Read The Ghost King for Free Online

helplessly. “Not very long, I imagine.”
    “Bwahaha!” Athrogate bellowed, then, “Aaaaaaaah.”
    * * * * *
    “The next time we face such creatures, I expect you to follow my lead,” Jarlaxle said to Athrogate the next morning as the dwarf fiddled once more with his skeletal toy.
    “Next time? What do ye know, elf?”
    “It was not a random event,” the drow admitted. “I have been visited, twice now, in my Reverie by a beast I had thought destroyed, but one that has somehow transcended death.”
    “A beast that brought up them skeletons?”
    “A great dragon,” Jarlaxle explained, “to the south of here and …” Jarlaxle paused, not really certain where Hephaestus’s lair was. He had gone there,but magically with a teleportation spell. He knew the general features of that distant region, but not the specifics of the lair, though he thought of someone who would surely know the place. “Near to the Snowflake Mountains,” he finished. “A great dragon whose thoughts can reach across hundreds of miles, it seems.”
    “Ye thinking we need to run farther?”
    Jarlaxle shook his head. “There are great powers I can enlist in defeating this creature.”
    “Hmm,” said the dwarf.
    “I just have to convince them not to kill us first.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Indeed,” said the drow. “A mighty priest named Cadderly, a Chosen of his god, who promised me death should I ever return.”
    “Hmm.”
    “But I will find a way.”
    “So ye’re sayin’, and so ye’re prayin’, but I’m hoping I’m not the one what’ll be payin’.”
    Jarlaxle glared at the dwarf.
    “Well, then ye can’t be going back where ye’re wanting—though I canno’ be thinking why ye’re wanting what ye’re wantin’! To go to a place where the dragons are hauntin’!”
    The glare melted into a groan.
    “I know, I know,” said Athrogate. “No more word-songin’. But that was a good one, what?”
    “Needs work,” said the drow. “Though considerably less so than your usual efforts.”
    “Hmm,” said the dwarf, beaming with pride.

CHAPTER
THE BROKEN CONTINUUM

    D rizzt Do’Urden slipped out of his bedroll and reached his bare arms up high, fingers wide, stretching to the morning sky. It was good to be on the road, out of Mithral Hall after the dark winter. It was invigorating to smell the fresh, crisp air, absent the smoke of the forges, and to feel the wind across his shoulders and through his long, thick white hair. It was good to be alone with his wife.
    The dark elf rolled his head in wide circles, stretching his neck. He reached up high again, kneeling on his blankets. The breeze was chill across his naked form, but he didn’t mind. The cool wind invigorated him and made him feel alive with sensation.
    He slowly moved to stand, exaggerating every movement to flex away the kinks from the hard ground that had served as his mattress, then paced away from the small encampment and outside the ring of boulders to catch a view of Catti-brie.
    Dressed only in her colorful magical blouse, which had once been the enchanted robe of a gnome wizard, she stood on a hillside not far away, her palms together in front of her in a pose of deep concentration. Drizzt marveled at her simple charm. The colorful shift reached only to mid-thigh, and Catti-brie’s natural beauty was neither diminished nor outshone by the finely crafted garment.
    They were on the road back to Mithral Hall from the city of Silverymoon,where Catti-brie’s wizard mentor, the great Lady Alustriel, ruled. It had not been a good visit. Something was in the air, something dangerous and frightening, some feeling among the wizards that all was not well with the Weave of magic. Reports and whispers from all over Faerûn spoke of spells gone horribly awry, of magic misfiring or not firing at all, of brilliant spellcasters falling to apparent insanity.
    Alustriel had admitted that she feared for the integrity of Mystra’s Weave itself, the very source of arcane