Robert Salvatore - The Ghost King

“What’d’ye do?” the dwarf asked in all seriousness.

“I have no idea,” Jarlaxle replied.

“Worked, though,” Athrogate offered.

Jarlaxle, not so certain of that, merely smirked.

They kept watch over the rift for a short while, and gradually the phenomenon dissipated, the wilderness returning to its previous firmament with no discernable damage. All was as it had been, except that the specter was gone.

“Still going east?” Athrogate asked as he and Jarlaxle started out the next day.

“That was the plan.”

“The plan to win.”

“Yes.”

“I’m thinkin’ we won last night,” the dwarf said.

“We defeated a minion,” Jarlaxle explained. “It has always been my experience that defeating a minion of a powerful foe only makes that foe angrier.”

“So we should’ve let the shadow thing win?”

Jarlaxle’s sigh elicited a loud laugh from Athrogate.

On they went through the day, and at camp that night, Jarlaxle dared to allow himself some time in Reverie.

And there, in his own subconscious, Hephaestus found him again.

Clever drow, the dracolich said in his mind. Did you truly believe you could so easily escape me?

Jarlaxle threw up his defenses in the form of images of Menzoberranzan, the great Underdark city. He concentrated on a distinct memory, of a battle his mercenary band had waged on behalf of Matron Mother Baenre. In that fight, a much younger Jarlaxle had engaged two separate weapons masters right in front of the doors of Melee-Magthere, the drow school of martial training. It was perhaps the most desperate struggle Jarlaxle had ever known, and one he would not have survived were it not for the intervention of a third weapons master, one of a lower-ranked House—House Do’Urden, actually, though that battle had been fought many decades before Drizzt drew his first breath.

That memory had long been crystallized in the mind of Jarlaxle Baenre, with images distinct and clear, and a level of tumult enough to keep his thoughts occupied. And with such emotional mental churning, the drow hoped he wouldn’t surrender his current position to the intrusive Hephaestus.

Well done, drow! Hephaestus congratulated him. But it will not matter in the end. Do you truly believe you can so easily hide from me? Do you truly believe your simple, but undeniably clever trick, would destroy one of the Seven?

One of what ‘Seven’? Jarlaxle asked himself.

He put the question to the back of his mind quickly and resumed his mental defense. He understood that his bold stand did little or nothing to shake the confidence of Hephaestus, but he remained certain that the hunting dragon wasn’t making much headway. Then a notion occurred to him and he was jolted from his confrontation with the dragon, and from his Reverie entirely. He stumbled away from the tree upon which he was leaning.

“The Seven,” he said, and swallowed hard, trying to recall all that he had learned about the origins of the Crystal Shard—and the seven liches who had created it.

“The Seven …” Jarlaxle whispered again, and a shiver ran up his spine.

Jarlaxle set the pace even swifter the next day, nightmare and hell boar running hard along the road. When they saw the smoke of an encampment not far ahead, Jarlaxle pulled to a halt.

“Orcs, likely,” he explained to the dwarf. “We are near the border of King Obould’s domain.”

“Let’s kill ‘em, then.”

Jarlaxle shook his head. “You must learn to exploit your enemies, my hairy little friend,” he explained. “If these are Obould’s orcs, they are not enemies of Mithral Hall.”

“Bah!” Athrogate said, and spat on the ground.

“We go to them not as enemies, but as fellow travelers,” Jarlaxle ordered. “Let us see what we might learn.” Noting the disappointment on Athrogate’s face, he added, “But do keep your morningstars near at hand.”

It was indeed a camp of Many Arrow orcs, who served Obould, and though they sprang to readiness, brandishing weapons, at the casual approach of the curious pair—dwarf and drow—they held their arrows.

“We are travelers from Luskan,” Jarlaxle greeted them in perfect command of Orcish, “trade emissaries to King Obould and King Bruenor.” Out of the corner of his mouth, he bade Athrogate to remain calm and to keep his mount’s pace steady and slow. “We have good food to share,” Jarlaxle added. “And better grog.”

“What’d’ye tell ‘em?” Athrogate asked, seeing the porcine soldiers brighten and nod at one another.

“That we’re all going to get drunk together,” Jarlaxle whispered back. “In a pig’s fat rump!” the dwarf protested.

“Wherever you please,” the drow replied. He slid down from his saddle and dismissed his hell-spawned steed. “Come, let us learn what we may.”

It all started rather tentatively, with Jarlaxle producing both food and “grog” aplenty. The drink went over well with the orcs, even more so when the dwarf spat out his first taste of it with disgust. He looked to Jarlaxle as if dumbstruck, as if he never could have imagined anything potent tasting so wretched. Jarlaxle responded with a wink and held out his flask to replenish Athrogate’s mug, but with a different mixture, the dwarf noted.

Gutbuster.

Not another word of complaint came from Athrogate.

“You friends with Drizzt Do’Urden?” one of the orcs asked Jarlaxle, the creature’s tongue loosened by the drink.

“You know of him?” the drow replied, and several of the orcs nodded. “As do I! I have met him many times, and fought beside him on occasion—and woe to those who stand before his scimitars!”

That last bit didn’t go over well with the orcs, and one of them growled threateningly.

“Drizzt is wounded in his heart,” said the orc, and the creature grinned as if that fact pleased him immensely.

Jarlaxle stared hard and tried to decipher that notion. “Catti-brie?” “A fool now,” the orc explained. “Touched by magic. Daft by magic.” A couple of the others chuckled.

The Weave, Jarlaxle realized, for he was not ignorant of the traumatic events unfolding around him. Luskan, too, a city that once housed the Hosttower of the Arcane and still named many of the wizards of that place as citizens—and allies of Bregan D’aerthe—had certainly been touched by the unraveling Weave.

“Where is she?” Jarlaxle asked, and the orc shrugged as if it hardly cared.

But Jarlaxle surely did, for a plan was already formulating. To defeat Hephaestus, he needed Cadderly. To enlist Cadderly, he needed Drizzt. Could it be that Catti-brie, and so Drizzt, needed Cadderly as well?

“Guenhwyvar,” the young girl called. Her eyes leveled in their sockets, showing their rich blue hue.

Drizzt and Bruenor stood dumbfounded in the small chamber, staring at Catti-brie, whose demeanor had suddenly changed to that of her pre-teen self. She had floated off the bed again, rising as her eyes rolled to white, purple flames and crackling energy dancing all around her, her thick hair flowing in a wind neither Drizzt nor Bruenor could feel.

Drizzt had seen this strange event before, and had warned Bruenor, but when his daughter’s posture and demeanor, everything about the way she held herself, had changed so subtly, yet dramatically, Bruenor nearly fell over with weakness. Truly she seemed a different person at that moment, a younger Catti-brie.

Bruenor called to her, his voice thick with desperation and remorse, but she seemed not to notice.

“Guenhwyvar?” she called again.

She seemed to be walking then, slowly and deliberately, though she didn’t actually move. She held out one hand as if toward the cat—the cat who wasn’t there.