Rise of the King

by R. A. Salvatore

  So many answers to so many questions.

  He was twelve years old. He could barely hold level the spear which had been thrust into his hands, its large tip continually dipping, though the boy gallantly leaned back to try to counterbalance its weight.

  He was twelve years old and he had no experience with battle.

  His sister stood beside him before the parapet of Sundabar’s south wall, her helmet far too big and constantly falling over her eyes, her short sword seeming more like a bastard sword in her tiny hands. She was younger by two years, though almost his size.

  “Stay alert!” came a barking command, and young Giles Wormack knew that the recrimination had been aimed at him. That one was always yelling, always criticizing, always telling Giles and the others that any mistakes would cost the city, their home, dearly.

  That one, Aleina Brightlance, Knight-Captain of the famed Knights in Silver from Silverymoon, was relentless indeed, both in ferreting out any and every able-bodied man or woman to take up arms, and in patrolling the length of Sundabar’s walls, yelling at anyone who seemed less than perfectly vigilant. She was not of Sundabar, but had taken over the garrison at the request of King Firehelm when nearly all of his military officers had been killed in a tragic bombing.

  “They will come against us today!” Aleina shouted.

  “They come against us every day,” Giles muttered quietly.

  “Be quiet,” said his sister Karolina. “The Knight-Captain is speaking.”

  “The Knight-Captain is shouting,” Giles corrected under his breath. “The Knight-Captain is always shouting.”

  Thoroughly miserable, the boy who was not yet a man took a deep breath and stared off into the darkness south of the city. To his right, the Rauvin River ran dark under a starless sky, a night so dark that only the sound of the rushing water confirmed to Giles that the river was still there.

  Before him, to the south, lay darkness and silence, a fact for which he was truly grateful as the sounds of battle erupted anew back behind him, as the Many-Arrows orcs came on yet again. Soon enough, the ground shook under their charge, the cacophony of horns rent the night air, and when he put his hands against the stone of the wall, Giles could feel the vibrations of the impacts, as flying boulder, both giant-hurled and catapulted, crashed against the northern reaches of the circular walled city.

  Every night and most days, those walls shook.

  The field north of Sundabar lay thick and black with orc bodies, red with orc blood. The charge of the orcs this night resounded with the sickly squishing of boots stomping on bloated corpses. But still they came, and their numbers did not seem diminished, each charge seeming thicker than the last, and each charge getting nearer to the walls, inflicting more damage and more death on the beleaguered city and its desperate citizens.

  “One night, they will send a second force around to the south, to attack under cover of the battle at the north wall,” said a voice suddenly beside Giles, and he nearly jumped out of his boots and turned to see Knight-Captain Aleina Brightlance standing beside him—and the mere fact that she had gotten there without his noticing shamed him and screamed at him to stay alert. “When that happens, will you be ready, boy?”

  She stared down at him severely.

  “Yes,” he answered, a response made more out of fear of this imposing warrior than out of any real conviction that he would be ready, or that he even could be ready.

  Ready for what? Ready to fight against a savage orc warrior? Wielding a spear he could hardly lift and with armor so ill-fitting that a strong wind would blow it free?

  The wall shook then, so violently that Giles nearly tumbled, and his sister would have, had not the Knight-Captain caught her by the arm and held her steady. Before Giles could react, before Karolina could even thank the powerful woman, Aleina Brightlance was gone, bounding down from the wall and screaming orders to those across the way to “Close that breach!”

  Giles glanced back and swallowed hard. A huge stone, hurled from a mighty catapult no doubt, had taken down a sizable section of the north wall. Even from this distance, scanning through the taller buildings, Giles could see the commotion as orcs poured into the breach, holding long logs to be used as an impromptu bridge across the moat that flowed between the stone barriers of the double-walled city. They were met hard by the Sundabar garrison. Torches danced in the hands of running men and women, and flew through the air and across the narrow waterway into the midst of the attackers.

  “Drive them back!” Aleina called, and to another group, she yelled for temporary barricades.

  The commands sounded so familiar in the ears of Giles Wormack. Every night there came a breach now, as the walls withered under the unending barrage, and only the courage and skill of the Sundabar garrison, and the hard and determined work of the masons and mages had kept the city clear of orc vermin.

  “Eyes to the south, all of you!” Aleina Brightlance screamed at Giles and the other curious sentries upon that southern wall.

  Giles spun around, managed a glance at his sister, who was sniffling and trying to hold back tears, before turning his vigilant gaze back to the dark southern reaches.

  And trying, so hard, not to give in to the fear that an orc would creep up behind him and lop off his head.

  A short while after leaving Beniago, Jarlaxle caught up with Kimmuriel in the ruins of Illusk, the ancient city below the mainland section of Luskan just off Closeguard Isle, only to learn that his brother the archmage had returned to Menzoberranzan immediately following their first psionic training session.

  “Do tell,” Jarlaxle bade the Oblodran psionicist.

  “Tell what?”

  It seemed fairly obvious that Kimmuriel was not in the best of moods. “The Archmage,” Jarlaxle explained, though he knew he didn’t really have to. “How did he fare?”

  Kimmuriel stared at him for a long while. “He has promise.”

  “Good.”

  “Many have promise,” Kimmuriel reminded. “Few will see it bloom, as you yourself know well.”

  “Oh, believe me when I say that I hope Gromph’s promise does not bloom into psionic prowess,” Jarlaxle explained. “It is bad enough that I have to constantly ward against your prying telepathy. Adding the meddling archmage to that list of subtle dangers would be maddening.”

  “Then why …”

  “His promise will keep him engaged with you,” Jarlaxle cut him short. “Gromph engaging with you means he needs you, and so he needs me, and us. Even if you quickly discern that he cannot access the psionic powers, do not let on so quickly, I beg. There are so many moving parts now with the end of the Spellplague, the ambitions of Lolth’s priestesses and of the Spider Queen herself, that the more we keep Gromph at our side, and the less we allow him to be beside Quenthel, the better for us.”

  Kimmuriel stared at him hard, in what passed as a great frown from the emotionless drow.

  “Be hopeful and of good cheer,” Jarlaxle laughed at him. “Perhaps if Gromph’s promise turns into something more, you’ll not be so alone in your strange magic.”

  Kimmuriel’s visage didn’t soften at all. Indeed, he seemed angrier at the possibility.

  Jarlaxle shrugged and put on a curious expression. “If this task was not to your liking, why did you agree?” he asked. “We are partners, and you need not obey …”

  “My acquiescence had nothing to do with you.”

  Jarlaxle’s expression grew perplexed.

  “Other than your idiocy in suggesting it to the archmage before consulting with me,” Kimmuriel explained.

  It took Jarlaxle a heartbeat or two to unwind that, but then a great smile creased his face. “My dear Kimmuriel, you’re afraid.”

  “Not of you.”

  “No, but of Gromph.”

  “He is the Archmage of Menzoberranzan,” Kimmuriel replied as if that should explain everything, and indeed, there was an undeniable truth to that line of reasoning.

  “Still, I don’t recall t
hat I have ever seen you fearful.”

  “Not of you,” Kimmuriel reiterated. “Perhaps you would be wise to remember that.”

  Jarlaxle laughed. He knew that Kimmuriel was joking—but then recalled that Kimmuriel was never joking. He cut the laugh short with an embarrassed cough.

  “When will Gromph return?” Jarlaxle asked, changing the subject. “I had hoped to find him here.”

  “A tenday? Two? He will return at his leisure, as he informed me.”

  “I need you to exact a promise from him.”

  “No.” The psionicist’s flat reply left Jarlaxle stunned.

  “This is not a simple request,” Jarlaxle explained. “It is a necessity. I am in need of the services of Gromph and I have no leverage with which to gain them. You do, and so I need you to …”

  “No.”

  Jarlaxle took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, and put his booted feet upon the desk, staring curiously at Kimmuriel the whole time.

  “It is a favor for Bregan D’aerthe, not for Jarlaxle,” the mercenary leader said at length.

  “There is nothing I can ask of Gromph. He will refuse me, if only to let you know that your control over him is less than tentative, less than existent, even.”

  “How can you know until you ask?”

  Kimmuriel’s responding expression was one of pure pity, as if he was looking down upon a truly inferior intellect.

  “What?” Jarlaxle demanded.

  “I have been teaching the archmage the power of psionics, the power of looking into the mind of another,” Kimmuriel explained, speaking slowly, as if he was talking to a child.

  “And so I have witnessed his thoughts and his honest attitude,” Kimmuriel explained, but Jarlaxle, having caught on, waved his hands to silence the drow.

  “I need him,” Jarlaxle said. “There are no others I would trust in the spells I require. There are great happenings in the land of Luruar, the Silver Marches, and we must stay abreast of the news from there.”

  Kimmuriel nodded.

  “And so I need to go there.”

  “I have taken you places before. Psionics is not without its own form of teleportation. And indeed, I have already been there.”

  “More than just going there,” Jarlaxle explained. “There are many places to visit, many situations to explore. Gromph knows the layout of the orc army—he directed much of it. He knows of their allies, indeed facilitated many of those alliances, like the frost giants, lured into alliance with Many-Arrows through his own tricks. Our ranks include many wizards, yes, but none I would trust for so many great teleports—and to unknown places.”

  “I have been there,” Kimmuriel repeated.

  “Your psionic methods of teleport are limited,” Jarlaxle reminded.

  “Take off your eyepatch,” Kimmuriel instructed, and Jarlaxle eyed him suspiciously.

  “My proxies are in place,” the psionicist explained. “I know more of the events in the Silver Marches than does Gromph. I have been there, in the midst of the orcs, and through them I have traveled to Adbar and Felbarr, and Mithral Hall, even.”

  The mention of Mithral Hall surely piqued Jarlaxle’s curiosity, though he wasn’t quite sure what Kimmuriel was talking about. “Through them?” he asked quietly.

  “My proxies in Luruar infect all they contact, orc to dwarf, dwarf to dwarf, orc to human.”

  “Infect? What are you talking about?”

  “Take off your eyepatch. I’ll not ask again, and if you choose to miss this opportunity, then know that you have severed the bonds of trust between us—and those bonds are all that keep us in harmony as co-leaders of Bregan D’aerthe.”

  It took Jarlaxle many heartbeats to realize that he had just been threatened, but then to unwind that notion enough from his instinctive reaction to realize that no, Kimmuriel did not threaten. Kimmuriel only warned, and warned honestly.

  Jarlaxle took off his eyepatch.

  “Do not resist my intrusion,” Kimmuriel explained. “I will join with your consciousness and take you … to see.”

  Before Jarlaxle could even ask for clarification, he felt the intrusions of Kimmuriel Oblodra into his mind. Reflexively he resisted—no rational, reasoning being would ever surrender identity in such a way, with defenses based purely on instinct; indeed, the very notion of basic survival rebelled against such a violation. But Jarlaxle wasn’t any subject here. He was old, centuries old, and hardened by experience, and wizened by an insatiable curiosity and a desire to know—everything.

  He fought back, then, ferociously, but not against Kimmuriel. No, he fought back against his own natural revulsion. He let Kimmuriel in.

  Almost instantly, Jarlaxle understood the psionicist’s references to proxies, and believed Kimmuriel’s claim that he knew what was transpiring in the Silver Marches, for almost instantly, Jarlaxle found himself looking through the eyes and hearing through the ears of a young man, a boy really, pressed into service on the south wall of Sundabar. He knew it was Sundabar immediately, for he “knew” what the boy knew, immediately!

  The great city was besieged and battered. The orcs had come on, every day. The walls shook under bombardment, every day, all day. The field outside the city lay black with bodies and carrion birds, but the houses of healing within the city bulged with patients, and lines of dying men and woman lay outside the doors, awaiting their time with the clerics—if they were fortunate enough to ever receive any healing.

  The cries of battle began anew. Thunderous retorts resounded from the shaking walls. The air filled with the stomp of thousands of boots, the war whoops of tens of thousands of orcs, the orders and cries for assistance from dozens of locations along the crumbling wall of Sundabar.

  Jarlaxle felt the boy’s fear, palpably. And then he felt a curious twist in his own thoughts as the child pulled information from his consciousness as he had pulled from the boy’s.

  Then curiosity, the boy becoming aware that something was very much amiss!

  It all went for naught a moment later, however, when above it all, a great screech rent the air.

  “Oh good, they have a dragon,” Jarlaxle heard himself say.

  Two, he heard Kimmuriel reply in his thoughts.

  Jarlaxle nearly fell out of his chair as he flew from the scene in Sundabar, to find himself in a dwarf cavern—for a moment, he thought it Mithral Hall. But no, he realized as he found the memories and sensibilities of his new host. He was in Adbar, in the Court of King Harnoth, in the body of a dwarf named Oretheo Spikes, a great warrior who had been sorely injured in the battle of the Cold Vale, where his king, Bromm, brother of Harnoth, had fallen.

  “ ’E’s out again,” one of the other dwarves in the room said, and the conversation began, the dwarves talking about, lamenting, that their young King Harnoth, so full of despair over the loss of his brother, kept going out of Adbar looking for orcs to slaughter. Sometimes he went with a raiding group, but often, he went alone.

  Many of the dwarves in here were gravely concerned—could Adbar survive the loss of both her kings?

  All that Jarlaxle felt from Oretheo Spikes, though, was regret—regret that he was still too injured to go along with the angry young King of Adbar.

  Oretheo Spikes wanted to kill orcs, and dark elves, and dragons.

  The dwarf silently cursed the name of House Do’Urden.

  Clever Quenthel, Jarlaxle thought, and it pained him greatly to think that Lady Lolth was indeed getting her revenge on Drizzt and his goddess.

  Giles Wormack felt dizzy, and violated, though he had no idea of how that might be possible. It was as if someone else was in his thoughts, or something strange like that—but it was far beyond the boy’s experience to understand.

  Except the violation part—that he knew and felt keenly.

  And now the screech and he fell out of his contemplation and nearly fell over entirely as the scene before him came into view. He turned fast to his sister, but she was not looking back at him. Her bulging eyes looked
to the north.

  Her expression, one of abject horror, prompted Giles to spin that way.

  “Giles, run!” he heard her say, but distantly, even though she was standing right beside him!

  It wasn’t that someone was inside his head again, no, but rather, the sight before him that pushed any thoughts of Karolina aside, and that froze him in place with terror.

  He had never seen a dragon before.

  He had fancied that one day he would like to see a dragon.

  Now he saw a dragon, and knew that he never wanted to see a dragon.

  Now he heard a dragon, and that was even worse, if there could be an even worse.

  And then he saw the dragon better, bigger and closer, as it dived across the field north of Sundabar, as it skimmed over the north wall, hind legs clipping men and throwing them into the air, and knocking over stones as easily as Giles blasted through pillows on the bed when he and Karolina were at play. He saw the dragon and he knew doom, utter doom. They could not defeat this beast—no army could stand against the magnificence of this dragon. Its horns could skewer a dozen men, and even holding them atop its head wouldn’t slow its biting maw. The monster shined white even in the dim light of the darkened sky, its eyes glowing bluish-white with inner cold, its teeth, most as long as Giles’ arm, glistening with their icy coating, catching and reflecting with crystalline clarity the meager sparkles from the bonfires about the city. A single flap of its great wings as it soared across the city nearly extinguished any of those nearby fires, bending the flames away as if they, too, cowered in fear as the godlike creature passed.

  “Giles, run!” Karolina cried again, but he couldn’t really register the words and couldn’t obey the command in any case. How could he turn from the glory of this spectacle? Why would he run when there was, after all, no hope at all?

  All he could do was stand there and watch.

  The steeple of a tall building exploded into flying stones as the dragon crashed through, hardly bothered or slowed by the obstacle.

  “Giles!”