The Last Threshold
Page 69

Late winter?
But they had come out here from Easthaven just two days before, and in the early autumn.
Drizzt tried to sort it all out. Had it all been a dream? Only then did he realize that he still held an object in his hand, and he lifted it up before his eyes and confirmed the scrimshaw statuette of Catti-brie and Taulmaril.
“Entreri,” he whispered and nudged the assassin with his foot. The dangerous man, ever a light sleeper, awakened immediately and bolted upright, as if expecting an attack and already prepared to defend against it.
And in an instant, the assassin wore the same expression, Drizzt knew, as was upon the drow’s own face. He blinked repeatedly, face contorted with confusion, as he glanced around at the curious, impossible sight.
“The music?” Entreri asked quietly. “The forest?”
Drizzt shrugged, having no answers.
“A dream then,” said Entreri.
“If so, then a common one,” Drizzt replied, and showed him the scrimshaw. “And look around! Our encampment is in summertime, it seems, but the rest of the world is not.”
They let the others sleep, both going out and breaking branches from the scraggly trees around the area so they could start a fire if winter closed in. They noticed, too, that the camp remained warm, summertime warm, but the air outside that small cluster proved wickedly cold, and a strong wind swept across the lake from the northwest. But that wind, like the winter itself, did not penetrate the magically protected area, almost as if that small patch of summertime grass existed in a different plane.
Drizzt started a fire and began preparing breakfast just before the dawn, and the others awakened, and each wore the same expression and remembered the sweet music in the summertime forest and asked the same questions and lacked the same answers. None of this made any sense, of course.
Any thoughts they might entertain of spending more time in this enchanted spot, to see if the forest returned, were lost with the break of dawn, for the daylight broke the enchantment fully, and the wind howled in at them, blowing snow stealing their summertime beds.
Drizzt alone heard the music again, then, but it was a different song, or at least, the closing notes to the previous song.
The closing notes, the end. A sense of finality engulfed him, for he knew that he was watching this forest, Iruladoon, die away, lost to the ages forevermore.
“Across the frozen lake?” Ambergris asked, breaking the drow’s contemplation.
Drizzt considered the words, then shook his head. He wasn’t sure of the exact month, but he knew it to be late in the winter season, or early in the spring, and he had no idea how thick the ice might be.
“The same path that took us here,” he replied, and he started to the south, moving down toward the even ground of the lake bed. “To Easthaven.”
“Ye plannin’ to tell us what’s what?” Ambergris asked.
“If I had any idea what might be happening, I would,” Drizzt replied.
“Well, ye seem to be knowin’ our path,” the dwarf protested.
“I know where our path is not,” Drizzt clarified. “And it is not straight across the lake, with no cover from the wind, and where the ice might prove too thin to support us.”
The dwarf shrugged, satisfied with that, and off they went, trudging through the snowpack, pulling their inadequate cloaks tight around them. Drizzt couldn’t begin to sort out any of this mystery, but he was glad indeed that they hadn’t awakened in midwinter, or surely they would have soon perished.
They were still moving along the lake bed, their progress slow, when the sun began to dip off to their right-hand side.
“We need to find a cave or a sheltered dell,” Drizzt explained, turning from the lake and into the small foothills that lined the western shore of Lac Dinneshere. As the daylight began to fade, he moved to the top of one small hill, trying to get his bearings. To the south, he saw the lights of Easthaven, still many hours of walking away, but he noted, too, an encampment much nearer, nestled in the foothills. A barbarian tribe, he knew, and judging from the location and the estimated time of year, likely the Tribe of the Elk, Wulfgar’s people, who knew the legend of Drizzt well.
He left his five friends in a sheltered vale near to the barbarian fires and moved in alone, breathing a sigh of relief when he determined that it was indeed the Tribe of the Elk. He entered with his hands upraised, unthreatening, and introduced himself clearly as many suspicious looks came his way.
One large barbarian wearing the garb of the chieftain stepped forward and paced right up to the drow, staring down at him from barely a hand’s breadth away. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked, and he seemed less than convinced. He lifted his weapon, a very familiar and magnificent warhammer, Drizzt’s way. “What ghost are you?”
“Aegis-fang,” Drizzt breathed, for surely it was indeed the warhammer Bruenor had crafted for Wulfgar a century before, and truly it did Drizzt’s heart good to see the hammer in the hands of the leader of this barbarian tribe, a proper legacy for a great man of Icewind Dale.
“No ghost,” he assured the man. He looked around, trying to find some face he might recognize, though he had not seen any of the tribe for some time. He spotted one large young man, barely more than a teenager with blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, one who immediately sparked some note of recognition in the drow.
But no, Drizzt realized. He was surely confused, and conflating this one with a barbarian he had known so many years before. The sight of Aegis-fang, the smell of Icewind Dale, the sound of the wind in his ears once more—it all seemed enough to transport Drizzt back those many decades.
“I have friends nearby, just five,” Drizzt explained. “We’re bound for Easthaven, but ill-equipped for the season. If we could spend the night …”
The chieftain looked around at his people, then back at the drow. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked again, seeming unconvinced. “Drizzt Do’Urden is long lost to the world, they say, taken by the tundra many years ago.”
“If they say that, then they are wrong. I passed through Easthaven only recently, coming out to find … well, you or some other tribe, to investigate rumors of a forest on the banks of Lac Dinneshere.”
“Why would you seek us?”
“I was told that three of your tribesmen spoke of such a forest.”
“I know of no such rumors,” said the chieftain and he seemed to stiffen at the suggestion.
“I have heard this talk,” interjected one of the others, an older woman. “But not for many years.”
Drizzt glanced at her, but found his gaze drawn instead to the young man who reminded Drizzt so much of young Wulfgar, who, Drizzt suspected, might be a descendant of his friend, so strong, uncanny even, seemed the resemblance. The young man shied away from his glance.
“You are Drizzt Do’Urden?” the chieftain asked him directly.
“As surely as your hammer was forged by King Bruenor Battlehammer for Wulfgar, son of Beornegar,” Drizzt answered. “A hammer named Aegis-fang, and etched upon its mithral head with the intertwined symbols of the three dwarf gods, Moradin, Dumathoin, and Clangeddin. I was there when it was forged, and there when it was given to Wulfgar—and indeed, with Wulfgar did I travel to the lair of Ingeloakastamizilian, Icingdeath, the white dragon, and there where I came upon this very weapon.” As he finished, he drew out his diamond-edged scimitar, which he had named after the slain dragon, and held it up before the chieftain, letting the firelight catch the brilliant edge. He rolled it over in his hand to display the black adamantine handle shaped as the head of a hunting cat.
“Gather your friends,” the chieftain said, nodding in recognition of the distinctive scimitar and smiling widely, for as Drizzt had hoped, the legend of Drizzt and particularly of Wulfgar, remained strong in the oral tradition of the Tribe of the Elk. “Share our fire and our food, and we will dress you warmly for the road to Easthaven.”
“Long dead,” said the young ferryman. “Drowned in ’73. Saved the boat, but not old Spiblin.”
The six companions looked to each other curiously, not knowing what to make of the strange words. They had made the southeastern corner of Lac Dinneshere, the egress point of the ferry, early the next afternoon, and luck had been with them, for they saw the boat’s sails not far off the shore. A signal fire had brought it sailing in, but to their surprise, the captain was not the crusty graybeard who had dropped them at this spot only a few days earlier.
“There are several ferries from Easthaven’s docks, then,” Drizzt reasoned.
“Nay, just this one,” said the young skipper.
“And the former captain?”
“Long dead, like I telled you.”
“Wait, you said ’73,” Afafrenfere put in.
“Aye, we speak of it as the Year of the Wave, for such a storm blew down from the north that half the waters of Dinneshere took the docks of Easthaven, and most of our fleet as well. Spiblin was too stubborn to run to higher ground, saying he’d save his boat if he had to die doing it. And so he did, to both. Eleven years, it’s been since then.”
“1484?” Drizzt asked, and behind him, Effron sucked in his breath. Drizzt turned around, to see the monk and the tiefling staring at each other.
“By Dalereckoning. It is 1484?” Effron asked the ferryman, who nodded. Effron looked back at the monk and said, “The Year of the Awakened Sleepers.”
They disembarked the ferry at Easthaven’s docks, and indeed these were not the same structures from which they had departed, though remnants of those “old” docks were still to be seen. They didn’t even enter the town, though, despite the late hour, but instead brought forth the nightmare and the unicorn. Drizzt, Dahlia, and Effron on Andahar, the other three on Entreri’s steed, they thundered off down the Eastway, making for Bryn Shander and Kelvin’s Cairn, determining that Clan Battlehammer seemed their best hope for answers.
Another riddle met them the next morning at Bryn Shander’s gate, for they were denied entrance.
“No friend of Ten-Towns drags a demon in his wake, then runs off!” the captain of the Bryn Shander garrison shouted to them from the wall when he at last arrived to the summons of the guards. “What menace chases you here this time, Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“No menace,” Drizzt replied, and he wanted to say much more, but found the words impossible to find. The city looked much the same, but he knew none of the guards, nor the captain, though he had met the captain on his last journey through the city, which seemed only a tenday previous.
“What demon?” Artemis Entreri asked when it became obvious that Drizzt was overwhelmed, and tongue-tied.
“A mighty balor, seeking Drizzt Do’Urden,” the captain replied from on high. “And praise that Master Tiago was around, to slay the demon before our western gate!”
A huzzah went up from the other guards at the mention of … Tiago?
Entreri turned and stared open-mouthed at Drizzt and both shook their heads. “And pray tell, what year was this battle?” Entreri asked the captain of the guard.