The Ghost King t-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  He denied Yharaskrik. He screamed at Yharaskrik, aloud and in his every thought. He thrashed physically, hurling himself against the stones, tearing at the tunnel opening to widen it, ignoring the falling rocks that banged off his arms and shoulders. And he thrashed mentally as well, screaming at the wretched beast to be gone from his mind.

  From his mind!

  Such rage enveloped him that Ivan tore the rocks free with bloody fingers and felt no pain. Such strength accompanied that rage that he flung the stones, some half his weight, far behind him to splash into the murky pool. And still he ignored the bruises and cuts, and the strain on his corded muscles. He let the rage take him fully and hold him, a wall of denial, a demand that the illithid get out.

  The hole was wide enough to crawl through—wide enough for two Ivans to crawl through side by side—and still the dwarf dug at the stones with his battered hands, using that physical sensation to give focus to his rage.

  He had no idea how long he went on like that, a few heartbeats or a few thousand, but finally, an exhausted Ivan Bouldershoulder fell through the opening and rolled into the tunnel. He landed flat on his face and lay there, gasping, for a long while.

  Despite the pain, a wry grin widened on his hairy face, for Ivan knew that he was truly alone.

  The tentacle-faced beast had been denied.

  He slept, then, right there in the mud, amidst the stones, keeping himself mentally ready to fend off another intrusion and hoping that no wandering creature of the Underdark would find him and devour him as he lay exhausted and battered in the darkness.

  * * * * *

  Rorick dived to the floor, just under the clawing feet of a huge black bat. “Uncle Pikel!” he screamed, beseeching the druid to do something.

  Pikel balled up his fist, pumped his arms, and stamped his feet in frustration, for he had nothing, nothing at all, to offer. Magic was gone—even his natural affinity with animals had flown. He thought back to only a few days earlier, when he had coaxed the roots out of the walls to secure the barricades—a temporary thing, apparently, since pursuit came from that direction. The dwarf knew he couldn’t reach that level of magic, perhaps not ever again, and his frustration played out, in that dark chamber deep beneath the Snowflakes.

  “Ooooh!” he whined, and he stamped his sandaled feet harder. His whine became a growl as he saw the same bat that had sent Rorick diving for cover angle its wings and come around directly at him.

  Pikel blamed the bat. It made no sense, of course, but none of it made a lot of sense to Pikel just then. So he blamed the bat. That bat. Only that bat. That one bat had caused the failure of magic, and had chased away his god.

  He squatted and picked up his cudgel. It wasn’t enchanted anymore, no longer a magical shillelagh, but it was still a solid club, as the bat found out.

  The black leathery thing swooped at Pikel, and the dwarf leaped and spun, launching the most powerful strike he had ever managed with his strong arm, even from the days when he had the use of both. The hard wood crunched against bat skull, shattering the bone.

  The nightwing fell as surely as if a huge boulder had fallen upon it from on high, crashing down atop Pikel, the two of them rolling away in a tumble of dwarf and black bat.

  Pikel head-butted and kicked with abandon. He bit and poked with his stubby arm. He swung his cudgel with short but heavy strokes, battering the creature relentlessly.

  Nearby, a man screamed as a nightwing swooped in and caught him by the shoulders in its huge clawed feet, but Pikel didn’t hear it. Several others cried out, and a woman shrieked in horror when the bat flew straight for a wall and let loose its prey, hurling the poor man against the rocks, where his bones shattered with a sickening crackle.

  Pikel didn’t hear it. He was still swinging his club and kicking with fury, though the bat that enwrapped him with those great wings was already dead.

  “Get up, Uncle Pikel!” Hanaleisa yelled at him as she leaped past.

  “Huh?” the dwarf replied, and he pulled one wing down from in front of his face and followed the sound to see Hanaleisa sprinting toward Rorick, who was still flat on the ground. Standing above him, Temberle cut his greatsword back and forth in long sweeping arcs above his head, trying to cut at a stubborn nightwing that fluttered up and down above him as if to taunt him. He couldn’t hit the agile bat.

  But Hanaleisa did, leaping high into the air as she rushed past Temberle, somersaulting as she went to enhance the power of her kick. She kicked the bat solidly in the side, sending it several feet away as she tumbled over and landed, still in a run.

  The nightwing turned its attention her way as it righted itself in the air, and swooped to give chase.

  With that distraction, Temberle’s sword at last caught up to it, slashing a leathery wing back to front. The nightwing flopped weirdly in the air and fluttered down, and Hanaleisa and Temberle were upon it before it managed to get the wounded wing out from under itself.

  Hanaleisa was the first to break away, calling out orders, trying to establish some measure of order and supporting lines of defense. But the whole of the wide chamber was in a frenzy, with nightwings fluttering all around them, with wounded men and woman, backs torn wide, one scalped by a raking claw, screaming and running and diving for cover.

  A group of more than a dozen grabbed up all of the precious torches stored at the far end of the hall, at the mouth of a tunnel the group had planned to traverse after their rest stop, and went running away.

  Others followed in the chaos.

  Temberle knocked down another bat, and Hanaleisa matched him. Other nightwings swept out of the chamber in pursuit down the tunnels.

  When it finally ended, just over a score of refugees remained, with three of those badly wounded.

  “It won’t hold,” Hanaleisa said to her brothers and uncle as they gathered together their scant supplies and few remaining torches. “We need to find a way out of here.”

  “Uh-uh!” Pikel emphatically disagreed.

  “Then light your staff!” Hanaleisa yelled at him.

  “Ooooh,” said the dwarf.

  “Hana!” Rorick scolded.

  The monk held forth her hands and took a deep breath, composing herself. “I’m sorry. But we need to move along, and quickly.”

  “We cannot stay here,” Temberle agreed. “We need to get as close to Spirit Soaring as we can manage, and we need to get out of these tunnels.”

  He looked at Pikel, but the dwarf just shrugged, hardly confident.

  “We have no other option,” Temberle assured him.

  A commotion behind them turned them around, and Rorick said, “The scout returns!”

  They rushed to the fisherman, Alagist, and even in the torchlight, they could see that he was thoroughly shaken. “We feared you dead,” Hanaleisa said. “When the bats came in—”

  “Forget the damned bats,” the man replied, and the punctuation of his sentence came as a thump from the distant corridor, like a rumble of thunder.

  “What—?” Temberle and Rorick said together.

  “A footstep,” Alagist said.

  “Uh-oh,” said Pikel.

  “What magic?” Hanaleisa asked the dwarf. “Uh-oh,” he repeated.

  “Gather up the wounded!” Temberle called to all still in the chamber. “Take everything we can carry! We must be gone from this place!”

  “He can’t be moved,” a woman called from beside an unconscious man.

  “We have no choice,” Temberle said to her, rushing over to help.

  The chamber shuddered under the reverberations of another heavy footstep.

  The woman didn’t argue as Temberle hoisted the wounded man over one shoulder.

  Pikel, torch in hand, led the way out of the chamber.

  * * * * *

  “Come on, then!” Ivan yelled into the darkness. “Not with yer head, ye damned squid, but all o’ ye! Come and play!” He didn’t have his axe, but he hoisted a pair of rocks and banged them together with ent
husiasm bordering on murderous glee.

  That physical manifestation of anger echoed the dwarf’s sheer rage, and once more, the intrusions of Yharaskrik faded to nothingness. If the illithid had come to him that time with any hope of possessing him again, Ivan believed with confidence, that delusion had come to an end.

  But the dwarf was still alone, battered and bloody and lost in the dark, with no real expectation that there was a way out of those forever-twisting tunnels. He glanced over his shoulder to the watery cavern, and considered for a moment going back and trying to figure out a way in which he could survive on the fish, or whatever those swimming things might be. Could he somehow strain or heat the murky water enough to make it potable?

  “Bah!” he snorted into the darkness, and decided that it was better to die trying than to simply exist in a dark and empty hole!

  So off Ivan trudged, rocks in hands, a scowl on his face, and a wall of rage within him just looking for an outlet.

  We walked for hours, often stumbling and tripping, for though his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, he still had to feel his way along. He found many side passages, some that led to dead ends, and others he took simply because they “felt” more promising. Even with his dwarf’s senses, so at home underground, Ivan had little idea of where he actually was in relation to the World Above, and even in relation to where he had first dropped down into the murky underground pond. With every turn, Ivan held his breath, hoping he wasn’t just going in circles.

  At every turn, too, the dwarf tucked one of his stone weapons under his armpit, wetted his finger, and held it aloft in search of air currents.

  Finally, he felt the slightest breeze on that upraised finger. Ivan held his breath and stared into the blackness. He knew it could be but a crack, a teasing, impassable chimney, a torturous wormhole he could never squeeze through.

  He slammed his rocks together and stomped along, clinging to optimism and armoring himself with anger. An hour later, he was still in darkness, but the air felt lighter to him, and he felt a distinct sensation on that wetted finger whenever he lifted it.

  Then he saw a light. A tiny spark, far away, rebounding off many turns and twists. But a light nonetheless. Along the walls, rocks took more definitive shape to the dwarf’s fine underground vision. The darkness was surely less absolute.

  Ivan rumbled along, thinking about how he could organize a counter-strike against the dracolich and the illithid and their huddled, shadowy minions. His fears went from his own dilemma to his friends up above, to Cadderly and Danica, the kids and his brother. His pace increased, for Ivan was always one who would fight like a badger for his own sake, but who would fight like a horde of hell-spawned badgers when his friends were involved.

  Soon, though, he slowed again, for the light was not daylight, he came to realize, nor was it any of the glowing fungi so common in the Underdark. It was firelight—torchlight, likely.

  Down there, that probably meant the light of an enemy.

  Ready for a fight, Ivan crept ahead. Knuckles whitening on stones, Ivan gritted his teeth and imagined the sensation of crushing a few skulls.

  A single voice stole that bellicose attitude and had him blinking in astonishment.

  “Oo oi!”

  CHAPTER 21

  FACING THE TRUTH

  Cadderly emerged from the room after spending more than half the morning with Catti-brie, his face ashen, his eyes showing profound weariness. Drizzt, waiting in the anteroom, looked to him with hope, and Jarlaxle, who stood beside Drizzt, looked instead at his dark elf companion. The mercenary recognized the truth splayed on Cadderly’s face even if Drizzt did not—or could not.

  “You have found her?” Drizzt asked.

  Cadderly sighed, just slightly, and handed the eye patch to him. “It is as we believed,” he said, speaking to Jarlaxle more than Drizzt.

  The drow mercenary nodded and Cadderly turned to face Drizzt. “Catti-brie is caught in a dark place between two worlds, our own and a place of shadow,” the priest explained. “The touch of the falling Weave has had many ill effects upon wizards and priests across Faerûn, and no two maladies appear to be the same, from what little I have seen. For Argust of Memnon, the touch proved instantly fatal, turning him to ice—just empty ice, no substance, no flesh beneath it. The desert sun reduced him to a puddle in short order. Another priest carries with him a most awful disease, with open sores across his body, and is surely failing. Many stories …”

  “I care not of them,” Drizzt interrupted, and Jarlaxle, hearing the edge creeping into the ranger’s voice, put a comforting hand on Drizzt’s shoulder. “You have found Catti-brie, caught between the worlds, you say, though in truth I fear it is all a grand illusion masking a sinister design—perhaps the Red Wizards, or—”

  “It is no illusion. The Weave itself has come undone, some of the gods have fled, died … we’re not yet certain. And whether it is the cause of the falling Weave, or a result of it, a second world is falling all around ours, and that junction seems also to have increased the expanse of the Plane of Shadow, or perhaps even opened doorways into some other realm of shadows and darkness,” said Cadderly.

  “And you have found her—Catti-brie, I mean—trapped between this place and our own world. How do we retrieve her fully, and bring her back …” His voice trailed off as he stared into Cadderly’s too-sympathetic face.

  “There is a way!” Drizzt shouted, and he grabbed the priest by the front of his tunic. “Do not tell me that it is hopeless!”

  “I would not,” Cadderly replied. “All sorts of unexplained and unexpected events are occurring all around us, on a daily basis! I have found spells I did not know I possessed, and did not know Deneir could grant, and with all humility and honesty, I say that I am not certain it is even Deneir granting them to me! You ask me for answers, my friend, and I do not have them.”

  Drizzt let him go, the drow’s shoulders sagging, along with his aching heart. He offered a slight nod of appreciation to Cadderly. “I will go and tell Bruenor.”

  “Let me,” said Jarlaxle, and that brought a surprised look from Drizzt. “You go to your wife.”

  “My wife cannot feel my touch.”

  “You do not know that,” Jarlaxle scolded. “Go and hold her, for both your sakes.”

  Drizzt looked from Jarlaxle to Cadderly, who nodded his agreement. The distraught drow put on the magical eye patch as he entered the adjacent chamber.

  “She is lost to us,” Jarlaxle said softly to Cadderly when they were alone. “We do not know that.”

  Jarlaxle continued to stare at him, and Cadderly, grim-faced, could not disagree. “I see no way for us to retrieve her,” the priest admitted. “And even if we could, I fear that the damage to her mind is already beyond repair. By any means I can fathom, Catti-brie is forever lost to us.”

  Jarlaxle swallowed hard, though he was not surprised by the prognosis. He wouldn’t tell King Bruenor quite everything, he decided.

  * * * * *

  Another defeat, Yharaskrik pointed out. We weakened them!

  We barely scratched their walls, the illithid imparted. And now they have new and powerful allies.

  More of my enemies in one place for me to throttle!

  Cadderly and Jarlaxle and Drizzt Do’Urden. I know this Drizzt Do’Urden, and he is not to be taken lightly.

  I know him as well. Crenshinibon unexpectedly joined the internal dialogue, and the illithid detected a simmering hatred behind the simple telepathic statement.

  We should fly from this place, Yharaskrik dared to suggest. The rift has brought uncontrollable beasts from the shadowy plane, and Cadderly has found unexpected allies …

  No cogent response came from the dragon, just a continuous, angry growl reverberating through the thoughts of the triumvirate that was the Ghost King, a wall of anger and resentment, and perhaps the most resounding “no” Yharaskrik had ever heard.

  Through the far-reaching mental eyes of the illithid, its consciousness fl
ying wide to scout the region, they had seen the rift in Carradoon. They had seen the giant nightwalkers and the nightwings and understood that a new force had come to the Prime Material Plane. And through the eyes of the illithid, they had witnessed the latest battle at Spirit Soaring, the coming of the dwarves and the drow, the power revealed by Cadderly—that unknown priestly magic had unnerved Yharaskrik most of all, for he had felt the magical thunder in Cadderly’s ward and had retreated from the brilliance of the priest’s beam of light. Yharaskrik, ancient and once part of a great communal mind flayer hive, thought it knew of every magical dweomer on Toril, but it had never seen anything like the power of the unpredictable priest that day.

  The melted flesh of crawlers and the ash piles of the raised dead served as grim reminders to the mind flayer that Cadderly was not to be underestimated.

  Thus, the dracolich’s continuing growl of denial was not a welcome echo in Yharaskrik’s expansive mind. The illithid waited for the sound to abate, but it did not. It listened for a third voice in the conversation, one of moderation, but heard nothing.

  Then it knew. In a sudden insight, a revelation of a minuscule but all-important shift, the mind flayer realized that the Ghost King was no longer a triumvirate. The resonance of the growl deepened, more a chorus of two than the grumble of one. Two that had become one.

  No words filtered out of that rumbling wall of anger, but Yharaskrik knew its warnings would go unheeded. They would not flee. They—the mind flayer and that dual being with whom it shared the host dragon corpse, for no longer could Yharaskrik count Hephaestus and Crenshinibon as separate entities! — would show no restraint. Not the rift, not Cadderly’s unexplained new powers, not the arrival of powerful reinforcements for Spirit Soaring, would slow the determined vengeance of the Ghost King.