R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

“You’re already plotting your course,” Kimmuriel said, and Beniago bowed at the compliment from this most intelligent and pragmatic drow.

“Problem?” Artemis Entreri asked Drizzt that night, the pair already a third of the way to Luskan despite their late start.

Drizzt rolled the figurine of the black panther over in his hands. “I don’t know.”

“You haven’t been calling her lately.”

“I haven’t seen the need.”

Entreri tapped him on the shoulder and forced him to look up, straight into the assassin’s doubting expression. “We’ve been in a dozen fights since you felled the sea devil on the docks.”

“I was often behind the wall, using a bow,” Drizzt replied.

“And often not.”

Drizzt sighed and nodded, unable to escape the accusation.

“The cat looks haggard,” Entreri said before he could. “Her skin hangs low, as if with exhaustion.”

“You’ve noticed.”

Entreri shrugged. “Call her.”

Drizzt looked back at the figurine and thought it over for a short while, then softly called out for Guenhwyvar. A few moments later, the gray mist arose and formed into the panther, who stood right before the seated drow.

“She pants,” Entreri observed.

Drizzt put a hand out to stroke the cat, and to feel the slackness of her skin, as if her muscles beneath had grown old. He had seen her like this before, but usually after she had spent many hours by his side, battling trolls or the like.

“You see it?” he asked.

“Do such magical creatures age?”

Drizzt had no answer. “Ever before when Guenhwyvar has been so exhausted, a day in her Astral home would rejuvenate her. I fear that the fight with Herzgo Alegni, when she was lost to me, has harmed her.”

“Or maybe she’s not properly returning to her Astral home,” Entreri offered.

Drizzt snapped his head around to regard the assassin.

“Still, she looks a bit better than she did when last she was at your side, so perhaps it will pass.”

Drizzt wasn’t sure of that, but as he had no need of Guenhwyvar at that time, he gave her a hug and quickly dismissed her. Remembering Entreri was watching, he felt a bit embarrassed, but to his great surprise the man offered no judgment-no negative one, at least. Drizzt filed that in the back of his mind and thought again of shadow gates and his suspicions of where Guenhwyvar had been lost to him. He wondered if he might soon be visiting the Shadowfell after all.

“Do you think Port Llast will thrive once more?” Drizzt asked a short while later.

“Do you think I care?”

Drizzt laughed and resisted the urge to blurt out “Yes!” He would allow Entreri his perpetual disaffection, for whatever purpose that might serve the man.

“So when we retrieve your dagger, you will sail out of Luskan and give no further thought to me, or Port Llast.”

“I give no thought to you now.”

Drizzt laughed again and let it go, fully confident that Artemis Entreri would be riding beside him on the return journey to Port Llast.

If they got that far, he reminded himself when he considered the task before him. He knew where Entreri’s dagger was, so he believed, but he wasn’t about to kill the only man who might broker the deal he needed for the sake of Port Llast in order to retrieve that dire blade!

Thanks to their enchanted mounts, they reached Luskan the next night, and neither found any problem in secretly climbing over the wall. Drizzt knew that Beniago would be more than willing to meet with him. He got his bearings and led Entreri through the city’s alleyways.

“I don’t know you,” Beniago remarked a short while later, having turned down the alleyway to the appointed spot where he expected to meet Drizzt, only to find a small man leaning easily on the wall of the alleyway, appearing rather bored.

“That dagger you carry on your hip is mine,” the small man replied. “And I would have it back.”

“I have carried this for many years.”

“Where did you get it?”

“That’s not important.”

“It is to me.”

“I hardly remember.”

Entreri kept his distance, but narrowed his eyes to let this man Beniago clearly see his building anger. “I will have it back.”

“I cannot give it to you.”

“Your corpse will not hold it so tightly, and if it does so, then I will merely chop off your fingers.”

Beniago laughed, but betrayed a bit of concern with his posture and movements.

“He really will kill you,” came a voice from above, and Beniago froze, and slowly looked up to see Drizzt Do’Urden sitting comfortably along a narrow ledge along the building to his left, legs outstretched before him, fingers locked behind his head as he rested against the structure’s chimney.

“I have seen you fight, and witnessed this man, Artemis Entreri, in combat many times,” Drizzt went on. “You will hold your ground against him for a short while-perhaps longer because he knows to beware your dagger. But soon enough he will overwhelm you, and you’ll feel the killing blow before you ever see it coming.”

“You betrayed me,” Beniago said. “You lured me out here to an ambush!”

“Not so. Only so if you make it so.”

“And I suppose your panther prowls nearby in case I try to flee.”

“You know the way I prepare a battlefield,” Drizzt replied and dropped down easily from his perch, landing lightly in the alleyway just a few strides from Beniago. “But I did not lure you out here for any ambush, or indeed for any fight. It wasn’t until we saw you coming that my companion recognized your dagger as the one he carried many years ago.” The statement was true enough, though Drizzt left out the part that he and Entreri had known of the item, and indeed that was why he brought Entreri along.

“I’ve grown quite fond of it,” Beniago replied.

“More than you are fond of breathing?” Entreri asked.

“It’s not worth it,” Drizzt said to the tall, red-headed man. “Artemis Entreri’s claim to the dagger is as legitimate as his ability to take it from you, should you choose that course.”

Beniago looked from Drizzt to Entreri, then back to the drow. “I am a businessman,” he said.

“I counted on that.”

“Then what do you offer,” Beniago asked, and he looked to Entreri and remarked, before Entreri could, “in addition to my life?”

“That which you once asked of me,” said Drizzt. “I, and Dahlia, and my friend Entreri here, can serve House Kurth quite valuably, from afar. We are in a position now to give High Captain Kurth a tremendous advantage over his peers.”

“Pray tell,” Beniago prompted.

“We come as emissaries of Port Llast.”

Beniago appeared greatly surprised at that. “Port Llast? It is a name I am hearing more often in the last few tendays.”

“And you will hear more of it in the future, I assure you,” said Drizzt. “The populace grows in number and in strength. They are reclaiming their city from the minions of Umberlee, and indeed have brought their city limits to water’s edge once more.”

“It is a rival city to Luskan’s designs.”

“No more,” said Drizzt. “The tides will not favor Port Llast. She will not rise as a trading port, but from her cold waters comes a bountiful harvest of shellfish and other delicacies, and fine rocks from her quarry. There is nothing in Port Llast to threaten Luskan, but plenty of opportunity for one wise enough to see far ahead.”

“That would be Ship Kurth,” Beniago said.

“That would be your choice,” said Drizzt. “And you would have the eyes you once claimed to want. My eyes, Dahlia’s eyes.”

“Why? You don’t seem like the type who would throw in with Ship Kurth, as you made clear in our last encounter.”