Robert Salvatore: The Ghost King

‘Twas your own breath that broke the shard, Jarlaxle reminded the creature. Through your trickery, clever drow. I have not forgotten. You blinded me, you weakened me, you destroyed me!

That last clause struck Jarlaxle as odd, not just because the dragon obviously wasn’t destroyed, but because he still had the distinct feeling that it wasn’t Hephaestus he was communicating with—but it was Hephaestus!

Another image came into Jarlaxle’s thoughts, that of a bulbous-headed creature with tentacles waving menacingly from its face.

I know you. I will find you, the dragon went on. You who stole from me the pleasures of life and the flesh. You who stole from me the sweet taste of food and the pleasure of touch.

So the dragon is dead, Jarlaxle thought.

Not I! Him! the voice that resonated like Hephaestus roared in his mind. I was blind, and slept in darkness! Too intelligent for death! Consider the enemies you have made, drow! Consider that a king will find you—has found you!

That last thought came through with such ferocity and such terrible implications that it startled Jarlaxle from his Reverie. He glanced around frantic, as if expecting a dragon to swoop down upon him and melt his camp into the dirt with an explosion of fiery breath, or an illithid to materialize and blast him with psionic energy that would scramble his mind forever.

But the night was quiet under the moon’s pale glow.

Too quiet, Jarlaxle believed, like the hush of a predator. Where were the frogs, the night birds, the beetles?

Something shifted down to the west, catching Jarlaxle’s attention. He scanned the field, seeking the source—a rodent of some sort, likely.

But he saw nothing, just the uneven grasses dancing in the moonlight on the gentle night breeze.

Something moved again, and Jarlaxle swept his gaze across the abandoned stones littering the field, reached up and lifted his eye patch so he could more distinctly focus. Across the field stood a shadowy, huddled figure, bowing and waving its arms. It occurred to the drow that it was not a living man, but a wraith or a specter or a lich.

In the open ground between them, a flat stone shifted. Another, standing upright, tilted to a greater angle.

Jarlaxle took a step toward the ancient markers.

The moon disappeared behind a dark cloud and the darkness deepened. But Jarlaxle was a creature of the Underdark, blessed with eyes that could see in the most meager light. In the nearly lightless caverns far below the stone, a patch of luminous lichen would glow to his eyes like a high-burning torch. Even in those moments when the moon hid, he saw that standing stone shift again, ever so slightly, as if something scrabbled at its base below the ground.

“A graveyard …” he whispered, finally recognizing the flat stones as markers and understanding Athrogate’s earlier assessment. As he spoke, the moon came clear, brightening the field. Something churned in the dirt beside the shifting stone.

A hand—a skeletal hand.

A greenish blue crackle of strange ground lightning blasted tracers across the field. In that light, Jarlaxle saw many more stones shifting, the ground churning.

I have found you, drow! the beast whispered in Jarlaxle’s thoughts. “Athrogate,” Jarlaxle called softly. “Awaken, good dwarf.” The dwarf snored, coughed, belched, and rolled to his side, his back to the drow.

Jarlaxle slipped a hand crossbow from the holster on his belt, expertly drawing back the string with his thumb as he moved. He focused on a particular type of bolt, blunted and heavy, and the magical pouch beside the holster dispensed it into his hand as he reached for it.

“Awaken, good dwarf,” the drow said again, never taking his gaze from the field. A skeletal arm grasped at the empty air near the low-leaning headstone.

When Athrogate did not reply, Jarlaxle leveled the hand crossbow and pulled the trigger.

“Hey, now, what’s the price o’ bacon!” the dwarf yelped as the bolt thumped him in the arse. He rolled over and scrambled like a tipped crab, but jumped to his feet. He began circling back and forth with short hops on bent legs, rubbing his wounded bum all the while.

“What do ye know, elf?” he asked at length.

“That you are indeed loud enough to wake the dead,” Jarlaxle replied, motioning over Athrogate’s shoulder toward the stone-strewn field. Athrogate leaped around.

“I see … dark,” he said. As he finished, not only did the moon break free of the clouds, but another strange lightning bolt arced over the field like a net of energy had been cast over it. In the flash, whole skeletons showed themselves, standing free of their graves and shambling toward the tree-lined ridge.

“Coming for us, I’m thinking!” Athrogate bellowed. “And they look a bit hungry. More than a bit! Bwahaha! Starved, I’d wager!”

“Let us be gone from this place, and quickly,” said Jarlaxle. He reached into his belt pouch and produced an obsidian statue of a gaunt horse with twists like fire around its hooves.

Athrogate nodded and did likewise, producing his boar figurine.

They both dropped their items and called forth their steeds together, an equine nightmare for Jarlaxle, snorting smoke and running on hooves of flame, and a demonic boar for Athrogate that radiated heat and belched the fire of the lower planes. Jarlaxle was first up in his seat, turning his mount to charge away, but he looked over his shoulder to see Athrogate take up his twin morningstars, leap upon the boar, and kick it into a squealing charge straight down at the graveyard.

“This way’s faster!” the dwarf howled, and he set the heavy balls of his weapons spinning at the ends of their chains on either side. “Bwahaha!”

“Oh, Lady Lolth,” Jarlaxle groaned. “If you sent this one to torment me, then know that I surrender, and just take him back.”

Athrogate charged straight down onto the field, the boar kicking and bucking. Another green flash lit up the stony meadow before him, showing dozens of walking dead climbing from the torn earth, lifting skeletal hands at the approaching dwarf.

Athrogate bellowed all the louder and clamped his powerful legs tightly on the demon-boar. Seeming no less crazy than its bearded rider, the boar charged straight at the walking horde, and the dwarf sent his morningstars spinning. All around him they worked, heavy glassteel balls smashing against bone, breaking off reaching fingers and arms, shattering ribs with powerful swipes.

The boar beneath him gored, kicked, and plowed through the mindless undead that closed in hungrily. Athrogate drove his heels in hard against the boar’s flanks and it leaped straight up and brought forth the fires of the lower planes, a burst of orange flame blasting out beneath its hooves as it landed, boiling into a radius half again wider than the dwarf was tall and curling up in an eruption of flame. The grass all around Athrogate smoked, licks of flame springing to life on the taller clumps.

While the flames bit at the nearest skeletons, they proved little deterrence to those coming from behind. The creatures closed, showing not the slightest sign of fear.

An overhead swing from Athrogate brought a morningstar down atop a skull, exploding it in a puff of white powder. He swung his other morningstar in a wide sweep, back to front, clipping three separate reaching skeletal arms and taking them off cleanly.

The skeletons seemed not to notice or care, and kept coming. Closing, always closing.

Athrogate roared all the louder against the press, and increased the fury of his swings. He didn’t need to aim. The dwarf couldn’t have missed smashing bones if he tried. Clawing fingers reached out at him, grinning skulls snapped their jaws.

Then the boar shrieked in pain. It hopped and sent out another circle of flames, but the unthinking skeletons seemed not to notice as their legs blackened. Clawing fingers raked the boar, sending it into a bucking frenzy, and Athrogate was thrown wide, clearing the front row of skeletons, but many more rushed at him as he fell.