The Ghost King

CHAPTER 16

 
DARK HOLES
Danica saw the cave entrance far in the distance, long before she realized that the trail of death led to that spot. She knew instinctively that such a creature as had caused that withering and decay would not long bask in sunlight.
The trail meandered a bit, but soon bent toward the dark face of the distant mountain, where it ended abruptly. Likely, the dragon had taken flight.
When Danica at last arrived at the base of the mountain, she looked up at the black mouth of the cavern. It was indeed large enough to admit a great wyrm, a subtle crease high in the mountain wall, inaccessible to any unable to fly.
Or unable to climb with the skill of a master monk.
Danica closed her eyes and fell inside herself, connecting mind and body in complete harmony. She envisioned herself as lighter, as unbounded by the press of gravity. Slowly, the woman opened her eyes again, lifting her chin to scan a path among the stones. Few others would have seen much possibility there, but to Danica, a ridge no wider than a finger seemed as inviting as a ledge upon which five men could stand breast.
She mentally lifted her body, then reached up to a narrow ledge and locked her fingers in place, counting out the cadence of the next few movements. She scrambled like a spider, seeming effortless, walking the wall on all fours, hands and feet reaching and stretching. Danica moved horizontally as well as vertically, shifting toward better ridges, more broken stones and better handholds.
The sun crossed its midpoint, and still Danica climbed. The wind howled around her, but she ignored its cold bite, and would not let it dislodge her. Of more concern to her was her timing. Her estimate in beginning her ascent was that the creature she sought was a beast of the darkness, and the last place she wanted to be when it emerged from its hole was splayed out on a cliff face, hundreds of feet above the ground.
With that unsettling thought in mind, Danica pushed on, her fingers and toes finding holds, however tentatively. She constantly shifted her weight to minimize the pull against any one limb or even one digit. As she neared the cave opening, the ascent became more broken and not so steep, with several stretches where she could pause and catch her breath. One long expanse was more a walk than a climb. Danica took her time along that trail and paid extra care to use any cover she could find among the many tumbled stones along the path that led to the stygian darkness of the waiting cave.
* * * * *
Numbers.
He was counting and adding, subtracting and counting some more. A compulsion dominated his every thought, to count and to add, to seek patterns in the many numbers that flitted though his thoughts.
Ivan Bouldershoulder had always been fond of numbers. Designing a new tool or implement, working through the proper ratios and calculating the necessary strength of each piece had been among the dwarf craftsman's greatest joys. As when Cadderly had come to him with a tapestry depicting dark elves and their legendary hand crossbows. Working from that image and his knowledge and intuition alone, Ivan had replicated those delicate weapons to near perfection.
Numbers. It was all about numbers. Everything was about numbers - at least, that's what Cadderly had always argued. Everything could be reduced to numbers and deconstructed at will from that point forward, if only the intelligence doing the reducing was great enough to understand the patterns involved.
That was the difference between the mortals and the gods, Cadderly had often remarked. The gods could reduce life itself to numbers.
Such thoughts had never found a home in the far less theorizing and far more pragmatic Ivan Bouldershoulder, but apparently, he realized, Cadderly's sermons had created a far bigger imprint on his brain than he had assumed.
He thought of the implication of numbers, and that memory of a long-ago conversation was the only thing that made the befuddled dwarf realize that the numbers constantly flashing before him just then were nothing more than a purposeful and malicious distraction.
Ivan felt as if he were waking up beside a babbling brook, that moment of recognition of the sound giving him a real space outside of his dreams, a piece of solidity and reality from which to bring his thoughts fully to the waking world.
The numbers continued to flash more insistently. The patterns flickered and disappeared. Distraction.
Something was keeping him off balance and out of sorts, away from consciousness itself. He couldn't close his eyes against the intrusion, because his eyes were already closed.
No, not closed, he suddenly understood - whether they were closed or not was of no practical consequence, because he wasn't the one using them, or seeing through them. He was lost, wandering aimlessly within the swirl of his own thoughts.
And something had put him there.
And something had kept him there - some force, some creature, some intellect that was inside him.
The dwarf had broken the enchantment of distraction and lashed out from the cocoon of numbers, though he flailed blindly.
A memory flashed quickly through his thoughts, of fighting on a rocky slope north of Mithral Hall, of a piece of shale spinning through the air and taking the arm from his brother.
As abruptly as Pikel's arm, the memory was gone, but Ivan kept running through the darkness of his own mind, seeking flashes and moments of his own identity.
He found another recollection, a time when he had flown on a dragon. It wasn't anything substantial, just a sensation of freedom, the wind blowing through his hair, dragging his beard out behind him.
A brief flicker of mountains' majesty unfolding before him.
It seemed a fitting metaphor to the dwarf. He felt the same way, but within himself. It was as if his mind had been lifted above the landscape of all that was Ivan Bouldershoulder, as if he were overlooking himself from afar, a spectator in his own thoughts.
But at least he knew. He had escaped the distraction and knew again who he was.
Ivan began to fight. He grabbed at every memory and held it fast, steeling his thoughts to ensure that what he remembered was true. He saw Pikel, he saw Cadderly, he saw Danica and the kids.
The kids.
He had watched them grow from drooling, helpless critters to adulthood, tall and straight and full of potential. He took pride in them as if they were his own children, and he would not let that notion go.
No creature in all the multiverse was more stubborn than a dwarf, after all. And few dwarves were as far-thinking as Ivan Bouldershoulder. He began immediately to use his recognition of the creature telepathically dominating him to begin a flow of information back the other way.
He knew his surroundings through the memory of that other being. He understood the threats around him, to some extent, and he felt keenly the power of the dracolich.
If he wanted to survive, if there was any way to survive, he knew, in that moment when he would at last find a way to reassert control of his mortal coil, that he couldn't allow himself to be confused and couldn't allow himself to be surprised.
* * * * *
The face of Ivan Bouldershoulder, controlled solely by Yharaskrik the illithid, smiled.
The dwarf was waking up.
Because of the illithid's own uncertainty, Yharaskrik knew, for as it had begun to consider the wisdom of returning fully to consciousness within the draconic host of Crenshinibon, so it had also, unavoidably, lessened its grasp on the dwarf.
Yharaskrik understood well that once a possessed creature of strong intellect and determination - a dwarf perhaps more than any other race - had broken out of the initial mental invasion of psionic power, it was like a trickle of water through an earthen dam.It couldn't be stopped, even if Yharaskrik had decided that it was critical to stop it. It could be temporarily plugged, perhaps, but never fully stopped, for all of the mental cobwebs Yharaskrik had enacted to keep the dwarf locked in a dark hole were beginning to erode.
The illithid amused itself with a notion of freeing the dwarf right before the waiting maw of fearsome Hephaestus. He thought of departing the dwarf's mind almost fully, but leaving just a bit of consciousness within Ivan so that it could feel the desperate terror and the last moments of the dwarf's life.
What, after all, could be more invasive and intrusive than being so intimate a part of another being's final moments?
And indeed, Yharaskrik had done that very thing many times before, as it pondered the truth of death. To the illithid's frustration, however, never had it been able to send its own consciousness over into the realm of death with that of its host.
It didn't matter, the illithid decided as it pushed away those past failures with a mental sigh. It still enjoyed those voyeur moments, of sharing those ultimate sensations and fears uninvited, of intruding upon the deepest privacy any sentient creature could ever know.
Through the eyes of Ivan Bouldershoulder, Yharaskrik looked upon Hephaestus. The dracolich lay curled at the back of the largest chamber in the mountain cavern, not asleep, for sleep was for the living, but in a state of deep meditation and plotting, and fantasizing of the victories to come.
No, the illithid decided as it sensed the dragon's continuing feelings of superiority. Yharaskrik would not give Hephaestus the satisfaction of that particular kill.
Methodically, the illithid in the dwarf's body walked over to retrieve Ivan's antlered helmet and his heavy axe, formulating the plan as it went. It wanted to feel the dwarf's extended terror, his fury and his fear. Yharaskrik moved out of the cave, signaling the four undead wizards to follow, and stepped out onto the rocky descent a short way, then paused, calling Fetchigrol to its side.
On Yharaskrik's command, the specter crossed the unseen threshold once more, past the realm of death and into the other world, the Shadowfell, that had been opened to them through the power of the falling Weave.
Yharaskrik paused only a moment longer, to taunt the thoughts of Ivan Bouldershoulder.
Then it let the dwarf have the control and sensibilities of his mortal coil back once more, surrounded by enemies and with nowhere to run, and no way to win.
* * * * *
Ivan knew where he was and what was coming against him - he had garnered that from the consciousness of his possessor. He felt no shock from the illithid departing, and so Ivan Bouldershoulder woke up swinging. His axe hummed through the air in great sweeping cuts. He smashed the burned wizard, sending up a cloud of flecks of blackened skin. His backhand opened wide the chest of a second zombie and sent the horrid creature tumbling away. When another came in at him behind the arc of that cut, Ivan lowered his head and butted hard, the deer antlers on his helmet poking deep holes in the charging beast.
With a groan, the undead wizard fell backward off the helmet spikes, just in time to catch the dwarf's axe swing right in the side of its head. The axe blew through and dived into the fourth as it shuffled up to grasp at the dwarf.
By that time, Ivan's initial fury played out, more enemies swarmed toward him: huddled, fleshy beasts.
Ivan sprinted down the trail, away from the cave, though he knew from memory that the route was surely a dead end, a long drop. But the invading consciousness still hovered over him, he sensed, anticipating just such a run.
So Ivan turned and bulled his way through the close pursuit of a pair of crawling beasts, knocking them aside with sheer ferocity and strength. He ran all the faster, right for the cave mouth, and straight into it.
And there lay the moldering skeleton of a titanic dragon, itself imbued with the animate power of the undead. It was already moving when Ivan came upon it, leaping up onto its four legs with amazing dexterity.
The sight nearly knocked the breath out of Ivan. He knew that something big and terrible was in that cave before he'd fully awakened, but he couldn't have anticipated a catastrophe of such proportions.
A lesser dwarf, a lesser warrior, would have hesitated right there at the entrance, and the huddled beasts would have fallen over him from behind, and even had he somehow prevailed in that crush, the great monster before him would have had him.
But Ivan did not hesitate. He lifted his axe high and charged the dracolich, bellowing a war cry to his god, Moradin. He had no doubt he was going to die, but he would do so in a manner of his choosing, in the manner of a true warrior.
* * * * *
The first sounds of battle alerted Danica. She scrambled around a stone and her heart fell, for there she saw Ivan, fighting valiantly against overwhelming odds of crawling beasts and a few horribly maimed walking dead. Behind them, directing them, Danica sensed, was some spectral being, huddled and shadowy and shimmering like simultaneously thinning and thickening gray smoke. Danica's first instinct was to go to Ivan, or rush behind the pursuing throng and attack the leading creature, but even as she digested the awful scene, the dwarf turned and sprinted away, up the trail toward the great cave.
The monsters pursued. The specter rushed behind them.
Danica followed.
Into the cave went Ivan. Into the cave went the monsters and the zombies and the specter. To the edge of the entrance went Danica, and there she skidded to an abrupt stop, and there she saw Ivan's doom, saw her own doom, saw the doom of all the world.
Danica couldn't even catch her breath in the sight of the great dracolich, and enough of the dragon remained intact for her to recognize the red scales of the wyrm. Her gaze locked on the beast's face, half-rotted, white bone showing, eye sockets burned out horribly, and a peculiar, green-glowing horn protruding from the very middle of its forehead.
She felt the power emanating from that horn.
Awful power.
Ivan's battle cry broke her trance, and she looked down at the dwarf's charge, his axe up high over his head as if he meant to tear his way right through the beast. He charged at the dracolich's front leg, and the wyrm lifted its foot at the last moment.
Ivan dived, and so did a trio of huddled fleshy beasts and one of the undead - one of the wizards from Baldur's Gate, Danica recognized with a heavy heart.
The beast stamped with power that shook the whole of the mountain spur, sending cracks spiderwebbing across the stone floor.
The air around its foot was sprayed with blood and gore, a crimson mist of ultimate destruction, a stamp of pure finality.
Danica couldn't contain her gasp.
A few of the creatures that had not followed the dwarf to doom, falling back and stumbling every which way from the sheer concussion of the stomp, noted that faint noise.
Then Danica was running away from the cave, hungry beasts in close pursuit. She sprinted down the trail, trying to figure out how or where she might go, for the navigable angle of decline would not hold, not in any direction.
She glanced over her shoulder, turned back, and cut fast behind a stone outcropping, and cut the other way around another, trying to gain some distance so that she could get over a ledge and begin her descent down the cliff face.
But there were too many, and every turn did no more than put different monsters close on her tail.
She ran out of room and skidded to the edge of the cliff, perched at the point of the longest drop, for not only did it rise above the hundreds of feet of cliffs that had led Danica to that awful place, it went far deeper on one side, into a gorge low in the foothills of the Snowflakes.
Danica turned around, then fell flat as a beast leaped at her. It sailed over her, its hungry cry turning to a scream of terror, fast receding as it plummeted to oblivion.
Up hopped Danica, kicking out to knock back the next monster in line. The third, as if oblivious to the fate of the first, leaped into the air and tumbled at her. Again she ducked, though not as fully, and the creature brushed her as it went over. Danica fought hard and regained her balance just in time.
But the creature's flailing claw caught her shoulder and tugged her back. All the fury and tumult of the moment seemed to stop suddenly and Danica's ears filled with the emptiness of a mournful wind. And she was falling.
She twisted around, looking down a thousand feet and more to the tops of very tall trees.
She thought of Cadderly, of her children, of a life not yet complete.
PART 3
THE SUM OF THEIR PARTS
We live in a dangerous world, and one that seems more dangerous now that the way of magic is in transition, or perhaps even collapse. If Jarlaxle's guess is correct, we have witnessed the collision of worlds, or of planes, to the point where rifts will bring newer and perhaps greater challenges to us all. It is, I suspect, a time for heroes.
I have come to terms with my own personal need for action. I am happiest when there are challenges to be met and overcome. I feel in those times of great crisis that I am part of something larger than myself - a communal responsibility, a generational duty - and to me, that is great comfort.
We will all be needed now, every blade and every brain, every scholar and every warrior, every wizard and every priest. The events in the Silver Marches, the worry I saw on Lady Alustriel's face, are not localized, but, I fear, resonate across the breadth of Toril. I can only imagine the chaos in Menzoberranzan with the decline of the wizards and priests; the entire matriarchal society might well be in jeopardy, and those greatest of Houses might find themselves besieged by legions of angry kobolds.
Our situation on the World Above is likely to be no less dire, and so it is the time for heroes. What does that mean, to be a hero? What is it that elevates some above the hordes of fighters and battle-mages? Certainly circumstance plays a role - extraordinary valor, or action, is more likely in moments of highest crisis.
And yet, in those moments of greatest crisis, the result is, more often than not, disaster. No hero emerges. No savior leads the charge across the battlefield, or slays the dragon, and the town is immersed in flames.
In our world, for good or for ill, the circumstances favorable to creating a hero have become all too common.
It is not, therefore, just circumstance, or just good fortune. Luck may play a part, and indeed some people - I count myself among them - are more lucky than others, but since I do not believe that there are blessed souls and cursed souls, or that this or that god is leaning over our shoulders and involving himself in our daily affairs, then I do know that there is one other necessary quality for those who find a way to step above the average.
If you set up a target thirty strides away and assemble the hundred best archers in any given area to shoot at it, they'd all hit the mark. Add in a bet of gold and a few would fall away, to the hoots of derision from their fellows.
But now replace the target with an assassin, and have that assassin holding at dagger-point the person each successive archer most loves in the world. The archer now has one shot. Just one. If he hits the mark - the assassin - his loved one will be saved. If he misses the assassin, it is certain doom for his beloved.
A hero will hit that mark. Few mere archers would.
That is the extra quality involved, the ability to hold poise and calm and rational thought no matter how devastating the consequences of failure, the ability to go to that place of pure concentration in times most emotionally and physically tumultuous. Not just once and not by luck. The hero makes that shot.
The hero lives for that shot. The hero trains for that shot, every day, for endless hours, with purest concentration.
Many fine warriors live in the world, wielding blade or lightning bolt, who serve well in their respective armies, who weather the elements and the enemies with quiet and laudable stoicism. Many are strong in their craft, and serve with distinction.
But when all teeters precariously on the precipice of disaster, when victory or defeat rests upon matters beyond simple strength and courage and valor, when all balances on that sword-edged line between victory or defeat, the hero finds a way - a way that seems impossible to those who do not truly understand the give and take of battle, the ebb and flow of sword play, the logical follow-up to counter an enemy's advantage.
For a warrior is one trained in the techniques of various weaponry, one who knows how to lift a shield or parry a thrust and properly counter, but a true warrior, a hero, extends beyond those skills. Every movement is instinctual, is engrained into every muscle to flow with perfect and easy coordination. Every block is based on clear thinking - so clear that it is as much anticipatory as reflexive. And every weakness in an opponent becomes apparent at first glance.
The true warrior fights from a place of calm, of controlled rage and quelled fear. Every situation comes to sharpened focus, every avenue of solution shines its path clearly. And the hero goes one step beyond that, finding a way, any way, to pave a path of victory when there is no apparent route.
The hero finds a way, and when that way is shown, however difficult the path, the hero makes the thrust or the block or the last frantic riposte, stealing his opponent's victory. As when Regis used his ruby pendant to paralyze a battle-mage in Luskan. As when Wulfgar threw himself at the yochlol to save Catti-brie. As when Catti-brie made that desperate shot in the sewers of Calimport to drive off Entreri, who had gained the advantage over me. As when Bruenor used his cunning, his strength, and his unshakable will to defeat Shimmergloom in the darkness of Mithral Hall.
Certain doom is a term not known in the vocabulary of the hero, for it is precisely at those times when doom seems most certain - when Bruenor rode the flaming shadow dragon down to the depths of Garumn's Gorge - that the warrior who would be hero elevates himself above the others. It is, instinctually, not about him or his life.
The hero makes the shot.
We are all to be tested now, I fear. In this time of confusion and danger, many will be pulled to the precipice of disaster, and most will fall over that dark ledge. But a few will step beyond that line, will find a way and will make that shot.
In those moments, however, it is important to recognize that reputation means nothing, and while past deeds might inspire confidence, they are no guarantee of present or future victory.
I hope that Taulmaril is steady in my hands when I stand upon that precipice, for I know that I walk into the shadows of doom, where black pits await, and I need only to think of broken Regis or look at my beloved Catti-brie to understand the stakes of this contest.
I hope that I am given that shot at this assassin, whomever or whatever it may be, who holds us all at dagger-point, for if so, I intend to hit the mark.
For that is the last point to make about the hero. In the aforementioned archery contest, the hero wants to be the one chosen to take that most critical shot. When the stakes are highest, the hero wants the outcome to be in his hands. It's not about hubris, but about necessity, and the confidence that the would-be hero has trained and prepared for exactly that one shot.