GAUNTLET THROWN

The Ghost King emerged from its cave with a deafening roar and a stomp of clawed feet that sent fleshy crawlers flying. The magnificent creature stepped out without heed to the scrambling beasts. Its great tail, part skeletal and part rotting dragon flesh, swept aside any too near. Its torn leathery wings buffeted those to either side with a great wind.

No plotting guided the attack, no care for minions or any role they might play. Rage drove the Ghost King. Freed of the caution of Yharaskrik, the great beast followed its emotions. The Ghost King could not be defeated by mere mortals, whose magic was failing. The Ghost King need not plot and connive and tread with fearful caution.

Wings wide, the Ghost King leaped from the pinnacle and rode the updrafts to climb above the Snowflakes. With eyes magical, the Ghost King saw across the miles to the symbol of its enemies, the place on which it focused its rage.

Higher it climbed, above the few wispy clouds that dulled part of the starry night sky. And there it circled, gathering speed, gathering its hatred. And like a bolt from on high, the Ghost King folded its wings, tipped down its huge head, and plummeted for Spirit Soaring.

Though Hephaestus's lips were mostly withered away, any watching would have noted a wicked smile upon the dracolich's face.
* * * * *

Twenty-one priests and wizards, almost half the contingent of residents and visitors remaining at Spirit Soaring, licked dry lips and clutched stones coated in explosive oil. The other half tried to sleep in the too-quiet night. They checked and rechecked their other implements, weapons and armor, magical rings and wands, scrolls and potion bottles, nervously awaiting the attack they knew would come.

It would be a greater beast, too, Cadderly had informed them after his meeting with the newcomers, the drow and the dwarves. A dragon, an undead dracolich, the master of the many minions they had slaughtered, would lead the next attack, so Cadderly had assured them with confidence.

More than a few of them had seen a dragon before, a handful had even witnessed the awful splendor of a dracolich. They were seasoned veterans, after all, travelers mostly, who had come to Spirit Soaring to try to make sense of a dangerous world gone mad.

Their mouths were dry, to a man and woman, for what sort of previous experiences could have offered them - could have offered anyone - solace at that desperate time?

They stood alert, spread over every vantage point of Spirit Soaring, their counterparts sleeping in small groups nearby, weapons at their sides. The attack would come soon, Cadderly had said. Perhaps that very night.

In the central chamber of the second floor, with easy access to corridors that would deliver them to any wall in short order, Cadderly, Danica, the two drow, and the three dwarves waited as well, none of them finding sleep. All of them expected, with each arrival of Ginance and her roving patrol group, to hear that the beast was upon them.

Spirit Soaring was alert, was ready.

But nothing could have truly prepared the fifty-four souls in the cathedral for the advent of the Ghost King. Some few sentries near the northeastern corner of the great building noted the movement from high above and pointed at the giant missile hurtling down at Spirit Soaring. A few managed to scream out a warning, and one lifted a shield in ridiculous defense.

With strength unimaginable, the Ghost King pulled up from its plummet just before it slammed the building, extending its great hind legs out before it and crashing in.

Not a person, not even King Bruenor, so strong on his feet, not even Athrogate, possessed of the low center of balance of a dwarf and the strength of a mountain giant, remained on his feet under the weight of that collision. Spirit Soaring shook to its foundation, glass shattering all over the structure under the sheer force of the impact and the twist of the magical building's indomitable frame. Doors popped open and corridors twisted. Bricks fell from every chimney.

The thunderous sound of a dragon's roar muted every scream, crash, and shatter.

The defenders pulled themselves up and did not shy from the fray. By the time Cadderly and his elite group arrived on the scene, where the wall had been torn away and the Ghost King stood, a dozen rocks had already been thrown, their magical oil exploding at they hit the flesh and bone of the beast.

The Ghost King swiveled its great head on a serpentine neck, fiery eyes selecting a group of annoying rock-throwers, but before the beast could bring its rage to bear on those men and woman, a wizard's fireball, thrown from a necklace of enchanted rubies, engulfed its face in biting flames.

Lightning blasts followed. A pillar of divine fire swept down from above to scorch the back of the dracolich's neck.

And the beast roared, and the beast thrashed, and the building shook, and again men and women, elf and drow and dwarf, tumbled. A swipe of the dracolich's mighty tail slapped the length of the building, shattering more glass, breaking stone facing and cracking thick timber supports.

The room lay broken open, the beast clearly visible to Cadderly's approaching group. The three dwarves spearheading did not hesitate in the face of that catastrophe, and could not slow. They had to be the focus of the battle, by the plans Cadderly had drawn.

As soon as he had felt the thunder of the initial impact, the wound to the place built of his magic, Cadderly had felt the assault on his own body. As the dracolich came into sight, Cadderly felt the magic building within him. Wrought of his desperation, his anger, his denial of the horror of it, the power of spells unknown began to stir.

Whether sensing that power or just recognizing Cadderly, the Ghost King locked its eyes on the approaching group and opened wide its jaws.

"Dive!" Bruenor yelled, and Thibbledorf Pwent dived into Bruenor and knocked him aside, the two of them falling atop the rolling Athrogate.

Flanking the dwarves, Drizzt, Jarlaxle, and Danica easily sidestepped from the direct line to the beast.

But Cadderly didn't move left or right. He thrust his hands forward, hand crossbow in one, walking stick in the other, and chanted in words he did not know.

Dragonfire poured forth from the beast, filling the room in front of them. While Spirit Soaring's magical structure diminished the effect on the walls and floor, the furniture, books, and bric-a-brac went up in bursts of flame, and the gout of immolation rushed across the floor at its living targets, jetting for the open doorway. And there it was stopped by Cadderly's ward.

As the conflagration lessened, the priest fired his hand crossbow, more an act of defiance and challenge than to inflict true damage to the mighty beast, though Cadderly did smile as the bolt exploded against the dracolich's face.

Into the burning room ran the seven, meeting the beast head on. Rocks flew in from left and right, smacking the dracolich and exploding with sudden bursts of magical flame. More magic roared in as well, a hornet's nest of stings, a hurricane of lightning, a god's wrath of fire.

Wings beat against Spirit Soaring in reply. The great tail slapped left and right, crushing stone and wood and throwing wizards and priests aside. But the beast did not turn its focus from that one room, from those seven puny heroes.

"And so we meet," the Ghost King said, its voice shaking the smoldering timbers.

Cadderly fired another dart into its ugly face.

Bruenor, Athrogate, and Pwent didn't pause, bursting through the doorway and charging across the room. Dragonfire drove them back.

"In together!" Cadderly demanded, and the seven tightened ranks around the priest, with his fire ward and his protection from the dracolich's withering touch.

Spell after spell came forth from the priest, in words none of them understood, and each of the defenders felt hardened against the deadly touch of the beast. On they went, marching right into the blinding roil of the Ghost King's breath. Those fires parted around them and reformed behind them as the dracolich continued its long exhale, so that the group of seven was fully surrounded by opaque walls of streaming flames.

But they moved forward, and as soon as the Ghost King finished, Cadderly cried for a charge.

And charge they did, Bruenor lifting high his axe, Athrogate beside him and spinning his morningstars, and Thibbledorf Pwent darting right between them, leaping at the beast with abandon. The battlerager latched on to one of the dracolich's great hind legs, dug his leg spikes in for support, and began whacking away with both hands, shaving skin and bone with his ridged armor as he thrashed.

Drizzt and Danica moved right behind the dwarves - Drizzt started to, but Cadderly grabbed him by the arm, then cupped his hand over Drizzt's right fist as Drizzt held his scimitar.

"You are the agent of all that is good!" Cadderly charged the surprised drow. The priest spoke another few words that neither he nor Drizzt understood, and Icingdeath glowed more brightly with a divine white light, one that overwhelmed its normal bluish hue. "Vanquish the beast!" Cadderly demanded, except it wasn't truly Cadderly, or only Cadderly talking, Drizzt realized to his hope and his horror. It was as if someone else, something else, some god or angel, had possessed the priest and placed that power and responsibility upon the drow.

Drizzt blinked but didn't dare hesitate other than to call forth Guenhwyvar. He spun back with such fury that it left him stumbling at the dracolich. He moved beside Danica, who leaped and spun and kicked out wide, hitting the beast with rapid and heavy blows. The Ghost King bit down at her, but she was too quick to be caught like that, and she threw herself aside at the last moment.

The snapping jaws cracked in the empty air, and Drizzt rushed in, glowing weapon in hand. He stabbed with Twinkle, the fine blade knifing through some rotting skin to crack against bone, then he slashed with Icingdeath, with his scimitar Cadderly had somehow infused with the power of divine might.

The strike sounded like the drop of a gigantic boulder, a sudden and sharp retort that dwarfed the boom of a fireball and made Athrogate's oil-soaked strikes seem like the tapping of a bird. The Ghost King's head flew back, a great chunk of its cheekbone and upper jaw flying from its face to the courtyard below.

Flying, too, went Guenhwyvar, a great leap that brought the panther clawing at the beast's ugly face.

Everyone else, even wild Pwent, paused a moment to stare in disbelief.

"Impressive," Jarlaxle congratulated, standing beside the gawking Cadderly. The drow threw down his plume, bringing forth the giant diatryma bird. Then he lifted his arms, a wand in each hand. From one came thundering lightning, from the other a line of viscous globs of green goo that the drow aimed to splatter across the wyrm's face, hoping to blind it or hinder its snapping jaws.

What a force they were!

But what an enemy they had found.

The Ghost King did not lift away and flee, did not shy even from Drizzt and that awful weapon. It stomped its leg, crushing through the support beams and driving straight down through the ceiling of the structure's first floor. Poor Pwent was ground by the walls and fell away, all twisted, to the main level.

The Ghost King shook its head wildly and Guenhwyvar went flying away. Then the beast swung its head back with battering ram force at Drizzt, a blow that would have killed him had it hit him squarely. But no one ever hit Drizzt Do'Urden squarely. As the head swung in, Drizzt dived over sideways, just ahead of it. Still, the sheer weight of the glancing blow forced him to roll repeatedly in an attempt to absorb the force. He tumbled out of room, slamming hard into the wrecked chamber's side wall, a burst of embers flying up behind him.

Stung and a bit dazed but hardly down, Drizzt rushed back at the beast. He watched Athrogate sail up in the air before him, caught by a foreleg. The dwarf's oil-soaked morningstar crashed and exploded against the bone, splintering it, but still the Ghost King managed to throw the dwarf far.

"Me head to shake, me bones to break!" the indomitable Athrogate yelled out even as he flew across the room and crashed to the floor. "He flinged me, a flat stone across a still lake!" he finished as he skipped up from the floor and slammed the corner of the wall near the outer break - only the word "lake" came out "la-aa-aa-aa-ke" as he fell to the ground outside.

With the two dwarves and Guenhwyvar out of the fray, Danica and Bruenor were sorely pressed. Bruenor pushed back hits from under his shield, his legs bowing but not buckling, his axe ever ready to respond with a heavy chop. Danica leaped and spun, rolled and somersaulted through the air, always half a step ahead of claw or bite.

"We can't hold it!" Jarlaxle said through gritted teeth. Even when Drizzt got back into the fight, his divinely weighted scimitar driving hard against the beast, the mercenary's grim visage didn't soften.

Jarlaxle spoke the painful truth. For all their power and gallant efforts, they were inflicting only minor wounds on the beast, and attrition was already working against them. Then cries went out that crawlers were swarming from the forest, and many on the periphery of the fight had to turn their attention outward.

In that awful moment of honesty, it seemed that all would end for Spirit Soaring and her defenders.

Cadderly reached up with his arms, and up further with his magic, and to all witnessing the event, it seemed as if the mighty priest had plucked a star or the sun itself from the sky and pulled it down over his own body.

Cadderly shone with such radiance that beams of his emanating light streamed through every crack in Spirit Soaring's planking. Beyond the broken wall, the courtyard and the forest shone as though lit by a clear midday.

The night was completely gone, and so too were the wounds of all those near the priest. Pain and fatigue were replaced by warmth and invigoration, the likes of which they had never known.

The opposite effect jarred the Ghost King, and the beast recoiled in shock and torturous pain.

Beyond the wall, the approaching crawlers fell back on their flat feet, long arms flailing to try, futilely, to block the heavenly light. Wisps of smoke rose from their black skins. Those that could roll backward scrambled for the shadows of the trees.

The Ghost King's roar shook the building to its foundation yet again. The beast did not fly away, but flailed all the more wildly, thumping Bruenor, who took every blow with a snarl and a swipe of retribution. The creature's foreleg cut nothing but air as it swiped at Danica, whose acrobatics defied gravity as she lifted and twisted and turned. The dracolich's great jaws snapped down on the diatryma and lifted the flailing bird into the air, where the massive head thrashed right and left and bit down, cutting the bird in half.

The creature tried to bite at the dodging woman, but there was Drizzt, rushing in, his blades rolling left and right and straight overhead, every swipe of the enchanted Icingdeath stabbing out a bit farther, slicing through dragon scale, melting dragon flesh, and exploding dragon bone.

The Ghost King slipped back from the ledge, its hind legs reaching to find footing on the ground. Barely had it stepped down before Thibbledorf Pwent hit it with a flying head butt, his helmet spike digging into the beast's calf and securing his hold. From the other side came Athrogate, one morningstar in hand, the other lost in the fall. He spun the heavy ball above his head in both hands, brought forth its oily might, and struck the Ghost King's other leg with such force that a red scale disintegrated beneath the blow and the beast's desiccated flesh splintered and dissolved all the way to the bone, which cracked loudly.

And above all the pain from those furious warriors, above the continuing sting of Jarlaxle's lightning bolts and the hindrance of the drow's viscous globs, there was the ever-intrusive agony of Cadderly's light. That awful light, divine spurs that permeated every inch of the Ghost King's being.

The beast breathed its fire into the room again, but Cadderly's ward remained to repel the effect, and his light healed his friends as soon as they were stung by the flames.

The effort cost the Ghost King dearly, for all the while it locked its great head in position to fill the room with its fires, Drizzt, who scrambled onto its leg and up to its neck, found the unhindered opportunity to pummel the dragon's skull. Again and again, Icingdeath came down with fury, bone and flesh and scales exploding under each thunderous strike.

The dragon's fiery breath ended abruptly with Drizzt's last strike. The Ghost King shuddered with such force that all, Drizzt and Athrogate included, were thrown aside. The creature leaped back, far out into the courtyard.

"Finish it!" Jarlaxle cried to all, and indeed, it seemed at that moment that the dracolich was in its last throes, that a concerted assault could actually bring the beast down.

And so they tried, but their weapons and spells and missiles passed through the Ghost King without consequence. For there was suddenly nothing tangible to the beast, just its shape outlined in blue light. Thibbledorf Pwent went charging out from the base of Spirit Soaring, roaring as only a battlerager could bellow, and leaped with abandon - right through the intangible beast to bounce down on the turf.

Even more significant to Drizzt, as he moved to follow Pwent, was the apparition of Guenhwyvar across the courtyard. The panther did not charge at the Ghost King. Ears flattened with uncharacteristic trepidation, Guenhwyvar, never afraid of anything, turned and fled.

Drizzt gawked in surprise. He looked to the beast on the field, to Pwent as he ran all around the glowing form, inside it even, thrashing to no effect.

Then suddenly, nothing at all remained to be seen of the Ghost King as the beast faded, just faded to nothingness. It was gone.

The defenders looked on with shock. Cadderly stared with amazement after the blue-white image and gasped at his memories of the Prophecies of Alaundo and of this year, 1385, the Year of Blue Fire. Coincidence, or fitting representation of their greater catastrophe? Before he could delve any deeper into his contemplations, from a room much farther inside Spirit Soaring, Catti-brie screamed in abject terror.

PART 4

SACRIFICE

The recognition of utter helplessness is more than humbling; it is devastating. On those occasions when it is made clear to someone, internally, that willpower or muscle or technique will not be enough to overcome the obstacles placed before him, that he is helpless before those obstacles, there follows a brutal mental anguish.

When Wulfgar was taken by Errtu in the Abyss, he was beaten and physically tortured, but on those few occasions I was able to coax my friend to speak of that time, those notes he sang most loudly in despair were those of his helplessness. The demon, for example, would make him believe that he was free and was living with the woman he loved, then would slaughter her and their illusionary children before Wulfgar's impotent gaze.

That torture created Wulfgar's most profound and lasting scars.

When I was a child in Menzoberranzan, I was taught a lesson universal to male drow. My sister Briza took me out to the edge of our cavern homeland where a gigantic earth elemental waited. The beast was harnessed and Briza handed me the end of the rein.

"Hold it back," she instructed.

I didn't quite understand, and when the elemental took a step away, the rope was pulled from my hand.

Briza struck me with her whip, of course, and no doubt, she enjoyed it.

"Hold it back," she said again.

I took the rope and braced myself. The elemental took a step and I went flying after it. It didn't even know that I existed, or that I was tugging with all my insignificant strength to try to hinder its movement.

Briza scowled as she informed me that I would try again.

This test must be a matter of cleverness, I decided, and instead of just bracing myself, I looped the rope around a nearby stalagmite, to Briza's approving nods, and dug in my heels.

The elemental, on command, took a step and whipped me around the stone as if I were no more than a bit of parchment in a furious gale. The monster didn't slow, didn't even notice.

In that moment, I was shown my limitations, without equivocation. I was shown my impotence.

Briza then held the elemental in place with an enchantment and dismissed it with a second one. The point she was trying to make was that the divine magic of Lolth overwhelmed both muscle and technique. This was no more than another subjugation tactic by the ruling matron mothers, to make the males of Menzoberranzan understand their lowly place, their inferiority, particularly to those more in Lolth's favor.

For me, and I suspect for many of my kin, the lesson was more personal and less societal, for that was my first real experience encountering a force supremely beyond my willpower, utterly beyond my control. It wasn't as if had I tried harder or been more clever I might have changed the outcome. The elemental would have stepped away unhindered and unbothered no matter my determination.

To say I was humbled would be an understatement. There, in that dark cavern, I learned the first truth of both mortality and mortal flesh.

And now I feel that terrible measure of impotence again. When I look at Catti-brie, I know that she is beyond my ability to help. We all dream about being the hero, about finding the solution, about winning the moment and saving the day. And we all harbor, to some degree, the notion that our will can overcome, that determination and strength of mind can push us to great ends - and indeed they can. To a point.

Death is the ultimate barrier, and when faced with impending death, personally or for someone you love, a mortal being will encounter, most of all, ultimate humility.

We all believe that we can defeat that plague or that disease, should it befall us, through sheer willpower. It is a common mental defense against the inevitability we all know we share. I wonder, then, if the worst reality of a lingering death is the sense that your own body is beyond your ability to control.

In my case, the pain I feel in looking at Catti-brie is manifold, and not least among the variations is my own sense of helplessness. I deny the looks that Cadderly and Jarlaxle exchanged, expressions that revealed their hearts and minds. They cannot be right in their obvious belief that Catti-brie is beyond our help and surely doomed!

I demand that they are not right.

And yet I know that they are. Perhaps I only "know" because I fear beyond anything I have ever known that they are correct, and if they are, then I will know no closure. I cannot say goodbye to Catti-brie because I fear that I already have.

And thus, in moments of weakness, I lose faith and know that they are right. My love, my dearest friend, is lost to me forever - and there again lurches my stubbornness, for my first instinct was to write "likely forever." I cannot admit the truth even as I admit the truth!

So many times have I seen my friends return from the brink of death: Bruenor on the back of a dragon, Wulfgar from the Abyss, Catti-brie from the dark plane of Tarterus. So many times have the odds been beaten. In the end, we always prevail!

But that is not true. And perhaps the cruelest joke of all is the confidence, the surety, that our good fortune and grand exploits have instilled in my friends, the Companions of the Hall.

How much worse becomes the cruel reality when at last we are touched by inescapable tragedy.

I look at Catti-brie and I am reminded of my limitations. My fantasies of saving the moment and the day are dashed against jagged and immovable rocks. I want to save her and I cannot. I look at Catti-brie, wandering lost, and in those moments when I can accept that this state is forever, my hopes become less about victory and more about ...

I can hardly think it. Have I truly been reduced to hoping that this woman I love will pass on quickly and peacefully?

And still the fight goes on around us, I am sure, in this world gone mad. And still will my scimitars be put to use in a struggle that has, I fear, only just begun. And still will I be needed to mediate between Bruenor and Jarlaxle, Cadderly and Jarlaxle. I cannot skulk away and be alone with my mounting grief and pain. I cannot abrogate my responsibilities to those around me.

But it all, so suddenly, seems less important to me. Without Catti-brie, what is the point of our fight? Why defeat the dracolich when the outcome will not change, since we are all doomed in the end? Is it not true that that which we deem important is, in the grand scheme of the millennia and the multiverse, utterly and completely irrelevant?

This is the demon of despair wrought of impotence. More profound than the helplessness created by Shimmergloom the shadow dragon's dark cloud of breath. More profound than the lesson of the drow matron mothers. For that question, "What is the point?" is the most insidious and destructive of all.

I must deny it. I cannot give in to it, for the sake of those around me and for the sake of myself, and yes, for the sake of Catti-brie, who would not allow me to surrender to such a concept.

Truly this inner turmoil tests me more than any demon, any dragon, any horde of ravaging orcs ever could.

For as this dark moment shows me the futility, so too it demands of me the faith - the faith that there is something beyond this mortal coil, that there is a place of greater understanding and universal community than this temporary existence.

Else it is all a sad joke.