The Ghost King (Transitions #3) 3

DRIVEN BY HATRED

They knew their enemy would return, and they knew where they wanted to fight it, but when it happened, as expected as it was, sturdy Athrogate and Thibbledorf Pwent gasped more profoundly than they cried out.

The Ghost King came back to the material world of Toril in exactly the same place that it had departed, appearing first and briefly in its translucent blue-white glow. Quickly it was whole again, on the courtyard outside the cathedral, and even as Pwent and Athrogate shouted out, their bellows echoing through the deserted hallways, the great beast leaped into the air and took wing, flying high into the night sky.

"It's up there! It's up there, me king!" Pwent cried, hopping up and down and pointing skyward. Bruenor, Drizzt, and the others arrived in the room adjacent to the balcony from which the two dwarves had been keeping watch.

"The dracolich appeared in the same place?" Cadderly asked, clearly interpreting some importance in that fact.

"Just like ye guessed," Athrogate answered. "Glowin' and all, then it jumped away."

"It's up there, me king!" Pwent shouted again.

Drizzt, Cadderly, Bruenor, and Jarlaxle exchanged determined nods. "It doesn't get away from us this time," said Bruenor.

All eyes went to Cadderly at that proclamation, and the priest's nod was one of confidence.

"Inside," Cadderly ordered them all. "The beast will return with fury and fire. Spirit Soaring will protect us."

Danica took a deep breath and grabbed at a nearby tree trunk to steady herself when she heard the awful, otherworldly shriek of the dracolich taking flight. She couldn't help but glance back toward Spirit Soaring, already miles behind her, and she had to remind herself that Cadderly was surrounded by powerful allies, and that Deneir, or some other divine entity, miraculously heard his pleas.

"They will prevail," Danica said softly - very softly, for she knew that the forest about her was full of monsters. She had watched groups of crawlers scratch by on the road and had felt the thunderous steps of some gigantic black behemoth, the likes of which she had never before known.

She was halfway to Carradoon and had hoped to be there already, but the going had been slow and cautious. As much as she wanted a fight, Danica could ill afford one. Her focus was Carradoon and Carradoon alone, to find her children, while Cadderly and the others dealt with the Ghost King at Spirit Soaring.

That was the plan - they knew the undead dragon would return - and Danica had to steel herself against any second-guessing. She had to trust Cadderly. She couldn't turn back.

"My children," she whispered. "Temberle and Rorick, and Hana, my Hana ... I will find you."

Behind her, high in the sky, the Ghost King's shriek split the night as profoundly as a bolt of lightning and the roar of thunder.

Danica ignored it and focused on the trees before her, picking her careful and swift way through the haunted woods.

"Kill him, Cadderly," she said under her breath, over and over again.

Without the cautionary interference of Yharaskrik, the Ghost King reveled in its flight, knowing that its vulnerable target lay below, knowing that soon enough it would destroy Spirit Soaring and the fools who had remained within.

The sweet taste of impending revenge filled Hephaestus's dead throat, and the dragon wanted nothing more than to dive at the building at full speed and tear it to kindling. But surprisingly to both entities that made up the Ghost King, recklessness was tempered by the pain of their recent defeat. The Ghost King still felt the blinding sting of Cadderly's fires, and the weight of Drizzt's scimitar. Though confident that its second assault would be different, the Ghost King meant to take no unnecessary chances.

And so from on high, up among the clouds, the beast called upon its minions once more, summoning them from the forests around Spirit Soaring, compelling them to soften the ground.

"They will not kill Cadderly," the beast said into the high winds. "But they will reveal him!"

The Ghost King folded its wings and dived, then opened them wide and rode the momentum and the currents in a spiraling pattern above the building, its magically enhanced eyesight scouring the land below.

Already the forest was alive with movement as crawlers and nightwings, huddled wraiths, and even a giant nightwalker swarmed toward Spirit Soaring.

The Ghost King's laugh rumbled like distant thunder.

They heard the break of glass, one of the few panes left intact from the previous assault, but the building did not shudder. "By the gods," Cadderly cursed. "Damned crawlers!" Bruenor agreed.

They were in the widest audience hall on the first story of the building, a windowless affair with only a few connecting corridors. Pwent and Athrogate stood at the rail on the northern balcony with their tied-off logs, some twenty-five feet above the others. Bruenor, Cadderly, and the rest stood on the raised dais where Cadderly usually held audience, across from the double doors and the main corridor that led to the cathedral's foyer. Drizzt stood at the open doorway of a small, secure anteroom, where lay Catti-brie.

Drizzt bent low to tuck a blanket more tightly around his wife, and whispered, "He won't get you. On my life, my love, I will kill that beast. I will find a way back to you, or a way to lead you back to us."

Catti-brie didn't react, but lay staring into the distance.

Drizzt leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. "I promise," he whispered. "I love you."

Not far from them, Drizzt heard wood splintering. He stood up straight and moved out of the small anteroom, securing the door behind him.

Cadderly shivered as he felt the unclean beasts crawling into the broken windows of Spirit Soaring.

"Clear the place?" Athrogate yelled down.

"No, hold your positions!" Cadderly ordered, and even as he spoke, the door on the balcony nearest the two dwarves began to rattle and bang. Cadderly fell within himself, trying to join with the magic that strengthened Spirit Soaring, begging the cathedral, begging Deneir, to hold strong.

"Come on, then," Cadderly whispered to the Ghost King. "Lead the way."

"He learned from his loss," Jarlaxle remarked as Drizzt rejoined them. "He's sending in the fodder. He's not to be trapped alone as before."

Cadderly flashed an alarmed look at Drizzt and Bruenor.

"I'll bring him in," Drizzt promised, and he charged across the room to the double doors, the other three close behind.

Cadderly grabbed him before he could leave the room. As Drizzt turned, the priest gripped his right hand, in which he held Icingdeath, then reached for the hilt of Twinkle with his other hand. Cadderly closed his eyes and chanted, and Drizzt felt again an infusion of power into both his weapons.

"Bruenor, the door," Jarlaxle said, drawing out a pair of black metal wands. "And do duck aside."

Jarlaxle nodded to Drizzt, then to Bruenor, who flung wide the double doors. Beyond them, the corridor to the foyer teemed with crawlers, and nightwings fluttered above them.

A lightning bolt blasted from Jarlaxle's wand to sear the darkness. The second wand responded in kind, then the first took its turn, and the second fired again. Flesh smoldered, bats tumbled, a stench filled the holy place.

A fifth bolt followed, a sixth fast behind. Monsters scrambled to get out of the corridor, or melted where they stood. The seventh blast shook the walls of Spirit Soaring.

"Go!" Jarlaxle ordered Drizzt, and loosed yet another explosive line of sizzling energy.

And right behind it went Drizzt Do'Urden, running and leaping, spinning and slashing with seeming abandon. But every stroke was planned and timed perfectly, clearing the way and propelling Drizzt along. A nightwing dived at him, or fell at him - the beast was badly scored from the many lightning bolts. Drizzt hit it with a solid backhand and his divinely-weighted scimitar threw the giant bat aside, the blade tearing its flesh with brutal ease.

The drow leaped atop the heads of a pair of trembling, dying crawlers and sprang away onto a third, bowling it over, spinning as he went and cutting another beast in half as he twirled around. He reached the foyer doors, both hanging loose from the battering of the eight lightning bolts.

"Jarlaxle!" Drizzt cried, and he skidded down and kicked the doors open, revealing a foyer stuffed with enemies.

Lightning bolts streaked over the hunched drow, one, two, blasting, burning, blinding, and scattering the beasts. Then Drizzt was up behind them, his mighty scimitars battering the creatures aside.

Out the door Drizzt went, into the courtyard.

"Fight me, dragon!" he yelled. A foolish nightwing dived at Drizzt from on high and was met by a flashing scimitar that cleaved through flesh and bone and infused a web of searing divine light into the creature of darkness. The batlike beast went spinning backward, up into the air, dead long before it tumbled and flopped to the ground.

From all around, from the walls and broken windows of Spirit Soaring, everything seemed to pause for just a moment. Drizzt had drawn attention to himself, indeed, and the monsters swarmed his way, leaping from the trees across the courtyard and from the walls of Spirit Soaring.

A wicked grin creased the dark elf's face. "Come on, then," he whispered, and he gave a private nod to Catti-brie.

"We got to go to him!" cried Bruenor. Along with Cadderly and Jarlaxle, he had eased out of the audience chamber and crept nearer the foyer, gaining a view of the open courtyard beyond.

"Hold, dwarf," Jarlaxle replied. He was looking to Cadderly as he spoke and taking note of the priest's equal confidence in Drizzt.

Bruenor started to reply, but bit it short with a gasp as he saw the first wave of monsters swarm at Drizzt.

The drow ranger exploded into motion, leaping and spinning, stepping atop monstrous heads and backs, slashing with devastating speed and precision. One after another, crawlers crumbled to heaps of quivering flesh or went sailing back, launched by a swinging, divinely-weighted blade. Drizzt leaped from a beast's back and hit the ground in a fast run up atop another, where he double stabbed, spun to the side, and caught yet another crawler with a deadly backhand. The drow continued his spin and darted out of it past the first dying beast to stab a fourth, slash a fifth, and leap above a sixth, thrusting down to mortally wound that one as he passed overhead with Twinkle, slashing up high to take the legs from a swooping nightwing in the same movement.

"You've known him a long time ..." Jarlaxle said to Bruenor.

"Ain't never seen that," the dumbfounded dwarf admitted.

Drizzt, whirling like a maelstrom, moved beyond their line of sight then, past the angle of the open double doors. But the erupting sounds and shrieks told the friends that his furious charge had not slowed. He veered back into view, sprinting the opposite way, cutting a swath of devastation with every stride, every thrust, and every swing. Crawlers flew and crumbled, nightwings tumbled dead from on high, but the divine glow on Drizzt's scimitars did not diminish, even seemed to flare with more purpose and anger.

A crash in the room behind them turned the three around to see a crawler thrashing in its death throes in the middle of the floor. A second dropped down from above, accompanied by the glee-filled cackle of Thibbledorf Pwent.

"Trust in Drizzt!" Cadderly commanded the other two, and the priest led the charge back into the audience hall, the battlefield of their choosing.

The sheer exuberance of Thibbledorf Pwent held the breach at the broken doorway. Thrashing and punching, the dwarf laughed all the harder with every bit of gore that splattered his ridged armor and with every sickening puncture of a knee-spike or a gauntlet.

"Get out o' the way!" Athrogate yelled at him repeatedly, the equally-wild dwarf wanting a chance to hit something.

"Bwahaha!" Thibbledorf Pwent responded, perfectly mimicking Athrogate's signature cry.

"Huh," Athrogate said, for that gave him pause. Only a brief pause, however, before he let out a hearty "Bwahaha!" of his own.

Thibbledorf Pwent dived out of the way and a pair of crawlers rushed onto the balcony to confront Athrogate, who promptly buried them under a barrage of his powerful morningstars, setting free another heartfelt howl of laughter.

Pwent, meanwhile, went right to the corridor exit, battering the next beasts in line. He hooked one with a glove spike and did a deft, swift turn and throw, launching the flailing thing over the balcony. Then the dwarf fell back, inviting more crawlers into the room, where he and Athrogate, side by side, destroyed them.

He did not slow and did not tire. The image of his wounded wife stayed crystal clear in his thoughts and drove him on, and because he felt no fatigue, he began to wonder if the power Cadderly had infused into his weapons was somehow providing strength and stamina to him, as well.

It was a fleeting thought, for the present predicament crowded out all but his most intense warrior instincts. Drizzt gave himself no time to reflect, for every turn brought him face-on with enemies, and every leap became a series of contortions and tucks to avoid a host of reaching arms or raking claws.

But it mattered not how many of those claws and arms came at Drizzt Do'Urden. He stayed ahead of them, every one, and his blades, so full of fury and might, cleared the way, whichever way he chose to go. Carnage piled around him and a mist of monster blood filled the air. Every other step fell atop the fleshy corpse of a dead enemy.

"Fight me, dragon!" he yelled, and his voice rang with an almost mocking glee. "Come down from on high, coward!"

In the space of those two sentences, another four crawlers fell dead, and even the stupidly vicious beasts were beginning to shy from the mad drow warrior. The trend continued - instead of rushing to avoid enemies, Drizzt found himself chasing them. And all the while, he continued calling out his challenges to the Ghost King.

That challenge was answered, not by the dragon, but by another creature, a gigantic nightwalker, that stepped from the forest and thundered at the dancing drow.

Drizzt had fought one of those behemoths before, and knew well how formidable they were, their deceptively thin limbs tightly wound with layers of muscle that could crush the life from him with hardly a thought.

Drizzt smiled and charged.

As they shied from Drizzt, many of the monsters charged in through the open double doors of Spirit Soaring and down the corridor leading to the audience hall. The leading crawler almost got through the door, but Bruenor was beside that entryway, his back to the wall, and he perfectly timed the mighty two-handed sweep of his axe, burying it in the crawler's chest and stopping the thing dead in its tracks.

A yank from the dwarf sent the thing rolling away, and as he did, he released his left hand, jerked his arm back to reposition his shield, and threw himself into the next beast scrambling through the door. Dwarf and crawler rolled aside, leaving the path open to Jarlaxle and his lightning bolts, one, two, flashing down the crowded hallway.

Behind those stepped Cadderly, right up to the doorway, and he threw his arms up high and pulled down magical power, releasing it through his feet and spreading it in a glowing circle right there in the archway. The priest fell back and the stubborn crawlers came on, and as they stepped upon Cadderly's consecrated ground, they were consumed by devastating radiance. They shrieked and they smoldered and they crumbled down, writhing in mortal agony.

Jarlaxle threw another pair of lightning bolts down the corridor.

Another crawler came flying over the balcony from above, but up there, as in the audience room, the situation was fast quieting.

"Come on, ye little beasties!" Athrogate yelled down the empty corridor above.

"Come on, dragon," Cadderly said in reply. "Come on, Drizzt," Bruenor had to add.

With brutal speed and ferocity, the black-skinned behemoth snapped a punch out at the charging drow, and a lesser warrior than Drizzt would have been crushed by that blow. The ranger, though, with his speed multiplied by his anklets, and his razor-edged reflexes, stepped left as the giant began its swing. Anticipating that the behemoth would react to that movement, Drizzt fast-stepped back the other way so he ran unhindered as the creature's fist plowed through the air.

Drizzt didn't slow as he charged past the giant, but he did leap and spin to gain momentum as he slashed out with Icingdeath. He meant to strike the giant's kneecap, and to use that impact to reverse his momentum and his spin so he could scramble to the side, but to Drizzt's surprise, he felt no sense of impact.

Drizzt landed almost as if he had hit nothing solid at all, and despite his previous experiences with his divinely-infused weapons, he found himself almost stupefied by the reality that he had cut right through the behemoth's leg.

Improvising, Drizzt flipped diagonally to his left, lifting himself over and twisting around as he did to place himself directly behind the giant. A further twist stabbed Icingdeath up into the back of the giant's other thigh, and the howling creature had to rise up on its tiptoes even as it lurched to grab at its other severed leg.

Drizzt retracted Icingdeath, but only to make way for Twinkle as that blade slashed across, taking with it the giant's remaining leg.

Down crashed the massive beast, its screams reaching out to the Ghost King more than Drizzt's spoken challenges ever could.

Drizzt didn't bother finishing the giant - it would bleed out and die on its own - and instead positioned himself for a run to the cathedral. Everything fled before him, nightwings fluttering into the darkness and crawlers climbing all over each other to get away. He caught a few and killed each with a single, devastating stroke, and ran a more circuitous route to his planned position to further scatter the horde.

A cry from above rent the night, a scream painful in its intensity and sheer volume. Drizzt dived into a somersault and rolled to his feet, planting them firmly and facing that scream. He saw the dracolich's fire-filled eyes first, like shooting stars diving toward him, then saw the green glow of Crenshinibon, the beast's newest horn.

"Come on!" Drizzt shouted, and he slapped his scimitars together, sparks flying from the impact.

In a single movement, he sheathed them and pulled Taulmaril from his shoulder. Grinning wickedly, Drizzt let fly a silver-streaking arrow, then a second, then a line of them, reaching out and stinging the beast as it plummeted from on high.