R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

Kimmuriel stepped into the shadows and was gone.

“Where’s this place?” Athrogate asked. “Me bum’s already starting to hurt.”

“Oh, it will hurt from riding,” Jarlaxle replied, still staring at the now-diminishing shadows. “A thousand miles to the east.”

“Right in the empire, then.”

“The heart of the Empire of Netheril,” Jarlaxle explained.

They summoned their mounts, nightmare and hell boar, and started away.

They rode easily, as usual, at a steady and consistent pace, trotting more than galloping though neither of their summoned mounts would tire.

“Ye think it really was him?” Athrogate asked as the sun lowered in the sky behind them.

“Who?”

“Ah, but don’t ye play clever with me,” the dwarf demanded. “I’m knowin’ ye too well for that.”

“Then it might be time for me to kill you.”

“Too well for that joke to be anything more than a joke, too,” said the dwarf. “So do ye think it really was Artemis Entreri?”

“I don’t know,” Jarlaxle admitted. “He should be long dead, but even in those last years, it seemed to me that he wasn’t aging as a normal human might. He certainly wasn’t losing his edge in battle, at least.”

“Shade stuff?” Athrogate asked. “Ye think his dagger sucked a bit o’ long life into him when he sticked a shade?”

“That was the reasoning,” Jarlaxle agreed, but then added, “Was.”

Athrogate looked up at him curiously. “So what’re ye thinkin’ now?”

Jarlaxle shrugged. “It could be the dagger, but with any of the life-stealing it performs and not that from a shade necessarily. Perhaps such a draw of an enemy’s life energy-any enemy-adds to one’s vitality and lifespan.”

Athrogate, who had been cursed with long life as part of a long-ago punishment, snorted at the horror.

“Or, more likely, Artemis Entreri is long dead, and no more than dust and bones,” Jarlaxle added.

“That Tiago fellow thought it was him.”

“Tiago Baenre isn’t old enough to know of Entreri’s visit to Menzoberranzan.”

“But ye said his sister-”

“Perhaps,” Jarlaxle interrupted, and that uncharacteristic interjection alone clued both of them in to how intriguing and unsettling this possibility was to the drow mercenary.

Jarlaxle gave a frustrated sigh and shook his head vigorously. “No matter,” he said, unconvincingly. “More likely, Drizzt and Dahlia have found a companion, whomever it might be, and Drizzt fed him that story to save them all when they were taken by the Xorlarrins.”

“Nah, that’s not Drizzt’s way,” Athrogate came back, and the response surprised Jarlaxle-until he looked down at his companion to witness Athrogate’s smile. The dwarf was prodding him, trying to draw him out.

“Drizzt ain’t one to weave a net o’ lies in advance,” Athrogate added. “That’s yer own way, not his.”

“Which is why I thrive while he merely survives,” Jarlaxle quipped. “I am sure that he and Dahlia will find a place soon enough. He always does.”

“Oh no ye don’t,” said Athrogate.

“I am sure that I do not know what you are talking about.”

“I’m talking about Entreri, and ye’re knowin’ it full well. That one’s ghost’s been following yerself for half-a-hunnerd years.”

Jarlaxle scoffed at that notion. “I have buried closer friends, and many lovers.”

“Aye, but how many needed buryin’ because o’ yer own actions?” Athrogate said.

There it was, spoken openly, and Jarlaxle suppressed his initial response to lash out at the dwarf. Athrogate was right, he knew. Jarlaxle had betrayed Entreri to the Netherese many years before, when the empire had come in force for the sword, Charon’s Claw. It wasn’t often in his long life that Jarlaxle had been trapped without recourse, but the Netherese had done it, and before physically surrounding the pair, the powerful lords of Netheril had appealed to greater powers in Jarlaxle’s own circle of potential allies, to Kimmuriel and Matron Mother Quenthel.

Indeed, the snares of Netheril had been complete.

And so their offer had been accepted.

Jarlaxle said no more for a long while, letting his thoughts slip back to Baldur’s Gate, the city where the final play had occurred. In exchange for his freedom, Jarlaxle had facilitated the takedown of Artemis Entreri, and indeed had even trapped the man in one of his extra-dimensional pockets for the Netherese. Both Entreri and Jarlaxle would have surely died otherwise, Jarlaxle told himself-then and now and a thousand times in between. And he had only chosen the route of betrayal because he had expected to quickly launch a rescue of Entreri, though likely one without retrieving the sword, of course, soon after his flight from Baldur’s Gate.

But that rescue attempt had never occurred, and indeed, many years passed before Jarlaxle had ever learned of the conspiracy working against him. Kimmuriel and the Baenres, for Jarlaxle’s own sake, had worked in concert to break down Jarlaxle’s magical defenses and thus allow the psionicist to invade Jarlaxle’s mind and alter the details of the Baldur’s Gate betrayal. As far as Jarlaxle could recall, just a few short hours after he had abandoned Entreri to the Netherese, that scenario had never happened, the actual events replaced by the suggestion of a betrayal by Entreri against Jarlaxle. Thus, by the time Jarlaxle had even sorted out the truth and remembered that Entreri had been taken as a prisoner of the Netherese, it was too late for Jarlaxle to do anything about it.

By that point, Matron Mother Quenthel had made it quite clear to the outraged Jarlaxle that he needed to forget the whole ordeal.

Pragmatism told him to honor her demands, for what would have been the gain of Jarlaxle attempting any such rescue, or even looking into the disposition of Artemis Entreri by that point, anyway? Even if Entreri had somehow managed to survive the initial capture and early imprisonment, he would have likely died of old age by then.

Unless …

“So now I find meself hopin’ that ye think o’ me as high as ye thought of Entreri,” Athrogate said, drawing him from his contemplations.

“What?” a surprised Jarlaxle said, looking again to his bearded companion.

“He’s still with ye,” Athrogate explained. “After all these tens o’ years. I’m thinkin’ that few others’d get more than a passing thought from Jarlaxle, even if ye came to think that one ye thought dead weren’t.”

“I am intrigued, is all.”

Athrogate’s roaring laughter mocked him.

Jarlaxle’s face grew tight and he looked straight ahead, urging his nightmare on at a slightly swifter pace.

“Aye, get done with our business so ye can find Drizzt and his companions, eh?”

Jarlaxle pulled up hard on the reins, halting his steed, and turned to glower at the dwarf. Athrogate had indeed struck a nerve with Jarlaxle. He knew there was little he could do to change the past, but for some reason, it was important for him to set the record straight with Artemis Entreri.

“Why do ye care, elf?” Athrogate asked him.

“I do not know,” came Jarlaxle’s honest response.

Effron didn’t much like the snow, and the Sword Coast was seeing more than its share of the wintry precipitation as the turn to the Year of the Six-armed Elf neared. He had returned to check in on the progress or retreat of the Thayans, as his master had demanded. Lord Draygo had told him to be thorough and not anxious, and the old warlock’s insistence that this mission was important had resonated with Effron, all the more so because he knew that showing his loyalty to Draygo Quick and his competence in carrying out these demands would likely be rewarded.