The Ghost King

CHAPTER 15

THE WEIGHT OF LEADERSHIP
They're less likely to take comfort in his dwarf heritage if they think him an idiot," Hanaleisa explained to Temberle, who was more than a little upset at the whispers he was hearing among the ranks of the Carradden refugees.
Temberle had insisted that Pikel, the only dwarf in the group and the only one who seemed able to conjure magical light in the otherwise lightless tunnels, would lead them through the dark. Though a few had expressed incredulity at the notion of following the inarticulate, green-bearded dwarf, none had openly disagreed. How could they, after all, when Pikel had undeniably been the hero of the last fight, freezing the water and allowing a retreat from certain disaster?
But that was yesterday, and the march of the last few hours had been a series of starts and stops, of backtracking and the growing certainty that they were lost. They had encountered no walking dead, at least, but that seemed cold comfort in those dank and dirty caves, crawling through tunnels and openings that had even the children on all fours, and with crawly bugs scurrying all around them.
"They're scared," Temberle whispered back. "They'd be complaining no matter who took the lead."
"Because we're lost." As she spoke, Hanaleisa nodded her chin at Pikel, who stood up front, lighted shillelagh tucked under his stumped arm while he scratched at his thick green beard with his good hand. The strange-looking dwarf stared at a trio of tunnels branching out before him, obviously without a clue.
"How could we not be lost?" Temberle asked. "Has anyone been through here, ever?"
Hanaleisa conceded that point with a shrug, but pulled her brother along as she moved to join the dwarf and Rorick, who stood by Pikel's side, leaning on a staff someone had given him to aid his movement with his torn ankle.
"Do you know where we are, Uncle Pikel?" Hanaleisa asked as she approached.
The dwarf looked at her and shrugged.
"Do you know where Carradoon is? Which direction?"
Without even thinking about it, obviously sure of his answer, Pikel pointed back the way they had come, and to the right, what Hanaleisa took to be southeast.
"He's trying to get us higher into the mountains before finding a way out of the tunnels," Rorick explained.
"No," Temberle was quick to reply, and both Rorick and Pikel looked at him curiously.
"Eh?" said the dwarf.
"We have to get out of the tunnels," Temberle explained. "Now."
"Uh-uh," Pikel disagreed, and he grabbed up his cudgel and held both of his arms out before him, mimicking a zombie to accentuate his point.
"Certainly we're far enough from Carradoon to escape that madness," said Temberle.
"Uh-uh."
"We're not that far," Rorick explained. "The tunnels are winding back and forth. If we came out on a high bluff, Carradoon would still be in sight."
"I do not disagree," said Temberle.
"But we have to get out of the tunnels as soon as possible," Hanaleisa added. "Dragging a gravely wounded man through these narrow and dirty spaces is sure to be the end of him."
"And going above ground is likely to be the end of all of us," Rorick shot back.
Hanaleisa and Temberle exchanged knowing looks. Watching the dead rise and come against them had profoundly unnerved Rorick, and certainly, the older twins shared that disgust and terror.
Hanaleisa walked over and draped her arm across Pikel's shoulders. "Get us in sight of the open air, at least," she whispered to him. "These close quarters and the unending darkness is playing on the nerves of all."
Pikel reiterated his zombie posture.
"I know, I know," Hanaleisa said. "I don't want to go out and face those things again, either. But we're not dwarves, Uncle Pikel. We can't stay down here forever."
Pikel leaned on his cudgel and gave a great, heaving sigh. He tucked the club under his stump and stuck a finger in his mouth, slurping about for a moment before pulling it forth with a hollow popping sound. He closed his eyes and began to chant as he held the wet finger up before him, magically sensitizing himself to the current of air.
He pointed to the right-hand corridor.
"That will get us out?" Hanaleisa asked.
Pikel shrugged, apparently unwilling to make any promises. He took up his glowing cudgel and led the way.
* * * * *
"We require the other four," decided Yharaskrik, still in the body of Ivan and speaking through the dwarf's mouth. "The lich First Grandfather Wu is lost to us, for now at least, but four others are missing and awaiting recall."
"They are busy," Hephaestus insisted.
"No matter is more important than the one before us."
The dracolich emitted a low, threatening growl. "I will have them," he said.
"The drow and the human?"
"You know who I mean."
"We already have lost First Grandfather Wu to the drow," Yharaskrik reminded. "It is possible that Jarlaxle was killed in that same conflict."
"We do not know what happened to First Grandfather Wu."
"We know that he is lost to us, that he is ... gone. There is nothing more we need know. He found Jarlaxle and was defeated, and whether the drow was also killed - "
"Is something we would know if you cared to search!" Hephaestus said, and there it was, the true source of his simmering rage.
"Do not overreach," the illithid in the dwarf's body retorted. "We are great and mighty, and our power will only multiply as more minions are brought through the rift, and more undead are called to our service - perhaps we will soon learn how to raise the bodies of the crawlers, then our army will be unending. But mighty, too, are our enemies, and none more so than the one we have here, within our reach, at the place they call Spirit Soaring."
"Magic is failing."
"But it has not failed. It is unpredictable, of course, but potent still."
"Fetchigrol and Solme have bottled this mighty enemy up in his hole," Hephaestus argued with dismissive sarcasm, his voice dripping as he referred to Cadderly as "mighty."
"They are out on the trails even now."
"Where many have been killed!"
"A few, no more," Yharaskrik said. "And many of our minions were consumed in the battle. They do not issue from an inexhaustible source, great Hephaestus."
"But the walking dead do - millions and millions will answer our call. And as they kill, their ranks increase," the dracolich proclaimed.
"The summoning is easy for those of this world who have fallen," Yharaskrik agreed. "But it is not without cost to the power of Crenshinibon - and who more likely than the powerful Cadderly to discover a countering magic?"
"I will have them!" Hephaestus roared. "The drow and his human companion - that Calishite. I will have them and I will devour them!"
The body of Ivan Bouldershoulder settled back on its heels. The illithid within was shaking the yellow-haired head with dismay and resignation. "A creature of centuries should know more of patience," Yharaskrik scolded quietly. "One enemy at a time. Let us destroy Cadderly and Spirit Soaring, then we can go hunting. We recall the four apparitions - "
"No!"
"We will need all of our power to - "
"No! Two in the north and two in the south. Two for the drow and two for the human. If First Grandfather Wu returns, then bring him back to our side, but the other four will hunt until they have found the drow and the human. I will have those treacherous fools. And fear not for Cadderly and his forces. We will peck at them until they are weak, then the catastrophe of Hephaestus will fall over them. I went out to Solme this very day and the ground beneath me died at my passing, and the touch of my wings rotted the trees. I fear no mortal, not this Cadderly nor anyone else. I am Hephaestus, I am catastrophe. Look upon me and know doom!"
With a large part of his enormous consciousness still residing within the coil of the dragon, sharing that body with Hephaestus and Crenshinibon, Yharaskrik understood that it could not convince the dragon otherwise. The illithid also realized, to its dismay, that Hephaestus was gaining the upper hand in the competition for the alliance of Crenshinibon.
Perhaps the illithid had erred in abandoning that coil with so much of its consciousness. Perhaps it was time to return to the others within the lifeforce of Hephaestus, to better battle the stubborn dragon.
A smile creased the face of Ivan Bouldershoulder - an ironic one indeed, Yharaskrik thought, because he was at that moment concluding that sacrificing the dwarf to the rage of Hephaestus might placate the dragon for a while, long enough for Yharaskrik to regain some measure of dominance.
* * * * *
A chorus of weary cheers erupted when at last the beleaguered refugees of Carradoon saw a stream of daylight. Never had any imagined how deep and dark mountain tunnels could be - except for Pikel, of course, who had been raised in dwarven mines.
Even Rorick, who had warned against going outside, couldn't hide his relief at learning that there was indeed an ending to those lightless corridors. With great hopes, they turned a long and curving corner leading to daylight.
And arrived with a communal, profound, and disappointed sigh.
"Uh-oh," said Pikel, for they had not come to the end of the tunnel, but merely to a natural chimney, and a very long and narrow one at that.
"We're deeper than I believed," Temberle admitted, staring up the shaft, which extended upward for more than a hundred feet. Most of it could not be climbed, and was too narrow in many places for any attempt, even for nimble Hanaleisa or Rorick, who were the slimmest of the group.
"Did you know we were this far down?" Hanaleisa asked Pikel, and in reply the dwarf began drawing mountains in the air, then merely shrugged.
His reasoning was correct, Hanaleisa and the other onlookers knew, for their current depth was likely more dependent upon the contours of the mountainous land above than the relatively mild grade of the tunnels they had been traversing.
The high shaft confirmed, though, that they were indeed moving deeper into the Snowflakes.
"You have to get us out," Temberle said to Pikel.
"To battle hordes of undead?" Rorick reminded him, and Temberle shot his brother an irritated look.
"Or at least, you have to show us ... show them" - he glanced back at the many Carradden moving into sight around the corner - "that there is a way out. Even if we don't go outside," he added, looking pointedly at his little brother, "it remains important that we know we can go outside again. We're not dwarves."
A cry sounded down the line. "They're fighting in the back!" a woman yelled. "Undead! Undead sailors again!"
"We know there's a way out," Hanaleisa said somberly, "because now we know there's a way in."
"Even if it's the way we already came," Temberle added, and he and Hanaleisa made their way along the line to take up arms once again, to battle bloodthirsty monsters in an unending nightmare.
By the time Hanaleisa and Temberle arrived at the scuffle, the small skirmish had ended, leaving a trio of waterlogged and rotted zombies crumpled in the corridor. But one of the Carradden, too, had fallen, caught by surprise. Her neck had been broken in the opening salvo.
"What are we to do with her?" a man asked, speaking above the wails of the woman's husband, a fellow sailor.
"Burn her, and be quick!" another shouted, which elicited many cries of protest and many more shouts of assent. Both sides in the debate became more insistent with each passing shout, and it seemed as if the whole argument would explode into more fighting then and there.
"We cannot burn her!" Hanaleisa yelled above it all, and whether by deference to one of Cadderly's children or simply because of the strength and surety in her voice, Hanaleisa's yell interrupted the cacophony of the brewing storm, at least for the moment.
"Ye'd have her stand up, then, to walk like one o' them?" an old seadog argued. "Better to burn her now and be sure."
"We haven't any fire, nor any tools for making fire," Hanaleisa shot back. "And even if we did, would you have us trudging through tunnels filled with such a smell and reminder as that?"
The dead woman's husband finally tore away from those trying to hold him back, and shoved his way through the crowd to kneel beside his wife. He took up her head, cradling it in his arms, his strong shoulders bobbing with sobs.
Hanaleisa and Temberle looked at each other, not knowing what to do.
"Cut off her head, then!" someone yelled from the back, and the dead woman's husband lifted a hateful and threatening gaze in the direction of the gruesome suggestion.
"No!" Hanaleisa yelled, again quieting the crowd. "No. Find some rocks. We'll bury her under a cairn, respectfully, as she deserves."
That seemed to mollify the distraught husband somewhat, but some in the crowd began to protest all the more loudly.
"And if she comes to a state of undeath like all the others, and charges at us?" a nearby dissenter remarked to Hanaleisa and Temberle. "Are you two going to have the will to cut her down, and in front of this poor man here? Are you sure you're not being cruel in thinking to be kind?"
Hanaleisa found it a hard point to argue, and the weight of responsibility for the calamity pressed down heavily on her young shoulders. She looked back at the husband, who obviously recognized her dilemma. He stared at her pleadingly.
"A few heavier rocks, then," Hanaleisa said. "If whatever abomination that is animating the dead reaches her, which I think unlikely," she added for the sake of the distraught man, "then she will not be able to rise against us, or anyone else."
"No, she'll be trapped flailing under our heavy stones, and what an eternity that's to be!" the old seadog said. More yelling ensued, and again the husband's expression fell as he hugged his dear dead wife more closely.
"Aye, so if we cut off her head and that happens, then she can tuck it under one arm, what, and walk about forever like that?" another man chided the first.
"I hate this," Temberle whispered to his sister.
"We've no choice," Hanaleisa reminded him. "If we don't lead, who will?" In the end, they settled on Hanaleisa's suggestion, building a cairn of heavy rocks to securely inter the dead woman. At Hanaleisa's private suggestion, Pikel then performed a ceremony to consecrate the ground around the cairn, with Hanaleisa assuring all, particularly the husband, that such a ritual would make it very unlikely that any necromantic magic could disturb her rest.
That seemed to calm the bereaved husband somewhat, and mollify the protestors, though in fact, Pikel had no such real ceremony to offer and the impromptu dance and song he offered was no more than a show.
At that dark time, in that dark place, Hanaleisa thought a show was just as good.
She realized it was better than the alternatives, of which she could not think of even one.