Rise of the King Read online

  “There is the doorway to the frost giant stronghold of Shining White,” the archmage said, pointing up the path. “Just ahead and around the bend. Make a worthy entrance and play your role well.”

  “You are far better at this game than I,” Saribel replied. “Are you sure that you will not join—”

  “My dear wife of Tiago, consider this your worthiness test for House Baenre,” Gromph said. He moved very near her. “You see, I can repair any damage your idiocy causes in the coming negotiation, or I can simply destroy Jarl Fimmel and replace him with a lackey more suitable to my needs if you fail to convince him. So I fear not for my own outcome.

  “But you should fear for yours,” Gromph added just as Saribel started to visibly relax. “If you fail me in this, well, there are many priestesses who would love to take Tiago Baenre as a husband, I expect, and many Houses more important to me than Xorlarrin, despite your ridiculous delusions of holding an independent city.”

  The giants around them began to chuckle, and one clapped his massive axe across his open palm.

  “It would be unfortunate for you to fail me here, dear Saribel,” was all that Gromph added, and he snapped his fingers and was gone, simply vanishing into nothingness, so it seemed.

  Saribel Xorlarrin took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was a High Priestess of Lolth and the noble daughter of a powerful drow House—indeed, the princess of a city. These were just frost giants, bulky and powerful, but dim-witted and without magic.

  She had set up a spell to teleport her almost instantly back to the cave where the drow had formed their base camp, but that notion now, given Gromph’s last warning, didn’t seem like such a clever escape should she fail here.

  “Enough,” she whispered under her breath, and to her three gigantic companions, she motioned forward and said determinedly, “We go.”

  “It is uncomfortable,” Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre said, walking beside Gromph along a mountain pass high up in the Spine of the World.

  “You are cold?”

  “The light,” she corrected. “The vastness of this unceilinged world.”

  “We are on the edges of Tsabrak’s spell,” Gromph explained. “It is darker in the midst of the Silver Marches.”

  “It is a foul place,” said Matron Mother Baenre. “I long for home.”

  Gromph nodded, and couldn’t really disagree. He led on with all speed, the appointed meeting place just ahead, around the next bend on a high and snowy plateau. The pair turned that corner and were assailed by high winds and stinging, blowing snow. So furious was the clime, whipping and blowing to near whiteout conditions, that it still took the pair a few more steps to see their counterparts, though those counterparts were huge indeed.

  Huge and white.

  And dragons.

  Lesser beings than the Matron Mother and Archmage of Menzoberranzan would have fallen to their knees at that moment, or run in terror back around the bend.

  “Is it not a beautiful day, wizard?” asked the larger of the pair, Arauthator, the Old White Death, one of the greatest of the white dragons of Faerûn.

  “They won’t think so, Father,” said the other, a young male barely half the size of the other. “They are puny and the wind is too cold …”

  “Silence!” demanded the Old White Death in a voice that shook the mountains around them.

  It was hard to note a white dragon blanching, of course, but surely it seemed to Gromph and the matron mother that the young dragon, Aurbangras by name, shrank beneath the weight of that imperial tone.

  “It is a beautiful day, to herald a glorious dawn,” said Quenthel. “You understand the purpose of our journey here?”

  “You will start a war,” Arauthator said plainly. “You wish for me to join in.”

  “I offer you the opportunity, for the glory of your queen,” said Quenthel.

  The dragon tilted his huge, horned head, regarding her curiously.

  “There will be much plunder, Old White Death,” the matron mother went on, undeterred. “You will find all that you can carry and more. That is your charge, is it not?”

  “What do you know, clever priestess?” the old dragon asked.

  “I am the voice of Lolth in Faerûn,” she answered with equal weight. “What should I know?”

  The dragon growled, mist and icicles blowing from between his jagged teeth.

  “We know that the word has gone out to the chromatic wyrms,” Gromph interjected, “to gather their hoards of gold and jewels and gems.” He paused and eyed the dragon slyly, and cryptically added, “A pile to reach the Nine Hells.”

  Arauthator rolled back on his haunches at that, his stare seeming as cold as any breath weapon he might produce.

  “Yours is not the only queen who seeks to gain,” said the matron mother. “The Spider Queen, in her wisdom, has shown me that your goals and mine intersect here in this land of the Silver Marches. There is opportunity here for us both, and in good faith do I come to you. Lend us your power, and share with us our plunder. For your queen and my own.”

  The dragon made a curious sound, as if a mountain had been inflicted with hiccups, and it took the two drow a short while to realize that Arauthator was laughing.

  “I will make many trips south and back to my lair,” the dragon informed them. “And each return will be laden with treasure.”

  “Your value will earn that,” the matron mother agreed with a bow.

  Gromph, too, wisely bowed, but he never stopped looking at Quenthel as he did. She had told him that this would be an easy acquisition, because of some stirring in the lower planes that held great interest and importance to the chromatic dragons of Toril.

  Apparently, she had been correct, and on such a momentous matter as this, that served to remind Gromph yet again that he had helped to create a powerful creature in Quenthel. Not so long ago he had been plotting her demise, but now he would not even dare to think of such a thing.

  “That one,” Ravel said to Tiago, indicating a burly orc warrior strolling confidently across the encampment, as revealed in the scrying mirror.

  “Impressive,” Tiago murmured. “He would survive my first attack, perhaps, though I’d have him dead by the second thrust.”

  Ravel gave the pompous drow warrior a curious look out of the side of his eye, and even shook his head a bit. “If it plays out as we expect, that one—Hartusk—will be our best friend.”

  “In his small mind.”

  “That is all that matters,” said Ravel. “Hartusk is a traditionalist, a war chief full of bloodlust, and he simmers for battle. Uryuga has whispered to me that Hartusk led several of the raiding bands that have attacked the humans, dwarves, and elves across the region. All secretly, of course, for this King Obould”—he motioned to another figure in the scene, sitting at the middle of a long feast table, bedecked in jewels, a fur-trimmed purple robe and a gaudy crown of beaten gold set with a multitude of semiprecious gemstones “—would tolerate no such activities.”

  “Uryuga said this pretend king would be trouble,” Tiago said. “We offer him powerful alliances and grand conquests, and he shakes his ugly head.”

  “ ‘Pretend’ king?”

  “A king of orcs afraid of battle?” Tiago said with a dismissive snort.

  “He is more concerned with the legacy of his namesake and the vision of the first Obould Many-Arrows,” Ravel explained. “More than the glory of battle, Obould seeks the power of peace.”

  “What are these orcs coming to?” Tiago lamented.

  “A change of mind,” Ravel answered the quip with one of his own. The drow wizard smiled wickedly as another figure moved up near to Obould, and when they were close, the resemblance was unmistakable. “Lorgru, eldest son and named heir of Obould,” he said.

  “Belween, second bastard son of Berellip,” Tiago corrected, for he knew the ruse, and knew too that the real Lorgru lay peacefully asleep in a mossy bed down by the orc docks on the River Surbrin, after hearing the soft and un
deniable whispers of drow poison.

  Ravel laughed.

  In the orc encampment, the fake son of Obould moved up to his presumed father with the king’s plate and drink, all properly tested by the court tasters—a precaution that had become critical in the last tenday or so, since the skies had darkened and rumors of—and calls for—war had begun cropping up all around.

  The fake Lorgru saluted properly and moved off, and King Obould began to eat, washing down each bite with a great swallow of lousy wine.

  “King Obould will be dead before the morning,” Ravel said with confidence. “And so will commence the fighting among his many sons, since the heir will be blamed for this murder.”

  “And none of them will win,” said Tiago.

  “None will survive, likely,” Ravel agreed, his smile showing that he would do his best to make sure of that very outcome. “Hartusk will claim the throne, and who among the orcs would dare oppose the powerful war chief when he is backed by the drow of Menzoberranzan and a legion of frost giants from Shining White?”

  Tiago nodded. It had all been so easy. Saribel had not disappointed, and Jarl Fimmel Orelson had called out to other giant clans along the Spine of the World, coaxing them into the cause. They were eager for battle. The mere existence of the vast Kingdom of Many-Arrows had essentially cut the frost giant clans off from their traditional raids on the goodly folk of the Silver Marches, and the orcs certainly didn’t have enough plunder or even livestock to make marauding worth the giants’ time!

  “It is better for us that King Obould did not agree with Uryuga’s call,” Ravel said, drawing Tiago from his private musing. The weapons master looked at his wizard friend and bade him continue.

  “Obould would have ever been a reluctant leader,” Ravel explained. “At any opportunity, where a city or citadel offered peace, he would likely have come to accept it as an appropriate feather in his cap and taken their offered treaty. He remains, and ever will, more concerned with his ancestor and the vision of a peaceful Many-Arrows than anything else. But Hartusk? Nay. He wants to taste blood, nothing less.”

  “But now the kingdom may be split,” Tiago warned.

  Ravel shook his head. “More orcs agree with Hartusk,” he said. “The beasts are tired of the imaginary lines defining their borders. Particularly outside of Dark Arrows Keep, where King Obould keeps those most loyal to him and his cause, the orcs of the kingdom have been whispering about the Obould family living in luxury because of the deal they signed with the dwarves and the other kingdoms. There is deep resentment among the rabble, and there is … the hunger for battle, for victory, for blood. Hartusk’s message will sound like the clarion horn of Gruumsh himself to many.”

  “Obould will be quickly forgotten, then,” Tiago agreed. “Cast into the soot pile of history to be swept under the uplifted corner of a dirty skin rug, and spoken of with naught but derision.”

  “A hundred thousand orcs will march, with legions of giants behind them,” Ravel said, his red eyes gleaming in the torchlight.

  “We’ll pull goblins and bugbears and ogres from every hole in the Underdark to bolster their lines,” said Tiago, getting caught up in the excitement.

  “And darker things,” said Ravel, and Tiago laughed.

  They had been sent here to start a war.

  The drow were very good at that particular task.

  UNDER SKIES OF GLOOM

  HOW MUCH EASIER IS MY JOURNEY WHEN I KNOW I AM WALKING A ROAD OF righteousness, when I know that my course is true. Without doubt, without hesitation, I stride, longing to get to the intended goal, knowing that when I have arrived there I will have left in my wake a better path than that which I walked.

  Such was the case in my road back to Gauntlgrym, to rescue a lost friend. And such was the case leaving that dark place, to Port Llast to return the rescued captives to their homes and proper place.

  And so now the road to Longsaddle, where Thibbledorf Pwent will be freed of his curse. Without hesitation, I stride.

  What of our intended journey after that, to Mithral Hall, to Many-Arrows … to start a war?

  Will my steps slow as the excitement of adventuring with my old friends ebbs under the weight of the darkness before us? And if I cannot come to terms with Catti-brie’s assertions of orc-kind as irredeemable, or cannot agree with Bruenor’s insistence that the war has already begun in the form of orc raids, then what does this discordance portend for the friendship and unity of the Companions of the Hall?

  I will not kill on the command of another, not even a friend. Nay, to free my blades, I must be convinced heart and soul that I strike for justice or defense, for a cause worth fighting for, worth dying for, and most importantly, worth killing for.

  That is paramount to who I am and to how I have determined to live my life. It is not enough for Bruenor to declare war on the orcs of Many-Arrows and begin its prosecution. I am not a mercenary, for gold coins or for friendship. There must be more.

  There must be my agreement with the decision to go to war.

  I will enjoy the journey to Mithral Hall, I expect. Surrounding me will be those friends I hold most dear, as we walk the new ways together again. But likely my stride will be a bit tighter, perhaps a bit heavier, the hesitance of conscience pressing down.

  Or not conscience, perhaps, but confusion, for surely I am not convinced, yet neither am I unconvinced.

  Simply put, I am not sure. Because even though Catti-brie’s words, so she says and so I believe, come from Mielikki, they are not yet that which I feel in my own heart—and that must be paramount. Yes, even above the whispers of a goddess.

  Some would call that insistence the height of hubris, and pure arrogance, and perhaps they would be right in some regard to place that claim upon me. To me, though, it is not arrogance, but a sense of deep personal responsibility. When first I found the goddess, I did so because the description of Mielikki seemed an apt name for what I carried in my thoughts and heart. Her tenets aligned with my own, so it seemed. Else, she would mean no more to me than any other in the named pantheon of Toril’s races.

  For I do not want a god to tell me how to behave. I do not want a god to guide my movements and actions—nay. Nor do I want a god’s rules to determine that which I know to be right or to outlaw that which I know to be wrong.

  For I surely do not need to fear the retribution of a god to keep my path aligned with what is in my heart. Indeed, I see such justifications for behavior as superficial and ultimately dangerous. I am a reasoning being, born with conscience and an understanding of what is right and what is wrong. When I stray from that path, the one most offended is not some unseen and extraworldly deity whose rules and mores are inevitably relayed—and often subjectively interpreted—by mortal priests and priestesses with humanoid failings. Nay, the one most wounded by the digressions of Drizzt Do’Urden is Drizzt Do’Urden.

  It can be no other way. I did not hear the call of Mielikki when I fell into the gray-toned company of Artemis Entreri, Dahlia, and the others. It was not the instructions of Mielikki that made me, at long last, turn away from Dahlia on the slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn, not unless those instructions are the same ones etched upon my heart and my conscience.

  Which, if true, brings me back full circle to the time when I found Mielikki.

  At that moment, I did not find a supernatural mother to hold the crossbar to the strings supporting a puppet named Drizzt.

  At that moment, I found a name for that which I hold as true. And so, I insist, the goddess is in my heart, and I need look no farther than there to determine my course.

  Or perhaps I am just arrogant.

  So be it.

  —Drizzt Do’Urden

  SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

  WHAT’RE THEM DOGS UP TO NOW?” KING BROMM OF CITADEL ADBAR asked when the scouts returned with their reports.

  “No good, that’s for sure as a baby goblin’s shiny butt,” replied his twin brother and fellow King of Adbar, Harnoth.

  Th
e twins looked at each other and nodded grimly—they both understood that this was their first real test as shared kings. They’d had their diplomatic and military squabbles, certainly—a trade negotiation with Citadel Felbarr that had almost come to blows between Bromm and King Emerus’s principle negotiator, Parson Glaive; a land dispute with the elves of the Moonwood that had become so hostile the leaders of Silverymoon and Sundabar had ridden north to intervene; even a few skirmishes with the troublesome rogues of Many-Arrows, raiding bands that had included giants and other beasties—but if the scouts were correct in their assessment, then surely the twin Kings of Citadel Adbar had yet presided over nothing of this magnitude.

  “Hunnerds, ye say?” Bromm asked Ragnerick Gutpuncher, a young dwarf, but one of considerable scouting experience.

  “Many hunnerds,” Ragnerick replied. “They’re floodin’ Upper Surbrin Vale with the stench o’ orc, me kings. Pressin’ the Moonwood already—been arrows flying out from the boughs and smoke’s rising into the dark sky.”

  Those last three words rang ominously in the hall, for the implications of the eternal night sky locked over the Silver Marches were hard to ignore.

  “They’ll be pressin’ Mithral Hall, to be sure,” said Bromm.

  “We got to get word fast to Emerus and Connerad,” his brother agreed.

  “Long way to Mithral Hall,” Bromm lamented, and Harnoth couldn’t disagree. The three dwarf citadels of Luruar were located roughly in a line, Adbar southwest to Felbarr, then an equal distance southwest from there to Mithral Hall, with most of the journey just south of the forested crescent known as the Glimmerwood. From one citadel to the next was a march of more than a hundred miles, at least a tenday’s hike—likely twice that given the broken terrain. The three citadels were also connected underground, through tunnels of the upper Underdark, but even along those routes, any march would be long and difficult.

  “We got to go,” Harnoth reasoned. “We can’t be sittin’ here with our kin facing a fight—and might be that we’re th’only ones knowing.”