The Ghost King t-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  The growl continued, a maddening and incessant wall, a pervasive answer to the illithid’s concerns that brooked no intelligent debate, or, the creature understood, no room for a change of plans, whatever new circumstances or new enemies might be revealed.

  The Ghost King meant to attack Spirit Soaring.

  Yharaskrik tried to send its thoughts around the growl, to find Crenshinibon, or what remained of the Crystal Shard as an independent sentience. It tried to construct logic to stop the dracolich’s angry vibrations.

  It found nothing, and every path led to one road only: eviction.

  It was no longer a disagreement, no longer a debate about their course of action. It was a revolt, full and without resolution. Hephaestus-Crenshinibon was trying to evict Yharaskrik, as surely as had the dwarf in the tunnels below.

  Unlike that occasion, however, the mind flayer had nowhere else to go.

  The growl rolled on.

  Yharaskrik threw wave after wave of mental energy at the dragon-shard mind. It gathered its psionic powers and released them in ways subtle and clever.

  The growl rolled on.

  The illithid assailed the Ghost King with a wall of discordant notions and emotions, a cacophony of twisted notes that would have driven a wise man mad.

  The growl rolled on.

  It attacked every fear buried within Hephaestus. It conjured images of the exploding Crystal Shard from those years before, when the light had burned the eyes from Hephaestus’s head.

  The growl rolled on. The mind flayer found no wedge between the dragon and the artifact. They were one, so completely united that even Yharaskrik couldn’t fathom where one ended and the other began, or which was in control, or which even, to the illithid’s great surprise and distress, was initiating the growl.

  And it went on, unabated, unflinching, incessant and forevermore if necessary, the illithid understood.

  Clever beast!

  There was nothing left there for the mind flayer. It would have no control of the great dracolich limbs. It would find no conversation or debate. It would find nothing there but the growl, heartbeats and days and years and centuries. Just the growl, just the opaque wall of a singular note that would forevermore dull its own sensibilities, that would steal its curiosity, that would force it to stay within, confined to an endless battle.

  Against Hephaestus alone, Yharaskrik knew it could prevail. Against Crenshinibon alone, Yharaskrik held confidence that it would find a way to win.

  Against both of them, there was only the growl. It all came clear to the illithid, then. The Crystal Shard, as arrogant as Yharaskrik itself, and as stubborn as the dragon, as patient as time, had chosen. To the illithid, that choice at first seemed illogical, for why would Crenshinibon side with the lesser intellect of the dragon?

  Because the Crystal Shard was more possessed of ego than the illithid had recognized. More than logic drove Crenshinibon. By joining with Hephaestus, the Crystal Shard would dominate.

  The growl rolled on.

  Time itself lost meaning in the rumble. There was no yesterday and no tomorrow, no hope nor fear, no pleasure nor pain.

  Just a wall, not thickening, not thinning, impenetrable and impassable.

  Yharaskrik couldn’t win. It couldn’t hold. The Ghost King became a creature of two, not three, and those two became one, as Yharaskrik departed.

  The disembodied intellect of the great mind flayer began to dissipate almost immediately, oblivion looming.

  * * * * *

  All the wizened and experienced minds remaining at Spirit Soaring gathered in lectures and seminars, sharing their observations and intuition about the crash of worlds and the advent of the dark place, a reformed Plane of Shadow they came to call the Shadowfell. All reservations were cast aside, priest and mage, human, dwarf, and drow.

  They were all together, plotting and planning, seeking an answer. They were quick to agree that the fleshy beasts crawling over Spirit Soaring were likely of another plane, and no one argued the basic premise of some other world colliding, or at least interacting in dangerous ways, with their own world. But so many other questions remained.

  “And the walking dead?” Danica asked.

  “Crenshinibon’s addition to the tumult,” Jarlaxle explained with surprising confidence. “The Crystal Shard is an artifact of necromancy more than anything else.”

  “You claimed it destroyed—Cadderly’s divination showed us the way to destroy it, and we met those conditions. How then …?”

  “The collision of worlds?” Jarlaxle asked more than stated. “The fall of the Weave? The simple chaos of the times? I do not believe that it has returned to us as it was—that former incarnation of Crenshinibon was indeed destroyed. But in its destruction, it is possible that the liches who created it have come free of it. I believe that I battled one, and that you encountered one as well.”

  “You make many presumptions,” Danica remarked.

  “A line of reasoning to begin our investigation. Nothing more.”

  “And you think these things, these liches, are the leaders?” asked Cadderly.

  Before Jarlaxle could answer, Danica cut him short. “The leader is the dracolich.”

  “Joined with the remnants of Crenshinibon, and thus with the liches,” said Jarlaxle.

  “Well, whatever it is, something bad’s going on, something badder than anything I e’er seen in me long years o’ living,” said Bruenor, and he looked toward the doorway to Catti-brie’s room as he spoke. An uncomfortable silence ensued, and Bruenor harrumphed a great and profound frustration and took his leave to be with his wounded daughter.

  To the surprise of all, especially Cadderly, the priest found himself beside Jarlaxle as the conversation resumed. The drow had surprising insights on the dual-world hypothesis. He had experience with the shadowy form they both understood to be one of the liches that had created Crenshinibon in that long-lost age. These ideas seemed to Cadderly the most informative of all.

  Not Drizzt, nor Bruenor, not even Danica fathomed as clearly as Jarlaxle the trap into which Catti-brie had fallen, or the dire, likely irreparable implications of a new world imprinting on the old, or of a shattering of the wall between light and shadow. Not the other mages nor the priests quite grasped the permanence of the change that had found them all, of the loss of magic and of some, if not all the gods. But Jarlaxle understood.

  Deneir was gone, Cadderly had come to accept, and the god was not coming back, at least not in the form Cadderly had come to know. The Weave, the source of Toril’s magic, could not be rewound. It appeared as though Mystra herself—all of her domain—was simply there one moment, gone the next.

  “Some magic will continue,” Jarlaxle said as the discussion neared its end. It had become little more than a rehash of belabored points. “Your exploits prove that.”

  “Or they are the last gasps of magic dying,” Cadderly replied. Jarlaxle shrugged and reluctantly nodded at the possibility of that theory.

  “Is this world that is joining with ours a place of magic and gods?” Danica asked. “The beasts we have seen—”

  “Have nothing to do with the new world, I think, which may be imbued, as is our own, with both magic and brute force,” Jarlaxle interrupted without reservation. “The crawlers come from the Shadowfell.” Cadderly nodded agreement with the drow.

  “Then, is their magic dying?” Drizzt asked. “Has this collision you speak of destroyed their Weave, as well?”

  “Or will the two intertwine in new ways, perhaps with this Plane of Shadow, this Shadowfell, between them?” Jarlaxle said.

  “We cannot know,” said Cadderly. “Not yet.”

  “What next?” asked Drizzt, and his voice took on an unusual timbre, one of distinct desperation—desperation wrought by his fears for Catti-brie, the others knew.

  “We know what tools we have,” Cadderly said, and he stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. “We will match strength with strength, and hope that some magic, at least
, will find its way to our many spellcasters.”

  “You have shown as much already,” said Jarlaxle.

  “In a manner I cannot predict, much less control or summon.”

  “I have faith in you,” Jarlaxle replied, and that statement gave all four of them pause, for it seemed so impossible that Jarlaxle would be saying that of Cadderly—or anyone!

  “Should Cadderly extend similar confidence?” Danica said to the drow.

  Jarlaxle burst into laughter, helpless and absurd laughter, and Cadderly joined him, and Danica joined them, too.

  But Drizzt could not, his gaze sliding to the side of the room, to the door behind which Catti-brie sat in unending darkness.

  Lost to him.

  * * * * *

  Desperation gripped the normally serene Yharaskrik as the reality of its situation closed in around it. Memories flew away and equations became muddled. It had known physical oblivion before, when Hephaestus had released his great fiery breath upon Crenshinibon, blasting the artifact. Only through an amazing bit of good fortune—the falling Weave touching the residual power of the artifact with the remnants of Yharaskrik nearby—had the illithid come to consciousness again.

  But oblivion loomed once again, and with no hope of reprieve. The disembodied intellect flailed without focus for just a few precious moments before the desperate mind flayer reached out toward the nearest vessel.

  But Ivan Bouldershoulder was ready, and the dwarf put up such a wall of denial and rage that Yharaskrik couldn’t begin to make headway into his consciousness. So shut out was the illithid that Yharaskrik had no understanding of where it was, or that it was surrounded by lesser beings that might indeed prove susceptible to possession.

  Yharaskrik didn’t even fight back against that refusal, for it knew that possession would not solve its problem. It could not inhabit an unwilling host forever, and should it insert all of its consciousness into the physical form of a lesser being, should it fully possess a dwarf, a human, or even an elf, it would become limited by that being’s physiology.

  There was no real escape. But even as it rebounded away from Ivan Bouldershoulder, the mind flayer had another thought, and cast a wide net, its consciousness reaching out across the leagues of Faerûn. It needed another awakened intellect, another psionicist, a fellow thinker.

  It knew of one. It reached for one as its homeless intellect began to flounder.

  In a lavish chamber beneath the port city of Luskan, many miles to the northwest, Kimmuriel Oblodra, lieutenant of Bregan D’aerthe, second-in-command behind only Jarlaxle Baenre, felt a sensation, a calling.

  A desperate plea.

  CHAPTER 22

  A WHISPER IN THE DARK

  The night was quiet, the forest beyond the wide courtyard of Spirit Soaring dark and still.

  Too quiet, Jarlaxle thought as he stared out from a second-story balcony, where he kept his assigned watch. He heard others in the hallways behind him expressing hope at the calm, but to Jarlaxle, the deceptive peace was just the opposite. The pause revealed to him that their enemies were not foolhardy. The last attack had become a massacre of fleshy crawling beasts—their burned and blasted lumps littered the lawn still.

  But they weren’t finished, to be sure. Given Danica’s report, given Jarlaxle’s understanding of the hatred toward him and toward Cadderly and Danica, he saw no possibility that Spirit Soaring would suddenly be left in peace.

  This night was peaceful, though—undeniably so, paradoxically so, eerily so. And in that quiet, with not even the breath of wind accompanying it, Jarlaxle, and Jarlaxle alone, heard a call.

  His eyes widened despite his near-perfect control over his emotions, and he reflexively glanced around. He knew how tentative his—and Athrogate’s—welcome was at Spirit Soaring, and he could hardly believe his misfortune as another ally, one who would not likely be accepted by any at Spirit Soaring, demanded an audience.

  He tried to push that quiet but insistent call away, but its urgency only heightened.

  Jarlaxle looked to the forest and focused his thoughts on one large tree, just behind the foliage border. Then, with another glance around, the drow slipped over the balcony railing and nimbly climbed to the ground. He disappeared into the darkness, making his careful way across the wide courtyard.

  * * * * *

  “Bah, just as I telled ye, elf,” a sneering Bruenor Battlehammer said to Drizzt as they watched Jarlaxle slip down from his perch. “Ain’t no friend to any other’n Jarlaxle, that one.”

  A profound sigh reflected Drizzt’s deep disappointment.

  “I’ll go get Pwent and bottle up that damned annoying dwarf ol’ big-hat there brung with him.” Bruenor started to turn away, but Drizzt caught him by the shoulder.

  “We don’t know what this is about,” he reminded them. “More scouting? Did Jarlaxle see something?”

  “Bah!” Bruenor snorted, pulling away. “Go and see if ye got to see, but I’m already knowing.”

  “Await my return,” Drizzt said.

  Bruenor glared at him.

  “Please, trust me in this,” Drizzt begged. “There is too much at stake for all of us, for Catti-brie. If anyone can help us solve the riddle of her troubles, it is Jarlaxle.”

  “Thought it was Cadderly. Ain’t that why we’re here?”

  “Him, too,” said Drizzt, and as Bruenor visibly relaxed, he slipped out the window and moved after Jarlaxle. Not a wary creature stirred at his silent passing.

  * * * * *

  Ever do I find you in curious places, Kimmuriel Oblodra’s fingers waggled to Jarlaxle, using the intricate hand language of the drow. With Cadderly Bonaduce and his pathetic priests? Truly?

  In this time, we all share concerns, and profit from … accommodations of mutual benefit, Jarlaxle’s fingers answered. The situation here is desperate, even grave.

  I know more about it than you do, Kimmuriel assured him, and Jarlaxle wore a puzzled expression.

  “About the failing of the Weave, perhaps …?” he said quietly. Kimmuriel shook his head and responded aloud. “About your predicament. About Hephaestus and Crenshinibon.”

  “And the illithid,” Jarlaxle added.

  “Because of the illithid,” Kimmuriel corrected. “Yharaskrik, without form and dissipating, found me in Luskan. He is no more a part of this creature they call the Ghost King. He was cast out, to fade to nothingness.”

  “And he seeks revenge?”

  “Revenge is not the way of illithids,” Kimmuriel explained. “Though no doubt Yharaskrik enjoyed the bargain I offered.”

  Do tell, said Jarlaxle, with his fingers and his amused expression.

  “Its only hope was to journey to the Astral Plane, a place of consciousness without corporeal restraint,” Kimmuriel explained. “With the failure of conventional magic and divine magic, its best opportunity for such a journey was a fellow practitioner of psionics—me. Without its own body as anchor, the mind flayer could not facilitate the flight alone.”

  “You let it go?” Jarlaxle asked, raising his voice just a bit. He wasn’t as angry as intrigued, however, revealed by the way he reached up to tug at the diatryma feather that was nearly fully regrown in his enchanted hat.

  “To survive as the years pass, Yharaskrik must find a mind hive of illithids. We of psionic power are not unaffected by that which is occurring across the multiverse, and having such allies….”

  “They are wretched creatures.”

  Kimmuriel shrugged. “They are among the most brilliant of all the mortal beings. I know not what will happen to my powers, nor to magic, divine or arcane. I know only that the world is changing—has changed. Even shifting here through the dimensions proved a great risk, but one that I needed to take.”

  “To warn me.”

  “To warn and to instruct, for in return for passage, Yharaskrik revealed to me all it knows about the Ghost King, and about the remnants of the artifact, Crenshinibon.”

  “I am touched at your concern for me.�
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  “You are necessary,” said Kimmuriel, drawing a laugh from Jarlaxle. “Do tell me, then,” Jarlaxle said. “How might I, might we, defeat this Ghost King?”

  Kimmuriel nodded and recounted it all in detail then, echoing Yharaskrik’s lecture about the being that was both Hephaestus and Crenshinibon, about its powers and its limitations. He explained the minions and the gates that brought them to Faerûn. He talked of one such rift he had sensed, though had not yet inspected, still opened wide in the lakeside town to the southeast. He spoke of human and dwarf refugees hiding in tunnels.

  “You trust this mind flayer?” Jarlaxle asked in the end.

  “Illithids are trustworthy,” Kimmuriel replied. “Loathsome, at times, fascinating always, but as long as their goals are understood, their logic is easily followed. In this case, Yharaskrik’s goal was survival. Its plight was real and immediate, and caused by the Ghost King. Knowing that truth, as I did, I trust in its recounting.”

  Jarlaxle believed that he held some insight into the mindset of illithids as well, for he had been a companion of Kimmuriel Oblodra for a long, long time, and if someone had ever deigned to put a squishy octopoid head on that particular drow, it surely would have fit Kimmuriel well.

  * * * * *

  In the brush not far away, Drizzt Do’Urden listened to it all with interest, though much of it was no more than a confirmation of that which they had already surmised about their mighty enemy. Then he listened to Jarlaxle’s reply and instructions, with wide-eyed disbelief, and truly he felt vindicated in trusting Jarlaxle.

  “You cannot demand of me that I take such a risk with Bregan D’aerthe,” he heard Kimmuriel argue.

  “It is worth the potential gain,” Jarlaxle replied. “And think of the opportunity here for you to discern so much more of the mystery that is occurring all around us!”

  That last line apparently had the desired effect on Kimmuriel, for the drow bowed to Jarlaxle, turned to the side, and literally cut the air with an outstretched finger, leaving a sizzling vertical blue line in its wake. With a wave, Kimmuriel turned that two-dimensional blue line into a doorway and stepped through, disappearing from sight.