The Ghost King

DAWN

Why aren't we fighting?" Temberle whispered to Ivan. Even his hushed tone seemed to echo in the too-quiet tunnels. "Not for knowin'," Ivan replied to Temberle and to all the remaining refugees in the group, which numbered less than twenty. "Hoping it's your da's work."

"Boom," Pikel said hopefully, and loudly, drawing gasps from all the others. "Oops," the green-bearded dwarf apologized, slapping his hand over his mouth.

"Or they're setting a trap for us," Hanaleisa interjected. Ivan was nodding as she spoke, about to make the same observation. "Perhaps they've learned from the slaughter."

"So what are we to do?" asked Rorick, and when she looked at her younger brother, Hanaleisa saw real fear there, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"We go on, for what choice do we got?" said Ivan, and he purposely lifted his voice. "If they be lying in wait for us, then we'll just kill 'em and walk on over their rottin' bodies."

Ivan slapped his bloodstained axe across his open hand and nodded with determination, then stomped away.

"Oo oi!" Pikel agreed, and adjusted his cooking pot helmet and scrambled to follow.

Not far from that site, the beleaguered band entered a room that presented yet another puzzle, but a welcome one at first glance. The chamber floor was littered with dead crawlers and dead giant bats, and even a dead giant.

The group scanned for clues, mostly looking for the bodies of those who had fought the beasts. Was it another fleeing refugee group?

"Did they kill each other?" Temberle asked, voicing a question they were all asking themselves.

"Not unless they use tiny bows," one of the refugees answered. Temberle and the others moved to the man's position, bringing the meager torchlight to bear. They found him holding a small dart, like those Cadderly used with his hand crossbows.

"Father!" Rorick said hopefully.

"If it was, he was busy," said Hanaleisa as she moved around, finding the same darts littering the floor and the bodies. She shook her head with doubt. Only two such hand crossbows were kept at Spirit Soaring, but dozens, perhaps hundreds, of darts had been fired in that fight. She pulled one from the corpse of a crawler and held it up, shaking her head even more. None of the darts showed her father's added feature: the collapsible center where the tiny vials of explosive oil were stored.

"These ain't Cadderly's," Ivan confirmed a moment later. Since he had designed and built Cadderly's hand crossbows and its quarrels, his words carried undeniable truth.

"Then who?" asked Rorick.

"We weren't that far away," Temberle added. "And this battle's not so old. This happened fast, and it happened quietly." He looked with great alarm at his sister and his Uncle Ivan.

"Poison-tipped," said Hanaleisa.

More than a few eyes widened at that, for most folk knew the dire implications of poison-tipped hand crossbow darts.

"Has the whole world gone upside down, then?" asked Ivan, his tone more sober - even somber - than ever. "I'm thinking the sooner we get to the surface, the better we'll be."

"Uh-huh," Pikel agreed.

On they marched, swiftly, and with all feeling that the enemy of their enemy would most certainly not prove to be their friend.
* * * * *

The hairless, black-skinned giant lurched forward another step.

Click. Click. Click.

The monster groaned as three more darts punctured its skin, adding to the drow sleep poison coursing its veins. Its next step came heavier, foot dragging.

Click. Click. Click.

The giant went down on one knee, barely conscious of the movement. Small, dodging forms came at it, left, right, and center, slender blades gleaming with magic. The nightwalker waved its arms, trying to deflect the approaching enemies, to block and to swat aside the dark elves as though they were gnats. But every swing, waved under the weight of a most profound weariness, was waved too slowly to catch the agile warriors. Every block failed to drive off the stabs and thrusts and slashes, and the giant nightwalker swatted nothing but the cavern's stagnant air.

They didn't maul the giant. Every strike landed precisely and efficiently in an area that would allow the smoothest and swiftest flow of blood. The behemoth didn't get hit a hundred times, not more than a score even, but as it settled to a prone position on the floor, overcome by poison and loss of blood, the nightwalker's wounds were surely mortal.

The last group, Valas Hune signaled to Kimmuriel. The way is clear.

Kimmuriel nodded and followed his lead team through the chamber. Another giant bat crashed down against the far wall, coaxed to sleep in mid flight. Many crawlers still thrashed on the floor, their movements uncoordinated and unfocused but defiant until one of the drow warriors found the time to finish the job with a sure stroke to the neck.

Out of that chamber, the Bregan D'aerthe force moved down a corridor to an area of tunnels and chambers puddled by lake water. After only a few more twists and turns, every dark elf squinted against the brightness of the surface. Night had fallen long ago, but the moon was up, and sensitive drow eyes stung under the brilliance of Selune's glow.

Can we not simply leave this place? more than one set of fingers dared flash Kimmuriel's way, but they were met one and all with a stern look that offered no compromise.

He had determined that they needed to go to the ruined town on the lakeshore before leaving the uncivilized reaches between Old Shanatar and Great Bhaerynden, and so to the place known as Carradoon they would go.

They exited the tunnels in the cove north of the city and easily scaled the cliffs to the bluff overlooking the ruined town. More than half the structures had burned to the ground, and less than a handful of those remaining had avoided the conflagration. The air hung thick with smoke and the stench of death, and skeletons of ship masts dotted the harbor, like markers for mass graves. The dark elves moved down in tight formation, even more cautious outside than in the more familiar environ of the tunnels. A giant nightwing occasionally flew overhead, but unless it ventured too near, the disciplined drow held their shots.

Led by Valas Hune, scouts broke left and right, flanking, leading, and ensuring that no pursuit was forthcoming.

What do you seek in this ruin? Valas's fingers asked of Kimmuriel soon after they had entered the city proper.

Kimmuriel indicated that he wasn't quite certain, but assured the scout that something there was worth investigating. He sensed it, felt it keenly.

A commotion to the side broke the discussion short as both drow contemplated the beginnings of a battle along a road parallel to their path. Another giant nightwalker had found the band and foolishly came on. The tumult increased briefly as the closest drow engaged and lured the behemoth to a narrow stretch between two buildings, a place where drow hand crossbows could not miss the huge target.

Kimmuriel and the bulk of his force continued along before the thing was even dead, confident in the discipline and tactics of the skilled and battle-proven company.

A scout returning from the quay delivered the report Kimmuriel had awaited, and he led swiftly to the spot.

"That bodes ill," Valas Hune remarked - the first words spoken since they had come out of the tunnels - when they came in sight of the rift. Every dark elf viewing the spectacle knew it immediately for what it was: a tear in the fabric of two separate worlds, a magical gate.

They stopped a respectful distance away, defenders sliding out like tentacles to secure the area as only Bregan D'aerthe could.

"Purposeful? Or an accident of misfiring magic?" Valas Hune asked.

"It matters not," answered Kimmuriel. "Though I expect that we will encounter many such rifts."

"A good thing, then, that drow never tire of killing."

Valas Hune fell silent when he realized that Kimmuriel, eyes closed, was no longer listening. He watched as the psionicist settled back, then lifted his hands toward the dimensional rift and popped wide his eyes, throwing forth his mental energy.

Nothing happened.

"Purposeful," Kimmuriel answered. "And foolish."

"You cannot close it?"

"An illithid hive could not close it. Sorcere on their strongest day could not close it," he said, referring to the great academy of the magical Art in Menzoberranzan.

"Then what?"

Kimmuriel looked to Mariv, who produced a thick wood-and-metallic rod the length of his forearm. Delicate runes of red and brown adorned the cylindrical item. Mariv handed it to Kimmuriel.

"The rod that cancels magical effects?" Valas Hune asked.

Kimmuriel looked to a young warrior, the same who had led the way through the gate in the tunnels, bidding him forth. He signaled the rod's command words with the fingers of his free hand as he passed the powerful item to the younger drow.

Licking dry lips, the drow moved toward the rift. His long white hair started to dance as he neared, as if tingling with energy, or struck, perhaps, by winds blowing on the other side of the dimensional gate.

He glanced at Kimmuriel, who nodded for him to proceed.

The young drow lifted the rod up to the rift, licked his lips again, and spoke the words of command. The magical implement flared with a brief burst of power that flowed its length and leaped out at the rift.

Back came a profound darkness, a gray mist that rolled through the conduit and surged into the hand of the drow warrior, who wasn't wise enough or quick enough to drop the rod in time.

He did drop it when his arm fell limp. He looked at Kimmuriel and the others, his face stretching into the most profound expression of terror any of them had ever witnessed as his life-force withered to shadowstuff and his empty husk fell dead to the ground.

No one went to aid him, or even to investigate.

"We cannot close it," Kimmuriel announced. "We are done here."

He led them away at a swift pace, Valas recalling his scouts as they went.

As soon as he thought them far enough so that the rift's continuing fields wouldn't interfere, Kimmuriel enacted another of his dimensional doorways.

"Back to Luskan?" Mariv asked as the next least of the band was brought forward to ensure the integrity of the gate.

"For now, yes," answered Kimmuriel, who was thinking that perhaps their road would lead them much farther than Luskan, all the way back into the Underdark and Menzoberranzan, where they would become part of a drow defense comprised of twenty thousand warriors, priestesses, and wizards.

The young drow stepped through and signaled from the other side, from the subterranean home Kimmuriel's band had constructed under the distant port city on the Sword Coast.

The Bregan D'aerthe force departed the Barony of Impresk as swiftly and silently as they had come.
* * * * *

The human refugees' eyes, too, stung as they came in sight of the surface world after several long and miserable days of wandering and fighting in the dark tunnels. Squinting against the sunrise reflecting across Impresk Lake, Ivan led the group to the edge of the cave at the back of the small cove.

The rest of the group crowded up beside him, eager to feel the sun on their faces, desperate to be out from under tons of rock and earth. Collectively, they took great comfort in the quiet of the morning, with no sounds other than the songs of birds and the lap of waves against the rocks.

Ivan brought them quickly into the open air. They had found more slaughtered nightwings, nightwalkers, and crawlers. Convinced that the tunnels were infested with dark elves, Ivan and the others were happy indeed to be out of them!

Getting out of the cove took longer than expected. They didn't dare venture out near the deeper water, having seen too much of the undead fish. Getting up the cliff face, for they had come down with magical help from Pikel, was no easy task for the weary humans or the short-legged dwarves. They tried several routes unsuccessfully and eventually crossed the cove and climbed the lower northern rise. The sun was high in the eastern sky when they at last managed to circle around and come in sight of Carradoon.

For a long, long while, they stood on the high bluff looking down at the ruins, saying not a word, making not a sound other than the occasional sob.

"We got no reason to go in there," Ivan asserted at length. "We have friends - " a man started to protest.

"Ain't nothing alive in there," Ivan interrupted. "Nothing alive ye're wantin' to see, at least."

"Our homes!" a woman wailed. "Are gone," Ivan replied.

"Then what are we to do?" the first man shouted at him.

"Ye get on the road and get out o' here," said Ivan. "Meself and me brother're for Spirit Soaring ..."

"Me brudder!" Pikel cheered, and pumped his stump into the air.

"And Cadderly's kids with us," Ivan added.

"Shalane is no farther, and down a safer road," the man argued.

"Then take it," Ivan said to him. "And good luck to ye." It seemed as simple as that to the dwarf, and he started away to the west, a route to circumvent the destroyed Carradoon and pick up the trail that led into the mountains and back to Spirit Soaring.

"What is happening to the world, Uncle Ivan?" Hanaleisa whispered.

"Durned if I know, girl. Durned if I know."