R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

“Nor is it even important whether or not this particular theory of Drizzt is true,” Jarlaxle added. “All that matters is that the Shadovar believe it might be true, and given the movements of the Spider Queen of late, we would be remiss to let this pass.”

“By that reasoning, if you go and find that Drizzt is alive, and somehow manage to bring him back, would we not be bound to turn him over to Tiago Baenre, or to your sister who rules Menzoberranzan?”

“Even if we were so bound, I would not,” Jarlaxle replied honestly and bluntly. “Nor would I allow you to do so.”

“Yet you ask so much of me and of Bregan D’aerthe.”

“Yes,” Jarlaxle answered evenly.

“You are mad. The cost will be enormous-are you willing to pay that for iblith? ”

“Yes-to both, and I assure you that I am mad in both meanings of the word.”

“Then I should relieve you of any command.”

“Nay, you should grant me this, with the full force of Bregan D’aerthe.”

“And how will House Baenre and the ruling council of Menzoberranzan view such an action?” Kimmuriel asked.

“Draygo Quick has him because he believes Drizzt to be the Chosen of Lolth. What good citizens of Menzoberranzan might Bregan D’aerthe be if we allowed that to stand?”

Kimmuriel could only laugh again at the unrelenting stubbornness of Jarlaxle.

“Send me to Gromph, I beg,” Jarlaxle said.

Kimmuriel looked at him skeptically. “What you seek from your brother is outside the boundaries of your argument.”

“I demand,” Jarlaxle clarified. “And I will pay my dear brother with my own coin.”

“And any risk this addition entails will be borne by Jarlaxle alone.”

Jarlaxle nodded in agreement, and Kimmuriel closed his eyes, summoning the psionic powers to do as Jarlaxle had requested.

Jarlaxle awaited the magical gate eagerly-indeed, as eagerly as he had looked forward to anything since he had traveled back to the pit in Gauntlgrym with Drizzt, Bruenor, Dahlia, and Athrogate to put the fire primordial back in its magical prison. Jarlaxle felt alive once more.

He understood the odds, and the likelihood that he was far too late for the sake of any of those who had gone to the lair of Draygo Quick.

But Jarlaxle liked long odds. Indeed, he lived for them.

"Tell me of your Goddess,” Draygo Quick bade Drizzt one morning as they sat for a shared breakfast. “This one you name Mielikki.”

“Are you asking me to proselytize?”

Draygo Quick shrugged. “Perhaps you will convert me. Do you think she would have me?”

Drizzt sat back and stared at Lord Draygo for a long while. “I believe that god is that which you find in your heart,” he answered finally. “Were you to find Mielikki in your heart, were her tenets to sing to you as truth, then it wouldn’t be within the power of any god to have you or reject you. Were you to come to believe those tenets, then you would be of Mielikki.”

“You act as though the gods are no more than names for that which is in your heart.”

Drizzt smiled and nodded, and went back to his food.

“You truly believe that?” Draygo Quick asked, sliding his chair back from the table.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“Why?” Drizzt asked calmly. He realized that he was perturbing the old warlock, and he found that he quite enjoyed it.

“How can it not?” Draygo Quick replied. “Are you positing that, were I to discover these tenets of Mielikki, I would become one of her flock no matter my past?”

“If you found the truth of her tenets, then your past would be a trial of your own conscience, or a matter of justice in retribution for any crimes, but nothing to the goddess.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Then what do her tenets matter?” Drizzt asked. “If a god, any god, is deemed to represent the universal and divine truth, then once one finds and truly embraces that truth, he becomes in harmony with the god. To hold it any other way is to attribute to supposed gods petty failings like jealousy or bitterness. If that is the case, then why would I pronounce the ultimate goodness of any such being? And worse, then why would I hold forth a name embodying that which is in my heart when doing so would only reduce a truth I call divine to a level of mortal frailty?”

Draygo Quick, too, slid back his chair and leaned back, scrutinizing the drow. “Well played,” he congratulated.

“It’s not a game.”

“Because your goddess is supreme?”

“Because reason lies in harmony with truth, else truth is a lie.”

“Hmm,” Draygo Quick muttered. “It seems a shame that you focused your training on the martial arts.”

“I will take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, it was,” Draygo Quick replied. “Or a lament.”

“Are you now to ask me to proselytize the glories of the Spider Queen?” Drizzt asked. “That might prove a more interesting conversation.”

Draygo Quick laughed at the sarcasm. “Nay,” he answered. “Consider this talk over our breakfast as one last angle I pursued in order to wrest from Drizzt Do’Urden the truth of Drizzt Do’Urden. I had thought that truth a marvelous irony, and perhaps it is, but more likely, I fear, you’re as boring as your preferred goddess.”

It was Drizzt’s turn to laugh-at Draygo Quick. “As boring as the sunrise and the sunset,” Drizzt said quietly. “As boring as the movements of the moon, the planets, and the sparkles of the stars. As boring as the food chain and the place of every living creature within the interlocking hands that so bind them. As boring as birth and death, the ultimate tenet of this reason and morality I hold as Mielikki.”

“I’m a warlock-do you forget? Perhaps I do consider death a lie.”

“Because you can pervert it?”

Draygo Quick sighed and stood up. “It matters not,” he announced, “for I grow weary of this conversation. Indeed, I find that I have lost interest in all of our conversations.”

“Then let me go.”

The old warlock laughed at him, and ended abruptly with, “No.”

“Then kill me and be done with it.”

“Again, no,” Draygo Quick replied. “You’re wrong about the gods of Toril, Drizzt. They are very real, and much more than mere embodiments of this or that tenet or truth.”

“That does not change that which is in my heart.”

“Or your fealty to Mielikki?

“My fealty to the truth and justice I know, which have been named to me as Mielikki. That is not a subtle difference.”

Draygo Quick waved his hands frantically to silence Drizzt and end the conversation. “I have reason to believe the coming years will bring great events in flux,” he said. “As great as those that brought Toril and Abeir together. I believe that, and I fear it. As great as the Spellplague and the advent of shadow. And I believe that you may have a place in these coming changes.”

“I will sharpen my blades,” the drow said with unrelenting sarcasm.

“Your blades are irrelevant. But your gods are not.”

“I don’t recognize gods-”

“I know, I know,” Draygo Quick said, patting his hands once more. “You know truths, and those truths were given a name.”

Drizzt resisted the urge to poke Draygo Quick once more by reminding him that he, after all, had brought it up again.

“You tell me of the path you follow, of the signposts of truth that guide you,” Draygo Quick offered as a parting shot. “And I believe your sincerity. But I know more in matters of the world than you do, Drizzt Do’Urden, and I expect that this road you walk is a deceptive circle that will serve that which you reject more than that which you embrace.