“Dragons,” Ambergris mouthed, barely able to speak, as the two copper dragons, Tazmikella and Ilnezhara, crawled into the clearing and shook away the branches they had dislodged in their trek.
“Say it with respect, dwarf,” Tazmikella replied, and her voice still sounded like that of a human woman, which put the dwarf and the monk off-kilter a bit as they tried to make sense of the amazing scene before them.
“I give you the ladies Tazmikella and Ilnezhara,” Jarlaxle said. “There are great happenings in the wider world, my friends, and these two would like to accompany us on our journey.”
“Saddles?” Afafrenfere heard himself say as he noted the leather harnesses the dragons wore, including a two-seated one on the dragon Jarlaxle had introduced as Ilnezhara.
“We’re to ride them things?” Ambergris asked incredulously.
“They have most graciously offered,” said Jarlaxle.
The dwarf began to titter, just a bit, then it became a giggle, then erupted into a full-force belly laugh. “Do ye steer it like a pony, then?” she asked Jarlaxle.
The reaction surely showed Ambergris that she had asked the wrong question.
The drow sucked in his breath and fell back, and in the blink of an astonished dwarf eye, Ilnezhara’s face was there, quick as a serpent strike, stopped barely a finger’s breath from Ambergris’s now-wide eyes.
“You hold on,” the dragon explained. “You do nothing more than hold on. You are my guest and not my rider. If you ever forget that …”
She paused and opened wide her maw, and poor Ambergris nearly fainted away as she stared at the rows and rows of jagged teeth, many longer than her forearm!
“Note the flatter teeth in the back,” Tazmikella added wickedly. “They will hold you and grind you, but oh so slowly. Our kind are known to digest rather … painfully.”
“Acid breath,” Jarlaxle explained with a wink.
Ambergris swallowed hard.
The drow moved around Ambergris and the grinning dragon, over to Tazmikella, where he nimbly pulled himself into the saddle.
“Courage,” Afafrenfere whispered, echoing the voice in his head. He moved to stand before Ilnezhara.
“With your permission, magnificent Ilnezhara,” he asked, and he bowed low in respect.
“Do,” the dragon answered with a deferential nod.
Up went the monk, into the saddle, and he called to his companion.
“Might I be joinin’ him?” Ambergris asked quietly.
“Just hold on,” Ilnezhara replied.
With every step, it looked as though poor Ambergris might simply topple over, but she somehow made it to the side of the great wyrm. She took Afafrenfere’s hand and he pulled her up behind him.
Barely had she settled into her seat when Tazmikella leaped straight up with a great swirl of air, and flexed her wings out wide, banking and drifting away down the side of the high mountain pass.
“Hold on,” Afafrenfere warned the dwarf, and he had guessed right, for up leaped Ilnezhara, much like her sister.
In mere heartbeats, the dragon sisters and their trio of “guests” soared up high, very high, higher than archers could shoot, where cold winds buffeted Jarlaxle, Afafrenfere, and Ambergris.
All fear flew away from the dwarf then, and she shrieked with glee as the world spread wide before her and below her.
She looked across the way to Jarlaxle, who nodded and returned her smile. At first, Ambergris was surprised that his reaction seemed so muted as compared to her own, but when she thought about it, about him, she could only nod. Ambergris believed that her life had been eventful, but she knew it would seem positively mundane to that particular drow, after all.
In fact, few in the Realms had seen, bartered, battled, befriended, or copulated with a more impressive array of powerful beings and monsters than Jarlaxle.
Afafrenfere remained quiet, but was no less elated than the dwarf behind him. So many wondrous things would he experience, he knew, not the least of which being the insights he would find from the spirit of Kane.
His heart sang to him, and he knew beyond doubt that the adventures he had known already paled in comparison.
And this road had only just begun.
From the courtyard of Hartusk Keep, Doum’wielle and Tos’un watched the trio fly away on the back of Arauthator.
It is a brilliant adventure, is it not?” Tos’un asked, wrapping his arm about his daughter’s slender and strong shoulders. “Ah, but it is good to be back where I belong, among my people—our people—and in the midst of such glorious campaigns.”
Doum’wielle nodded and offered a smile to her father, but inside, she was much less certain of this course. She had seen, she had done and caused, terrible things and horrific suffering. Her own homeland would soon be razed, she knew, her own mother murdered. Or worse, captured.
She thought of her brother, whom she had murdered.
These changes in her life, so abrupt, so stark, so brutal …
Her doubts only lasted a few moments, however, as a wave of ecstasy coursed through her body. Ugly things seemed pretty things, her movements, she thought, were pre-ordained and of a higher purpose. She was a blessed thing.
Without even thinking of the movement, Little Doe put a hand to the hilt of her fabulous, sentient sword.
Her fabulous, evil sword.
On and on came the waves of monsters, goblins and orcs and ogres throwing themselves against the walls of the battered town. Even without the five heroes who had set off to find help from Mithral Hall, the defenders of the city fought valiantly and repelled the attackers.
But more monsters came on and more died.
Giants milled about the back ranks of the monstrous force, heaving their boulders against and over the wall. From the south came the trolls and bog blokes.
“Fight on!” Jolen Firth rallied his charges. “Every arrow is a goblin dead. Heigh-ho!”
And the hardy warriors of Nesmé cheered back at him and set the next arrows to their bowstrings, and indeed, more monstrous corpses piled outside of Nesmé’s strong wall.
Along the south wall, a blue-robed wizard ran the length of the archer line, enchanting their arrows with magically flaming tips.
Trolls didn’t like fire. Neither did bog blokes, monsters the folk of Nesmé often referred to as “self-delivering kindling.”
An hour into the attack, the enemy dead piled thick.
Two hours into the attack, the defenders continued to rally.
Three hours into the attack, the wall was breached, but the Riders of Nesmé were to the spot in short order, running down the monsters, chasing them back out or slaughtering them within the city.
Four hours into the attack, the weary defenders held on, though the mages had little magic left to throw, the clerics had healed all that they could heal, and the archers’ fingers bled, rubbed more than raw.
But still they held, and still Jolen Firth rode about the ways of the town, rallying his warriors, telling them that this would be their most glorious day. And indeed, they seemed to be holding, and Nesmé commanders even whispered that perhaps they could quickly recover and then break out against their battered enemy when this assault was through, and drive the orcs from their fields.
For a brief moment, the defenders knew hope.
It fell from on high, barely a speck against the roiling blackness of the Darkening, tumbling, tumbling. Soon after, it began to make a whistling sound, falling so fast that the air screamed about it.
The rock—and it was a rock, a huge rock, a rock the size of a giant—landed atop Jolen Firth’s own keep, crushing down with such force that it shattered the roof and plunged through, the sheer weight and force of the explosion blowing out the walls of the building as the rock crashed down to the ground.
A few were killed, many more wounded, but that alone could not have turned the battle.
However, the source of the falling stone surely could, and surely did.
It, to
o, came down from on high, folding its leathery wings in a great stoop that had the cheeks and lips of its rider flapping in the press of wind, and had his white hair flying out behind him with such force that it seemed as if he would be a bald drow by the time he and Arauthator reached the ground.
The Old White Death had come, unfolding its wings at the last moment and leveling out to sweep above the city, low enough for the dragon’s killing claws to tear some defenders from the wall as it passed, low enough for the dragon to breathe its killing frost over a group of Riders as they huddled near the breach, trying to hold back the monstrous hordes.
The defenders of Nesmé saw the dragon and knew their doom had come.
The attackers of Nesmé saw the dragon and knew they could not lose.
On the monsters charged again, ferociously, and now the giants joined in the assault, a score of the behemoths coming on in a group from the west, confident that the city’s wizards had exhausted their killing fiery magic. Barely five long strides from the wall, the giant legion pulled up as one and hurled their boulders, each stone slamming the wall right near the previous, and under that concentrated attack, the center of Nesmé’s western wall buckled and tumbled.
The dragon rushed past south-to-north along that same expanse, at just that time, its murderous breath scattering defenders, widening the breach.
In poured the monsters, the goblins and orcs and armored ogres, and behind them came the giants, staying close in their group, rocks in hand.
Jolen Firth led the Riders of Nesmé to the newest breach, trampling goblins, battling ogres.
But down came Arauthator and Tiago astride the wyrm, and the horses reared in terror, and even fled before the power of the dragon. No training and no rider, no matter how skilled, could stop them in their terror.
And so the brilliant coordination of the city defense was shattered.
And so did Nesmé die.
A PAIR OF BURLY ORCS DRAGGED GISELLE ACROSS THE COURTYARD AND unceremoniously dropped her in the mud at the base of the dais that had been constructed to seat the two dark elves, who had proclaimed themselves as Duke and Duchess of Nesmé.
One was a high priestess of Lady Lolth, so the whispers said, and the other, the dragon rider, with his starry sword and a strange shield that could widen for full protection and contract to mere buckler size on command.
To the side of the stage, Jolen Firth stood chained to a post, barely alive.
To the other side, a huge pile of bodies, many of whom Giselle had known as friends.
“You are a Rider of Nesmé?” the male drow asked, though it took Giselle a few moments to decipher his words, given his strong accent.
“I am Giselle …” she started to say, but the orc beside her kicked her in the ribs.
“You are a Rider of Nesmé?” the drow asked again.
“Yes,” she answered through gritted teeth.
“Where is the drow?”
Giselle looked at him curiously.
“The drow who fought for Nesmé,” the dragon rider clarified.
Giselle stared at him dumbfounded, her thoughts spinning.
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked.
“Who?” she asked, or started to ask, but the orc bent low and chopped its fist across her face, dropping her down to the mud.
The orc grabbed her by the back of the head and began rubbing her face in the muck. It tugged her head back and face-slammed her down, once and then again, until the drow finally said, “Enough.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked the mud-spitting Giselle again.
“I do not know …” she started to reply, but the orc grabbed her roughly once more.
“No, no,” the drow called and the orc held.
“That will not make her answer,” the drow prompted, but then he smiled wickedly. “Well, go on for a bit, perhaps, for my pleasure.”
The orc slammed her face in the mud again and pummeled her about the ears. The brute tugged her head back painfully and slammed her down hard, then pressed on the back of her head so that she could not breathe, so that her nostrils and mouth filled with mud.
She flailed desperately and tried to reach back to break the hold, but she could not, and she was sure she would die.
But then the orc relented, yanking her head back so that she was looking at the drow couple once more.
“You still do not know the answer to my question, I am sure,” the male drow said.
Giselle stared at him, offering nothing. He motioned to the side, and a young child was dragged out before her, a boy who could not have been more than seven or eight years of age.
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” the drow asked.
Giselle stared at the child.
Too long.
“Kill him,” the drow said, matter-of-factly.
“No!” Giselle shouted in a mud-filled cry as an orc near the boy lifted its wicked blade to his throat.
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” the drow asked again.
“He left,” she said. “Days ago.”
“To where?”
Giselle hesitated.
“To where?” the drow shouted, coming forward now to the edge of the dais. When Giselle didn’t immediately reply, he motioned to the orc.
They had a lot of children waiting in the wings, Giselle knew.
“North!” she cried. “He went north, to find allies to come to Nesmé’s aid.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” the drow asked. “A dark elf? You know him as Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“Drizzt, yes,” she admitted. “He saved me in the forest, him and his companions. They came to Nesmé and aided us in our time of need. And he went out north, days ago, to find help, to beg of the dwarves of Mithral Hall, perhaps.”
The drow did not seem pleased, not at all. He sat back in his chair, mulling and muttering.
“You should have answered sooner,” he said to Giselle, and then to the orc to the side, he added, “Kill him.”
“No!” Giselle cried, but it was muffled as the orc securing her slammed her down into the mud again. That proved merciful, for she did not have to witness the execution of the young boy.
She heard his cry, though, and saw him lying in the mud, so still, when the orc holding her yanked her head back once more.
“I will have him,” the drow Duke of Nesmé told the priestess at his side. “He will not escape me again.”
Another dark elf came up to the stage then. “We’ve six hundred prisoners,” the drow reported. “The rest are dead.”
“Too many,” the Duke of Nesmé replied. “Choose the hardiest half to serve as slaves. Do as you will with the other half.”
Giselle’s head fell back to the mud, the woman overwhelmed by the casual evilness of this dark elf before her. She had seen many battles in her twenty-five years of life, but she simply could not fathom this level of cruelty, this level of atrocity, particularly from a creature so strangely beautiful.
“What of him?” asked the orc, and the brute pointed to Jolen Firth.
“Crucify him before the city’s main gate,” the drow answered without hesitation.
“And her?” asked the orc, who tugged Giselle by the hair.
“She lives,” she heard the Duke order the orc guarding her.
To Giselle, those might have been the cruelest words of all.
The halfling-turned-ogrillon went right past Wulfgar’s former prison and sped further down the corridor, turning into a side passage, one much narrower. Regis had scouted this area well, and with orcs and other monsters closing in fast, with spears flying to skip across the floor not far behind their running feet, he and Wulfgar got through a door.
Regis slammed it shut and dropped a locking bar in place.
“Follow,” he told his friend, and on they ran.
“How?” Wulfgar asked many footsteps later, through a dozen more doors, several side passages, and into a more natural area of the upper Underdark—and still pursuit was not far behind!
Regis pulled
off the executioner’s hood, threw it aside, and tapped his head where his disguised magical beret was. He immediately reverted to his true halfling look, but remained much larger than he had been, as tall as Wulfgar and still much thicker, so that he looked like a strangely gigantic human child.
“You may have to pull me along,” the giant halfling said. “The potion …” He grimaced and there came a popping sound in his hip, another in one shoulder, as the magical effects of the potion began to wear away.
“Regis?” Wulfgar asked, grabbing him to steady him, for indeed it seemed as if the halfling would pitch over headlong to the floor.
“I hate this potion …” Regis stuttered, and he even bit his lip as his face twisted. Then he pitched away from Wulfgar, stumbling to the side as he tried to take a step—with a shortened leg.
Behind them, a goblin shrieked, “There! There!”
Wulfgar, though still unsteady himself, his wounds not fully healed, hoisted the halfling right over his shoulder and awkwardly charged along. Regis continued to squirm and twist strangely.
“It … doesn’t … grow or … shrink all at once …” the halfling gasped.
Wulfgar pulled the halfling from his shoulder and held him out at arm’s length. The barbarian’s face screwed up in shock as the halfling twisted weirdly. Half of Regis seemed too small, or the other half too big—Wulfgar couldn’t sort it out!
“Keep … running …” Regis stammered. “Left … door …”
Wulfgar leaped ahead and several strides down, shouldered the door the halfling had indicated, then rushed down a long and winding passageway. With the door long out of sight, they heard the flopping feet of goblin pursuit, and Wulfgar looked back over his shoulder, expecting to see a spear already flying his way.
“I … I can run now,” Regis said, his voice returning to normal.
Wulfgar set him down and hustled him along.
“I hate that potion.”
“Then why use it?”
“Because I’m a bit too short to be a proper ogrillon torturer,” the halfling explained. “And I feared that if my disguise was not proper, I would not have struck terror into the heart of Wulfgar.”
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