Robert Salvatore - The Ghost King

They held their handshake throughout the conversation, each feeding off the strength of the other, for both Cadderly—so wise, the Chosen of Deneir—and Dalebrentia—an established mage even back in the Time of Troubles some two decades before—suspected that what they’d all experienced of late was no temporary thing, that it might lead to the end of Toril as they knew it, to turmoil beyond anything they could imagine.

“I will read the words of Dalebrentia with great interest,” Cadderly assured the man as they finally broke off their handshake, and Dalebrentia moved out into the night to join his three companions.

They were a somber group as their wagon rolled slowly down Spirit Soaring’s long cobblestone entry road, but not nearly as much so as when they had first arrived. Though they had found nothing solid to help them solve the troubling puzzle that lay before them, it was hard to leave Spirit Soaring without some measure of hope. Truly the library had become as magnificent in content as it was in construction, with thousands of parchments and tomes donated from cities as far away as Waterdeep and Luskan, Silverymoon, and even from great Calimport, far to the south. The place carried an aura of lightness and hope, a measure of greatness and promise, as surely as any other structure in all the lands.

Dalebrentia had climbed into the wagon beside old Resmilitu, while Wanabrick rode the jockey box with Pearson Bluth, who drove the two ponies.

“We will find our answers,” Dalebrentia said, mostly to the fuming Wanabrick, but for the sake of all three.

Hooves clacking and wheels bouncing across the cobblestones were the only sounds that accompanied them down the lane. They reached the packed dirt of the long road that would lead them out of the Snowflakes to Carradoon.

The night grew darker as they moved under the thick canopy of overhanging tree limbs. The woods around them remained nearly silent—strangely so, they would have thought, had they bothered to notice—save for the occasional rustle of the wind through the leaves.

The lights of Spirit Soaring receded behind them, soon lost to the darkness.

“Bring up a flame,” Resmilitu bade the others.

“A light will train enemies upon us,” Wanabrick replied.

“We are four mighty wizards, young one. What enemies shall we fear this dark and chilly night?”

“Not so chilly, eh?” Pearson Bluth said, and glanced over his shoulder.

Though the driver’s statement was accurate, he and the other two noted with surprise that Resmilitu hugged his arms around his chest and shivered mightily.

“Pop a light, then,” Dalebrentia bade Wanabrick.

The younger wizard closed his eyes and waggled his fingers through a quick cantrip, conjuring a magical light atop his oaken staff. It flared to life, and Resmilitu nodded, though it shed no heat.

Dalebrentia moved to collect a blanket from the bags in the wagon bed.

Then it was dark again.

“Ah, Mystra, you tease,” said Pearson Bluth, as Wanabrick offered stronger curses to the failure.

A moment later, Pearson’s good nature turned to alarm. The darkness grew more intense than the night around them, as if Wanabrick’s dweomer had not only failed, but had transformed somehow into an opposing spell of darkness. The man pulled the team to a stop. He couldn’t see the ponies, and couldn’t even see Wanabrick sitting beside him. He had no way of knowing if they, too, were engulfed in the pitch blackness.

“Damn this madness!” Wanabrick cried.

“Oh, but you’ve erased the stars themselves,” said Dalebrentia in as light-hearted a tone as he could manage, confirming that the back of the wagon, too, had fallen victim to the apparent reversal of the dweomer.

Resmilitu cried out then through chattering teeth, “So chill!” and before the others could react to his call, they felt it too, a sudden, unnatural coldness, profound and to the bone.

“What?” Pearson Bluth blurted, for he knew as the others knew that the chill was no natural phenomenon, and he felt as the others felt a malevolence in that coldness, a sense of death itself.

Resmilitu was the first to scream out in pain as some unseen creature came over the side of the wagon, its raking hands clawing at the old mage.

“Light! Light!” cried Dalebrentia.

Pearson Bluth moved to heed that call, but the ponies began to buck and kick and whinny terribly. The poor driver couldn’t hold the frantic animals in check. Beside him, Wanabrick waved his arms, daring to dive into the suddenly unpredictable realm of magic for an even greater enchantment. He brought forth a bright light, but it lasted only a heartbeat—enough to reveal the hunched and shadowy form assailing Resmilitu.

The thing was short and squat, a misshapen torso of black flesh and wide shoulders, with a head that looked more like a lump without a neck. Its legs were no more than flaps of skin tucked under it, but its arms were long and sinewy, with long-fingered, clawing hands. As Resmilitu rolled away, the creature followed by propelling itself with those front limbs, like a legless man dragging himself.

“Be gone!” cried Dalebrentia, brandishing a thin wand of burnished wood tipped in metal. He sent forth its sparkling bolts of pure energy just as Wanabrick’s magical light winked out.

The creature wailed in pain, but so too did poor Resmilitu, and the others heard the tearing of the old wizard’s robes.

“Be gone!” Dalebrentia cried again—the trigger phrase for his wand—and they heard the release of the missiles even though they couldn’t see any flash in the magical darkness.

“More light!” Dalebrentia cried.

Resmilitu cried out again, and so did the creature, though it sounded more like a shriek of murderous pleasure than of pain.

Wanabrick threw himself over the seat atop the fleshy beast and began thrashing and pounding away with his staff to try to dislodge it from poor Resmilitu.

The monster was not so strong, and the wizard managed to pry one arm free, but then Pearson Bluth screamed out from in front, and the wagon lurched to the side. It rolled out of the magical darkness at that moment, and the light atop Wanabrick’s oaken staff brightened the air around them. But the wizards took little solace in that, for the terrified team dragged the wagon right off the road, to go bouncing down a steep embankment. They all tried to hold on, but the front wheels turned sharply and dug into a rut, lifting the wagon end over end.

Wood splintered and the mages screamed. Loudest of all came the shriek of a mule as its legs shattered in the roll.

Dalebrentia landed hard in some moss at the base of a tree, and he was certain he’d broken his arm. He fought through the pain, however, forcing himself to his knees. He glanced around quickly for his lost wand but found instead poor Resmilitu, the fleshy beast still atop him, tearing at his broken frame in a frenzy.

Dalebrentia started for him, but fell back as a blast of lightning blazed from the other side, lifting the shadowy beast right off his old friend and throwing it far into the night. Dalebrentia looked to Wanabrick to nod his approval.

But he never managed that nod. Looking at the man, the magically-lit staff lying near him, Dalebrentia saw the shadowy beasts crawling in behind the younger mage, huddled, fleshy beasts coming on ravenously.

To the side, Pearson Bluth stumbled into view, a beast upon his back, one of its arms wrapped around his neck, its other hand clawing at his face.

Dalebrentia fell into his spellcasting and brought forth a fiery pea, thinking to hurl it past Wanabrick, far enough so its explosion would catch the approaching horde but not engulf his friend.

But the collapsing Weave deceived the old mage. The pea had barely left his hand when it exploded. Waves of intense heat assailed Dalebrentia and he fell back, clutching at his seared eyes. He rolled around wildly on the ground, trying to extinguish the flames, too far lost to agony to even hear the cries of his friends, and those of the fleshy beasts, likewise shrieking in burning pain.