The Last Threshold

Chapter 3

Drizzt held the statuette up before his eyes, staring at it with trepidation. He hadn’t wanted to dismiss Guenhwyvar the previous night, fearing that her arrival had been an anomaly, and one not to be repeated. But the cat had appeared haggard to him, and she had needed rest.

The sun had not yet risen outside the window of his room in Neverwinter, and he had dismissed the cat long after sundown the previous day.

But despite the short time, he had to try to call her again.

“Guenhwyvar,” he whispered.

On the bed behind him, Dahlia stirred but did not awaken.

“Guenhwyvar.”

Even in the darkened room, Drizzt could see the gray mist rising around him, and could feel the presence of Guenhwyvar growing. In the span a few heartbeats, though it seemed like a long while to Drizzt, she was there again, right beside him. The drow wrapped her in a hug, overjoyed. He needed her now, perhaps more than at any time since he’d walked with her out of Menzoberranzan those many decades before.

He hugged her closer, his head against her flank.

He noted her ragged breathing.

Too soon, he realized, and he silently berated himself for his impatience. “Be gone,” he whispered into her ear. “I will call you again soon.”

The cat obeyed, pacing in a circle and diminishing fast to insubstantial mist, then to nothing at all.

Drizzt started for the bed where Dahlia lay, but changed his mind and went to the window instead. He took a seat and looked out over the city of Neverwinter, still a shadow of what it had been. But the settlers were industrious and determined to rebuild Neverwinter from the ashes of the cataclysm.

Drizzt fed off that thought, determined to rebuild his own life. He reflexively glanced at Dahlia as he considered that. Would she be a part of that? She was an elf, and young, and surely would outlive Drizzt unless an enemy’s blade cut her down. Would she walk beside Drizzt for the rest of his days?

He couldn’t know.

He turned back to the darkened city and thought of his other three companions, and he couldn’t help but consider them in light of the four friends he once traveled beside.

Would any of this group measure up to the standards, the character, of any of the Companions of the Hall?

The question stung the drow. Surely in terms of skill, with blade or fist or even magic, the group around him had proven their capabilities. Were these four to battle the previous four companions he had known, the victor would be long in doubt.

But that hardly mattered, Drizzt understood, for the more important measurement was one of morality, of purpose.

In that regard …

Drizzt sighed and began to rise, thinking to return to his bed and Dahlia’s side. He changed his mind and remained at the window instead. He fell asleep in the chair, staring out at the city of Neverwinter, rising from the ashes, for the sight brought him comfort and hope.

“Ye best be gettin’ him out o’ the city if ye’re wanting to keep him beside us,” Ambergris told Drizzt later that morning in the common room of the inn. The night had been cold, and the chill had found its way inside, so Ambergris threw another log on the fire.

“Soon,” Drizzt assured her.

“Boats’re putting out for the south every day,” Ambergris warned.

The drow nodded absently as he stared into the flames.

“Ye got him anxious, though I’m not for knowin’ how, but ye understand that one well enough to know that puttin’ him on the edge isn’t to hold for long, at least not in the direction ye’re hopin’!”

Drizzt nodded again and wasn’t about to argue with the perceptive dwarf’s reasoning. He had teased Artemis Entreri with the promise of his jeweled dagger, but delays would likely turn intrigue into anger.

An angry Artemis Entreri was not among the goals of Drizzt Do’Urden. “Today,” he heard himself telling Amber before he even considered the promise. “We’ll head out today.”

He would forego his planned visit with Arunika, he decided then, for with Guenhwyvar back at his side, he did not need to seek her out. But he could not as easily turn away from the intriguing mystery they had discovered southeast of the city. He pictured the destroyed goblin encampment once more, the marks on one throat Dahlia had attributed to a vampire, the carnage at the tent he believed a trademark of another type of foe. Dahlia had insisted that they go back out in pursuit of the goblin killer, her eagerness for the hunt only increasing as the night had deepened.

The elf woman entered the common room then, her expression revealing that she had not appreciated waking up alone in her bed.

“When the others come down, find me in the square outside the market and we’ll set a rendezvous point north of the city,” Drizzt instructed the dwarf. He grabbed a couple of morningfeast buns from the tray set out and met Dahlia before she had crossed half the room.

“Be quick,” Drizzt said to her. “The merchants are unfolding their wares, and we might find our best bargain if we are first to the kiosks.”

Dahlia looked at him curiously.

“Our time grows short,” Drizzt explained. “Let’s find your vampire.”

Dahlia stood staring at Drizzt with hands on hips. He understood her confusion, for on their return trip to the city the previous night, when she had concocted the idea of purchasing some magical assistance to seek out a vampire, Drizzt had openly doubted her, had even ridiculed her a bit.

Drizzt merely returned her doubting look with a nod, tossed her a small pouch of coins, and headed out of the inn.

Within the hour, Andahar the unicorn thundered along the eastern road out of Neverwinter, heading into the rising sun, easily bearing Drizzt and Dahlia.

At Dahlia’s bidding, Drizzt slowed the pace a bit. He glanced back at the woman, and at the curious, softly-glowing wand she pointed off at the forest to their right.

“There,” she said, nudging the wand toward the trees.

“So you trust in the merchant’s words and believe that wand?”

“I paid good gold for it.”

“Foolishly,” Drizzt muttered under his breath, but merely to lighten the mood. It had been his coin, after all.

He turned Andahar aside and began trotting off across the small field leading to the tree line. The wand, so the merchant had explained, was imbued with a dweomer to detect undead creatures, of which there had been no shortage of late in this area, since Sylora had created the vile Dread Ring.

Drizzt pulled Andahar to a stop and swung around to regard Dahlia directly, though she hardly seemed to note his glance, so intent was she upon the wand. “Why is this suddenly so important to you?” Drizzt asked.

A startled Dahlia looked up at him. She paused for a few heartbeats before responding, “You think that letting a vampire run free is the valiant act of a good citizen?”

“The forest is full of danger, with or without a vampire.”

“So Drizzt Do’Urden wishes to leave such a stone unturned?” Dahlia quipped. “And here I was under the impression that you were a hero.”

Drizzt put on a smirk, and was glad that Dahlia was verbally jousting in such a playful manner. There were times when Dahlia hinted that there could be much more between them, times when Drizzt dared hope that he could mold these new companions into a band worthy of his memories.

Dahlia’s expression changed abruptly.

“Indulge me,” Dahlia pleaded, in all seriousness.

“You think it’s your old companion?”

“Dor’crae?” Dahlia blurted, and her surprise was genuine, Drizzt could tell. “Hardly. I destroyed him, utterly and gladly! Don’t you remember?”

Drizzt did remember, of course. Dahlia had battled Dor’crae, the dying dwarves beside them. She had driven him from the antechamber, already mortally wounded, only to fly under the deluge of the water elementals re-entering the primordial pit in Gauntlgrym. Under the assault of the rushing, magical waters, the vampire had seemingly been obliterated.

So it wasn’t the thought of Dor’crae driving Dahlia, he then understood, and he suspected another angle to Dahlia’s desire to see this through. Perhaps she believed that this Effron creature, her son, was behind the attack.

He found that he couldn’t follow his own thoughts down that road, however, given the reminder of Dor’crae’s last moments-for indeed, how could Drizzt ever forget that awful moment when he had come across the pit and into the antechamber to find his friends dead or dying beside Gauntlgrym’s all-important lever?

“Then it cannot be him, and we should …” Drizzt started to say, but his eyes widened as he considered the scene at the lever immediately following the demise of Dor’crae. He recalled Bruenor’s last words to him, sweet and sad and forever echoing in his mind, of Bruenor fast dying, the light leaving his gray eyes, and of Thibbledorf Pwent …

Thibbledorf Pwent.

Drizzt thought of the torn tent in the goblin camp, the recognizable carnage. Vampire or battlerager, he and Dahlia had debated.

All of those nagging thoughts coalesced, and Drizzt had his answer. He was right in his guess, and so was Dahlia.

Without another word, he turned around and urged Andahar forward.

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear, but she needn’t have, for if he had been alone, Drizzt would have taken this very same course.

They slowed when they entered the tree line, Drizzt picking his way carefully through the trees and tangled branches. They had barely entered the thicket when Dahlia’s wand glowed brighter and a wisp of blue-gray fog reached out from it, wafting into the forest before them.

“Well, that is interesting,” Drizzt remarked.

“Follow it,” Dahlia instructed.

The foggy coil continued to reach out before them like a rope, guiding their way through the trees. They came past a stand of oaks, and near what they thought to be a boulder.

Andahar pulled up suddenly and snorted, and Drizzt gasped in alarm, for it was no rock before them, but a large and strange beast, a blended concoction of magic run afoul.

Part bear. Part fowl.

“So we go north,” Afafrenfere remarked. “You know this place?”

Artemis Entreri tossed his full sack over the back of the saddle and leaped astride his nightmare. “Only an hour’s ride up the road,” he explained.

“Aye, and me friend here can run like no other,” Ambergris said. “But with me short legs, I’m thinkin’ I best be riding.”

Entreri nodded, then merely walked his mount away and said over his shoulder, “A pity you’ve got no horse then, or pig.”

Ambergris put her hands on her hips and stared up at the man. “It’ll be takin’ us longer to get there, then,” she said.

“No, it will take you longer,” Entreri corrected, and he kicked his mount into movement and leaped away, charging out Neverwinter’s northern gate.

Brother Afafrenfere snorted and chuckled helplessly.

“Aye,” Ambergris agreed. “If I had a better road afore me, I’d be walkin’ away.”

“Better than … what?” the monk asked. “Do we even know what adventure Drizzt might have planned for us?”

“We need to be keepin’ him close,” Ambergris explained. “Dahlia, and aye, that one, too,” she said, nodding toward the now-distant Entreri. “If Lord Draygo or Cavus Dun comes a’huntin’, I’ll be wantin’ the blades o’ them three between me and the shades.”

Afafrenfere considered her words for a few moments, then nodded and started toward the northern gate.

“Don’t ye outrun me,” the dwarf warned. “Or I’ll put a spell on ye and leave ye held and helpless in the forest.”

The reminder of the unexpected assault in the bowels of Gauntlgrym had Afafrenfere turning around, glowering at the dwarf. “That worked once,” he replied, “but not again. Never again.”

Ambergris laughed heartily as she came up beside him. “Best spell what e’er found ye, boy,” she said. “For now ye’ve got a finer life ahead o’ ye! A life of adventure, don’t ye doubt. A life o’ battle.”

“Aye, and probably a life of battling my own companions,” he said dryly, and Ambergris laughed all the harder.

That beast, an owlbear, didn’t rise up to meet them, and Drizzt calmed quickly, recognizing that it was quite dead.

“Well now,” Dahlia said, sliding down from the unicorn’s back to stand beside the slain behemoth. And it was a behemoth, as large as a great brown bear, but with the head and powerful beak of an owl atop those powerful ursine shoulders.

“Indeed,” Drizzt agreed as he slid down.

Dahlia bent low beside the beast, ruffling the fur-the bloody fur-around its neck. “I expect that we’ve found our vampire’s most recent kill.”

“A vampire killed an owlbear?” Drizzt asked skeptically and he, too, bent low and began inspecting the corpse, but not its neck.

“So you admit that it was a vampire?” As she asked, Dahlia used both hands to pull the beast’s thick fur aside, to reveal the canine puncture wounds.

“So it would seem,” Drizzt replied. “And yet-” He put his shoulder to the owlbear and nudged it over just a bit, then similarly parted the fur, to reveal a larger hole, a much deeper puncture. “I know this wound as well.”

“Do tell.”

“A helmet spike,” Drizzt could hardly get the words out. He thought again of the grisly scene beside the lever, thought of Pwent.

“Perhaps a vampire and a battlerager are working together?”

“A dwarf allied with a vampire?” Drizzt asked doubtfully. He had another explanation, but one he wasn’t ready to share.

“Athrogate traveled beside Dor’crae.”

“Athrogate is a mercenary,” Drizzt said, shaking his head. This wasn’t just any battlerager he was considering. “Battleragers are loyal soldiers, not mercenaries.”

Dahlia stood and pointed her wand toward the forest once more. The mist reappeared and snaked away through the trees.

“Well, let’s find out what’s going on, then,” Dahlia said.

Drizzt dismissed Andahar and they moved into the forest on foot. For many hours they searched fruitlessly, Dahlia expending charge after charge of her wand. Many times, Drizzt put his hand to his belt pouch, but he knew that he shouldn’t bring in Guen, not for another day at least.

“If we wait until nightfall, perhaps the vampire will find us,” Dahlia remarked later on, and only then did Drizzt realize that the sun had already passed its zenith and was moving lower in the west. He considered Dahlia’s words and the thought did not sit well with him. Guenhwyvar would be with them in the morning, and she would find their prey.

So intrigued had Drizzt been by the possibilities swirling before him that he had forgotten one other detail of the day’s plans. He looked to the north, where their three companions waited, at his request. Artemis Entreri would not be pleased.

“Where to now?” Dahlia asked.

Drizzt turned back to the west. They were too far out, having passed into reaches of the forest that neither of them knew. “Back to Neverwinter,” the drow decided.

“You would leave Entreri and the others out alone in the forest with a vampire about?”

“If we’re not at their camp by twilight, they’ll return to the city,” Drizzt said absently. He could not focus on the others. This hunt, so suddenly, was more important. “Vampire.…” Dahlia said again, ominously.

“We will find it tomorrow.”

“You indulge me,” Dahlia remarked. “I like that.”

Drizzt didn’t bother to explain his own interests, particularly when Dahlia moved closer, wearing an impish grin.

“Vampire,” she said again with a wide smile, her eyes sparkling.

Drizzt considered that grin, and wanted to share in her mirth at that moment, but found it impossible, for he was too troubled by the possibilities.

Dahlia moved right in front of him and casually draped her arms around his shoulders, putting her face very close to his. “No argument this time?” she asked quietly.

Drizzt managed a chuckle.

“Vampire,” she said and her smile turned in a lewd direction. She shifted to the side and lunged for his throat, biting him playfully on the neck.

“Still no argument?” she asked and she bit him again, a bit harder.

“You are hoping for a vampire, I can see,” Drizzt replied, and it was hard for him to keep his thoughts straight at that particular moment. It was the first time they had touched, other than riding, since they’d left the darkness of Gauntlgrym. “I would hate to disavow you of your wishes.”

Dahlia moved back to stare him in the eye. “Hoping?”

“Hoping to be one, then,” Drizzt said, “apparently.”

Dahlia, laughing, hugged him close. She brought her lips to his ear and kissed him softly, then asked, “Have you forgiven me?”

Drizzt pushed her back to arms’ length and studied her face. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her, particularly when she wore her hair in this softer style, and with the war woad barely visible.

“I had nothing to forgive.”

“My kiss with Entreri?” Dahlia asked. “Your jealousy?”

“It was the sword, playing on my insecurities, pressing my imagination to dark places.”

“Are you sure that’s all it was?” she asked, and she reached over and brushed Drizzt’s long white hair from in front of his face. “Perhaps the sword was only exploiting that which it saw within you.”

Drizzt was shaking his head before she had ever finished. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he repeated.

He almost added, “Have you forgiven yourself?” but he wisely held that thought, not wanting to open anew the wound inflicted by the appearance of the young and twisted warlock.

“Let’s go to Neverwinter,” Drizzt said, but now Dahlia was shaking her head.

“Not yet,” she explained, and she led him to a mossy bed.

Dahlia tapped Drizzt on the arm and when he looked up from his bowl of stew, nodded toward the tavern door.

Drizzt was not surprised to see the three enter, nor was he caught off guard by Artemis Entreri’s dour expression. When the assassin noticed him, he led the other two straight through the crowd to the table.

“Winter fast approaches,” Entreri said, pulling up a chair across from Drizzt.

“The night is cold,” he added when Drizzt didn’t respond.

“Good, then, that you decided to return to the city,” the drow replied casually.

“Oh, grand,” Afafrenfere remarked to Ambergris off to the side. “I will so enjoy watching these two beat each other to death.”

The dwarf snorted.

Drizzt, seeming unbothered by it all, went back to his stew, or tried to until Entreri’s hand snapped across the table and grabbed him roughly by the wrist.

The drow lifted his gaze slowly to regard the man.

“I don’t appreciate being left in a cold forest,” Entreri said evenly.

“We got lost,” Drizzt replied.

“How could you get lost?” Entreri asked. “You were the one who named the place of rendezvous.”

“Our road took us to the east, to unfamiliar ground,” Dahlia interjected.

“What road?” asked Entreri, still staring at Drizzt.

Drizzt sat back in his chair as Entreri let go of his wrist. The drow glanced to the side and motioned to the other two to take a seat. He wondered where he should take this. He was pretty certain now who and what Dahlia and he were hunting. The question was: Did he want Artemis Entreri along on that hunt? The encounter, should it happen, was going to be difficult enough to control as it was, and how much more difficult would it become with the unpredictable and merciless Artemis Entreri in the mix?

“What is your plan, drow?” Entreri asked.

All four of the others, even Dahlia, looked to him for exactly that answer, and it was a good question.

“You escorted me to the bowels of Gauntlgrym to be rid of that cursed sword,” Entreri said. “For that, I owe you.”

Entreri looked to Dahlia, pointedly so. “Or owed you,” he clarified. “But no more. I waited where you asked, and you did not arrive.”

“A great sacrifice,” Dahlia said sarcastically.

Afafrenfere giggled and Ambergris snorted.

Entreri turned his gaze from Dahlia to the other two before settling back on Drizzt.

“You owed me nothing,” Drizzt answered that look. “Not before and not now.”

“Hardly true,” said Dahlia.

“To be rid of Herzgo Alegni, to be rid of Charon’s Claw”-he paused and looked directly at Dahlia“-to be rid of Sylora Salm-all of these things were good and right. I would have undertaken them had I been alone and the opportunity had come before me.”

“Drizzt the hero,” Entreri muttered.

The drow shrugged, unwilling to engage the assassin on that level.

Artemis Entreri stared at him a few moments longer, then placed both his hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “We do not part as enemies, Drizzt Do’Urden, and that is no small thing,” he said. “Well met and farewell.”

With a last glance at Dahlia, he turned and walked out of the tavern.

“And where is that leaving us?” Brother Afafrenfere asked Ambergris.

The dwarf looked at Drizzt for an answer. “Which road are ye thinking to be more excitin’?” she asked. “Yer own or Entreri’s? For meself, I’m itching for a fight or ten.”

“Ten, and ten more after that,” Afafrenfere added eagerly.

Drizzt had no answer, and when they looked instead to Dahlia, the elf woman could only shrug.

Drizzt, too, looked at Dahlia, her crestfallen expression stabbing deep into his heart. Not a stab of jealousy, however, and he found that curious.

“Well we’re not to solve it here, then,” Ambergris declared, and she too leaped up from her seat. “And me belly’s grumblin’ to be sure!” At the sound of a crashing plate, she looked over to the bar where a band of ruffians began jostling for position.

“House covers the bets,” the bartender announced.

“Oh, but I’m startin’ to like this Neverwinter place,” Ambergris said. “Come along, me friend,” she added to Afafrenfere. “Let’s go earn a few coins.”

She turned to Drizzt and Dahlia and offered an exaggerated wink. “Don’t look like much, does he?” she asked, indicating her rather small and scrawny companion. “But bare-fisted, ain’t many to be standin’ long against him!”

She gave a great laugh.

“We’ll be about, if ye find a road worth walkin’!” she said. She glanced back at the bar, where two large men were stripping down to the waist to begin their battle, and where others passed coins and shouted their odds and bets.

“Ye might just find us in the most expensive rooms to be found in the city,” Ambergris offered and started away, Afafrenfere in tow. As they left, Drizzt and Dahlia heard the dwarf remark softly to her monk companion, “Now don’t ye drop any o’ them too quick. Keep the next one hopin’ that he can beat ye, that we might be playin’ it out for all it’s worth.”

Dahlia’s chuckle turned Drizzt back to her.

“We seem to attract interesting companions,” he said.

“Amusing, at least.” She immediately sobered after the remark, and gave Drizzt a serious look. “What is our road?”

“Right now? To find our vampire, is it not?”

“Battlerager, you mean.”

“That, too.”

“And then?”

Drizzt wore a pensive look as he sincerely tried to sort out that very thing.

“Find an answer quickly or we’re to lose three companions,” Dahlia remarked. “Or two more, for it seems that one is already gone.”

Drizzt considered that, but shook his head. The allure of the jeweled dagger would keep Entreri beside him, he believed, for at least a bit longer. Despite Entreri’s parting words and obvious anger, Drizzt knew that he could get the man on the road beside him, as long as they started that journey soon.

“You wish to keep them by our side?” Drizzt asked, nodding toward the monk and dwarf.

“The world is full of danger,” she replied. She looked past him, then, to a commotion beginning to brew, and she nodded for him to turn around.

There stood Afafrenfere, stripped to the waist, his wily form seeming puny indeed against the giant of a man he faced.

The hulking fighter took a lumbering swing, which the monk easily ducked, and Afafrenfere quietly jabbed the man in the ribs as he did so. A second wild hook by the large man missed badly, and the crowd howled with laughter.

The third punch, though, caught Afafrenfere on the side of the jaw and he went flying to the floor, and the crowd howled again.

“It hardly touched him,” Dahlia remarked, and with respect in her voice indicating that she had recognized the monk’s feint. Drizzt had seen it as well. Afafrenfere had turned with the blow perfectly, always just ahead of it enough so that it couldn’t do any real damage.

The monk got up to his feet, appearing shaky, but as the hulking man fell over him, Afafrenfere found a perfectly balanced stance and tore off a series of sudden and vicious strikes at the man’s midsection-again, subtly, in close, and few noticed that the big man leaning over him was too tight with pain to offer any real response.

Afafrenfere slipped out of the hold to the side and struck repeatedly, his open hands slapping against the man’s ribs.

“He’s pulling his strikes,” Drizzt remarked.

“Now don’t ye drop any o’ them too quick,” Dahlia said in a near-perfect Ambergris impression. She ended abruptly, though, and winced, and so did Drizzt, when the big man spun around with a left hook that seemed to come all the way from his ankles, a wild and powerful swing that might have ripped Afafrenfere’s head from his shoulders had it actually struck.

But the monk ducked, again so easily, and the fist sailed over him to crash into one of the tavern’s support columns so forcefully that the whole of the building shuddered.

And how the big man swooned as he pulled in his broken hand, his eyes crossing, his knees wobbling, and it seemed like he was doing all he could manage to prevent himself from vomiting.

Afafrenfere slipped around to the side of him with great speed, bent low, and spun a circuit on the ball of his right foot. He grasped the bar, planting himself firmly as his lifted left foot set against the large man’s back, giving him full balance and brace as he kicked out. He launched the man through the air to crash face first into a table, sending plates and glasses and splintering wood flying, and patrons dancing aside.

The crowd cheered wildly, and even more so when the big man tried to rise and simply fell back to the floor, clutching his smashed hand as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

Jingling coins and sputtered curses, wild cheers and calls for more, filled the air as the tavern took on an even greater festive atmosphere.

And amidst it all, Drizzt and Dahlia focused on Ambergris, pulling forth her holy symbol as she moved to the fallen pugilist. “I’ll be fixin’ yer hand for ye,” she said, and added, “for a few coins.”

“Brilliant,” Drizzt muttered helplessly, and behind him, Dahlia laughed again.

“I grow bored,” Afafrenfere said to Ambergris. The two stood off to the side as another match took center stage.

“Bah, not to worry,” said the dwarf. “After that last one, I ain’t to get anyone to challenge yerself anyway.”

As she spoke, a burly man in the current brawl hoisted his opponent up over his head and threw him across the room, to smash down among the chairs and tables.

“More coins for a healer,” Ambergris whispered. She started away, but stopped abruptly, considering the victor, who stood with his large arms upraised, roaring and prancing about.

“Might that that one’ll want a try at ye,” the dwarf said to the monk.

“He is a lumbering fool,” Afafrenfere replied.

“Aye, but a proud one.”

The monk shrugged.

Soon after Ambergris had cast a healing spell upon the latest loser, Afafrenfere squared up against the large man, who seemed to have a bit of ogre blood, so tall and wide was he.

Of course, that only made him a bigger target.

He came on brazenly, swiping his thick arms across one after the other, while Afafrenfere ducked back, then under, then off to the side.

The cheers began to quiet, shouts of complaint arising as many twists and turns resulted in not a blow being landed.

Afafrenfere kept glancing at Ambergris, who held a bag of coins, for which she could find no takers.

The big man came at him, hands open, and Afafrenfere did not dodge then, but stepped forward and punched the man in the face.

The move cost him dearly, though, as the big man grabbed him around the neck with both hands and lifted him off the ground. Afafrenfere kicked out at him, but so long were the man’s arms that the monk couldn’t get any solid hits.

He glanced over again at Ambergris, who was arguing with several patrons who were demanding that she honor her offer and place her bets.

The dwarf convincingly argued-too convincingly and for far too long, Afafrenfere thought, as the big man choked him and jerked him side to side like a doll. Finally, Ambergris relented and handed over the coins.

She noted the monk’s glance her way and tossed him a wink.

Afafrenfere grabbed the big man’s thumbs and held on tight then kicked out at him with both feet but pulled them back in close before they connected. He used the momentum to go right over, lifting his legs above him and thus breaking free of the hold.

He landed back a stride or so, but the big man kept up in pursuit, as Afafrenfere had hoped, and grabbed again at the monk’s throat. Before the behemoth could come close and hoist Afafrenfere from the floor again, however, the monk grabbed at his hands, hooked his thumbs under the big man’s thumbs and folded his legs under him, dropping straight to the floor.

The big man lurched forward, but before he realized what was happening, the monk landed in a kneeling position and used the momentum of that drop to drive his hands down and over with sudden and brutal force, bending the big man’s thumbs back over the large hands.

The dull thud of the monk’s knees hitting the floor fast became the sharp crack of finger bones breaking.

The big man made a strange sound, half growl, half howl, and pulled his hands away. Up came the furious monk, leaping forward to strike a quick left and right into the man’s face. And up came the broken hands and Afafrenfere came on even harder, letting fly a tremendous right into the man’s gut. He staggered back to crash into the back and lurched over, arms crossed over his belly.

Afafrenfere’s left hook cracked him across the face, whipping his head to the side. He brought his hands to block, and the monk’s tremendous right-handed uppercut hit him in the gut with enough force to lift him off the ground.

Down went the big man’s hands and across came Afafrenfere’s left hook, again snapping his opponent’s head to the side. Up went the man’s hands defensively and another uppercut lifted him from his feet.

The devastating cycle repeated a third time, which left the big man out on his feet, his arms just hanging there helplessly. Still angry about the choke hold, Afafrenfere leaned right against the big man and his right hand pumped repeatedly, each blow hoisting the brute from the floor and dropping him back in place.

“Enough!” came a cry from the crowd.

“Aye, ye’re to kill him! Enough!” shouted another.

Brother Afafrenfere turned around and put up his hands unthreateningly. He stared into a score of amazed expressions, many shaking their heads in disbelief.

The monk looked at Ambergris and gave a helpless shrug and a crooked grin, and the dwarf, recognizing the intent behind that look, shook her head and grimaced.

Just as Afafrenfere spun a sudden circuit up on his the balls of his feet, coming around with great speed and force, a spinning left hook that chopped the side of the big man’s jaw and sent him flipping and flopping over and down, to land heavily flat on his back on the wooden floor.

The whole room seemed to stand in place and time, cheers and jeers and shouts becoming a sudden frozen silence, all eyes locked on this shocking, wiry man with his thunderous hands.

The big man groaned and shifted, showing that he wasn’t dead at least, breaking the spell, and several patrons near to Ambergris began shoving the dwarf and yelling. Afafrenfere moved quickly to her side.

“What magic, dwarf?” one man asked.

“None,” answered a woman from behind, unexpectedly, and the crowd parted and turned to see a red-haired woman well known in Neverwinter.

Arunika moved up to the dwarf and monk and scrutinized Afafrenfere carefully. She took him by the wrist, and when he didn’t object, she turned his arm over, revealing a tattoo of a yellow rose inside his forearm.

She gave a knowing laugh.

“No magic,” she said to those others around. “A fair win, though I’d not be betting on this one’s opponents.”

“Ah, ye gamed us, ye wretched little dwarf!” a particularly dirty patron grumbled.

“Ah, so’s yer sister,” Ambergris yelled right back at him. “Ye weren’t for givin’ me a bet, and then yer boy looked to be a winner and ye called me on me coin!”

“Ye set it up that way!” the patron declared.

“I set it up to get the life choked out o’ me friend?”

“He’s looking alive to me!”

“Aye, but if we’re to be agreeing with what ye’re sayin’, then yer champion there ain’t much o’ nothin’! Think about it, ye dolt!” As she built momentum, Ambergris moved very near the man and poked her thick finger right in his face, driving him back before her. “Yerself’s arguing that I let me boy get himself choked half to death knowin’ that he could then break out and pound yer boy to the floor. Says nothing good about yer boy, and I’ll be sure to tell him o’ yer confidence and praise”-she looked over at the man lying flat out on the floor “-soon as he’s waking up.”

That had the aggressive man back on his heels.

“Pay her,” Arunika told the patrons. “Coin won fairly. And if you’re to bet, then you’re to pay your losses.”

Much grumbling ensued, but Ambergris and Afafrenfere walked out of the tavern with several small bags of gold.

“We won’t be winning anymore that way,” Afafrenfere remarked. “We should have stopped after two.”

“Bah! They’ll bet again. Can’t help themselves, the dolts.”

“They will bet on me, so where is your win?”

“Ye might be right,” Ambergris said, and she grinned wickedly and winked at him. “Unless ye’re thinkin’ ye can take a pair o’ them.”

Afafrenfere started to respond, but just sighed instead. More likely, he knew, Ambergris would put him in a match against three opponents.

“There is your seer,” Dahlia remarked to Drizzt.

The drow reflexively put a hand to his belt pouch, but he moved it back immediately. He didn’t need Arunika, for Guen was back beside him.

But then another idea came to him, and he smiled at Dahlia and waved to Arunika to join him.

“You look well,” the red-haired woman remarked when she came over and took a seat beside the two.

“He found his panther,” Dahlia explained. “And now we seek-” Drizzt put his hand on her forearm, cutting her short, something Arunika surely noticed.

“Barrabus-Artemis Entreri, is here,” Drizzt said. “He is in the third private room upstairs. Would you go to him for me? I will pay.”

Dahlia’s eyes widened and she turned to stare at Drizzt, her expression full of surprise and anger.

“I am no whore,” Arunika replied with a laugh.

“No,” Drizzt replied with a laugh of his own, “not like that. Entreri has agreed to accompany us to the north, but now has fostered second thoughts. His best course is to the north, I insist, and I would like you to confirm that for him.”

“On your word?” the woman asked skeptically.

“Use your powers then,” Drizzt bade her. “I know where to find something he wishes returned to him.”

“The sword?”

“Is destroyed,” Dahlia interjected.

“Ah,” said Arunika, and she seemed impressed.

“This is something different, but no less important,” Drizzt assured her.

Arunika stared at him for a while, and whispered some words-a spell, he realized-under her breath.

“An item, or an epiphany?” the seer asked slyly.

“Yes,” Drizzt answered.

Arunika started to rise and Drizzt reached for his coin purse. But the woman deferred and promised, “I will go to him.”

***

“What do you want?” Artemis Entreri asked from behind the cracked door. He was stripped to the waist-and Arunika made certain that he noted her appreciative stare at his muscled torso.

“Barrabus,” she replied.

“That is not my name-never again my name.”

“Artemis, then,” she said. “Speak with me. We’re great players amidst a sea of peasants. We shouldn’t be strangers, or enemies.”

Her words were weighted with more than a little magical suggestion, but she needn’t have bothered. For most males, and Entreri proved no exception, the magically disarming and enticing affect of her spell-enhanced appearance sufficed. Entreri stepped back and opened the door, and Arunika happily entered his den.

“It’s good that you’ve returned,” she said, taking a seat on his ruffled bedding and demurely crossing her legs. It occurred to her that she should abandon Drizzt’s request and convince Entreri to remain in Neverwinter. Could she make him an informant, perhaps, another great cog in the network she’d fostered? She knew the exploits of Barrabus the Gray, after all, and he was a man of no small danger and power.

Too much danger, she decided not long into her conversation with Entreri, not long after looking into his cold eyes. Yes, she did remember Barrabus the Gray, and had always understood that he was one of the few mortals she had ever met capable of defeating her.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful to her, and in a number of ways.

Despite her protests earlier, the redhead did engage in a bit of overpowering seduction, to indulge herself as much as to please Entreri. She didn’t leave his room until the sky was beginning to lighten with the dawn, and she left Entreri quite exhausted, indeed fast asleep.

She had shown him great pleasure, and he had reciprocated. An added bonus, the succubus thought, for the purpose of her seduction had not been her own pleasure. Not this night, though it had come as an added bonus, surely! No, in the midst of their entwining, Arunika had placed an enchantment upon this dangerous assassin, a dweomer of clairvoyance. And when they were done, collapsed in each other’s arms, the red-haired succubus, a whispering demon, had lived up to the reputation of her kind, offering quiet encouragement into Entreri’s ear, assuring him that his best road forward lay beside Drizzt and Dahlia.

Her reputation as a seer wasn’t wholly unearned, after all, and now Artemis Entreri, marked by the dweomer of Arunika, would spy for her.