The Pirate King

I put Regis at ease as we walked out of Longsaddle. I kept my demeanor calm and assuring, my stride solid and my posture forward-leaning. Yet inside, my stomach churned and my heart surely ached. What I saw in the once-peaceful village shook me profoundly. I had known the Harpells for years, or thought so, and I was pained to see that they were walking a path that could well lead them to a level of authoritarian brutishness that would have made the magistrates at Luskan’s wretched Prisoner’s Carnival proud.

I cannot pretend to judge the immediacy and criticality of their situation, but I can certainly lament the potential outcome I so clearly recognized.

I wonder, then, where is the line between utilitarian necessity and morality? Where does one cross that line, and more importantly, when, if ever, is the greater good not served by the smaller victories of, or concessions to, basic standards of morality?

This world in which I walk often makes such distinctions based on racial lines. Given my dark elf heritage, I certainly know and understand that. Moral boundaries are comfortably relaxed in the concept of “the other.” Cut down an orc or a drow with impunity, indeed, but not so a dwarf, a human, an elf?

What will such moral surety do in light of King Obould should he consider his unexpected course? What did such moral surety do in light of myself? Is Obould, am I, an anomaly, the exception to a hard and fast rule, or a glimpse of wider potential?

I know not.

Words and blades, I kept in check in Longsaddle. This was not my fight, since I had not the time, the standing, or the power to see it through to any logical conclusion. Nor could I and Regis have done much to alter the events at hand. For all their foolishness, the Harpells are a family of powerful magic-users. They didn’t ask the permission or the opinion from a dark elf and halfling walking a road far from home.

Is it pragmatism, therefore, to justify my lack of action, and my subsequent assurances to Regis, who was so openly troubled by what we had witnessed?

I can lie to him—or at least, conceal my true unease—but I cannot do so to myself. What I saw in Longsaddle wounded me profoundly; it broke my heart as much as it shocked my sensibilities.

It also reminded me that I am one small person in a very large world. I hold in reserve my hope and faith in the general weal of the family Harpell. This is a good and generous family, grounded in morality if not in common sense. I cannot consider myself so wrong in trusting in them. But still…

Almost in answer to that emotional turmoil, I now find a situation not so different waiting for me in Luskan, but one from a distinctly opposing perspective. If Captain Deudermont and this young Waterdhavian lord are to be believed, then the authorities in Luskan have gone over to a dangerous place. Deudermont intends to lead something not quite a revolution, since the Hosttower of the Arcane is not the recognized leadership of the city.

Is Luskan now what Longsaddle will become as the Harpells consolidate their power with clever polymorphs and caged bunnies? Are the Harpells susceptible to the same temptations and hunger for greater power that has apparently infected the hierarchy of the Hosttower? Is this a case of better natures prevailing? My fear is that in any ruling council where the only check against persecuting power is the better nature of the ruling principles is doomed to eventual, disastrous failure. And so I ride with Deudermont as he begins his correction of that abuse.

Here, too, I find myself conflicted. It is not a lament for Longsaddle that drives me on in Luskan; I accept the call because of the man who calls. But my words to Regis were more than empty comforts. The Harpells were behaving with brutality, it seemed, but I hold no doubt that the absence of suffocating justice would precipitate a level of wild and uncontrollable violence between the feuding clerics.

If that is true, then what will happen in Luskan without the power behind the throne? It is well understood that the Arcane Brotherhood keeps under its control the five high captains, whose individual desires and goals are often conflicting. These high captains were all men of violence and personal power before their ascent. They are a confederation whose individual domains have never been subservient to the betterment of the whole of Luskan’s populace.

Captain Deudermont will wage his battle against the Hosttower. I fear that defeating Arklem Greeth will be the easier task than replacing the control exerted by the archmage arcane.

I will be there beside Deudermont, one small person in a very large world. And as we take actions that will no doubt hold important implications for so many people, I can only hope that Deudermont and I, and those who walk with us, will create good results from good desires.

If so, should I reverse my steps and return to Longsaddle?

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 10 TACTICS AND FIREBALLS

B rilliant thought, this battling against wizards!” Regis said, ending in a shriek as he dived aside and behind a water trough. A lightning bolt blasted out the distant building’s open front door, digging a small trench across the ground just to the side of where Regis had been.

“They are annoying,” Drizzt said, accentuating his point by popping up from behind a barrel and letting fly three arrows in rapid succession from Taulmaril. All three, magically sizzling like lightning bolts of their own, disappeared into the darkness of the house and popped loudly against some unseen surface within.

“We should move,” Regis remarked. “He—or they—know where we are.”

Drizzt shook his head, but dived low and cried out as a second bolt of lightning came forth. It hit the barrel in front of him, blasting it to kindling and sending out a thick spray of foamy beer.

Regis started to cry out for his friend, but stopped when he discovered that Drizzt, moving with speed enhanced by magical anklets, was already crouching beside him.

“You may be right,” the drow conceded.

“Call Guenhwyvar, at the least!” Regis said, but Drizzt was shaking his head through every word.

Guenhwyvar had fought beside them throughout the night, and the Astral panther had limitations on the time she could spend on the Prime Material Plane. Exceeding those limitations rendered Guenhwyvar a feeble and pained companion.

Regis glanced back down the road the other way, at a column of black smoke that rose into the late afternoon sky. “Where is Deudermont?” he lamented.

“Fighting at the Harbor Cross bridge, as we knew he would be.”

“Some should have pushed through to our aid!”

“We’re forward scouts,” Drizzt reminded. “It was not our place to engage.”

“Forward scouts in a battle that came too swiftly,” Regis remarked.

Only the day before, Drizzt and Regis sat in Deudermont’s cabin on Sea Sprite, none of them sure there would even be a fight. But apparently, over the course of the afternoon, the captain had communicated with one or more of the high captains, and had received a reply to his and Lord Brambleberry’s offer. They’d received an answer from the Hosttower, as well. In fact, had not the ever-vigilant Robillard intercepted that reply with a diffusion of magical energies, seaman Waillan Micanty would have been turned into a frog.

And so it was on, suddenly and brutally, and the Luskan Guard, their loyalties split between the five high captains, had made no overt moves to hinder Deudermont’s circuitous march.

They had gone north first, past the ruins of ancient Illusk and the grand open market of Luskan to the banks of the Mirar River. To cross out onto the second island, Cutlass by name, and assault the Hosttower directly would have been a foolish move, for the Arcane Brotherhood had established safehouses and satellite fortresses all over the city. Deudermont meant to shrink Arklem Greeth’s perimeter of influence, but every step was proving difficult indeed.

“Let us hope we can extract ourselves from this unwanted delay,” Drizzt remarked.

Regis turned his cherubic but frowning face up at Drizzt, recognizing from the drow’s tone that his words were a not so subtle reminder of why they had been spotted by the wizard in the house in the first place.

“I was thirsty,” Regis muttered under his breath, eliciting a grin from Drizzt and a sidelong glance at the shattered beer barrel that had so lured the halfling scout into the open.

“Wars will do that to you,” Drizzt replied, ending in another yelp and shoving Regis down beside him as a third lightning bolt shot forth, skimming in across the top of the trough and taking out one of the higher boards in the process. Even as the ground shook beneath them from the retort, water began to drain out onto them.

Regis rolled one away, Drizzt the other, the drow coming up to one knee. “Drink up,” he said, putting his bow to use again, first through the open door, then shattering a glass window and another on the second floor for good measure. He kept drawing and letting fly, his magical quiver forever replenishing his supply of enchanted missiles.

A different sort of missile came forth from the house, though, a trio of small pulses of magical light, spinning over each other, bending and turning and sweeping unerringly for Drizzt.

One split off at the last moment as the retreating drow tried futilely to dodge. It veered right into Regis’s chest, singeing his vest and sending a jolt of energy through him.

Drizzt took his two hits with a grimace and a growl, and turned around to send an arrow at the window from which the missiles had flown. As he let fly, he envisioned his path to the house, looking for barriers against the persistent magical barrage. He sent another magical arrow flying. It hit the doorjamb and exploded with a shower of magical sparks.

Using that as cover, the drow sprinted at an angle to the right side of the street, heading behind a group of barrels.

He thought he would make it, expecting to dive past another lightning stroke, as he lowered his head and sprinted full out. He felt foolish for so over-balancing, though, as he saw a pea of flame gracefully arc out of the second floor window.

“Drizzt!” Regis cried, seeing it too.

And the halfling’s friend was gone, just gone, when the fireball exploded all around the barrels and the front of the building backing them.

Sea Sprite tacked hard against the current at the mouth of the Mirar River. Occasional lightning bolts reached out at her from the northern bank, where a group of Hosttower wizards fought desperately to hold back Brambleberry’s forces at the northern, longer span of Harbor Cross, the westernmost bridge across the Mirar.

“We would need to lose a score of men to each wizard downed, you claimed, if we were to have any chance,” Deudermont remarked to Robillard, who stood beside him at the rail. “But it would seem that Lord Brambleberry has chosen his soldiers well.”

Robillard let the sarcasm slip past as he, too, tried to get a better summation of the situation unfolding before them. Parts of the bridge were aflame, but the fires seemed to be gaining no real traction. One of Brambleberry’s wizards had brought up an elemental from the Plane of Water, a creature that knew no fear of such fires.

One of the enemy wizards had responded with an elemental summoning of his own, a great creature of the earth, a collection of rock, mud, and grassy turf that seemed no more than a hillside come to life, sprouting arms of connected stone and dirt with boulder hands. It splashed into the river to do battle, its magical consistency strong enough to keep the waters from washing its binding dirt away, and both sides of the battle seemed intent on the other’s elemental proxy—or proxies as more wizards brought forth their own otherworldly servants.

A trumpet sounded on the southern end of Harbor Cross, from Blood Island, and out from Brambleberry’s position came a host of riders, all in shining armor, banners flying, spear tips glistening in the morning sun.

“Idiots,” Robillard muttered with a shake of his head as they charged out onto the wide bridge.

“Harder to port!” Deudermont shouted to his crew, recognizing, as had Robillard, that Brambleberry’s men needed support. Sea Spritegroaned under the strain as she listed farther, the river waters pounding into her broadside, threatening to drive her against one of the huge rocks that dotted the banks of the Mirar. She couldn’t hold her position, of course, but she didn’t need to. Her crack catapult team had a ball of fiery pitch away almost immediately, cutting through the wind.

A barrage of lightning bolts, capped by a fireball, slammed the bridge, and the riders disappeared in a cloud of smoke, flame, and blinding flashes.

When they re-emerged, a bit fewer in number, battered and seeming much less eager and much less proud, they were heading back the way they’d come.

Any sense of victory the Hosttower wizards might have felt, though, was short-lived, as Sea Sprite’s shot thundered into the side of one of the structures they used for cover, one of several compounds that had been identified as secret safehouses for the Arcane Brotherhood. The wooden building went up in flames, and wizards scrambled for safety.

Brambleberry’s men charged across the bridge once more.

“Fight the current!” Deudermont implored his crew as his ship groaned back the other way, barely holding her angle.

A second ball of pitch went flying, and though it fell short, it splattered up against the barricades used by the enemy, creating more smoke, more screaming, and more confusion.

Deudermont’s knuckles whitened as he grasped the rail, cursing at the less-than-favorable winds and tide. If he could just get Sea Sprite’s archers in range, they could quickly turn the tide of the fight.

The captain winced and Robillard gave an amused but helpless chuckle, as the leading edge of Brambleberry’s assault hit a stream of evocation magic. Missiles of glowing energy, lightning bolts, and a pair of fireballs burst upon them, sending men writhing and flailing to the ground, or leaping from the bridge, which shook under the continuing thunder of the earth elemental’s pounding.

“Just take her near to the wharf and debark!” the captain cried, and to Robillard, he added, “Bring it up.”

“You wanted to hold our surprise,” the wizard replied.

“We cannot lose this battle,” Deudermont said. “Not like this. Brambleberry stands in sight of the Luskan garrison, and they are watching intently, knowing not where to join in. And the young lord has the Hosttower behind him and soon to awaken to the fighting.”

“He has two secured bridges and the roads around the ruins of Illusk,” Robillard reminded the captain. “And a busy marketplace as buffer.”

“The Hosttower wizards need not cross to the mainland. They can strike at him from the northern edge of Closeguard.”

“They’re not on Closeguard,” Robillard argued. “High Captain Kurth’s men block the bridges, east and west.”

“We don’t know that Kurth’s men would even try to slow the wizards,” Deudermont stubbornly replied. “He has not professed his loyalty.”

The wizard shrugged, gave another of his all-too-common sighs, and faced the northern bank. He began chanting and waving his arms. Recognizing that the Hosttower kept several safehouses in the northern district, Robillard and some of Brambleberry’s men had set up a wharf just below the waves, but far enough out into the river for Sea Sprite to get up beside it safely. As Robillard ignited the magical dweomers he had set on the bridge, the front poles of the makeshift dock rose up out of the dark waters, guiding the helmsman.

Still, Sea Sprite wouldn’t have been able to tack enough to make headway and come alongside, but again, Robillard provided the answer. He snapped his fingers, propelling himself through a dimensional gate back to his customary spot on the raised deck behind the mainsail. He reached into his ring, first to bring up gusts of wind to help fill the sails then to communicate with his own elemental from the Plane of Water.Sea Sprite lurched and bucked, the river slamming in protest against her starboard side. The elemental set itself against the port side and braced with its otherworldly strength.

The catapult crew let fly a third missile, and a fourth right behind.

On the bridge, Brambleberry’s forces pushed hard against the magic barrage and the leading edge managed to get across just as Sea Spriteslid in behind the secret, submerged wharf, a hundred yards downriver. Planks went out beside the securing ropes, and the crew wasted no time in scrambling to the rail.

Robillard closed his eyes, trusting fully in his detection spell, and sensed for the magic target. Still with his eyes closed, the wizard loosed a searing line of lightning into the water just before the wharf’s guide poles. His shot proved precise, severing the locking chain of the wharf. Buoyed by a line of empty barrels, free of its shackles, the wharf lifted up and broke the water with a great splash and surge. The crew poured down.

“Now we have them,” Deudermont cried.

He had barely finished speaking, though, when a great crash sounded upriver, as a span of the century-old Harbor Cross Bridge collapsed into the Mirar.

“Back to stations!” Deudermont yelled to those crewmen still aboard. The captain, though, ran to the nearest plank and scrambled over the rail, not willing to desert his crewmen who had already left the ship. “Port! Port!” he cried for his ship to flee.

“By the giggling demons,” Robillard cursed, and as soon as Deudermont hit the wharf running, the wizard commanded his elemental to let go the ship and slide under it to catch the drifting flotsam. Then he helped free Sea Sprite by pulling a wand and shooting a line of lightning at the heavy rope tying her off forward, severing it cleanly.

Before the crew aft could even begin to free that second heavy rope, Sea Sprite swung around violently to the left, and a pair of unfortunate crewmen flipped over the rail to splash into the cold Mirar.

Sputtering curses, the wizard blinked himself to the taffrail and blasted the second rope apart.

The first pieces of the shattered bridge expanse swept down at them. Robillard’s elemental deflected the bulk, but a few got through, chasingSea Sprite as she glided away toward the harbor.

Robillard ordered his elemental to rush up and push her along. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his friend Deudermont get off the makeshift dock, right before a large piece of the fallen bridge slammed against it, shattering its planking and destroying its integrity, as it, too, became another piece of wreckage. Barrels and dock planks joined the sweep of debris.

Robillard had to stay with the ship, at least long enough for his summoned monster to assist Sea Sprite safely out of the river mouth and into quieter waters. He never took his eyes off of Deudermont, though, thinking that his dearest friend was surely doomed, trapped as he was on the northern bank with only a fraction of Brambleberry’s forces in support, and a host of angry wizards against them.

Drizzt saw it coming, a little burning ball of flame, enticing as a candlelight, gentle and benign.

He knew better, though, and knew, too, that he couldn’t hope to get out of its explosive range. So he threw his shoulders back violently and kicked his feet out in front of him, and didn’t even try to break his fall as he slammed down on his back. He even resisted the urge to throw his arms out wide to somehow mitigate the fall, instead curling them over his face, hands grasping his cloak to wrap it around him.

Even covered as he was with the wet clothing and cloak, the darkness flew away when the fireball exploded, and hot flames bit at Drizzt, igniting a thousand tiny fires in his body. It lasted only an instant, mercifully, and winked out as immediately as it had materialized. Drizzt knew he couldn’t hesitate—the wizard could strike at him again within the span of a few heartbeats, or if another wizard was inside the house, a second fireball might already be on its way.

He rolled sidelong away from his enemy to put out the little fires burning on his cloak and clothing, and even left the cloak smoldering on the ground when he leaped back to his feet. Again Drizzt ran full out, leaning forward in complete commitment to his goal, a tight strand of birch trees. He dived in headlong, rolling to a sitting position and curling up, expecting another blast.

Nothing happened.

Gradually, Drizzt uncoiled and looked back Regis’s way, to see the halfling still crouched in the muddied ground behind the damaged water trough.

Regis’s little hands flashed the rough letters of the drow silent alphabet, approximating the question, Is he gone?

His arsenal is depleted, perhaps, Drizzt’s fingers replied.

Regis shook his head—he didn’t understand.

Drizzt signaled again, more slowly, but the halfling still couldn’t make sense of the too-intricate movements.

“He may be out of spells,” the drow called quietly, and Regis nodded enthusiastically—until a rumble from inside the distant house turned them both that way.

Trailing a line of fire that charred the floorboards, it came through the open door, a great beast comprised entirely of flame: orange, red, yellow, and white when it swirled more tightly. It seemed vaguely bipedal, but had no real form, as the flames would commit to nothing but moving forward, and with purpose.

When it cleared the door, leaving smoking wood at every point of the jamb, it grew to its full, gigantic proportions, towering over the distant companions, mocking them with its intensity and its size.

A fiery monstrosity from the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Drizzt sucked in his breath and lifted Taulmaril, not even thinking to go to his more trusted scimitars. He couldn’t fight the creature in close; of all the four primary elemental beasts, fire was the type any melee warrior was least capable of battling. Its flames burned with skin-curling intensity, and the strike of a scimitar, though it could hurt the beast, would heat the weapon as well.

Drizzt drew back and let fly, and the arrow disappeared into the swirl of flames.

The fire elemental swung around toward him and roared, the sound of a thousand trees crackling, then spat forth a line of flames that immediately set the birch stand aflame.

“How do we fight it?” Regis cried, and yelped as the elemental scorched the trough he hid behind, filling the air with thick steam.

Drizzt didn’t have an answer. He shot off another arrow, and again had no way of knowing if it scored any damage on the creature or not.

Then, on instinct, the drow angled his bow to the side and let fly a third, right past the elemental to slam into, and punch through, the wall of the structure housing the wizard.

A cry from inside told him that he had startled the mage, and the sudden and angry turn of the fire elemental, back toward the house, confirmed what the drow had hoped.

He fired off a continual stream, then, a volley placed all around the wooden structure, blasting hole after hole and without discernable pattern. He judged his effect by the motions of the elemental, gliding one stride toward him, then one back at the wizard. For controlling such a beast was no easy feat, and one that required absolute concentration. And if that control was lost, Drizzt knew, the summoned creature would almost always take out its rage upon the summoner.

More arrows flashed into the house but to less effect; Drizzt needed to actually score a hit on the mage to turn the elemental fully.

But he didn’t, and he soon recognized that the creature was inevitably edging his way. The wizard had adjusted.

Drizzt kept up the barrage anyway, and began moving away as he fired, confident that he could turn and outdistance the creature, or at least get to the water’s edge, where the Mirar would protect him from the elemental’s fury. He turned and glanced to the water trough, thinking to tell Regis to run.

But the halfling was already gone.

The wizard was protected from the arrows, Drizzt realized as the elemental bore down on him with renewed enthusiasm. The drow fired off a pair of shots into it for good measure then turned and sprinted back the way he’d come, around the edge of the building hit by the same fireball that had nearly melted him, which was burning furiously.

“Clever wizard,” he heard himself muttering as he almost ran headlong into a giant web that stretched from building to building in the alleyway. He spun to see the elemental blocking the exit, its flames licking the structures to either side.

“Have at it, then,” Drizzt said to the beast and drew his scimitars.

He couldn’t really speak to a creature from an elemental plane, of course, but it seemed to Drizzt as if the monster heard him, for as he finished, the elemental rushed forward, its fiery arms sweeping ferociously.

Drizzt ducked the first swing then leaped out to his right just ahead of the second, running up the wall—and feeling that its integrity was diminished by the fires roaring within—and spinning into a back somersault. He came down in a spin, scimitars slashing across, backhand leading forehand, and both sent puffs of flame into the air as they slashed against the life-force that held those flames together into a physical, solid creature.

That second weapon, Icingdeath, sent a surge of hope through Drizzt, for its properties were not only affording him some substantial protection from flames, as it had done against the wizard’s fireball, but the frostbrand scimitar took a particular pleasure in inflicting cold pain upon creatures with affinity to fire. The fire elemental shook off Twinkle’s backhand hit, as it had all but ignored the shots from Taulmaril, but when Icingdeath connected, the creature seemed to burn less bright. The elemental whirled away and seemed to shrink in on itself, spinning around tightly.

Its flames burned brighter, white hot, and the creature came out enraged and huge once more.

Drizzt met its charge with a furious flurry of whirling blades. He shortened Twinkle’s every stroke, using that blade to fend off the elemental’s barrage of punches. He followed every strike with Icingdeath, knowing that he was hurting the elemental.

But not killing it.

Not anytime soon at least, and despite the protection of Icingdeath, Drizzt felt the heat of the magnificent, deadly beast. More than that, the power of the elemental’s swings could fell an ogre even without the fiery accompaniment.

The elemental stomped its foot and a circular gout of flames rushed out from the point of impact, sweeping past Drizzt and making him hop in surprise.

The creature came forward and let fly a sweeping right hook, and Drizzt fell low, barely escaping the hit, which smashed hard into the burning building, crushing through the wooden wall.

From that hole came a blast of fire, and as it retracted, Drizzt leaped for the broken wood. He planted his foot on the bottom rim of the opening and came up flat against the wall, but only for the brief second it took him to swing his momentum and leap away into a backward somersault and turn, and as he came around, climbing higher across the alleyway, he somehow managed to sheathe his blades and catch on to the rim of the opposite building’s roof. He ignored the stun of the impact as he crashed against the structure and scrambled, lifting his legs just above another heavy, fiery slug.

As fast as he went, though, the elemental was faster. It didn’t climb the wall in any conventional sense, but just fell against it and swirled up over itself, rising as flames would climb a dry tree. Even as Drizzt stood tall on the roof, so did the elemental, and that building, too, was fully involved.

The elemental shot a line of flames at Drizzt, who dived aside, but still got hit—and though Icingdeath helped him avoid the brunt of the burn, he surely felt that sting!

Worse, the roof was burning behind him, and the elemental sent out another line, and another, all designed, Drizzt recognized, to seal off his avenues of escape.

The elemental hadn’t done that in the alley, the drow realized as he drew out his scimitars yet again. The creature was smart enough to recognize a web, and knew that such an assault would have freed its intended prey. This creature was not dumb.

“Wonderful,” Drizzt muttered.

“To the bridge!” Deudermont ordered, running from the collapsing wharf to the collection of rocks and crates, stone walls and trees his crewmen were using as cover. “We have to turn the wizards from Brambleberry’s men.”

“We be fifteen strong!’ one man shouted back at him. “Or fifteen weak, I’m saying!”

“Two fireballs from extinction,” said another, a fierce woman from Baldur’s Gate who, for the last two years, had led almost every boarding charge.

Deudermont didn’t disagree with their assessments, but he knew, too, that there was no other choice before them. With the collapse of the bridge, the Hosttower wizards had gained the upper hand, but despite the odds, Brambleberry’s leading ranks had nowhere to retreat. “If we flee or if we wait, they die,” the captain explained, and when he charged northeast along the river’s northern bank, not one of the fifteen sailors hesitated before following.

Their charge turned into a series of stops and starts as the wizards took note of them and began loosing terrible blasts of magic their way. Even with the volume of natural and manmade cover available to them, it occurred to Deudermont that his entire force might be wiped out before they ever got near the bridge.

And worse, Brambleberry’s force could not make progress, as every attempt to break out from the solid structures at the edge of the bridge was met with fire and ice, electricity and summoned monsters. The earth elemental was finally brought down by the coordinated efforts of many soldiers and friendly wizards, but another beast, demonic in nature, rushed out from the enemy wizards’ position to take its place before any of Brambleberry’s men had even begun to cheer the earth beast’s fall.

Deudermont looked downriver, hoping to witness the return of Sea Sprite, but she was far into the harbor by then. He looked forlornly to the southeast, to Blood Island, where Brambleberry and the bulk of his forces remained, and was not encouraged to see that the young lord had only then begun to swing his forces back to the bridge that would bring them to the south-bank mainland and Luskan’s market, where they could march up the riverbank and cross along the bridge farther to the east.

This would be a stinging defeat, the captain reasoned, with many men lost and few of the Hosttower’s resources captured or destroyed.

Even as he began to rethink his assault, considering that perhaps he and his men should hunker down and wait for Brambleberry, a shout to the north distracted him.

The mob rushing to enter the fray, men and dwarves with an assortment of weapons, terrified him. The northwestern section of Luskan was known as the Shield, the district housing merchants’ storehouses and assembling grounds for visiting caravans from Luskan’s most important trading partner, the city of Mirabar. And the marchion of Mirabar was known to have blood connections among the Hosttower’s highest ranks.

But the rumors of a rift between Mirabar and the Arcane Brotherhood were apparently true. Deudermont saw that as soon as it became obvious that the new force entering the fray was no ally of the Hosttower wizards. They swept toward the wizards’ position, leading with a volley of sling bullets, spears, and arrows that brought howls of protest from the wizards and a chorus of cheers from Brambleberry’s trapped warriors.

“Onward!” the captain cried. “They are ours!”

Indeed they were, at least those poor lesser mages who didn’t possess the magical ability to fly or teleport from the field. Enemies closed in on them from three sides, and the wizards fleeing east, the only open route, could not hope to get past the next bridge before Brambleberry swept across and cut them off.

The fire elemental reared up to its full height, towering over the drow, who used the moment to rush ahead and sting it with Icingdeath before running back the other way as the great arms flashed in powerful swipes.

Thinking pursuit imminent, Drizzt cut to the side and dived headlong into a roll, turning halfway into the circuit in case he had to continue right over the edge of the building.

The elemental, though, didn’t pursue. Instead it roared off the other way, burning a line over the front edge of the building, then down into the street where it left a scarred trail back to the house from which it had emerged.

“It’s a pretty gem,” the wizard agreed, staring stupidly at the little ruby pendant the halfling had spinning at the end of a chain. On every rotation, the gem caught the light, bending it and transforming it into the wizard’s fondest desires.

Regis giggled and gave it another spin, deftly moving it back from the wizard’s grabbing hand. “Pretty, yes,” he said.

His smile disappeared, and so did the gem, scooped up into his hand in the blink of an astonished wizard’s eye.

“What are you doing?” the mage asked, seeming sober once more. “Where did it…?” His eyes widened with horror, and he started to say, “What have you done?” as he spun back toward the door just in time to see his angry elemental rushing into the house.

“Stay warm,” Regis said, and he fell backward out of the same window through which he’d entered, hitting the alleyway in a roll and running along with all speed.

Fire puffed out every window in the house, and between the wooden planks as well. Regis came back into the street. Drizzt, smoke wafting from his shoulders and hair, emerged from the front door of the house behind the battered water trough.

They met in the middle of the road, both turning back to the house that served as battleground between the wizard and his pet. Booms of magical thunder accompanied the crackle of burning beams. The roar of flames, given voice by the elemental, howled alongside the screams of the terrified wizard. The outer wall froze over suddenly, hit by some magical, frosty blast, only to melt and steam almost immediately as the fire elemental’s handiwork won the contest.

It went on for a few moments before the house began to fall apart. The wizard staggered out the front door, his robes aflame, his hair burned away, his skin beginning to curl.

The elemental, defeated, didn’t come out behind him, but the man could hardly call it a victory as he toppled face down in the road. Regis and Drizzt ran to him, patting out the flames and rolling him over.

“He won’t live for long without a priest,” the halfling said.

“Then we must find him one,” Drizzt replied, and looked back to the southwest, where Deudermont and Brambleberry assaulted the bridge. Smoke rose along with dozens of screams, the ring of metal, and the booming of magic.

Regis blew a long sigh as he answered, “I think most of the priests are going to be busy for a while.”

CHAPTER 11 THE ARCHMAGE ARCANE

T he building resembled a tree, its arms lifting up like graceful branches, tapering to elegant points. Because of the five prominent spires, one for each compass point and a large central pillar, the structure also brought to mind a gigantic hand.

In the centermost spire of the famous Hosttower of the Arcane, Arklem Greeth looked out upon the city. He was a robust creature, rotund and with a thick and full gray beard and a bald head that gave him the appearance of a jolly old uncle. When he laughed, if he wanted to, it came from a great belly that shook and jiggled with phony but hearty glee. When he smiled, if he pretended to, great dimples appeared and his whole face brightened.

Of course Arklem Greeth had an enchantment at his disposal that made his skin look positively flushed with life, the epitome of health and vigor. He was the Archmage Arcane of Luskan, and it wouldn’t do to have people put off by his appearance, since he was, after all, a skeletal, undead thing, a lich who had cheated death. Magical illusions and perfumes hid the more unpleasant aspects of his decaying corporeal form well enough.

Fires burned in the north—he knew them to be the largest collection of his safehouses. Several of his wizards were likely dead or captured.

The lich gave a cackling laugh—not his jolly one, but one of wicked and perverse enjoyment—wondering if he might soon find them in the netherworld and bring them back to his side, even more powerful than they had been in life.

Beneath that laughter, though, Arklem Greeth seethed. The Luskar guards had allowed it to happen. They had turned their backs on law and order for the sake of the upstart Captain Deudermont and that miserable Waterdhavian brat, Brambleberry. The Arcane Brotherhood would have to repay the Brambleberry family, to be sure. Every one of them would die, Arklem Greeth decided, from the oldest to the infants.

A sharp knock on his door broke through the lich’s contemplation.

“Enter,” he called, never looking back. The door magically swung open.

In rushed the young wizard Tollenus the Spike. He nearly tripped and fell on his face as he crossed the threshold, he was so excited and out of sorts.

“Archmage, they have attacked us,” he gasped.

“Yes, I am watching the smoke rise,” said an unimpressed Greeth. “How many are dead?”

“Seven, at least, and more than two-score of our servants,” the Spike answered. “I know not of Pallindra or Honorus—perhaps they managed to escape as did I.”

“By teleporting.”

“Yes, Archmage.”

“Escape? Or flee?” Greeth asked, turning slowly to stare at the flustered young man. “You left without knowing the disposition of your superior, Pallindra?”

“Th-there was nothing…” the Spike stuttered. “All was—was lost…”

“Lost? To a few warriors and half a ship’s crew?”

“Lost to the Mirabarrans!” the Spike cried. “We thought victory ours, but the Mirabarrans…”

“Do tell.”

“They swept upon us like a great wave, m-men and dwarves alike,” the Spike stammered. “We had little power remaining to us in the way of destructive magic, and the hearty dwarves could not be slowed.”

He kept rambling with the details of their last stand, but Greeth tuned him out. He thought of Nyphithys, his darling erinyes, lost to him in the east. He had tried to summon her, and when that had failed, had brought from the lower planes one of her associates, who had told him of the betrayal of King Obould of the orcs and the interference of that wretched Bruenor Battlehammer and his friends.

Arklem Greeth had long wondered how such an ambush had been so carefully planned. He had feared that he had completely underestimated that Obould creature, or the strength of the truce between Many-Arrows and Mithral Hall. He wondered if it hadn’t been a bit more than that strange alliance, though.

And now the Shield of Mirabar in Luskan had surprisingly joined into a fight that the Luskar guards had avoided.

A curious thought crossed Arklem Greeth’s mind.

That thought had a name: Arabeth Raurym.

“They will be compensated,” Lord Brambleberry assured the angry guard captain, who had followed the Waterdhavian lord all the way from Blood Island to the Upstream Span, the northern and westernmost of Luskan’s three Mirar bridges. “Houses can be rebuilt.”

“And children can be re-birthed?” the man snapped back.

“There will be unfortunate circumstances,” said Brambleberry. “It’s the way of battle. And how many were killed by my forces and how many by the Hosttower’s wizards with their wild displays of magic?”

“None would have died if you hadn’t started the fight!”

“My good captain, some things are worth dying for.”

“Shouldn’t that be the choice of him what’s dying?”

Lord Brambleberry smirked at the man, but really had no response. He wasn’t pleased at the losses incurred around the Harbor Cross Bridge. A fire had broken out just north of their perimeter and several homes had been reduced to smoldering ruin. Innocent Luskar had died.

The guard captain’s forward-leaning posture weakened when Captain Deudermont walked over to stand beside Lord Brambleberry.

“Is there a problem?” the legend of Luskan asked.

“N-no, Mr. Deudermont,” the guard stammered, for he was clearly intimidated. “Well, yes, sir.”

“It pains you to see smoke over your city,” Deudermont replied. “It tears at my heart as well, but the worm must be cut from the apple. Be glad that the Hosttower is on a separate island.”

“Yes, Mr. Deudermont.” The guard captain gave one more curt look at Lord Brambleberry then briskly turned and marched away to join his men and their rescue work at the site of the battle.

“His resistance was less strident than I’d anticipated,” Brambleberry said to Deudermont. “Your reputation here makes this much easier.”

“The fight has only just begun,” the captain reminded him.

“Once we have them driven into the Hosttower, it will go quickly,” Brambleberry said.

“They’re wizards. They won’t be held back by lines of men. We’ll be looking over our shoulders for the entirety of the war.”

“Then make it a short one,” the eager Waterdhavian lord said. “Before my neck stiffens.”

He offered a wink and a bow and hurried away, nearly bumping into Robillard, who was coming Deudermont’s way.

“Pallindra is among the dead, and that is no small loss for the Hosttower, and an even greater one for Arklem Greeth, personally, for she was known to be fiercely loyal to him,” Robillard reported. “And our scout of questionable heritage…”

“His name is Drizzt,” Deudermont said.

“Yes, that one,” the wizard replied. “He defeated a wizard by name of Huantar Seashark, paramount among the Hosttower at summoning elementals and demons—even elder elementals and demon lords.”

“Paramount? Even better than Robillard?” Deudermont said to lighten the wizard’s typically dour mood.

“Be not a fool,” Robillard replied, drawing a wide smile from Deudermont, who took note that Robillard hadn’t actually answered the question. “Huantar’s prowess would have served Arklem Greeth well when our flames tickle at his towers.”

“Then it’s a day of great victory,” Deudermont reasoned.

“It’s the day we awakened the beast. Nothing more.”

“Indeed,” Deudermont replied, though in a tone that showed neither agreement nor concession, but rather more of a detached amusement as the captain looked past Robillard and nodded.

Robillard turned to see Drizzt and Regis coming down the road, the drow with a tattered cloak over one arm.

“You found a fine battle, I’m told,” Deudermont called to them as they neared.

“Those two words rarely go together,” said the drow.

“I like him more all the time,” Robillard said so that only Deudermont could hear, and the captain snorted.

“Come, let us four retire to a warm hearth and warmer brandy, that we might exchange tales,” said Deudermont.

“And cake,” Regis said. “Never forget the cake.”

“Cause or effect?” Arklem Greeth asked quietly as he padded down the hallway leading to the chambers of the Overwizard of the South Spire.

Beside him Valindra Shadowmantle, Overwizard of the North Tower, widely considered to be next in line to succeed Arklem Greeth—which of course was a rather useless tribute, since the lich planned to live forever—gave a derisive snort. She was a tiny thing, much shorter than Greeth and with a lithe moon elf frame that was many times more diminutive than the archmage arcane’s burly and bloated animated vessel.

“No, truly,” Arklem Greeth went on. “Did the Mirabarrans join in the battle against Pallindra and our safehouse because of the rumors that we had threatened to intervene with the stability of the Silver Marches? Or was their interference part of a wider revolt against the Arcane Brotherhood? Cause or effect?”

“The latter,” Valindra replied with a flip of her long and lustrous black hair, so clear in contrast to eyes that seemed as if they had stolen all the blue from the waters of the Sword Coast. “The Mirabarrans would have joined in the fight against us whether Nyphithys had gone to Obould or not. This betrayal has Arabeth’s stench all over it.”

“Of course you would say that of your rival.”

“Do you disagree?” the forceful elf said without the slightest hesitation, and Arklem Greeth gave a wheezing chuckle. It wasn’t often that anyone had the courage to speak to him so bluntly—in fact, beyond Valindra’s occasional outbursts, he couldn’t remember the last person who had done so. Someone he had subsequently murdered, no doubt.

“You would then imply that Overwizard Raurym sent word ahead of the meeting between Nyphithys and King Obould,” reasoned the lich. “Following your logic, I mean.”

“Her treachery is not so surprising, to me at least.”

“And yet you too have your roots in the Silver Marches,” Greeth said with a wry grin. “In the Moonwood, I believe, and among the elves who wouldn’t be pleased to see the Arcane Brotherhood bolster King Obould.”

“All the more reason for you to know that I did not betray you,” said Valindra. “I have made no secret of my feelings for my People. And it was I who first suggested to you that the Arcane Brotherhood would do well to stake a claim in the bountiful North.”

“Perhaps only so that you could foil me later and weaken my position,” said Greeth. “And that after you had gained my favor with your prodding for the spread of our influence. Clever of you to insinuate yourself as my heir apparent before leading me to a great chasm, yes?”

Valindra stopped abruptly and Arklem Greeth had to turn and look back to look at her. She stood with one arm on her hip, the other hanging at her side, and her expression absent any hint of amusement.

The lich laughed all the louder. “You are offended that I credit you with such potential for deviousness? Why, if half of what I said were true, you would be a credit to the twisted dealings of the dark elves themselves! It was a compliment, girl.”

“Half was true,” Valindra replied. “Except that I wouldn’t be so clever to desire anything good to befall the Silver Marches or the worthless fools of the Moonwood. Were I to love my homeland, I might take your words as a compliment, though I insist I would have come up with something a bit less transparent than the plot you lay at my feet. But I take no pleasure in the loss of Nyphithys and the setback for the Arcane Brotherhood.”

Arklem Greeth stopped smiling at the sheer bitterness and venom in the elf woman’s words. He nodded somberly. “Arabeth Raurym, then,” he said. “The cause for this troubling and costly effect.”

“Her heart has ever remained in Mirabar,” said Valindra, and under her breath, she added, “The little wretch.”

Arklem Greeth smiled again when he heard that, having already turned back for the door to the South Tower. He recited a quiet incantation and waved a thick hand at the door. The locks clicked and humming sounds of various pitches emanated from all around the portal. At last, the heavy bar behind the door fell away with a clang and the portal swung open toward Arklem Greeth and Valindra, revealing a darkened room beyond.

The archmage arcane stared into the black emptiness for a few moments before turning back to regard the elf as she walked up beside him.

“Where are the guards?” the Overwizard of the South Tower asked.

Arklem Greeth lifted a fist up before his face and summoned around it a globe of purple, flickering flames. With that faerie fire “torch” thrust before him, he strode into the south tower.

The pair went up room by room, the stubborn and confident lich ignoring Valindra’s continual complaints that they should go and find an escort of capable battle-mages. The archmage arcane whispered an incantation into every torch on the walls, so that soon after he and Valindra had made their way out of the room, the enchanted torches would burst into flame behind them.

They found themselves outside the door to Arabeth’s private quarters not long after, and there the lich paused to consider all they had seen, or had not seen.

“Did you notice an absence of anything?” he asked his companion.

“People,” Valindra dryly replied.

Arklem Greeth smirked at her, not appreciating the levity. “Scrolls,” he explained. “And rods, staves, and wands—and any other magical implements. Not a spellbook to be found….”

“What might it mean?” Valindra asked, seeming more curious.

“That the chamber beyond this door is equally deserted,” said Greeth. “That our guesses about Arabeth ring true, and that she knew that we knew.”

He ended with a grimace and spun back at Arabeth’s door, waving his hand forcefully its way as he completed another spell, one that sent the reinforced, many-locked door flinging wide.

Revealing nothing but darkness behind.

With a growl, Valindra started past Greeth, heading into the room, but the archmage arcane held out his arm and with supernatural power held the elf back. She started to protest, but Arklem Greeth held up the index finger of his free hand over pursed lips, and again added the power of supernatural dominance, hushing the woman as surely as he had physically gagged her.

He looked back into the darkness, as did Valindra, only it wasn’t as pitch black as before. In the distance to the left, a soft light glowed and a tiny voice lessened the emptiness.

Arklem Greeth strode in, Valindra on his heel. He cast a spell of detection and moved slowly, scanning for glyphs and other deadly wards. He couldn’t help but pick up his pace, though, as he came to understand the light source as a crystal ball set on a small table, and came to recognize the voice as that of Arabeth Raurym.

The lich walked up to the table and stared into the face of his missing overwizard.

“What is she doing out of…?” Valindra started to ask as she, too, came to recognize Arabeth, but Arklem Greeth waved his hand and snarled in her direction. Her words caught in her throat so fully that she fell back, choking.

“Well met, Arabeth,” he said to the crystal ball. “You didn’t inform me that you and your associate wizards would be leaving the Hosttower.”

“I didn’t know that your permission was required for an overwizard to leave the tower,” Arabeth replied.

“You knew enough to leave an active scrying ball in place to greet any visitors,” Greeth replied. “And who but I would deign to enter your chambers without permission?”

“Perhaps that permission has been given to others.”

Arklem Greeth paused and considered the sly comment, the veiled threat that Arabeth had co-conspirators within the Hosttower.

“There is an army assembled against you,” Arabeth went on.

“Against us, you mean.”

The woman in the crystal ball paused and didn’t blink. “Captain Deudermont leads them, and that is no small thing.”

“I tremble at the thought,” Arklem Greeth replied.

“He is a hero of Luskan, known to all,” Arabeth warned. “The high captains will not oppose him.”

“Good, then they won’t get in my way,” said Arklem Greeth. “So pray tell me, daughter of Mirabar, in this time of trial for the Hosttower, why is one of my overwizards unavailable to me?”

“The world changes around us,” Arabeth said, and Arklem Greeth took note that she seemed a bit shaken, that as the reality of her choice opened wide before her, as expected as that eventuality had to be, doubts nibbled at her arrogant surety. “Deudermont has arrived with a Waterdhavian lord, and an army trained specifically in tactics for battling wizards.”

“You know much of them.”

“I made it a priority to learn.”

“And you have not once addressed me by my title, Overwizard Raurym. Not once have you spoken to me as the archmage arcane. What am I to garner from your lack of protocol and respect, to say nothing of your conspicuous absence in this, our time of trial?”

The woman’s face grew stern.

“Traitor,” said Valindra, who had at last rediscovered her magically muted voice. “She has betrayed us!”

Arklem Greeth turned a condescending look over the perceptive elf.

“Tell me then, daughter of Mirabar,” the archmage arcane said, seeming amused, “have you fled the city? Or do you intend to side with Captain Deudermont?”

As he finished, he closed his eyes and sent more than his thoughts or voice into the crystal ball. He sent a piece of his life essence, his very being, the undead and eternal power that had held Arklem Greeth from passing into the netherworld.

“I choose self-preservation, whatever course that—” She stopped and winced, then coughed and shook her head. It seemed as if she would simply topple over. The fit passed, though, and she steadied herself and looked back at her former master.

The crystal ball went black.

“She will run, the coward,” said Valindra. “But never far enough….”

Arklem Greeth grabbed her and tugged her along, hustling her out of the room. “Wraithform, at once!” he instructed, and he cast the enchantment upon himself, his body flattening to a two-dimensional form. He slipped through a crack in the wall then through the floor, rushing swiftly and in a nearly straight line back to the main section of the Hosttower with the similarly flattened Valindra close behind.

And not a moment too soon, both learned as they slipped out of a crease in the tower’s main audience chamber just as the south tower was wracked by a massive, fiery explosion.

“The witch!” Valindra growled.

“Impressive witch,” Greeth said.

All around them, other wizards began scrambling, shouting out warnings of fire in the south tower.

“Summon your watery friends,” Arklem Greeth said to them all, calmly, almost amused, as if he truly enjoyed the spectacle. “Perhaps I have at last found a worthy challenge in this Deudermont creature, and in the allies he has inspired,” he said to Valindra, who stood with her jaw hanging open in disbelief.

“Arabeth Raurym is still in the city,” he told her. “In the northern section, with the Shield of Mirabar. I looked through her eyes, albeit briefly,” he explained as she started to ask the obvious question. “I saw her heart, too. She means to fight against us, and has gathered an impressive number of our lesser acolytes to join her. I’m wounded by their lack of loyalty, truly.”

“Archmage Arcane, I fear you don’t understand,” Valindra said. “This Captain Deudermont is not to be taken—”

“Don’t tell me how I should take him!” Arklem Greeth shouted in her face, his dead eyes going wide and flashing with inner fires that came straight from the Nine Hells.

“I will take him roasted and basted before this is through, or I will devour him raw! The choice is mine, and mine alone. Now go and oversee the fighting in the south tower. You bore me with your fretting. We have been issued a challenge, Valindra Shadowmantle. Are you not up to fighting it?”

“I am, Archmage Arcane!” the moon elf cried. “I only feared—”

“You feared I didn’t understand the seriousness of this conflict.”

“Yes,” Valindra said, or started to say, before she gasped as an unseen magical hand grabbed at her throat and lifted her to her tip-toes then right off the ground.

“You are an overwizard of the Hosttower of the Arcane,” Arklem Greeth said. “And yet, I could snap your neck with a thought. Consider your power, Valindra, and lose not your confidence that it’s considerable.”

The woman squirmed, but could not begin to break free.

“And while you are remembering who you are, while you consider your power and your present predicament, let that remind you of who I am.” He finished with a snort and Valindra went flying away, stumbling and nearly falling over.

With a last look at the grumbling archmage arcane, Valindra ran for the south tower.

Arklem Greeth didn’t watch her go. He had other things on his mind.

CHAPTER 12 SAVA, FIVE-AND-A-HALF WAYS

M y bilge rats are grumbling!” High Captain Baram protested, referring to the peasants who lived in the section of the city that was his domain, the northeastern quadrant of Luskan south of the Mirar. “I can’t have fires taking down their hovels, now can I? Your war’s not a cheap thing!”

“My war?” old Rethnor replied, leaning back in his chair. Kensidan sat beside him, his chair pushed back from the table, as was the protocol, and with his thin legs crossed as always.

“Word’s out that you provoked Deudermont from the start,” Baram insisted. He was the heaviest of the five high captains by far, and the tallest, though in their sailing days, he was the lightest of the bunch, a twig of a man, thinner even than the fretful Taerl, who very much resembled a weasel.

A bit of grumbling ensued around the table, but it ended when the most imposing of the five interjected, “I heard it, too.”

All eyes turned to regard High Captain Kurth, a dark man, second oldest of the five high captains, who seemed always cloaked in shadow. That was due in part to his grizzled beard, which seemed perpetually locked in two days’ growth, but more of that shadowy cloak was a result of the man’s demeanor. He alone among the five lived out on the river, on Closeguard Island, the gateway to Cutlass Island, which housed the Hosttower of the Arcane. With such a strategic position in the current conflict, many believed that Kurth held the upper hand.

From his posture, it seemed to Kensidan that Kurth agreed with that assessment.

Never a boisterous or happy man, Kurth seemed all the more grim, and understandably so. His domain, though relatively unscathed so far, seemed most in peril.

“Rumors!” Suljack insisted, pounding his fist on the table, a display that brought a knowing smile to Kensidan’s face. The perceptive son of Rethnor realized then where Baram and Kurth had heard the rumor. Suljack was not the most discreet of men, nor the most intelligent.

“These rumors are no doubt due to my father’s—” Kensidan began, but such an outcry came at him as to stop him short.

“Ye’re not for talking here, Crow!” Baram cried.

“Ye come and ye sit quiet, and be glad that we’re letting ye do that!” Taerl, the third of the five, agreed, his large head bobbing stupidly at the end of his long, skinny neck—a neck possessed of the largest Adam’s apple Kensidan had ever seen. Standing beside Taerl, Suljack wore an expression of absolute horror and rubbed his face nervously.

“Have you lost your voice, Rethnor?” High Captain Kurth added. “I’ve been told that you’ve turned your Ship over to the boy, all but formally. If you’re wishing him to speak for you here, then mayhaps it’s time for you to abdicate.”

Rethnor’s laugh was full of phlegm, a clear reminder of the man’s failing health, and it did more to heighten the tension than to alleviate it. “My son speaks for Ship Rethnor, because his words come from me,” he said, seemingly with great difficulty. “If he utters a word that I don’t like, I will say so.”

“High captains alone may speak at our gathering,” Baram insisted. “Am I to bring all my brats and have them blabber at all of Taerl’s brats? Or maybe our street captains, or might that Kurth could bring a few of his island whores….”

Kensidan and Rethnor exchanged looks, the son nodding for his father to take the lead.

“No,” Rethnor said to the others, “I have not yet surrendered my Ship to Kensidan, though the day be fast approaching.” He began to cough and hock and continued for a long while—long enough for more than one of the others to roll his eyes at the not-so-subtle reminder that they might have been able to listen to a young, strong voice instead of all that ridiculous wheezing.

“It’s not my war,” Rethnor said at last. “I did nothing to Deudermont or for him. The archmage arcane has brought this on himself. In his supreme confidence, he has overreached—his work with the pirates has become too great an annoyance for the lords of Waterdeep. Solid information tells that he has made no friend of Mirabar, either. It’s all perfectly reasonable, a pattern that has played out time and again through history, all across Faerûn.”

A long pause ensued, where the old man seemed to be working hard to catch his breath. After another coughing session, he continued, “What is more amazing are the faces of my fellow high captains.”

“It’s a startling turn-around!” Baram protested. “The south spire of the Hosttower is burning. There is smoke rising from the northern section of the city. Powerful wizards lay dead in our streets.”

“Good. A cleansing leaves opportunity, a truth not reflected in these long and frightened faces.”

Rethnor’s remark left three of the others, including Suljack, staring wide-eyed. Kurth, though, just folded his hands on his lap and stared hard at old Rethnor, ever his most formidable opponent. Even back in their sailing days, the two had often tangled, and none of that had changed when they traded their waterborne ships for their respective “Ships” of state.

“My bilge rats—” Baram protested.

“Will grump and complain, and in the end accept what is offered to them,” said Rethnor. “They have no other choice.”

“They could rise up.”

“And you would slaughter them until the survivors sat back down,” said Rethnor. “View this as an opportunity, my friends. Too long have we sat on our hands while Arklem Greeth reaps and rapes the wealth of Luskan. He pays us well, indeed, but our gains are a mere pittance beside his own.”

“Better the archmage arcane, who knows and lives for Luskan…” Baram started, but stopped as a few others began to chuckle at his curious choice of words.

“He knows Luskan,” Baram corrected, joining in the mirth with a grin of his own. “Better him than some Waterdhavian lord.”

“This Brambleberry idiot has no designs on Luskan,” said Rethnor. “He is a young lord, borne to riches, who fancies himself a hero, and nothing more. I doubt he will survive his folly, and even should he, he will take his thousand bows and seek ten thousand more cheers in Waterdeep.”

“Which is leaving us with Deudermont,” said Taerl. “He fancies nothing, and already has a greater reputation than Brambleberry’d ever imagine.”

“True, but not to our loss,” Rethnor explained. “Should Deudermont prevail, the people of Luskan would all but worship him.”

“Some already do that,” said Baram.

“Many do, if the numbers o’ his swelling ranks are to be told,” Taerl corrected. “I’d not’ve thought folks would dare follow anyone against the likes o’ Arklem Greeth, but they are.”

“And at no cost to us,” said Rethnor.

“You would want Deudermont as ruler above us five, then?” asked Baram.

Rethnor shrugged. “Do you really think him as formidable as Arklem Greeth?”

“He has the numbers—growing numbers—and so he might prove to be,” Taerl replied.

“In this fight, perhaps, but Arklem Greeth has the resources to see where Deudermont cannot see, and to kill quickly where Deudermont would need to send an army,” said Rethnor, again after a long pause. It was obvious that the man was nearing the limit of his stamina. “For our purposes, we wouldn’t be worse off with Deudermont at the head of Luskan, even openly, as Arklem Greeth is secretly.”

He ended with a fit of coughing as the other high captains exchanged curious glances, some seeming intrigued, others obviously simmering.

Kensidan stood up and moved to his father. “The meeting is ended,” he announced, and he called a Ship Rethnor guard over to thump his ailing father on the back in the hopes that they could extract some of that choking phlegm.

“We haven’t even answered the question we came to discuss,” Baram protested. “What are we to do with the city guard? They’re getting eager, and they don’t rightly know which side to join. They sat in their barracks on Blood Island and let Deudermont march through, and the northern span of the Harbor Cross fell into the water!”

“We do nothing with them,” Kensidan replied, and Taerl shot him an angry look then turned to Kurth for support. Kurth, though, just sat there, hands folded, expression hidden behind his dark cloud.

“My father will not allow those guards who heed Ship Rethnor’s call, at least, to act,” the Crow explained. “Let Deudermont and Arklem Greeth have their fight, and we will join in as it decisively turns.”

“For the winner, of course,” Taerl reasoned in sarcastic tones.

“It’s not our fight, but that does not mean that it cannot be our spoils,” Suljack said. He looked at Kensidan, seeming quite proud of his contribution.

“The archmage arcane will turn the whole of the guard against Deudermont,” Kurth warned.

“And against us for not doing just that!” Taerl added.

“Then…why…hasn’t he?” Rethnor shouted between gasps and coughs.

“Because they won’t listen to him,” Suljack added at Kensidan’s silent prompting. “They won’t fight against Deudermont.”

“Just what Luskan needs,” Kurth replied with a heavy sigh. “A hero.”

“Unexpected allies from every front,” Deudermont announced to Robillard, Drizzt, and Regis. Lord Brambleberry had just left them, heading for a meeting with Arabeth Raurym and the Mirabarran dwarves and humans who had unexpectedly thrown in with Brambleberry and Deudermont in their fight against Arklem Greeth. “The first battles have been waged in the Hosttower and we have not even crossed to Closeguard Isle yet.”

“It’s going better than we might have hoped,” Drizzt agreed, “but these are wizards, my friend, and never to be underestimated.”

“Arklem Greeth has a trick or ten ready for us, I don’t doubt,” said Deudermont. “But with an overwizard and her minions now on our side, we can better anticipate and so better defeat such tricks. Unless, of course, this Arabeth Raurym is the first of those very deceptions….”

He said it in jest, but his glance at Robillard showed anything but levity.

“She isn’t,” the wizard assured him. “Her betrayal of the Hosttower is genuine, and not unexpected. It was she, I’m sure—and so is Arklem Greeth—who betrayed the Arcane Brotherhood’s advances into the Silver Marches. No, her survival depends upon Arklem Greeth losing, and losing everything.”

“She has put everything on the line for our cause.”

“Or for her own,” Robillard replied.

“So be it,” said Deudermont. “In any case, her defection brings us needed strength to ensure the destruction of the Hosttower’s perverse leader.”

“And then what?” Regis asked.

Deudermont stared hard at Regis and replied, “What do you mean? You cannot support the rule of Arklem Greeth, who is not even alive. His very existence is a perversion!”

Regis nodded. “All true, I expect,” he replied. “I only wonder…” He looked to Drizzt for support, but then just shook his head, not believing himself qualified to get into such a debate with Captain Deudermont.

Deudermont smiled at him then moved to pour wine into four tallglasses, handing them around.

“Follow your heart and do what is good and just, and the world will be aright,” Deudermont said, and lifted his glass in toast.

The others joined in, though the tapping of glasses was not enthusiastic.

“Enough time has passed,” Deudermont said after a sip. He referred to Lord Brambleberry’s bidding that he should go and join Brambleberry with Arabeth and the Mirabarrans. His intentional delay in going was a calculated stutter in bringing in the leadership, to keep the balance of power on Brambleberry’s side. He and Deudermont were more impressive introduced separately than together.

Drizzt motioned to Regis to go with the captain. “The Mirabarrans will not yet understand my new relationship with their marchion,” Drizzt said. “Go and represent Bruenor’s interests at this meeting.”

“I don’t know Bruenor’s interests,” Regis quipped.

Drizzt tossed a wink at Deudermont. “He trusts the good captain,” the drow said.

“Trusting the good captain’s heart and trusting his judgment might be two entirely different matters, wouldn’t you agree?” Robillard said to Drizzt when the other two had gone. He dumped his remaining wine into the hearth and moved to a different bottle, a stronger liquor, to refill his glass, and to fill another one for Drizzt, who gingerly accepted it.

“You don’t trust his judgment?” the drow asked.

“I fear his enthusiasm.”

“You loathe Arklem Greeth.”

“More so because I know him,” Robillard agreed. “But I know Luskan, too, and recognize that she is not a town predisposed to peace and law.”

“What will we have when the smothering mantle of the Hosttower is removed?” asked Drizzt.

“Five high captains of questionable demeanor—men Captain Deudermont would have gladly killed at sea had he caught them in their swaggering days of piracy. Perhaps they have settled into reasonable and capable leaders, but…”

“Perhaps not,” Drizzt offered, and Robillard lifted his glass in solemn agreement.

“I know the devil who rules Luskan, and the limits of his demands and depravations. I know his thievery, his piracy, his murder. I know the sad injustice of Prisoner’s Carnival, and how Greeth cynically uses it to keep the peasants terrified even as they’re entertained. What I don’t know is what devil will come after Greeth.”

“So believe in Captain Deudermont’s premise,” the drow offered. “Do what is good and just, and trust that the world will be aright.”

“I like the open seas,” Robillard replied. “Out there, I find clear demarcations of right and wrong. There is no real twilight out there, and no dawn light filtered by mountains and trees. There is light and there is darkness.”

“To simplicity,” Drizzt said with another tip of his glass.

Robillard looked out the window to the late afternoon skyline. Smoke rose from several locations, adding to the gloom.

“So much gray out there,” the wizard remarked. “So many shades of gray….”

“I didn’t think you would have the courage to come here,” High Captain Kurth said when Kensidan, seeming so much the Crow, walked unescorted into his private parlor. “You could disappear….”

“And how would that benefit you?”

“Perhaps I just don’t like you.”

Kensidan laughed. “But you like what I have allowed to take place.”

“What you have allowed? You speak for Ship Rethnor now?”

“My father accepts my advice.”

“I should kill you for simply admitting that. It’s not your prerogative to so alter the course of my life, whatever promise of better things you might expect.”

“This need not affect you,” Kensidan said.

Kurth snorted. “To get to the Hosttower, Brambleberry’s forces will have to cross Closeguard. By allowing that, I’m taking sides. You and the others can hide and wait, but you—or your father—have forced a choice upon me that threatens my security. I don’t like your presumption.”

“Don’t allow them passage,” Kensidan replied. “Closeguard is your domain. If you tell Deudermont and Brambleberry that they cannot pass, then they will have to sail to the Hosttower’s courtyard.”

“And if they win?”

“You have my assurance—the assurance of Ship Rethnor—that we will speak on your behalf with Captain Deudermont should he ascend to lead Luskan. There will be no residual acrimony toward Ship Kurth for your reasonable decision.”

“In other words, you expect me to be in your debt.”

“No…”

“Do not play me for a fool, young man,” said Kurth. “I was indenturing would-be leaders before your mother spread her legs. I know the price of your loyalty.”

“You misjudge me, and my Ship,” said Kensidan. “When Arklem Greeth is no more, the high captains will find a new division of spoils. There is only one among that group, outside of Ship Rethnor, who is truly formidable, and who will be able seize the right opportunity.”

“Flattery…” Kurth said with a derisive snort.

“Truth, and you know it.”

“I know that you said ‘outside of Ship Rethnor’ and not ‘other than Rethnor,’” Kurth remarked. “It’s official then, though secret, that Kensidan captains that Ship.”

Kensidan shook his head. “My father is a great man.”

“Was,” Kurth corrected. “Oh, take no offense at a statement you know to be true,” he added when Kensidan bristled, like a Crow ruffling the feathers of its black wings. “Rethnor recognizes it, as well. He is wise to know when it’s time to pass along the reins of power. Whether or not he chose wisely is another matter entirely.”

“Flattery…” Kensidan said, mocking Kurth’s earlier tone.

Kurth cracked a smile at that.

“How long has Suljack suckled at your teat, boy?” Kurth asked. “You should coach him to stop looking at you for approval whenever he makes a suggestion or statement favorable to your position.”

“He sees the potential.”

“He is an idiot, and you know him to be just that.”

Kensidan didn’t bother replying to the obvious. “Captain Deudermont and Lord Brambleberry chart their own course,” he said. “Ship Rethnor neither encourages nor dissuades them, but seeks only to find profit in the wake.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Kensidan shrugged.

“Will Arklem Greeth believe you if he proves victorious?”

“Will Captain Deudermont understand your refusal to allow passage across Closeguard if he wins the fight?”

“Should we just draw sides now and be done with it?”

“No,” Kensidan answered with a tone of finality that stopped Kurth cold. “No, none of us are served in this fight. In the aftermath, likely, but not in the fight. If you throw in with Greeth against Deudermont, and with the implication that you would then use a successful Arklem Greeth against Ship Rethnor, then I…then my father would need to throw in with Deudermont to prevent such an outcome. Suljack will follow our lead. Baram and Taerl would find themselves isolated if they followed yours, you being out here on Closeguard, don’t you think? Neither of them would stand against Brambleberry and Deudermont for a few days, and how much help would the wretch Arklem Greeth send them, after all?”

Kurth laughed. “You have it all charted, it seems.”

“I see the potential for gain. I hedge against the potential for loss. My father raised no fool.”

“Yet you are here, alone.”

“And my father didn’t send me out this day without an understanding of High Captain Kurth, a man he respects above all others in Luskan.”

“More flattery.”

“Deserved, I’m told. Was I misinformed?”

“Go home, young fool,” Kurth said with a wave of his hand, and Kensidan was more than happy to oblige.

You heard that? Kensidan asked the voice in his head as soon as he had exited the high captain’s palace, making his way with all speed to the bridge, where his men waited.

Of course.

The assault on the Hosttower will be much more difficult by sea.

High Captain Kurth will allow passage, the voice assured him.

CHAPTER 13 THE NOOSE AND THE DEAD MEN

H elp me! They want to kill me!” the man cried.

He ran to the base of the stone tower, where he began pounding on the ironbound wooden door. Though he wore no robes, the nondescript fellow was known to be a wizard.

“Out of spells and tricks, then?” one of the sentries called down. Beside the sentry, his companion chuckled then elbowed him and nodded for him to look out across the square to the approaching warrior.

“Wouldn’t want to be this one,” the second sentry said.

The first looked down at the desperate wizard. “Threw a few bolts at that one, did you? I’m thinking I’d rather punch my fist through a wasp nest.”

“Let me in, you fools!” the wizard yelled up. “He’ll kill me.”

“We’re not doubting that.”

“He is a drow!” the wizard yelled. “Can you not see that? You would side with a dark elf against one of your own race?”

“Aye, a drow by the name of Drizzt Do’Urden,” the second sentry shouted back. “And he’s working for Captain Deudermont. You wouldn’t expect us to go against the master of Sea Sprite, would you?”

The wizard started to protest, but stopped as reality settled in. The guards weren’t going to help him. He rolled his back to the door so he could face the approaching drow. Drizzt came across the square, weapons in hand, his expression emotionless.

“Well met, Drizzt Do’Urden,” one of the sentries called down as the drow stopped a few steps from the whimpering wizard. “If you’re thinking to kill him, then let us turn away so that we can’t bear witness against you.” The other sentry laughed.

“You are caught, fairly and fully,” Drizzt said to the frantic man. “Do you accept that?”

“You have no right!”

“I have my blades, you have no spells remaining. Need I ask you again?”

Perhaps it was the deathly calm of Drizzt’s tone, or the laughter of the amused sentries, but the wizard found a moment of strength then, and straightened against the door, squaring his shoulders to his adversary. “I am an overwizard of the Hosttower of…”

“I know who you are, Blaskar Lauthlon,” Drizzt replied. “And I witnessed your work. There are dead men back there, by your hand.”

“They attacked my position! My companions are dead…”

“You were offered quarter.”

“I was bade to surrender, and to one who has no authority.”

“Few in Luskan would agree with that, I fear.”

“Few in Luskan would suffer a drow to live!”

Drizzt chuckled at that. “And yet, here I am.”

“Be gone from this place at once!” Blaskar yelled. “Or feel the sting of Arklem Greeth!”

“I ask only one more time,” said Drizzt. “Do you yield?”

Blaskar straightened his shoulders again. He knew his fate, should he surrender.

He spat at Drizzt’s feet—feet that moved too quickly to be caught by the spittle, slipping back a step then rushing forward with blinding speed. Blaskar shrieked as the drow’s blades came up and closed on him. Above, the guards also cried out in surprise, though their yelps seemed more full of glee than fear.

Drizzt’s scimitars hummed in a cross, then a second, one blade stabbing left past Blaskar’s head to prod the door, the other cutting the air just above the man’s brown hair. The flurry went on for many moments, scimitars spinning, Drizzt spinning, blades slashing at every conceivable angle.

Blaskar yelled a couple of times. He tried to cover up, but really had no way to avoid any of the drow’s stunningly swift, sure movements. When the barrage ended, the wizard stood in a slight crouch, arms tight against him and afraid to move, as if expecting that pieces of his extremities would simply fall away.

But he hadn’t been touched.

“What?” he said, before realizing that the show had been merely to put Drizzt into just the right position.

The drow, much closer to Blaskar than when the flurry began, punched out, and the pommel of Icingdeath smashed hard into the overwizard’s face, slamming him up against the door.

He held his balance for just a moment, shooting an accusatory look and pointing a finger at Drizzt before crumbling to the ground.

“Bet that hurt,” said one of the sentries from above.

Drizzt looked up to see that four men, not two, stared down at him, admiring his handiwork.

“I thought you’d cut him to bits,” said one, and the others laughed.

“Captain Deudermont will arrive here soon,” Drizzt replied. “I expect you will open the door for him.”

The sentries all nodded. “Only four of us here,” one mentioned, and Drizzt looked at him curiously.

“Most aren’t at their posts,” another explained. “They’re watching over their families as the battles draw near.”

“We got no orders to join in for either side,” said the third.

“Nor to stay out,” the last added.

“Captain Deudermont fights for justice, for all of Luskan,” Drizzt said to them. “But I understand that your choice, should you make it, will be based on pragmatism.”

“Meaning?” asked the first.

“Meaning that you have no desire to be on the side that loses,” Drizzt said with a grin.

“Can’t argue that.”

“And I cannot blame you for it,” said the drow. “But Deudermont will prevail, don’t doubt. Too long has the Hosttower cast a dark shadow over Luskan. It was meant to be a shining addition to the beauty of the city, but under the control of the lich Greeth, it has become a tombstone. Join with us, and we’ll take the fight to Greeth’s door—and through it.”

“Do it fast, then,” said one of the men, and he motioned out toward the wider city, where fires burned and smoke clouded nearly every street, “before there’s nothing left to win.”

A woman ran screaming out onto the square, flames biting at her hair and clothing. She tried to drop and roll, but merely dropped and squirmed as the fire consumed her.

More screams emanated from the house she’d run from, and flashes of lightning left thundering reports. An upper story window shattered and a man came flying out, waving his arms wildly all the way to the hard ground. He pulled himself up, or tried to, but fell over, grasping at a torn knee and a broken leg.

A wizard appeared at the window from which the man had fallen, and pointed a slender wand down at him, sneering with wicked glee.

A hail of arrows arched above the square from rooftops across the way, and the wizard staggered back into the room, killed by the unexpected barrage.

The battle raged with missiles magical and mundane. A group of warriors charged across the square at the house, only to be driven back by a devastating volley of magical flame and lightning.

A second magical volley rose up just south of the house, aimed at it, and despite all the wards of the Hosttower wizards trapped inside, a corner of the building roared in flames.

From a large palace some distance to the northwest, High Captains Taerl and Suljack watched it all with growing fascination.

“It’s the same tale each time,” Suljack remarked.

“No less than twenty o’ Deudermont’s followers dead,” Taerl replied, to which Suljack merely shrugged.

“Deudermont will replace archers and swordsmen far more readily than Arklem Greeth will find wizards to throw fireballs at them,” Suljack said. “This is to end the same way all of them have, with Deudermont’s men drawing out every ounce of magical energy from Greeth’s wizards then rushing over them.

“And look out in the harbor,” he went on, pointing to the masts of four ships anchored in the waterway between Fang and Harbor Arm Islands, and between Fang Island and Cutlass Island, which housed the Hosttower. “Word is that Kurth’s shut the Sea Tower down, so it can’t oppose Sea Sprite, or anyone else that tries to put in on southern Cutlass. Deudermont’s already got Greeth blocked east, west, and north, and south’ll be closed within a short stretch. Arklem Greeth’s not long for the world, or not long for Luskan, at least.”

“Bah, but ye’re not remembering the power o’ that one!” Taerl protested. “He’s the archmage arcane!”

“Not for long.”

“When those boys get close to the Hosttower, you’ll see how long,” Taerl argued. “Kurth won’t let them cross Closeguard, and going at Arklem Greeth by sea alone will fill the harbor with bodies, whether Sea Tower’s to oppose them or not. More likely, Greeth’s wanting Sea Tower empty so that Deudermont and his boys’ll foolishly walk onto Cutlass Island and he can sink their ships behind them.”

“Nothing foolish about Captain Deudermont,” Suljack reminded his companions, something every living man who ever sailed the Sword Coast knew all too well. “And nothing weak about that dog Robillard who walks beside him. If this was just Brambleberry, I’d be thinking you’re right, friend.”

A loud cheer went up across the way, and Suljack and Taerl looked across to see Deudermont riding down one of the side streets, the crowd swelling behind him. Both high captains turned to the wizards’ safehouse, knowing the fight would be over all too soon.

“He’s to win, I tell you,” said Suljack. “We should all just throw in with him now and ride the wind that’s filling Deudermont’s sails.”

The stubborn Taerl snorted and turned away, but Suljack grabbed him and turned him right back, pointing to a group of men flanking Deudermont. They wore the garb of city guards, and seemed as enthusiastic as the men Brambleberry had brought along from Waterdeep—more so, even.

“Your boys,” Suljack said with a grin.

“Their choice, not me own,” the high captain protested.

“But you didn’t stop them,” Suljack replied. “Some of Baram’s boys are down there, too.”

Taerl didn’t respond to Suljack’s knowing grin. The fight for Luskan was going exactly as Kensidan had predicted, to Arklem Greeth’s ultimate dismay, no doubt.

“Fires in the east, fires in the north,” Valindra said to Arklem Greeth, the two of them looking out from the Hosttower to the same scene as Taerl and Suljack, though from an entirely different direction and an entirely different perspective.

“Anyone of worth to us will have the spells needed to get back to the Hosttower,” Greeth replied.

“Only those skilled in such schools,” said Valindra. “Unlike Blaskar—we have not heard from him.”

“My mistake in appointing him overwizard,” said Greeth. “As it was my mistake in ever trusting that Raurym creature. I will see her dead before this is ended, don’t you doubt that.”

“I don’t, but I wonder to what end.”

Arklem Greeth turned on her fiercely, but Valindra Shadowmantle didn’t back down.

“They press us,” she said.

“They will not cross Closeguard and we can fend them off from the rocky shores of Cutlass,” Greeth replied. “Station our best invokers and our most clever illusionists to every possible landing point, and guard their positions with every magical fortification you can assemble. Robillard and whatever other wizards Deudermont holds at his disposal are not to be taken lightly, but as they are aboard ship and we’re on solid ground, the advantage is ours.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as need be!” Arklem Greeth yelled, his undead eyes glowing with inner fires. He calmed quickly, though, and nodded, conceding, “You are correct, of course. Deudermont and Brambleberry will be relentless and patient as long as Luskan accepts them. Perhaps it’s time we turn that game back on them.”

“You will speak with the high captains?”

Arklem Greeth scoffed before she ever finished the question. “With Kurth, perhaps, or perhaps not. Are you so certain those foolish pirates are not in fact behind this peasant uprising?”

“Deudermont learned of our complicity in the piracy along the Sword Coast, I’m told.”

“And suddenly found a willing ally in Brambleberry, and a willing traitor in Arabeth Raurym? Convenience is often a matter of careful planning, and as soon as I’m finished with the idiot Deudermont, I intend to have a long discussion with each of the high captains. One I doubt any of them will enjoy.”

“And until then?”

“Allow that to be my concern,” Arklem Greeth told her. “You see to the defense of Cutlass Island. But first pry Overwizard Rimardo from his library in the east tower and bid him go and learn what has happened to Blaskar. And remind our muscular friend that if he is too busy shaking hands, he’ll have one less arm available for casting spells.”

“Are you sure I shouldn’t go find Blaskar while Rimardo prepares the defenses?”

“If Rimardo is too stupid or distracted to do his work correctly, I would rather have the consequences befall him when I’m not standing right behind him,” said the lich. He grinned wickedly, taking Valindra’s measure with his undressing stare. “Besides, you only wish to go that you might find an opportunity to unearth our dear Arabeth. Nothing would please you more than destroying that one, yes?”

“Guilty as charged, Archmage.”

Arklem Greeth lifted a cold hand to cup Valindra’s narrow elf chin. “If I were only alive,” he said wistfully. “Or perhaps, if you were only dead.”

Valindra swallowed hard at that one, and fell back a step, out of Greeth’s deathly cold grasp. The archmage arcane cackled his wheezing laugh.

“It’s time to punish them,” he said. “Arabeth Raurym most of all.”

Late that night, Arklem Greeth, a gaseous and insubstantial cloud, slipped out of the Hosttower of the Arcane. He drifted across Closeguard Island and resisted the urge to go into Kurth Tower and disturb the high captain’s sleep.

Instead, he went right past the structure and across the bridge to the mainland, to Luskan proper. Just off the bridge, he turned left, north, and entered an overgrown region of brambles, creepers, broken towers, and general disrepair: Illusk, the only remaining ruins of an ancient city. It wasn’t more than a couple of acres—at least above ground. There was much more below, including damp old tunnels reaching out to Closeguard Island, and to Cutlass Island beyond that. The place smelled of rotting vegetation, for Illusk also served as a dump for waste from the open market just to the north.

Illusk was entirely unpleasant to the sensibilities of the average man. To the lich, however, there was something special there. It was the place where Arklem Greeth had at last managed the transformation from living man to undead lich. In that ancient place with its ancient graves, the boundary between life and death was a less tangible barrier. It was a place of ghosts and ghouls, and the people of Luskan knew that well. Among the Hosttower’s greatest accomplishments, the first real mark the wizards had put upon Luskan during its founding so long ago, was an enchantment of great power that kept the living dead in their place, in Illusk. That was a favor that had, of course, elicited great favor among the people of the City of Sails for the founders of the Hosttower of the Arcane.

Arklem Greeth had studied that dweomer in depth before his transformation, and though he too was an undead thing, the power of the dweomer could not touch him.

He came back to corporeal form in the center of the ruins, and sensed immediately that he was being watched by a hungry ghoul, but the realization only humored him. Few undead creatures would dare approach a lich of his power, and fewer still could refuse to approach him if he so beckoned.

Still grinning wickedly, Arklem Greeth moved to the northwestern tip of the ruins, on the banks of the Mirar. He unfastened a large belt pouch and carefully pulled it open, revealing powdered bone.

Arklem Greeth walked along the bank to the south, chanting softly and sprinkling the bone dust as he went. He took greater care when he came around to the southern edge of the ruins, making certain he wasn’t being watched. It took him some time, and a second belt pouch full of bone dust, to pace the entirety of the cordoned area—to set the countering magic in place.

The ghouls and ghosts were free. Greeth knew it, but they didn’t.

He went to a mausoleum near the center of the ruins, the very structure in which he’d completed his transformation so long ago. The door was heavily bolted and locked, but the lich rattled off a spell that transformed him once more into a gaseous cloud and he slipped through a seam in the door. He turned corporeal immediately upon entering, wanting to feel the hard, wet stones of the ancient grave beneath his feet.

He padded down the stairs, his undead eyes having no trouble navigating through the pitch dark. On the landing below, he found the second portal, a heavy stone trapdoor. He reached his arm out toward it, enacted a spell of telekinesis, and reached farther with magical fingers, easily lifting the block aside.

Down he went, into the dank tunnel, and there he sent out his magical call, gathered the ghouls and ghosts, and told them of their freedom.

And there, when the monsters had gone, Arklem Greeth placed one of his most prized items, an orb of exceptional power, an artifact he had created to reach into the netherworld and bring forth the residual life energies of long dead individuals.

Cities of men had been situated on that location for centuries, and before the cities, tribes of barbarians had settled there. Each settlement had been built upon the bones of the previous—the bones of the buildings, and the bones of the inhabitants.

Called by the orb of Arklem Greeth, the latter part of the foundation of Luskan began to stir, to awaken, to rise.

CHAPTER 14 FOLLOW THE SCREAMS

D rizzt? Drizzt?” a nervous Regis asked. With his eyes fixated on the door of the house across the lane, he reached back to tug at his friend’s sleeve. “Drizzt?” he asked again, flailing his hand around. He finally caught on to the truth and turned around to see that his friend was gone.

Across the lane, the woman screamed again, and the tone of her shriek, bloodcurdling and full of primal horror, told Regis exactly what was happening there. The halfling summoned his courage and took up his little mace in one hand, his ruby pendant in the other. As he forced himself across the lane, calling softly for Drizzt with every step, he reminded himself of the nature of his enemy and let the useless pendant drop back to the end of its chain.

The screaming was replaced by gasping and whimpering and the shuffling of furniture as Regis neared the house. He saw the woman rush by a window to the right of the door, her arm whipping out behind her—likely upending a chair to slow her pursuer.

Regis darted to that window and saw that her impromptu missile had some effect, tripping up a wretched ghoul.

Regis fought hard trying to breathe at the sight of the hideous thing. It had once been a man, but was hardly recognizable now, with its emaciated appearance, skin stretched tight over bone, lips rotted away to reveal fangs clotted with strips of freshly devoured flesh. The ghoul grabbed the chair in both hands, nails as long as fingers scraping at the wood, and brought it up to its mouth. Snarling and grumbling with rage, needing to bite something, it seemed, the ghoul tore into the chair before flinging it aside.

The woman screamed again.

The ghoul charged, but so intent was it on the woman that it never noticed the small form crouched on the window pane.

As the ghoul rushed past, Regis leaped out. Both hands clutching his mace, he used his flight and all his strength to whip the weapon across the back of the passing ghoul’s head. Bone crackled and withered skin tore free. The ghoul stumbled and fell off to the side, crashing down amidst more chairs.

Regis, too, landed hard, overbalanced from his heavy swing. He caught himself quickly, though, and set with a wide stance facing the fallen ghoul, praying that he had hit it hard enough to keep it down.

No such luck—the ghoul pulled itself back up and turned its lipless grin at the halfling.

“Come on, then, and be done with it,” Regis heard himself say, and as if in response, the ghoul leaped at him.

The halfling batted aside its flailing arms, knowing that the poison and filth, the essence of undeath in those clawlike fingernails could render a man or halfling immobile. Back and forth he whipped his mace, slapping against the ghoul’s arms, defeating the weight of every attack.

But he still got scratched, and felt his knees wobble against the vile poison. And while his swings were stinging the ghoul, perhaps, he wasn’t really hurting it.

Desperation drove Regis to new tactics and he dived in between the ghoul’s wide swings, repeatedly bashing his mace about the undead monster’s face and chest.

He felt the tearing of his shoulders, arms and back, felt the weakness of paralyzation creeping through him like the cold of death. But he stubbornly resisted the urge to fall down, and kept swinging, kept pounding.

Then his strength was gone and he crumbled to the floor.

The ghoul fell in front of him, its head a mass of blasted pulp.

The woman was holding Regis then, though he couldn’t feel her touch. He heard her grateful thanks then her renewed scream of terror as she leaped past him and ran for the door.

Regis couldn’t turn to follow her movements. He stared helplessly forward, then saw only their legs—four legs, two ghouls. He tried to find comfort in the knowledge that his paralysis likely meant that he wouldn’t feel the wretched things eating him.

“Out to the streets!” Deudermont yelled, running along a lane, his forces behind him, and Robillard beside him. “Come out, one and all! There is safety in unity!”

The people of Luskan heard that call and ran to it, though some houses echoed only with screams. Deudermont directed his soldiers into those houses, to battle ghouls and rescue victims.

“Arklem Greeth freed them from Illusk,” Robillard said. He’d been grumbling since sunset, since the onslaught of undead. “He seeks to punish the Luskar for allowing us, his enemies, to take the streets.”

“He will only turn the whole of the town against him,” Deudermont growled.

“I doubt the monster cares,” said Robillard. He stopped and turned, and Deudermont paused to regard him then followed his gaze to a balcony across the way. A group of children hustled into view then disappeared into a different door. Behind them came a pair of hungry ghouls, drooling and slavering.

A bolt of lightning reached out from Robillard, forking into two streaks as it neared the balcony, each fork blasting a monster.

The smoking husks, the former ghouls, fell dead on the balcony as the blackened wood behind them smoldered.

Deudermont was glad to have Robillard on his side.

“I will kill that lich,” Robillard muttered.

The captain didn’t doubt him.

Drizzt ran along the street, searching for his companion. He’d charged into a building, following the screams, but Regis had not followed.

The streets were dangerous. Too dangerous.

Drizzt nodded to Guenhwyvar, who padded along the rooftops, shadowing his movements. “Find him, Guen,” he bade, and the panther growled and sprang away.

Across the way, a woman burst out of a house, staggering, bleeding, terrified. Drizzt instinctively charged for her, expecting pursuit.

When none came, when he realized the proximity of that house to where he’d left Regis, a sickly feeling churned in the dark elf’s gut.

He didn’t pause to question the woman, guessing that she wouldn’t have been able to answer with any coherence anyway. He didn’t pause at all. He sprinted flat out for the door, then veered when he noticed an open window—no ghoul would have paused to open a window, and the air was too cold for any to have simply been left wide.

Drizzt knew as he leaped to the sill what he would find inside, and only prayed that he wasn’t too late.

He crashed atop a ghoul bent over a small form. A second ghoul slashed at him as he and the other went tumbling aside, scoring a tear on Drizzt’s forearm. He ached from that, but his elf constitution rendered him impervious to the debilitating touch of such a creature, and he gave it no thought as he hit the floor in a roll. He slammed the wall, willingly, using the barrier to redirect his momentum and allow him to squirm back to his feet as the ghoul bore down hard.

Twinkle and Icingdeath went to fast work before him, much as Regis had parried with his little mace. But those blades, in those hands, proved far more effective. The ghoul’s arms were deflected then they were slashed to pieces before they went falling to the floor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Drizzt saw Regis, poor Regis, lying in blood, and the image enraged him like none before. He drove into the standing ghoul, blades stabbing, poking into the emaciated creature with wet, sickly sounds. Drizzt hit it a dozen times, thrusting his blades with such force that they burst right through the creature’s back.

He retracted as the ghoul fell against a wall. Likely, it was already dead, but that didn’t slow the outraged drow. He brought his blades back and sent them into complimentary spins and began slashing at the ghoul instead of stabbing it. Skin ripped in great lines, showing gray bones and dried-up entrails.

He kept beating the creature even when he heard its companion approach from behind.

That ghoul leaped upon him, claws slashing for Drizzt’s face.

They never got close, for even as the ghoul leaped atop him, the drow ducked low and the creature flipped right over him to slam against its destroyed friend.

Drizzt held his swing as a dark form flew in through the window, the great panther slamming the animated corpse, driving the ghoul to the floor under a barrage of slashing claws and tearing fangs.

Drizzt ran to Regis, dropping his blades and skidding down to his knees. He cradled Regis’s head and stared into his wide-open eyes, hoping to see a flash of life left there. Yet another ghoul charged at him, but Guenhwyvar leaped over him as he crouched with Regis and hit the thing squarely, blasting it back into the other room.

“Get me out of here,” Regis, seeming so near to death, whispered breathlessly.

In Luskan, they came to call the next two tendays the Nights of Endless Screams. No matter how many ghouls and other undead monsters Deudermont and his charges destroyed, more appeared as the sun set the next evening.

Terror fast turned to rage for the folk of Luskan, and that rage had a definite focus.

Deudermont’s work moved all the faster, despite the nocturnal terrors, and almost every able bodied man and woman of Luskan marched with him as he flushed the Hosttower’s wizards out of their safehouses, and soon there were thirty ships, not four, anchored in a line facing Cutlass Island.

“Arklem Greeth stepped too far,” Regis said to Drizzt one morning. From his bed where he was slowly and painfully recovering, the halfling could see the harbor and the ships, and from beneath his window he could hear the shouts of outrage against the Hosttower. “He thought to cow them, but he only angered them.”

“There is a moment when a man thinks he’s going to die when he’s terrified,” Drizzt replied. “Then there is a moment when a man is sure he’s going to die when he’s outraged. That moment, upon the Luskar right now, is the time of greatest courage and the time when enemies should quiver in fear.”

“Do you think Arklem Greeth is quivering?”

Drizzt, staring out at the distant Hosttower and its ruined and charred southern arm, thought for a moment then shook his head. “He is a wizard, and wizards don’t scare easily. Nor do they always see the obvious, for their thoughts are elsewhere, on matters less corporeal.”

“Remind me to repeat that notion to Catti-brie,” said Regis.

Drizzt turned a sharp stare at him. “There are still hungry ghouls to feed,” he reminded, and Regis snickered all the louder, but held his belly in pain from the laughter.

Drizzt turned back to the Hosttower. “And Arklem Greeth is a lich,” he added, “immortal, and unconcerned with momentary triumphs or defeats. Win or lose, he assumes he will fight for Luskan again when Captain Deudermont and his ilk are dust in the ground.”

“He won’t win,” said Regis. “Not this time.”

“No,” Drizzt agreed.

“But he’ll flee.”

Drizzt shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and in many ways, it didn’t.

“Robillard says he’ll kill the lich,” said Regis.

“Then let us pray for Robillard’s success.”

“What?” Deudermont asked Drizzt when he noticed the drow looking at him curiously from across the breakfast table. Diagonal to both, Robillard, whose mouth was full of food, chuckled and brought a napkin over his lips.

Drizzt shrugged, but didn’t hide his smile.

“What do you…what do both of you know that I don’t?” the captain demanded.

“I know we spent the night fighting ghouls,” Robillard said through his food. “But you know that, too.”

“Then what?” asked Deudermont.

“Your mood,” Drizzt replied. “You’re full of morning sunshine.”

“Our struggles go well,” Deudermont replied, as if that should have been obvious. “Thousands have rallied behind us.”

“There is a reason for that,” said Robillard.

“And that’s why you’re in such a fine mood—the reason, not the reinforcements,” said Drizzt.

Deudermont looked at them both in complete puzzlement.

“Arklem Greeth has erased the shades of gray—or has colored them more darkly, to be precise,” said Drizzt. “Any doubts you harbored regarding this action in Luskan have been cast away because of the lich’s actions at Illusk. As Arklem Greeth stripped the magical boundary that held the monsters at bay, so too did he peel away the heavy pall of doubt from Captain Deudermont’s shoulders.”

Deudermont turned his stare upon Robillard, but the wizard’s expression only supported Drizzt’s words.

The good captain slid his chair back from the table and stared out across the battered city. Several fires still burned in parts of Luskan, their smoke feeding the perpetual gloom. Wide, flat carts moved along the streets, their drivers solemnly clanging bells as a call for the removal of bodies. Those carts, some moving below Deudermont’s window, carried the bodies of many dead.

“I knew Lord Brambleberry’s plan would exact a heavy price from the city, yes,” the captain admitted. “I see it—I smell it! — every day, as do you. And you speak truly. It has weighed heavily upon me.” He kept looking out as he spoke, and the others followed his gaze across the dark roads and buildings.

“This is much harder than sailing a ship,” Deudermont said, and Drizzt glanced at Robillard and smiled knowingly, for he knew that Deudermont was going down the same philosophical path as had the wizard those tendays ago when the revolt against the Hosttower had first begun. “When you’re hunting pirates, you know your actions are for the greater good. There’s little debate to be had beyond the argument of sink them and let them drown out there in the emptiness, or return them to Luskan or Waterdeep for trial. There are no hidden designs behind the actions of pirates—none that would change my actions toward them, at least. Whether they serve the greed of a master or of their own black hearts, my fight with them remains grounded in absolute morality.”

“To the joys of political expediency,” Robillard said, lifting a mug of breakfast tea in toast. “Here, I mean, in an arena far more complicated and full of half-truths and hidden designs.”

“I watch Prisoner’s Carnival with utter revulsion,” said Deudermont. “More than once I fought the urge to charge the stage and cut down the torturing magistrate, and all the while I knew that he acted under the command of the lawmakers of Luskan. High Captain Taerl and I once nearly came to blows over that whole grotesque scene.”

“He argued that the viciousness was necessary to maintain order, of course,” said Robillard.

“And not without conviction,” Deudermont replied.

“He was wrong,” said Drizzt, and both turned to him with surprise.

“I had thought you skeptical of our mission here,” said Deudermont.

“You know that I am,” Drizzt replied. “But that doesn’t mean I disagree that some things, at least, needed to change. But that is not my place to decide in all of this, as you and many others are far more familiar with the nature and character of Luskan than I. My blade is for Captain Deudermont, but my fears remain.”

“As do mine,” said Robillard. “There are hatreds here, and designs, plots, and rivalries that run deeper than a distaste for Arklem Greeth’s callous ways.”

Deudermont held up his hand for Robillard to stop, and shifted his open palm toward Drizzt when the drow started to cut in.

“I’m not without consternation,” he said, “but I will not surrender my faith that right action makes right result. I cannot surrender that faith, else who am I, and what has my life been worth?”

“A rather simple and unfair reduction,” the always-sarcastic wizard replied.

“Unfair?”

“To you,” Drizzt answered for Robillard. “You and I have not walked so different a road, though we started from vastly different places. Meddlers, both, we be, and always with the hope that our meddling will leave in our wake a more beautiful tapestry than that we first encountered.” Drizzt heard the irony in his own words as he spoke them, a painful reminder that he had chosen not to meddle in Longsaddle, where his meddling might have been needed.

“Me with pirates and you with monsters, eh?” the captain said with a grin, and it was his turn to lift a cup of tea in toast. “Easier to kill pirates, and easier still to kill orcs, I suppose.”

Given the recent events in the North, Drizzt nearly snorted his tea out of his nose at that, and it took him a long moment to catch his breath and clear his throat. He held up his hand to deflect the curious looks coming at him from both his companions, not wanting to muddy the conversation even more with tales of the improbable treaty between Kings Bruenor and Obould, dwarf and orc. The drow’s expectations of absolutism had been thoroughly flattened of late, and so he was both heartened by and fearful of his friend’s unwavering faith.

“Beware the unintended consequences,” Robillard said.

But Captain Deudermont looked back out over the city and shrugged that away. A bell clanged below the window, followed by a call for the dead. The course had been set. The captain’s gaze drifted to Cutlass Island and the tree-like structure of the Hosttower, the masts of so many ships behind it across the harbor and the river.

The threat of the ghouls had diminished. Robillard’s wizard friends were on the verge of recreating the seal around Illusk, and most of the creatures had been utterly destroyed.

It was time to take the fight to the source, and that, Deudermont feared, would exact the greatest cost of all.

CHAPTER 15 FROM THE SHADOWS

T he ground shaking beneath his bed awakened High Captain Kurth one dismal morning. As soon as he got his bearings and realized he wasn’t dreaming, the former pirate acted with the reflexes of a warrior, rolling off the side of his bed to his feet while in the same movement grabbing his sword belt from the bed pole and slapping it around his waist.

“You will not need that,” came a quiet, melodic voice from the shadows across the large, circular room, the second highest chamber in Kurth Tower. As his dreams faded and the moment of alarm passed, Kurth recognized the voice as one that had visited him unbidden twice before in that very room.

The high captain gnashed his teeth and considered spinning and throwing one of the many daggers set in his sword belt.

This is no enemy, he reminded himself, though without much conviction, for he wasn’t certain who the mysterious visitor really was.

“The western window,” the voice said. “It has begun.”

Kurth moved to that window and pulled open the heavy drapes, flooding the room with the dawn’s light. He looked in the direction from which the voice had sounded, hoping to catch a glimpse of its source from the shadows, but that edge of his chamber defied the morning light and remained as dark as a moonless midnight—magic, Kurth was certain, and potent magic, indeed. The tower had been sealed against magical intrusion by Arklem Greeth himself. And yet, there was the visitor—again!

Kurth turned back to the west, to the slowly brightening ocean.

A dozen boulders and balls of pitch drew fiery lines in the air, flying fast for the Hosttower, or for various parts of the rocky shore of Cutlass Island.

“See?” asked the voice. “It is as I have assured you.”

“Rethnor’s son is a fool.”

“A fool who will prevail,” the voice replied.

It was hard to argue that possibility, given the line of ships throwing their missiles at Cutlass Island. Their work was meticulous. They threw in unison and with concentrated aim. He counted fifteen ships firing, though there might have been a couple more hidden from view. In addition, another group of wide, low boats ferried along the line then back to Whitesails Harbor to get more ammunition.

Whitesails Harbor!

The reality hit Kurth hard. Whitesails served as the harbor for Luskan’s navy, a flotilla under the auspices, supposedly, of the five high captains as directed by the Hosttower. The ships at Whitesails were the pretty front to the ugly piracy behind Luskan’s riches. Deudermont knew those pirates, and they knew him, and many of them hated him and had lost friends to Sea Sprite’s exploits on the open seas.

Despite that, the nagging thought—reinforced as more and more masts lined up beside Sea Sprite and Brambleberry’s warships—was that the Luskar sailors might well desert. As improbable as it seemed, he couldn’t deny what he saw with his own eyes. Luskan’s fleet, and the men and women of Whitesails, were directly involved in supporting the bombardment of the Hosttower of the Arcane. The men and women of Luskan’s fleet were in open revolt against Arklem Greeth.

“The fool with his undead,” Kurth muttered.

Arklem Greeth had pushed too hard, too wickedly. He had crossed a line and had driven the whole of the city against him. The high captain kept his gaze to the northwest, to Whitesails Harbor, and though he couldn’t make out much from that distance, he clearly saw the banner of Mirabar among many on the quayside. He imagined Mirabarran dwarves and men working hard to load the courier ships with rocks and pitch.

Full of anxiety, Kurth turned angrily at the hidden visitor. “What do you demand of me?”

“Demand?” came the reassuring reply, in a tone that seemed truly surprised by the accusation. “Nothing! I…we, are not here to demand, but to advise. We watch the wave of change and measure the strength of the rocks against which that wave will break. Nothing more.”

Kurth scoffed at the obvious understatement. “So, what do you see? And do you truly understand the strength of those rocks to which you so poetically refer? Do you grasp the power of Arklem Greeth?”

“We have known greater foes, and greater allies. Captain Deudermont has an army of ten thousand to march against the Hosttower.”

“And what do you see in that?” Kurth demanded.

“Opportunity.”

“For that wretch Deudermont.”

A chuckle came from the darkness. “Captain Deudermont has no understanding of the forces he will unwittingly unleash. He knows good and evil, but nothing more, but we—and you—see shades of gray. Captain Deudermont will scale to unstable heights in short order. His absolutes will rally the masses of Luskan, then will send them into revolt.”

Kurth shrugged, unconvinced, and fearful of the reputation and power of Captain Deudermont. He suspected that those mysterious outside forces, that hidden character who had visited him twice before, never threateningly, but never comfortably, were sorely underestimating the good captain and the loyalty of those who would follow him.

“I see the rule of law, heavy and cumbersome,” he said.

“We see the opposite,” said the voice. “We see five men of Luskan who will collect the spoils set free when the Hosttower falls. We see only two of those five who are wise enough to separate the copper from the gold.”

Kurth paused and considered that for a while. “A speech you give to Taerl, Suljack, and Baram, too, no doubt,” he replied at length.

“Nay. We have visited none of them, and come to you only because the son of Rethnor, and Rethnor himself, insist that you are the most worthy.”

“I’m flattered, truly,” Kurth said dryly. He did well to hide his smile and his suspicion, for whenever his “guest” so singled him out as one of importance, it occurred to him that his guest might indeed be a spy from the Hosttower, even Arklem Greeth himself, come to test the loyalty of the high captains in difficult times. It was Arklem Greeth, after all, who had strengthened the magical defenses of Kurth Tower and Closeguard Island a decade before. What wizard would be powerful enough to circumvent defenses set in place by the archmage arcane, but the archmage arcane himself? What wizard in Luskan could claim the power of Arklem Greeth? None who were not in the Hosttower, as far as Kurth knew, would even be close, other than that Robillard beast who sailed with Deudermont, and if his guest was Robillard, that raised the banner of duplicity even higher.

“You will be flattered,” the voice responded, “when you come to understand the sincerity behind the claim. Rethnor and Kensidan will show outward respect to all of their peers—”

“It’s Rethnor’s Ship alone, unless and until he formally cedes it to Kensidan,” Kurth insisted. “Quit referring to that annoying Crow as one whose word is of any import.”

“Spare us both your quaint customs, for they are a ridiculous assertion to me, and a dangerous delusion for you. Kensidan’s hand is in every twist of that which you see before you: the Mirabarrans, the Waterdhavians, Deudermont himself, and the defection of a quarter of Arklem Greeth’s forces.”

“You openly admit that to me?” Kurth replied, the implication being that he could wage war on Ship Rethnor for such a reality.

“You needed to hear it to know it?”

Kurth narrowed his eyes as he stared into the darkness. The rest of the room had brightened considerably, but still no daylight touched that far corner—or ever would unless his guest willed it to be so.

“Arklem Greeth’s rule is doomed, this day,” the voice said. “Five men will profit most from his fall, and two of those five are wise enough and strong enough to recognize it. Is one of those two too stubborn and set in his ways to grasp the chest of jewels?”

“You ask me for a declaration of loyalty,” Kurth replied. “You ask me to disavow my allegiance to Arklem Greeth.”

“I ask nothing of you. I help to explain to you that which is occurring outside your window, and show you paths I think wise. You walk those paths or you do not of your own volition.”

“Kensidan sent you here,” Kurth accused.

A telling pause ensued before the voice answered, “He didn’t, directly. It’s his respect for you that guided us here, for we see the possible futures of Luskan and would prefer that the high captains, above all, above Deudermont and above Arklem Greeth, prevailed.”

Just as Kurth started to respond, the door to his room burst open and his most trusted guards rushed in.

“The Hosttower is under bombardment!” one cried.

“A vast army gathers at our eastern bridge, demanding passage!” said the other.

Kurth glanced to the shadows—to where the shadows had been, for they were gone, completely.

So was his guest, whoever that guest might have been.

Arabeth and Robillard walked along Sea Sprite’s rail before the line of archers, waggling their fingers and casting devious, countering enchantments on the piles of arrows at each bowman’s feet.

The ship lurched as her aft catapult let fly a large ball of pitch. It streaked through the air, unerringly for the Hosttower’s westernmost limb, where it hit and splattered, launching lines of fire that lit up bushes and already scorched grass at the base of the mighty structure.

But the tower itself had repelled the strike with no apparent ill effects.

“The archmage arcane defends it well,” Arabeth remarked.

“Each hit takes from his defenses, and from him,” Robillard replied. He bent low and touched another pile of arrows. Their silvery tips glowed for just a moment before going dim again. “Even the smallest of swords will wear through the strongest warrior’s shield if they tap it enough.”

Arabeth looked to the Hosttower and laughed aloud, and Robillard followed her gaze. The ground all around the five-limbed structure was thick with boulders, ballista bolts, and smoldering pitch. Sea Sprite and her companion vessels had been launching non-stop against Cutlass Island throughout the morning, and at Robillard’s direction, all of their firepower had been directed at the Hosttower itself.

“Do you think they will respond?” Arabeth asked.

“You know Greeth as well as I do,” Robillard answered. He finished with the last batch of arrows, waited for Arabeth to do likewise, then led her back to his usual perch behind the mainsail. “He will grow annoyed and will order his defenders along the shore to lash out.”

“Then we will make them pay.”

“Only if we’re quick enough,” Robillard replied.

“Every one of them will be guarded by spells to counter a dozen arrows,” said the woman of Mirabar.

“Then every one will be hit by thirteen,” came Robillard’s dry reply.

Sea Sprite shuddered again as a rock flew out, along with ten others from the line, all soaring in at the Hosttower with such precision and timing that a pair collided before they reached their mark and skipped harmlessly away. The others shook the ground around the place, or smacked against the Hosttower’s sides, to be repelled by its defensive magic.

Robillard looked to the north where one of Brambleberry’s boats eased a bit closer against the strong currents of the Mirar.

“Sails!” Robillard cried, and Sea Sprite’s crew flipped the lines, unfurling fast.

From the rocks of the northwestern tip of Cutlass Island, a pair of lightning bolts reached out at Brambleberry’s ship, scorching her side, tearing one of her sails. With the strong and favorable current, though, the ship was able to immediately reverse direction.

Even as Sea Sprite leaned and splashed to life, Robillard and Arabeth filled her sails with sudden and powerful winds. They didn’t even take the time to pull up the anchor, but just cut the line, and Sea Sprite turned straight in, bucking the currents with such jolting force that all aboard had to grab on and hold tight.

Arklem Greeth’s wizards focused on Brambleberry’s boat for far too long, as Robillard had hoped, and by the time the Hosttower contingent noticed the sudden charge of Sea Sprite, she was close enough so that those on her deck could see the small forms scrambling across the rocks and ducking for whatever cover they could find.

From a more southern vantage on Cutlass Island, a lightning bolt streaked out at Sea Sprite, but she was too well warded to be slowed by the single strike. Her front ballista swiveled and threw a heavy spear at the point from which that attack had emanated, and as Sea Sprite began her broadside turn, her prow bending to straight north in a run up the coast, the crack catapult crew on her aft deck had another ball of pitch flying away. It splattered among the rocks and several men and women scrambled up from the burning ground, one engulfed in flame, all screaming.

And those weren’t even the primary targets, which were to starboard, trying to hide as a bank of archers the length of Sea Sprite’s main deck and three deep lifted and bent their bows.

Three separate volleys went in, enchanted arrows all, skipping off the stones or striking against the defensive magic shields Greeth’s minions had raised.

But as Robillard had predicted, more arrows found their way than could be defeated by the enchantments, and another Hosttower wizard fell dead on the stones.

Lightning bolts and arrows reached out at Sea Sprite from the rocky coastline. Boulders and balls of pitch flew out from the ship line in response, followed by a devastating barrage of arrows as Sea Sprite veered due west and sped away with the fast current.

Robillard nodded his approval.

“One dead, perhaps, or perhaps two,” said Arabeth. “It’s difficult work.”

“Another one Arklem Greeth cannot afford to lose,” Robillard replied.

“Our tricks will catch fewer and fewer. Arklem Greeth will teach his forces to adapt.”

“Then we will not let him keep up with our evolving tricks,” Robillard said, and nodded his chin toward the line of ships, all of whom were pulling up anchor. One by one, they began to glide to the south.

“Sea Tower,” Robillard explained, referring to the strong guard tower on southern Cutlass Island. “It would cost Arklem Greeth too much energy to have it as fortified as the Hosttower, so we’ll bombard it to rubble, and destroy every other defensible position along the southern coast of the island.”

“There are few places to land even a small boat in those rocky waters,” Arabeth replied. “Sea Tower was built so that defenders could assault any ships attempting to enter the southern mouth of the Mirar, and not as a defense for Cutlass Island.”

Robillard’s deadpan expression quieted her, for of course he knew all of that. “We’re tightening the noose,” he explained. “I expect that those inside the Hosttower are growing more uncomfortable by the hour.”

“We nibble at the edges when we must bite out the heart of the place,” Arabeth protested.

“Patience,” said Robillard. “Our final fight with the lich will be brutal—no one doubts that. Hundreds will likely die, but hundreds more will surely perish if we attack before we prepare the battlefield. The people of Luskan are on our side. We own the streets. We have Harbor Arm and Fang Island fully under our control. Whitesails Harbor sides with us. Captain’s Court is ours, and Illusk has been rendered quiescent once again. The Mirar bridges are ours.”

“Those that remain,” said Arabeth, to which Robillard chuckled.

“Arklem Greeth hasn’t a safehouse left in the city, or if he does, his minions there are huddled in a dark basement, trembling—rightfully so! — in fear. And when we have bombed Sea Tower to rubble, and have chased off or killed all of his minions he placed in the southern reaches of Cutlass, Arklem Greeth will need to look south, on his own shores, as well. Unrelenting bombardment, unrelenting pressure, and keep clear in your mind that if we lose ten men—nay, fifty! — for every Arcane Brotherhood wizard we slay, Captain Deudermont will claim victory in a rout.”

Arabeth Raurym considered the older and wiser wizard’s words for some time before nodding her agreement. Above all else, she wanted the archmage arcane dead, for she knew with certainty that if he wasn’t killed, he would find a way to kill her—a horrible, painful way, no doubt.

She looked south as Sea Sprite came around Fang Island, to see that the other ships were already lining up to begin the bombardment of Sea Tower.

Sea Sprite’s bell rang and the men tacked accordingly to slow her as a trio of ammunition barges from Whitesails Harbor turned around the horn of Harbor Arm Island and crossed in front of her. Arabeth looked over to regard Robillard and could almost hear the calculations playing out behind his eyes. He had orchestrated every piece of the day’s action—the bombardment, the trap and attack, and the turn south, complete with supply lines—to the most minute detail.

She understood how Deudermont had gained such a glorious reputation hunting the ever-elusive pirates of the Sword Coast. He had surrounded himself with the finest crew she had ever seen, and standing beside him was the wizard Robillard, so calculating and so very, very deadly.

A shiver ran along Arabeth’s spine, but it was one of hope and reassurance as she reminded herself that Robillard and Sea Sprite were on her side.

From his eastern balcony, High Captain Kurth and his two closest advisors, one the captain of his guard and the other a high-ranking commander in Luskan’s garrison, watched the gathering of thousands at the small bridge that linked Closeguard Island to the city. Deudermont was there, judging from the banners, and Brambleberry as well, though their ships were active in the continuing, unrelenting bombardment of Cutlass Island to the west.

For a moment, Kurth envisioned the whole of the invading army enveloped in the flames of a gigantic Arklem Greeth fireball, and it was not an unpleasant mental image—briefly, at least, until he considered the practical ramifications of having a third of Luskan’s populace lying dead and charred in the streets.

“A third of the populace….” he said aloud.

“Aye, and most o’ me soldiers in the bunch,” said Nehwerg, who had once commanded the garrison at Sea Tower, which was even then crumbling under a constant rain of boulders.

“They could have ten times that number and not get across, unless we let them,” insisted Master Shanty, Kurth Tower’s captain of the guard.

The high captain chuckled at the ridiculous, empty boast. He could make Deudermont and the others pay dearly for trying to cross to Closeguard—he could even drop the bridge, which his engineers had long ago rigged for just such an eventuality—but to what gain and to what end?

“There’s yer bird,” Nehwerg grumbled, and pointed down at a black spec flapping past the crowd and climbing higher in the eastern sky. “The man’s got no dignity, I tell ya.”

Kurth chuckled again and reminded himself that Nehwerg served a valuable purpose for him, and that the man’s inanity was a blessing and not a curse. It wouldn’t do to have such a personal liaison to the Luskar garrison who could think his way through too many layers of intrigue, after all.

The black bird, the Crow, closed rapidly on Kurth’s position, finally alighting on the balcony railing. It hopped down, and flipped its wings over as it did, enacting the transformation back to a human form.

“You said you would be alone,” Kensidan said, eyeing the two soldiers hard.

“Of course my closest advisors are well aware of this particular aspect of your magical cloak, son of Rethnor,” Kurth replied. “Would you expect that I wouldn’t have told them?”

Kensidan didn’t reply, other than to let his gaze linger a bit longer on the two before turning it to Kurth, who motioned for them all to enter his private room.

“I’m surprised you would ask to see me at this tense time,” Kurth said, moving to the bar and pouring a bit of brandy for himself and Kensidan. When Nehwerg made a move toward the drink, Kurth turned him back with a narrow-eyed glare.

“It was not Arklem Greeth,” said Kensidan, “nor one of his lackeys. You need know that.”

Kurth looked at him curiously.

“Your shadowy visitor,” Kensidan explained. “It was not Greeth, not an ally of Greeth in any way, and not a mage of the Arcane Brotherhood.”

“Bah, but who’s he talking about?” demanded Nehwerg, and Master Shanty stepped up beside his high captain. Kurth impatiently waved them both back.

“How do you…?” Kurth started to ask, but stopped short and just smirked at the surprising, dangerous upstart.

“No wizard outside of Arklem Greeth’s inner circle could penetrate the magical defenses he has set in place in Kurth Tower,” Kensidan said as if reading Kurth’s mind.

Kurth tried hard to not look impressed, and just held his smirk, inviting the Crow to continue.

“Because it was no wizard,” Kensidan said. “There is another type of magic involved.”

“Priests are no match for the web of Arklem Greeth,” Kurth replied. “Do you think him foolish enough to forget the schools of those divinely inspired?”

“And no priest,” said Kensidan.

“You’re running out of magic-users.”

Kensidan tapped the side of his head and Kurth’s smirk turned back into an unintentional, intrigued expression.

“A mind mage?” he asked quietly, a Luskar slang for those rare and reputably powerful practitioners of the concentration art known as psionics. “A monk?”

“I had such a visitor months ago, when first I started seeing the possibilities of Captain Deudermont’s future,” Kensidan explained, taking the glass from Kurth and settling into a chair in front of the room’s generous hearth, which had only been lit a few minutes earlier and wasn’t yet throwing substantial heat.

Kurth took the seat across from Rethnor’s son and motioned for Nehwerg and Master Shanty to stand a step behind him.

“So the machinations of this rebellion, the inspiration even, came from outside Luskan?” Kurth asked.

Kensidan shook his head. “This is a natural progression, a response to the overreaching of Arklem Greeth both on the high seas, where Deudermont roams, and in the east, in the Silver Marches.”

“Which all came together in this ‘coincidental’ conglomeration of opponents lining up against the Hosttower?” Kurth asked, doubt dripping from every sarcastic word.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Kensidan replied.

“And yet, here we are. Do you admit that Kensidan’s hand, that Ship Rethnor’s hands, are in this?”

“Up to our elbows…our shoulders, perhaps,” Kensidan said with a laugh, and lifted his glass in toast. “I didn’t create this opportunity, but neither would I let it pass.”

“You, or your father?”

“He is my advisor—you know as much.”

“A startling admission, and a dangerous one,” said Kurth.

“How so? Have you heard the rumble on the island to your west? Have you seen the gathering at the gates of Closeguard Bridge?”

Kurth considered that for a moment, and it was his turn to tip his glass to his companion.

“So Arklem Greeth has frayed the many strings, and Kensidan of Ship Rethnor has worked to weave them into something to his own benefit,” said Kurth.

Kensidan nodded.

“And these others? Our shadowy visitors?”

Kensidan rubbed his long and thin fingers over his chin. “Consider the dwarf,” he said.

Kurth stared at him curiously for a few moments, recalling the rumors from the east regarding the Silver Marches. “King Bruenor? The dwarf King of Mithral Hall works for the fall of Luskan?

“No, not Bruenor. Of course it’s not Bruenor, who, by all reports, has troubles enough to keep him busy in the east, thank the gods.”

“But it’s Bruenor’s strange friend who rides with Deudermont,” said Kurth.

“Not Bruenor,” Kensidan replied. “He has no place or part in any of this, and how the dark elf happened back to Deudermont’s side I neither know nor care.”

“Then what dwarves? The Ironspur Clan from the mountains?”

“Not dwarves,” Kensidan corrected. “Dwarf. You know of my recent acquisition…the bodyguard?”

Kurth nodded, finally catching on. “The creature with the unusual morningstars, yes. How could I not know? The one whose ill-fashioned rhymes grate on the nerves of every sailor in town. He has brawled in every tavern in Luskan over the last few months, mostly over his own wretched poetry, and from what my scouts tell me, he’s a far better fighter than he is a poet. Ship Rethnor strengthened her position on the street greatly with that one. But he is tied to all of this?” Kurth waved his arm out toward the western window, where the sound of the bombardment had increased yet again.

Kensidan nodded his chin at Master Shanty and Nehwerg, staring all the while into Kurth’s dark eyes.

“They are trusted,” Kurth assured him.

“Not by me.”

“You have come to my Ship.”

“To advise and to offer, and not under duress, and nor under duress shall I stay.”

Kurth paused and seemed to be taking it all in, glancing from his guest to his guards. It was obvious to Kensidan that the man was intrigued, though, and so it came as no surprise when he turned at last to the two guards and ordered them out of the room. They protested, but Kurth would hear none of it and waved them away.

“The dwarf was a gift to me from these visitors, who take great interest in establishing strong trading ties with Luskan. They are here for commerce, not conquest—that is my hope at least. And my belief, for were they openly revealed, we would be facing greater lords of Waterdeep than Brambleberry, do not doubt, and King Bruenor, Marchion Elastul of Mirabar, and Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon wouldn’t be far behind with their own armies.”

Kurth felt a bit more perplexed and defensive, and a lot less intrigued.

“These events were not their doing, but they watch closely, and advise me and my father, as they have visited you,” said Kensidan, hoping that naming Rethnor almost as an afterthought had slipped past the perceptive Kurth. The man’s arched eyebrow showed that it had not, however, and Kensidan silently berated himself and promised that he would do better in the future. Ship Rethnor wasn’t yet officially his. Not officially.

“So you hear voices in the shadows, and these bring you confidence,” Kurth said. He held up his hand as Kensidan tried to interrupt and continued, “Then we’re back at the initial square of the board, are we not? How do you know your friends in the shadows aren’t agents of Arklem Greeth? Perhaps the cunning lich has decided it’s time to test the loyalties of his high captains. Are you too young to see the dangerous possibilities? And wouldn’t that make you the biggest fool of all?”

Kensidan held up his open palm and finally managed to silence the man. He slowly reached under his strange black cloak and produced a small glass item, a bottle, and within it stood the tiny figure of a tiny man.

No, not a figure, Kurth realized. His eyes widened as the poor soul trapped within shifted about.

Kensidan motioned to the hearth. “May I?”

Kurth responded with a puzzled expression, which Kensidan took as permission. He flung the bottle into the hearth, where it smashed against the back bricks.

The tiny man enlarged, bouncing around the low-burning logs before catching his bearings and his balance enough to roll back out, taking ash and one burning log with him.

“By the Nine Hells!” the man protested, batting at his smoldering gray cloak. Blood dripped from several wounds on his hands and face and he reached up and pulled a small shard of glass out of his cheek. “Don’t ever do that to me again!” he cried, still flustered and waving his arms. It seemed then as if he had at last caught his bearings, and only then he realized where he was and who was seated before him. The blood drained from his face.

“Are you settled?” Kensidan asked.

The thoroughly flustered little man toed the log beside him and brushed it back into the fireplace, but didn’t otherwise respond.

“High Captain Kurth, I give you Morik,” Kensidan explained. “Morik the Rogue, to those who know him enough to care. His lady is a mage in the Hosttower—perhaps that is why he’s found a place in all this.”

Morik looked anxiously from man to man, dipping many short bows.

Kensidan drew Kurth’s gaze with his own. “Our visitors are not agents of Arklem Greeth,” he said, before turning to the pathetic little man and motioning for him to begin. “Tell my friend your story, Morik the Rogue,” Kensidan bade him. “Tell him of your visitors those years ago. Tell him of the dark friends of Wulfgar of Icewind Dale.”

“I told ye they wouldn’t get across without a row,” Baram insisted to his fellow high captains, Taerl and Suljack. The three stood atop the southwest tower of High Captain Taerl’s fortress, looking directly west to the bridge to Kurth’s Closeguard Island and the great open square south of Illusk where Deudermont and Lord Brambleberry had gathered their mighty army.

“They will,” Suljack replied. “Kensi—Rethnor said they will, and so they will.”

“That Crow boy is trouble,” said Baram. “He’ll bring down Rethnor’s great Ship before the old man passes on.”

“The gates will open,” Suljack replied, but very quietly. “Kurth can’t refuse. Not this many, not with almost all of Luskan knocking.”

“Hard to be denyin’ that number,” Taerl said. “Most o’ the city’s walking with Deudermont.”

“Kurth won’t go against Arklem Greeth—he’s more sense than that,” Baram replied. “Deudermont’s fools’ll be swimming or sailing if they want to get to the Hosttower.”

Even as Baram spoke, some of High Captain Kurth’s sentries rushed up to the bridge and began throwing the locks. To Baram’s utter shock, and to Taerl’s as well, despite his words, the gates of the Kurth Tower compound pulled open and Kurth’s guards stepped back, offering passage.

“A trick!” Baram protested, leaping to his feet. “She’s got to be a trick! Arklem Greeth’s bidding them on that he can destroy them.”

“He’ll have to kill half the city, then,” Suljack said.

Deudermont’s banner led the way across the small bridge with more than five thousand in his wake. Out in the harbor beyond Cutlass Island, sails appeared and anchors climbed from the water. The fleet began to creep in, boulders and pitch leading the way.

The noose tightened.

CHAPTER 16 ACCEPTABLE LOSSES

V alindra Shadowmantle’s green eyes opened wide as she noted the approaching mob. She turned to rush to Arklem Greeth’s chambers, but found the lich standing behind her, wearing a wicked grin.

“They come,” Valindra gasped. “All of them.”

Arklem Greeth shrugged as if he was hardly concerned. Gripped by her fear, the archmage’s casual reaction served only to anger Valindra.

“You have underestimated our enemies at every turn!” she screamed, and several lesser wizards nearby sucked in their breath and turned away, pretending not to have heard.

Arklem Greeth laughed at her.

“You find this amusing?” she replied.

“I find it…predictable,” Greeth answered. “Sadly so, but alas, the cards were played long ago. A Waterdhavian lord and the hero of the Sword Coast, the hero of Luskan, aligned against us. People are so fickle and easy to sway; it’s no wonder that they rally to the empty platitudes of an idiot like Captain Deudermont.”

“Because you raised the undead against them,” Valindra accused.

The lich laughed again. “Our options were limited from the beginning. The high captains, cowards all, did little to hold back the mounting tide of invasion. I feared we could never depend upon those fools, those thieves, but again alas, you accept what you have and make the best of it.”

Valindra stared at her master, wondering if he’d lost his mind. “The whole of the city is rallied against us,” she cried. “Thousands! They gather on Closeguard, and will fight their way across.”

“We have good wizards guarding our bridge.”

“And they have powerful spellcasters among their ranks, as well,” said Valindra. “If Deudermont wanted, he could send the least of his warriors against us, and our wizards would expend their energies long before he ran out of fodder.”

“It will be amusing to watch,” Arklem Greeth said, grinning all the wider.

“You have gone mad,” Valindra stated, and beyond Arklem Greeth several lesser wizards shuffled nervously as they went about their assigned tasks, or at least, feigned going about them.

“Valindra, my friend,” Greeth said, and he took her by the arm and walked her deeper into the structure of the Hosttower, away from the disquieting sights in the east. “If you play this correctly, you will find great entertainment, a fine practice experience, and little loss,” the archmage arcane explained when they were alone. “Deudermont wants my head, not yours.”

“The traitor Arabeth is with him, and she is no ally of mine.”

The lich waved the notion away. “A minor inconvenience and nothing more. Let them lay the blame fully upon Arklem Greeth—I welcome the prestige of such notoriety.”

“You seem to care little about anything at the moment, Archmage,” the overwizard replied. “The Hosttower itself is in dire peril.”

“It will fall to utter ruin,” Arklem Greeth predicted with continuing calm.

Valindra held out her hands and stuttered repeatedly, unable to fashion a response.

“All things fall, and all things can be rebuilt from the rubble,” the lich explained. “Surely they’re not going to destroy me—or you, if you’re sufficiently cunning. I’m nimble enough to survive the likes of Deudermont, and will take great enjoyment in watching the ‘reconstruction’ of Luskan when he proclaims his victory.”

“Why did we ever allow it to come to such a state as this?”

Arklem Greeth shrugged. “Mistakes,” he admitted. “My own, as well. I struck out for the Silver Marches at precisely the worst time, it would seem, though by coincidence and bad luck, or more devious coordination on the part of my enemies, I cannot know. Mirabar turned against us, as have even the orcs and their fledgling king. Deudermont and Brambleberry on their own would prove to be formidable opponents, I don’t doubt, but with such an alignment of enemies mounting against us, it would do us ill to remain in Luskan. Here we are immobile, an easy target.”

“How can you say such things?”

“Because they are true. Aha! I know not all of the conspirators behind this uprising, but surely there are traitors among the ranks of those I thought allies.”

“The high captains.”

Arklem Greeth shrugged again. “Our enemies are vast, it would seem—even more so than the few thousand who flock to Deudermont’s side. They are merely fodder, as you said, while the real power behind this usurpation lays hidden and in wait. We could fight them hard and stubbornly, I expect, but in the end, that would prove to be the more dangerous course for those of us who really matter.”

“We are to just run away?”

“Oh no!” Greeth assured her. “Not just run away. Nay, my friend, we’re going to inflict such pain upon the people of Luskan this day that they will long remember it, and while they may call my abdication a victory, that notion will prove short lived when winter blows in mercilessly on the many households missing a father or mother. And their victory will not claim the most coveted prize, rest assured, for I have long anticipated this eventuality, and long prepared.”

Valindra relaxed a bit at that assurance.

“Their victory will reveal the conspirators,” said Greeth, “and I will find my way back. You put too much value in this one place, Valindra, this Hosttower of the Arcane. Have I not taught you that the Arcane Brotherhood is much greater than what you see in Luskan?”

“Yes, my master,” the elf wizard replied.

“So take heart!” said Arklem Greeth. He cupped her chin in his cold, dead fingers and made her look up into his soulless eyes. “Enjoy the day—ah the excitement! I surely will! Use your wiles, use your magic, use your cunning to survive and escape…or to surrender.”

“Surrender?” she echoed. “I don’t understand.”

“Surrender in a manner that exonerates you enough so that they don’t execute you, of course.” Arklem Greeth laughed. “Blame me—oh, please do! Find your way out of this, or trust in me to come and retrieve you. I surely will. And from the ashes we two will find enjoyment and opportunity, I promise. And more excitement than we have known in decades!”

Valindra stared at him for a few moments then nodded.

“Now be gone from this multi-limbed target,” said Greeth. “Get to the coast and our wizards set in defense, and take your shots as you find them. Make them hurt, Valindra, all of them, and hold faith in your heart and in your magnificent mind that this is a temporary setback, one intended to lead to ultimate and enduring victory.”

“When?”

The simple question rocked Arklem Greeth back on his heels a bit, for Valindra’s tone had made it clear that she understood that her timetable and that of a lich might not be one and the same.

“Go,” he bade her, and nodded toward the door. “Make them hurt.”

Half-dazed with confusion, Valindra Shadowmantle, Overwizard of the North Tower, in many eyes the second ranking wizard of the great Hosttower of the Arcane of Luskan, ambled toward the door of the mighty structure, fully believing that when she left it, she would never again enter. It was all too overwhelming, these dramatic and dangerous changes.

They crossed the bridge from Closeguard to Cutlass in full charge, banners flying, swords banging against shields, voices raised in hearty cheers.

On the other side of the bridge loomed the eastern wall of the Hosttower’s courtyard, ground unblemished by the naval bombardment, and atop that wall, two score wizards crouched and waited, accompanied by a hundred apprentices armed with bows and spears.

They unleashed their fury as one, with the leading edge of Brambleberry’s forces barely a dozen running strides from the wall. Men and ladders went up in flames, or flew away under the jolt of lightning bolts. Spears and arrows banged against shields and armor, or found a seam and sent an enemy writhing and screaming to the ground.

But Lord Brambleberry had brought wizards of his own, mages who had enacted wards on shield and man alike, who had brought forth watery elementals to quickly defeat the fireballs’ flames. Men and women died or fell to grave wounds, to be sure, but not nearly to the devastating effect the Hosttower’s front line of defense had hoped, and needed.

Volleys of arrows skipped in off the battlements, and concentrations of lightning blasts shook the wall, chipping and cracking the stone. The front row of Brambleberry’s forces parted and through the gap ran a concentration of strong men wielding heavy hammers and picks. Lightning blasts led them to specific points on the wall, where they went to work, smashing away, further weakening the integrity of the structure.

“Pressure the top!” Lord Brambleberry yelled, and his archers and wizards let fly a steady stream of devastation, keeping the Hosttower defenders low.

“What ho!” one hammer team commander cried, and his group fell back as some of the Waterdhavian wizards heard the beckon and sent a trio of powerful blasts at the indicated spot. The first rebounded off the broken stone and sent the commander himself flying to the ground. The second bolt, though, broke through, sending stone chips flying into the courtyard, and the third blew out the section’s support, dropping blocks and creating an opening through which a man could easily pass.

“What ho!” another team leader called from another spot, and a different trio of wizards was ready to finish the work of the sledges.

At the same time, far to the left and right, ladders went up against the walls. Initial resistance from the defenders fast gave way to calls for retreat.

The Hosttower’s first line of defense had killed Brambleberry’s men a dozen to one or more, but the swarm of Luskar, following Brambleberry and Deudermont, enraged by the ghouls sent by Arklem Greeth, and excited by the smell of blood and battle, rolled through.

As soon as the charge across the bridge had begun, the warships, too, went into swift action. Knowing that the Hosttower’s focus had to be on the eastern wall, half a dozen vessels weighed anchor and filled their sails, crashing in against the current. They let fly long and far, over the western wall and courtyard to the Hosttower itself, or even beyond it to the eastern courtyard. Crewed by a bare minimum of sailors and gunners, they knew their role as one of diversion and pressure, to keep the defenders outside of the Hosttower confused and frightened, and perhaps even to score a lucky throw and kill a few in the process.

To the south of them, another half a dozen ships led by Sea Sprite sailed for the battered surrounds of Sea Tower, leading their assault with pitch and arrows, littering the rocky shore with destruction in case any of the Hosttower’s wizards lay in wait there.

More than one such defender showed himself, either lashing out with a lightning bolt, or trying to flee back to the north.

Robillard and Arabeth welcomed such moments, and though both hoped to hold their greatest energies for the confrontation with Arklem Greeth and the main tower, neither could resist the temptation to reply to magic with greater evocations of their own.

“Hold and lower!” ordered Robillard, who remained in command of Sea Sprite while Deudermont rode at Brambleberry’s side.

The ship dropped her sails and the anchor splashed into the dark waters as other crewmen ran to the smaller boats she carried and put them over the side. Taking their cues from Sea Sprite, the other five ships acted in concert.

“Sails south!” the man in the crow’s nest shouted down to Robillard.

Eyes wide, the wizard ran aft and grabbed the rail hard, leaning out to get a better view of the leading craft, then of another two ships sailing hard their way.

“Thrice Lucky,” Arabeth said, coming up beside the wizard. “That’s Maimun’s ship.”

“And what side does he choose?” Robillard wondered. He murmured through a quick spell and tapped thumb and forefinger against his temples, imbuing his eyes with the sight of an eagle.

It was indeed Maimun leading the way, the man standing forward at the prow of Thrice Lucky, his crew readying boats behind him. More tellingly, the ship’s catapult was neither armed nor manned, and no archers stood ready.

“The boy chose well,” Robillard said. “He sails with us.”

“How can you know?” Arabeth asked. “How can you be certain enough to continue the landing?”

“Because I know Maimun.”

“His heart?”

“His purse,” Robillard clarified. “He knows the force arrayed against Arklem Greeth and understands that the Hosttower cannot win this day. A fool he would be to stand back and let the city move on without his help, and Maimun is many things, but a fool is not among them.”

“Three ships,” Arabeth warned, looking at the trio expertly navigating the familiar waters under full sail, and closing with great speed. “As our crews disembark, they could do profound damage. We should hold three at full strength to meet them if they attack.”

Robillard shook his head. “Maimun chose well,” he said. “He is a vulture seeking to pick the bones of the dead, and he understands which bones will be meatier this day.”

He turned and strode back amidships, waving and calling for his crew to continue. He enacted another spell as he neared the gangplank and gingerly hopped down onto the water—onto and not into, for he didn’t sink beneath the waves.

Arabeth copied his movements and stood beside him on the rolling sea. Side by side, they walked swiftly toward the rocky shore, small boats overcrowded with warriors bobbing all around them.

Two of the newcomers dropped sail near the fleet and Sea Sprite, their crews similarly manning the smaller boats. But one, Thrice Lucky,sailed past, weaving in through the narrow, rocky channel.

“The young pirate knows his craft,” Valindra marveled.

“He learned from Deudermont himself,” said Robillard. “A pity that’s all he learned.”

The wall had fallen in short order, but Lord Brambleberry’s forces quickly came to realize that the defenders of the Hosttower had fallen back by design. The wall defense had been set only so the tower’s wizards could have time to prepare.

As the fierce folk of Luskan crashed into the courtyard, the full fury of the Hosttower of the Arcane fell upon them. Such a barrage of fire, lightning, magical bolts, and conical blasts of frost so intense they froze a man’s blood solid fell over them that of the first several hundred who crossed the wall, nine of ten died within a few heartbeats.

Among those survivors, though, were Deudermont and Brambleberry, protected from the intense barrage by powerful Waterdhavian wizards. Because the pennants of their leaders still stood, the rest of the army continued its charge undeterred. The second volley didn’t match the first in intensity or duration, and the warriors pushed on.

Undead rose from the ground before them, ghouls, skeletons, and rotting corpses given a grim semblance of life. And from the tower came golems and gargoyles, magical animations sent to turn back the tide.

The folk of Luskan didn’t turn in fear, didn’t run in horror, with the undead monsters only bitterly reminding them of why they’d joined the fight in the first place. And while Lord Brambleberry was there astride a large roan stallion, a spectacular figure of strength, two others inspired them even more.

First was Deudermont, sitting tall on a blue-eyed paint mare. Though he was no great rider, his mere presence brought hope to the heart of every commoner in the city.

And there was the other, the friend of Deudermont. As the explosions lessened and the Hosttower’s melee force came out to meet the charge, so it became the time of Drizzt.

With quickness that mocked allies and foes alike, with anger solidly grounded in the image of his halfling friend lying injured on a bed, the drow burst through the leading ranks and met the enemy monsters head on. He whirled and twirled, leaped and spun through a line of ghouls and skeletons, leaving piles of torn flesh and shattered bones in his wake.

A gargoyle leaped off a balcony from above, swooping down at him, leathery wings wide, clawed hands and feet raking wildly.

The drow dived into a roll, somehow maneuvered out to the side when the gargoyle angled its wings to intercept, and came back to his feet with such force that he sprang high into the air, his blades working in short and devastating strokes. So completely did he overwhelm the creature that it actually hit the ground before he did, already dead.

“Huzzah for Drizzt Do’Urden!” cried a voice above all the cheering, a voice that Drizzt surely knew, and he took heart that Arumn Gardpeck, proprietor of the Cutlass, was among the ranks.

Magical anklets enhancing his speed, Drizzt sprinted for the central tower of the great structure in short, angled bursts, and often with long, diving rolls. He held only one scimitar then, his other hand clutching an onyx figurine. “I need you,” he called to Guenhwyvar, and the weary panther, home on the Astral Plane, heard.

Lightning and fire rained down around Drizzt as he continued his desperate run, but every blast came a little farther behind him.

“He moves as if time itself has slowed around him,” Lord Brambleberry remarked to Deudermont when they, like everyone else on the field, took note of the dark elf’s spectacular charge.

“It has and it does,” Deudermont replied, wearing a perfectly smug expression. Lord Brambleberry hadn’t taken well to hearing that a drow was joining his ranks, but Deudermont hoped Drizzt’s exploits would earn him some inroads into the previously unwelcoming city of Waterdeep.

He’d be making quite an impression on the minions of Arklem Greeth in short order, as well, by Deudermont’s calculations.

If he hadn’t already.

Even more importantly, Drizzt’s charge had emboldened his comrades, and the line moved inexorably for the tower, accepting the blasts and assaults from wizards, smashing the reaching arms of skeletons and ghouls, shooting gargoyles from the air with so many arrows they darkened the sky.

“Many will die,” Brambleberry said, “but the day is ours.”

Watching the progress of the insurgent army, Deudermont couldn’t really disagree, but he knew, too, that they were battling mighty wizards, and any proclamations of victory were surely premature.

Drizzt came around the side of the main structure, skidding to a fast stop, his face a mask of horror, for he found himself wide open to a balcony on which stood a trio of wizards, all frantically waving their arms in the midst of some powerful spellcasting.

Drizzt couldn’t turn, couldn’t dodge, and had no apparent or plausible defense.

Resistance at the Sea Tower proved almost nonexistent, and the force of Robillard, Arabeth, and the sailors quickly secured the southern end of Cutlass Island. To the north, fireballs and lightning bolts boomed, cheers rose in combination with agonized screams, and horns blew.

Valindra Shadowmantle watched it all from concealment in a cubby formed of Sea Tower’s fallen blocks.

“Come on, then, lich,” she whispered, for though the magical display seemed impressive, it was nothing of the sort that could result in the explosive ending Arklem Greeth had promised her.

Which made her doubt his other promise to her, that all would be put aright in short order.

Valindra was no novice to the ways and depths of the Art. Her lightning bolts didn’t drop men shaking to the ground, but sent their souls to the Fugue Plane and their bodies to the ground in smoldering heaps.

She looked to the beach, where the sailors were putting up their boats and preparing to march north to join the battle.

Valindra knew she could kill many of them, then and there, and when she noted the wretched Arabeth Raurym among their ranks, her desire to do so multiplied many times over, though the sight of the mighty Robillard beside the wretched Mirabarran witch tempered that somewhat.

But she held her spells in check and looked to the north, where the sound of battle—and the horns of Brambleberry and the Luskar insurgents—grew ever stronger.

Would Arklem Greeth be able to save her if she struck against Arabeth and Robillard? Would he even try?

Her doubts holding her back, Valindra stared and pictured Arabeth lying dead on the ground—no, not dead, but writhing in the agony of a slow, burning, mortal wound.

“You surprise me,” said a voice behind her, and the overwizard froze in place, eyes going wide. Her thoughts whirled as she tried to discern the speaker, for she knew that she had heard that voice before.

“Your judgment, I mean,” the speaker added, and Valindra recognized him then, and spun around to face the pirate Maimun—or more specifically, to face the tip of his extended blade.

“You have thrown in with…them?” Valindra asked incredulously. “With Deudermont?”

Maimun shrugged. “Seemed better than the alternative.”

“You should have stayed at sea.”

“Ah, yes, to then sail in and claim allegiance with whichever side won the day. That is the way you would play it, isn’t it?”

The moon elf mage narrowed her eyes.

“You reserve your magic when so many targets present themselves,” Maimun added.

“Prudence is not a fault.”

“Perhaps not,” said the grinning young pirate captain. “But ’tis better to join in the fight with the apparent winner than to claim allegiance when the deed is done. People, even celebratory victors, resent hangers-on, you know.”

“Have you ever been anything but?”

“By the seas, a vicious retort!” Maimun replied with a laugh. “Vicious…and desperate.”

Valindra moved to brush the blade away from her face, but Maimun deftly flipped it past her waving hand and poked her on the tip of her nose.

“Vicious, but ridiculous,” the pirate added. “There were times when I found that trait endearing in you. Now it’s simply annoying.”

“Because it reeks of truth.”

“Ah, but dear, beautiful, wicked Valindra, I can hardly be called an opportunist now. I have an overwizard in my grasp to prove my worth. A prisoner I suspect a certain Lady Raurym will greatly covet.”

Valindra’s gaze threw daggers at the slender man. “You claim me as a prisoner?” she asked, her voice low and threatening.

Maimun shrugged. “So it would seem.”

Valindra’s face softened, a smile appearing. “Maimun, foolish child, for all your steel and all your bluster, I know you won’t kill me.” She stepped aside and reached for the blade.

And it jumped back from her hand and came forward with sudden brutality, stabbing her hard in the chest, drawing a gasp and a whimper of pain. Maimun pulled the stroke up short, but his words cut deeper.

“Mithral, not steel,” he corrected. “Mithral through your pretty little breast before the next beat of your pretty little heart.”

“You have…chosen,” Valindra warned.

“And chosen well, my prisoner.”

Guenhwyvar leaped past Drizzt to shield him from the slings and arrows of enemies, from blasts magical and mundane. Lightning bolts reached down from the balcony as Guenhwyvar soared up toward it, and though they stung her, they didn’t deter her.

On the scarred field below, Drizzt stumbled forward and regained his balance and looked on with admiration and deep love for his most trusted friend who had, yet again, saved him.

Saved him and vanquished his enemies all at once, the drow noted with a wince, as flailing arms and horrified expressions appeared to him every so often from around the ball of black fury.

He had no time to dwell on the scene, though, for more undead creatures approached him, and more gargoyles swooped down from above.

And lightning roared and his allies died in their charge behind him. But they kept coming, outraged at the lich and his ghoulish emissaries. A hundred died, two hundred died, five hundred died, but the wave rolled for the beach and wouldn’t be deterred.

In the middle of it all rode Deudermont and Brambleberry, urging their charges on, seeking battle side by side wherever it could be found.

Drizzt spotted their banners, and whenever he found a moment’s reprieve, he glanced back at them, knowing they would eventually lead him to the most coveted prize of all, to the lich whose defeat would end the carnage.

It was to Drizzt’s complete surprise, then, that Arklem Greeth did indeed come upon the field to face his foes, but not straightaway to Deudermont and Brambleberry, but straightaway to Drizzt Do’Urden.

He appeared as no more than a thin black line at first, which widened and flattened to a two-dimensional image of the archmage arcane then filled out to become Arklem Greeth in person.

“They are always full of surprises,” the archmage said, considering the drow from about five strides away. Grinning wickedly, he lifted his hands and waggled his fingers.

Drizzt sprinted at him with blinding speed, intent on taking him down before he could complete the spell. He dived at the powerful wizard, scimitars leading, and driving right through the image of the lich.

It was just an image—an image masking a magical gate through which tumbled the surprised dark elf. He tried to stop, skidding along the ground, and when it was obvious that he was caught, on pure instinct and a combination of desperate hope and the responsibility of friendship, he tore free his belt pouch and threw it back behind him.

Then he was tumbling in the darkness, a wretched, sulfuric smell thickening around him, great dark shapes moving through the smoky shadows of a vast, dark field of sharp-edged rocks and steaming lines of blood red lava.

Gehenna…or the Nine Hells…or the Abyss…or Tarterus…. He didn’t know, but it was one of the lower planes, one of the homes of the devils and demons and other wicked creatures, a place in which he could not long survive.

He didn’t even have his bearings or his feet back under him when a black beast, dark as the shadows, leaped upon him from behind.

“Pathetic,” Arklem Greeth said, shaking his head, almost disappointed that the champion of the lords who had come against him had been so easily dispatched.

Staying close to the central tower, the archmage arcane moved along and spotted the banners of his principle enemies, the invading Lord Brambleberry, so far from home, and the fool Deudermont, who had turned the city against him.

He studied the field for a short while, mentally measuring the distance with supernatural precision. The tumult all around him, the screaming, dying, and explosions, seemed distant and unremarkable. A spear flew his way and struck solidly, except that his magical protections simply flattened its metal tip and dropped it harmlessly to the ground before it got near to his undead flesh.

He didn’t even wince. His focus remained on his principle enemies.

Arklem Greeth rubbed his hands together eagerly, preparing his spells.

In a flash he was gone, and when he stepped through the other side of the dimensional portal in the midst of a fighting throng, he tapped his thumbs together before him and brought forth a fan of fire, driving away friend and foe alike. Then he thrust his hands out wide to his sides and from each came a mighty forked lightning bolt, angled down to thump into the ground with such force that men and zombies, dwarves and ghouls went bouncing wildly away, leaving Arklem Greeth alone in his own little field of calm.

Everyone noticed him—how could they not? — for his display of power and fury was so far beyond anything that had been brought to the field thus far, by either Brambleberry or the Hosttower.

Barely controlling their mounts at that point, both Brambleberry and Deudermont turned to regard their foe.

“Kill him!” Brambleberry cried, and even as the words left his mouth, so too came the next of Arklem Greeth’s magical barrages.

All around the two leaders, the ground churned and broke apart, soil spraying, rocks flying, roots tearing. Down they tumbled side by side, their horses twisting and breaking around them. Brambleberry’s landed atop him with a sickening cracking of bones, and though he was luckier to fall aside from his thrashing and terrified horse, Deudermont still found himself at the bottom of a ten-foot hole, thick with mud and water.

Up above, Arklem Greeth wasn’t finished. He ignored the sudden reversal his assault on Brambleberry, and particularly upon beloved Deudermont, had wrought in the army around them, their fear quickly turning to outrage aimed at Greeth alone. Like the one point of calm in a world gone mad, Arklem Greeth followed his earth-shaking spell with an earthquake that had all around him stumbling and falling. The line of the tremor was aimed perfectly for the loose mounds at the sides of the chasm he had created. He meant to bury the Waterdhavian lord and the good captain alive.

All around them realized it, though, and came at Greeth with fury, a roiling throng of outrage closing in on him from every side, throwing spears and rocks—even swords—anything to distract or wound that being of ultimate evil.

“Fools, all,” the archmage arcane muttered under his breath.

With one last burst of power that broke apart one side of the deep hole, Greeth fell back into his wraith form, flattening to two dimensions. He narrowed to a black line and slipped down into the ground, running swiftly through narrow cracks until he stood again in his own chamber in the Hosttower of the Arcane.

Exhaustion followed him there, for the lich had not utilized such a sudden and potent barrage of magic in many, many years. He heard the continuing roar outside his window and didn’t need to go there to understand that any gains he’d made would prove temporary.

Dropping the leaders had not turned the mob, but had only incensed it further.

There were simply too many. Too many fools…too much fodder.

“Fools all,” he said again, and he thought of Valindra out along the southern rocks of Cutlass Island. He hoped she was dead already.

With a heavy sigh that crackled across the collection of hardened mucus in Arklem Greeth’s unbreathing lungs, the lich went to his private stash of potent drinks—drinks he had created himself, fashioned mostly of blood and living things. Drinks that, like the lich himself, transcended death. He took a long, deep sip of one potent mixture.

He thought of his decades at the Hosttower, a place he had so long called home. He knew that was over, for the time being at least, but he could wait.

And he could make it hurt.

The chamber would come with him—he had fashioned it with magic for just such a sudden and violent transportation, for he had known from the moment he’d achieved lichdom that the day would surely befall him when he’d have to abandon his tower home. But he, and the part he most coveted, would be saved.

The rest would be lost.

Arklem Greeth moved through a small trapdoor, down a ladder to a tiny secret room where he kept one of his most prized possessions: a staff of incredible power. With that staff, a younger, living Arklem Greeth had waged great battles, his fireballs and lightning bolts greater in number and intensity. With that staff, full of its own power to taste of Mystra’s Weave, he had escaped certain doom many times on those occasions when his own magical reservoir had been drained.

He rubbed a hand over its burnished wood, considering it as he would an old friend.

It was set in a strange contraption of Greeth’s design. The staff itself was laid across a pyramid-shaped stone, the very center of the six-foot long staff right at the narrow tip of the great block. Hanging from chains at either end of the staff were two large metal bowls, and up above those bowls, over the staff and on stout stands of thick iron, sat two tanks of dense silver liquid.

With another sigh, Greeth reached up and pulled a central cord, one that uncorked plugs from the mercury-filled reservoirs, and dropped out chutes directly over the corresponding bowls.

The heavy fluid metal began to flow, slowly and teasingly dripping into the bowls, like the sands of an hourglass counting down the end of the world.

Such staves as that, so full of magical energy, could not be broken without a cataclysmic release.

Arklem Greeth went back to his secure but mobile chamber with confidence that the explosion would send him exactly where he wanted to go.

They were winning the field, but the Luskar and their Waterdhavian allies didn’t feel victorious, not with their leaders Brambleberry and Deudermont buried! They set a defensive perimeter around the churned area, and many fell over the loose dirt, digging with sword and dagger, or bare hands. A torn fingernail elicited no more than a grimace among the determined, frantic group. One man inadvertently drove his dagger through his own hand, but merely growled as he went back to tearing at the ground for his beloved Captain Deudermont.

Fury rained upon the field: fire and lightning, monsters undead and magically created. The Luskar matched that fury; they were fighting for their very lives, for their families. There could be no retreat, no withdrawal, and to a man and woman they knew it.

So they fought, and fired their arrows at the wizards on the balconies, and though they died ten-to-one, perhaps more, it seemed that their advance could not be halted.

But then it was, with the snap of a magical staff.

Someone tugged hard at his arm, and Deudermont gasped his first breath in far too long a time as another hand scraped the dirt away from his face.

Through bleary eyes, he saw his rescuers, a woman brushing his face, a strong man yanking at his one extended arm, and with such force that Deudermont feared he would pull his shoulder right out of its socket.

His thoughts went to Brambleberry, who had fallen beside him, and he took heart to see so many clawing at the ground, so much commotion to rescue the Waterdhavian lord. Though he was still fully immersed in the soil, other than that one extended arm, Deudermont somehow managed to nod, and even smile at the woman cleaning off his face.

Then she was gone—a wave of multicolored energy rolled out like a ripple on a pond, crossing over Deudermont with the sound of a cyclone.

The sleeve burned from his extended arm, his face flushed with stinging warmth. It seemed to go on for many, many heartbeats, then came the sound of crashing, like trees falling. Deudermont felt the ground rumble three or four times—too close together for him to accurately take a count.

His arm fell limp to the ground. As he regained his sensibilities, Deudermont saw the boots of the man who had been tugging at his arm. The captain couldn’t turn his head enough to follow up the legs, but he knew the man was dead.

He knew that the field was dead.

Too still.

And too quiet, so suddenly, as if all the world had ended.

Robillard kept his forces tight and organized as they made their way north along Cutlass Island. He was fairly certain that they’d meet no resistance until they got within the Hosttower’s compound, but he wanted the first response from his force to be coordinated and devastating. He assured those around him that they would clear every window, every balcony, every doorway on the North Spire with their first barrage.

Behind Robillard came Valindra, her arms tightly bound behind her back, flanked by Maimun and Arabeth.

“The archmage arcane falls this day,” Robillard remarked quietly, so that only those close to him could hear.

“Arklem Greeth is more than ready for you,” Valindra retorted.

Arabeth reacted with a suddenness that shocked the others, spinning a left hook into the face of their moon elf captive. Valindra’s head jolted back and came forward, blood showing below her thin, pretty nose.

“You will pay for—” Valindra warned, or started to, until Arabeth hit her again, just as viciously.

Robillard and Maimun looked to each other incredulously, but then both just grinned at Arabeth’s initiative. They could clearly see the years of enmity between the two overwizards, and separately reasoned that the taller and more classically beautiful Valindra had often been a thorn in Arabeth’s side.

Each man made a mental note to not anger the Lady Raurym.

Valindra seemed to get the message as well, for she said no more.

Robillard led them up a tumble of boulders to get a view over the wall. The fighting was thick and vicious all around the five-spired tower. The ship’s wizard quickly formulated an approach to best come onto the field, and was about to relay it to his charges when the staff broke.

The world seemed to fall apart.

Maimun saved Robillard that day, the young pirate reacting with amazing agility to pull the older wizard down behind the rocks beside him. Similarly, Arabeth rescued Valindra, albeit inadvertently, for as she, too, dived back, she brushed the captive enough to send her tumbling down as well.

The wave of energy rolled over them. Rocks went flying and several of Robillard’s force fell hard, more than one mortally wounded. They were on the outer edge of the blast and so it passed quickly. Robillard, Maimun, and Arabeth all scrambled to their feet quickly enough to peer over and witness the fall of the Hosttower itself. The largest, central pillar, Greeth’s own, was gone, as if it had either been blown to dust or had simply vanished—and it truth, it was a bit of both. The four armlike spires, the once graceful limbs, tumbled down, crashing in burning heaps and billowing clouds of angry gray dust.

The warriors on the field, man and monster alike, had fallen in neat rows, like cut timber, and though groans and cries told Robillard and the others that some had survived, none of the three believed for a heartbeat that number to be large.

“By the gods, Greeth, what have you done?” Robillard asked into the empty and suddenly still morning air.

Arabeth gave a sudden cry of dismay and fell back, and neither Maimun nor Robillard considered her quickly enough to stop her as she leaped down at the face-down and battered Valindra and drove a dagger deep into the captured wizard’s back.

“No!” Robillard cried at her when he realized her action. “We need…” He stopped and grimaced as Arabeth retracted the blade and struck again, and again, and Valindra’s screams became muffled with blood.

Maimun finally got to Arabeth and pulled her back; Robillard called for a priest.

He waved back the first of the clerics that came forward, though, knowing that it was too late, and that others would need his healing prayers.

“What have you done?” Robillard asked Arabeth, who sobbed, but looked at the devastated field, not at her gruesome handiwork.

“It was better than she deserved,” Arabeth replied.

Glancing over his shoulder at the utter devastation of the Hosttower of the Arcane, and the men and women who had gone against it, Robillard found it hard to disagree.

CHAPTER 17 CONSEQUENCE

T he irony of pulling a battered, but very much alive Deudermont from the ground was not lost on Maimun, who considered how many others—they were all around him on the devastated field—would soon be put into the ground, and because of the decisions of that very same captain.

“Don’t kick a man who’s lying flat, I’ve been told,” Maimun muttered, and Robillard and Arabeth turned to regard him, as well as the half-conscious Deudermont. “But you’re an idiot, good captain.”

“Watch your tongue, young one,” Robillard warned.

“Better to remain silent than speak the truth and offend the powerful, yes Robillard?” Maimun replied with a sour and knowing grin.

“Remind me why Sea Sprite didn’t sink Thrice Lucky on the many occasions we’ve seen you at sea,” the wizard threatened. “I seem to forget.”

“My charm, no doubt.”

“Enough, you two,” Arabeth scolded, her voice trembling with every syllable. “Look around you! Is this travesty all about you? About your petty rivalry? About placing blame?”

“How can it not be about who’s to blame?” Maimun started to argue, but Arabeth cut him short with a vicious scowl.

“It’s about those scattered on this field, nothing more,” she said, her voice even. “Alive and dead…in the Hosttower and without.”

Maimun swallowed hard and glanced at Robillard, who seemed equally out of venom, and indeed, Arabeth’s argument was difficult to counter given the carnage around them. They finished extracting Deudermont at the same time that another rescue team called out that they had located Lord Brambleberry.

The ground covering him had saved him from the explosion, but had smothered him in the process. The young Waterdhavian lord, so full of ambition and vision, and the desire to earn his way, was dead.

There would be no cheering that day, and even if there had been, it would have been drowned out by the cries of anguish and agony.

Work went on through the night and into the next day, separating dead from wounded, tending to those who could be helped. Guided by Robillard, assault teams went into each of the four fallen spires of the destroyed Hosttower, and more than a few of Arklem Greeth’s minions were pulled from the rubble, all surrendering without a struggle, no fight left in them—not after seeing the unbridled evil of the man they’d once called the archmage arcane.

The cost had been horrific—more than a third of the population of the once-teeming city of Luskan was dead.

But the war was over.

Captain Deudermont shook his head solemnly.

“What does that mean?” Regis yelled at him. “You can’t just say he’s gone!”

“Many are just gone, my friend,” Deudermont explained. “The blast that took the Hosttower released all manner of magical power, destructive and altering. Men were burned and blasted, others transformed, and others, many others, banished from this world. Some were utterly destroyed, I’m told, their very souls disintegrated into nothingness.”

“And what happened to Drizzt?” Regis demanded.

“We cannot know. He is not to be found. Like so many. I’m sorry. I feel this loss as keenly as—”

“Shut up!” Regis yelled at him. “You don’t know anything! Robillard tried to warn you—many did! You don’t know anything! You chose this fight and look at what it has gotten you, what it has gotten us all!”

“Enough!” Robillard growled at the halfling, and he moved threateningly at Regis.

Deudermont held him back, though, understanding that Regis’s tirade was wrought of utter grief. How could it not be? Why should it not be? The loss of Drizzt Do’Urden was no small thing, after all, particularly not to the halfling that had spent the better part of the last decades by the dark elf’s side.

“We could not know the desperation of Arklem Greeth, or that he was capable of such wanton devastation,” Deudermont said, his voice quiet and humble. “But the fact that he was capable of it, and willing to do it, only proves that he had to be removed, by whatever means the people of Luskan could muster. He would have rained his devastation upon them sooner or later, and in more malicious forms, no doubt. Whether freeing the undead from the magical bindings of Illusk or using his wizards to slowly bleed the city into submission, he was no man worthy of being the leader of this city.”

“You act as if this city is worthy of having a leader,” Regis said.

“They stood arm in arm to win,” Deudermont scolded, growing excited—so much so that the priest attending him grabbed him by the shoulders to remind him that he had to stay calm. “Every family in Luskan feels grief as keen as your own. Doubt that not at all. The price of their freedom has been high indeed.”

“Their freedom, their fight,” the halfling spat.

“Drizzt marched with me willingly,” Deudermont reminded Regis. That was the last of it, though, as the priest forcibly guided the captain out of the room.

“You throw guilt on the shoulders of a man already bent low by its great weight,” Robillard said.

“He made his choices.”

“As did you, as did I, and as did Drizzt. I understand your pain—Drizzt Do’Urden was my friend, as well—but does your anger at Captain Deudermont do anything to alleviate it?”

Regis started to answer, started to protest, but stopped and fell back on his bed. What was the point?

Of anything?

He thought of Mithral Hall and felt that it was past time for him to go home.

He couldn’t even make out their physical shapes, as they seemed no more than extensions of the endless shadows that surrounded him. Nor could he distinguish the many natural weapons that each of the demonic creatures seemed to possess, and so all of his fighting was purely on instinct, purely on reaction.

There was no victory to be found. He would stay alive only as long as his reactions and reflexes remained fast enough to fend off the gathering cloud of monsters, only as long as his arms held the strength to keep his scimitars high enough to block a serpentine head from tearing out his throat, or a clublike fist from bashing in the side of his skull.

He needed a reprieve, but there was none. He needed to escape, but knew that was just as unlikely.

So he fought, blades and growls denying his own mortality. Drizzt fought and ran, and fought some more and ran some more, always seeking a place of refuge.

And finding only more battle.

A large black shape rose before him, six arms coming at him in an overwhelming barrage, and with overwhelming strength. Knowing better than to try to stand against it, Drizzt dived to the ground to the side, thinking to roll to his feet and rush around to attack the creature from another angle.

But it had prepared for him, and when he hit the ground, he found his momentum stolen by a thick puddle of sticky mucus.

The creature rushed over to him, rising to its full height, twice that of a tall man. It lifted all six of its thunderous arms out wide and high, and bellowed in anticipation of victory.

Drizzt wriggled an arm free and stabbed it hard in the leg, but that would hardly slow the beast.

When Guenhwyvar crashed into the side of its lupine head, though, all thoughts of finishing off the drow fled, as both panther and demon flew away.

Drizzt wasted no time in extracting himself from the muck, muttering thanks to Guenhwyvar all the while. How lifted his spirits had been when he’d realized the identity of his first encounter in that hellish place, when he’d realized that Guenhwyvar had followed him through Arklem Greeth’s gate. Together they had defeated every foe thus far, and as Drizzt closed in on the fallen behemoth, scimitars swinging, another demon found its premature victory cries muffled by its own blood.

Drizzt paused to crouch beside Guenhwyvar, though he knew they had to move along, and quickly.

He had been so pleased to see her, so hopeful that his rescue was at hand by his dearest of companions, but he had come to regret that Guenhwyvar had come through, for she was as trapped as he, and surely as doomed.

“Well, now, there’s a good one,” Queaser said to Skerrit through a mouth half-full of twisted yellow teeth. “I’ll get us a good bit for this, I’d be guessin’.”

“What’d ye find then, ye dirty cow?” Skerrit replied with an equally wretched grin, and one made worse since he was between bites of some rancid meat he had found in the pocket of a dead soldier.

Queaser motioned for Skerrit to come closer—the field was full of looting thugs, after all—and showed him an onyx figurine beautifully crafted into the likeness of a great black cat.

“Heh, but we should be thanking Deudermont for bringing so much opportunity our way, I’m thinking,” said a very pleased Skerrit. “Three-hands’ll give us a purse o’ gold for that one.”

Queaser laughed and stuffed the figurine into a pouch under his dirty and ragged vest, instead of the large, bulging sack where he and Skerrit had placed the more mundane booty.

“Let’s get away,” Queaser reasoned. “If they’re to catch us with the coin and the belts, that’s our loss, but I’m not for wanting this treasure tucked into the pocket of a Luskar guard.”

“Get her sold,” Skerrit agreed. “There’ll be more to find on the field tomorrow night, and the night after that, and after that again.”

The two wretches shuffled across the dark field. Somewhere in the darkness, a wounded woman, not yet found by the rescue teams, moaned pitifully, but they ignored the plea and went on their profitable way.

CHAPTER 18 ASCENSION AND SALVATION

Y ou are recovering well,” Robillard said to Deudermont the next morning, a brilliantly sunny one, quite rare in Luskan that time of year. In response, the captain held up his injured arm, clenched his hand, and nodded. “Or would be, if we could quiet the din,” Robillard added. He moved to the room’s large window, which overlooked a wide square, and pulled aside a corner of the heavy curtain.

Out in the square, a great cheer arose.

Robillard shook his head and sighed then turned back to see Deudermont sitting up on the edge of his bed.

“My waistcoat, if you would,” Deudermont said.

“You should not…” Robillard replied, but without much conviction, for he knew the captain would never heed his warning. The resigned wizard went from the window to the dresser and retrieved his friend’s clothes.

Deudermont followed him, albeit shakily.

“You’re sure you’re ready for this?” the wizard asked, helping with the sleeves of a puffy white shirt.

“How many days has it been?”

“Only three.”

“Do we know the count of the dead? Has Drizzt been found?”

“Two thousand, at least,” Robillard answered. “Perhaps half again that number.” Deudermont winced from more than pain as Robillard slid the waistcoat along his injured arm. “And no, I fear that Arklem Greeth’s treachery marked the end of our drow friend,” Robillard added. “We haven’t found as much as a dark-skinned finger. He was right near the tower when it exploded, I’m told.”

“Quick and without pain, then,” said Deudermont. “That’s something we all hope for.” He nodded and shuffled to the window.

“I expect Drizzt hoped for it to come several centuries from now,” Robillard had to jab as he followed.

Propelled as much by anger as determination, Deudermont grabbed the heavy curtain and pulled it wide. Still using only his uninjured arm, he tugged the window open and stepped into clear view of the throng gathered in the square.

Below him on the street, the people of Luskan, so battered and bereaved, so weary of battle, oppression, thieves, murderers, and all the rest, cheered wildly. More than one of the gathering fainted, overcome by emotion.

“Deudermont is alive!” someone cried.

“Huzzah for Deudermont!” another cheered.

“A third of them dead and they cheer for me,” Deudermont said over his shoulder, his expression grim.

“It shows how much they hated Arklem Greeth, I expect,” Robillard replied. “But look past the square, past the hopeful faces, and you will see that we haven’t much time.”

Deudermont did just that, and took in the ruin of Cutlass Island. Even Closeguard had not escaped the weight of the blast, with many of the houses on the western side of the island flattened and still smoldering. Beyond Closeguard, in the harbor, a quartet of masts protruded from the dark waves. Four ships had been damaged, and two fully lost.

All across the city signs of devastation remained, the fallen bridge, the burned buildings, the heavy pall of smoke.

“Hopeful faces,” Deudermont remarked of the crowd. “Not satisfied, not victorious, just hopeful.”

“Hope is the back of hate’s coin,” Robillard warned and the captain nodded, knowing all too well that it was past time for him to get out of his bed and get to work.

He waved to the crowd and moved back into his room, followed by the frenzied cheers of desperate folk.

“It’s worth a thousand gold if it’s worth a plug copper,” Queaser argued, shaking the figurine in front of the unimpressed expression of Rodrick Fenn, the most famous pawnbroker in Luskan. Languishing beside the many others who dealt with the minor rogues and pirates of the city, Rodrick had only recently come into prominence, mostly because of the vast array of exotic goods he’d somehow managed to wrangle. A large bounty had been offered for information regarding Rodrick’s new source.

“I’ll give ye three gold, and ye’ll be glad to get it,” Rodrick said.

Queaser and Skerrit exchanged sour looks, both shaking their heads.

“You should pay him to take it from you,” said another in the store, who seemed an unassuming enough patron. In fact, he had been invited by Rodrick for just such a transaction, since Skerrit had tipped off Rodrick the night before regarding the onyx figurine.

“What d’ye know of it?” Skerrit demanded.

“I know that it was Drizzt Do’Urden’s,” Morik the Rogue replied. “I know that you hold a drow item, and one the dark elves will want returned. I wouldn’t wish to be the person caught with it, to be sure.”

Queaser and Skerrit looked at each other again, then Queaser scoffed and waved a hand dismissively at the rogue.

“Think, you fools,” said Morik. “Consider who—what—ran beside Drizzt into that last battle.” Morik gave a little laugh. “You’ve managed to place yourself between legions of drow and Captain Deudermont…oh, and King Bruenor of Mithral Hall, as well, who will no doubt seek that figurine out. Congratulations are in order.” He ended his sarcastic stream with a mocking laugh, and made his way toward the door.

“Twenty pieces of gold, and be glad for it,” Rodrick said. “And I’ll be turning it over to Deudermont, don’t you doubt, and hoping he’ll repay me—and if I’m in a good mood, I might tell him that the two of you came to me so that I could give it back to him.”

Queaser looked as if he was trying to say something, but no words came out.

“Or I’ll just go to Deudermont and make his search a bit easier, and you’ll be glad that I sent him and that I had no way to tell any dark elves instead.”

“Ye’re bluffing,” Skerrit insisted.

“Call it, then,” Rodrick said with a wry grin.

Skerrit turned to Queaser, but the suddenly pale man was already handing the figurine over.

The two left quickly, passing Morik, who was outside leaning against the wall beside the door.

“You chose well,” the rogue assured them.

Skerrit got in his face. “Shut yer mouth, and if ye’re ever for telling anyone other than what Rodrick’s telling them, then know we’re to find ye first and do ye under.”

Morik shrugged, an exaggerated movement that perfectly covered the slide of his hand. He went back into Rodrick’s shop as the two hustled away.

“I’ll be wanting my gold back,” Rodrick greeted him, but the smiling Morik was already tossing the pouch the pawnbroker’s way. Morik walked over to the counter and Rodrick handed him the statue.

“Worth more than a thousand,” Rodrick muttered as Morik took it.

“If it keeps the bosses happy, it’s worth our very lives,” the rogue replied, and he tipped his hat and departed.

“Governor,” Baram spat with disgust. “They’re wanting him to be governor, and he’s to take the call, by all accounts.”

“And well he should,” Kensidan replied.

“And this don’t bother ye?” Baram asked. “Ye said we’d be finding power when Greeth was gone, and now Greeth’s gone and all I’m finding are widows and brats needing food. I’ll be emptying half of me coffers to keep the folk of Ship Baram in line.”

“Consider it the best investment of your life,” High Captain Kurth answered before Kensidan could. “No Ship lost more than my own.”

“I lost most of me guards,” Taerl put in. “Ye lost a hundred common folk and a score of houses, but I lost fighters. How many of yers marched alongside Deudermont?”

His bluster couldn’t hold, though, as Kurth fixed him with a perfectly vicious glare.

“Deudermont’s ascension was predictable and desirable,” Kensidan said to them all to get the meeting of the five back on track. “We survived the war. Our Ships remain intact, though battered, as Luskan herself is battered. That will mend, and this time, we will not have the smothering strength of the Hosttower holding us in check at every turn. Be at ease, my friends, for this has gone splendidly. True, we could not fully anticipate the devastation Greeth wrought, and true, we have many more dead than we expected, but the war was mercifully short and favorably concluded. We could not ask for a better stooge than Captain Deudermont to serve as the new puppet governor of Luskan.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Kurth warned. “He is a hero to the people, even to those fighters who serve in our ranks.”

“Then we must make sure that the next few tendays shine a different light upon him,” said Kensidan. As he finished, he looked at his closest ally, Suljack, and saw the man frowning and shaking his head. Kensidan wasn’t quite sure what that might mean, for in truth, Suljack had lost the most soldiers in the battle, with nearly all of his Ship marching beside Deudermont and a good many of them killed at the Hosttower.

“Well enough to get out of bed, I would say,” a voice accosted Regis. He lay in his bed, half asleep, feeling perfectly miserable both emotionally and physically. He could deal with his wounds a lot easier than with the loss of Drizzt. How was he going to go back to Mithral Hall and face Bruenor? And Catti-brie!

“I feel better,” he lied.

“Then do sit up, little one,” the voice replied, and that gave Regis pause, for he didn’t recognize the speaker and saw no one when he looked around the room.

He sat up quickly then, and immediately focused on a darkened corner of the room.

Magically darkened, he knew.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“An old friend.”

Regis shook his head.

“Fare well on your journey….” the voice said and the last notes of the sentence faded away to nothingness, taking the magical darkness with it.

Leaving a revelation that had Regis gawking with surprise and trepidation.

He knew that he was nearing the end, and that there was no way out. Guenhwyvar, too, would perish, and Drizzt could only pray that her death on that alien plane, removed from the figurine, wouldn’t be permanent, that she would, as she had on the Prime Material Plane, simply revert to her Astral home.

The drow cursed himself for leaving the statuette behind.

And he fought, not for himself, for he knew that he was doomed, but for Guenhwyvar, his beloved friend. Perhaps she would find her way home through sheer exhaustion, as long as he could keep her alive long enough.

He didn’t know how many hours, days, had passed. He had found bitter nourishment in giant mushrooms and in the flesh of some of the strange beasts that had come against him, but both had left him sickly and weak.

He knew he was nearing the end, but the fighting was not.

He faced a six-armed monstrosity, every lumbering swing from its thick arms heavy enough to decapitate him. Drizzt was too quick for those swipes, of course, and had he been less weary, his foe would have been an easy kill. But the drow could hardly hold his scimitars aloft, and his focus kept slipping. Several times, he managed to duck away just in time to avoid a heavy punch.

“Come on, Guen,” he whispered under his breath, having set the fiendish beast up for a sidelong strike from the panther’s position on a rocky outcropping to the right. Drizzt heard a growl, and grinned, expecting Guenhwyvar to fly in for the kill.

But Drizzt got hit, and hard, instead, a flying tackle that flung him away from the beast and left him rolling in a tangle with another powerful creature.

He didn’t understand—it was all he could do to hold onto his scimitars, let alone try to bring them to bear.

But then the muddy ground beneath him became more solid, and a stinging light blinded him, and though his eyes could not adjust to see anything, he realized from another familiar growl that it was Guenhwyvar who had tackled him.

He heard a friendly voice, a welcomed voice, a cry of glee.

He got hit with another flying tackle almost as soon as he’d extricated himself from the jumble with Guen.

“How?” he asked Regis.

“I don’t know and I don’t care!” the halfling responded, hugging Drizzt all the tighter.

“Kurth is right,” High Captain Rethnor warned his son. “Underestimate Captain Deudermont…Governor Deudermont, at our peril. He is a man of actions, not words. You were never at sea, and so you don’t understand the horror that filled men’s eyes when the sails of Sea Sprite were spotted.”

“I have heard the tales, but this is not the sea,” Kensidan replied.

“You have it all figured out,” Rethnor said, his mocking tone unmistakable.

“I remain agile in my ability to adapt to whatever comes our way.”

“But for now?”

“For now, I allow Kurth to run rampant on Closeguard and Cutlass, and even in the market area. He and I will dominate the streets easily enough, with Suljack playing my fool.”

“Deudermont may disband Prisoner’s Carnival, but he will raise a strong militia to enforce the laws.”

“His laws,” Kensidan replied, “not Luskan’s.”

“They are one and the same now.”

“No, not yet, and not ever if we properly pressure the streets,” said Kensidan. “Turmoil is Deudermont’s enemy, and lack of order will eventually turn the people against him. If he pushes too hard, he will find all of Luskan against him, as Arklem Greeth realized.”

“It’s a fight you want?” Rethnor said after a contemplative pause.

“It’s a fight I insist upon,” his conniving son answered. “For now, Deudermont makes a fine target for the anger of others, while Ship Kurth and Ship Rethnor rule the streets. When the breaking point is reached, a second war will erupt in Luskan, and when it’s done…”

“A free port,” said Rethnor. “A sanctuary for…merchant ships.”

“With ready trade in exotic goods that will find their way to the homes of Waterdhavian lords and to the shops of Baldur’s Gate,” said Kensidan. “That alone will keep Waterdeep from organizing an invasion of the new Luskan, for the self-serving bastard nobles will not threaten their own playthings. We’ll have our port, our city, and all pretense of law and subservience to the lords of Waterdeep be damned.”

“Lofty goals,” said Rethnor.

“My father, I only seek to make you proud,” Kensidan said with such obvious sarcasm that old Rethnor could only laugh, and heartily.

“I’m not easy with this disembodied voice arriving in the darkness,” Deudermont said. “But pleased I am, beyond anything, to see you alive and well.”

“Well is a relative term,” the drow replied. “But I’m recovering—though if you ever happen to travel to the plane of my imprisonment, take care to avoid the mushrooms.”

Deudermont and Robillard laughed at that, as did Regis, who was standing at Drizzt’s side, both of them carrying their packs for the road.

“I have acquaintances on Luskan’s streets,” Drizzt reasoned. “Some not even of my knowing, but friends of a friend.”

“Wulfgar,” said Deudermont. “Perhaps it was that Morik character he ran beside—though he’s not supposed to be in Luskan, on pain of death.”

Drizzt shrugged. “Whatever good fortune brought Guenhwyvar’s statue to Regis, it’s good fortune I will accept.”

“True enough,” said the captain. “And now you are bound for Icewind Dale. Are you sure that you cannot stay the winter, for I’ve much to do, and your help would serve me well.”

“If we hurry, we can beat the snows to Ten-Towns,” said Drizzt.

“And you will return to Luskan in the spring?”

“We would be sorry friends indeed if we didn’t,” Regis answered.

“We will return,” Drizzt promised.

With handshakes and bows, the pair left Sea Sprite, which served as the governor’s palace until the devastation in the city could be sorted out and a new location, formerly the Red Dragon Inn on the northern bank of the Mirar, could be properly secured and readied.

The enormity of the rebuilding task ahead of Luskan was not lost on Drizzt and Regis as they walked through the city’s streets. Much of the place had been gutted by flames and so many had died, leaving one empty structure after another. Many of the larger homes and taverns had been confiscated by order of Governor Deudermont and set up as hospitals for the many, many wounded, or as often as not as morgues to hold the bodies until they could be properly identified and buried.

“The Luskar will do little through the winter, other than to try to find food and warmth,” Regis remarked as they passed a group of haggard women huddled in a doorway.

“It will be a long road,” Drizzt agreed.

“Was it worth the cost?” the halfling asked.

“We can’t yet know.”

“A lot of folk would disagree with you on that,” Regis remarked, nodding in the direction of the new graveyard north of the city.

“Arklem Greeth was intolerable,” Drizzt reminded his friend. “If the city can withstand the next few months, a year perhaps, with the rebuilding in the summer, then Deudermont will do well by them, do not doubt. He will call in every favor from every Waterdhavian lord, and goods and supplies will flow fast to Luskan.”

“Will it be enough, though?” Regis asked. “With so many of the healthy adults dead, how many of their families will even stay?”

Drizzt shrugged helplessly.

“Perhaps we should stay and help through the winter,” said Regis, but Drizzt was shaking his head.

“Not everyone in Luskan accepts me, Deudermont’s friend or not,” the drow replied. “We didn’t instigate their fight, but we helped the correct side win it. Now we must trust them to do what’s right—there’s little we can do here now. Besides, I want to see Wulfgar again, and Icewind Dale. Its been too long since I’ve looked upon my first true home.”

“But Luskan…” Regis started.

Drizzt interrupted with an upraised hand.

“Was it really worth it?” Regis pressed anyway.

“I have no answers, nor do you.”

They passed out of the city’s northern gate then, to the halfhearted cheers of the few guardsmen along the wall and towers.

“Maybe we could get them all to march to Longsaddle next,” Regis remarked, and Drizzt laughed, almost as helplessly as he had shrugged.