Robert Salvatore - The Ghost King

“Go and ready the wagon,” Drizzt instructed, “but wait for me.”

He turned and sprinted back the way they’d come, all the way to Regis’s room, where he burst in and dashed to the small coffer atop the dresser. With trembling hands, Drizzt pulled forth the ruby pendant.

“What’re ye about?” asked Cordio Muffinhead, a priest of high repute, who stood beside the halfling.

Drizzt held up the pendant, the enchanting ruby spinning enticingly in the torchlight. “I have an idea. Pray, wake the little one, but hold him steady, all of you.”

They looked at the drow curiously, but so many years together had taught them to trust Drizzt Do’Urden, and they did as he bade them.

Regis came awake thrashing, his legs moving as if he were trying to run away from some unseen monster.

Drizzt moved his face very close to the halfling, calling to him, but Regis gave no sign of hearing his old friend.

The drow brought forth the ruby pendant and set it spinning right before Regis’s eyes. The sparkles drew Drizzt inside, so alluring and calming, and a short while later, within the depths of the ruby, he found Regis.

“Drizzt,”the halfling said aloud, and also in Drizzt’s mind. “Help me.”

Drizzt got only the slightest glimpse of the visions tormenting Regis. He found himself in a land of shadow—the very Plane of Shadow, perhaps, or some other lower plane—with dark and ominous creatures coming at him from every side, clawing at him, open maws full of sharpened teeth biting at his face. Clawed hands slashed at him along the periphery of his vision, always just a moment ahead of him. Instinctively, Drizzt’s free hand went to a scimitar belted at his hip and he cried out and began to draw it forth.

Something hit him hard, throwing him aside, right over the bed he couldn’t see. It sent him tumbling to a floor he couldn’t see.

In the distance, Drizzt heard the clatter of something bouncing across the stone floor and knew it to be the ruby pendant. He felt a burning sensation in his forearm and closed his eyes tightly to grimace away the pain. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the room, Cordio standing over him. He looked at his arm to see a trickle of blood where it had caught against his half-drawn scimitar as he tumbled.

“What—?” he started to ask the dwarf.

“Apologies, elf,” said Cordio, “but I had to ram ye. Ye was seein’ monsters like the little one there, and drawing yer blade …”

“Say no more, good dwarf,” Drizzt replied, pulling himself up to a sitting position and bringing his injured arm in front of him, pressing hard to try to stem the flow of blood.

“Get me a bandage!” Cordio yelled to the others, who were hard at work holding down the thrashing Regis.

“He’s in there,” Drizzt explained as Cordio wrapped his arm. “I found him. He called out for help.”

“Yeah, that we heared.”

“He’s seeing monsters—shadowy things—in a horrible place.”

Another dwarf came over and handed the ruby pendant to Cordio, who presented it to Drizzt, but the drow held up his hand.

“Keep it,” Drizzt explained. “You might find a way to use it to reach him, but do take care.”

“Oh, I’ll be having a team o’ Gutbusters ready to knock me down in that case,” Cordio assured him.

“More than that,” said Drizzt. “Take care that you can escape the place where Regis now resides.” He looked with great sympathy at his poor halfling friend, for the first time truly appreciating the horror Regis felt with every waking moment.

Drizzt caught up to Bruenor in the eastern halls. The king sat on the bench of a fabulous wagon of burnished wood and solid wheels, with a sub-carriage that featured several strong springs of an alloy Nanfoodle had concocted, almost as strong as iron, but not nearly as brittle. The wagon showed true craftsmanship and pride, a fitting representation of the art and skill of Mithral Hall.

The vehicle wasn’t yet finished, though, for the dwarves had planned an enclosed bed and perhaps an extension bed for cargo behind, with a greater harness that would allow a team of six or eight. But upon Bruenor’s call for urgency, they had cut the work short and fitted low wooden walls and a tailgate quickly. They had brought out their finest team of mules, young and strong, fitting them with magical horseshoes that would allow them to move at a swift pace throughout the entirety of a day.

“I found Regis in his nightmares,” Drizzt explained, climbing up beside his friend. “I used the ruby on him, as he did with Catti-brie.”

“Ye durned fool!”

Drizzt shook his head. “With all caution,” he assured his companion.

“I’m seein’ that,” Bruenor said dryly, staring at the drow’s bandaged arm.

“I found him and he saw me, but only briefly. He is living in the realm of nightmares, Bruenor, and though I tried to pull him back with me, I could not begin to gain ground. Instead, he pulled me in with him, a place that would overwhelm me as it has him. But there is hope, I believe.” He sighed and mouthed the name they had attached to that hope, “Cadderly.” That notion made Bruenor drive the team on with more urgency as they rolled out of Mithral Hall’s eastern gate, turning fast for the southwest.

Pwent moved up to ride on the seat with Bruenor. Drizzt ran scout along their flanks, though he often had to climb aboard the wagon and catch his breath, for it rolled along without the need to rest the mules. Through it all, Catti-brie sat quietly in the back, seeing nothing that they could see, hearing nothing that they could hear, lost and alone.

“Ye’re knowin’ them well,” Athrogate congratulated Jarlaxle later that day when the pair, lying on top of a grassy knoll, spied the wagon rambling down the road from the northeast.

Jarlaxle’s expression showed no such confidence, for he had been caught completely by surprise at the quick progress the wagon had already made; he hadn’t expected to see Bruenor’s party until the next morning.

“They’ll drive the mules to exhaustion in a day,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

Off in the distance, a dark figure moved among the shadows, and Jarlaxle knew it to be Drizzt.

“Running hard for their hurt friend,” Athrogate remarked.

“There is no power greater than the bonds they share, my friend,” said the drow. He finished with a cough to clear his throat, and to banish the wistfulness from his tone. But not quickly enough, he realized when he glanced at Athrogate, to keep the dwarf from staring at him incredulously.

“Their sentiments are their weakness,” Jarlaxle said, trying to be convincing. “And I know how to exploit that weakness.”

“Uh-huh,” said Athrogate, then he gave a great “Bwahaha!”

Jarlaxle could only smile.

“We goin’ down there, or we just following?”

Jarlaxle thought about it for a moment, then surprised himself and the dwarf by hopping up from the grass and brushing himself off.

“Stuttgard o’ the Stone Hills?” Bruenor asked when the wagon rolled around a bend in the road to reveal the dwarf standing in their way. “I thought ye was stayin’ in Mithral …” he called as he eased the wagon to a stop before the dwarf. His voice trailed off as he noted the dwarf’s impressive weapons, a pair of glassteel morningstars bobbing behind his sturdy shoulders. Suspicion filled Bruenor’s expression, for Stuttgard had shown no such armament in Mithral Hall. His suspicion only grew as he considered how far along the road he was already—for Stuttgard to have arrived meant that the dwarf must have departed Mithral Hall immediately after meeting with Bruenor.

“Nah, but well met again, King Bruenor,” Athrogate replied.