It was the halfling’s ruby pendant, the enchanted gemstone that allowed Regis to cast charms upon unwitting victims.

Regis recovered from his self-inflicted wallop and leaped to his feet. He screamed again and ran past Bruenor, flailing his arms insanely. When Bruenor tried to intercept him, the halfling slapped him and punched him, pinched him and even bit him, and all the while Bruenor called to him, but Regis seemed not to hear a word. The dwarf might as well have been a demon or devil come to eat the little one for dinner.

“Elf!” Bruenor called. Then he yelped and fell back, clutching his bleeding hand.

Regis sprinted for the door. Drizzt beat him there, hitting him with a flying tackle that sent them both into a roll into the hall. In that somersault, Drizzt deftly worked his hands so that when they settled, he was behind Regis, his legs clamped around the halfling’s waist, his arms knifed under Regis’s, turning and twisting expertly to tie the little one in knots.

There was no way for Regis to break out, to hit Drizzt, or to squirm away from him. But that hardly slowed his frantic gyrations, and didn’t stop him from screaming insanely.

The hallway began to fill with curious dwarves.

“Ye got a pin stuck in the little one’s arse, elf?” one asked.

“Help me with him!” Drizzt implored.

The dwarf came over and reached for Regis, then quickly retracted his hand when the halfling tried to bite it. “What in the Nine Hells?”

“Just ye take him!” Bruenor yelled from inside the room. “Ye take him and tie him down—and don’t ye be hurting him!”

“Yes, me king!”

It took a long time, but finally the dwarves dragged the thrashing Regis away from Drizzt.

“I could slug him and put him down quiet,” one offered, but Drizzt’s scowl denied that course of action.

“Take him to his chamber and keep him safe,” the drow said. He went back into the room, closing the door behind him.

“She didn’t even notice,” Bruenor explained as Drizzt sat on the bed beside Catti-brie. “She’s not knowing she world around her.”

“We knew that,” Drizzt reminded.

“Not even a bit! Nor’s the little one now.”

Drizzt shrugged. “Cadderly,” he reminded the dwarf king.

“For both o’ them,” said the dwarf, and he looked at the door. “Rumblebelly used the ruby on her.”

“To try to reach her,” Drizzt agreed.

“But she reached him instead,” the dwarf said.

CHAPTER 5

ANGRY DEAD

It will be at Spirit Soaring,” the Ghost King proclaimed. The specter chasing Jarlaxle had worked out the drow’s intentions even before the clever dark elf’s dastardly trick had sent the creature on its extra-planar journey. And anything the specters knew, so knew the dracolich.

The enemies of Hephaestus, Yharaskrik, and mostly of Crenshinibon would congregate there, in the Snowflake Mountains, where a pair of the Ghost King’s specters were already causing mischief.

Then there would be only one more, the human southerner. The Crystal Shard knew he could be found, though not as easily as Jarlaxle. After all, Crenshinibon had shared an intimate bond with the dark elf for many tendays. With Yharaskrik’s psychic powers added to the shard’s, locating the familiar drow had proven as simple as it was necessary. Jarlaxle had become the focus of anger that served to bring the trio of mighty beings together, united in common cause. The human, however tangential, would be revealed soon enough.

Besides, to at least one of the three vengeful entities—the dragon—the coming catastrophe would be enjoyable.

To Yharaskrik, the destruction of its enemies would be practical and informative, a worthy test for the uncomfortable but likely profitable unification.

And Crenshinibon, which served as conduit between the wildly passionate dragon and the ultimately practical mind flayer, would share in all the sensations the destruction of Jarlaxle and the others would bring to both of them.

“Uncle Pikel!” Hanaleisa called when she saw the green-bearded dwarf on a street in Carradoon late the next morning. He was dressed in his traveling gear, which meant that he carried a stick and had a cooking pot strapped on his head as a helmet.

Pikel flashed her a big smile and called into the shop behind him. As the dwarf advanced to give Hanaleisa a great hug, Hanaleisa’s younger brother Rorick exited the shop.

“What are you doing here?” she called over Pikel’s shoulder as her grinning sibling approached.

“I told you I wanted to come along.”

“Then spent the rest of the morning arguing with wizards about the nature of the cosmos,” Hanaleisa replied.

“Doo-dad!” Pikel yelled, pulling back from the young woman, and when both she and Rorick looked at him curiously, he just added, “Hee hee hee.”

“He has it all figured out,” Rorick explained, and Hanaleisa nodded.

“And do the wizards and priests have it all figured out as well?” Hanaleisa asked. “Because of your insights, I mean?”

Rorick looked down.

“They kicked you out,” Hanaleisa reasoned.

“Because they couldn’t stand to be upstaged by our little brother, no doubt!” greeted Temberle, rounding the corner from the blacksmith he’d just visited. His greatsword had taken a nasty nick the previous night when bouncing off the collarbone of the undead bear.

Rorick brightened a bit at that, but when he looked up at his brother and sister, an expression of confusion came over him. “What happened?” he asked, noting that Temberle had his greatsword in hand and was examining the blade.

“You left Spirit Soaring late yesterday?” Temberle asked.

“Midday, yes,” Rorick answered. “Uncle Pikel wanted to use the tree roots to move us down from the mountains, but father overruled that, fearing the unpredictability and instability of magic, even druidic.”

“Doo-dad,” Pikel said with a giggle.

“I wouldn’t be traveling magically either,” said Hanaleisa. “Not now.”

Pikel folded his arm and stump over his chest and glared at her.

“So you camped in the forest last night?” Temberle went on.

Rorick answered with a nod, not really understanding where his brother might be going, but Pikel apparently caught on a bit, and the dwarf issued an “Ooooh.”

“There’s something wrong in those woods,” said Temberle. “Yup, yup,” Pikel agreed.

“What are you talking about?” Rorick asked, looking from one to the other.

“Brr,” Pikel said, and hugged himself tightly.

“I slept right through the night,” said Rorick. “But it wasn’t that cold.”

“We fought a zombie,” Hanaleisa explained. “A zombie bear. And there was something else out there, haunting the forest.”

“Yup, yup,” Pikel agreed.

Rorick looked at the dwarf, curious. “You didn’t say anything was amiss.” Pikel shrugged.

“But you felt it?” Temberle asked. The dwarf gave another, “Yup, yup.”

“So you did battle—real battle?” Rorick asked his siblings, his intrigue obvious. The three had grown up in the shadow of a great library, surrounded by mighty priests and veteran wizards. They had heard stories of great battles, most notably the fight their parents had waged against the dreaded chaos curse and against their own grandfather, but other than the few times when their parents had been called away for battle, or their dwarf uncles had gone to serve King Bruenor of Mithral Hall, the lives of the Bonaduce children had been soft and peaceful. They had trained vigorously in martial arts—hand-fighting and sword-fighting—and in the ways of the priest, the wizard, and the monk. With Cadderly and Danica as their parents, the three had been blessed with as comprehensive and exhaustive an education as any in Faerûn could ever hope for, but in practical applications of their lessons, particularly fighting, the three were neophytes indeed, completely untested until the previous night.