Promise of the Witch-King

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Maybe I just wanted Canthan dead.”

  “Then maybe you should have killed him in the other room.”

  “Shut up.”

  Jarlaxle laughed and sighed all at once.

  “Where is Ellery?” Entreri asked.

  “I believe that you nicked her heart.”

  Entreri shook his head at the insanity of it all.

  “She was unreliable, in any case,” Jarlaxle said. “Obviously so. I do take offense when women I have bedded turn on me with such fury.”

  “If it happens often, then perhaps you should work on your technique.”

  That had Jarlaxle laughing, but just for a moment. “So we are five,” he said. “Or perhaps four,” he added, glancing at the hole.

  “Stubborn dwarf?” asked the assassin.

  “Is there any other kind?”

  Entreri moved to the edge of the hole. “Ugly one,” he called down. “Your wizard friend is dead.”

  “Bah!” Athrogate snorted.

  Entreri glanced back at Jarlaxle then moved over, grabbed Canthan’s corpse, and hauled him over the edge of the hole, dropping him with a splat beside the surprised dwarf.

  “Your friend is dead,” Entreri said again, and the dwarf didn’t bother to argue the point. “And so now you’ve a choice.”

  “Eat him or starve?” Athrogate asked.

  “Eat him and eventually starve anyway,” Jarlaxle corrected, coming up beside Entreri to peer in at the dwarf. “Or you could come out of the hole and help us.”

  “Help ye what?”

  “Win,” said the drow.

  “Didn’t ye just stop that possibility when Canthan put it forth?”

  “No,” Jarlaxle said with certainty. “Canthan was wrong. He believed that Arrayan was the continuing source of power for the castle, but that is not so. She was the beginning of the enchantment, ’tis true, but this place is far beyond her.”

  The drow had all of the others listening by then, with Olgerkhan, the color returned to his face, standing solidly once more.

  “If I believed otherwise, then I would have killed Arrayan myself,” Jarlaxle went on. “But no. This castle has a king, a great and powerful one.”

  “How do you know this?” Entreri asked, and he seemed as doubtful and confused at the others, even Athrogate.

  “I saw enough of the book to recognize that it has a different design than the one Herminicle used outside of Heliogabalus,” the drow explained. “And there is something else.” He put a hand over the extra-dimensional pocket button he wore, where he kept the skull-shaped gem he had taken from Herminicle’s book. “I sense a strength here, a mighty power. It is clear to me, and given all that I know of Zhengyi and all that the dragon sisters told me, with their words and with the fear that was so evident in their eyes, it is not hard for me to see the logic of it all.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Entreri.

  “Dragon sisters?” Athrogate added, but no one paid him any heed.

  “The king,” said Jarlaxle. “I know he exists and I know where he is.”

  “And you know how to kill him?” Entreri asked. It was a hopeful question, but one that was not answered with a hopeful response.

  The assassin let it go at that, surely realizing he’d never get a straight answer from Jarlaxle. He looked back down at Athrogate, who was standing then, looking up intently.

  “Are you with us? Or should we leave you to eat your friend and starve?” Entreri asked.

  Athrogate looked down at Canthan then back up at Entreri. “Don’t look like he’d taste too good, and one thing I’m always wantin’ is food.” He pronounced “good” and “food” a bit off on both, so that they seemed closer to rhyming, and that brought a scowl to Entreri’s face.

  “He starts that again and he’s staying in the hole,” he remarked to Jarlaxle, and the drow, who was already taking off his belt that he might command it to elongate and extract the dwarf, laughed again.

  “We’ll have your word that you’ll make no moves against any of us,” Entreri said.

  “Ye’re to be takin’ me word?”

  “No, but then I can kill you with a clearer conscious.”

  “Bwahaha!”

  “I do so hate him,” Entreri muttered to Jarlaxle, and he moved away.

  Jarlaxle considered that with a wry grin, thinking that perhaps it was yet another reason for him to get Athrogate out and by their side. The dwarf’s lack of concern for Canthan was genuine, Jarlaxle knew, and Athrogate would not go against them unless he found it to be in his best interests.

  Which, of course, was the way with all of Jarlaxle’s friends.

  CHAPTER 21

  AN AUDIENCE WITH THE KING

  Athrogate and Entreri eyed each other for a long, long while after the dwarf came out of the hole.

  “Could’ve ruined yer weapon, ye know,” Athrogate remarked, holding up the morning star that coated itself with the rust-inducing liquid.

  “Could’ve eaten yer soul, ye know,” the assassin countered, mimicking the dwarf’s tone and dialect.

  “With both yer weapons turned to dust? Got the juice of a rust monster in it,” he said, jostling the morning star so that the head bounced a bit at the end of its chain.

  “It may be that you overestimate your weapons or underestimate mine. In either case, you would not have enjoyed learning the truth.”

  Athrogate cracked a smile. “Some day we’ll find out that truth.” “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “Bwahaha!”

  Entreri wanted nothing more than to drive his dagger into the annoying dwarf’s throat at that moment. But it wasn’t the time. They remained surrounded by enemies in a castle very much alive and hostile. They needed the powerful dwarf fighting beside them.

  “I remain convinced that Canthan was wrong,” Jarlaxle said, moving between the two.

  He glanced back at the two half-orcs, leading the gaze of the dwarf and the assassin. Arrayan sat against the wall across the way, while her companion scrambled about on all fours, apparently searching for something. Olgerkhan looked much healthier, obviously so. The dagger had fed Canthan’s life energy to him and had healed much of the damage of Athrogate’s fierce attacks. Beyond that, the great weariness that had been dragging on Olgerkhan seemed lifted; his eyes were bright and alert, his movements crisp.

  But as much better as he looked, Arrayan appeared that much worse. The woman’s eyes drooped and her head swayed as if her neck had not the strength to hold it upright. Something about the last battles had taken much from her, it seemed, and the castle was taking the rest.

  “The castle has a king,” Jarlaxle said.

  “Bah, Canthan got it right, and ye killed him to death for it,” said Athrogate. “It’s the girl, don’t ye see? She’s wilting away right afore yer eyes.”

  “No doubt she is part of it,” the drow replied. “But only a small part. The real source of the castle’s life lies below us.”

  “And how might ye be knowin’ that?” asked the dwarf. “And what’s he looking for, anyway?”

  “I know because I can feel the castle’s king as acutely as I can feel my own skin. And I know not what Olgerkhan is seeking, nor do I much care. Our destiny lies below and quickly if we hope to save Arrayan.”

  “What makes ye think I’m giving an orc’s snot rag for that one?”

  Entreri shot the dwarf a hateful look.

  “What?” Athrogate asked with mock innocence. “She ain’t no friend o’ me own, and she’s just a half-orc. Half too many, by me own counting.”

  “Then disregard her,” Jarlaxle intervened. “Think of yourself, and rightly so. I tell you that if we defeat the king of this castle, the castle will fight us no more, whatever Arrayan’s fate. I also tell you that we should do all that we can to save her, to keep her alive now, for if she is taken by the castle it will benefit the construct and hurt us. Trust me on this and follow my advice. If I am wrong, and the castle continues to feed from her
, and in doing so it continues to attack us, then I will kill her myself.”

  The dwarf nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “But I only say that because I am certain it will not come to that,” Jarlaxle quickly added for the sake of Olgerkhan, who glared at him. “Now let us tend our wounds and prepare our weapons, for we have a king to kill.”

  Athrogate pulled a waterskin off and moved toward the two half-orcs. “Here,” he offered. “Got a bit o’ the healing potions to get yer strength back,” he said to Arrayan. “And as for yerself, sorry I breaked yer neck.”

  Olgerkhan offered nothing in reply. He hesitated for a moment by Arrayan’s side, but then moved back toward the side passage and began crawling around on all fours once more, searching.

  Entreri pulled Jarlaxle to the far side of the room and asked, “What are you talking about? How do you know what you pretend to know, or is it all but a ruse?”

  “Not a ruse,” Jarlaxle assured him. “I feel it and have since we entered this place. Logic tells me that Arrayan could not have constructed anything of this magnificence, and everything I have seen and felt since only confirms that logic.”

  “You have told me that all before,” the assassin replied. “Could you offer something more?”

  Jarlaxle patted his button pocket, wherein he had stored the skull. “The skull gem we took from the other tower has sensitized me to certain things. I feel the king below us. His is a life-force quite mighty.”

  “And we are to kill him?”

  “Of course.”

  “On your feeling?”

  “And following the clues. Do you remember Herminicle’s book?”

  Entreri thought on that for a moment then nodded.

  “Do you remember the designs etched upon its leathery cover, and in the margins on the page?”

  Again the assassin paused, and shook his head.

  “Skulls,” Jarlaxle explained. “Human skulls.”

  “And?”

  “Did you notice the designs on the book up the ramp, the source of this castle?”

  Entreri stared hard at his friend. He had not actually looked at the book that closely, but he was beginning to catch on. Given his experiences with Jarlaxle, where every road seemed to lead, his answer was as much statement as question: “Dragons?”

  “Exactly,” the drow confirmed, pleased that Entreri resisted the urge to punch him in the face. “I understand the fearful expressions of our sister employers. They knew that the Witch-King could pervert dragonkind as he perverted humankind, even from beyond the grave. They feared the apparent opening of Zhengyi’s lost library, as evidenced by Herminicle’s tower. They feared that such a book as the one that constructed this castle might be uncovered.”

  “You doubt that Arrayan started this process?”

  “Not at all, as I explained. The book used her to send out its call, I believe. And that call was answered.”

  “By a dragon?”

  “More likely an undead dragon.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Jarlaxle shrugged against his companion’s disgusted stare. “It is our way. An adventurous road!”

  “It is a fatal disease.”

  Again the drow shrugged, and a wide grin spread across his face.

  They continued on their way down the side passage Canthan had taken to the room where Entreri had defeated the battle mage. The magical webbing Canthan had created to prevent the daemon eggs from falling remained in place, except for the small area Entreri had burned away in his fight with the mage. Still, the five went through the room quickly, not wanting an encounter with those powerful adversaries. They all believed that the “king,” as Jarlaxle had aptly named it, awaited them, and they needed no more wounds and no more weariness. The order of the day at that time was avoiding battles, and so with that in mind, Entreri took up the point position.

  They made good progress for a short while along the twisting, winding corridor. No traps presented themselves, only the pressure bars that kept lighting the wall torches, and no monsters rose before them.

  Around one particularly sharp bend, though, they found Entreri waiting for them, his expression concerned.

  “A room with a dozen coffins like those of the gnoll mummies,” he explained, “only even more decorated.”

  “A dozen o’ the raggy ones?” Athrogate replied. “Ha! Six slaps each!” he said and sent his morning stars into alternating swings.

  The dwarf’s cavalier attitude did little to lift the mood of the others, however.

  “There is another exit from the room, or is this the end of our path?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “Straight across,” said Entreri. “A door.”

  Jarlaxle instructed them to wait then slowly moved ahead. He found the room around the next bend, a wide, circular chamber lined, as Entreri had said, with a dozen sarcophagi. The drow took out the skull gem and allowed it to guide his sensibilities. He felt the energy within each of the coffins, vengeful and focused, hating death and envying life.

  The drow fell deeper into the skull gem, testing its strength. The gem was attuned to humans, not the dog-faced humanoids wrapped in rags within the coffins. But they were not too far removed, and when he opened his eyes again, Jarlaxle drew forth a slender wand from its holster inside his cloak and aimed it across the room at the door. He paused a moment to consider the richly decorated portal, for even in the low light of the torches burning in the wall sconces behind him, he could see the general make-up of its design: a bas relief of a great battle, with scores of warriors swarming a rearing dragon.

  The drow found the design quite revealing. “It was made of memories,” he whispered, and he looked all around, for he was talking about more than that door; he was talking about the whole of the place.

  The castle was a living entity, created of magic and memories. Its energy brought forth the gargoyles and the doors, the stone walls and tunnels complete with the clever designs of the wall torches and the traps. Its energy recreated its former occupiers, the gnoll soldiers Zhengyi had used as staff, only trapped in undeath and far more powerful than they had been in life.

  And its energy had unwittingly tapped into the other memories of the place, animating in lesser form the many bodies that had been buried on that spot. Jarlaxle suspected then that those undead skeletons that had arisen against them in the courtyard were not of Zhengyi’s design but were an inadvertent side effect of the magical release.

  He smiled at that thought and looked ahead at the design on the door. It was no haphazard artist’s interpretation. The scene was indeed a memory, a recording of something that had truly occurred.

  The drow had hoped that the suspicions festering within him since crawling through the portcullis would prove accurate, and there was his confirmation and his hope.

  He pointed his wand at the door and uttered a command word.

  Several locks clicked and a latch popped. With a rush of air the door swung open. Beyond it, the corridor continued into darkness.

  “Remain in a tight group and be quick through the room,” Jarlaxle instructed the others when he returned to them a moment later. “The door is open—make sure it remains so as we pass. Come now, and be quick.”

  He glanced at the half-orcs, Olgerkhan all but carrying Arrayan, who seemed as if she couldn’t even keep her head from swaying. Jarlaxle motioned for Athrogate to help them, and though he gave a disgusted sigh, the dwarf complied.

  “Are you coming?” the drow asked Entreri as the others started away.

  The assassin held up his hand, looked back the way they had come, and said, “We’re being followed.”

  “Press ahead,” Jarlaxle instructed. “Our road is ahead of us, not behind.”

  Entreri turned on him. “You know something.”

  “You hope I do,” Jarlaxle replied, and he started after the trio. He paused a few steps down and glanced back at his friend and grinned sheepishly. “As do I.”

  Entreri’s expression showed that the humor was
not appreciated.

  “We cannot go out, unless we are willing to let the castle win,” Jarlaxle reminded him after they had taken a few steps. “And in that victory, the construct will claim Arrayan. Is that acceptable to you?”

  “Am I following you?” Entreri remarked.

  They passed through the chamber quickly and no sarcophagi opened and no eggs fell, releasing daemons to rise against them. Through the other door, they found a long descending staircase and down they went into the darkness.

  Entreri took the lead again, inspecting every step and every handhold as the light diminished around them. Near to the bottom, he was relieved to see another of the pressure plates, and torches soon flared to life on the opposite walls at the sides of the bottom step.

  The light flickered and cast long, uneven shadows across stone that was no longer worked and fitted. It seemed as if they had come to the end of the construct, to a natural winding tunnel, boring down ever deeper before them.

  Entreri went ahead a short distance, the others moving close behind. He turned and went back past them to the last two torches. He inspected them carefully, expecting a trap or ten, and indeed on the left-hand one, he removed several barbed pins, all wet with some sort of poison. Then he carefully extracted the torches and carried them back to the others. He handed one to Olgerkhan and had thought to give the other to Arrayan. One look at the woman dissuaded him from that course, however, for she didn’t seem to have the strength to hold it, and indeed, had it not been for Olgerkhan’s supporting arm, she would not have been standing. He offered the torch to Athrogate instead.

  “I got dwarf eyes, ye dolt,” Athrogate growled at him. “I ain’t needing no firelight. This tunnel’s bathed in sunlight next to where me kin’ve dug.”

  “Jarlaxle needs both of his hands and Arrayan is too weak,” Entreri said to him, thrusting the torch back his way. “I prefer to lead in the darkness.”

  “Bah, but ye’re just making me a target,” the dwarf growled back, but he took the torch.

  “Another benefit,” Entreri said, turning away and moving out in front.

  The corridor continued to bend to the left, even more sharply, giving the assassin the feeling that they were in the same general area from which they’d started, only far below. The caverns were all of natural stone, with no more torches and no pressure plates or other traps that the assassin could locate. There were intersections, however, and always sharp turns back the other way as the other winding tunnels joined into this one, becoming one great spiraling corridor. With each joining, the passage widened and heightened, so that it seemed almost as if they were walking down a long sloping cavern instead of a corridor.