and a prisoner?”

“I would hope for much more from you.”

“Do tell.”

“When I give to you my insights, you will understand that both of our respective groups, Bregan D’aerthe and you and your fellow lords of Netheril, will benefit greatly from our alliance.”

“How do I know you are not lying to me?”

Kimmuriel’s expression remained, as always, impassive. “Why would I need to do so? Your tower is full of unseen illithids, all eager to feast on the brains of shades. By my word alone are you and your acolytes protected.”

“The illithids answer to a dark elf?” the warlock asked doubtfully.

“In this instance, yes.”

The way Kimmuriel said it, so matter-of-factly, erased any doubts in Draygo Quick, and he realized that this offered deal was the best he was going to get.

“Good,” Kimmuriel answered, and only then did Draygo Quick realize that the drow psionicist was reading his thoughts.

“I will return to you within a tenday,” Kimmuriel promised. “For now, keep your minions in this tower if you wish to keep them safe.”

Draygo Quick started to protest, but Kimmuriel turned around and walked away, right through the tower wall.

Lord Draygo fell back into his chair, full of venom, but full, too, of intrigue.