Robert Salvatore: The Ghost King

The blue fire crawled out of the far wall and etched along the floor. It crossed over where the Crystal Shard had lain, and over where Hephaestus’s wingtip had been. In the span of a few heartbeats, it exited the chamber altogether, leaving the place dim, with only the dancing orange flames of the liches’ eyes, Hephaestus’s eyes, and the soft green glow of Crenshinibon.

But the beast’s power did not diminish with its passing, and the apparitions still bowed.

He was risen.

A dracolich.

Where does reason end and magic begin? Where does reason end and faith begin? These are two of the central questions of sentience, so I have been told by a philosopher friend who has gone to the end of his days and back again. It is the ultimate musing, the ultimate search, the ultimate reality of who we are. To live is to die, and to know that you shall, and to wonder, always wonder.

This truth is the foundation of the Spirit Soaring, a cathedral, a library, a place of worship and reason, of debate and philosophy. Her stones were placed by faith and magic, her walls constructed of wonderment and hope, her ceiling held up by reason. There, Cadderly Bonaduce strides in profundity and demands of his many visitors, devout and scholarly, that they do not shy from the larger questions of existence, and do not shield themselves and buffet others with unreasoned dogma.

There is now raging in the wider world a fierce debate—just such a collision between reason and dogma. Are we no more than the whim of the gods or the result of harmonic process? Eternal or mortal, and if the former, then what is the relationship of that which is forever more, the soul, to that which we know will feed the worms? What is the next progression for consciousness and spirit, of self-awareness and—or—the loss of individuality in the state of oneness with all else? What is the relationship between the answerable and the unanswerable, and what does it bode if the former grows at the expense of the latter?

Of course, the act of simply asking these questions raises troubling possibilities for many people, acts of punishable heresy for others, and indeed even Cadderly once confided in me that life would be simpler if he could just accept what is, and exist in the present. The irony of his tale is not lost on me. One of the most prominent priests of Deneir, young Cadderly remained skeptical even of the existence of the god he served. Indeed he was an agnostic priest, but one mighty with powers divine. Had he worshipped any god other than Deneir, whose very tenets encourage inquisition, young Cadderly likely would never have found any of those powers, to heal or to invoke the wrath of his deity.

He is confident now in the evermore, and in the possibility of some Deneirrath heaven, but still he questions, still he seeks. At Spirit Soaring, many truths—laws of the wider world, even of the heavens above—are being unraveled and unrolled for study and inquisition. With humility and courage, the scholars who flock there illuminate details of the scheme of our reality, argue the patterns of the multiverse and the rules that guide it, indeed, realign our very understanding of Toril and its relationship to the moon and the stars above.

For some, that very act bespeaks heresy, a dangerous exploration into the realms of knowledge that should remain solely the domain of the gods, of beings higher than us. Worse, these frantic prophets of doom warn, such ponderings and impolitic explanations diminish the gods themselves and turn away from faith those who need to hear the word. To philosophers like Cadderly, however, the greater intricacy, the greater complexity of the multiverse only elevates his feelings for his god. The harmony of nature, he argues, and the beauty of universal law and process bespeak a brilliance and a notion of infinity beyond that realized in blindness or willful, fearful ignorance.

To Cadderly’s inquisitive mind, the observed system supporting divine law far surpasses the superstitions of the Material Plane.

For many others, though, even some of those who agree with Cadderly’s search, there is an undeniable level of discomfort.

I see the opposite in Catti-brie and her continued learning and understanding of magic. She takes comfort in magic, she has said, because it cannot be explained. Her strength in faith and spirituality climbs beside her magical prowess. To have before you that which simply is, without explanation, without fabrication and replication, is the essence of faith.

I do not know if Mielikki exists. I do not know if any of the gods are real, or if they are actual beings, whether or not they care about the day-to-day existence of one rogue dark elf. The precepts of Mielikki—the morality, the sense of community and service, and the appreciation for life—are real to me, are in my heart. They were there before I found Mielikki, a name to place upon them, and they would remain there even if indisputable proof were given to me that there was no actual being, no physical manifestation of those precepts.

Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, though I know from bitter experience that such is not often the case. To act in a manner designed to catapult you into one heaven or another would seem transparent to a god, any god, for if one’s heart is not in alignment with the creator of that heaven, then … what is the point?

And so I salute Cadderly and the seekers, who put aside the ethereal, the easy answers, and climb courageously toward the honesty and the beauty of a greater harmony.

As the many peoples of Faerûn scramble through their daily endeavors, march through to the ends of their respective lives, there will be much hesitance at the words that flow from Spirit Soaring, even resentment and attempts at sabotage. Cadderly’s personal journey to explore the cosmos within the bounds of his own considerable intellect will no doubt foster fear, in particular of the most basic and terrifying concept of all, death.

From me, I show only support for my priestly friend. I remember my nights in Icewind Dale, tall upon Bruenor’s Climb, more removed from the tundra below, it seemed, than from the stars above. Were my ponderings there any less heretical than the work of Spirit Soaring? And if the result for Cadderly and those others is anything akin to what I knew on that lonely mountaintop, then I recognize the strength of Cadderly’s armor against the curses of the incurious and the cries of heresy from less enlightened and more dogmatic fools.

My journey to the stars, among the stars, at one with the stars, was a place of absolute contentment and unbridled joy, a moment of the most peaceful existence I have ever known.

And the most powerful, for in that state of oneness with the universe around me, I, Drizzt Do’Urden, stood as a god.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

I will find you, drow.

The dark elf’s eyes popped open wide, and he quickly attuned his keen senses to his physical surroundings. The voice remained clear in his mind, invading his moment of quiet Reverie.

He knew the voice, for with it came an image of catastrophe all too clear in his memories, from perhaps a decade and a half before.

He adjusted his eye patch and ran a hand over his bald head, trying to make sense of it. It couldn’t be. The dragon had been destroyed, and nothing, not even a great red wyrm like Hephaestus, could have survived the intensity of the blast when Crenshinibon had released its power. Or even if the beast had somehow lived, why hadn’t it arisen then and there, where its enemies would have been helpless before it?