The Ghost King (12 page)

Pwent moved up to ride on the seat with Bruenor. Drizzt ran scout along their flanks, though he often had to climb aboard the wagon and catch his breath, for it rolled along without the need to rest the mules. Through it all, Catti-brie sat quietly in the back, seeing nothing that they could see, hearing nothing that they could hear, lost and alone.

* * * * *

“Ye’re knowin’ them well,” Athrogate congratulated Jarlaxle later that day when the pair, lying on top of a grassy knoll, spied the wagon rambling down the road from the northeast.

Jarlaxle’s expression showed no such confidence, for he had been caught completely by surprise at the quick progress the wagon had already made; he hadn’t expected to see Bruenor’s party until the next morning.

“They’ll drive the mules to exhaustion in a day,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

Off in the distance, a dark figure moved among the shadows, and Jarlaxle knew it to be Drizzt.

“Running hard for their hurt friend,” Athrogate remarked.

“There is no power greater than the bonds they share, my friend,” said the drow. He finished with a cough to clear his throat, and to banish the wistfulness
from his tone. But not quickly enough, he realized when he glanced at Athrogate, to keep the dwarf from staring at him incredulously.

“Their sentiments are their weakness,” Jarlaxle said, trying to be convincing. “And I know how to exploit that weakness.”

“Uh-huh,” said Athrogate, then he gave a great “Bwahaha!”

Jarlaxle could only smile.

“We goin’ down there, or we just following?”

Jarlaxle thought about it for a moment, then surprised himself and the dwarf by hopping up from the grass and brushing himself off.

* * * * *

“Stuttgard o’ the Stone Hills?” Bruenor asked when the wagon rolled around a bend in the road to reveal the dwarf standing in their way. “I thought ye was stayin’ in Mithral …” he called as he eased the wagon to a stop before the dwarf. His voice trailed off as he noted the dwarf’s impressive weapons, a pair of glassteel morningstars bobbing behind his sturdy shoulders. Suspicion filled Bruenor’s expression, for Stuttgard had shown no such armament in Mithral Hall. His suspicion only grew as he considered how far along the road he was already—for Stuttgard to have arrived meant that the dwarf must have departed Mithral Hall immediately after meeting with Bruenor.

“Nah, but well met again, King Bruenor,” Athrogate replied.

“What’re ye about, dwarf?” Bruenor asked. Beside Bruenor, Pwent stood flexing his knees, ready to fight.

A growl from the side turned them all to look that way, and up on a branch in the lone tree overlooking the road perched Guenhwyvar, tamping her paws as if she meant to spring down upon the dwarf.

“Peace, good king,” Athrogate said, patting his hands calmly in the air before him. “I ain’t no enemy.”

“Nor are you Stuttgard of the Stone Hills,” came a call from farther along the road, behind Athrogate and ahead of the wagon.

Bruenor and Pwent looked past Stuttgard and nodded, though they couldn’t see their drow companion. Stuttgard glanced over his shoulder, knowing it to be Drizzt, though the drow was too concealed in the brush to be seen.

“I should have recognized you at Bruenor’s court,” Drizzt called.

“It’s me morningstars,” Stuttgard explained. “I’m lookin’ bigger with them, so I’m told. Bwahaha! Been a lot o’ years since we crossed weapons, eh Drizzt Do’Urden?”

“Who is he?” Bruenor called to Drizzt, then he looked straight at the dwarf in the road and said, “Who are ye?”

“Where is he?” Drizzt called out in answer, drawing looks of surprise from both Bruenor and Pwent.

“He’s right in front o’ us, ye blind elf!” Pwent called out.

“Not him,” Drizzt replied. “Not … Stuttgard.”

“Ah, but suren me heart’s to fall, for me worthy drow me name can’t recall,” said the dwarf in the road.

“Where is who?” Bruenor demanded of Drizzt, anger and impatience mounting

“He means me,” another voice answered. On the side of the road opposite Guenhwyvar stood Jarlaxle.

“Oh, by Moradin’s itchy arse,” grumbled Bruenor. “Scratched it, he did, and this one fell out.”

“A pleasure to see you again as well, King Bruenor,” Jarlaxle said with a bow.

Drizzt came out of the brush then, moving toward the group. The drow had no weapons drawn—indeed, he leaned his bow over his shoulder as he went.

“What is it, me king?” Pwent asked, glancing nervously from the dwarf to Jarlaxle. “What?”

“Not a fight,” Bruenor assured him and disappointed him at the same time. “Not
yet
a fight.”

“Never that,” Jarlaxle added as he moved beside his companion.

“Bah!” Pwent snorted.

“What’s this about?” Bruenor demanded.

Athrogate grumbled as Drizzt walked by, and gave a lamenting shake of his head, his braided beard rattling as its small beads bounced.

“Athrogate,” Drizzt whispered as he passed, and the dwarf howled in laughter.

“Ye’re knowin’ him?” asked Bruenor.

“I told you about him. From Luskan.” He looked at Jarlaxle. “Eight years ago.”

The drow mercenary bowed. “A sad day for many.”

“But not for you and yours.”

“I told you then and I tell you now, Drizzt Do’Urden. The fall of Luskan, and of Captain Deudermont, was not the doing of Bregan D’aerthe. I would have been as happy dealing with him—”

“He never would have dealt with the likes of you and your mercenaries,” Drizzt interrupted.

Jarlaxle didn’t finish his thought, just held his hands out wide, conceding the point.

“And what’s this about?” Bruenor demanded again. “We heard of your plight—of Catti-brie’s,” Jarlaxle explained. “The right road is to Cadderly, so I had my friend here go in—”

“And lie to us,” said Drizzt.

“It seemed prudent in the moment,” Jarlaxle admitted. “But the right road
is
to Cadderly. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything where Jarlaxle is concerned,” Drizzt shot back, even as Bruenor nodded. “If this is all you claim, then why would you meet us out here on the road?”

“Needin’ a ride, not to doubt,” Pwent said, and his bracers screeched as they slid together when he crossed his burly arms over his chest.

“Hardly that,” the drow replied, “though I would welcome the company.” He paused and looked at the mules then, obviously surprised at how fresh they appeared, given that they had already traveled farther than most teams would go in two days.

“Magical hooves,” Drizzt remarked. “They can cover six days in one.”

Jarlaxle nodded.

“Now he’s wanting a ride,” Pwent remarked, and Jarlaxle did laugh at that, but shook his head.

“Nay, good dwarf, not a ride,” the drow explained. “But there is something I would ask of you.”

“Surprising,” Drizzt said dryly.

“I am in need of Cadderly, too, for an entirely different reason,” Jarlaxle explained. “And he will be in need of me, or will be glad that I am there, when he learns of it. Unfortunately, my last visit with the mighty priest did not fare so well, and he requested that I not return.”

“And ye’re thinking that he’ll let ye in if ye’re with us,” Bruenor reasoned, and Jarlaxle bowed.

“Bah!” snorted the dwarf king. “Ye better have more to say than that.”

“Much more,” Jarlaxle replied, looking more at Drizzt than Bruenor. “And I will tell you all of it. But it is a long tale, and we should not tarry, for the sake of your wife.”

“Don’t ye be pretendin’ that ye care about me girl!” Bruenor shouted, and Jarlaxle retreated a step.

Drizzt saw something then, though Bruenor was too upset to catch it. True pain flashed in Jarlaxle’s dark eyes; he did care. Drizzt thought back to the time Jarlaxle had allowed him, with Catti-brie and Artemis Entreri, to escape from Menzoberranzan, one of the many times Jarlaxle had let him walk away. Drizzt tried to put it all in the context of the current situation, to reveal the possible motives behind Jarlaxle’s actions. Was he lying, or was he speaking the truth?

Drizzt felt it the latter, and that realization surprised him. “What’re ye thinking, elf?” Bruenor asked him.

“I would like to hear the story,” Drizzt replied, his gaze never leaving Jarlaxle. “But hear it as we travel along the road.”

Jarlaxle nudged Athrogate, and the dwarf produced his boar figurine at the same time that Jarlaxle reached into his pouch for the obsidian nightmare. A moment later, their mounts materialized and Bruenor’s mules flattened their ears and backed nervously away.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Bruenor muttered, working hard to control the team.

On a signal from Jarlaxle, Athrogate guided his boar to the side of the wagon, to take up a position in the rear.

“I want one o’ them!” Thibbledorf Pwent said, his eyes wide with adoration as the fiery demon boar trotted past. “Oh, me king!”

Jarlaxle reined his nightmare aside and moved it to walk beside the wagon. Drizzt scrambled over that side to sit on the rail nearest him. Then he called to Guenhwyvar.

The panther knew her place. She leaped down from the tree, took a few running strides past Athrogate, and leaped into the wagon bed, curling up defensively around the seated Catti-brie.

“It is a long road,” Drizzt remarked.

“It is a long tale,” Jarlaxle replied.

“Tell it slowly then, and fully.”

The wagon wasn’t moving, and both Drizzt and Jarlaxle looked at Bruenor, the dwarf staring back at them with dark eyes full of doubt.

“Ye sure about this, elf?” he asked Drizzt.

“No,” Drizzt answered, but then he looked at Jarlaxle, shook his head, and changed his mind. “To Spirit Soaring,” he said.

“With hope,” Jarlaxle added.

Drizzt turned his gaze to Catti-brie, who sat calmly, fully withdrawn from the world around her.

T
his is futile!” cried Wanabrick Prestocovin, a spirited young wizard from Baldur’s Gate. He shoved his palms forward on the table before him, ruffling a pile of parchment.

“Easy, friend,” said Dalebrentia Promise, a fellow traveler from the port city. Older and with a large gray beard that seemed to dwarf his skinny frame, Dalebrentia looked the part of the mage, and even wore stereotypical garb: a blue conical hat and a dark blue robe adorned with golden stars. “We are asked to respect the scrolls and books of Spirit Soaring.”

A few months earlier, Wanabrick’s explosion of frustration would have been met by a sea of contempt in the study of the great library, where indeed, the massive collections of varied knowledge from all across Faerûn, pulled together by Cadderly and his fellows, were revered and treasured. Tellingly, though, as many wizards, sages, and priests in the large study nodded their agreement with Wanabrick as revealed their scorn at his outburst.

That fact was not lost on Cadderly as he sat across the room amidst his own piles of parchment, including one on which he was working mathematical equations to try to inject predictability and an overriding logic into the seeming randomness of the mysterious events.

His own frustrations were mounting, though Cadderly did well to hide them, for that apparent randomness seemed less and less like a veil to be unwound and more and more like an actual collapse of the logic that held
Mystra’s Weave aloft. The gods were not all dark, had not all gone silent, unlike the terrible Time of Troubles, but there was a palpable distance involved in any divine communion, and an utter unpredictability to spellcasting, divine or wizardly.

Cadderly rose and started toward the table where the trio of Baldur’s Gate visitors studied, but he purposely put a disarming smile on his face, and walked with calm and measured steps.

“Your pardon, good Brother Bonaduce,” Dalebrentia said as he neared. “My friend is young, and truly worried.”

Wanabrick turned a wary eye at Cadderly. His face remained tense despite Cadderly’s calm nod.

“I don’t blame you, or Spirit Soaring,” Wanabrick said. “My anger, it seems, is as unfocused as my magic.”

“We’re all frustrated and weary,” Cadderly said.

“We left three of our guild in varying states of insanity,” Dalebrentia explained. “And a fourth, a friend of Wanabrick’s, was consumed in his own fireball while trying to help a farmer clear some land. He cast it long—I am certain of it—but it blew up before it ever left his hand.”

“The Weave is eternal,” Wanabrick fumed. “It must be … stable and eternal, else all my life’s work is naught but a cruel joke!”

“The priests do not disagree,” said a gnome, a disciple of Gond.

His support was telling. The Gondsmen, who loved logic and gears, smokepowder and contraptions built with cunning more than magic, had been the least affected by the sudden troubles.

“He is young,” Dalebrentia said to Cadderly. “He doesn’t remember the Time of Troubles.”

“I am not so young,” Cadderly replied.

“In mind!” Dalebrentia cried, and laughed to break the tension. The other two Baldurian wizards, one middle-aged like Cadderly and the other even older than Dalebrentia, laughed as well. “But so many of us who feel the creak of knees on a rainy morning do not much sympathize, good rejuvenated Brother Bonaduce!”