The Ghost King t-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  “Get out o’ the way!” Athrogate yelled at him repeatedly, the equally-wild dwarf wanting a chance to hit something.

  “Bwahaha!” Thibbledorf Pwent responded, perfectly mimicking Athrogate’s signature cry.

  “Huh,” Athrogate said, for that gave him pause. Only a brief pause, however, before he let out a hearty “Bwahaha!” of his own.

  Thibbledorf Pwent dived out of the way and a pair of crawlers rushed onto the balcony to confront Athrogate, who promptly buried them under a barrage of his powerful morningstars, setting free another heartfelt howl of laughter.

  Pwent, meanwhile, went right to the corridor exit, battering the next beasts in line. He hooked one with a glove spike and did a deft, swift turn and throw, launching the flailing thing over the balcony. Then the dwarf fell back, inviting more crawlers into the room, where he and Athrogate, side by side, destroyed them.

  * * * * *

  He did not slow and did not tire. The image of his wounded wife stayed crystal clear in his thoughts and drove him on, and because he felt no fatigue, he began to wonder if the power Cadderly had infused into his weapons was somehow providing strength and stamina to him, as well.

  It was a fleeting thought, for the present predicament crowded out all but his most intense warrior instincts. Drizzt gave himself no time to reflect, for every turn brought him face-on with enemies, and every leap became a series of contortions and tucks to avoid a host of reaching arms or raking claws.

  But it mattered not how many of those claws and arms came at Drizzt Do’Urden. He stayed ahead of them, every one, and his blades, so full of fury and might, cleared the way, whichever way he chose to go. Carnage piled around him and a mist of monster blood filled the air. Every other step fell atop the fleshy corpse of a dead enemy.

  “Fight me, dragon!” he yelled, and his voice rang with an almost mocking glee. “Come down from on high, coward!”

  In the space of those two sentences, another four crawlers fell dead, and even the stupidly vicious beasts were beginning to shy from the mad drow warrior. The trend continued—instead of rushing to avoid enemies, Drizzt found himself chasing them. And all the while, he continued calling out his challenges to the Ghost King.

  That challenge was answered, not by the dragon, but by another creature, a gigantic nightwalker, that stepped from the forest and thundered at the dancing drow.

  Drizzt had fought one of those behemoths before, and knew well how formidable they were, their deceptively thin limbs tightly wound with layers of muscle that could crush the life from him with hardly a thought.

  Drizzt smiled and charged.

  * * * * *

  As they shied from Drizzt, many of the monsters charged in through the open double doors of Spirit Soaring and down the corridor leading to the audience hall. The leading crawler almost got through the door, but Bruenor was beside that entryway, his back to the wall, and he perfectly timed the mighty two-handed sweep of his axe, burying it in the crawler’s chest and stopping the thing dead in its tracks.

  A yank from the dwarf sent the thing rolling away, and as he did, he released his left hand, jerked his arm back to reposition his shield, and threw himself into the next beast scrambling through the door. Dwarf and crawler rolled aside, leaving the path open to Jarlaxle and his lightning bolts, one, two, flashing down the crowded hallway.

  Behind those stepped Cadderly, right up to the doorway, and he threw his arms up high and pulled down magical power, releasing it through his feet and spreading it in a glowing circle right there in the archway. The priest fell back and the stubborn crawlers came on, and as they stepped upon Cadderly’s consecrated ground, they were consumed by devastating radiance. They shrieked and they smoldered and they crumbled down, writhing in mortal agony.

  Jarlaxle threw another pair of lightning bolts down the corridor.

  Another crawler came flying over the balcony from above, but up there, as in the audience room, the situation was fast quieting.

  “Come on, ye little beasties!” Athrogate yelled down the empty corridor above.

  “Come on, dragon,” Cadderly said in reply. “Come on, Drizzt,” Bruenor had to add.

  * * * * *

  With brutal speed and ferocity, the black-skinned behemoth snapped a punch out at the charging drow, and a lesser warrior than Drizzt would have been crushed by that blow. The ranger, though, with his speed multiplied by his anklets, and his razor-edged reflexes, stepped left as the giant began its swing. Anticipating that the behemoth would react to that movement, Drizzt fast-stepped back the other way so he ran unhindered as the creature’s fist plowed through the air.

  Drizzt didn’t slow as he charged past the giant, but he did leap and spin to gain momentum as he slashed out with Icingdeath. He meant to strike the giant’s kneecap, and to use that impact to reverse his momentum and his spin so he could scramble to the side, but to Drizzt’s surprise, he felt no sense of impact.

  Drizzt landed almost as if he had hit nothing solid at all, and despite his previous experiences with his divinely-infused weapons, he found himself almost stupefied by the reality that he had cut right through the behemoth’s leg.

  Improvising, Drizzt flipped diagonally to his left, lifting himself over and twisting around as he did to place himself directly behind the giant. A further twist stabbed Icingdeath up into the back of the giant’s other thigh, and the howling creature had to rise up on its tiptoes even as it lurched to grab at its other severed leg.

  Drizzt retracted Icingdeath, but only to make way for Twinkle as that blade slashed across, taking with it the giant’s remaining leg.

  Down crashed the massive beast, its screams reaching out to the Ghost King more than Drizzt’s spoken challenges ever could.

  Drizzt didn’t bother finishing the giant—it would bleed out and die on its own—and instead positioned himself for a run to the cathedral. Everything fled before him, nightwings fluttering into the darkness and crawlers climbing all over each other to get away. He caught a few and killed each with a single, devastating stroke, and ran a more circuitous route to his planned position to further scatter the horde.

  A cry from above rent the night, a scream painful in its intensity and sheer volume. Drizzt dived into a somersault and rolled to his feet, planting them firmly and facing that scream. He saw the dracolich’s fire-filled eyes first, like shooting stars diving toward him, then saw the green glow of Crenshinibon, the beast’s newest horn.

  “Come on!” Drizzt shouted, and he slapped his scimitars together, sparks flying from the impact.

  In a single movement, he sheathed them and pulled Taulmaril from his shoulder. Grinning wickedly, Drizzt let fly a silver-streaking arrow, then a second, then a line of them, reaching out and stinging the beast as it plummeted from on high.

  CHAPTER 29

  CHASING IT TO THE ENDS OF REALITY

  There!” Rorick cried, pointing at the sky high above the mountains. They had heard the shriek of doom, and following Rorick’s gaze, they saw the Ghost King as it glided across the starry canopy.

  “Over our home,” Hanaleisa said, and all five began to run. With every tenth step, though, Ivan called for a halt. Finally, the others slowed, gasping for breath.

  “We stay together or we’re suren dead,” the yellow-bearded dwarf scolded. “I can’no’ run with ye, girl!”

  “And I cannot watch from afar as my home is attacked,” Hanaleisa countered.

  “And ye can’no’ get there,” said Ivan. “Half a day and more o’ walking—hours of running. Ye mean to run for hours, do ye?”

  “If I—” Hanaleisa started to retort, but she went quiet at Pikel’s “Shh!” All eyes focused on the green-bearded dwarf as he hopped about, pointing into the dark forest.

  A moment later, they heard the shuffling of many creatures moving swiftly through the underbrush. As one, the group braced for an attack, but they quickly realized that those creatures, minions of the Ghost King, they believed, were not coming for them but were
running flat out to the west, up the hillsides toward Spirit Soaring. Their enemies swarmed to the distant battle.

  “Quick, then, but not running,” Ivan ordered. “And stay close, all o’ ye!”

  Hanaleisa spearheaded the charge, and at a swift pace. With her intensive training in stealth and stamina, and the graceful manner of her movements, she was sure that she could indeed run all the way home, as far as it was, even though the path was mostly uphill. But she couldn’t abandon the others, surrounded by enemies, and particularly Rorick with his torn ankle, struggling with every step.

  “Mother and Father are surrounded by a hundred capable mages and priests,” Temberle tried to reassure her—and reassure himself, she sensed from the tone of his voice. “They will defeat this threat.”

  Soon after, with nearly a mile behind them, the group had to slow, both from exhaustion and because the forest around them teemed with shadowy creatures. On more than one occasion, Hanaleisa held up her hand to stop those behind her and fell low behind a tree trunk or a bush, expecting a fight. Every time, though, the noisy beasts scrambling ahead or to the sides seemed possessed of a singular purpose, and that purpose had nothing to do with the little band of Carradden refugees.

  Gradually, Hanaleisa began to press on even when enemies sounded very near—a part of her hoped that some would come against them, she had to privately admit. Anything they killed out in the wilds would be one less attacker at the gates of Spirit Soaring.

  But then Hanaleisa sensed something different, some movement that seemed intent upon them. She slid behind a broad tree and motioned for the others to stop, then held her breath as something approached very near, opposite her on the other side of the tree.

  She jumped out as her opponent did the same, and launched a series of blows that would have leveled a skilled warrior.

  But every strike was intercepted by an open hand that slapped her attacks aside. It took Hanaleisa only a moment to understand her defeat, only a heartbeat to recognize her opponent as the woman who had trained her all her life.

  “Mother!” she cried, and Danica fell over her in the tightest hug she had ever known.

  Rorick and Temberle echoed Hanaleisa’s call and they, along with Ivan and Pikel, rushed up to embrace Danica.

  Tears of profound relief and sheer joy filled Danica’s eyes as she crushed each of her children close to her, and as she fell over Pikel. And those tears streaked a face full of confusion when she looked upon Ivan.

  “I saw you die,” she said. “I was on the cliff, outside the cave, when the dracolich crushed you.”

  “Crushed them what was chasing me, ye mean,” Ivan corrected. “Dumb thing didn’t even know it was standing above a hole—small for a dragon, but a tunnel for meself!”

  “But …” Danica started. She just shook her head and kissed Ivan on his hairy cheek.

  “You found a way,” she said. “We’ll find a way.”

  “Where’s Father?” Hanaleisa asked.

  “He remains at Spirit Soaring,” Danica replied, and she glanced nervously up the mountains, “facing the Ghost King.”

  “He’s surrounded by an army of wizards and warrior priests,” Rorick insisted, but Danica shook her head.

  “He’s with a small group of powerful allies,” Danica corrected, and she looked at Ivan and Pikel. “King Bruenor and one of his battleragers, and Drizzt Do’Urden.”

  “Bruenor,” Ivan gasped. “Me king, come to us in our time o’ need.”

  “Drizzit Dudden,” Pikel added with a signature giggle.

  “Lead on, Milady,” Ivan bade Danica. “Might that we’ll get there when there’s still something to hit!”

  * * * * *

  The Ghost King didn’t open wide its wings to break out of the stoop. Down it came, a missile from on high, wings folded, eyes burning, jaws wide. At the very last moment, right before it crashed, the Ghost King snapped its head up and flipped its wings out, altering nothing but its angle of descent. It hit the ground and plowed through the turf, digging a trench as it skidded at its prey. And if that alone were not enough to put a fast end to the fool who would challenge a god, the Ghost King breathed forth its flaming breath.

  On and on it went, consuming all in its path, reaching to the very doorway of Spirit Soaring. The flesh of dead crawlers bubbled and burst and disintegrated beneath the conflagration, grass charred and obliterated.

  “Drizzt!” Bruenor, Cadderly, and Jarlaxle yelled together from inside the cathedral, knowing their friend was surely consumed.

  The gout of flames might have continued much longer, for it seemed an endless catastrophe, but a scimitar swung by a drow who should have been buried in that assault smashed hard against the side of the Ghost King’s face.

  Jolted, stunned that Drizzt had been quick enough to get out of the way, the Ghost King tried to turn its fury upon him.

  But a second blow, so heavy with magical power, snapped the dracolich’s head to the side yet again.

  The Ghost King hopped up to its hind legs, towering over the drow even though it stood in a trench deeper than two tall men, a hollow torn by the weight of its cometlike impact.

  Barely had it stood when the beast bit down at the drow, spearlike teeth snapping loudly, and in Spirit Soaring’s doorway, Bruenor gasped, thinking his friend taken whole.

  But again Drizzt moved ahead of his enemy, again the drow, so intent on the image of his wounded bride, so perfect in his focus and so adroit his reflexes, dived at precisely the right angle, forward and inside the reach of the Ghost King. As he came up, three lightning-fast steps brought him to the beast’s right hind leg, where his scimitars bit deep.

  Yet the power of Cadderly’s magic and the fury of Drizzt Do’Urden could not do to that godlike being what he had done in dismembering the nightwalker, and for all of his rage and fury and focus, Drizzt never lost one simple truth: He could not beat the Ghost King alone.

  And so he was moving again, and with all speed, even as he struck hard. Again the dragon snapped its killing fangs at him, and again he dodged and ran, at a full sprint away from the dracolich and toward Spirit Soaring.

  Instinctively, Drizzt swerved out wide and dived again, and felt the heat at his back as the Ghost King breathed forth its murderous fires once more. Drizzt crossed that blackened line back the other way the moment it ended, again just ahead of the pursuing, biting monster.

  He bolted through the double doors just ahead of the Ghost King and called out for Cadderly, for there was nowhere to turn.

  And as he knew would happen, the Ghost King’s fires followed him inside, rushing fast for his back and engulfing him fully, filling the passageway behind and in front with dragonfire.

  Cadderly groaned in pain as roiling flames gnawed at Spirit Soaring, at the magic that sustained the priest and his creation. He held his radiant hands out before him, reaching for the corridor, reaching for Drizzt, praying he had reacted quickly enough.

  Only when Drizzt scrambled into the room, out of the blast of dragonfire, did Cadderly allow himself to breathe. But his relief, the relief of them all, lasted only a moment before the whole of the great structure shuddered violently.

  Cadderly fell back and grimaced, then again as another explosion rocked Spirit Soaring. Its walls, even for their magic, could not withstand the fury of the Ghost King, who crashed in, tearing with tooth and claw, battering aside walls, wood and stone alike, with its skull. Ripping, shredding, and battering its way along, the Ghost King moved into the structure, widening the passageway and crashing through the lower ceiling outside the audience chamber.

  Inside that hall, the four companions fell back, step by step, trying to hold their calm and their confidence. A look at Cadderly did nothing to bolster their resolve. With every crash and tear against Spirit Soaring, the priest shuddered—and aged. Before their astonished eyes, Cadderly’s hair went from gray to white, his face became creased and lined, his posture stooped.

  The front wall of the audience chambe
r cracked, then blew apart as the monster slammed through. The Ghost King lifted its head and issued a deafening wail of pure hatred.

  The building shook as the wyrm stomped into the room, then shook again with its next heavy step, which brought it within striking distance of its intended prey.

  “For me king!” yelled Thibbledorf Pwent, who sat atop a tied-off log up on the high balcony. Right before him, standing on the rail, Athrogate cut free the lead log and gave it a heave to send it swinging down from on high.

  The giant spear stabbed into the side of the Ghost King, hitting it squarely just under its shoulder, just under its wing, and indeed, the creature lurched, if only a bit, under the weight of that blow.

  An inconsequential weight, though, against the godlike dracolich.

  Except that Thibbledorf Pwent then cut loose the second log, the one on which he sat. “Wahoo!” he yelled as he swung past Athrogate, who gave a shove for good measure, and followed the same trajectory as the first beam.

  More than the dwarf’s added weight enhanced the blow as log hit log, end to end, for the front end of that second log had been hollowed out and filled with explosive oil. Like a gigantic version of Cadderly’s hand crossbow bolts, the dwarven version collapsed in on itself and exploded with the force of a thunderbolt.

  The front log blew forward, lifting the Ghost King and throwing it far and fast against the opposite wall. The back log blew to splinters, and the dwarf who had been sitting upon it flew forward, arms and legs flailing, and chased the dracolich through the air to the wall, catching it like a living grapnel even as the ceiling crumbled down atop the stunned Ghost King. Like a biting fly on the side of a horse, Thibbledorf Pwent scrambled and stabbed.

  The Ghost King ignored him, though, for on came Drizzt, leading the charge, Bruenor behind. Still beside the shaken Cadderly, Jarlaxle lifted his wands and began a barrage.

  Taulmaril’s stinging arrows led Drizzt’s assault, flashing at the Ghost King’s face to keep the creature occupied. As he neared, Drizzt threw the bow aside and reached for his blades.