The Last Threshold

Chapter 24

Drizzt waited, crouched defensively, unsure of his situation. The room had shaken violently-the drow couldn’t imagine what had caused such a rumble. His thoughts shot back to the cataclysm that had flattened the city of Neverwinter, the volcano that had thrown him from his feet with its incredible shockwave.

Was this, then, some similar natural, or primordial, disaster?

Drizzt stayed on his toes, listening, watching, knowing that he might have to spring away on an instant’s notice. Perhaps another earthquake would split the wall asunder and drop the ceiling. Would he be quick enough to get free of the crash? And perhaps such a leap and sprint would garner him his freedom beyond Draygo Quick’s crumbling walls.

But then what?

Soon after, the drow heard running outside his door, and shouts of protest, followed swiftly by grunts and groans and the all-too familiar thud of a body collapsing to the hard floor.

“An attack,” he whispered, and no sooner had the words escaped his lips than his room’s door swung in.

Drizzt tensed, ready to attack. Then he gasped, his thoughts spinning in a jumbled swirl, so much so that he tried to speak out a name, but barely made a squeak.

“Wonderful to see you again, as well,” Jarlaxle replied with a wry grin. “I have missed you, my old friend.”

“What? How?” Drizzt sputtered. Aside from all the implications of this unexpected encounter, Drizzt had thought Jarlaxle killed in Gauntlgrym. The sight of this one, another tie to a long-lost time, overwhelmed him and he simply could not contain his relief. He leaped across and wrapped Jarlaxle in a great hug.

“Ambergris,” Jarlaxle explained. “She alone escaped the castle of Draygo Quick, and she guided me back to this place.”

“But you died in Gauntlgrym!”

“I did?” Jarlaxle stepped back and looked at his arms and torso. “I fear I must disagree.”

Now Drizzt eyed him suspiciously. “This is a trick of Draygo Qui-”

Jarlaxle’s laughter cut him short. “My suspicious friend, be at ease. Recall the day of your escape from Menzoberranzan those decades ago, after you and Catti-brie dropped a stalactite through the roof of House Baenre’s chapel. Did I not show you then that I am a friend full of surprises? I will tell you all about the events of Gauntlgrym and beyond, but at another time. For now, let us leave this place.”

Drizzt mulled that over for a few moments and knew then that this was indeed Jarlaxle, the real, living Jarlaxle, come to rescue him.

“The earthquake? You caused it?”

“You will see, soon enough,” Jarlaxle promised. “But here.” He pulled a pouch from his belt and upended it, and all sorts of items-a bow and quiver, a pair of scimitars and a belt to hold them, boots, a mithral shirt, a unicorn pendant, a pair of magical bracers-tumbled forth, though few of those could have even fit in the small belt pouch had it not been powerfully enchanted. “I believe this is all of your gear, but my many companions are searching in case we have missed anything.”

Drizzt looked at the pile incredulously, but knew with only that cursory glance, of course, that something was indeed missing.

“And there is this,” Jarlaxle said, and Drizzt snapped his gaze back up, to see the drow mercenary holding forth the ring fashioned of pure ruby that Drizzt had taken from the Xorlarrin wizard. “Do you know what this is?”

“A mage’s bauble, I would expect.”

Jarlaxle nodded. “And of no small power. Keep it safe.” He flipped it to Drizzt, who caught it and slipped it upon his finger.

“And this,” Jarlaxle added, and when Drizzt looked up, the smiling mercenary held that which he wanted above all else, the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar. He handed it over to Drizzt’s trembling hands.

“She is free now,” Jarlaxle explained. “Draygo Quick’s bondage of her to this plane is no more, and she rests comfortably in her Astral home, recovering, and awaiting your call.”

Drizzt felt his knees going weak beneath him, and he stumbled back and fell into a chair, thoroughly overwhelmed. “Thank you,” he mouthed, over and over again.

“We’re not done,” Jarlaxle explained. “We must be gone from this place.”

“Effron-” Drizzt started to reply.

“Our next stop,” Jarlaxle assured him, patting a pouch on his other hip, one similar to that which had held Drizzt’s possessions. “Gather your gear and come along. Dress as we go and be prepared for battle, for the fight might not yet be fully won.”

By the time the pair reached Effron’s room, which was guarded now by Bregan D’aerthe warriors, Drizzt had his bow in hand, and all of his gear back in place. It was all he could manage to resist blowing the whistle to summon Andahar, so badly did he wish to see his unicorn steed once more. A sense of normalcy leaped at his heart and mind, and yet, at the same time, it all seemed even more strange now, like knowing the roads that would lead to a place where you had once lived, only to discover that it is no longer your home.

He just wasn’t sure. More than anything, he wanted to bring in Guenhwyvar, wanted to find the constancy of her thick fur and muscular flank, but he knew that he should not. He recalled the last time he had seen her, so haggard and appearing near death, and decided that he would let a tenday pass, or more even, before he called to her.

He glanced up at the sound of a crash, and saw Effron’s gear lying on the floor before the obviously-startled tiefling warlock.

“You killed Draygo Quick?” Effron breathlessly asked.

“You would like that?” Jarlaxle replied.

Effron looked at him curiously for just a moment, then admitted, “No.”

Jarlaxle’s smile and nod caught Drizzt by surprise, making him suspect that the drow’s question might have been some kind of test. He let it go, however, for they obviously had more to do.

And indeed, Jarlaxle led them off immediately, back the way he had come, and soon to enter the grand entry hall. Drizzt and Effron could only stare in disbelief at the new addition of an adamantine tower, standing amidst the crumbled floor and wall as if some giant had thrown it like a spear into the structure.

“Well met again, elf!” Athrogate the dwarf roared, bounding over to properly greet Drizzt.

“You fell into the pit, in Gauntlgrym,” Drizzt said. “Both of you.”

“Aye, and taked me a year to grow back me beard, durned fire beast, bwahahaha!” Athrogate replied.

“I foresee many nights about the hearth, drink in hand,” Jarlaxle said. “But those are for another world, not this one.” He swept his arm out toward the open tower door. “Athrogate will show you to the gate.”

“Gate?” Effron asked.

“To Luskan,” Jarlaxle explained, and he pushed Drizzt and Effron along. “Keep beside them,” he instructed Athrogate. “I will be along presently.”

“Only if the elf puts in a good word for meself with that pretty young Ambergris,” Athrogate said, and he tossed an exaggerated wink Drizzt’s way.

Overwhelmed again-or still, actually-Drizzt could only nod stupidly and follow along. He put his hand on his own belt pouch then slipped it inside, needing to feel the contours of the Guenhwyvar figurine and the promise of a true friend recovered.

Most of the drow were gone now, but Jarlaxle wasn’t finished. He kept the magical tower of Caer Gromph in place, and could only hope that Lord Draygo had taken Kimmuriel’s words to heart.

Off Jarlaxle went through a series of small chambers in the back left corner of the grand entry. Kimmuriel had shown him the way and it seemed as if there would be few obstacles or sentries blocking him, but still he was nervous, more so than at any other point in this rescue mission.

It wasn’t Draygo Quick causing the beads of sweat-so rare a sight! — on his forehead. It wasn’t the prospect of guards, or even facing a brutal enemy he knew to be around.

No, it was the prospect of facing the one he hoped to save.

He wound down to the castle’s substructure and moved along a long corridor to a trio of doors. Before them lay four more of Draygo Quick’s sentries, bound and gagged, two awake and the others still under the effects of the drow sleep poison.

Jarlaxle tipped his hat to them as he stepped over them to the center door. He took a deep breath and he pushed through, taking care to softly close the door behind him. He had come into a large cellar full of low archways, connecting the massive stone supports for the castle. Fortunately, Caer Gromph hadn’t sunk its roots into this portion of the castle.

Jarlaxle moved slowly, keeping close to the stone buttresses, trying to get a feel of the dusty and ancient catacombs. The smell of decay hung thick in here, and many crypts lined the walls, open to the main area, their skeletal remains lying in a state of eternal rest, many with arms crossed, others with bones fallen away. Rusty swords and tarnished crowns, tattered and decayed robes and crawly things flitted around the edges of Jarlaxle’s lowlight vision, but the gloom was too complete for him to get an accurate view of the place. He crouched beside one of the low archways and pulled a little ceramic ball out of his belt pouch. He brought it up to his lips and whispered the command, then tossed it deeper into the catacomb.

The ball rolled and bounced and burst into flame as it settled, spitting sparks as it lit the dust around it, and flickering with the intensity of a torch, casting strange shadows all around.

“Come and play, pretty lady,” Jarlaxle said quietly.

He froze in place and listened, and thought something or someone had shuffled behind another low archway not so far from him.

“Do be reasonable,” he said, moving that way, but his words were more of an afterthought, for his concentration surely lay elsewhere.

He came up near that low archway and paused, shadows dancing.

Suddenly, one of those shadows wasn’t a shadow, but the medusa leaping out at him as he spun around to meet the charge, her red eyes wide, her killing gaze falling over him.

Jarlaxle saw her in all of her awful glory, and he knew without doubt that only his eyepatch had saved him in that instance, that without its powerful dweomer, his skin would already be turning to stone. He called upon his innate drow abilities, his affinity to the magical emanations of the Underdark, and brought forth a globe of impenetrable darkness around him and the medusa, stealing her most powerful weapon.

At the same time, his left hand pumped, his bracer feeding him daggers to throw out at his foe, and he caught a dagger in his right hand as well, and snapped his wrist to elongate the weapon into a sword, which he put out before him, hoping to keep the medusa and her hair of living, poisonous snakes back from him.

When he didn’t strike her with his prodding weapon, he thrust out further, and still hit nothing but the empty air, and he knew that his foe had slipped aside.

Totally blind and totally helpless were not the same thing with Jarlaxle. He had committed the area to crystal-clear memory, and now he moved without hesitation, slipping down and around to get under the archway, an opening no higher than his shoulders. He came out of the magical darkness as soon as he crossed under, throwing his back against the buttress stone.

He nearly faltered, however, for from this new vantage, he noted before him the man he had called a friend for decades,

Artemis Entreri stood perfectly still, of course, though he had surely been in the midst of movement when he had looked at the medusa. He was angled and up against Dahlia’s side, as if trying to knock her aside, and it didn’t take much imagination for Jarlaxle to picture the scene that had led to this tragedy.

The distraction almost cost Jarlaxle dearly, for he noted the pursuit of the medusa only at the last instant. He leaped away and spun around to face his nemesis, but not to look at her, instead leveling a wand at the level of her head. He listened intently to the hissing approach of her snakes as she moved into range to strike at him as he spoke the command word, then breathed a sigh of relief when that hissing abruptly ceased and he heard the medusa stumble backward.

Jarlaxle dared open his eye to see the powerful creature struggled and staggering, her head engulfing in a blob of viscous goo, and her hands, too, had become fast stuck as she had tried to scrape the sticky stuff away.

One of the snakes wriggled free of the goo, waving at Jarlaxle menacingly, though the medusa was too far away for it to strike at him.

Still, that freed serpent might guide his foe, he realized, uncertain of the relationship between a medusa and those snakes, or whether she might, perhaps, see through the creature’s eyes. So he fired another glob at her, this one capturing her midsection and pinning her back against the side of the stone archway.

He thought to go and finish her off, but held back, figuring that perhaps Lord Draygo would be more agreeable in their future encounters if he let the wretched and powerful creature live. He watched for a few more moments, until he was certain that she was truly and fully caught.

Jarlaxle turned to the statues, and quickly located the third, that of Afafrenfere, not so far away. From another of his many pouches, the drow mercenary produced a large jug and set it on the floor halfway between the monk and the other two.

He took a deep breath, unsure as to whether this would work. Even Gromph, who had fashioned it for him, could offer no guarantees. And even if it did work, the archmage had warned, the conversion of flesh to stone, then back to flesh, brought with it such a tremendous shock to the body that many would not survive one or the other transmutations.

“Entreri and Dahlia,” the drow whispered to himself, trying to garner his resolve. “Hearty souls.” He looked at the monk and could only shrug, for he cared little for the stranger.

He popped the cork off the jug and stepped back as smoke began to pour forth, filling the area and obscuring his vision. His first indication that his powerful brother had succeeded was the sound of jostling, as Entreri and Dahlia, flesh once more, stumbled and tumbled, trying to extract themselves from the tangle.

Entreri cried out, “No!” and Dahlia merely cried out, and from the other side, the monk leaped into view, landing in a defensive crouch, one arm up to shield his eyes, the other cocked to strike.

“Be at ease, my friends,” Jarlaxle said, stepping forward and scooping up the jug as the fog began to dissipate. “The battle is won.”

“You!” Entreri cried, clearly horrified and outraged, and launched himself at Jarlaxle.

“Artemis!” Dahlia interrupted, and interrupted, too, Entreri’s charge, blocking his way.

“You are quite welcome,” Jarlaxle said dryly.

“Who are you?” Dahlia demanded.

“Jarlaxle!” Entreri answered before the drow could.

“At your service,” Jarlaxle agreed, sweeping low in a bow. “Indeed, already at your service,” he added, and he snapped his finger, breaking another magical ceramic torch. He dropped it to the floor as it flared to life, revealing the stuck medusa clearly to the others. Still she struggled against the stone buttress, one menacing snake coiled atop her goo-covered head.

“You would ask for gratitude,” Entreri spat at him.

“Call us even, then,” Jarlaxle replied. “Or leave our squabble for another time and place, when we are safely away from Lord Draygo and his minions.”

Dahlia looked back at him, clearly alarmed, as did Afafrenfere.

“Come,” Jarlaxle bade them. “It is time to go. You have been here a long time.”

“How is this possible?” Dahlia asked, glancing all around at the unfamiliar catacomb. “We were in the room, the checkerboard floor. Drizzt and Effron fell-”

“They are well,” Jarlaxle assured her. “They have already escaped back to Luskan.”

“How long?” Afafrenfere asked.

“The three of you have served as decorations for Castle Draygo for many months,” Jarlaxle explained. “For more than a year. It is the spring of 1466 on Toril.”

Three stunned expressions came back at him, for even Entreri seemed sobered by the news.

“Quickly,” Jarlaxle bade them. “Before the medusa wriggles free, or Lord Draygo finds us.” He started away at a brisk clip, the other three falling in line.

Afafrenfere and Dahlia both gasped when they came back into the checkerboard entry hall, to see a tower construct blocking the far wall, but loudest of all, and most satisfying to Jarlaxle by far, was the resigned sigh offered by Artemis Entreri, who knew Jarlaxle well enough to not need any detailed explanations.

“Inside you go,” Jarlaxle explained, stepping aside and motioning to the tower door and a drow soldier standing guard. “He will show you to the gate, and the gate will show you to Luskan.”

“Ambergris!” Afafrenfere said. “I will not leave without her!”

“Your gallant dwarf friend was the one who led me here, of course,” Jarlaxle replied.

“Effron and Drizzt?” Dahlia demanded.

“Likely with Ambergris by now, and yes, back in the City of Sails. Now, be gone, I beg.”

Afafrenfere and Dahlia both looked to Entreri.

“Trust him,” the assassin admitted. “For what choice do we have? And indeed,” he added, staring hard at the most-hated Jarlaxle, “only because we have no other choice.”

The monk and Dahlia started for the tower, but Entreri held back, and paced to stand right before Jarlaxle. “I have not forgotten what you did to me,” he said. “Nor the years of torment I suffered because of your cowardice.”

“There is more to the story,” Jarlaxle assured him. “Someday, perhaps, you will hear the tale in full.”

“I doubt that,” Entreri replied with a snarl and he started after his companions. He glanced back a couple of times, but seemed more to be watching out warily for Jarlaxle, as if expecting the drow to stab him in the back-literally this time.

Jarlaxle said no more and just let him go. He had hoped that his daring, and expensive, rescue might put him on even footing with the man once more, but he had always known that hope to be rooted more in his heart than in his reason.

Artemis Entreri had been tortured for decades as Herzgo Alegni’s slave, and Jarlaxle had little argument against the truth that much of Entreri’s suffering had been his fault.

Artemis Entreri was not a forgiving man.

A signal flash in the tower’s second floor showed Jarlaxle that the trio and the remaining guards had gone through the magical portal back to Toril.

With a quick chant, the drow dismissed the tower, which reverted to a mere cube on the floor, and more than a bit of Castle Draygo rained down from above as the intervening structure disappeared. The room’s grand balcony crashed down in ruins. When the rumbling ended, Jarlaxle realized that he was not alone, and indeed it was Kimmuriel who walked in from the castle’s far wing to scoop up Gromph’s toy.

“Are you quite finished?” Kimmuriel asked with rare sarcasm, tossing the cube to Jarlaxle.

“You have brought Lord Draygo to an understanding?”

“He desperately desires the answers that I am uncovering in my commune with the illithids,” Kimmuriel explained.

“And you are willing to supply those answers?”

“In the tumult of coming days, we will find a valuable ally in Lord Draygo Quick, and in his peers.”

Jarlaxle looked around at the ruined entry hall and laughed at the absurdity.

“Allies, then,” he said with a snicker. “Now pray open a gate that I might be out of this place.”

“Indeed, but to Baldur’s Gate and not to Luskan.”

Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.

“Your role in this play is ended, my friend,” Kimmuriel explained.

“Powerful entities seek Drizzt-”

“You need not remind me, but that is a worry for others of Bregan D’aerthe and not for Jarlaxle.”

“Athrogate is in Luskan,” Jarlaxle argued.

“I will return him to your side in short order.”

Jarlaxle eyed his companion sternly, and even entertained a thought of betraying Kimmuriel here. It passed quickly, though, as Jarlaxle considered Entreri’s reaction to him.

Perhaps it would be better Kimmuriel’s way.