Too well, perhaps.

“We have possibilities with a collection of Netherese lords in Shade Enclave,” Kimmuriel said. “They are quite interested in facilitating an underground trade network.”

“Shade Enclave?” Jarlaxle muttered. He had never been to the place, in what had been the desert of Anauroch before the Spellplague and the great upheavals that had so changed the land.

“You would be the perfect facilitator,” Kimmuriel said. “In your efforts against the primordial, you delivered a great blow to the minions of Thay, as these lords are aware. They will be pleased to meet you and begin the negotiations.”

“What of Luskan?”

“I will deal with Luskan.”

“You should speak with the Baenres.”

“I already have.”

They will lose their prized young weapons master, Jarlaxle’s fingers flashed.

I will see to it, came Kimmuriel’s cryptic response.

Jarlaxle did well to hide his frustration with this drow who always seemed one step ahead of everyone else—at least he thought he had hidden it until he realized that he hadn’t enacted the psychic shields afforded by his eyepatch and Kimmuriel was probably fully reading his mind.

“Shade Enclave, then,” Jarlaxle said.

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.

Chapter 8: The Arranged Marriage

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.

For all of his desperation to pay back Dahlia, Effron understood that he couldn’t manage any such thing alone. She was surrounded by powerful allies, and he would need a powerful response. The resources and personal power of Lord Draygo Quick would more than suffice.

So Effron had faithfully gone into Neverwinter Wood once again, and had thoroughly scouted and spied upon the remnants of the Thayan force, particularly the lich known as Valindra Shadowmantle. The Ashmadai were scattered and leaderless, posing no threat at all to the city or to any of Draygo Quick’s ambitions in this area, if he held any. It didn’t take Effron very long to realize that his previous report to Lord Draygo had been correct, for he saw nothing of Valindra Shadowmantle to indicate anything other than sheer insanity. The lich wandered out from her treelike tower on occasion and meandered through the forest paths calling for Arklem Greeth or Dor’crae, and rarely speaking either name correctly and without some insane stutter, wailing and keening, and occasionally throwing a bolt of purplish-black necromantic energy at a tree or a bird for no reason whatsoever.

Effron figured that she would be caught by the citizen garrison of Neverwinter soon enough and properly dispatched.

He turned his eyes away from Valindra and the Thayans then, but lurked around the forest. Now he looked toward Neverwinter. Every time he noted activity near the city gates, he peered closely and anxiously, as if he expected Dahlia to walk into view. And what would he do if that came to pass, he had to ask himself?

Would he hold to his promise to Draygo Quick of restraint and patience?

He told himself that he would, that he had to be careful with his father Herzgo Alegni gone. More than once, though, he wondered if he was lying to himself.

On the morning he had determined to be his last day near the city, Effron walked a perimeter outside the wall, finding empty regions by which he could travel deeper into the place with his wraith form and other various methods of magical invisibility.