The Ghost King (11 page)

They found some organized defense forming halfway to the docks and eagerly found positions among the ranks. Pikel offered an approving nod as he continued past with Rorick, toward a cluster of large buildings overlooking the boardwalk and wharves. Built on an old fort, it was where the ship captains had decided to make their stand.

“Fight well for mother and father,” Hanaleisa said to Temberle. “We will not dishonor their names.”

Temberle smiled back at her, feeling like a veteran already.

They got their chance soon enough, their line rushing up the street to support the last groups of townsfolk trying hard to get ahead of the monstrous pursuit. Fearlessly, Hanaleisa and Temberle charged among the undead, smashing and slashing with abandon.

Their efforts became all the more devastating when Uncle Pikel joined them, his bright cudgel destroying every monster that ventured near.

Despite their combined power, the trio and the rest of the squad fighting beside them were pushed back, moving inexorably in retreat. For every zombie or skeleton they destroyed, it seemed there were three more to take its place. Their own line thinned whenever a man or woman was pulled down under the raking and biting throng.

And those unfortunate victims soon enough stood up, fighting for the other side.

Horrified and weak with revulsion, their morale shattered as friends and family rose up in undeath to turn against them, the townsfolk gave ground.

They found support at the cluster of buildings, where they had no choice but to stand and fight. Eventually, even that defense began to crumble.

Hanaleisa looked to her brother, desperation and sadness in her rich brown eyes. They couldn’t retreat into the water, and the walls of the buildings wouldn’t hold back the horde for long. She was scared, and so was he.

“We have to find Rorick,” Temberle said to his dwarf uncle.

“Eh?” Pikel replied.

He didn’t understand that the twins only wanted to make sure that the three siblings were together when they died.

I
t was the last thing Bruenor Battlehammer wanted to hear just then. “Obould’s angry,” Nanfoodle the gnome explained. “He thinks we’re to blame for the strange madness of magic, and the silence of his god.”

“Yeah, we’re always to blame in that one’s rock-head,” Bruenor grumbled back. He looked at the door leading to the corridor to Garumn’s Gorge and the Hall’s eastern exit, hoping to see Drizzt. Morning had done nothing to help Catti-brie or Regis. The halfling had thrashed himself to utter exhaustion and since languished in restless misery.

“Obould’s emissary—” Nanfoodle started to say.

“I got no time for him!” Bruenor shouted.

Across the way, several dwarves observed the uncharacteristic outburst. Among them was General Banak Brawnanvil, who watched from his chair. He’d lost the use of his lower body in the long-ago first battle with Obould’s emerging hordes.

“I got no time!” Bruenor yelled again, though somewhat apologetically. “Me girl’s got to go! And Rumblebelly, too!”

“I will accompany Drizzt,” Nanfoodle offered.

“The Nine Hells and a tenth for luck ye will!” Bruenor roared at him. “I ain’t for leaving me girl!”

“But ye’re the king,” one of the dwarves cried.

“And the whole world is going mad,” Nanfoodle answered.

Bruenor simmered, on the edge of an explosion. “No,” he said finally, and with a nod to the gnome, who had become one of his most trusted and reliable advisors, he walked across the room to stand before Banak.

“No,” Bruenor said again. “I ain’t the king. Not now.”

A couple of dwarves gasped, but Banak Brawnanvil nodded solemnly, accepting the responsibility he knew to be coming.

“Ye’ve ruled the place before,” said Bruenor. “And I’m knowin’ ye can do it again. Been too long since I seen the road.”

“Ye save yer girl,” the old general replied.

“Can’t give ye Rumblebelly to help ye this time,” Bruenor went on, “but the gnome here’s clever enough.” He looked back at Nanfoodle, who couldn’t help but smile at the unexpected compliment and the trust Bruenor showed in him.

“We’ve many good hands,” Banak agreed.

“Now don’t ye be startin’ another war with Obould,” Bruenor instructed. “Not without me here to swat a few o’ his dogs.”

“Never.”

Bruenor clapped his friend on the shoulder, turned, and started to walk away. A large part of him knew that his responsibilities lay there, where Clan Battlehammer looked to him to lead, particularly in that suddenly troubling time. But a larger part of him denied that. He was the king of Mithral Hall, indeed, but he was the father of Catti-brie and the friend of Regis, as well.

And little else seemed to matter at that dark moment.

He found Drizzt at Garumn’s Gorge, along with as smelly and dirty a dwarf as had ever been known.

“Ready to go, me king!” Thibbledorf Pwent greeted him with enthusiasm. The grisly dwarf hopped to attention, his creased battle armor, all sharpened plates and jagged spikes, creaking and squealing with the sudden motion.

Bruenor looked at the drow, who just closed his eyes, long ago having quit arguing with the likes of the battlerager.

“Ready to go?” Bruenor asked. “With war brewing here?”

Pwent’s eyes flared a bit at that hopeful possibility, but he resolutely shook his head. “Me place is with me king!”

“Brawnanvil’s the Steward o’ Mithral Hall while I’m gone.”

A flash of confusion in the dwarf’s eyes couldn’t take hold. “With me King Bruenor!” Pwent argued. “If ye’re for the road, Pwent and his boys’re for the road!”

At that proclamation, a great cheer came up and several nearby doors banged open. The famed Gutbuster Brigade poured into the wide corridor.

“Oh no, no,” Bruenor scolded. “No, ye ain’t!”

“But me king!” twenty Gutbusters cried in unison.

“I ain’t taking the best brigade Faerûn’s e’er known away from Steward Brawnanvil in this troubled time,” said Bruenor. “No, but I can’t.” He looked Pwent straight in the eye. “None o’ ye. Ain’t got room in the wagon, neither.”

“Bah! We’ll run with ye!” Pwent insisted.

“We’re goin’ on magical shoes and we ain’t got no magical boots for the lot of ye to keep up,” Bruenor explained. “I ain’t doubtin’ that ye’d all run till ye drop dead, but that’d be the end of it. No, me friend, yer place is here, in case that Obould thinks it’s time again for war.” He gave a great sigh and looked to Drizzt for support, muttering, “Me own place is here.”

“And you’ll be back here swiftly,” the drow promised. “Your place now is on the road with me, with Catti-brie and Regis. We’ve no time for foolishness, I warn. Our wagon is waiting.”

“Me king!” Pwent cried. He waved his brigade away, but hustled after Drizzt and Bruenor as they quickly moved to the tunnels that would take them to their troubled friends.

In the end, only four of them left Mithral Hall in the wagon pulled by a team of the best mules that could be found. It wasn’t Pwent who stayed behind, but Regis.

The poor halfling wouldn’t stop thrashing, fending off monsters that none of them could see, and with all the fury and desperation of a halfling standing on the edge of the pit of the Abyss itself. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t drink. He wouldn’t stop swinging and kicking and biting for a moment, and no words reached his ears to any effect. Only through the efforts of a number of attendants were the dwarves able to get any nourishment into him at all, something that could never have been done on a bouncing wagon moving through the wilds.

Bruenor argued taking him anyway, to the point of hoarseness, but in the end, it was Drizzt who said, “Enough!” and led the frustrated Bruenor away.

“Even if the magic holds, even if the wagon survives,” Drizzt said, “it will be a tenday and more to Spirit Soaring and an equal time back. He’ll not survive.”

They left Regis in a stupor of exhaustion, a broken thing.

“He may recover with the passage of time,” Drizzt explained as they hustled along the tunnels and across the great gorge. “He was not touched directly by the magic, as was Catti-brie.”

“He’s daft, elf!”

“And as I said, it may not hold. Your priests will reach him—” Drizzt paused and skidded to a stop “—or I will.”

“What do ye know, elf?” Bruenor demanded.

“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.