R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

“You won’t,” Drizzt insisted, or begged, actually, though he had tried to mask that desperation from Dahlia, and particularly from Pwent. Unsuccessfully, he knew when he regarded the elf woman.

“No?” the dwarf answered. “Ye don’t know that, elf.” He walked toward the mouth of the cave and plopped himself down on the floor. He seemed even more dispirited than Drizzt. “I died. Should still be dead. Might be that I’ll just sit right here, wait for the sun.”

Drizzt didn’t doubt his resolve. This was Pwent, after all.

Beyond the dwarf, the air began to brighten a bit as the pre-dawn glow lit up the east.

“That might be best,” Dahlia said, walking past him and out into the open air. She added flippantly, “There is little chance of you feasting on some poor child when you are but dust.”

“When you’re dust,” Drizzt silently mouthed, and he couldn’t help but grimace as he watched Dahlia walk away. She didn’t understand the loss here, or the indignation. That the proud and loyal battlerager should be reduced to this wretched fate was almost more than Drizzt could bear.

And Dahlia didn’t seem to care in the least. Indeed, her emphasis on that last word, “dust,” had Drizzt shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. He walked over to his friend and put a hand on Pwent’s sturdy shoulder.

“There must be a way,” he said.

“Nah, but there ain’t,” said Pwent.

“There is no turning back the curse of vampirism,” Dahlia said, rather coldly. “I have known such creatures, for they abound in Thay. Many tried-oh, how they tried! — to return to the light. The mightiest of the Red Wizards and the most powerful priests sought these answers. But alas, there is no return.”

Drizzt stared at her coldly, but the elf woman merely shrugged.

The drow wondered what he might do. This was Pwent, loyal Pwent. Thibbledorf Pwent, who had led Stokely Silverstream and his boys from Icewind Dale to help in the fight in Gauntlgrym. Thibbledorf Pwent, who had carried Bruenor across the primordial pit and helped his beloved king pull the lever to trap the fiery beast back in its hole.

Thibbledorf Pwent, the hero.

Thibbledorf Pwent, the vampire.

Drizzt looked inside his own heart-what would he do if he had been so afflicted? He couldn’t deny the dwarf’s logic. Pwent was a vampire, and a vampire would feast. The smell of blood would surely overrule any moral code, for that was the way of it. There was no avoiding that truth of the curse, and there was, alas, no cure to the affliction.

“That’s how you’d end it, my friend?” he asked quietly. “You choose to burn?”

“I died with me king, in Gauntlgrym. I’m just lettin’ meself go back to him.”

“There is nothing I can say?” Drizzt asked.

“Me king,” the dwarf answered. “He’ll be waitin’ for me at Moradin’s side, and I ain’t done nothing yet that’d make Moradin turn me away! But I will. I’m knowin’ that I will if I don’t end this now.”

Drizzt tried to focus on the words, but a disconcerting thought had crossed his mind at Pwent’s mention of his king.

“Bruenor will not … rise?” the drow asked, his voice hesitant. He could hardly bear to look at Pwent, his old friend, in this wretched state, but to see Bruenor Battlehammer, his dearest friend for more than a century, similarly afflicted, would be more than his heart could bear, he was sure.

“No, elf.” Pwent assured him. “He’s set in his grave, where ye put him. Killed natural and for good and all, and dyin’ the hero. Unlike meself.”

“None question the heroics of Thibbledorf Pwent, in the fight for Gauntlgrym and in a hundred before that,” Drizzt said. “Your legend is wide and grand, your legacy secure.”

Pwent nodded and grunted in thanks and didn’t speak the obvious: that his legacy would remain secure only if he turned away from his current course. And there was only one way to accomplish that.

He put his thick hand atop Drizzt’s and repeated, “Ah, me king.”

“So be it,” Drizzt said, and he had trouble getting those words out of his mouth.

Dahlia called to him. “Let’s get moving. I want to get back to Neverwinter, and soon!”

“Farewell, my friend,” Drizzt said, and he walked out of the cave. “Sit in feast and hoist a mug beside King Bruenor in Dwarfhome.”

“To Clan Battlehammer and to yerself, too, elf,” Pwent answered, and it did Drizzt’s heart a bit of good to hear the serenity in his voice, as if he had truly come to terms with this, understanding it as his best, or only, choice. Still, Drizzt’s heart could not have been heavier as he walked out of that cave.

He paused outside and turned back to regard the dark opening, though Pwent was now out of sight. He should stay and witness this, he thought. He owed that much to this shield dwarf who had given so much to him and to Bruenor over the decades. Pwent had been as much a hero in the last fight in Gauntlgrym as any of them, and now Drizzt would just walk away and let him be burned to ashes by the rising sun?

“Come along,” Dahlia bade him, and he shot her an angry look indeed.

“You can’t do anything for him,” Dahlia explained, walking over to take Drizzt’s hand. “He makes the right choice, morally. You would disagree with that? If so, then go and enlist him to our side. A vampire is a powerful companion, I know.”

Drizzt studied her, not quite understanding her real intent, and not quite able to discount her words or the possibility of taking Thibbledorf Pwent along. Didn’t he owe his old friend that much at least?

“But he will eat,” Dahlia added. “And if he can find no food other than goblinkin, he will feast on the neck of an elf, or a human. There is no other possibility. He cannot resist the hunger-if he could, you would find great and powerful communities of vampires, and what king might resist them or their temptations of immortality?”

“You know this?”

“I have much experience with these creatures,” Dahlia explained. “Thay is littered with them.”

Drizzt glanced back at the cave opening.

“There is nothing you can do for him,” Dahlia whispered, and when Drizzt turned back to regard her, he found true sympathy in her blue eyes, for him and for Pwent, and he was glad of that. “There is nothing anyone can do for him, except the dwarf himself. He can end his torment, as he has decided, before the curse further eats his mind and drives him into the darkness. I have seen this: young vampires, newly undead, destroying themselves before the affliction could fully take hold.”

Drizzt took a deep breath, but did not turn from the cave, even leaned toward it as if thinking of returning.

“Let him have this moment,” Dahlia whispered. “He will die again as a hero, for few so afflicted could ever so resist the dark temptations, as he now intends.”

Drizzt nodded, and knew that he had to be satisfied with that, that he had to take the small victory and hold it close. In his mind, he drew a parallel between Pwent and Artemis Entreri, as he considered Dahlia’s claim that Pwent would indeed feast upon an elf or human or some other goodly person. That was his nature now, and it was a powerful, irresistible demand.

So what of Entreri? The man had killed many. Would he kill more, and not only those deserving, or not only in the service of the greater good?

Aye, that was always the question, Drizzt recognized. And it was always his hope that Entreri would find his way around that vicious nature.

How ironic that Thibbledorf Pwent had to sacrifice himself, without hope, while Entreri continued to draw breath. How tragic that the insurmountable danger was Pwent’s to bear, while hope could remain for Artemis Entreri.