The Last Threshold

He wanted to help Dahlia. He wanted to comfort her, to guide her through these days, but in truth, he had no idea what to say that would make any difference to the emotionally battered woman, particularly not with Effron tied to a chair in a sectioned-off part of the hold.

Dahlia seemed a different person to Drizzt after Afafrenfere’s gallant rescue, and Effron seemed a different enemy. Neither showed much sign of life, the young warlock not offering anything in terms of resistance, the elf warrior not offering much of anything at all. Dahlia’s capture by her son and their long meetings had drained both of all energy, it seemed.

Drizzt figured that if pirates boarded Minnow Skipper, both would simply surrender without lifting a hand to fight, and he could well imagine the shrug either might offer on the last steps off the plank.

That notion had the drow glancing down at the deck. Dahlia was there among the crew, by the starboard rail, ostensibly stitching a torn sail, though at the rate she was going, a finger’s length tear might occupy her for the rest of the journey to Memnon.

Drizzt’s gaze drifted farther aft, to the open bulkhead, where Ambergris had just appeared. The dwarf reached back and bent low, grabbing hold on Effron and helping him up into the open air, with Afafrenfere closely following.

Amidships, Dahlia glanced back to look at the young tiefling, but she quickly looked down and went back to her task.

Making busy work, Drizzt could see, trying to pretend that Effron wasn’t on the deck, or that he wasn’t on the boat at all.

But Drizzt could see even that wouldn’t prove enough emotional insulation for Dahlia. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then gathered up her things and moved to the forward bulkhead, never looking back.

Never looking back at Effron.

“Effron,” Drizzt whispered from on high, and then it hit him, the simplest answer to the questions and doubts that had been pounding him for these many days. This wasn’t about the relationship he had with Dahlia, whatever that might be. This wasn’t about him at all. It was about that twisted tiefling leaning over the taffrail of Minnow Skipper.

Drizzt couldn’t begin to decipher the many emotions that must be running through Effron and Dahlia, wrenched from hidden corners of their hearts by circumstance and the abrupt turn of events. But in this moment, finally, the drow came to realize that it was all right that he couldn’t understand.

Because this wasn’t about him.

Drizzt hopped out from his seat, catching a handhold and wrapping his ankles around the guide rope, then half sliding, half hand-walking his way quickly to the deck. With a last glance at the bulkhead through which Dahlia had gone—and brushing away his certainty that she was belowdecks speaking with, or at least sitting with, Artemis Entreri—Drizzt moved aft along the deck.

“Hey now!” Mister Sikkal yelled at him. “Get yerself back at the lookout!”

Drizzt didn’t even turn to regard the old first mate. He moved easily around the captain’s quarters and to the back, where the dwarf called a greeting to him.

“Take my place at the crow’s nest,” he said to Afafrenfere when the monk also turned to greet him. “I won’t be long.”

Afafrenfere glanced at Effron, who hadn’t even turned away from the sizzling foam in Minnow Skipper’s wake, who hadn’t even shown the slightest interest in anything other than the empty dark water. With a nod, the monk moved past Drizzt.

“You can go with him,” the drow said to Ambergris.

“I ain’t for climbin’ no durned dead tree pole!” the dwarf insisted.

“Stay at the mast’s base, then.”

Ambergris offered him a little grin. “Our deal with Cannavara says two’re to be with this Effron boy at all times, including meself and me silencing spells.”

Drizzt motioned with his head in the direction Afafrenfere had gone.

“I’ll be just around the corner, then,” the stubborn dwarf replied, and she walked past Drizzt and around the edge of the captain’s cabin, but there plopped down noisily and made a point of beginning a song, an old dwarf ballad of deep mines, thick silver veins, and a host of goblins in need of a bit of dwarf-style relocation.

Drizzt moved up to Effron, but faced back at the captain’s cabin as he leaned against the taffrail.

“Where will this go?” Drizzt asked Effron—asked his back, actually, since the tiefling was still leaning out over the taffrail, staring at the empty sea.

“Do you know or do you care?” Drizzt pressed when Effron didn’t respond.

“Why do you care?” came the curt reply.

“Because I care for Dah … I care for your mother,” Drizzt replied, deciding to go there with Effron, straight to the relationship that was obviously causing him so much pain.

The young tiefling’s response came as a derisive snort, which was not quite what Drizzt had expected.

“Why would you doubt that?” Drizzt asked, still trying to remain calm and reasonable, trying honestly to coax Effron from his defensive shell. “Dahlia and I have been traveling together for many months now.”

“Traveling and coupling, you mean,” Effron said, still not turning around.

“That is our business.”

“Is it Artemis Entreri’s?” the young tiefling asked, and now he did turn around, an unsettling grin spreading wickedly across his face.

Drizzt couldn’t quite find the words to respond, not sure where Effron was going with this, yet afraid of where that might be.

“The night I caught Dahlia, she had just left him,” Effron explained.

Drizzt shrugged and wanted nothing more than to turn this conversation back to the more important topic, that of Effron and Dahlia.

“She had just left his bed,” Effron pressed, and he seemed quite pleased with himself. “She stank of him.”

It took all the self-control he could muster for Drizzt not to simply reach out and push the nasty young warlock over that taffrail and be done with him. Effron’s every word hit him like a dagger, and more pointedly so because he had known this truth already, though he hadn’t been able to admit it to himself.

“I don’t understand why you and Entreri bothered to rent two rooms,” Effron continued. “You would save coin and time renting just one, don’t you think, with Dahlia lying between you?”

He bit off his last word, and quite nearly a piece of his tongue, when Drizzt lost control for just the blink of an eye—long enough for Drizzt to deliver a stinging slap across Effron’s face.

“Concern yourself more with your own predicament,” the drow advised. “Where will this all go? How will it end?”

“Badly,” Effron spat back.

“That is one choice, but only that, a choice.”

“I’ll see her dead.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“You don’t know—” Effron started, but Drizzt cut him short.

“It won’t free you of your burden,” Drizzt calmly assured him. “Your satisfaction will prove short-lived, and ever longer will your misery grow. This I know. Whatever else, whatever other details you think yourself privy to that I am not, matter not at all. Because this I know.”

Effron stared at him hard.

“Where will this all go?” Drizzt asked again, and he started off. And he knew that Ambergris has been listening to every word when she came around the corner before Drizzt had reached it.

And he knew it by the look on the dwarf’s face, an expression of sympathy aimed at him.

“Ask yerself the same,” the dwarf advised in a whisper as Drizzt walked by.

Up above the deck in the crow’s nest, Drizzt was the first to spot land, a jutting mountain to the south east. Memnon was closer than that natural mound, Drizzt knew, though it was not yet visible, as Minnow Skipper neared the end of the second leg of her journey.

He called down to Captain Cannavara, who looked up at him and nodded, as if expecting the call. “So keep your eyes to the horizons for pirate sails, drow!” he yelled back. “Here’s the channel they haunt!”

Drizzt nodded, but thought little of it. There were no sails to be seen, and in truth, that irked Drizzt. He scanned as the captain had asked, and he hoped to see something, and was dismayed that he did not.

Drizzt wanted a fight.

He had spent the last two tendays wanting a fight. Since his confrontation with Effron, the drow had subconsciously wrung the blood out of his knuckles on many occasions, most often whenever Artemis Entreri was in view.

He looked down at the deck now, forward, where Entreri was sitting and eating some bread. Dahlia wasn’t far from him, working the lines as the pilot tried to keep the sails full of wind.

The two of them in the same frame stung him, and his imagination took him to dark places indeed. He shook it away and tried to rationalize, tried to find a distinction where Drizzt left off and Dahlia began. He didn’t focus on the claim he held on the woman as much as on the notion that any such claim was preposterous.

Still, the drow found himself gnashing his teeth. The intersection of emotion and rational thought was not bordered by well-marked corners after all.

“Memnon?” Dahlia asked Captain Cannavara after Drizzt’s call.

“With the morning tide,” the captain replied.

Dahlia glanced over at Entreri, and with alarm. It wasn’t just the notion of him leaving, as he had hinted, but more the coming conclusion to the situation with Effron. One way or another, something had to be resolved. Dahlia had hardly seen her son, willingly relinquishing control of him to Afafrenfere and Ambergris, though she doubted that much attention was even needed, given Effron’s obvious distress. The young warlock appeared as broken inside as out, now, and showed no signs of trying to lash out, or escape. Indeed, Ambergris had assured them all that Effron could have gotten away on several occasions, for he knew how to shadowstep. If he tried to execute such a maneuver to return to the Shadowfell, only immediate and overwhelming intervention could stop him, and surely over the course of tendays, there had been many such opportunities for Effron to escape.

But now loomed Memnon, the next dock, and Cannavara had informed the crew that they would be in port for a tenday, perhaps two, as they executed some needed repairs to Minnow Skipper’s hull and masts.

With a heavy sigh, Dahlia started for the hold.

“Here now, girl!” Cannavara said to her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’ve something I need to do.”

“Not now, you don’t, unless you’re thinking that you need to work that line. We’re in pirate waters, the last run to Memnon, and we’re not to put aside our diligence until we’re fast tied to the long dock.”

Dahlia turned away from the captain. “Entreri,” she called, and he looked back at her over his shoulder. She nodded to her post and gave a pleading expression and shrug.

Artemis Entreri tore off another piece of bread and nodded, moving to replace her.

Dahlia turned back to Captain Cannavara, who had already turned away to move on to other business.

The elf pointedly did not look up at Drizzt as she moved to the open bulkhead of the aft hold.