"Damned if we didn't win," he said to Jarlaxle.

The drow hardly heard him. Jarlaxle moved across the room quickly, fearing what he would find.

He breathed a lot easier when Artemis Entreri walked out from under the archway, wisps of smoke rising from his head and torso. In one hand he held the crumpled, smoldering rag that had been his cloak, and with a disgusted look at the drow, he tossed it aside.

"Always dragons with you," he muttered.

"They do hold the greatest of treasures for the taking."

Entreri looked around the bone-filled but otherwise empty room, then back at Jarlaxle.

The drow laughed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TO THE VICTOR…

Olgerkhan grunted and groaned and held his breath as Athrogate tied a heavy leather strap around his broken leg. The dwarf looped the belt and held one end up near the half-orc's face.

"Best be biting hard," he said.

Olgerkhan looked at him for a moment, then took the end of the strap in his mouth and clamped down on it.

Athrogate nodded and gave a great tug on the strap, yanking it tight and forcing the half-orc's leg in line. The strap somewhat muffled Olgerkhan's scream, but it still echoed through the chamber. The half-orc's hands clenched and he pounded them on the stone floor.

"Yeah, bet that hurt," Athrogate offered.

The half-orc lay back, near to collapse. He flitted in and out of consciousness for a few moments, black spots dancing before his eyes, but then through the haze and pain, he saw something that commanded his attention. Arrayan appeared on the ledge. She stood straight, for the first time in so long, leaning on nothing.

Olgerkhan came up to his elbows as she met his gaze.

"And so it ends," Jarlaxle remarked, he and Entreri moving to the dwarf and half-orc. "Help him up, then. I will levitate you up to join Arrayan on the ledge one at a time."

Athrogate moved to help Olgerkhan stand, but Entreri just moved away to the wall, where he quickly picked a route and began climbing. By the time Jarlaxle made his first trip up, easing Olgerkhan down beside Arrayan, Entreri was nearly there, moving steadily.

When he finally pulled his head above the ledge, he found Arrayan fallen over Olgerkhan, hugging him tightly and professing her love to him. Entreri hopped up beside them, offered a weak smile that neither of them even registered, and moved off to check the ascending hallway.

He sprinted up some distance but found no enemies and heard no sounds at all. When he came back, he found the other four waiting for him, Olgerkhan leaning on the dwarf with Arrayan supporting him under his other arm.

"The corridor is clear," he reported.

"The castle is dead," Arrayan replied, and her voice rang out more strongly than Entreri had previously heard.

"Ye can't be sure," Athrogate replied.

But Arrayan nodded, her confidence working against the doubts of the others. "I don't know how I know," she explained. "I just know. The castle is dead. No gargoyles or mummies will rise against us, nor daemons or other monsters. Even the traps, I believe, are now inert."

"I will ensure that, every step," Entreri assured her.

"Bah, but she can't be sure," Athrogate reiterated.

"I do believe she is," said Jarlaxle. "Sure and correct. The dracolich was the source of the castle's continuing life, was giving power to the book, and the book power to the gargoyles and other monsters. Without the dragon, they are dead stone and empty corpses, nothing more."

"And the dragon was giving the book the power to steal from me my life," Arrayan added. "The moment it fell, my burden was lifted. I do not understand it all, good dwarf, but I am certain that I am correct."

"Bah, and I was just starting to have some fun."

That brought a laugh, even from Olgerkhan, though he grimaced with the effort. Jarlaxle moved out before the trio to join Entreri.

"We will move up ahead and ensure that the way is clear," the dark elf said, and he and Entreri started off.

They trotted along swiftly, putting a lot of distance between themselves and the others.

"The castle is truly dead?" Entreri asked when they were well alone.

"Arrayan is a perceptive one, and since she was inextricably tied to the castle, I would trust her judgment in this."

"You seem to know more than she."

Jarlaxle shrugged.

"No gargoyles and no mummies," Entreri went on. "Their source of power is gone. But what of the undead? Will we find skeletons waiting for us when we get back to the keep?"

"What do you mean?"

"Their master, it would seem, walks beside me."

Jarlaxle gave a little laugh.

"When did you become a necromancer?" Entreri asked.

Jarlaxle took out the skull gem.

"It was you back there, of course," the assassin said. "All of it."

"Not completely true," Jarlaxle replied. "I brought in our three lost companions, true. You did indeed hear them following us down."

"And left the fourth hanging on a spike?"

Another laugh. "He is a dwarf—the gem grants me no power over dead dwarves, just humans. So if you fall in battle…."

Entreri was not amused. "You have the power to raise an army of skeletons?" he asked.

"I did not," the drow explained. "Not all of them. The dracolich animated them, or the castle did. But I heard them, every one, and they heard me, and heeded my commands. Perhaps they harbored old grievances against the dragon that had long ago slaughtered them."

They crossed the room where Entreri had battled Canthan and moved steadily along. No eggs fell from the ceiling carvings, releasing guardian daemons to terrorize them, and no sarcophagi creaked open. When they at last reached the main chamber of the keep, they found that the monsters had broken through the doors. But none remained to stand against them. Bones littered the floor, and a pair of gnoll mummies lay still on the stairs, but not a gargoyle was to be seen. Outside it was dark, for it was well into the night by then.

Jarlaxle paid it all little heed. His prize was in sight, and he was fast to the book, which still stood on its tendril platform. No mystical runes spun in the air above it, and the drow felt no tingles of magical power as he moved to stand before it. He looked over at Entreri then tore out a page.

He paused and looked around, as if listening for the rumble of a wall crumbling.

"What?" Entreri asked.

"The castle will not crumble as did Herminicle's tower."

"Why?"

"Because, unlike that structure, this one is complete," Jarlaxle explained. "And because the life-force that completed this castle is still alive."

"Arrayan? But you said…"

Jarlaxle shook his head. "She was nothing more than the one who began the process, and the castle leeched her for convenience, not for survival. Her death would have meant nothing to the integrity of the structure, beyond perhaps slowing the growth of the gargoyles or some other minor thing."

"Well, if not Arrayan, then who?" Entreri asked. "The dracolich?"

Jarlaxle tore out another page, then another. "Dracoliches are interesting creatures," he explained. "They do not 'die' as we know it. Their spirits run and hide, awaiting another suitable body to animate and inhabit."

Entreri's eyes went wide and despite himself he glanced around as if expecting the beast to drop upon him. He started to ask Jarlaxle what he meant by that but paused when he heard the others shuffling into the chamber behind him.

"Well met," Jarlaxle said to them. "And just in time to witness the end of the threat."

He stepped back from the book as he finished and tapped the tips of his thumbs together. Fingers splayed before him, he called upon the power of one of his magic rings. Flames fanned out from his spread hands, washing over the magical book and igniting it. Laughing, Jarlaxle brought a dagger into his hand and began tearing at the tome, sending blackened, burning parchment flying.