Promise of the Witch-King

by R. A. Salvatore

  Up above, the dracolich’s head snapped Canthan from the ledge, its powerful jaws taking in the wizard to the waist and clamping hard. The beast swung its neck side to side and Canthan’s lower torso fell free from on high as his upper body was ground into pulp.

  Entreri wanted to scream.

  But he growled instead and came up on the dracolich’s rear leg, throwing all of his weight behind his strike.

  He did some damage, but hardly enough, and it occurred to him that he would have to hit the creature a thousand times to kill it.

  Canthan was already gone. The dracolich fell to all fours and swiveled its head around to spit forth another stream of acid, one that engulfed Mariabronne and melted him in place.

  Entreri reconsidered his course.

  Beside him, a skeleton rose, lifting a rusting broadsword. The assassin slashed at it, felling it with a single stroke. But all around him, more bones rattled, collected themselves, and rose. Entreri looked everywhere for some way out. He moved to strike at the next nearest skeleton, but he stopped short when he realized that he was not their enemy.

  The skeleton warriors, formerly men of the Army of Bloodstone, attacked the dracolich.

  Stunned, Entreri looked again to Jarlaxle, and his mind whirled with the possibilities, the insanity, as he noted that Jarlaxle stood with one hand extended, a purple-glowing, skull-shaped gemstone presented before him.

  “By the gods!” Athrogate yelled from in front, and for the first time Entreri was in full agreement with the wretched little creature.

  All around the great chamber, the Army of Bloodstone rose and renewed the battle they had waged decades before. A hundred warriors stood tall on skeletal legs, lifted sword, axe, and warhammer. They had no fear and only a singular purpose, and as one they rushed in at the beast. Metal rang against bone, leathery skin tore apart beneath the barrage.

  Athrogate had no idea what was happening around him or why. He didn’t stop to question his good fortune, though, for had the dead not risen, he undoubtedly would have met a sudden and brutal end.

  The dracolich’s roar thundered through the room and nearly felled the dwarf with its sheer power. A line of acidic spittle melted one group of skeleton warriors, but as the beast lowered its head to breathe its devastation, another group of warriors charged in.

  Athrogate saw his opening. He called forth more oil of impact on his right-hand morning star and charged in behind the group of skeletons, pushing through them and letting fly a titanic swing.

  The explosion shattered dragon teeth and took off a large chunk of the dracolich’s jawbone, but before the dwarf could swing again, the great skull lifted up beyond his reach.

  Then it came down, and hard, and Athrogate cried out and dived away. Skeletons all around him got crushed and shattered, and the dropping skull smacked him hard and sent him sprawling, his weapons flying from his grasp. He tried to rise but could not. He sensed the dracolich coming in at his back and knew he was doomed.

  But first he was grabbed by the front by a stumbling half-orc who yanked him aside and drove him to the ground then fell atop him defensively.

  “Ye still smell bad,” the dwarf muttered, his voice weak and shaky.

  Olgerkhan would have taken that as a thank you, except that the half-orc was barely conscious by that point, overwhelmed by the lines of agony rolling up from his broken leg.

  Entreri slashed and bashed with all his strength, his mighty sword having some effect. The cumulative efforts of all the fighters was their only chance, he knew, and he played his part.

  But not too well, for in Entreri’s thoughts, first and foremost, he did not want to draw the dracolich’s attention.

  Wherever that attention went, the beast’s enemies crumbled to dust.

  And the great creature was in a frenzy by that point, its wings beating and battering, its tail whipping wildly and launching warriors through the air to smash against the chamber’s distant walls.

  But metal rang out, on and on, snapping against bones, tearing rotting dragon skin. One wing came down to buffet Ellery, but when it reached its low point, a dozen undead warriors leaped upon it and hacked away, and bit and clawed and tugged on bones with skeletal arms. The dracolich roared—and there seemed to be some pain in that cry—and thrashed wildly.

  The skeletons hung on.

  The dracolich rolled, and bones splintered and shattered. When it came around, the skeleton warriors were dislodged, but so was its wing, snapped right off at the shoulder.

  The creature roared again.

  Then it bit Ellery in half and launched her torn corpse across the room.

  Stubbornly, relentlessly, the skeletons were upon it again, bashing away, but Entreri recognized that the ring of metal on bone had lessened.

  A line of spittle melted another group of charging skeletons. Forelegs tore another undead soldier in half and threw its bones at yet another. The dracolich flattened another pair with a downward smash from its great skull.

  All hope faded from Entreri. Despite the unexpected allies, they could not win out against that mighty beast. He looked over to Jarlaxle then, and for the first time in a while the drow looked back. Jarlaxle offered an apologetic shrug, then tugged on the side of his hat’s wide brim. His body darkened, his physical form wavered.

  The dark elf seemed two-dimensional more than three, more of a shadow than a living, breathing creature. He slipped back to the wall, thinned to a black line, and slid into a crack in the stone.

  Entreri cursed under his breath.

  He had to get away, but how? The ramp was no good to him with the large section burned out of it.

  So he just ran, as fast as his wounded ankle could carry him. He stumbled across the room, away from the dracolich as it continued its slaughter of the skeleton army. He looked back over his shoulder to see the creature’s massive tail sweep aside the last of the resistance, and his heart sank as those terrible red points of light that served as the beast’s eyes focused in on him.

  The monster took up the chase.

  Entreri scanned the far wall. There were some openings but they were wide—too wide.

  He had no choice, though, and he went for the narrowest of the group, a circular tunnel about eight feet high. As he reached its entry, he leaped to a stone on the side, grimacing against the stinging pain in his ankle, then sprang higher off of it, catching the archway with both hands. He worked his hands fast, hooking a small cord, then let go and ran on into the tunnel.

  But it wasn’t a tunnel, only a small, narrow room.

  He had nowhere to run, and the dracolich’s head could easily snake in behind him.

  He turned and flattened himself as much as possible against the short tunnel’s back wall. He drew his weapons, though he knew he could not win, as the creature closed.

  “Come on, then,” he snarled, and all fear was gone. If he was to die then and there, so be it.

  The beast charged forward and lowered its head in line. Its serpentine neck snapped with a rattle of bones, sending those terrible, torn jaws forward into the tunnel, straight for the helpless Entreri.

  The assassin didn’t strike out but rather dived down, curled up, and screamed with all his strength.

  For as the dracolich’s skull came through the archway, came under the red-eyed silver dragon statuette that Entreri had just placed there, the devilish trap fired, loosing a blast of fire that would have given the greatest of red dragonkind pause.

  Flames roared down from the archway with tremendous force, charring bone, bubbling the very bedrock. The dracolich’s head did not continue through to bite at Entreri, but the assassin knew nothing but the sting of heat. He kept curled, his eyes closed, screaming against the terror and the pain, denying the roar of the flames and the dracolich. He felt his cloak ignite, his hair singe.

  The defenders of Palishchuk fought bravely, for they had little choice. More and more gargoyles came in at them from out of the darkness in the latest wave of a battle that seem
ed without end. After the initial assault, the townsfolk had organized into small, defensible groups, tight circles surrounding those who could not fight. To their credit, they had lost only a few townspeople to the gargoyles, though a host of the creatures lay dead in the streets.

  In one small room, a lone warrior found less luck and no options. For, like some of the other townsfolk who had fallen that night, Calihye had been cut off from the defensive formations. She battled alone, with Davis Eng helplessly crying out behind her. Three gargoyles were dead in the room, with two killed in the early moments of the long, long battle. After an extended lull, the third had come in against her, and it had only just gone down. Its cries had been answered though, with the next two crashing in, and Calihye knew that others were out there, ready to join the fray.

  She dodged and stabbed ahead, and she thought she might win out against the pair, but she knew she couldn’t keep it up much longer.

  She glanced over at Davis Eng, who lay there with the starkest look of terror on his face.

  Calihye growled as she turned her attention back to the fight. She couldn’t leave him, not like that, not when he was so utterly helpless.

  So she fought on, and a gargoyle went spinning down to the floor. Another came in, then another, and Calihye spun and slashed wildly, hoping and praying that she could just keep them at bay.

  All thoughts of winning flew away, but she continued her desperate swinging and turning, clinging to the last moments of her life.

  The gargoyles screeched so loudly, so desperately, that it stung Calihye’s ears, and behind her, Davis Eng cried out.

  But then the gargoyles were gone. Just gone. They hadn’t flown out of the room. They hadn’t done anything but disappear.

  The gargoyle corpses were gone too, Calihye realized. She blinked and looked at Davis Eng.

  “Have I lost my mind then?” she asked.

  The man, looking as confused as she, had no answers.

  Out on the street, cheering began. Calihye made her way to the broken window and looked down.

  Abruptly, without explanation, the fight for Palishchuk had ended.

  From a crack in the wall across the chamber, Jarlaxle had seen the conflagration. A pillar of fire had rained down from above, obscuring the dracolich’s upper neck and head. The great body, one wing torn away, shuddered and trembled.

  What trick had Entreri played?

  Then it hit the drow. The statuette he had placed over their apartment door in Heliogabalus, the gift from the dragon sisters.

  My clever friend, Jarlaxle thought, and he thought, too, that his clever friend was surely dead.

  The flames relented and the dracolich came back out of the hole. Lines of smoke rose from its swaying head and neck, and when it turned unsteadily, Jarlaxle could see that half of its head had been melted away. The creature roared again or tried to.

  It took a step back across the room. It swayed and fell, and it lay very, very still.

  Jarlaxle slid out of the crack and rematerialized in the chamber—a room that had grown eerily quiet.

  “Get off o’ me, ye fat dolt,” came Athrogate’s cry, breaking the silence.

  The drow turned to see the dwarf roll Olgerkhan over onto the floor. Up hopped Athrogate, spitting and cursing. He looked around, trying to take it all in, and stood there for along while, hands on his hips, staring at the dragon cadaver.

  “Damned if we didn’t win,” he said to Jarlaxle.

  The drow hardly heard him. Jarlaxle moved across the room quickly, fearing what he would find.

  He breathed a lot easier when Artemis Entreri walked out from under the archway, wisps of smoke rising from his head and torso. In one hand he held the crumpled, smoldering rag that had been his cloak, and with a disgusted look at the drow, he tossed it aside.

  “Always dragons with you,” he muttered.

  “They do hold the greatest of treasures for the taking.”

  Entreri looked around the bone-filled but otherwise empty room, then back at Jarlaxle.

  The drow laughed.

  CHAPTER 22

  TO THE VICTOR …

  Olgerkhan grunted and groaned and held his breath as Athrogate tied a heavy leather strap around his broken leg. The dwarf looped the belt and held one end up near the half-orc’s face.

  “Best be biting hard,” he said.

  Olgerkhan looked at him for a moment, then took the end of the strap in his mouth and clamped down on it.

  Athrogate nodded and gave a great tug on the strap, yanking it tight and forcing the half-orc’s leg in line. The strap somewhat muffled Olgerkhan’s scream, but it still echoed through the chamber. The half-orc’s hands clenched and he pounded them on the stone floor.

  “Yeah, bet that hurt,” Athrogate offered.

  The half-orc lay back, near to collapse. He flitted in and out of consciousness for a few moments, black spots dancing before his eyes, but then through the haze and pain, he saw something that commanded his attention. Arrayan appeared on the ledge. She stood straight, for the first time in so long, leaning on nothing.

  Olgerkhan came up to his elbows as she met his gaze.

  “And so it ends,” Jarlaxle remarked, he and Entreri moving to the dwarf and half-orc. “Help him up, then. I will levitate you up to join Arrayan on the ledge one at a time.”

  Athrogate moved to help Olgerkhan stand, but Entreri just moved away to the wall, where he quickly picked a route and began climbing. By the time Jarlaxle made his first trip up, easing Olgerkhan down beside Arrayan, Entreri was nearly there, moving steadily.

  When he finally pulled his head above the ledge, he found Arrayan fallen over Olgerkhan, hugging him tightly and professing her love to him. Entreri hopped up beside them, offered a weak smile that neither of them even registered, and moved off to check the ascending hallway.

  He sprinted up some distance but found no enemies and heard no sounds at all. When he came back, he found the other four waiting for him, Olgerkhan leaning on the dwarf with Arrayan supporting him under his other arm.

  “The corridor is clear,” he reported.

  “The castle is dead,” Arrayan replied, and her voice rang out more strongly than Entreri had previously heard.

  “Ye can’t be sure,” Athrogate replied.

  But Arrayan nodded, her confidence working against the doubts of the others. “I don’t know how I know,” she explained. “I just know. The castle is dead. No gargoyles or mummies will rise against us, nor daemons or other monsters. Even the traps, I believe, are now inert.”

  “I will ensure that, every step,” Entreri assured her.

  “Bah, but she can’t be sure,” Athrogate reiterated.

  “I do believe she is,” said Jarlaxle. “Sure and correct. The dracolich was the source of the castle’s continuing life, was giving power to the book, and the book power to the gargoyles and other monsters. Without the dragon, they are dead stone and empty corpses, nothing more.”

  “And the dragon was giving the book the power to steal from me my life,” Arrayan added. “The moment it fell, my burden was lifted. I do not understand it all, good dwarf, but I am certain that I am correct.”

  “Bah, and I was just starting to have some fun.”

  That brought a laugh, even from Olgerkhan, though he grimaced with the effort. Jarlaxle moved out before the trio to join Entreri.

  “We will move up ahead and ensure that the way is clear,” the dark elf said, and he and Entreri started off.

  They trotted along swiftly, putting a lot of distance between themselves and the others.

  “The castle is truly dead?” Entreri asked when they were well alone.

  “Arrayan is a perceptive one, and since she was inextricably tied to the castle, I would trust her judgment in this.”

  “You seem to know more than she.”

  Jarlaxle shrugged.

  “No gargoyles and no mummies,” Entreri went on. “Their source of power is gone. But what of the undead? Will we find skel
etons waiting for us when we get back to the keep?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Their master, it would seem, walks beside me.”

  Jarlaxle gave a little laugh.

  “When did you become a necromancer?” Entreri asked.

  Jarlaxle took out the skull gem.

  “It was you back there, of course,” the assassin said. “All of it.”

  “Not completely true,” Jarlaxle replied. “I brought in our three lost companions, true. You did indeed hear them following us down.”

  “And left the fourth hanging on a spike?”

  Another laugh. “He is a dwarf—the gem grants me no power over dead dwarves, just humans. So if you fall in battle.…”

  Entreri was not amused. “You have the power to raise an army of skeletons?” he asked.

  “I did not,” the drow explained. “Not all of them. The dracolich animated them, or the castle did. But I heard them, every one, and they heard me, and heeded my commands. Perhaps they harbored old grievances against the dragon that had long ago slaughtered them.”

  They crossed the room where Entreri had battled Canthan and moved steadily along. No eggs fell from the ceiling carvings, releasing guardian daemons to terrorize them, and no sarcophagi creaked open. When they at last reached the main chamber of the keep, they found that the monsters had broken through the doors. But none remained to stand against them. Bones littered the floor, and a pair of gnoll mummies lay still on the stairs, but not a gargoyle was to be seen. Outside it was dark, for it was well into the night by then.

  Jarlaxle paid it all little heed. His prize was in sight, and he was fast to the book, which still stood on its tendril platform. No mystical runes spun in the air above it, and the drow felt no tingles of magical power as he moved to stand before it. He looked over at Entreri then tore out a page.

  He paused and looked around, as if listening for the rumble of a wall crumbling.