The Ghost King (3 page)

Jarlaxle just shook his head and turned to walk away. “I’m still asking, elf.”

“I thought it wise to search the grounds before our esteemed visitor arrives,” Jarlaxle replied.

“He’ll be getting here with half the dwarfs o’ Mirabar’s Shield, not for doubting,” said Athrogate.

True enough, Jarlaxle knew. He heard Athrogate shuffle out of his bedroll and scramble to his feet.

“Prudence, my friend,” the drow said over his shoulder, and started away.

“Nah, it’s more’n that,” Athrogate declared.

Jarlaxle laughed helplessly. Few in the world knew him well enough to so easily read through his tactical deflections and assertions, but in the years Athrogate had been at his side, he had indeed let the dwarf get to know something of the true Jarlaxle Baenre. He turned and offered a grin to his dirty, bearded friend.

“Well?” Athrogate asked. “Yer words I’m taking, but what’s got ye shaking?”

“Shaking?”

Athrogate shrugged. “It be what it be, and I see what it be.”

“Enough,” Jarlaxle bade him, holding his hands out in surrender.

“Ye tell me or I’ll rhyme at ye again,” the dwarf warned.

“Hit me with your mighty morningstars instead, I beg you.”

Athrogate planted his hands on his hips and stared at the dark elf hard.

“I do not yet know,” Jarlaxle admitted. “Something …” He reached around and retrieved his enormous, wide-brimmed hat, patted it into shape, and plopped it atop his head.

“Something?”

“Aye,” said the drow. “A visitor, perhaps in my dreams, perhaps not.”

“Tell me she’s a redhead.”

“Red scales, more likely.”

Athrogate’s face crinkled in disgust. “Ye need to dream better, elf.”

“Indeed.”

* * * * *

“My daughter fares well, I trust,” Marchion Elastul remarked. He sat in a great, comfortable chair at the heavy, ornately decorated table his attendants
had brought from his palace in Mirabar, surrounded by a dozen grim-faced dwarves of Mirabar’s Shield. Across from him, in lesser thrones, sat Jarlaxle and Athrogate, who stuffed his face with bread, eggs, and all manner of delicacies. Even for a meeting in the wilderness, Elastul had demanded some manner of civilized discourse, which, to the dwarf’s ultimate joy, had included a fine breakfast.

“Arabeth has adapted well to the changes in Luskan, yes,” Jarlaxle answered. “She and Kensidan have grown closer, and her position within the city continues to expand in prominence and power.”

“That miserable Crow,” Elastul whispered with a sigh, referring to High Captain Kensidan, one of the four high captains who ruled the city. He knew well that Kensidan had become the dominant member of that elite group.

“Kensidan won,” Jarlaxle reminded him. “He outwitted Arklem Greeth and the Arcane Brotherhood—no small feat!—and convinced the other high captains that his course was the best.”

“I would have preferred Captain Deudermont.”

Jarlaxle shrugged. “This way is more profitable for us all.”

“To think that I’m sitting here dealing with a drow elf,” Elastul lamented. “Half of my Shield dwarves would prefer that I kill you rather than negotiate with you.”

“That would not be wise.”

“Or profitable?”

“Nor healthy.”

Elastul snorted, but his daughter Arabeth had told him enough about the creature Jarlaxle for him to know that the drow’s quip was only half a joke, and half a deadly serious threat.

“If Kensidan the Crow and the other three high captains learn of our little arrangement here, they will not be pleased,” Elastul said.

“Bregan D’aerthe does not answer to Kensidan and the others.”

“But you do have an arrangement with them to trade your goods through their markets alone.”

“Their wealth grows considerably because of the quiet trade with Menzoberranzan,” Jarlaxle replied. “If I decide it convenient to do some dealing outside the parameters of that arrangement, then … I am a merchant, after all.”

“A dead one, should Kensidan learn of this.”

Jarlaxle laughed at the assertion. “A weary one, more likely, for what shall I do with a surface city to rule?”

It took a moment for the implications of that boast to sink in to Elastul, and the possibility brought him little amusement, for it served as a reminder and a warning that he dealt with dark elves.

Very dangerous dark elves.

“We have a deal, then?” Jarlaxle asked.

“I will open the tunnel to Barkskin’s storehouse,” Elastul replied, referring to a secret marketplace in the Undercity of Mirabar, the dwarf section. “Kimmuriel’s wagons can move in through there alone, and none shall be allowed beyond the entry hall. And I expect the pricing exactly as we discussed, since the cost to me in merely keeping the appropriate guards alert for drow presence will be no small matter.”

“‘Drow presence?’ Surely you do not expect that we will deign to move further into your city, good marchion. We are quite content with the arrangement we have now, I assure you.”

“You are a drow, Jarlaxle. You are never ‘quite content.’”

Jarlaxle simply laughed, unwilling and unable to dispute that point. He had agreed to personally broker the deal for Kimmuriel, who would oversee the set-up of the operation, since Jarlaxle’s wanderlust had returned and he wanted some time away from Luskan. In truth, Jarlaxle had to admit to himself that he wouldn’t really be surprised at all to return to the North after a few months on the road and find Kimmuriel making great inroads in the city of Mirabar, perhaps even becoming the true power in the city, using Elastul or whatever other fool he might prop up to give him cover.

Jarlaxle tipped his great hat, then, and rose to leave, signaling Athrogate to follow. Snorting like a pig on a truffle, the dwarf kept stuffing his mouth, egg yolk and jam splattering his great black beard, a braided and dung-tipped mane.

“It has been a long and hungry road,” Jarlaxle commented to Elastul. The marchion shook his head in disgust. The dwarves of Mirabar’s Shield, however, looked on with pure jealousy.

* * * * *

Jarlaxle and Athrogate had marched more than a mile before the dwarf stopped belching long enough to ask, “So, we’re back for Luskan?”

“No,” Jarlaxle replied. “Kimmuriel will see to the more mundane details now that I have completed the deal.”

“Long way to ride for a short talk and a shorter meal.”

“You ate through half the morning.”

Athrogate rubbed his considerable belly and issued a belch that scared a flock of birds from a nearby tree, and Jarlaxle gave a helpless shake of his head.

“My tummy hurts,” the dwarf explained. He rubbed his belly and burped again, several times in rapid succession. “So we’re not back to Luskan. Where, then?”

That question gave Jarlaxle pause. “I am not sure,” he said honestly.

“I won’t be missing the place,” said Athrogate. He reached over his shoulder and patted the grip of one of his mighty glassteel morningstars, which he kept strapped diagonally on his back, handles up high, their spiked ball heads bouncing behind his shoulders as he bobbed along the trail. “Ain’t used these in months.”

Jarlaxle, staring absently into the distance, simply nodded.

“Well, wherever we’re to go, if even ye’re to know, I’m thinkin’ and talkin’, it’s better ridin’ than walkin’. Bwahaha!” He reached into a belt pouch where he kept a black figurine of a war boar that could summon a magical mount to his side. He started to take it out, but Jarlaxle put a hand over his and stopped him.

“Not today,” the drow explained. “Today, we meander.”

“Bah, but I’m wantin’ a bumpy road to shake a few belches free, ye damned elf.”

“Today we walk,” Jarlaxle said with finality.

Athrogate looked at him with suspicion. “So ye’re not for knowin’ where we’re to be goin’.”

The drow looked around at the rough terrain and rubbed his slender chin. “Soon,” he promised.

“Bah! We could’ve gone back into Mirabar for more food!” Athrogate blanched as he finished, though, a rare expression indeed for the tough dwarf, for Jarlaxle fixed him with a serious and withering glare, one that reminded him in no uncertain terms who was the leader and who the sidekick.

“Good day for a walk!” Athrogate exclaimed, and finished with a great belch.

They set their camp only a few miles northeast of the field where they had met with Marchion Elastul, on a small ridge among a line of scraggly, short trees, many dead, others nearly leafless. Below them to the west loomed the remains of an old farm, or perhaps a small village, beyond a short rocky field splashed with flat, cut stones, most lying but some standing on end, leading Athrogate to mutter that it was probably an old graveyard.

“That or a pavilion,” Jarlaxle replied, hardly caring.

Selûne was up, dancing in and out of the many small clouds that rushed overhead. Under her pale glow, Athrogate was soon snoring contentedly, but for Jarlaxle, the thought of Reverie was not welcomed.

He watched as the shadows under the moon’s pale glow began to shrink, disappear, then stretch toward the east as the moon passed overhead and started its western descent. Weariness crept in upon him, and he resisted it for a long while.

The drow silently berated himself for his foolishness. He couldn’t stay present and alert forever.

He leaned against a dead tree, a twisted silhouette whose shadow looked like the skeleton of a man who reached, pleading, to the gods. Jarlaxle didn’t climb it—the old tree likely wouldn’t have held his weight—but instead remained standing, leaning against the rough trunk.

He let his mind fall away from his surroundings, let it fall inward. Memories blended with sensations in the gentle swirl of Reverie. He felt his own heartbeat, the blood rushing through his veins. He felt the rhythms of the world, like a gentle breathing beneath his feet, and he embraced the sensation of a connection to the earth, as if he had grown roots into the deep rock. At the same time, he experienced a sensation of weightlessness, as if he were floating, as the wonderful relaxation of Reverie swept through his mind and body.

Only there was Jarlaxle free. Reverie was his refuge.
I will find you, drow
.

Hephaestus was there with him, waiting for him. In his mind, Jarlaxle saw again the fiery eyes of the beast, felt the hot breath and the hotter hatred.
Be gone. You have no quarrel with me
, the dark elf silently replied.
I have not forgotten!

‘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.