The Ghost King

The recognition of utter helplessness is more than humbling; it is devastating. On those occasions when it is made clear to someone, internally, that willpower or muscle or technique will not be enough to overcome the obstacles placed before him, that he is helpless before those obstacles, there follows a brutal mental anguish.

When Wulfgar was taken by Errtu in the Abyss, he was beaten and physically tortured, but on those few occasions I was able to coax my friend to speak of that time, those notes he sang most loudly in despair were those of his helplessness. The demon, for example, would make him believe that he was free and was living with the woman he loved, then would slaughter her and their illusionary children before Wulfgar’s impotent gaze.

That torture created Wulfgar’s most profound and lasting scars.

When I was a child in Menzoberranzan, I was taught a lesson universal to male drow. My sister Briza took me out to the edge of our cavern homeland where a gigantic earth elemental waited. The beast was harnessed and Briza handed me the end of the rein.

“Hold it back,” she instructed.

I didn’t quite understand, and when the elemental took a step away, the rope was pulled from my hand.

Briza struck me with her whip, of course, and no doubt, she enjoyed it.

“Hold it back,” she said again.

I took the rope and braced myself. The elemental took a step and I went flying after it. It didn’t even know that I existed, or that I was tugging with all my insignificant strength to try to hinder its movement.

Briza scowled as she informed me that I would try again.

This test must be a matter of cleverness, I decided, and instead of just bracing myself, I looped the rope around a nearby stalagmite, to Briza’s approving nods, and dug in my heels.

The elemental, on command, took a step and whipped me around the stone as if I were no more than a bit of parchment in a furious gale. The monster didn’t slow, didn’t even notice.

In that moment, I was shown my limitations, without equivocation. I was shown my impotence.

Briza then held the elemental in place with an enchantment and dismissed it with a second one. The point she was trying to make was that the divine magic of Lolth overwhelmed both muscle and technique. This was no more than another subjugation tactic by the ruling matron mothers, to make the males of Menzoberranzan understand their lowly place, their inferiority, particularly to those more in Lolth’s favor.

For me, and I suspect for many of my kin, the lesson was more personal and less societal, for that was my first real experience encountering a force supremely beyond my willpower, utterly beyond my control. It wasn’t as if had I tried harder or been more clever I might have changed the outcome. The elemental would have stepped away unhindered and unbothered no matter my determination.

To say I was humbled would be an understatement. There, in that dark cavern, I learned the first truth of both mortality and mortal flesh.

And now I feel that terrible measure of impotence again. When I look at Catti-brie, I know that she is beyond my ability to help. We all dream about being the hero, about finding the solution, about winning the moment and saving the day. And we all harbor, to some degree, the notion that our will can overcome, that determination and strength of mind can push us to great ends—and indeed they can. To a point.

Death is the ultimate barrier, and when faced with impending death, personally or for someone you love, a mortal being will encounter, most of all, ultimate humility.

We all believe that we can defeat that plague or that disease, should it befall us, through sheer willpower. It is a common mental defense against the inevitability we all know we share. I wonder, then, if the worst reality of a lingering death is the sense that your own body is beyond your ability to control.

In my case, the pain I feel in looking at Catti-brie is manifold, and not least among the variations is my own sense of helplessness. I deny the looks that Cadderly and Jarlaxle exchanged, expressions that revealed their hearts and minds. They cannot be right in their obvious belief that Catti-brie is beyond our help and surely doomed!

I demand that they are not right.

And yet I know that they are. Perhaps I only “know” because I fear beyond anything I have ever known that they are correct, and if they are, then I will know no closure. I cannot say goodbye to Catti-brie because I fear that I already have.

And thus, in moments of weakness, I lose faith and know that they are right. My love, my dearest friend, is lost to me forever—and there again lurches my stubbornness, for my first instinct was to write “likely forever.” I cannot admit the truth even as I admit the truth!

So many times have I seen my friends return from the brink of death: Bruenor on the back of a dragon, Wulfgar from the Abyss, Catti-brie from the dark plane of Tarterus. So many times have the odds been beaten. In the end, we always prevail!

But that is not true. And perhaps the cruelest joke of all is the confidence, the surety, that our good fortune and grand exploits have instilled in my friends, the Companions of the Hall.

How much worse becomes the cruel reality when at last we are touched by inescapable tragedy.

I look at Catti-brie and I am reminded of my limitations. My fantasies of saving the moment and the day are dashed against jagged and immovable rocks. I want to save her and I cannot. I look at Catti-brie, wandering lost, and in those moments when I can accept that this state is forever, my hopes become less about victory and more about …

I can hardly think it. Have I truly been reduced to hoping that this woman I love will pass on quickly and peacefully?

And still the fight goes on around us, I am sure, in this world gone mad. And still will my scimitars be put to use in a struggle that has, I fear, only just begun. And still will I be needed to mediate between Bruenor and Jarlaxle, Cadderly and Jarlaxle. I cannot skulk away and be alone with my mounting grief and pain. I cannot abrogate my responsibilities to those around me.

But it all, so suddenly, seems less important to me. Without Catti-brie, what is the point of our fight? Why defeat the dracolich when the outcome will not change, since we are all doomed in the end? Is it not true that that which we deem important is, in the grand scheme of the millennia and the multiverse, utterly and completely irrelevant?

This is the demon of despair wrought of impotence. More profound than the helplessness created by Shimmergloom the shadow dragon’s dark cloud of breath. More profound than the lesson of the drow matron mothers. For that question, “What is the point?” is the most insidious and destructive of all.

I must deny it. I cannot give in to it, for the sake of those around me and for the sake of myself, and yes, for the sake of Catti-brie, who would not allow me to surrender to such a concept.

Truly this inner turmoil tests me more than any demon, any dragon, any horde of ravaging orcs ever could.

For as this dark moment shows me the futility, so too it demands of me the faith—the faith that there is something beyond this mortal coil, that there is a place of greater understanding and universal community than this temporary existence.

Else it is all a sad joke.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 24 WANDERING IN THE DARKNESS

How can I be tellin’ ye what I ain’t for knowing?” Ivan grumbled, putting Temberle back on his heels. “I thought … you might know …” the young man stammered. “You are a dwarf,” Hanaleisa added dryly.

“So’s he!” Ivan fumed, poking a finger Pikel’s way. His obstinate expression melted when he looked back to the Bonaduce siblings, both wearing skeptical expressions. “Yeah, I know,” Ivan agreed with an exasperated sigh.

“Doo-dad,” said Pikel, and with an imperious “harrumph” of his own, he walked away.

“He’s durned good in the higher tunnels, though,” Ivan said in his brother’s defense. “When there’s roots pokin’ through. He talks to ‘em, and the damned things talk back!”

“Our current plight?” Rorick reminded, walking over to join the discussion. “The folk are sick of tunnels and growing ever more agitated.”

“They’d rather be out in Carradoon, would they?” Ivan retorted. It was sarcasm, of course, but to everyone’s surprise, Rorick didn’t blink.

“They’re saying that very thing,” he informed the others.

“They forget what chased us here in the first place,” said Temberle, but Rorick shook his head with every word.

“They forget nothing—and we’ve been fighting those same monsters in the tunnels, anyway.”

“From defensible positions, on ground of our choosing,” said Hanaleisa, to which Rorick merely shrugged.

“Do ye think ye might be finding yer way back to the tunnels near to Carradoon?” Ivan asked Temberle and Hanaleisa.

“You cannot …” Temberle started, but Hanaleisa cut him short.

“We can,” she said. “I’ve been marking the tunnels at various junctures. We can get back close to where we started, I’m sure.”

“Might be our best option,” said Ivan.

“No,” said Temberle.

“We’re not knowin’ what’s still there, boy,” Ivan reminded. “And we know what’s waiting for us in the mountains, and I know ye didn’t see nothing the size o’ that damned wyrm in Carradoon, else ye’d all be dead. I’d like to give ye a better choice—I’d like a better choice for meself! — but I’m not for knowing another way out o’ these tunnels, and the one I came down can’t be climbed, and I wouldn’t be climbing back that way anyhow!”

Temberle and Hanaleisa exchanged concerned looks, and both glanced across the torchlit chamber to the haggard refugees. The weight of responsibility pressed down upon them, for their decisions would affect everyone in that chamber, perhaps fatally.

“Choice ain’t for ye, anyway,” Ivan blustered a few heartbeats later, as if reading their thoughts, certainly reading their expressions. “Ye done good in gettin’ these folk from Carradoon, and I’ll be sure to tell yer Ma and Da that when we get back to Spirit Soaring. But I’m here now, and last time I bothered to look, I’ve got a bit o’ rank and experience on the both o’ ye put together.

“We can’t stay down here. Yer brother’s right on that. If we were all kin dwarves, we’d just widen a few holes, put up a few walls, call the place home, and be done with it. But we ain’t, and we got to get out, and I can’t be getting us out unless we’re going back the way ye came in.”

“We’ll be fighting there,” Hanaleisa warned.

“More the reason to go, then!” Ivan declared with a toothy grin.

And they went, back the way they had come, and when they weren’t sure of either left or right, because Hanaleisa’s markings were neither complete nor always legible, they guessed and pressed on. And when they guessed wrong, they turned around and marched back, double-time, by the barking commands of Ivan Bouldershoulder.

Bark he did, but he added a much-needed enthusiasm, full of optimistic promise. His energy proved contagious and the group made great headway that first day. The second went along splendidly as well, except for one unusually long detour that nearly dropped Ivan, who insisted on leading the way, into a deep pit.

By the third day, their steps came smaller and the barks became mere words. Still they went along, for what choice did they have? When they heard the growls of monsters echoing along distant tunnels, though they all cringed at the notion of more fighting, they took hope that such sounds meant they were nearing the end of their Underdark torment. Hungry, as they had fed on nothing more than a few mushrooms and a few cave fish, thirsty, as most of the water they found was too fetid to drink, they took a deep breath and pushed forward.

Around a bend in the corridor, where the tunnel soon widened into a large chamber, they saw their enemies—not undead monsters, but the crawling fleshy beasts that Ivan knew so well—at the same time their enemies saw them. Driven by the knowledge that he had led those poor, beleaguered folks, including Cadderly’s precious children, into danger, Ivan Bouldershoulder was fast to the charge. Fury drove his steps, and determination that he would not be the cause of disaster brought great strength to his limbs. The dwarf hit the advancing enemy line like a huge rock denying the tide. Crawlers flowed around him, but those nearest exploded under the weight of Ivan’s mighty axe.

Flanking him left came Temberle and Hanaleisa, a great slash of the blade and a flurry of fists, and to the right came Pikel and Rorick. Rorick attempted only one spell, and when it utterly failed, he took up the dagger he carried on his belt and was glad that he, like his siblings, had been taught how to fight.

For Pikel, there was no magical glow to his club, no shillelagh enchantment to add weight to his blows. But like his brother, Pikel had gone to a deeper place of anger, a place where he was fighting not just for himself, but for others who could hardly defend against such enemies.

“Oo oi!” he yelled repeatedly, emphasizing each shout by cracking his cudgel across the head of a crawling beast. He could only swing with one arm, it was true, and swung a weapon absent its usual enchantment, but crawler after crawler was bowled back or fell straight to the ground, shuddering in its death throes, its skull battered to shards.

With that living prow of five skilled fighters, the embattled refugees pushed on and drove their enemies back. Any thought that they should slow and close ranks, or flee back the way they had come, was denied by Ivan—not with words, but because he would neither slow nor turn. He seemed as if he cared not if those flanking and supporting him kept up.

For Ivan, this wasn’t about tactics, but about anger—anger at all of it: at the dragon and at the danger that threatened Cadderly’s children; at the frustration of his brother, who felt abandoned by his god; at the loss of security in the place he called home. Left and right went his axe, with no thought of defense—not a blocking arm or a creature leaping at him deterred his cuts. He sliced a grasping arm off where his axe hit it, and more than one fleshy beast did leap upon him, only to get a head-butt or a jab in the face from the pommel of the axe. Then, as the foolish creature inevitably fell away, Ivan kicked and spat and ultimately split the thing’s head wide with that double-bladed, monstrous weapon he carried.

He waded along, the floor slick with blood and gore, with brains and slabs of flesh.

He got too far ahead of the others, and creatures came at him from every side, even from behind.

And creatures died all around the frenzied dwarf.

They grabbed at him and clawed at him. Blood showed on every patch of Ivan that was not armored, and creatures died with strands of his yellow hair in their long fingers. But he didn’t slow, and his blows rained down with even more strength and fury.

Soon enough, even the stupid crawlers understood to stay away from that one, and Ivan could have walked across the rest of the chamber unhindered. Only then did he turn back to support the line.

The fight went on and on, until every swing of a weapon came with aching arms, until the whole of the refugee band gasped for every breath as they struggled to continue the battle. But continue they did, and the crawlers died and died. When it was at last over, the remnants of the strange enemy finally fleeing down side corridors, the wide chamber full of blood and bodies, the ranks of the refugees had not significantly thinned.

But if there was an end to their battle, none of them could see it.

“To Carradoon,” the indomitable Hanaleisa bade Ivan and Pikel, raising her voice so that all could hear, and hoping against hope that her feigned optimism would prove contagious.

The meager food, the constant fighting, the lack of daylight, the smell of death, and the grieving of so many for so many had depleted the band, she knew, as did everyone else. The reprieve that was Ivan, adding his bold, confident, and fearless voice, had proven a temporary uplift.

“We’ll be fighting, every step!” complained one of the fishermen, sitting on a rock, his face streaked with blood—his own and that of a crawler—and with tears. “My stomach’s growling for food and my arms are aching.”

“And there’s nothing back the way we came but dark death!” another shouted at him, and so yet another argument ensued.

“Get us out of here,” Hanaleisa whispered to Ivan. “Now.”

They didn’t bury their dead under piles of heavy stones, and they made no formal plans for their wounded, just offered each a shoulder and dragged themselves along. They were moving again soon after the fight, but it seemed an inch at a time.

“If it comes to fightin’ again, the two of ye will make us win or make us lose,” Ivan informed Temberle and Hanaleisa. “We can’t move along as fast, ‘tis true, but we can’t fight any slower or we die. They’ll be lookin’ to you two. Ye find that deeper place and pull out the strength ye need.”

The twins exchanged fearful glances, but those fast became expressions of determination.

In a quiet chamber not far from where the Bouldershoulders, the Bonaduce children, and the other refugees earned their hard-fought victory, the absolute darkness was interrupted by a blue-glowing dot, hovering more than six feet above the stone floor. As if some unseen hand was drawing with it, the dot moved along, cutting the blackness with a blue line.

It hung there, sizzling with magical power for a few moments, then seemed to expand, moving from two dimensions to three, forming a glowing doorway.

A young drow male stepped through that doorway, materializing from thin air, it seemed. Hand crossbow in one hand, sword in the other, the warrior slipped in silently, peering intently down the corridor, one way, then another. After a quick search of the area, he moved in front of the portal, stood up straight, and sheathed his sword.

On that signal, another dark elf stepped into the corridor. Fingers waggling in the silent language of the race, he ordered the first scout to move back behind the magical entry and take up a sentry position.

More drow stepped out, moving methodically and with precision and discipline, securing the area.

The portal sizzled, its glow increasing. More dark elves stepped through, including Kimmuriel Oblodra, who had created the psionic dimensional rift. A drow beside him began to signal with his fingers, but Kimmuriel, showing great confidence, grabbed his hand and bade him to whisper instead.

“You are certain of this?” the drow, Mariv by name, asked.

“He is following Jarlaxle’s recommendation and request,” answered the second drow who had come through the portal, Valas Hune, a scout of great renown. “So, no, Mariv, our friend is not certain because he knows that Jarlaxle is not certain. That one is always acting as if he is sure of his course, but all of his life’s been a gamble, hasn’t it?”

“That is his charm, I fear,” said Kimmuriel.

“And why we follow him,” Mariv said with a shrug.

“You follow him because you agreed to follow him, and promised to follow him,” Kimmuriel reminded, clearly uncomfortable with, or condescending toward, such a line of reasoning. Kimmuriel Oblodra, after all, was perhaps the only drow close enough to Jarlaxle to understand the truth of that one: the appearance of a great gamble might be Jarlaxle’s charm, but Kimmuriel knew that the source of the charm was truly a farce. Jarlaxle seemed to gamble all the time, but his course was rarely one of uncertainty. That was why the logical and pragmatic, never-gambling Kimmuriel trusted Jarlaxle. It had nothing to do with charm, and everything to do with the realization of that which Jarlaxle promised.

“You may, of course, change your mind,” he finished to Mariv, “but it would not be a course I would advise.”

“Unless he’d prefer you dead,” Valas Hune remarked to Mariv with a sly grin, and he moved away to make sure the perimeter was secure.

“I know you’re uncomfortable with this mission,” Kimmuriel said to Mariv, and such empathy was indeed rare, almost nonexistent, from the callous and logical drow psionicist. Mariv had been Kimmuriel’s appointee, and had climbed the ranks of Bregan D’aerthe during Jarlaxle’s absence, when the band had been fully under Kimmuriel’s direction. The young wizard was in Kimmuriel’s highest favor, one of three in the third tier of the mercenary band where Kimmuriel was undisputed second and Jarlaxle was undisputed leader. Even with the drawdown and current unpredictability of magic, the resourceful Mariv retained Kimmuriel’s good graces, for he was possessed of many magical items of considerable power and was no novice with the blade as well. Well-versed with the sword, having graduated from Melee-Magthere, the drow martial school, before his tenure at Sorcere, the academy for wizards, Mariv remained a potent force even in a time of the collapsing Weave.

Kimmuriel stood quiet then, and waved away all other conversation, waiting for the rest of his strike force to come through the gate, and for all the preparations around him to be completed. As soon as those things were done, all eyes turned his way.

“You know why we have come,” Kimmuriel said quietly to those around him. “Your orders are without exception. Strike true and strike as instructed—and only as instructed.”

The psionicist knew that more than a few of the Bregan D’aerthe warriors remained confused about their mission, and some were even repulsed by it. He didn’t care. He trusted his underlings to perform as instructed, for to do otherwise was to face the wrath of not only the ultimately deadly Jarlaxle, but of Kimmuriel, and no one could exact exquisite torture more profoundly than a psionicist.

Two score of Bregan D’aerthe’s force had entered the tunnels beneath the Snowflakes not far from the destroyed town of Carradoon. They moved out, silent, methodical, deadly.

CHAPTER 25 THE AWFUL TRUTH

It started hesitantly, one cheer of victory among a sea of doubting and skeptical expressions. For those outside of Spirit Soaring, the dwarves on the ground and the wizards and priests fighting from the balconies and rooftops, they saw only that single image of the great dracolich dematerializing before their astonished eyes, fading to seeming nothingness under the brilliant light of Cadderly’s conjured sun.

It was gone, of that they were all certain, and the assault of its minions had also ended with the disappearance of the great wyrm. The wizards didn’t even bother sending magical bolts out at the retreating hordes, so intent were they on the empty spot where the dracolich had been.

Then that one cheer became a chorus of absolute relief. Clapping, whistling, and shouting with joy, they moved toward the spot where the beast had departed the field as if pulled by gravity.

The cheers grew louder, shouts of joy and hope. Wizards proclaimed that the Weave itself would mend. Priests cried out in joy that they would once more be able to speak with their gods. Cheers for Cadderly rolled across the walls, some proclaiming him a god, a deity who could bring the sun itself to bear on his enemies. “All fear Cadderly!”

But that was outside Spirit Soaring. That euphoria was for those who could not hear Catti-brie screaming.

With magical anklets speeding his strides, Drizzt outpaced Cadderly, Danica, and even Bruenor, desperate as the dwarf king was to reach his daughter. The drow scrambled through the corridors, leaped a banister to the fifth step of a rising staircase, and sprinted up to the third floor three steps at a time. He banged against walls so he didn’t have to slow in his turns down the side corridors, and when he came to her door, Jarlaxle’s eye patch in hand, along with his divinely weighted scimitar, he shouldered right through it.

Jarlaxle was waiting for him, though how the mercenary had beaten him to the room, Drizzt could not fathom and didn’t have time to consider.

Catti-brie huddled against the back wall, screaming no more, but trembling with abject terror. She shielded her face with upraised arms, and between those intervening limbs, Drizzt could see that her white eyes were wide indeed.

He leaped toward her, but Jarlaxle caught him and tugged him back. “The patch!” Jarlaxle warned.

Drizzt had enough of his senses remaining to pause for a moment and don the enchanted eye patch, dropping Icingdeath to the floor in the process. He went to his beloved and enveloped her, wrapping her in a great hug and trying to calm her.

Catti-brie seemed no less frightened when the other three arrived a few heartbeats later.

“What’s it about?” Bruenor demanded of both Cadderly and Jarlaxle.

Jarlaxle had his suspicions and started to answer, but he bit his response off short and shook his head. In truth, he had no real evidence, nor did Cadderly, and they all looked to Drizzt, whose eye—the one not covered by the patch—like his wife’s, had gone wide with horror.

They had not destroyed the Ghost King—that much was obvious to Drizzt as he hugged Catti-brie close and slipped into the pit of despair that had become her prison.

Her eyes looked into that alien world. He, briefly, resided in a gray shadow of the world around him, mountainous terrain to mimic the Snowflakes, in the Shadowfell.

The Ghost King was there.

On the plain before Catti-brie, the dracolich thrashed and roared in defiance and pain. Its bones shone whiter, its skin, where the scales had fallen away, showed an angry red mottled by great blisters. Seared by holy light, the beast seemed out of its mind with pain and rage, and though he had just faced it in battle, Drizzt could not imagine standing before it at that horrible time.

Cadderly had stung the beast profoundly, but Drizzt could easily recognize that the wounds would not prove mortal. Already the beast seemed on the mend, and that act of reconstitution was the most terrifying of all.

The beast reared up in all of its fiendish glory, and it began to turn, faster and faster, and from its spinning form emanated shadows, like demonic arms of darkness. They reached across the plain, grasping scrambling crawlers, who shrieked, but only once, then fell dead.

Drizzt had never witnessed anything like it, and he concentrated on only a small portion of the spectacle. For the sake of his own sanity, he had to keep his emotional and mental distance from the conduit that was Catti-brie.

The Ghost King was leaching the life energy out of anything it could reach, was stealing the life-force from the crawlers and using that energy to mend its considerable wounds.

Drizzt knew that the monster would recover fully, and soon. Then the Ghost King would return to Spirit Soaring.

With great effort and greater remorse, the drow pulled himself away from his beloved wife. He couldn’t comfort her. She felt not at all his embrace, and heard not at all his gentle calls.

He had to return to his companions. He had to warn them. Finally, he managed to let go, then broke the mental link to Catti-brie. The effort left him so drained that he collapsed on the floor of the room.

He felt strong hands grab him and hoist him upright, then guide him to sit on the edge of the small bed.

Drizzt opened his eyes, pulling back the eye patch.

“Bah, but another of her fits?” said Athrogate, who had just come to the door, Thibbledorf Pwent beside him.

“No,” answered Cadderly, who stared at Drizzt. All eyes went to the priest, and many of them, Danica most of all, gasped in surprise at the sight of the man.

He wasn’t young any more.

For years, it had taken first-time visitors to Spirit Soaring considerable effort to reconcile the appearance of Cadderly Bonaduce, the accomplished and venerable priest whose remarkable exploits stretched back two decades, for he appeared as young as his own children. But before the disbelieving stares of the three dwarves, two drow, and his wife, that youth had dissipated.

Cadderly looked at least middle-aged, and more. His skin sagged, his shoulders slumped a bit, and his muscles thinned even as the others stood gawking. He looked older than Danica, older than he was, nearer to sixty than to fifty.

“Cadderly,” Danica gasped. He managed a smile back at her and held his hand up to keep her and the others at bay.

He seemed to stabilize, and he appeared as a man in his fifties, not much older than his actual age.

“Humans,” Athrogate snorted.

“The magic of the cathedral,” Jarlaxle said. “The wounded cathedral.”

“What do you know?” Danica snapped at the drow mercenary.

“The truth,” said Cadderly, and Danica turned to him, approached him, and he allowed her a hug. “My youth, my health—are wound within the walls of Spirit Soaring,” he explained to them. “The beast wounded it—wounded us!” He gave a helpless little laugh. “And surely wounded me.”

“We will fix it,” Danica breathlessly promised.

But Cadderly shook his head. “It isn’t a matter of wood and nails and stone,” he said.

“Then Deneir will fix it with you,” Jarlaxle said, drawing curious stares with his unexpected compassion.

Cadderly started to shake his head, then looked at the drow and nodded, for it was no time for any expression of pessimism.

“But first we must ready ourselves for the return of the Ghost King,” Jarlaxle remarked, and he led everyone’s gaze to Drizzt Do’Urden, who sat on the bed staring helplessly at Catti-brie.

“What’s she seeing, elf?” Athrogate demanded. “What memory this time?”

“No memory,” Drizzt whispered. He could hardly even find his voice. “She cowers before the raging Ghost King.”

“In the Shadowfell,” Cadderly reasoned, and Drizzt nodded.

“It is there, in all its fury, and there it heals its wounds,” the drow said, looking so pitifully, so helplessly, at his lost and terrified wife. He couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t help her. He could only look on and pray that somehow Catti-brie would find her way out of darkness.

For a fleeting moment, it occurred to Drizzt Do’Urden that his wife might truly be better off dead, for it seemed that her torment might have no end. He thought back to that quiet morning on the road from Silverymoon when, despite the troubles with the ways of magic, all had seemed so right in his world, beside the woman he loved. It had been only a matter of tendays since that falling magical strand had descended upon Catti-brie and had taken her from Drizzt, but to him, sitting on that bed, so near and yet so distant from his wife, it truly seemed a lifetime ago.

All of that pain and confusion showed on his face, he realized, when he looked at his companions. Bruenor stood in the doorway, trembling with rage, tears streaking his hairy cheeks, his strong fists balled at his sides so tightly that his grip could have crushed stone. He studied Danica, so troubled by her own spouse’s dilemma, still taking the time to alternate her gaze between Cadderly, whom she stood beside, and Drizzt, and with equal sympathy and fear showing for both.

Jarlaxle put a hand on Drizzt’s shoulder. “If there’s a way to get her back, we will find it,” he promised, and Drizzt knew he meant every word. When Drizzt looked past him to Bruenor, he recognized that the dwarf understood Jarlaxle’s sincerity.

But both also knew that it wouldn’t do any good.

“It heals, and it will return,” Cadderly said. “We must prepare, and quickly.”

“To what end?” asked a voice from the hallway, and they all turned to see Ginance and the others standing there. The speaker, a wizard, held one arm in close, for his robe’s sleeve had fallen to tatters and the arm underneath it had withered to dried skin and bone. One of the dracolich’s tail swipes had touched him there.

“If we defeat it again, will it not simply retreat once more to this other world of which you speak?” Ginance asked. Cadderly winced at the devastating question from his normally optimistic assistant.

Everyone understood Cadderly’s grimace, particularly Drizzt, for the simple truth of Ginance’s remark could not be denied. How could they defeat a beast who could so readily retreat, and so easily heal, as Drizzt had witnessed when he had hugged Catti-brie?

“We will find a way,” Cadderly promised. “Before Spirit Soaring, in the old structure that was the Edificant Library, we fought a vampire. That creature, too, could run from the field if the battle turned badly. But we found a way.”

“Aye, yer dwarfs sucked the gassy thing into a bellows!” howled Thibbledorf Pwent, who had made Ivan Bouldershoulder tell him that story over and over again during the time Ivan and Pikel had spent at Mithral Hall. “And spat him out into a running stream under the sunshine!”

“What’re ye saying?” Athrogate demanded, his eyes wide with intrigue and awe. “Are ye speaking true?”

“He is,” Cadderly confirmed, and he tossed a wink at the rest of the crew, all of them glad for the light-hearted respite.

“Bwahaha!” roared Athrogate. “I’m thinking that we’re needin’ a song for that one!”

The faces around them, particularly those in the hallway, didn’t change much, however, as the weight of the situation quickly pressed the brief respite away.

“We need to prepare,” Cadderly said again, when all had muted to an uncomfortable silence.

“Or we should leave this place, and quickly,” said the wizard with the withered arm. “Run fast for Baldur’s Gate, or some other great city where the beast daren’t approach.”

“Where an army of archers will greet it with doom too sudden for its clever retreat!” another voice chimed in from beyond the room’s door.

Drizzt watched Cadderly through it all, as the chorus for retreat grew louder and more insistent, and Drizzt understood the priest’s personal turmoil. Cadderly could not disagree with the logic of swift departure, of running far from that seemingly doomed place.

But Cadderly could not go. Damage to Spirit Soaring manifested in his personal being. And Cadderly and Danica could not go far, since their children were still missing and might be out there, or in Carradoon.

Drizzt looked to Bruenor for guidance.

“I ain’t leaving,” the dwarf king said without hesitation, commanding the gathering. “Let the beast come back, and we’ll pound it into dust.”

“That is foolish …” the wizard with the withered arm started to argue, but Bruenor’s expression stopped the debate before it could begin, and made the man blanch almost as surely as had the sight of the dracolich.

“I ain’t leaving,” Bruenor said again. “Unless it’s to go find Cadderly’s kids, or to go and find me missing friend, Pikel, who stood beside me and me kin in our time o’ trial. He’s lost his brother, so Lady Danica tells me, but he’s not to lose his friends from Mithral Hall.”

“Then you’ll be dead,” someone in the hall dared to say.

“We’re all to die,” Bruenor retorted. “Some of us’re already dead, though we’re not knowin’ it. For when ye’re to run and leave yer friends behind, then ye’re surely dead.”

Someone started to reply with an argument, but Cadderly shouted, “Not now!” So rare was it that the priest raised his voice in such a way that all conversation in the room and without stopped. “Go and assess the damage,” Cadderly instructed them all. “Count our wounds …”

“And our dead,” the withered wizard added with a hiss.

“And our dead,” Cadderly conceded. “Go and learn, go and think, and do so quickly.” He looked at Drizzt and asked, “How long do we have?”

But the drow could only shrug.

“Quickly,” Cadderly said again. “And for those who would leave, organize your wagons as fast as you can. It would not do you well to be caught on the road when the Ghost King returns.”

His giant hat in hand, Jarlaxle entered the private quarters of Cadderly and Danica, who sat around the priest’s desk, staring at his every step. “You surprise me,” Cadderly greeted him.

“You surprise everyone around you with this new magic you’ve found,” Jarlaxle replied, and he took the chair Danica indicated, beside her and opposite Cadderly.

“No,” Cadderly replied. “I have not found any new magic. It has found me. I can’t even begin to explain it, and so how can I claim ownership of it? I know not from where it comes, or if it will be there when I need it in the next crisis.”

“Let us hope,” said Jarlaxle.

Outside the room’s south window came a commotion, horses whinnying and men calling out orders.

“They’re all leaving,” Jarlaxle said. “Even your friend Ginance.”

“I told her to go,” said Cadderly. “This is not her fight.”

“You would flee, too, if you could,” Jarlaxle gathered from his tone.

With a heavy sigh, Cadderly stood up and walked to the window to glance at the activity in the courtyard. “This battle has confirmed an old fear,” he explained. “When I built Spirit Soaring, weaving the magic Deneir allowed to flow through this mere mortal coil, it aged me. As the cathedral neared completion, I became an old man.”

“We had already said our farewells,” Danica added.

“I thought I had reached the end of my life, and that was acceptable to me, for I had fulfilled my duty to my god.” He paused and looked at Jarlaxle curiously. “Are you religious?” he asked.

“The only deity I grew up knowing was one I would have preferred not to know,” the drow answered.

“You are more worldly than that,” said Cadderly.

“No,” Jarlaxle answered. “I follow no particular god. I thought to interview them first, to see what paradise they might offer when at last I have left this life.”

Danica crinkled her face at that, but Cadderly managed a laugh. “Always a quip from Jarlaxle.”

“Because I do not consider the question a serious one.”

“No?” Cadderly asked with exaggerated surprise. “What could be more serious than discovering that which is in your heart?”

“I know what is in my heart. Perhaps I simply do not feel the need to find a name for it.”

Cadderly laughed again. “I would be a liar if I told you I didn’t understand.”

“I would be a liar if I bothered to answer your ignorance. Or a fool.”

“Jarlaxle is no fool,” Danica cut in, “but of the former charge, I reserve judgment.”

“You wound me to my heart, Lady Danica,” said the drow, but his grin was wide, and Danica couldn’t resist a smile.

“Why haven’t you left?” Cadderly asked bluntly. It was that question, Jarlaxle knew, that was the reason he’d been asked to join the couple. “The road is clear and our situation seems near to hopeless, and yet you remain.”

“Young man …”

“Not so young,” Cadderly corrected.

“By my standards, you will be young when you have passed your one-hundredth birthday, and young still when you have spent another century rotting in the ground,” said Jarlaxle. “But to the point, I have nowhere to run that this Ghost King cannot find me. It found me in the north, outside of Mirabar. And as it found me, I knew it would find you.”

“And Artemis Entreri?” Danica asked, to which Jarlaxle shrugged.

“Years have passed since I last spoke with him.”

“So you came here hoping that I would have an answer to your dilemma,” said Cadderly.

Again the drow shrugged. “Or that we might work together to find a solution to our common problem,” he answered. “And I did not come without powerful allies to our cause.”

“And you feel no guilt in involving Drizzt, Bruenor, Catti-brie, and that Pwent creature in such a desperate struggle?” Danica asked. “You would march them to near-certain doom?”

“Apparently I have more faith in us than you do, Lady,” Jarlaxle quipped, and turned to Cadderly. “I was not disingenuous when I proposed to Bruenor and Drizzt that they would do well in bringing Catti-brie to this place. I knew that many of the great minds of our time had no doubt come to Spirit Soaring in search of answers—and what could provide a greater clue to the reality that has descended upon us than the affliction of Catti-brie? Even regarding the Ghost King, I believe it is all connected—more so now that Drizzt has told us that she is watching the beast in that other world in which her mind is trapped.”

“They are connected,” Cadderly agreed, speaking before Danica could respond. “Both are manifestations of the same catastrophe.”

“In one, we may find clues to the other,” said Jarlaxle. “We already have! Thank your god that Catti-brie was here, that we could discern the truth of the Ghost King’s defeat, and know that the beast would return.”

“If I could find my god, I would thank him,” Cadderly replied dryly. “But you are correct, of course. So now we know, Jarlaxle. The beast will return, whole, angry, and wiser than in our first battle. Do you intend to remain to battle it again?”

“Such a course offers me the best chance to prevail, I expect, and so yes, good sir Cadderly, with your permission, I and my dwarf companion would like to stand beside you for that next battle.”

“Granted,” Danica said, cutting Cadderly short, and when she looked at him, he flashed her a smile of appreciation. “But do you have any ideas? They say you are a clever one.”

“You have not witnessed enough of me to come to that conclusion on your own?” Jarlaxle said to her, and he patted his heart as if she had wounded him profoundly.

“Not really, no,” she replied.

Jarlaxle burst out in laughter, but only briefly. “We must kill it quickly—that much is obvious,” he said. “I see no way to hinder its ability to walk between the worlds, and so we must defeat it abruptly and completely.”

“We struck at it with every magic I could manage,” said Cadderly. “I merely hope to be able to replicate some of those spells—I hold no illusions that there are greater powers to access.”

“There are other ways,” Jarlaxle said, and he nodded his chin toward Cadderly’s hand crossbow and bandolier.

“I shot it repeatedly,” Cadderly reminded him.

“And a hundred bees might sting a man to little effect,” the drow replied. “But I have been to a desert where the bees were the size of a man. Trust me when I tell you that you would not wish to feel the sting of but one of those.”

“What do you mean?” asked Danica.

“My companion, Athrogate, is a clever one, and King Bruenor more so than he,” Jarlaxle replied.

“Would that Ivan Bouldershoulder were still with us!” said Cadderly, his tone more full of hope than of lament.

“Siege weapons? A ballista?” Danica asked, and Jarlaxle shrugged again.

“Drizzt, Bruenor, and his battlerager will remain as well,” Jarlaxle informed Cadderly, and the drow stood up from his chair. “Ginance and some others offered to take Catti-brie away, but Drizzt refused.” He looked Cadderly directly in the eye as he added, “They don’t intend to lose.”

“Catti-brie should have been allowed to go,” said Danica.

“No,” Cadderly replied, and when both looked at him, they saw him staring out the window. Danica could see that he was suddenly deep in thought. “We need her,” he said in a tone that revealed him to be certain of his claim, though not yet sure why.

“Copper for yer thoughts, elf,” Bruenor said. He moved behind Drizzt, who stood on a balcony overlooking the courtyard of Spirit Soaring, staring out at the ruined forest where the dracolich had passed.

Drizzt glanced back at him and acknowledged him with a nod, but didn’t otherwise reply—just gazed into the distance.

“Ah, me girl,” Bruenor whispered, moving up beside him, for how could Drizzt be thinking of anything else? “Ye think she’s lost to us.”

Still Drizzt didn’t reply.

“I should smack ye one for losing faith in her, elf,” Bruenor said.

Drizzt looked at him again, and he withered under that honest gaze, the level of the dwarf’s own confidence overwhelming his bluster.

“Then why’re we stayin’?” Bruenor managed to ask, a last gasp of defiance to the drow’s irresistible reasoning.

Drizzt wore a puzzled look.

“If not for bringing me girl back, then why’re we staying here?” Bruenor clarified.

“You would leave a friend in need?”

“Why’re we keepin’ her here, then?” Bruenor went on. “Why not put her on one o’ them wagons rolling away, bound for a safer place?”

“I don’t believe half of them will make it out of the forest alive.”

“Bah, that’s not what ye’re thinking!” Bruenor scolded. “Ye’re thinking that we’ll find a way. That as we kill this dragon thing, we’ll also find a way to get me girl back. It’s what ye’re thinking, elf, and don’t ye lie to me.”

“It is what I’m hoping,” Drizzt admitted, “not thinking. The two are not the same. Hoping against reason.”

“Not so much, else ye wouldn’t keep her here, where we’re all likely to die.”

“Is there a safe place in all the world?” Drizzt asked. “And something else. When the dracolich began to shift to the other plane, Guenhwyvar fled.”

“Smart cat would’ve run off long before that,” said Bruenor.

“Guenhwyvar fears no battle, but she understands the dilemma of dimensions joined. Remember when the crystal tower in Icewind Dale collapsed?”

“Aye,” said Bruenor, his face brightening just a bit. “And Rumblebelly rode the damned cat to her home.”

“Remember Pasha Pook’s palace in Calimport?”

“Aye, a sea o’ cats following yer Guenhwyvar from her home. What’re ye thinking, elf? That yer cat might get you to me girl on the other plane, and might bring ye both back?”

“I don’t know,” Drizzt admitted.

“But ye’re thinking there might be a way?” Bruenor asked in a tone as desperately hopeful as any the drow had ever heard from his dwarf friend.

He fixed Bruenor with a stare and a grin. “Isn’t there always a way?”

Bruenor managed a nod at that, and as Drizzt turned his gaze outward from the balcony, he looked to the trees.

“What are they doing?” Drizzt asked a moment later, when Thibbledorf Pwent and Athrogate bobbed out of the forest, carrying a heavy log shoulder to shoulder.

“If we’re meaning to stay and fight, then we’re meaning to win,” said Bruenor.

“But what are they doing, exactly?” Drizzt asked.

“I’m afraid to ask them two,” Bruenor admitted, and he and Drizzt shared a much-needed chuckle.

“Ye going to bring in the damned cat again this fight?” Bruenor asked.

“I fear to. The seam between these worlds, between life and death as well, is too unpredictable. I would not lose Guen as I have lost …”

His voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish the thought for Bruenor to understand.

“World’s gone crazy,” the dwarf said.

“Or maybe it always was.”

“Nah, but don’t ye start talking like that,” Bruenor scolded. “We’ve put a lot o’ good years and good work under our girdles, and ye know it.”

“And we even made peace with orcs,” said Drizzt, and Bruenor’s face tightened and he let out a little growl.

“Ye’re a warm fire on a cold winter night, elf,” he muttered.

Drizzt smiled all the wider, stood up straight, and stretched his arms and back. “We’re staying and we’re fighting, my friend. And one more thing we’re doing …”

“Winning,” said Bruenor. “We might get me girl back and we might not, elf, but I’m meaning to stay mad for a bit.” He punched Drizzt in the shoulder. “Ye ready to kill us a dragon, elf?”

Drizzt didn’t answer, but the look he gave to Bruenor, his lavender eyes full of a fire the dwarf king had seen so many times before, made Bruenor almost pity the dracolich.

Down on the courtyard below, Pwent, who was leading the pair, stumbled and the two dwarves crashed down in a heap with their heavy cargo.

“If them two don’t kill us all with their plannin’, that wyrm ain’t getting back to its hiding place,” Bruenor declared. “Or if it does, then I’m meaning to find a way to chase it there and be done with it!”

Drizzt nodded, more than ready for the fight, but mixed with his expression of determination was a bit of intrigue at that last statement. His hand went to his belt pouch, to Guenhwyvar, and he wondered.

He had traveled the planes with the cat before, after all.

“What’re ye thinking, elf?” Bruenor asked.

Drizzt flashed him those eyes again, so full of determination and simmering anger.

Bruenor nodded and smiled, no less determined and no less angry.

“Is there no way to learn?” Danica asked Cadderly.

Cadderly shook his head. “I’ve tried. I’ve asked, of Deneir or of any sentience I might find anywhere.”

“I can’t do this any more,” Danica admitted. She slumped in her chair and put her hands over her face. Cadderly was at her side in a heartbeat, hugging her, but he had little to offer. He was no less tormented than she.

Their children were out there somewhere, maybe alive and maybe, very possibly, dead.

“I have to go back out,” Danica said, straightening and taking a deep, steadying breath. “I have to go to Carradoon.”

“You tried already, and it nearly killed you,” Cadderly reminded. “The forest is no less—”

“I know!” Danica snapped at him. “I know and I don’t care. I can’t stay here and just wait and hope.”

“I cannot go!” Cadderly shouted back at her.

“I know,” Danica said softly, tenderly, and she reached up and ran her fingers across Cadderly’s cheek. “You are bound here, tied to this place, I know. You cannot desert it, because if it falls, you fall, and our enemies win. But I have recovered from my wounds, and we have driven off the beast for now.” Cadderly started to interrupt, but Danica silenced him by putting a finger over his lips. “I know, my love,” she said. “The Ghost King will return and attack Spirit Soaring once more. I know. And it is a fight I welcome, for I will see that creature destroyed. But …”

“But our children are out there,” Cadderly finished for her. “They’re alive—I know they are! If any of them had fallen, Spirit Soaring would feel the loss.”

Danica looked at him, curious.

“They are of me, as this place is of me,” Cadderly tried to explain. “They are alive, I am sure.”

Danica fell back a bit and stared at her husband. She understood his confidence, but knew, too, that it was based more on a need to believe that the children were alive and well than on anything substantive.

“You cannot stay here,” Cadderly said, surprising her, and she sat up straight, her eyes wide.

“You are about to fight the most desperate battle of your life, and you would send me away?”

“If the Ghost King returns and is to be defeated …” Cadderly paused there, seeming almost embarrassed.

“It will be by the power of Cadderly, and not the fists of Danica,” she reasoned.

Cadderly shrugged. “We are a powerful team, we seven, each armed in our own ways to do battle with such a beast as the Ghost King.”

“But I least of all,” the woman said. She held up her empty hands. “My weapons are less effective than Bruenor’s axe, and I haven’t the tricks of Jarlaxle.”

“There is no one I would rather have fighting beside me than you,” Cadderly said. “But truly, there is no one in all the world who might better elude the monsters in the forest and find our children. And if we don’t have them, then …”

“Then what is the point?” Danica finished for him. She leaned in and kissed him passionately.

“They are alive,” Cadderly said.

“And I will find them,” Danica whispered back.

She was out of Spirit Soaring within the hour, moving among the trees alongside the road to Carradoon, invisible and silent in the dark night.

CHAPTER 26 DAWN

Why aren’t we fighting?” Temberle whispered to Ivan. Even his hushed tone seemed to echo in the too-quiet tunnels. “Not for knowin’,” Ivan replied to Temberle and to all the remaining refugees in the group, which numbered less than twenty. “Hoping it’s your da’s work.”

“Boom,” Pikel said hopefully, and loudly, drawing gasps from all the others. “Oops,” the green-bearded dwarf apologized, slapping his hand over his mouth.

“Or they’re setting a trap for us,” Hanaleisa interjected. Ivan was nodding as she spoke, about to make the same observation. “Perhaps they’ve learned from the slaughter.”

“So what are we to do?” asked Rorick, and when she looked at her younger brother, Hanaleisa saw real fear there, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“We go on, for what choice do we got?” said Ivan, and he purposely lifted his voice. “If they be lying in wait for us, then we’ll just kill ‘em and walk on over their rottin’ bodies.”

Ivan slapped his bloodstained axe across his open hand and nodded with determination, then stomped away.

“Oo oi!” Pikel agreed, and adjusted his cooking pot helmet and scrambled to follow.

Not far from that site, the beleaguered band entered a room that presented yet another puzzle, but a welcome one at first glance. The chamber floor was littered with dead crawlers and dead giant bats, and even a dead giant.

The group scanned for clues, mostly looking for the bodies of those who had fought the beasts. Was it another fleeing refugee group?

“Did they kill each other?” Temberle asked, voicing a question they were all asking themselves.

“Not unless they use tiny bows,” one of the refugees answered. Temberle and the others moved to the man’s position, bringing the meager torchlight to bear. They found him holding a small dart, like those Cadderly used with his hand crossbows.

“Father!” Rorick said hopefully.

“If it was, he was busy,” said Hanaleisa as she moved around, finding the same darts littering the floor and the bodies. She shook her head with doubt. Only two such hand crossbows were kept at Spirit Soaring, but dozens, perhaps hundreds, of darts had been fired in that fight. She pulled one from the corpse of a crawler and held it up, shaking her head even more. None of the darts showed her father’s added feature: the collapsible center where the tiny vials of explosive oil were stored.

“These ain’t Cadderly’s,” Ivan confirmed a moment later. Since he had designed and built Cadderly’s hand crossbows and its quarrels, his words carried undeniable truth.

“Then who?” asked Rorick.

“We weren’t that far away,” Temberle added. “And this battle’s not so old. This happened fast, and it happened quietly.” He looked with great alarm at his sister and his Uncle Ivan.

“Poison-tipped,” said Hanaleisa.

More than a few eyes widened at that, for most folk knew the dire implications of poison-tipped hand crossbow darts.

“Has the whole world gone upside down, then?” asked Ivan, his tone more sober—even somber—than ever. “I’m thinking the sooner we get to the surface, the better we’ll be.”

“Uh-huh,” Pikel agreed.

On they marched, swiftly, and with all feeling that the enemy of their enemy would most certainly not prove to be their friend.

The hairless, black-skinned giant lurched forward another step.

Click. Click. Click.

The monster groaned as three more darts punctured its skin, adding to the drow sleep poison coursing its veins. Its next step came heavier, foot dragging.

Click. Click. Click.

The giant went down on one knee, barely conscious of the movement. Small, dodging forms came at it, left, right, and center, slender blades gleaming with magic. The nightwalker waved its arms, trying to deflect the approaching enemies, to block and to swat aside the dark elves as though they were gnats. But every swing, waved under the weight of a most profound weariness, was waved too slowly to catch the agile warriors. Every block failed to drive off the stabs and thrusts and slashes, and the giant nightwalker swatted nothing but the cavern’s stagnant air.

They didn’t maul the giant. Every strike landed precisely and efficiently in an area that would allow the smoothest and swiftest flow of blood. The behemoth didn’t get hit a hundred times, not more than a score even, but as it settled to a prone position on the floor, overcome by poison and loss of blood, the nightwalker’s wounds were surely mortal.

The last group, Valas Hune signaled to Kimmuriel. The way is clear.

Kimmuriel nodded and followed his lead team through the chamber. Another giant bat crashed down against the far wall, coaxed to sleep in mid flight. Many crawlers still thrashed on the floor, their movements uncoordinated and unfocused but defiant until one of the drow warriors found the time to finish the job with a sure stroke to the neck.

Out of that chamber, the Bregan D’aerthe force moved down a corridor to an area of tunnels and chambers puddled by lake water. After only a few more twists and turns, every dark elf squinted against the brightness of the surface. Night had fallen long ago, but the moon was up, and sensitive drow eyes stung under the brilliance of Selûne’s glow.

Can we not simply leave this place? more than one set of fingers dared flash Kimmuriel’s way, but they were met one and all with a stern look that offered no compromise.

He had determined that they needed to go to the ruined town on the lakeshore before leaving the uncivilized reaches between Old Shanatar and Great Bhaerynden, and so to the place known as Carradoon they would go.

They exited the tunnels in the cove north of the city and easily scaled the cliffs to the bluff overlooking the ruined town. More than half the structures had burned to the ground, and less than a handful of those remaining had avoided the conflagration. The air hung thick with smoke and the stench of death, and skeletons of ship masts dotted the harbor, like markers for mass graves. The dark elves moved down in tight formation, even more cautious outside than in the more familiar environ of the tunnels. A giant nightwing occasionally flew overhead, but unless it ventured too near, the disciplined drow held their shots.

Led by Valas Hune, scouts broke left and right, flanking, leading, and ensuring that no pursuit was forthcoming.

What do you seek in this ruin? Valas’s fingers asked of Kimmuriel soon after they had entered the city proper.

Kimmuriel indicated that he wasn’t quite certain, but assured the scout that something there was worth investigating. He sensed it, felt it keenly.

A commotion to the side broke the discussion short as both drow contemplated the beginnings of a battle along a road parallel to their path. Another giant nightwalker had found the band and foolishly came on. The tumult increased briefly as the closest drow engaged and lured the behemoth to a narrow stretch between two buildings, a place where drow hand crossbows could not miss the huge target.

Kimmuriel and the bulk of his force continued along before the thing was even dead, confident in the discipline and tactics of the skilled and battle-proven company.

A scout returning from the quay delivered the report Kimmuriel had awaited, and he led swiftly to the spot.

“That bodes ill,” Valas Hune remarked—the first words spoken since they had come out of the tunnels—when they came in sight of the rift. Every dark elf viewing the spectacle knew it immediately for what it was: a tear in the fabric of two separate worlds, a magical gate.

They stopped a respectful distance away, defenders sliding out like tentacles to secure the area as only Bregan D’aerthe could.

“Purposeful? Or an accident of misfiring magic?” Valas Hune asked.

“It matters not,” answered Kimmuriel. “Though I expect that we will encounter many such rifts.”

“A good thing, then, that drow never tire of killing.”

Valas Hune fell silent when he realized that Kimmuriel, eyes closed, was no longer listening. He watched as the psionicist settled back, then lifted his hands toward the dimensional rift and popped wide his eyes, throwing forth his mental energy.

Nothing happened.

“Purposeful,” Kimmuriel answered. “And foolish.”

“You cannot close it?”

“An illithid hive could not close it. Sorcere on their strongest day could not close it,” he said, referring to the great academy of the magical Art in Menzoberranzan.

“Then what?”

Kimmuriel looked to Mariv, who produced a thick wood-and-metallic rod the length of his forearm. Delicate runes of red and brown adorned the cylindrical item. Mariv handed it to Kimmuriel.

“The rod that cancels magical effects?” Valas Hune asked.

Kimmuriel looked to a young warrior, the same who had led the way through the gate in the tunnels, bidding him forth. He signaled the rod’s command words with the fingers of his free hand as he passed the powerful item to the younger drow.

Licking dry lips, the drow moved toward the rift. His long white hair started to dance as he neared, as if tingling with energy, or struck, perhaps, by winds blowing on the other side of the dimensional gate.

He glanced at Kimmuriel, who nodded for him to proceed.

The young drow lifted the rod up to the rift, licked his lips again, and spoke the words of command. The magical implement flared with a brief burst of power that flowed its length and leaped out at the rift.

Back came a profound darkness, a gray mist that rolled through the conduit and surged into the hand of the drow warrior, who wasn’t wise enough or quick enough to drop the rod in time.

He did drop it when his arm fell limp. He looked at Kimmuriel and the others, his face stretching into the most profound expression of terror any of them had ever witnessed as his life-force withered to shadowstuff and his empty husk fell dead to the ground.

No one went to aid him, or even to investigate.

“We cannot close it,” Kimmuriel announced. “We are done here.”

He led them away at a swift pace, Valas recalling his scouts as they went.

As soon as he thought them far enough so that the rift’s continuing fields wouldn’t interfere, Kimmuriel enacted another of his dimensional doorways.

“Back to Luskan?” Mariv asked as the next least of the band was brought forward to ensure the integrity of the gate.

“For now, yes,” answered Kimmuriel, who was thinking that perhaps their road would lead them much farther than Luskan, all the way back into the Underdark and Menzoberranzan, where they would become part of a drow defense comprised of twenty thousand warriors, priestesses, and wizards.

The young drow stepped through and signaled from the other side, from the subterranean home Kimmuriel’s band had constructed under the distant port city on the Sword Coast.

The Bregan D’aerthe force departed the Barony of Impresk as swiftly and silently as they had come.

The human refugees’ eyes, too, stung as they came in sight of the surface world after several long and miserable days of wandering and fighting in the dark tunnels. Squinting against the sunrise reflecting across Impresk Lake, Ivan led the group to the edge of the cave at the back of the small cove.

The rest of the group crowded up beside him, eager to feel the sun on their faces, desperate to be out from under tons of rock and earth. Collectively, they took great comfort in the quiet of the morning, with no sounds other than the songs of birds and the lap of waves against the rocks.

Ivan brought them quickly into the open air. They had found more slaughtered nightwings, nightwalkers, and crawlers. Convinced that the tunnels were infested with dark elves, Ivan and the others were happy indeed to be out of them!

Getting out of the cove took longer than expected. They didn’t dare venture out near the deeper water, having seen too much of the undead fish. Getting up the cliff face, for they had come down with magical help from Pikel, was no easy task for the weary humans or the short-legged dwarves. They tried several routes unsuccessfully and eventually crossed the cove and climbed the lower northern rise. The sun was high in the eastern sky when they at last managed to circle around and come in sight of Carradoon.

For a long, long while, they stood on the high bluff looking down at the ruins, saying not a word, making not a sound other than the occasional sob.

“We got no reason to go in there,” Ivan asserted at length. “We have friends—” a man started to protest.

“Ain’t nothing alive in there,” Ivan interrupted. “Nothing alive ye’re wantin’ to see, at least.”

“Our homes!” a woman wailed. “Are gone,” Ivan replied.

“Then what are we to do?” the first man shouted at him.

“Ye get on the road and get out o’ here,” said Ivan. “Meself and me brother’re for Spirit Soaring …”

“Me brudder!” Pikel cheered, and pumped his stump into the air.

“And Cadderly’s kids with us,” Ivan added.

“Shalane is no farther, and down a safer road,” the man argued.

“Then take it,” Ivan said to him. “And good luck to ye.” It seemed as simple as that to the dwarf, and he started away to the west, a route to circumvent the destroyed Carradoon and pick up the trail that led into the mountains and back to Spirit Soaring.

“What is happening to the world, Uncle Ivan?” Hanaleisa whispered.

“Durned if I know, girl. Durned if I know.”

CHAPTER 27 ELSEWHERE LUCIDITY

Cadderly tapped a finger against his lips as he studied the woman playing out the scene before him. She was talking to Guenhwyvar, he believed, and he couldn’t help but feel like a voyeur as he studied her reenactment of a private moment.

“Oh, but she’s so pretty and fancy, isn’t she?” Catti-brie said, her hand brushing the air as if she were petting the great panther as it curled near her feet. “With her lace and finery, so tall and so straight, and not a silly word to pass those painted lips, no, no.”

She was there, but she wasn’t, Cadderly sensed. Her movements were too complete and too complex to be merely a normal memory. No, she was reliving the moment precisely as it had occurred. Catti-brie’s mind was back in time while her physical form was trapped in the current time and space.

With his unique experience regarding physical aging and regression, Cadderly was struck by the woman’s apparent madness. Was she really mad, he wondered, or was she, perhaps, trapped in a bona fide but unknown series of disjointed bubbles in the vast ocean of time? Cadderly had often pondered the past, had often wondered if each passing moment was a brief observance of an eternal play, or whether the past was truly lost as soon as the next moment was found.

Watching Catti-brie, it seemed to him that the former wasn’t as unrealistic as logic implied.

Was there a way to travel in time? Was there a way to bring foresight to those unanticipated preludes to disaster?

“Do ye think her pretty, Guen?” Catti-brie asked, drawing him from his contemplation.

The door behind Cadderly opened, and he glanced to see Drizzt enter the room, the drow wincing as soon as he recognized that Catti-brie had entered another of her fits. Cadderly begged him to silence with a wave and a finger over pursed lips, and Drizzt, Catti-brie’s dinner tray in hand, stood very still, staring at his beloved wife.

“Drizzt thinks her pretty,” Catti-brie continued, oblivious to them. “He goes to Silverymoon whenever he can, and part o’ that’s because he’s thinking Alustriel pretty.” The woman paused and looked up, though surely not at Cadderly and Drizzt, and wore a smile that was both sweet and pained. “I hope he finds love, I do,” she told the panther they could not see. “But not with her, or one o’ her court, for then he’s sure to leave us. I’m wantin’ him happy, but that I could’no’ take.”

Cadderly looked at Drizzt questioningly.

“When first we retook Mithral Hall,” he said.

“You and Lady Alustriel?” Cadderly asked.

“Friends,” Drizzt replied, never taking his eyes off his wife. “She allowed me passage in Silverymoon, and there I knew I could make great strides toward finding some measure of acceptance in the World Above.” He motioned to Catti-brie. “How long?”

“She has been in this different place for quite a while.”

“And there she is my Catti,” Drizzt lamented. “In this elsewhere of her mind, she finds herself.”

The woman began to shake then, her hands twitching, her head going back, her eyes rolling up to white. The purple glow of faerie fire erupted around her once more and she rose a bit higher from the floor, arms going out wide, her auburn hair blowing in some unfelt wind.

Drizzt put the tray down and adjusted the eye patch. He hesitated only a few moments, at Cadderly’s insistence, as the priest moved closer to Catti-brie, even dared touch her during the dangerous time of transition. Cadderly closed his eyes and opened his mind to the possibilities swirling in the discordant spasms of the tortured woman.

He fell back, quickly replaced by Drizzt, who wrapped Catti-brie in a tight hug and eased her to the floor. The drow looked at Cadderly, his expression begging for an explanation, but he saw the priest even more perplexed, wide-eyed and staring at his hand.

Drizzt, too, took note of the hand that Cadderly had placed upon Catti-brie. What appeared as a blue translucence solidified and became flesh tone once more.

“What was that?” the drow asked as soon as Catti-brie settled. “I do not know,” Cadderly admitted. “Words I hear too often in these times. “Agreed.”

“But you seem certain that my wife cannot be saved,” said Drizzt, a sharper tone edging into his voice.

“I do not wish to give such an impression.”

“I’ve seen the way you and Jarlaxle shake your heads when the conversation comes to her. You don’t believe we can bring her back to us—not whole, at least. You have lost hope for her, but would you, I wonder, if it was Lady Danica here, in that state, and not Catti-brie?”

“My friend, surely you don’t—”

“Am I to surrender my hope as well? Is that what you expect of me?”

“You’re not the only one here clinging to desperate hope, my friend,” Cadderly scolded.

Drizzt eased back a bit at that reminder. “Danica will find them,” he offered, but how hollow his words sounded. He continued in a soft voice, “I feel as if there is no firmament beneath my feet.”

Cadderly nodded in sympathy.

“Should I battle the dracolich with the hope that in its defeat, I will find again my wife?” Drizzt blurted, his voice rising again. “Or should I battle the beast with rage because I will never again find her?”

“You ask of me … these are questions …” Cadderly blew a heavy sigh and lifted his hands, helpless. “I do not know, Drizzt Do’Urden. Nothing can be certain regarding Catti-brie.”

“We know she’s mad.”

Cadderly started to reply, “Do we?” but he held it back, not wishing to involve Drizzt in his earlier ponderings.

Was Catti-brie truly insane, or was she reacting rationally to the reality that was presented to her? Was she re-living her life out of sequence or was she truly returning to those bubbles of time-space and experiencing those moments as reality?

The priest shook his head, for he had no time to travel the possibilities of such a line of reasoning, particularly since the scholars and sages, and the great wizards and great priests who had visited Spirit Soaring had thoroughly dismissed any such possibility of traveling freely through time.

“But madness can be a temporary thing,” Drizzt remarked. “And yet, you and Jarlaxle think her lost forever. Why?”

“When the madness is tortured enough, the mind can be permanently wounded,” Cadderly replied, his dour tone making it clear that such was an almost certain outcome and not a remote possibility. “And your wife’s madness seems tortured, indeed. I fear—Jarlaxle and I fear—that even if the spell that is upon her is somehow ended, a terrible scar will remain.”

“You fear, but you do not know.”

Cadderly nodded, conceding the point. “And I have witnessed miracles before, my friend. In this very place. Do not surrender your hope.”

That was all he could give, and all that Drizzt had hoped to hear, in the end. “Do you think the gods have any miracles left in them?” the dark elf quietly asked.

Cadderly gave a helpless laugh and shrugged. “I grabbed the sun itself and pulled it to me,” he reminded the drow. “I know not how, and I didn’t try to do it. I grabbed a cloud and made of it a chariot. I know not how, and didn’t try to do it. My voice became thunder … truly, my friend, I wonder why anyone would bother asking me questions at this time. And I wonder more why anyone would believe any of my answers.”

Drizzt had to smile at that, and so he did, with a nod of acceptance. He turned his gaze to Catti-brie and reached out to gently stroke her thick hair. “I cannot lose her.”

“Let us destroy our enemy, then,” Cadderly offered. “Then we will turn all of our attention, all of our thoughts, and all of our magic to Catti-brie, to find her in her … elsewhere lucidity … and bring her sense back to our time and space.”

“Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt said, and Cadderly blinked in surprise.

“She was petting the cat, yes.”

“No, I mean in the next fight,” Drizzt explained. “When the Ghost King began to leave the field, Guenhwyvar fled faster. She does not run from a fight. Not from a raging elemental or a monstrous demon, and not from a dragon or dracolich. But she fled, ears down, full speed away into the trees.”

“Perhaps she was hunting one of the crawlers.”

“She was running. Recall Jarlaxle’s tale of his encounter with the specter he believes was once a lich of the Crystal Shard.”

“Guenhwyvar is not of this plane, and she feared creating a rift as the Ghost King opened a dimensional portal,” Cadderly reasoned.

“One that perhaps Guenhwyvar could navigate,” Drizzt replied. “One that perhaps I could navigate with her, to that other place.”

Cadderly couldn’t help but smile at the reasoning, and Drizzt offered a curious expression. “There is an old saying that great minds follow similar paths to the same destination,” he said.

“Guen?” Drizzt asked hopefully, patting his belt pouch. But Cadderly was shaking his head.

“The panther is of the Astral Plane,” the priest explained. “She cannot, of her own will, go to where the Ghost King resides, unless someone there possessed a figurine akin to your own and summoned her.”

“She fled the field.”

“Because she feared a rift, a great tear that would consume all near to her, and the Ghost King, if their dangerous abilities came crashing together. Perhaps that rift would send our enemy to the Astral Plane, or to some other plane, but likely the creature is anchored enough both here and in the Shadowfell that it could return.” He was still shaking his head. “But I have little faith in that course and fear a potential for greater disaster.”

“Greater?” Drizzt asked, and he began a hollow laugh. “Greater?”

“Are we at the point where we reach blindly for the most desperate measures we can find?” Cadderly asked.

“Are we not?”

The priest shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he admitted, his gaze fixing on Catti-brie again. “Perhaps we will find another way.”

“Perhaps Deneir will deliver a miracle?”

“We can hope.”

“You mean pray.”

“That, too.”

He lifted the spoon to her lips and she did not resist, taking the food methodically. Drizzt dabbed a napkin into a small bowl of warm water and wiped a bit of the porridge from her lips.

She seemed not to notice, as she seemed not to notice the taste of the food he offered. Every time he put a spoonful into Catti-brie’s mouth, every time she showed no expression at all, it pained Drizzt and reminded him of the futility of it all. He had flavored the porridge exactly as his wife liked, but he understood with each spoonful that he could have skipped the cinnamon and honey and used bitter spices instead. It wouldn’t have mattered one bit to Catti-brie.

“I still remember that moment on Kelvin’s Cairn,” he said to her. “When you relived it before my eyes, it all came back into such clear focus, and I recalled your words before you spoke them. I remember the way you had your hair, with those bangs and the uneven length from side to side. Never trust a dwarf with scissors, right?”

He managed a little laugh that Catti-brie seemed not to hear.

“I did not love you then, of course. Not like this. But that moment remained so special to me, and so important. The look on your face, my love—the way you looked inside of me instead of at my skin. I knew I was home when I found you on Kelvin’s Cairn. At long last, I was home.

“And even though I had no idea for many years that there could ever be more between us—not until that time in Calimport—you were ever special to me. And you still are, and I need you to come back to me, Catti. Nothing else matters. The world is a darker place. With the Ghost King and the falling Weave, and the implications of this catastrophe, I know that so many trials will fall before me, before all goodly folk. But I believe that I can meet those challenges, that we together will find a way. We always find a way!

“But only if you come back to me. To defeat a mighty foe, a warrior must want to defeat a mighty foe. What is the point, my love, if I am alone once more?”

He exhaled and sat there, staring at her, but she didn’t blink, didn’t react at all. She hadn’t heard him. He might pretend differently for the sake of his own sanity, but Drizzt knew in his heart that Catti-brie wasn’t lurking there, just beneath the damaged surface, taking it all in.

Drizzt wiped a tear from his lavender eyes, and as the moistness went away, it was replaced by that same look that had at once shaken and encouraged Bruenor, the promise of the Hunter, the determination, the simmering rage.

Drizzt leaned forward and kissed Catti-brie on the forehead and told himself that it had all been wrought by the Ghost King, that the dracolich was the source of all that had gone so very wrong in the world, not a result of some larger disaster.

No more tears for Drizzt Do’Urden. He meant to destroy the beast.

CHAPTER 28 DRIVEN BY HATRED

They knew their enemy would return, and they knew where they wanted to fight it, but when it happened, as expected as it was, sturdy Athrogate and Thibbledorf Pwent gasped more profoundly than they cried out.

The Ghost King came back to the material world of Toril in exactly the same place that it had departed, appearing first and briefly in its translucent blue-white glow. Quickly it was whole again, on the courtyard outside the cathedral, and even as Pwent and Athrogate shouted out, their bellows echoing through the deserted hallways, the great beast leaped into the air and took wing, flying high into the night sky.

“It’s up there! It’s up there, me king!” Pwent cried, hopping up and down and pointing skyward. Bruenor, Drizzt, and the others arrived in the room adjacent to the balcony from which the two dwarves had been keeping watch.

“The dracolich appeared in the same place?” Cadderly asked, clearly interpreting some importance in that fact.

“Just like ye guessed,” Athrogate answered. “Glowin’ and all, then it jumped away.”

“It’s up there, me king!” Pwent shouted again.

Drizzt, Cadderly, Bruenor, and Jarlaxle exchanged determined nods. “It doesn’t get away from us this time,” said Bruenor.

All eyes went to Cadderly at that proclamation, and the priest’s nod was one of confidence.

“Inside,” Cadderly ordered them all. “The beast will return with fury and fire. Spirit Soaring will protect us.”

Danica took a deep breath and grabbed at a nearby tree trunk to steady herself when she heard the awful, otherworldly shriek of the dracolich taking flight. She couldn’t help but glance back toward Spirit Soaring, already miles behind her, and she had to remind herself that Cadderly was surrounded by powerful allies, and that Deneir, or some other divine entity, miraculously heard his pleas.

“They will prevail,” Danica said softly—very softly, for she knew that the forest about her was full of monsters. She had watched groups of crawlers scratch by on the road and had felt the thunderous steps of some gigantic black behemoth, the likes of which she had never before known.

She was halfway to Carradoon and had hoped to be there already, but the going had been slow and cautious. As much as she wanted a fight, Danica could ill afford one. Her focus was Carradoon and Carradoon alone, to find her children, while Cadderly and the others dealt with the Ghost King at Spirit Soaring.

That was the plan—they knew the undead dragon would return—and Danica had to steel herself against any second-guessing. She had to trust Cadderly. She couldn’t turn back.

“My children,” she whispered. “Temberle and Rorick, and Hana, my Hana … I will find you.”

Behind her, high in the sky, the Ghost King’s shriek split the night as profoundly as a bolt of lightning and the roar of thunder.

Danica ignored it and focused on the trees before her, picking her careful and swift way through the haunted woods.

“Kill him, Cadderly,” she said under her breath, over and over again.

Without the cautionary interference of Yharaskrik, the Ghost King reveled in its flight, knowing that its vulnerable target lay below, knowing that soon enough it would destroy Spirit Soaring and the fools who had remained within.

The sweet taste of impending revenge filled Hephaestus’s dead throat, and the dragon wanted nothing more than to dive at the building at full speed and tear it to kindling. But surprisingly to both entities that made up the Ghost King, recklessness was tempered by the pain of their recent defeat. The Ghost King still felt the blinding sting of Cadderly’s fires, and the weight of Drizzt’s scimitar. Though confident that its second assault would be different, the Ghost King meant to take no unnecessary chances.

And so from on high, up among the clouds, the beast called upon its minions once more, summoning them from the forests around Spirit Soaring, compelling them to soften the ground.

“They will not kill Cadderly,” the beast said into the high winds. “But they will reveal him!”

The Ghost King folded its wings and dived, then opened them wide and rode the momentum and the currents in a spiraling pattern above the building, its magically enhanced eyesight scouring the land below.

Already the forest was alive with movement as crawlers and nightwings, huddled wraiths, and even a giant nightwalker swarmed toward Spirit Soaring.

The Ghost King’s laugh rumbled like distant thunder.

They heard the break of glass, one of the few panes left intact from the previous assault, but the building did not shudder. “By the gods,” Cadderly cursed. “Damned crawlers!” Bruenor agreed.

They were in the widest audience hall on the first story of the building, a windowless affair with only a few connecting corridors. Pwent and Athrogate stood at the rail on the northern balcony with their tied-off logs, some twenty-five feet above the others. Bruenor, Cadderly, and the rest stood on the raised dais where Cadderly usually held audience, across from the double doors and the main corridor that led to the cathedral’s foyer. Drizzt stood at the open doorway of a small, secure anteroom, where lay Catti-brie.

Drizzt bent low to tuck a blanket more tightly around his wife, and whispered, “He won’t get you. On my life, my love, I will kill that beast. I will find a way back to you, or a way to lead you back to us.”

Catti-brie didn’t react, but lay staring into the distance.

Drizzt leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “I promise,” he whispered. “I love you.”

Not far from them, Drizzt heard wood splintering. He stood up straight and moved out of the small anteroom, securing the door behind him.

Cadderly shivered as he felt the unclean beasts crawling into the broken windows of Spirit Soaring.

“Clear the place?” Athrogate yelled down.

“No, hold your positions!” Cadderly ordered, and even as he spoke, the door on the balcony nearest the two dwarves began to rattle and bang. Cadderly fell within himself, trying to join with the magic that strengthened Spirit Soaring, begging the cathedral, begging Deneir, to hold strong.

“Come on, then,” Cadderly whispered to the Ghost King. “Lead the way.”

“He learned from his loss,” Jarlaxle remarked as Drizzt rejoined them. “He’s sending in the fodder. He’s not to be trapped alone as before.”

Cadderly flashed an alarmed look at Drizzt and Bruenor.

“I’ll bring him in,” Drizzt promised, and he charged across the room to the double doors, the other three close behind.

Cadderly grabbed him before he could leave the room. As Drizzt turned, the priest gripped his right hand, in which he held Icingdeath, then reached for the hilt of Twinkle with his other hand. Cadderly closed his eyes and chanted, and Drizzt felt again an infusion of power into both his weapons.

“Bruenor, the door,” Jarlaxle said, drawing out a pair of black metal wands. “And do duck aside.”

Jarlaxle nodded to Drizzt, then to Bruenor, who flung wide the double doors. Beyond them, the corridor to the foyer teemed with crawlers, and nightwings fluttered above them.

A lightning bolt blasted from Jarlaxle’s wand to sear the darkness. The second wand responded in kind, then the first took its turn, and the second fired again. Flesh smoldered, bats tumbled, a stench filled the holy place.

A fifth bolt followed, a sixth fast behind. Monsters scrambled to get out of the corridor, or melted where they stood. The seventh blast shook the walls of Spirit Soaring.

“Go!” Jarlaxle ordered Drizzt, and loosed yet another explosive line of sizzling energy.

And right behind it went Drizzt Do’Urden, running and leaping, spinning and slashing with seeming abandon. But every stroke was planned and timed perfectly, clearing the way and propelling Drizzt along. A nightwing dived at him, or fell at him—the beast was badly scored from the many lightning bolts. Drizzt hit it with a solid backhand and his divinely-weighted scimitar threw the giant bat aside, the blade tearing its flesh with brutal ease.

The drow leaped atop the heads of a pair of trembling, dying crawlers and sprang away onto a third, bowling it over, spinning as he went and cutting another beast in half as he twirled around. He reached the foyer doors, both hanging loose from the battering of the eight lightning bolts.

“Jarlaxle!” Drizzt cried, and he skidded down and kicked the doors open, revealing a foyer stuffed with enemies.

Lightning bolts streaked over the hunched drow, one, two, blasting, burning, blinding, and scattering the beasts. Then Drizzt was up behind them, his mighty scimitars battering the creatures aside.

Out the door Drizzt went, into the courtyard.

“Fight me, dragon!” he yelled. A foolish nightwing dived at Drizzt from on high and was met by a flashing scimitar that cleaved through flesh and bone and infused a web of searing divine light into the creature of darkness. The batlike beast went spinning backward, up into the air, dead long before it tumbled and flopped to the ground.

From all around, from the walls and broken windows of Spirit Soaring, everything seemed to pause for just a moment. Drizzt had drawn attention to himself, indeed, and the monsters swarmed his way, leaping from the trees across the courtyard and from the walls of Spirit Soaring.

A wicked grin creased the dark elf’s face. “Come on, then,” he whispered, and he gave a private nod to Catti-brie.

“We got to go to him!” cried Bruenor. Along with Cadderly and Jarlaxle, he had eased out of the audience chamber and crept nearer the foyer, gaining a view of the open courtyard beyond.

“Hold, dwarf,” Jarlaxle replied. He was looking to Cadderly as he spoke and taking note of the priest’s equal confidence in Drizzt.

Bruenor started to reply, but bit it short with a gasp as he saw the first wave of monsters swarm at Drizzt.

The drow ranger exploded into motion, leaping and spinning, stepping atop monstrous heads and backs, slashing with devastating speed and precision. One after another, crawlers crumbled to heaps of quivering flesh or went sailing back, launched by a swinging, divinely-weighted blade. Drizzt leaped from a beast’s back and hit the ground in a fast run up atop another, where he double stabbed, spun to the side, and caught yet another crawler with a deadly backhand. The drow continued his spin and darted out of it past the first dying beast to stab a fourth, slash a fifth, and leap above a sixth, thrusting down to mortally wound that one as he passed overhead with Twinkle, slashing up high to take the legs from a swooping nightwing in the same movement.

“You’ve known him a long time …” Jarlaxle said to Bruenor.

“Ain’t never seen that,” the dumbfounded dwarf admitted.

Drizzt, whirling like a maelstrom, moved beyond their line of sight then, past the angle of the open double doors. But the erupting sounds and shrieks told the friends that his furious charge had not slowed. He veered back into view, sprinting the opposite way, cutting a swath of devastation with every stride, every thrust, and every swing. Crawlers flew and crumbled, nightwings tumbled dead from on high, but the divine glow on Drizzt’s scimitars did not diminish, even seemed to flare with more purpose and anger.

A crash in the room behind them turned the three around to see a crawler thrashing in its death throes in the middle of the floor. A second dropped down from above, accompanied by the glee-filled cackle of Thibbledorf Pwent.

“Trust in Drizzt!” Cadderly commanded the other two, and the priest led the charge back into the audience hall, the battlefield of their choosing.

The sheer exuberance of Thibbledorf Pwent held the breach at the broken doorway. Thrashing and punching, the dwarf laughed all the harder with every bit of gore that splattered his ridged armor and with every sickening puncture of a knee-spike or a gauntlet.

“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 chamber 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.

He unsheathed only Icingdeath, however, his eyes sparking with sudden inspiration.

He felt his bones cracking like the beams of Spirit Soaring itself. His back twisted in a painful hunch, and his arms trembled from the effort of trying to hold them up before him.

But Cadderly knew that the moment of truth was at hand, the moment of Cadderly and Spirit Soaring and Deneir—somehow he sensed that it was the Scribe of Oghma’s last moment, his god’s final act.

He needed power then, and he found it, and as he had done in the previous battle with the Ghost King, the priest seemed to reach up and bring the sun itself down upon him. Allies drew strength and healing energy—so much so that Athrogate hardly groaned as he leaped down from the balcony, his twisted ankles untwisting before the pain even registered.

The Ghost King felt the brutal sting of Cadderly’s light, and the priest advanced. The dracolich filled the room with dragonfire, but Cadderly’s ward held strong and the sting did not stop the assault.

The Ghost King focused on Drizzt instead, determined to be rid of that wretched warrior, but again it could not bite quickly enough to catch the dancing elf, and as it tried to position its strikes to corner Drizzt against the rubble of the broken wall, it found itself cornered instead.

Drizzt leaped up against the dracolich and caught hold with his free hand on the monster’s rib, exposed by the wide hole blown into it by the dwarven bolt, and before the Ghost King or anyone else could begin to analyze the drow’s surprising move, Drizzt pulled himself right inside the beast, right into the lung, torn wide.

The Ghost King shuddered and thrashed with abandon, out of its mind with agony as the drow, both weapons drawn, began tearing it apart from the inside. So violent was its movements, so shattering its cries, so furious its breath that the other combatants staggered to a stop and pressed hands over their ears, and even Pwent fell off the creature.

But inside, Drizzt played out his fury, and Cadderly held forth his radiant light to bolster his allies and consume his enemy.

The Ghost King pushed away from the wall, stumbling and kicking, smashing a foot right through the floor to crash down into the catacombs below. It shrieked and breathed its fire, and the weakened magic of Spirit Soaring could not resist the bite of those flames. The smoke grew thick, dulling the blinding brilliance of Cadderly’s light, but not weakening its effect.

“Kill it, and quickly!” Jarlaxle yelled as the beast shuddered and shook with agony. Bruenor raised his axe and charged, Athrogate set his morningstars to spinning, and Thibbledorf Pwent leaped onto a leg and thrashed as only a battlerager could.

A blue glow overwhelmed the yellow hue of Cadderly’s radiance, and the three dwarves felt their weapons hitting only emptiness.

Drizzt fell through the insubstantial torso, landing lightly on the floor, but sliding and slipping on the blood and gore that covered him. Pwent tumbled face down with an “Oomph!”

“It flees!” Jarlaxle shouted, and behind him, in the small room, Catti-brie cried out. In the main hall, the Ghost King vanished.

Cadderly was first to the anteroom, though every step seemed to pain the old man. He pulled the latch and threw open the door, and from under his white shirt produced the ruby pendant Jarlaxle had loaned to him.

Before him, Catti-brie trembled and cried out. Behind him, Drizzt pulled out the onyx figurine. Cadderly looked at Drizzt and shook his head.

“Guenhwyvar will not get you there,” said the priest.

“We cannot allow it to escape us again,” Drizzt said. He moved inexorably toward Catti-brie, drawn to her in her pain.

“It will not,” Cadderly promised. He gave a profound sigh. “Tell Danica that I love her, and promise me that you will find and protect my children.”

“We will,” Jarlaxle answered, and Drizzt, Bruenor, and Cadderly all looked at him in astonishment. Had not the weight of the situation been pressing so enormously upon all of them at that moment, all three would have burst out in laughter.

It was a fleeting moment of relief, though. Cadderly nodded his appreciation to Jarlaxle and turned back to Catti-brie, bringing the ruby pendant up before her. With his free hand he gently touched her face and he moved very near to her, falling into her thoughts and seeing through her eyes.

A collective gasp sounded from the two drow and the three dwarves, and Cadderly began to glow with the same bluish-white hue of the departing Ghost King. That gasp became a cry as the priest faded to nothingness.

Catti-brie cried out again, but more in surprise, it seemed, than in fear.

With a determined grunt, Drizzt again reached for Guenhwyvar, but Jarlaxle grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” the mercenary bade him.

A crash behind them stole the moment, and all turned to see a giant support beam lying diagonally from the balcony to the floor, thick with flames.

“Out,” Jarlaxle said, and Drizzt moved to Catti-brie and scooped her up in his arms.

It was a shadow image of the world he had left, absent the fabricated structures, a land of dull resolution and often utter darkness, of huddled ugly beasts and terrifying monsters. But in those clouds of shadowstuff shone a singular brilliance, the light of Cadderly, and before him loomed the most profound darkness of all, the Ghost King.

And there the two did battle, light against darkness, the radiance of Deneir’s last gift to his Chosen against the combined powers of perversion. For a long, long while, light seared through shadows, and the flowing shadows rolled back to cover the radiance. For a long, long while, neither seemed to gain an advantage, and the other creatures of the dark plane looked on in awe.

Then those creatures fell back, for the shadow could not grow against that radiance, that unrelenting warmth of Cadderly Bonaduce. Possessed of great draconic intelligence and the wisdom of centuries, the Ghost King knew the truth as well.

For the king had been usurped and the new Ghost King stood amidst the darkness, and in that final struggle, Cadderly could not be defeated.

With a cry of protest, the dracolich lifted away and fled, and Cadderly, too, did not remain. For it was not his place, and there, he cared not if the evil beast lived or died.

But he could not allow the creature to return to his homeland.

He knew the sacrifice before him. He knew that he could not cross back through the membrane between worlds, that he was trapped by duty to Deneir, to what was right, and to his family and friends.

With a smile of contentment, certain of a life well-lived, Cadderly left that world of darkness for a place almost, but not quite, his home.

CHAPTER 30 THE LAST MEMORIES OF CHANGING GODS

She did not lie limp in Drizzt’s arms, but rather seemed to be watching an awe-inspiring spectacle, and from her twitches and gasps, Drizzt could only imagine the battle his friend Cadderly was waging with the Ghost King.

“Kill it,” he found himself whispering as he stumbled out of the ruined cathedral, through the double doors and onto the wide porch. What he really meant was a private prayer to Cadderly to find a way to bring Catti-brie back to him. “Kill it,” meant all of it, from the tangible and symbolic dracolich to the insanity that had gripped the world and had entrapped Catti-brie. It was his last chance, he believed. If Cadderly could not find a way to break the spell over his beloved wife, she would remain forever lost to him.

To the relief of them all, no monsters remained to confront them as they escaped the building. The courtyard was littered with dead, killed by Drizzt or by the ferocious assault of the Ghost King. The lawn, once so serene and beautiful, showed the blackened scar of dragonfire, great brown swaths of dead grass from the dracolich’s touch, and the massive trench dug by the diving wyrm.

Jarlaxle and Bruenor led the way out of the structure, and when they looked back at the grand cathedral, at the life’s work of Cadderly Bonaduce, they understood better why the assault had taken such a toll on the priest. Fires leaped from several places, most dramatically from the wing they had just departed. Where the initial assault of dragonfire had been muted by the power of the cathedral’s magic, the protective spells had worn thin. The fire wouldn’t consume the place entirely, but the damage was extensive.

“Put her down, friend,” Jarlaxle said, taking Drizzt’s arm.

Drizzt shook his head and pulled away, and at that moment, Catti-brie’s eyes flickered, and for a moment, just a moment, Drizzt thought he saw clarity there, thought he saw, within her—she recognized him!

“Me girl!” Bruenor cried, obviously seeing the same.

But a fleeting thing it was, if anything at all, and Catti-brie settled almost immediately back into the same lethargic state that had dominated her days since the falling Weave had wounded her.

Drizzt called to her repeatedly and shook her gently. “Catti! Catti-brie! Wake up!”

But he received no response.

As the weight of her condition sank in, Athrogate gave a cry, and all eyes went to him, then followed his gaze to the cathedral’s open doorway.

Out walked Cadderly. Not flesh and blood, but a translucent, ghostly form of the old priest, hunched but walking with a purpose. He approached them and walked right through them, and everyone shuddered with a profound sense of coldness as he neared and passed.

They called to him, but he could not hear, as if they didn’t exist. And so, they knew, in Cadderly’s new reality, they did not.

The old priest ambled to the tree line, the other six following, and against the backdrop of leaping orange flames, Cadderly began to walk and whisper, bending low, his hand just off the ground. Behind him, a line of blue-white light glowed softly along the grass, and they realized that Cadderly was laying that line as he went.

“A ward,” Jarlaxle realized. He tentatively stepped over it, and showed relief indeed when it did not harm him.

“Like the barrier in Luskan,” Drizzt agreed. “The magic that was put down to seal off the old city, where the undead walk.”

Cadderly continued his circuit, indeed walking the perimeter of Spirit Soaring.

“If the Ghost King returns, it must be to this spot,” Jarlaxle said, though he seemed less than confident of his assessment and his reasoning sounded more like a plea. “The undead will not be able to cross out of this place.”

“But how long’s he got to weave it?” Bruenor asked.

“He knew,” Drizzt gasped. “His words for Danica …”

“Forever,” Jarlaxle whispered.

It took a long while for the priest to complete his first circuit, and he began his second anew, for the magic ward where he had started was already fading. Barely after Cadderly commenced the second pass, a voice called out from the darkness of the forest. “Father!” cried Rorick Bonaduce. “He is old! Mother, why does he look so old?”

Out of the trees rushed Danica and her children, with Ivan and Pikel. Joyful greetings and reunions had to wait, though, dampened by the pain that lay evident on the faces of three young adults, and on the woman who had so loved Cadderly.

Drizzt felt Danica’s pain profoundly as he stood holding Catti-brie.

“What happened?” Danica asked, hurrying to join them.

“We drove it off, and hurt it badly,” said Jarlaxle.

“Cadderly chased it when it left,” said Bruenor.

Danica looked past them to the burning Spirit Soaring. She knew why her ghostly husband seemed so old, of course. Spirit Soaring was ruined, its magic diminished to near nothingness, and that magic supported Cadderly as surely as it held strong the timbers, stone, and glass of Deneir’s cathedral. The magic had made Cadderly young, and had kept him young.

The spell had been destroyed.

Her husband had been destroyed, too, or … what? She looked at him and did not know.

“His last thoughts were of you,” Drizzt said to her. “He loved you. He loves you still, as he serves Deneir, as he serves us all.”

“He will come back from this,” Hanaleisa said with determination. “He will finish his task and return to us!”

No one contradicted her, for what was to be gained? But a look from Danica told Drizzt that she, too, sensed the truth. Cadderly had become the Ghost King. Cadderly, his service to Spirit Soaring and to the wider world, was eternal.

The ghostly priest was halfway through his third circuit when dawn broke over the eastern horizon, and the others, exhausted, continued to follow him.

His glow diminished with the rising sun until he was gone from sight entirely, to the gasps—hopeful and horrified—of his children. “He’s gone!” Temberle cried. “He’s coming back to us,” Rorick declared.

“Not gone,” Jarlaxle said a moment later, and he motioned the others over to him. The glowing line continued on its way, and near to its brightest point, its newest point, the air was much colder. Cadderly was still there, unseen in the daylight.

The fires had diminished greatly in Spirit Soaring, but the group did not go back inside the cathedral, instead setting a camp just outside the front door. Weariness alone brought them some sleep, in cautious shifts, and as dusk descended, the Ghost King, the apparition of Cadderly, returned to view, walking, forever walking, his lonely circuit.

Soon after, some crawlers returned, a small group seeming intent on again attacking Spirit Soaring. They broke out of the forest and shrieked as one as they neared Cadderly’s glowing line. Off they ran, into the darkness.

“Cadderly’s ward,” Bruenor said. “A good one.”

The group rested a little easier after that.

“We have to leave this place,” Jarlaxle remarked to them all later that night, and that drew many looks, few appreciative. “We do,” the drow insisted. “We have to tell the world what has happened here.”

“You go and tell them, then,” Hanaleisa growled at him, but Danica put her hand on her daughter’s forearm to quiet her.

“The monsters have retreated, but they remain out there,” Jarlaxle warned.

“Then we stay in here where they can’t get at us,” Rorick argued.

“The dracolich can return inside that ward,” Jarlaxle warned. “We must lea—”

Drizzt stopped him with an upraised hand and turned to Danica. “In the morning, first light,” he bade her.

“This is our home. Where will we go?”

“Mithral Hall, and Silverymoon from there,” Drizzt answered. “If there is an answer to be found, look to Lady Alustriel.”

Danica turned to her children, who frowned as one, but had no words to counter the obvious reality. The food they could salvage from inside the structure couldn’t sustain them forever.

As a compromise, they waited another two nights, but by then, even Hanaleisa and Rorick had to admit that their father was not coming back to them.

And so it was a solemn caravan that made its way out of Spirit Soaring one bright morning. The wagon hadn’t been badly damaged out in the courtyard, and with five skilled dwarves supplying the know-how, they managed to repair it completely. Even better news followed when they found the poor mules, frightened and hungry but very much alive, roaming a distant corridor of the cathedral’s first floor, their magical shoes intact.

They set a slow pace down to empty, ruined Carradoon, then north to the road to Mithral Hall. They knew they would find enemies in the Snowflakes, and so they did, but with the combined strength of the five dwarves, the Bonaduce family, and the two drow, no sufficient number of crawlers, giant bats, or even nightwalkers could pose any real threat.

They set an easier pace than the fury that had brought them south, and two tendays later, they crossed the Surbrin and entered Mithral Hall.

Hunched and uncomplaining, the Ghost King Cadderly circled the ruins of Spirit Soaring that night. And every night, forevermore.

It was all a blur, all a swirl, an overriding grayness that defied lucidity. Flashes of images, most of them terrifying, stabbed at her sensibilities and jolted her from memory to memory, to senses of the life she had known.

It was all an ungraspable blur.

But then Catti-brie saw a dot within that sea of movement, a focal point, like the end of a rope reaching out to her through the fog. In her mind and with her hand she reached out for that point of clarity and to her surprise, she touched it. It was firm and smooth, the purest ivory.

The clouds swirled out, retreating from that point, and Catti-brie saw with her eyes clearly then, and in the present, for the first time in tendays. She looked to her lifeline, a single horn. She followed it.

A unicorn.

“Mielikki,” she breathed.

Her heart pounded. She tried to fight through the confusion, to sort out all that had transpired.

The strand of the Weave! She remembered the strand of the Weave touching her and wounding her.

It was still there, inside of her. The gray clouds roiled at the edges of her focus.

“Mielikki,” she said again, knowing beyond doubt that it was she, the goddess, who stood before her.

The unicorn bowed and went down on its front knees, inviting her.

Catti-brie’s heart beat furiously; she thought it would jump out of her chest. Tears filled her eyes as she tried to deny what was coming next, and she silently begged to delay.

The unicorn looked at her, great sympathy in its large dark eyes. Then it stood once more and backed away a step.

“Give me this one night,” Catti-brie whispered.

She rushed out of the room and padded on bare feet to the next door in Mithral Hall, the one she knew so well, the one she shared with Drizzt.

He lay on the bed in fitful sleep when she entered the room, and she released the bindings of her magical garment and let it drop to the floor as she slid in beside him.

He started, and turned, and Catti-brie met him with a passionate kiss. They fell together, overwhelmed, and hade love until they collapsed into each other’s arms.

Drizzt’s sleep was more profound then, and when she heard the soft tap of the unicorn’s horn on the closed door, Catti-brie understood that Mielikki was compelling him to slumber.

And calling her to her destiny.

She slid out from under Drizzt’s arm, raised up on one elbow, and kissed him on the ear. “I will always love you, Drizzt Do’Urden,” she said. “My life was full and without regret because I knew you and was completed by you. Sleep well, my love.”

She slipped out of the bed and reached for her magical blouse. But she stopped and shook her head, moving instead to her dresser. There she found clothes Alustriel of Silverymoon had given to her: a white, layered gown full of pleats and folds, but sleeveless and low-cut, and with no even hemline. It was a wrap designed to flow with her every movement, and to enhance, not hide, her beauty of form.

She took a hooded black cloak and threw it over her shoulders, and gave a twirl to see it trailing.

She went out on bare feet. She didn’t need shoes any more.

The unicorn was waiting, but offered no protest as Catti-brie quietly led it down the dim corridor, to a door not far away. Within lay Regis, tormented, emaciated, hanging on to life by a thread and by the near-continual efforts of the loyal priests of Mithral Hall, one of whom sat in a chair near the halfling’s bed, deep in slumber.

Catti-brie didn’t have to undo the bindings holding Regis’s arms and legs, for there was much she would leave behind. Regis broke free of his fleshy coil then, and the woman, his guide and companion, gently lifted him into her arms. He started to groan, but she whispered to him softly, and with the magic of Mielikki filling her breath, the halfling calmed.

Out in the hall, the unicorn went down to its knees and Catti-brie sat sidesaddle upon its back. They started down the corridor.

A cry from a familiar voice awakened Drizzt, its panic so at odds with the wonderful, lingering warmth of the previous night.

But if Bruenor’s frantic call didn’t fully break the sleepy spell, the image that came into focus, at the same time Drizzt became aware of the sensations of his touch, surely did.

Catti-brie was there with him, in his bed, her eyes closed and a look of serenity on her face, as if she was asleep.

But she wasn’t asleep.

Drizzt sat bolt upright, gagging and choking, eyes wide, hands trembling.

“Catti,” he cried. “Catti, no!” He fell over her, so cool and still, and lifted her unresponsive form to him. “No, no, come back to me.”

“Elf!” Bruenor shrieked again—shrieked and not yelled. Never before had Drizzt heard such a keen from the stoic and level-headed dwarf. “Oh, by the gods, elf!”

Drizzt lowered Catti-brie to the bed. He didn’t know whether to touch her, to kiss her, to try to breathe life into her. He didn’t know what to do, but Bruenor’s third cry had him rolling out of bed and stumbling through his door.

He burst out into the hall, naked and sweating, and nearly ran over Bruenor, who was shaking and stumbling down the corridor, and carrying in his arms the lifeless form of Regis.

“Oh, elf.”

“Bruenor, Catti-brie….” Drizzt stammered, but Bruenor interrupted him.

“She’s on the damned horse with Rumblebelly!”

Drizzt looked at him dumbfounded, and Bruenor nodded his chin down the corridor and stumbled toward the nearest connecting hallway. Drizzt supported him and pulled him along, and together they turned the corner. There ahead of them, they saw the vision that had accounted for no small part of Bruenor’s frantic cry.

A unicorn carried Catti-brie, riding sidesaddle and cradling Regis in her arms. Not the equine creature or the woman looked back, despite the commotion of pursuit and drow and dwarf calling out to them.

The corridor turned sharply again, but the unicorn did not.

It walked right into the stone and was gone.

Drizzt and Bruenor stumbled to a halt, gasping and stuttering over words that would not come.

Behind them came a commotion as other dwarves reacted to the cries of their king, and Jarlaxle, too, ran up to the horrified pair. Many cries went up for Regis, lying dead in Bruenor’s arms, for the halfling who had served well as steward of Mithral Hall and as a close advisor to their greatest king.

Jarlaxle offered his cloak to Drizzt, but had to put it on the ranger, who was out of his mind with terror and pain. Finally, Drizzt focused on Jarlaxle, grabbing the mercenary by the folds of his shirt and running him up against a wall.

“Find her!” Drizzt begged, against all logic, for he knew where the woman lay, still and cold. “You must find her! I’ll do anything you demand … all the riches in the world!”

“Mithral Hall and everything in it!” Bruenor yelled.

Jarlaxle tried to calm the ranger and Bruenor. He nodded and he patted Drizzt’s shoulder, though of course he had no idea where to begin, or what precisely he would be looking for—Catti-brie’s soul?

Their promises of fealty and riches rang strangely discordant to Jarlaxle at that moment. He would find her, or would try, at least. Of that, he had no doubt.

But to Jarlaxle’s surprise, he had no intention of taking a copper for his efforts, and wanted no promise of fealty from Drizzt Do’Urden. Maybe something else compelled him then.