The Ghost King

 

A TIME FOR HEROES



A light appeared, a bright beacon cutting through the smoke, beckoning her. Hanaleisa felt its inviting warmth, so different from the bite of the fire's heat. It called to her, almost as if it were enchanted. When she at last burst out the door, past the thick smoke, rolling out onto the wharves, Hanaleisa was not surprised to see a grinning Uncle Pikel standing there, holding aloft his brilliantly glowing shillelagh. She tried to thank him, but coughed and gagged on the smoke. Nearly overcome, she managed to reach Pikel and wrap him in a great hug, her brothers coming in to flank her, patting her back to help her dislodge the persistent smoke.



After a long while, Hanaleisa finally managed to stop coughing and stand straight. Pikel quickly ushered them all away from the storehouse, as more explosions wracked it, kegs of Carradden whiskey still left to explode.



"Why did you go in there?" Rorick scolded her once the immediate danger was past. "That was foolish!"



"Tut tut," Pikel said to him, waggling a finger in the air to silence him. A portion of the roof caved in with a great roar, taking down part of the wall with it. Through the hole, the four saw the continuing onslaught of the undead, the unthinking monsters willingly walking in the door after Hanaleisa had opened it. They were fast falling, consumed by the flames.



"She invited them in," Temberle said to his little brother. "Hana bought us the time we'll need."



"What are they doing?" Hanaleisa asked, looking past her brothers toward the wharves, her question punctuated by coughs. The question was more of surprise than to elicit a response, for the answer was obvious. People swarmed aboard the two small fishing vessels docked nearby.



"They mean to ferry us across the lake to the north, to Byernadine," Temberle explained, referring to the lakeside hamlet nearest to Carradoon.



"We haven't the time," Hanaleisa replied.



"We haven't a choice," Temberle said. "They have good crews here. They'll get more boats in fast."



Shouting erupted on the docks. It escalated into pushing and fighting as desperate townsfolk scrambled to get aboard the first two boats.



"Sailors only!" a man shouted above the rest, for the plan had been to fill those two boats with experienced fishermen, who could then retrieve the rest of the fleet.



But the operation wasn't going as planned.



"Cast her off!" many people aboard one of the boats shouted, while others still tried to jump on board.



"Too many," Hanaleisa whispered to her companions, for indeed the small fishing vessel, barely twenty feet long, had not near the capacity to carry the throng that had packed aboard her. Still, they threw out the lines and pushed her away from the wharf. Several people went into the water as she drifted off, swimming hard to catch her and clinging desperately to her rail, which was barely above the cold waters of Impresk Lake.



The second boat went out as well, not quite as laden, and the square sails soon opened as they drifted out from shore. So packed was the first boat that the crewmen aboard couldn't even reach the rigging, let alone raise sail. Listing badly, weaving erratically, her movements made all on shore gasp and whisper nervously, while the shouting and arguing on the boat only increased in desperation.



Already, many were shaking their heads in dismay and expecting catastrophe when the situation fast deteriorated. The people in the water suddenly began to scream and thrash about. Skeletal fish knifed up to stab hard into them like thrown knives.



The fishing boat rocked as the many hangers-on let go, and people shrieked as the waters churned and turned red with blood.



Then came the undead sailors, rising up to some unseen command. Bony hands gripped the rails of both low-riding ships, and people aboard and on shore cried out in horror as the skeletons of long-dead fishermen began to pull themselves up from the dark waters.



The panic on the first boat sent several people splashing overboard. The boat rocked and veered with the shifting weight, turning uncontrollably - and disastrously. Similarly panicked, the sailors on the second boat couldn't react quickly enough as the first boat turned toward her. They crashed together with the crackle of splintering wood and the screams of scores of townsfolk realizing their doom. Many went into the water, and as the skeletons scrambled aboard, many others had no choice but to leap into Impresk Lake and try to swim to shore.



Long had men plied the waters of Impresk Lake. Its depths had known a thousand thousand turns of the circle of life. Her deep bed churned with the rising dead, and her waters roiled as more skeletal fish swarmed the splashing Carradden.



And those on the wharves, Hanaleisa, her bothers, and Uncle Pikel as well, could only watch in horror, for not one of the eighty-some people who had boarded those two boats made it back to shore alive.



"Now what?" Rorick cried, his face streaked with tears, his words escaping through such profound gasps that he could hardly get them out.



Indeed, everyone on the wharves shared that horrible question. Then the storehouse collapsed with a great fiery roar. Many of the undead horde were destroyed in that conflagration, thanks to the daring of Hanaleisa, but many, many more remained. And the townsfolk were trapped with their backs to the water, a lake they dared not enter.



Rag-tag groups ran to the north and south as all semblance of order broke down. A few boat crews managed to band together along the shore, and many townsfolk followed in their protective wake.



Many more looked to the children of Cadderly and Danica, those two so long the heroes of the barony. In turn, the three siblings looked to the only hope they could find: Uncle Pikel.



Pikel Bouldershoulder accepted the responsibility with typical gusto, punching his stump into the air. He tucked his cudgel under that shortened arm and began to hop around, tapping his lips with one finger and mumbling, "umm" over and over again.



"Well, what then?" a fishing boat captain cried. Many people closed in on the foursome, looking for answers.



"We find a spot to defend, and we order our line," Temberle said after looking to Pikel for answers that did not seem to be forthcoming. "Find a narrow alleyway. We cannot remain down here."



"Uh-uh," Pikel disagreed, even as the group began to organize its retreat.



"We can't stay here, Uncle Pikel!" Rorick said to the dwarf, but the indomitable Pikel just smiled back at him.



Then the green-bearded dwarf closed his eyes and tapped his shillelagh against the boardwalk, as if calling to the ground beneath. He turned left, to the north, then hesitated and turned back before spinning to the north again and dashing off at a swift pace.



"What's he doing?" the captain and several others asked.



"I don't know," Temberle answered, but he and Rorick hooked arms again and started after.



"We ain't following the fool dwarf blindly!" the captain protested.



"Then you're sure to die," Hanaleisa answered without hesitation.



Her words had an effect, for all of them swarmed together in Pikel's wake. He led them off the docks and onto the north beach, moving fast toward the dark rocks that sheltered Carradoon's harbor from the northern winds.



"We can't get over those cliffs!" one man complained.



"We're too near the water!" another woman cried, and indeed, a trio of undead sailors came splashing at them, forcing Temberle and Hanaleisa and other warriors to protect their right flank all the way.



All the way to an apparent dead end, where the rocky path rose up a long slope, then ended at a drop to the stone-filled lake.



"Brilliant," the captain complained, moving near Pikel. "Ye've killed us all, ye fool dwarf!"



It surely seemed as if he spoke the truth, for the undead were in pursuit and the group had nowhere left to run.



But Pikel was unbothered. He stood on the edge of the drop, beside a swaying pine, and closed his eyes, chanting his druidic magic. The tree responded by lowering a branch down before him.



"Hee hee hee," said Pikel, opening his eyes and handing the branch to Rorick, who stood beside him.



"What?" the young man asked.



Pikel nodded to the drop, and directed Rorick's gaze to a cave at the back of the inlet.



"You want me to jump down there?" Rorick asked, incredulous. "You want me to swing down?"



Pikel nodded, and pushed him off the ledge.



The screaming Rorick, guided by the obedient tree, was set down - as gently as a mother lays her infant in its crib - on a narrow strip of stone beside the watery inlet. He waited there for the captain and two others, who came down on the next swing, before heading toward the cave.



Pikel was the last one off the ledge, with a host of zombies and skeletons closing in as he leaped. Several of the monsters jumped after him, only to fall and shatter on the stones below.



His cudgel glowing brightly, Pikel moved past the huddled group and led the way into the cave, which at first glance seemed a wide, high, and shallow chamber, ankle deep with water. But Pikel's instincts and his magical call to the earth had guided him well. On the back wall of that shallow cave was a sidelong corridor leading deeper into the cliffs, and deeper still into the Snowflake Mountains.



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.



PART 2



PRYING 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 Faerun 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 Faerun, 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.