Drizzt looked to Regis, though, and saw the halfling staring at him hard. No, not at him, he realized. Not really. Regis was looking past him, past them all, lost inside his own thoughts.
And indeed, Drizzt’s story had hit the halfling hard, for Regis, too, had known powerful traveling companions, and before that, had known much more.
Regis almost wished they would send him after Ambergris and Afafrenfere as Bruenor had joked. What might happen if he rode the Trade Way once more and found himself beside Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies?
What might happen if he rode all the way to Cormyr and the banks of the Sea of Fallen Stars?
Looking across those waters, Regis’s mind’s eye would surely see House Topolino, and in his heart, he would be looking upon Donnola again. An inadvertent smile widened on his cherubic face, lifting the edges of his stylish mustache, as he thought of their sparring match, which had led them into each other’s arms to tumble to the floor in passion.
“Regis?” he heard from afar, and he focused his eyes to see Drizzt and Catti-brie staring at him with curious expressions.
Regis just replied to that with a wistful smile, and said to Drizzt, “If you would trust them to ride with us, then so would I. Even the warlock.”
And then the halfling rose and tipped his fashionable beret to the others and took his leave, wandering out of Stonecutter’s Solace and onto the streets of Port Llast. The sun had dipped below the western horizon by then and the stars were just coming into view, and back to the east, a bright moon was rising.
Regis wondered if Donnola Topolino was looking upon that moon, as well. Was she remembering? Was she feeling his arms around her again, as he was surely feeling hers?
“We will watch the moonrise together again, my love,” the halfling vowed, and started back to the cave that served as an inn.
But he stopped long before he got back to Stonecutter’s Solace. “Not tonight,” he whispered and turned away. This night wasn’t for the Companions of the Hall, he decided. This night wasn’t for Regis, but for Spider, the lad he had been in Aglarond.
Spider Parrafin climbed atop a nearby roof—coincidentally the same structure Artemis Entreri had scaled in the fight with the drow in Port Llast—and sat down on the edge, his feet dangling in the cool ocean air.
He didn’t know it, but tucked under the eaves within his reach was a very special jeweled dagger, an assassin’s weapon that could steal the very life-force from a victim.
A dagger Regis knew all too well from his previous life, for in the hands of Artemis Entreri, it had once taken his finger …
THE TEARS OF TARSAKH
LORGRU, LORGRU,” SINNAFEIN LAMENTED AS SHE RESTED IN A HIDDEN tree house far up in a towering evergreen, out of breath and rubbing her aching legs. Normally the nimble elf would have had no trouble scaling the tree to this lookout perch, but she had been grievously wounded, her legs slashed by her husband.
Wounded and left to be slaughtered by a horde of angry orcs.
But that had not come to pass. Among that group had been Lorgru, the son of King Obould and likely heir to the throne of Many-Arrows. Very much an orc, Lorgru had wanted to kill her. She and her drow husband Tos’un had cut a swath of devastation through his fellow orcs of Many-Arrows as they had frantically pursued their daughter.
Still, and over the loud objections of many of his warriors, Lorgru had seen the benefits of keeping Sinnafein alive, and so had traded her back to her people in the Moonwood, the westernmost expanse of the great Glimmerwood, in exchange for a public apology, a promise of good will, and a fair amount of gold.
That had been but a few tendays ago, and now, for some reason Sinnafein could not decipher, Lorgru’s mercy and subsequent actions seemed to make no sense at all. The orc armies had come to the borders of the Moonwood. They had crossed the Surbrin on several occasions, striking into the elven lands, felling great trees and starting fires.
And now this, Sinnafein lamented as she looked out from the eastern edge of the elven lands to the Cold Vale. Here, too, the orcs had marched, a sizable force milling about the foothills of the Rauvin Mountains. It made no sense. This seemed far beyond any excursion to test the defenses of the area, and certainly the swarms of orcs were too large to be some fringe tribe. Such a march as this had taken planning and coordination, and likely with battle plans set even before Sinnafein had found the bite of Tos’un’s sword.
“They are Many-Arrow orcs,” the fine young scout Myriel confirmed, scrambling up beside Sinnafein.
The elf leader winced at the news—she had been hoping that her scouts would determine this to be another tribe, instead of a warning sign that war with the vast orc kingdom had come in full. “You are certain?”
“There is no doubt, Lady,” Myriel replied. “Some carry banners of Dark Arrow Keep. There was some confusion at first among our scouts, for we heard the name of King Obould not at all in those moments when we were close enough to discern their common prayers and battle chants.”
Sinnafein looked at the young female curiously. Orc battlefield commanders who did not properly give thanks to the king with almost every sentence they uttered were often later seen impaled on a tall spike.
“ ‘War Chief Hartusk,’ they cry,” Myriel added.
“Hartusk?” Sinnafein whispered, more to herself than to the scout. She had heard that name before, though she couldn’t quite place it. She stared out at the distant orc force, trying to make sense of it all. Not King Obould, but Hartusk? Where was Obould, then, and where was Lorgru, his son and heir?
A shiver coursed Sinnafein’s spine as she remembered her days of capture among Lorgru’s gang. The orc prince of Many-Arrows had been clear and decisive in his decision to return her to the Moonwood, but that decision hadn’t gone over well with most of his ferocious charges. Indeed, on many occasions Sinnafein had thought her life forfeit as one of the lesser orcs approached as if to take her fate into its own ugly hands. By the time the orc group had reached the Surbrin, Sinnafein had heard open words of disdain aimed at Lorgru, and had been surprised by that level of discontent, and shocked by the boldness of the grumbles.
She couldn’t help but wonder—and fear—that the mercy shown to her had been the final stone to crush the idealistic designs of the line of Obould.
The elf hated orcs and had never come to terms with this vast kingdom of the smelly, warlike creatures living in relative peace in the northern reaches of Luruar. She accepted the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, of course, and did not openly condone the many bands of vigilante elves who had gone out to wage battle with rogue bands of orcs. But neither would she privately condemn their actions, and indeed had effectively pardoned all who had been caught at such activities, reducing their punishment to a trivial bit of work and a public apology.
Sinnafein understood the necessity of the treaty, but hated that reality nonetheless—and still, that reality was a far better sort, she had always believed, than the alternative.
But was that alternative, a full-out war with Many-Arrows, now on her doorstep? Had her excursion into Many-Arrows in pursuit of her daughter facilitated this impending tragedy?
Had she known that to be a possibility, even a remote possibility, at the time of her capture, Sinnafein would have fought the orcs with her bare hands, would have bitten them and spat upon them and forced them to kill her.
The western edge of the Glimmerwood cast dull shadows under the sunless sky upon the greatest army of orcs that had been collected in the Silver Marches, at least back to the days of the march of the original King Obould. And if that wasn’t enough, a second sizable force had appeared on the other side of the deep forest.
“Oh, Lorgru,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
She was startled from her introspection a moment later when Myriel dared to correct her. “Oh, Tos’un, you mean,” the young elf scout said.
Sinnafein closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm herself so that she didn’t angrily lash out a
t the young scout. She was the leader of the clan, but the elves of the Moonwood were not the orcs of Dark Arrow Keep, and Sinnafein had always coaxed them to speak their minds honestly and without fear.
Myriel’s observation had struck a deep chord of discontent within her; every word had poured like salt into the emotional wounds. Her son was dead, murdered by his sister Doum’wielle, and Doum’wielle was gone now, into the Underdark beside Tos’un. Tos’un, her husband for decades, her beloved, who had betrayed Sinnafein, hacking her legs so that she could not flee and would thus hold back the pursuing orcs while he and Doum’wielle made their escape into the deep tunnels.
Myriel had only spoken what they were all thinking, Sinnafein knew, and as horrible and painful as it was, when she looked into her broken heart, she could not deny the truth of the words.
Whatever this catastrophe was before her, it seemed plausible to her that Tos’un had played a role.
The elf shook her head, her expression grim. “There is nothing there for you,” she told King Bromm, who was eight days out of Citadel, Adbar with a force of two hundred dwarves. “Go south, past the Rauvins and my people will meet you in the foothills and guide you through the forest to wide ferries that will speed you along the Surbrin to Mithral Hall’s eastern gate.”
“That’ll put us ahead of yer royal brother,” Oretheo Spikes, one of Bromm’s commanders, remarked.
The dwarf king nodded. They had estimated just that morning that Harnoth’s legion was a day closer to Citadel Felbarr than they, only, of course, Harnoth and his boys were making the trek via an underground route.
“We’d have to get word to him, then,” Bromm reasoned, to the commander and to this elf who had come out of the Glimmerwood to intercept their march.
“Get word to Citadel Felbarr?” the elf maiden asked. “Easily accomplished. King Emerus is friend to my mother and we are all watching closely since the Darkening began.”
“The what?” Bromm and Oretheo asked together.
The elf swallowed a bit too hard, perhaps, but Bromm didn’t catch it. “The Darkening,” she reiterated, pointing to the sky. “It seems a fitting name, does it not?”
“Aye, that’ll do,” said Bromm. “So ye’re wantin’ us to round south o’ yer woods then, instead o’ the north road?”
“The north road will leave you out alone for many days, and all you’ll find is the Surbrin blocking your way and a horde of orcs across the water hurling their curses at you. The waters are too swift and strong up there with the spring melt for us to bring any suitable ferries to get you across.”
Young King Bromm put his hands on his hips and turned to his commanders.
“What will you do then, good king of Citadel Adbar, so far from home and unable to advance?” the elf asked, as the dwarves stared and shrugged.
King Bromm turned a curious glance on the young elf maiden.
“Are ye mockin’ me then?”
She shrugged and laughed as if it didn’t matter. “I am telling you the way to battle, or to support Mithral Hall, if that is your choice—and my mother believes that it should be,” she explained. “We will get word to King Emerus and your twin brother, of course.”
“Puttin’ both kings far from home,” warned Chayne Mulish, one of the other dwarf commanders.
“Bah, Adbar’s buttoned up tighter than the hug of a giant squeezer snake,” the ferocious Spikes argued.
“Bah, yerself,” said the first, and Oretheo scowled fiercely.
“I must be going,” the young elf said when Bromm continued to mull his options, and she turned to leave.
“South?” Bromm called after her.
“The Rauvin foothills in the Cold Vale, then straight west into the Moonwood,” she said.
“So says yer Ma?”
“Aye, so says Sinnafein, the Lady of Glimmerwood,” she answered. “Tis the swiftest road to Mithral Hall.”
“Aye, then we’ll go,” King Bromm decided. “And me best to Sinnafein, young lassie …?”
“Doum’wielle,” she answered with a smile. “I am Doum’wielle of the Moonwood.”
“Well met, then,” King Bromm called, and the elf lass nodded. “Ye tell yer Ma that Citadel Adbar’s puttin’ aside our unpleasantries and staying true to her friends.”
The young elf nodded and smiled again, then rushed away, disappearing fully into the underbrush of the Glimmerwood in the blink of an eye.
“Double-time it,” Bromm told Oretheo. “We’ll get word to Harnoth to turn his force back for Adbar and we’ll thicken King Connerad’s garrison. I could use a bit of a fight.”
“Aye,” the dwarf commander replied, and most of the others nodded their agreement.
“So shall we go and relay to Sinnafein the brat Bromm’s well-wishes?” Doum’wielle’s drow father asked when she had gained their position, in a small clearing amid a line of thick pines not far from the forest’s edge—close enough so that the dark elf sentry up in the tree could clearly watch the movement of the dwarf force beyond the Glimmerwood’s borders.
Beside Tos’un, the wizard Ravel Xorlarrin snickered.
“He did seem concerned with her well-being,” Doum’wielle played along, striking a perfectly contemplative pose.
Tos’un Armgo nodded and smiled, thinking that his daughter was making the adjustment to the ways of the drow with aplomb indeed. He reflexively glanced down at the sword hanging on her hip, suspecting that Khazid’hea continued to play more than a little role in that dramatically shifting attitude.
“The dwarves have turned to the south,” came the hoped-for call from above.
“I expect that we’re about to make quite the formal introduction, then,” said Doum’wielle.
“I do believe that Arauthator will make that introduction for us,” Ravel remarked and walked off.
Doum’wielle started to follow him, but Tos’un held her back, wanting a private moment with his daughter. “Well done, my Little Doe,” Tos’un congratulated, and he gave his daughter a great hug. He looked past her as he did, though, into the Glimmerwood. He was thinking of Sinnafein and the life he had known here. Never had he been suited to such an existence, he told himself repeatedly.
But in the corner of Tos’un’s heart, he couldn’t deny the fine decades he had known here among the elves, or the love he had once known for Sinnafein, or his joy at the birth of his children.
He thought of Tierflin, his son.
Doum’wielle had slaughtered Tierflin, the end result of a contest that Tos’un had begun, a battle for the sword Doum’wielle now carried.
Why had he done that? Why had he begun something that almost assuredly would leave one of his beloved children dead, and likely at the bloodstained hands of the other?
Tos’un rubbed Doum’wielle’s back and let his hand slide down her side to touch the hilt of Khazid’hea, and there he had his sinister answer.
But there, too, he found relief from his nostalgia and his pain, for with that touch, the sentient sword immediately dangled visions of glory and riches in his mind—they weren’t even tangible images—a pot of gold, a cheering crowd, or anything like that—but rather a sensation in the mind of the old dark elf that his current road would lead him to greater joy than he had ever known.
“It’s frozen, I tell ye,” the dwarf scout shouted above the laughter of the others.
“How can it be frozen, ye dolt?” asked Oretheo Spikes. “It’s midsummer.”
“Aye, and how can the sky be black when it’s midday?” the scout retorted, and the laughter drifted off uncomfortably.
“A frozen pond, ye say,” King Bromm asked, shaking his head. “Well, let’s us go and see what there’s to see.” He nodded to his commanders, who relayed the order with great efficiency and the dwarf force of three hundred started off in short order, marching hard through the rocky foothills of the Rauvin Mountains. Sometime late that afternoon, they had covered the ten miles to the location the scout had indicated.
They knew they
were close from the pounding sound of a waterfall and soon came in sight of the cascading flow, leaping down from on high and disappearing behind a rocky spur of the mountain before them.
“Frozen,” Oretheo Spikes said with a snort.
“They said that o’ the pond, not the waterfall,” Chayne Mulish reminded.
“How can the pond be freezin’ if the water’s falling?” Oretheo argued. “Colder up higher, course, and don’t ye know?”
Even as his words left his mouth, though, the leading edge of the dwarf force climbed up to the apex of the rocky spur, and as one turned back to the main group and shouted out their surprise. King Bromm pushed his leaders forward, scrambling to the top of the stones, then looking down upon a frozen lake. The deluge of the waterfall splashed into the one open area, the resulting waves sending a film of water washing over the ice.
“Well I’m a bearded gnome,” Commander Spikes remarked.
“Stupid one, too,” Chayne Mulish added under his breath.
Bromm ignored them and led the way down to the water’s edge. He motioned to a nearby sentry, who moved over and prodded his spear down hard into the water. The very top was liquid, but only as thick as a dwarf’s fingernail, and under that, the spear hit solid ice. The dwarf stabbed again, scraping a bit, but this was no flimsy ice pack.
“How …?” King Bromm started to ask, but he and the others jumped back in surprise as a burst of bubbles rose up from the lake around the edges of the ice pack and the loose water atop the ice immediately crystallized into a new layer of ice.
“Mage spell?” Chayne Mulish asked.
“Not for knowin’,” Bromm and Oretheo said in unison. The two looked to each other and shrugged.
“Not for likin’, neither,” said King Bromm, and he turned to his commanders. “Move us around the lake, straight’n’fast for the Glimmerwood.”
“Might that it’ll hold us and we can slide right across,” Oretheo Spikes offered, but clearly regretted the advice the moment it left his mouth, as a swarm of incredulous, even taunting, looks came back at him from all around, including from King Bromm.
Rise of the King Page 5
