The Ghost King

by R. A. Salvatore

CHAPTER 12

 

  WHEN THE SHADOWS CAME TO THE LIGHT

  Danica and Cadderly rushed through the hallways of Spirit Soaring to see what the commotion was all about. They had to push through a bevy of whispering wizards and priests to squeeze their way out the door, and the grand front porch of the structure was no less crowded.

  "Stay up here!" a mage called to Danica as she squirmed through and jumped down the steps to the cobblestones. "Cadderly, don't let her . . . "

  The man eased up on his protests as Cadderly lifted a hand to silence him. The priest trusted in Danica, and reminded the others to do the same. Still, Cadderly was more than a little perplexed by the sight before him. Deer, rabbits, squirrels, and all manner of animals charged across the lawn of Spirit Soaring, in full flight.

  "There was a bear," an older priest explained.

  "A bear is scaring them like this?" Cadderly asked with obvious skepticism.

  "Bear was running just as fast, just as frightened," the priest clarified, and as Cadderly frowned in disbelief, several others nodded, confirming the wild tale.

  "A bear?"

  "Big bear. Has to be a fire. "

  But Cadderly looked to the south, from whence the animals came, and he saw no smoke darkening the late afternoon sky. He sniffed repeatedly, but found no scent of smoke in the air. He looked at Danica, who was making her way to the southern tree line. Somewhere beyond her came the roar of another bear, then one of a great cat.

  Cadderly pushed his way to the front steps and cautiously descended. A deer bounded out of the trees, leaping frantically across the lawn. Cadderly clapped his hands, figuring to frighten the creature enough to make it veer to the side, but it never seemed to hear or even see him. It went leaping by, knocking him back as it passed.

  "I told you!" the first mage cried at him. "There's no sensibility in them. "

  In the woods, the bear roared again, more powerfully, more insistently. "Danica!" Cadderly called.

  The bear was roaring out in protest and in pain, its threatening growls interspersed with higher-pitched squeals.

  "Danica!" Cadderly cried again, more insistently, and he started toward the trees. He stopped abruptly as Danica burst out of the brush.

  "Inside! Inside!" she yelled to them all.

  Cadderly looked at her questioningly, then his eyes widened in surprise and horror as a horde of crawling beasts, long arms propelling them along at tremendous speed, charged out of the trees behind her.

  The priest had studied the catalogs of Faerun's many and varied animals and monsters, but he had never seen anything quite like these. In that instant of identification, Cadderly got the image of a legless man crawling on long, powerful arms, but that reflexive thought did not hold under closer scrutiny. Wide, hunched shoulders surmounted squat torsos, and the dark-skinned creatures used their arms to walk. They had something resembling feet at the end of their stubby legs, like a sea mammal's flippers. Their locomotion was half hop, half drag. Had they stood straight up, they would nearly match an average man, despite their vestigial feet and their compressed heads, a sort of half-sphere set on their shoulders.

  Their faces were far from human in appearance, with no forehead to speak of, a flat nose, nostrils open forward, and shining yellow eyes - malignant eyes. But their mouths, all toothy and vicious, most alarmed Cadderly and everyone else staring at the beasts. They stretched almost the width of their elongated faces, with a hinged bottom jaw that protruded forward and seemed to project right from the top of the chest, snapping upward hungrily in an eager underbite.

  Danica was ahead of the monstrosities, and a fast runner, but one of them closed fast on her, cutting an intercepting angle.

  Cadderly started to call out to her with horror, but bit it off as she dropped her weight to her heels and skidded to a stop, threw herself around in a circle, and leaped into the air, tucking her legs up high as the creature came in under her. It too stopped fast, long arms reaching up, but Danica's legs were faster and they drove down hard against the monster's upturned face. She used the press as a springboard and leaped away. The monster bounced under the weight of the blow.

  Danica put her head down and ran with all speed, sparing a heartbeat to wave Cadderly back into the cathedral, to remind him with her desperate expression that he, too, was in grave danger.

  As the priest turned, he saw just how grave that danger was. Coming out of the woods were more of the crawling beasts, many more. That unseen but oft-heard bear lumbered out, too, thrashing and stumbling, covered with the shadowy creatures.

  His heart pounding, Cadderly leaped to the stairs, but on the porch, the many wizards and priests were in a panic, crushing against the door with few actually getting inside. To both sides of the double doors, windows flew open, those inside beckoning their companions to dive in from the porch.

  They weren't going to make it, Cadderly realized as he glanced back at Danica. How he wished he had his hand crossbow, or even his walking stick! But he had come down thinking that nothing was seriously out of sorts. Physically, he was unarmed.

  But he still had Deneir.

  Cadderly turned on the top step and closed his eyes, falling into prayer, praying for some solution. He began spellcasting before he even realized what he was attempting.

  He opened his eyes and threw his arms wide. Danica hit the bottom step and sprang up past him, a host of creatures right behind her.

  A blast of energy rolled out from Cadderly across the ground and through it in a great, rolling wave, lifting the cobblestones and grass, and many of the creatures.

  More waves came forth, washing the beasts back in a series of rolling semicircles, like a ripple of waves from the shore of a still pond. The hungry beasts tried to fight past it, but inevitably lost ground, washing farther and farther backward.

  "What is that?" a wizard asked in obvious awe, and despite his concentration, Cadderly heard the woman.

  He had no answer.

  None, that is, except that his spell had bought them the time they needed, and into Spirit Soaring they all went, Danica and Cadderly coming last, with Danica practically pulling her stunned husband in behind her.

  * * * * *

  Danica was relieved to hear other people calling out commands to guard the windows and doors, because Cadderly could do little at that moment, and he needed her. She looked around only briefly, suddenly realizing that someone was missing. Spirit Soaring was a huge place of many, many rooms, so she hadn't noticed the absence before. But in that moment of urgency and danger, she knew that the Spirit Soaring family was incomplete.

  Where was Ivan Bouldershoulder?

  Danica glanced around again, trying to recall when last she had seen the boisterous dwarf. But Cadderly's gasp brought her back to the situation at hand.

  "What did you do out there?" Danica asked him. "I have never seen - "

  "I know not at all," he admitted. "I went to Deneir, seeking spells, seeking a solution. "

  "And he answered!"

  Cadderly looked at her with a blank expression for a moment before shaking his head with concern. "The Metatext, the Weave . . . " he whispered. "He is part of it now. "

  Danica stared at him, puzzled.

  "As if the two - perhaps the three of them, Deneir, Metatext, and Weave - are no longer separate," Cadderly tried to explain.

  "But save for Mystra, the gods were never a part of - "

  "No, more than that," Cadderly said, shaking his head more forcefully. "He was writing to the Weave, patterning it with numbers, and now . . . "

  The sound of breaking glass, followed by shouts, followed by screams, broke short the conversation.

  "They come," said Danica, and she started off, pulling Cadderly behind her.

  They found their first battle in the room only two doors down from the foyer, where a group of priests met the incursion of a pair of the beasts head on. Smashing away w
ith their maces, and mostly armored, the priests had the situation well in hand.

  Cadderly took the lead, running fast to the central stairwell and sprinting up three steps at a time to get up to the fourth floor and his private quarters. Just inside the doorway, he grabbed his belt, a wide leather girdle with a holster on either side for his hand crossbows. He looped a bandolier of specially crafted bolts around his neck and sprinted back to join Danica, loading the crossbows as he went.

  They started for the stairs, but then discovered an unwelcome talent of the strange, crawling beasts: they were expert climbers. Down the hall a window shattered, and they heard thumps as one of the creatures pull itself through.

  Danica moved in front of Cadderly as he dashed that way, but as they reached the room and kicked the door wide, he pushed her aside and lifted his arm, leveling the crossbow.

  A beast was in the room, a second in the window frame, and both opened wide their mouths in vicious snarls.

  Cadderly fired, the bolt flashing across the room to strike the chest of the beast in the window. The dart's side supports folded inward, collapsing on themselves and crushing the small vial they held. That concussion ignited magical oil in an explosive burst that blew a huge hole in the monster's black flesh. The force blew the crawler back out the window.

  Cadderly aimed his second crossbow at the remaining creature, but turned his arm aside as Danica charged it. She stutter-stepped at the last moment, brought her left leg across to her right, and swept it back powerfully, deflecting both clawing arms aside. She expertly turned her hips as she went, gaining momentum, for as her left foot touched down, she snap-kicked with her right, driving the tip of her foot into the beast's left eye.

  It howled and thrashed, arms swinging back furiously, predictably, and Danica easily stepped out of reach, then followed through with a forward step and front kick to the creature's chest that drove it back against the wall.

  Again it reacted with fury, and again she easily leaped out of reach.

  This was the way to fight the creatures, she decided then. Strike hard and back out, repeatedly, never staying close enough to engage those awful claws.

  Cadderly was more than glad that she had the situation under control when they heard the window in the adjoining room shatter. He spun around the jamb, turning to kick open the next door, and swept into the room with his left arm upraised.

  The beast huddled right before him, waiting to spring at him.

  With a startled cry, Cadderly fired the hand crossbow, the bolt hitting the charging crawler barely two feet away, close enough that he felt the rush of concussive force as the dart exploded. Then the beast was gone, blown back across the room where it settled against the wall, its long arms out wide and trembling, a hole in its torso so large that Cadderly realized he could slide his fist into it with ease.

  His breathing came in surprised gasps, but he heard a commotion just outside. He dropped the hand crossbow from his left hand - it bounced off his mid thigh, for it was securely tethered - and worked fast to reload the other weapon.

  He nearly dropped the explosive dart when Danica rushed into the hall behind him, slamming the door of the first room.

  "Too many!" she cried. "And they're coming in all around us. We've got to call up help from below. "

  "Go! Go!" Cadderly yelled back, fumbling with the dart as a shadowy form filled the window across the room.

  Danica, hardly noticing the nearby enemy, ran for the stairwell. The fleshy beast hurled itself at Cadderly.

  The crossbow string slipped from his grasp, and he was lucky to stop the dart from falling out of its grooved table. His eyes flashed from bow to beast and back again, and back, to see a filthy clawed hand slashing at his face.

  * * * * *

  The center stairs at Spirit Soaring ran down a flight, turned around a landing, then ran down another flight in the opposite direction, two flights for every story of the building. Danica didn't actually run down the steps. She went halfway down the first flight and hopped the railing, landing lightly halfway down the second flight. She didn't bounce right to the third set of stairs, but leaped down to the landing to reconnoiter the third floor.

  As she had feared, she was met by the sound of breaking glass. She yelled down the stairs again and sprang halfway down the next stairway, then leaped to the fourth set of steps. She heard the commotion of many people running up the stairs.

  "Break into patrols to secure each floor!" Danica yelled to them, her point accentuated when the lead group reached the landing to the second story and immediately encountered a pair of the beasts rushing down the hallway at them.

  Waggling fingers sent bolts of magical force reaching out. Armored clerics crowded into the doorway to shield the unarmored wizards.

  Few at Spirit Soaring were untested or unseasoned in battle, and so several broke off from the first group with precision and discipline, most continuing up the stairs.

  Danica was already gone from the spot, sprinting back up three steps at a time. She had been away from Cadderly for longer than she had anticipated, and though she trusted in him - how could she not, when she had seen him face down a terrible dragon and a vampire, and when she had watched him, through sheer willpower and divine magic, create the magnificent library cathedral? - she knew that he was alone up there on the fourth floor.

  Alone and with more than two dozen windows to defend in that wing alone.

  * * * * *

  He cried out in alarm and turned away from the blow, but not enough to avoid the long, vicious claws. He felt the skin under his left eye tear away, and the weight of the blow nearly knocked him senseless.

  Cadderly wasn't even aware that he had pulled the trigger of his hand crossbow. The bolt wasn't set perfectly on the table, but it snapped out anyway, and good fortune alone had the weapon turned in the correct direction. The bolt stabbed into the monster's flesh, collapsed, and exploded, throwing the beast backward. It flew against the wall, shrieking in a ghastly squeal. Clawed hands grabbed at the blasted-open wound.

  Cadderly heard the scream, but couldn't tell whether it was pain, defeat, or victory. Bent low, he stumbled out of the room, blood streaming down his face and dripping on the floor. The blow hadn't touched his eye, but it was already swollen so badly he could see only splashes of indistinguishable light.

  Staggering and disoriented, he heard more creatures dragging themselves through other rooms. Load! Load! his thoughts silently screamed, and he fumbled to do just that, but quickly realized that he hadn't the time.

  He closed his eyes and called out to Deneir.

  All he found were numbers, patterns written on the Weave.

  His confusion lasted until a creature burst into the hall before him. The numbers formed a pattern in his mind, and a spell issued from his lips.

  A gleaming shield of divine energy enwrapped the priest as the creature rushed in, and though Cadderly instinctively recoiled from its bashing, clawing attacks, they did not, could not, seriously harm him.

  They couldn't penetrate the magical barrier he had somehow enacted.

  Another spell flowed into his thoughts, and he wasted no time in uttering the words, dropping his hand crossbows to hang by their tethers and throwing his hands high into the air. He felt the energy running through him, divine and wonderful and powerful, as if he pulled it out of the air. It tingled down his arms and through his torso, down his legs and into the floor, and there it rolled out in every direction, an orange-red glow spider-webbing through the floor planks.

  The creature whacking at him immediately began to howl in pain, and Cadderly ambled down the hall, taking the consecrated ground with him. Too stupid to realize its error, the fleshy beast followed and continued to scream out, its lower torso sizzling under the burn of radiant energy.

  More creatures came at him and tried to attack, but began howling as they entered the circle of power. The magic still moved w
ith Cadderly as he turned toward the stairs.

  There, the mighty priest saw Danica gawking at him.

  The first creature died. Another one fell, then a third, consumed by the power of Deneir, the power of the unknown dweomer Cadderly had cast. He waved for Danica to run away, but she didn't, and went to join him instead.

  As soon as she drew near, she too began to glisten under the light of his divine shield.

  "What have you done?" she asked him.

  "I have no idea," Cadderly replied. He wasn't about to stand there and question his good fortune.

  "Let's clear the floor," Danica said, and together they moved down the hallway.

  Danica led with a flurry of kicks and punches that finished off two of the beasts as they writhed in pain when the consecrated ground came under them.

  One creature tried to scramble into a side room, and Danica turned toward it. But Cadderly cast forth a pointing finger and cried out another prayer. A shaft of light, a lance of divine energy, shot out and skewered the beast, which howled and crashed into the doorjamb as Danica neared.

  The crawler survived the spearlike energy, but it sparkled and glowed, making it easy for the expert Danica to line up her blows and quickly dispatch it.

  By the time five bloodied and battered priests arrived on the landing of the stairs to support the couple, one wing of the fourth floor had been swept clear of monsters. Cadderly still emanated the circle of power flowing around him, and discovered too that his wounds were magically mending.

  The other priests looked at him with puzzlement and intrigue, but he had no answers for them. He had called to Deneir, and Deneir, or some other being of power, had answered his prayers with unknown dweomers.

  There was no time to sit and contemplate, Cadderly knew, for Spirit Soaring was a gigantic structure full of windows, full of side rooms and alcoves, plus narrow back passages and a multilevel substructure.

  They fought throughout the night and into the early dawn, until no more monsters came through the windows. Still they fought throughout the morning, weary and battered, and with several of their companions dead, painstakingly clearing the large spaces of Spirit Soaring.

  Cadderly and Danica both knew that many rooms remained to be explored and cleared, but they were all exhausted. The task began to reinforce the windows with heavy boards, to tend the wounded, and to organize battle groups for the coming night and the next possible attack.

  "Where is Ivan?" Danica asked Cadderly when they finally had a few moments alone.

  "He went to Carradoon, I thought. "

  "No, just Pikel, with Rorey and . . . " the names caught in Danica's throat. All three of her children had gone to Carradoon, had traveled through the mountain forests from which those hideous creatures had come.

  "Cadderly?" she whispered, her voice breaking. He, too, had to take a deep breath to stop himself from falling over in fear.

  "We have to go to them," he said.

  But Danica was shaking her head. "You have to stay here," she replied. "You cannot - "

  "I can move more quickly on my own. "

  "We have no idea what precipitated this," Cadderly complained. "We don't even know what power we're up against!"

  "And who better than I to find out?" his wife asked, and she managed a little grin of confidence.

  A very little grin of confidence.