The Ghost King (17 page)
Authors: R.A. Salvatore
Into that darkness went two score of Carradoon’s survivors, half of them capable fighters, the other half frightened citizens, some elderly, some too young to wield a weapon. Just a short while into the retreat, they came to a defensible spot where the corridor ended at a narrow chimney, and through that chimney was another chamber.
There they decided to make their first camp, a circle of guards standing at the cave entrance, which they covered with a heavy stone, and more guarding the two corridors that led out of the chamber, deeper into the mountains.
No more complaints were shouted Uncle Pikel’s way.
* * * * *
Jarlaxle slid his wand away, shouting to Athrogate, “Just his face!”
The drow leaped from his mount to the back of the wagon, charging right past Bruenor, who was down on one knee, his right hand grasping his left shoulder in an attempt to stem the flow of spraying blood.
Twinkle had cut right through the dwarf’s fine armor and dug deeply into the flesh beneath.
Jarlaxle seized Catti-brie just as she floated over the back of the wagon, having been jostled hard by the thrashing and running Drizzt. Jarlaxle pulled her in and hugged her closely, as Drizzt had done, and started that same journey to insanity.
Jarlaxle knew the distortions for what they were, the magic of his eye patch fighting back the deception. So he held Catti-brie and whispered softly to her as she sobbed. Gradually, he was able to ease her down to the floorboards of the wagon, moving her to a sitting position against the side wall.
He turned away, shaking his head, to find Thibbledorf Pwent hard at work tearing off Bruenor’s blood-soaked sleeve.
“Ah, me king,” the battlerager lamented.
“He’s breathing,” Athrogate called from the side of the trail, where Drizzt remained stuck fast by the viscous glob Jarlaxle’s wand had launched at him. “And seethin’, thrashing and slashin’, not moving at all but wantin’ to be bashin’!”
“Don’t ask,” Jarlaxle said as both Bruenor and Pwent looked Athrogate’s way, then questioningly back at Jarlaxle.
“What just happened?” Bruenor demanded.
“To your daughter, I do not know,” Jarlaxle admitted. “But when I went to her, I was drawn through her into a dark place.” He glanced furtively at Drizzt. “A place where our friend remains, I fear.”
“Regis,” Bruenor muttered. He looked at Jarlaxle, but the drow was staring into the distance, lost in thought. “What d’ya know?” Bruenor demanded, but Jarlaxle just shook his head.
The drow mercenary looked at Catti-brie again and thought of the sudden journey he had taken when he’d touched her. It was more than an illusion, he believed. It was almost as if his mind had walked into another plane of existence. The Plane of Shadow, perhaps, or some other dark region he hoped never to visit again.
But even on that short journey, Jarlaxle hadn’t really gone away, as if that plane and the Prime Material Plane had overlapped, joined in some sort of curious and dangerous rift.
He thought about the specter he’d encountered when Hephaestus had come looking for him, of the dimensional hole he had thrown over the creature, and of the rift to the Astral Plane that he’d inadvertently created.
Had that specter, that huddled creature, been physically passing back and forth from Toril to that shadowy dimension?
“It’s real,” he said quietly.
“What?” Bruenor and Pwent demanded together.
Jarlaxle looked at them and shook his head, not sure how he could explain what he feared had come to pass.
* * * * *
“He’s calming down,” Athrogate called from the tree. “Asking for the girl, and talking to me.”
With Pwent’s help, Bruenor pulled himself to his feet and went with the drow and the dwarf to Drizzt’s side.
“What’re ye about, elf?” Bruenor asked when he got to Drizzt, who was perfectly helpless, stuck fast against the tree.
“What happened?” the drow ranger replied, his gaze fixed on Bruenor’s arm.
“Just a scratch,” Bruenor assured him.
“Bah, but two fingers higher and ye’d have taken his head!” Athrogate cut in, and both Bruenor and Jarlaxle glared at the brash dwarf.
“I did—?” Drizzt started to ask, but he stopped and scowled with a perplexed look.
“Just like back at Mithral Hall,” muttered Bruenor.
“I know where Regis is,” Drizzt said, looking up with alarm. He was sure the others could tell that he was even more afraid for his little friend at that dark moment. And his face twisted with more fear and pain when he glanced over at Catti-brie. If Regis’s mind had inadvertently entered and been trapped in that dark place, then Catti-brie was surely caught between the two worlds.
“Yerself came back, elf, and so’ll the little one,” Bruenor assured him.
Drizzt wasn’t so confident of that. He had barely set his toes in that umbral dimension, but with the ruby, Regis had entered the very depths of Catti-brie’s mind.
Jarlaxle flicked his wrist, and a dagger appeared in his hand. He motioned for Athrogate to move aside, and stepped forward, bending low, carefully cutting Drizzt free.
“If you mean to go mad again, do warn me,” Jarlaxle said to Drizzt with a wink.
Drizzt neither replied nor smiled. His expression became darker still when Athrogate walked over, holding the drow’s lost scimitar, red with the blood of his dearest friend.
PRYING THE RIFTPRYING THE RIFT
I
know she is in constant torment, and I cannot go to her. I have seen into the darkness in which she resides, a place of shadows more profound and more grim than the lower planes. She took me there, inadvertently, when I tried to offer some comfort, and there, in so short a time, I nearly broke.
She took Regis there, inadvertently, when he tried to reach her with the ruby, and there he broke fully. He threw the drowning Catti-brie a rope and she pulled him from the shore of sanity.
She is lost to me. Forever, I fear. Lost in an oblivious state, a complete emptiness, a listless and lifeless existence. And those rare occasions when she is active are perhaps the most painful of all to me, for the depth of her delusions shines all too clearly. It’s as if she’s reliving her life, piecemeal, seeing again those pivotal moments that shaped this beautiful woman, this woman I love with all my heart. She stood again on the side of Kelvin’s Cairn back in Icewind Dale, living again the moment when first we met, and while that to me is among my most precious of memories, that fact made seeing it play out again through the distant eyes of my love even more painful.
How lost must my beloved Catti-brie be to have so broken with the world around her?
And Regis, poor Regis. I cannot know how deeply into that darkness Catti-brie now resides, but it’s obvious to me that Regis went fully into that place of shadows. I can attest to the convincing nature of his delusions, as can Bruenor, whose shoulder now carries the scar of my blade as I fought off imaginary monsters. Or were they imaginary? I cannot begin to know. But that is a moot point to Regis, for to him they are surely real, and they’re all around him, ever clawing at him, wounding him and terrifying him relentlessly.
We four—Bruenor, Catti-brie, Regis, and I—are representative of the world around us, I fear. The fall of Luskan, Captain Deudermont’s folly, the advent of Obould—all of it were but the precursors. For now we have the collapse of that which we once believed eternal, the unraveling of Mystra’s Weave. The enormity of that catastrophe is easy to see on the face of the always calm Lady Alustriel. The potential results of it are reflected in the insanity of Regis, the emptiness of Catti-brie, the near-loss of my own sanity, and the scar carried by King Bruenor.
More than the wizards of Faerûn will feel the weight of this dramatic change. How will diseases be quelled if the gods do not hear the desperate pleas of their priests? How will the kings of the world fare when any contact to potential rivals and allies, instead of commonplace through divination and teleportation, becomes an arduous and lengthy process? How weakened will be the armies, the caravans, the small towns, without the potent power of magic-users among their ranks? And what gains will the more base races, like goblins and orcs, make in the face of such sudden magical weakness? What druids will tend the fields? What magic will bolster and secure the exotic structures of the world? Or will they fall catastrophically as did the Hosttower of the Arcane, or long-dead Netheril?
Not so long ago, I had a conversation with Nanfoodle the gnome in Mithral Hall. We discussed his cleverness in
funneling explosive gasses under the mountain ridge where Obould’s giant allies had set up devastating artillery. Quite an engineering feat by the gnome and his crew of dwarves, and one that blew the mountain ridge apart more fully than even a fireball from Elminster could have done. Nanfoodle is much more a follower of Gond, the god of inventions, than he is a practitioner of the Art. I asked him about that, inquiring as to why he tinkered so when so much of what he might do could be accomplished more quickly by simply touching the Weave.
I never got an answer, of course, as that is not Nanfoodle’s wont. Instead, he launched into a philosophical discussion of the false comfort we take in our dependence on, and expectation of, “that which is.”
Never has his point been more clear to me than it is now, as I see “that which is” collapsing around us all.
Do the farmers around the larger cities of Faerûn, around Waterdeep and Silverymoon, know how to manage their produce without the magical aid of the druids? Without such magical help, will they be able to meet the demands of the large populations in those cities? And that is only the top level of the problems that will arise should magic fail! Even the sewers of Waterdeep are complicated affairs, built over many generations, and aided at certain critical points, since the city has so expanded, by the power of wizards, summoning elementals to help usher away the waste. Without them—what?
And what of Calimport? Regis has told me often that there are far too many people there, beyond any sensible number for which the ocean and desert could possibly provide. But the fabulously rich Pashas have supplemented their natural resources by employing mighty clerics to summon food and drink for the markets, and mighty wizards to teleport in fresh sustenance from faraway lands.
Without that aid, what chaos might ensue?
And, of course, in my own homeland of Menzoberranzan, it is magic that keeps the kobolds enslaved, magic that protects the greater Houses from their envious rivals, and magic that holds together the threads of the entire society. Lady Lolth loves chaos, they say, and so she may see it in the extreme if that magic fades!
The societies of the world have grown over the centuries. The systems we have in place have evolved through the many generations, and in that evolution, I fear, we have long forgotten the basic foundations of society’s structures. Worse, perhaps, even re-learning those lost arts and crafts will not likely suffice to meet the needs of lands grown fatter and more populous because of the magical supplements to the old ways. Calimport could never have supported her enormous population centuries ago.
Nor could the world, a much wider place by far, have attained such a level of singularity, of oneness, of community, as it has now. For people travel and communicate to and with distant lands much more now than in times long past. Many of the powerful merchants in Baldur’s Gate are often seen in Waterdeep, and vice versa. Their networks extend over the leagues because their wizards can maintain them. And those networks are vital in ensuring that there will be no war between such mighty rival cities. If the people of Baldur’s Gate are dependent upon the craftsmen and farmers of Waterdeep, then they will want no war with that city!
But what happens if it all collapses? What happens if “that which is” suddenly is not? How will we cope when the food runs out, and the diseases cannot be defeated through godly intervention?
Will the people of the world band together to create new realities and structures to fulfill the needs of the masses?
Or will all the world know calamity, on a scale never before seen?
The latter, I fear. The removal of “that which is” will bring war and distance and a world of pockets of civilization huddled defensively in corners against the intrusion of murderous insanity.
I look helplessly at Catti-brie’s lifelessness, at Regis’s terror, and at Bruenor’s torn shoulder and I fear that I am seeing the future.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
BEARDED PROXY
