Robert Salvatore: The Ghost King

“Mother!” she cried, and Danica fell over her in the tightest hug she had ever known.

Rorick and Temberle echoed Hanaleisa’s call and they, along with Ivan and Pikel, rushed up to embrace Danica.

Tears of profound relief and sheer joy filled Danica’s eyes as she crushed each of her children close to her, and as she fell over Pikel. And those tears streaked a face full of confusion when she looked upon Ivan.

“I saw you die,” she said. “I was on the cliff, outside the cave, when the dracolich crushed you.”

“Crushed them what was chasing me, ye mean,” Ivan corrected. “Dumb thing didn’t even know it was standing above a hole—small for a dragon, but a tunnel for meself!”

“But …” Danica started. She just shook her head and kissed Ivan on his hairy cheek.

“You found a way,” she said. “We’ll find a way.”

“Where’s Father?” Hanaleisa asked.

“He remains at Spirit Soaring,” Danica replied, and she glanced nervously up the mountains, “facing the Ghost King.”

“He’s surrounded by an army of wizards and warrior priests,” Rorick insisted, but Danica shook her head.

“He’s with a small group of powerful allies,” Danica corrected, and she looked at Ivan and Pikel. “King Bruenor and one of his battleragers, and Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“Bruenor,” Ivan gasped. “Me king, come to us in our time o’ need.”

“Drizzit Dudden,” Pikel added with a signature giggle.

“Lead on, Milady,” Ivan bade Danica. “Might that we’ll get there when there’s still something to hit!”

The Ghost King didn’t open wide its wings to break out of the stoop. Down it came, a missile from on high, wings folded, eyes burning, jaws wide. At the very last moment, right before it crashed, the Ghost King snapped its head up and flipped its wings out, altering nothing but its angle of descent. It hit the ground and plowed through the turf, digging a trench as it skidded at its prey. And if that alone were not enough to put a fast end to the fool who would challenge a god, the Ghost King breathed forth its flaming breath.

On and on it went, consuming all in its path, reaching to the very doorway of Spirit Soaring. The flesh of dead crawlers bubbled and burst and disintegrated beneath the conflagration, grass charred and obliterated.

“Drizzt!” Bruenor, Cadderly, and Jarlaxle yelled together from inside the cathedral, knowing their friend was surely consumed.

The gout of flames might have continued much longer, for it seemed an endless catastrophe, but a scimitar swung by a drow who should have been buried in that assault smashed hard against the side of the Ghost King’s face.

Jolted, stunned that Drizzt had been quick enough to get out of the way, the Ghost King tried to turn its fury upon him.

But a second blow, so heavy with magical power, snapped the dracolich’s head to the side yet again.

The Ghost King hopped up to its hind legs, towering over the drow even though it stood in a trench deeper than two tall men, a hollow torn by the weight of its cometlike impact.

Barely had it stood when the beast bit down at the drow, spearlike teeth snapping loudly, and in Spirit Soaring’s doorway, Bruenor gasped, thinking his friend taken whole.

But again Drizzt moved ahead of his enemy, again the drow, so intent on the image of his wounded bride, so perfect in his focus and so adroit his reflexes, dived at precisely the right angle, forward and inside the reach of the Ghost King. As he came up, three lightning-fast steps brought him to the beast’s right hind leg, where his scimitars bit deep.

Yet the power of Cadderly’s magic and the fury of Drizzt Do’Urden could not do to that godlike being what he had done in dismembering the nightwalker, and for all of his rage and fury and focus, Drizzt never lost one simple truth: He could not beat the Ghost King alone.

And so he was moving again, and with all speed, even as he struck hard. Again the dragon snapped its killing fangs at him, and again he dodged and ran, at a full sprint away from the dracolich and toward Spirit Soaring.

Instinctively, Drizzt swerved out wide and dived again, and felt the heat at his back as the Ghost King breathed forth its murderous fires once more. Drizzt crossed that blackened line back the other way the moment it ended, again just ahead of the pursuing, biting monster.

He bolted through the double doors just ahead of the Ghost King and called out for Cadderly, for there was nowhere to turn.

And as he knew would happen, the Ghost King’s fires followed him inside, rushing fast for his back and engulfing him fully, filling the passageway behind and in front with dragonfire.

Cadderly groaned in pain as roiling flames gnawed at Spirit Soaring, at the magic that sustained the priest and his creation. He held his radiant hands out before him, reaching for the corridor, reaching for Drizzt, praying he had reacted quickly enough.

Only when Drizzt scrambled into the room, out of the blast of dragonfire, did Cadderly allow himself to breathe. But his relief, the relief of them all, lasted only a moment before the whole of the great structure shuddered violently.

Cadderly fell back and grimaced, then again as another explosion rocked Spirit Soaring. Its walls, even for their magic, could not withstand the fury of the Ghost King, who crashed in, tearing with tooth and claw, battering aside walls, wood and stone alike, with its skull. Ripping, shredding, and battering its way along, the Ghost King moved into the structure, widening the passageway and crashing through the lower ceiling outside the audience chamber.

Inside that hall, the four companions fell back, step by step, trying to hold their calm and their confidence. A look at Cadderly did nothing to bolster their resolve. With every crash and tear against Spirit Soaring, the priest shuddered—and aged. Before their astonished eyes, Cadderly’s hair went from gray to white, his face became creased and lined, his posture stooped.

The front wall of the audience chamber cracked, then blew apart as the monster slammed through. The Ghost King lifted its head and issued a deafening wail of pure hatred.

The building shook as the wyrm stomped into the room, then shook again with its next heavy step, which brought it within striking distance of its intended prey.

“For me king!” yelled Thibbledorf Pwent, who sat atop a tied-off log up on the high balcony. Right before him, standing on the rail, Athrogate cut free the lead log and gave it a heave to send it swinging down from on high.

The giant spear stabbed into the side of the Ghost King, hitting it squarely just under its shoulder, just under its wing, and indeed, the creature lurched, if only a bit, under the weight of that blow.

An inconsequential weight, though, against the godlike dracolich.

Except that Thibbledorf Pwent then cut loose the second log, the one on which he sat. “Wahoo!” he yelled as he swung past Athrogate, who gave a shove for good measure, and followed the same trajectory as the first beam.

More than the dwarf’s added weight enhanced the blow as log hit log, end to end, for the front end of that second log had been hollowed out and filled with explosive oil. Like a gigantic version of Cadderly’s hand crossbow bolts, the dwarven version collapsed in on itself and exploded with the force of a thunderbolt.

The front log blew forward, lifting the Ghost King and throwing it far and fast against the opposite wall. The back log blew to splinters, and the dwarf who had been sitting upon it flew forward, arms and legs flailing, and chased the dracolich through the air to the wall, catching it like a living grapnel even as the ceiling crumbled down atop the stunned Ghost King. Like a biting fly on the side of a horse, Thibbledorf Pwent scrambled and stabbed.