Promise of the Witch-King

by R. A. Salvatore

  His confidence grew as he read on, for he felt the empathetic intrusions of the living tome and came to believe that his wards would suffice in fending them off.

  Quickly did the learned mage begin to decipher the ways of the book. The runes appearing in the air above it and falling into it were translations of life energy, drawn from an outside source. That energy had fueled the construction, served as the living source of power animating the undead, caused the gargoyles to regenerate on their perches, and brought life to the golems.

  Canthan could hardly draw a breath. The sheer power of the translation overwhelmed him. For some two decades, the wizards of the Bloodstone Lands considered Zhengyi’s lichdom, his cheating of death itself, to be his greatest accomplishment, but the book …

  The book rivaled even that.

  The wizard devoured another page and eagerly turned to the next. In no time, he had come to the point where the lettering ended and watched in amazement as runes appeared in the air and drifted to the pages, writing as they went. The process had been vampiric at first, Canthan recognized, with the tome taking from the living force, but it had become more symbiotic, a joining of purpose and will.

  The source of energy? Canthan mused. He considered Arrayan, her weakness and that of her partner. She had found the missing book, Mariabronne and Wingham had told them.

  No, the wizard decided. That wasn’t the whole of it. Arrayan was far more entwined in all of it than just having been drained of her life energies.

  Canthan smiled when he finally understood the power of the tome and knew how to defeat it.

  And not just defeat it, he hoped, but possess it.

  He tore his gaze away from the page and glanced up the staircase to see Arrayan leaning back against a wall, watching Olgerkhan. She looked his way desperately, plaintively. Too much so, Canthan knew. There was more at stake for the young woman than merely whether or not they could find their way out of the castle. For her, it was much more personal than the safety of Palishchuk.

  Entreri had shown them how to test each pressure plate safely, but Mariabronne needed no such instructions. The ranger had played through similar scenarios many times, and had the know-how and the equipment to work his way quickly down the tunnel he had chosen.

  It had continued to bend around to the left for many feet, with pressure plates set between wall-set torches every dozen feet or so. Mariabronne lit the first by tapping the plate with a long telescoping pole, but he did not trigger the next, or the next after that, preferring to walk in near darkness.

  Then, convinced all was clear, the ranger rushed back to the second set of torches and triggered the plate. He repeated the process, always lighting the torches two sets back.

  After about fifty feet, the tunnel became a staircase, moving straight down for many, many steps.

  Mariabronne glanced back the way he had come. Ellery had told them to inspect the tunnels just to thirty feet or so. The ranger had always been that advanced and independent scout, though, and he trusted his instincts. Down he went, testing the stairs and the walls. Slowly and steadily, he put three dozen steps behind him before it simply became too dark for him to continue. Not willing to mark his position clearly by lighting a candle or torch of his own, Mariabronne sighed and turned back.

  But then a light appeared below him, behind the slightly ajar door of a chamber at the bottom of the stairs. Mariabronne eyed it for a long while, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling and standing on end. Such were the moments he lived for, the precipice of disaster, the taunt of the unknown.

  Smiling despite himself, Mariabronne crept down to the door. He listened for a short while and dared to peek in. Every castle must have a treasure room was his first thought, and he figured he was looking in on one of the antechambers to just that. Two decorated sarcophagi were set against the opposite wall, framing a closed iron door. Before them, in the center of the room, a brazier burned brightly, a thin line of black smoke snaking up to the high ceiling above. Centering that ceiling was a circular depression set with some sort of bas relief that Mariabronne could not make out—though it looked to him as if there were egglike stones set into it.

  Stone tables covered in decorated silver candelabra and assorted trinkets lined the side walls, and the ranger made out some silver bells, a gem-topped scepter, and a golden censer. Religious items, mostly, it seemed to him. A single cloth hung from one table, stitched with a scene of gnolls dancing around a rearing black dragon.

  “Lovely combination,” he whispered.

  Mariabronne glanced back up the ascending corridor behind him. Perhaps he shouldn’t press on. He could guess easily enough what those sarcophagi might hold.

  The ranger grinned. Such had been the story of his life: always pushing ahead farther than he should. He recalled the scolding King Gareth had given to him upon his first official scouting expedition in eastern Vaasa. Gareth had bade him to map the region along the Galenas for five miles.

  Mariabronne had gone all the way to Palishchuk.

  That was who he was and how he played: always on the edge and always just skilled enough or lucky enough to sneak out of whatever trouble his adventurous character had found.

  So it was still, and he couldn’t resist. The Honorable General Dannaway of the Vaasan Gate had been wise indeed not to entrust Ellery to Mariabronne’s care alone.

  The ranger pushed open the door and slipped into the room. Gold and silver reflected in his brown eyes, gleaming in the light of the brazier. Mariabronne tried hard not to become distracted, though, and set himself in line with the coffins.

  As he had expected, their dog-faced, decorated lids swung open.

  As one gnoll mummy strode forth from its coffin, Mariabronne was there, a smile on his face, his sword deftly slashing and stabbing. He hit the creature several times before it had even cleared the coffin, and when it reached for him with one arm, lumbering forward, Mariabronne gladly took that arm off at the elbow.

  The second was on him by then, and the ranger hopped back. He went into a quick spin, coming around fast, blade level, and the enchanted sword creased the gnoll’s abdominal area, tearing filthy gray bandages aside and opening up a gash across the belly of the dried-out husk of the undead creature. The gnoll mummy groaned and slowed its pursuit. Mariabronne smiled all the wider, knowing that his weapon could indeed hurt the thing.

  And the two undead creatures simply weren’t fast enough to present a serious threat to the skilled warrior. Mariabronne’s blade worked brilliantly and with lightning speed and pinpoint accuracy, finding every opening in the mummies’ defenses, taking what was offered and never asking for more. He fought with no sense of urgency, as was his trademark, and it was rooted in the confidence that whatever came along, he would have the skills to defeat it.

  A rattle from above tested that confidence. Both mummies were ragged things by then, much more so than they had been when first they had emerged from their coffins, with rag wrappings hanging free and deep gashes oozing foul odors and the occasional drip of ichor all around them both. One had only half an arm, a gray-black bony spur protruding from the stump. The other barely moved, its gut hanging open, its legs torn. The ranger led them to the near side of the room, back to the door through which he’d entered, then he disengaged and dashed back to find the time to glance up at the rattle.

  He noted one of the egg shapes rocking back and forth above the brazier. It broke free of the ceiling and dropped to the flaming bowl. Mariabronne’s eyes widened with curiosity as he watched it fall. He came to realize that it was not an egg-shaped stone but an actual egg of some sort. It hit the flaming stones in the bowl and cracked open, and a line of blacker smoke rushed out of it, widening as it rose.

  Hoping it was no poison, Mariabronne darted back at the mummies, thinking to slash through them and get in position for a fast exit. He hit the nearest again in the gut, extending the already deep wound so thoroughly that the creature buckled over, folded in half, and fell into a hea
p. The other swung at Mariabronne, but the ranger was too fast. He ducked the lumbering blow and quickstepped past, nearly to the door.

  “You shall not run!” came a booming voice in his ears, and the ranger felt a shiver course his spine. Accompanying that voice was a sudden, sharp gust of wind that whipped the ranger’s cloak up over his back.

  Worse for Mariabronne, though, the wind slammed the door.

  He rolled and turned as he came around, so that he faced the room with his back to the door. His jaw dropped as he followed the billowing column of black smoke up and up to where it had formed into the torso and horned head of a gigantic, powerful demonic creature that radiated an aura of pure evil. Its head and facial features resembled that of a snub-nosed bulldog, with huge canines and a pair of inward-hooking horns at the sides of its wide head. Its arms and hands seemed formed of smoke, great grasping black hands with fingers narrowing to sharp points.

  “Well met, human,” the demon creature said. “You came here seeking adventure and a test of your skills, no doubt. Would you leave when you have at last found it?”

  “I will send you back to the Abyss, demon!” Mariabronne promised.

  He started forward but realized his error immediately, for in his fascination with the more formidable beast, he had taken his eye off the mummy. It came forward with a lumbering swing. The ranger twisted and ducked the blow. But that second, cropped arm stabbed in, the sheared, sharpened bone gashing Mariabronne’s neck. Again Mariabronne’s speed extracted him before the mummy could follow through, but he felt the warmth of his own blood dribbling down his neck.

  Before he could even consider that, however, he was leaping aside once more.

  The smoky creature blew forth a cone of fiery breath.

  “Daemon,” the beast corrected. “And my home is the plane of Gehenna, where I will gladly return. But not until I feast upon your bones.”

  Flames danced up from Mariabronne’s cloak and he spun, pulling it free as he turned. He noted then that the pursuing mummy had not been so fortunate, catching the daemon fire full force. It thrashed about, flames dancing all over it, one arm waving frantically, futilely.

  Mariabronne threw his cloak upon it for good measure.

  Then he leaped forward and the daemon came forth, smoke forming into powerful legs as it stepped free of the brazier. It raked with its shadowy hands and its head snapped forward to bite at Mariabronne, but again the ranger realized at once that he was the superior fighter and that his sword could indeed inflict damage upon the otherworldly creature.

  “Gehenna, then,” he cried. “But you will go there hungry!”

  “Fool, I am always hungry!”

  Its last word sounded more as a gurgle, as the ranger’s fine sword creased its face. In his howl of triumph, though, Mariabronne didn’t hear the second egg drop.

  Or the third.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE RANGER’S JOURNEY

  The sound of battle echoed up the corridor and into the main room of the tower. Canthan snarled at the noise but refused to turn away from the tome. He felt certain there were more secrets buried within that book. Energy made his skin tingle and hummed in the air around it. The book was magical, the runes were magical, and he had a much better understanding of how the castle had come about, about the source of energy that had facilitated the construction, but there was more. Something remained hidden just below the surface. The magical runes even then appearing on the page might prove to be a clue.

  The ring of steel distracted him. He turned back to see an agitated Pratcus hopping from one foot to the other in the middle of the room. Ellery came out of one tunnel, and cut to the side from where the sound emanated. She looked at Pratcus as Athrogate emerged from a tunnel opposite. Up on the balcony, Olgerkhan and Arrayan leaned over the railing, looking down with concern.

  “Who?” Ellery asked.

  “Gotta be the ranger,” Pratcus answered.

  Ellery ran toward the sound. “Which tunnel?” she asked, for the torches in all had gone dark again, and the echoes of the sounds confused her.

  All eyes went to the dwarf, but Pratcus just shrugged.

  Then from above, Olgerkhan cried out, “Breach!”

  The fight had come.

  “Just keep them off me!” Canthan growled, and he forced his attention back to the open book.

  Another egg fell and broke open, and that made five.

  Mariabronne finished the first with a two-handed overhead chop, but he was too busy leaping away from fiery daemon breath to applaud himself for the kill.

  He went into a frenzy, spinning, rolling, and slashing, scoring hit after hit, and he came to realize that the creatures could only breathe their fire on him from a distance. So he ran, alternately closing on each. He took a few hits and gave a few more, and his confidence only heightened when, upon hearing more rattling from above, he leaped over and shouldered the brazier to the floor.

  The rattling stopped.

  There would be no more than the four standing against him. All he had to do was hold out until his companions arrived.

  He sprang forward and charged but skidded to a stop and cut to the side. He used the sarcophagi as shields and kept the clawing, smoky hands at bay.

  His smile appeared once more, that confidence reminiscent of the young Mariabronne who had rightly earned the nickname “the Rover” and had also earned a rakish reputation with ladies all across Damara. His sense of adventure overwhelmed him. He never felt more alive, more on the edge of disaster, of freedom and doom, than he was in times of greatest danger.

  “Are all of Gehenna so slow?” he tried to say, to taunt the daemons, but halfway through the sentence he coughed up blood.

  The ranger froze. He brought his free hand up to his neck to feel the blood still pumping. A wave of dizziness nearly dropped him.

  He had to dive aside as two of the daemons loosed cones of fire at him, and so weak did he feel that he almost didn’t get back to his feet—and when he did, he overbalanced so badly that he nearly staggered headlong into a third of the beasts.

  “Priest, I need you!” Mariabronne the Rover shouted through the blood, and all at once he wasn’t so confident and exuberant. “Priest! Dwarf, I need you!”

  Entreri and Jarlaxle rushed into the room to join the others. Sounds of fighting from above assailed them, and both Entreri and Athrogate started that way.

  Then came the desperate call from Mariabronne, “Priest, I need you!”

  “Athrogate, hold the balcony!” Ellery ordered. “The rest with me!”

  Entreri heard Arrayan’s cry and ignored the commander’s order. In his thoughts, he pictured the doom of Dwahvel, his dear halfling friend, and so overwhelming was that sensation that he never paused long enough to consider it. He sprinted past the dwarf and hit the stairs running, taking them three at a time. He cut to the right, though the door and his companions were on the balcony to the left.

  Then he cut back sharply to the left and leaped up to the slanted stairway railing in a dead run. His lead foot hit and started to slide, but the assassin stamped his right foot hard on the railing and leaped away, spinning as he went so that when he lifted up near the floor of the balcony, his back was to the railing. He threw his hands up and caught the balusters, and with the others on the floor below looking at him with mouths hanging open, Entreri’s taut muscles flexed and tugged. He curled as he rose, throwing his feet up over his head. Not only was his backward flip over the railing perfectly executed, not only did he land lightly and in perfect balance, but on the way over he managed to draw both dagger and sword.

  He spun as he landed and threw himself into the nearest gnoll mummy, his blades working in a scything whirlwind. Gray wrappings exploded into the air, flying all around him.

  Down below, Jarlaxle looked to Ellery and said, “Consider the room secured.”

  Ellery managed one quick look the drow’s way as she sprinted toward the tunnel entrances.

  “Which one?�
�� she asked again of Pratcus, who ran beside her.

  “Yerself to the right, meself to the left!” the dwarf replied, and they split into the two possible openings.

  Jarlaxle followed right behind them, but paused there. Athrogate rambled back from the stairs, trying to catch up.

  Torches flared to life as Ellery ran through. A split second later, Pratcus’s heavy strides similarly lit the first pair in his descending corridor.

  “Which one, then?” Athrogate asked Jarlaxle.

  “Here!” Ellery cried before the drow could answer, and both Jarlaxle and Athrogate took up the chase of the woman warrior.

  In the other tunnel, Pratcus, too, heard the call, just as he passed the second set of torches, which flared to life. The dwarf instinctively slowed but shook his head. Perhaps his tunnel would intersect with the other and he wouldn’t have to lose all the time backtracking, he thought, and he decided to light up one more set of torches.

  He hit the next pressure plate, turning sidelong so that he could quickly spin around if the light didn’t reveal an intersection.

  But the torches didn’t ignite.

  Instead came a sudden clanging sound, and Pratcus just happened to be looking the right way to see the iron spike slide out of the wall.

  He thought to throw himself aside but only managed to cry out. The spike moved too fast. It hit him in the gut and drove him back hard against the far corridor wall. It kept going, plunging right through the dwarf and ringing hard against the stone behind him.

  With trembling hands, Pratcus grabbed at the stake. He tried to gather his wits, to call upon his gods for some magical healing.

  But the dwarf knew that he’d need more than that.

  Flames licked at Mariabronne from every angle. He drove his sword through a daemon’s head, tore it free and decapitated another as he swung wildly. All the room was spinning, though, and he was staggering more than charging as he went for the last pair of daemons.