“And you have found her—Catti-brie, I mean—trapped between this place and our own world. How do we retrieve her fully, and bring her back …” His voice trailed off as he stared into Cadderly’s too-sympathetic face.
“There is a way!” Drizzt shouted, and he grabbed the priest by the front of his tunic. “Do not tell me that it is hopeless!”
“I would not,” Cadderly replied. “All sorts of unexplained and unexpected events are occurring all around us, on a daily basis! I have found spells I did not know I possessed, and did not know Deneir could grant, and with all humility and honesty, I say that I am not certain it is even Deneir granting them to me! You ask me for answers, my friend, and I do not have them.”
Drizzt let him go, the drow’s shoulders sagging, along with his aching heart. He offered a slight nod of appreciation to Cadderly. “I will go and tell Bruenor.”
“Let me,” said Jarlaxle, and that brought a surprised look from Drizzt. “You go to your wife.”
“My wife cannot feel my touch.”
“You do not know that,” Jarlaxle scolded. “Go and hold her, for both your sakes.”
Drizzt looked from Jarlaxle to Cadderly, who nodded his agreement. The distraught drow put on the magical eye patch as he entered the adjacent chamber.
“She is lost to us,” Jarlaxle said softly to Cadderly when they were alone. “We do not know that.”
Jarlaxle continued to stare at him, and Cadderly, grim-faced, could not disagree. “I see no way for us to retrieve her,” the priest admitted. “And even if we could, I fear that the damage to her mind is already beyond repair. By any means I can fathom, Catti-brie is forever lost to us.”
Jarlaxle swallowed hard, though he was not surprised by the prognosis. He wouldn’t tell King Bruenor quite everything, he decided.
Another defeat, Yharaskrik pointed out. We weakened them!
We barely scratched their walls, the illithid imparted. And now they have new and powerful allies.
More of my enemies in one place for me to throttle!
Cadderly and Jarlaxle and Drizzt Do’Urden. I know this Drizzt Do’Urden, and he is not to be taken lightly.
I know him as well. Crenshinibon unexpectedly joined the internal dialogue, and the illithid detected a simmering hatred behind the simple telepathic statement.
We should fly from this place, Yharaskrik dared to suggest. The rift has brought uncontrollable beasts from the shadowy plane, and Cadderly has found unexpected allies …
No cogent response came from the dragon, just a continuous, angry growl reverberating through the thoughts of the triumvirate that was the Ghost King, a wall of anger and resentment, and perhaps the most resounding “no” Yharaskrik had ever heard.
Through the far-reaching mental eyes of the illithid, its consciousness flying wide to scout the region, they had seen the rift in Carradoon. They had seen the giant nightwalkers and the nightwings and understood that a new force had come to the Prime Material Plane. And through the eyes of the illithid, they had witnessed the latest battle at Spirit Soaring, the coming of the dwarves and the drow, the power revealed by Cadderly—that unknown priestly magic had unnerved Yharaskrik most of all, for he had felt the magical thunder in Cadderly’s ward and had retreated from the brilliance of the priest’s beam of light. Yharaskrik, ancient and once part of a great communal mind flayer hive, thought it knew of every magical dweomer on Toril, but it had never seen anything like the power of the unpredictable priest that day.
The melted flesh of crawlers and the ash piles of the raised dead served as grim reminders to the mind flayer that Cadderly was not to be underestimated.
Thus, the dracolich’s continuing growl of denial was not a welcome echo in Yharaskrik’s expansive mind. The illithid waited for the sound to abate, but it did not. It listened for a third voice in the conversation, one of moderation, but heard nothing.
Then it knew. In a sudden insight, a revelation of a minuscule but all-important shift, the mind flayer realized that the Ghost King was no longer a triumvirate. The resonance of the growl deepened, more a chorus of two than the grumble of one. Two that had become one.
No words filtered out of that rumbling wall of anger, but Yharaskrik knew its warnings would go unheeded. They would not flee. They—the mind flayer and that dual being with whom it shared the host dragon corpse, for no longer could Yharaskrik count Hephaestus and Crenshinibon as separate entities! — would show no restraint. Not the rift, not Cadderly’s unexplained new powers, not the arrival of powerful reinforcements for Spirit Soaring, would slow the determined vengeance of the Ghost King.
The growl continued, a maddening and incessant wall, a pervasive answer to the illithid’s concerns that brooked no intelligent debate, or, the creature understood, no room for a change of plans, whatever new circumstances or new enemies might be revealed.
The Ghost King meant to attack Spirit Soaring.
Yharaskrik tried to send its thoughts around the growl, to find Crenshinibon, or what remained of the Crystal Shard as an independent sentience. It tried to construct logic to stop the dracolich’s angry vibrations.
It found nothing, and every path led to one road only: eviction.
It was no longer a disagreement, no longer a debate about their course of action. It was a revolt, full and without resolution. Hephaestus-Crenshinibon was trying to evict Yharaskrik, as surely as had the dwarf in the tunnels below.
Unlike that occasion, however, the mind flayer had nowhere else to go.
The growl rolled on.
Yharaskrik threw wave after wave of mental energy at the dragon-shard mind. It gathered its psionic powers and released them in ways subtle and clever.
The growl rolled on.
The illithid assailed the Ghost King with a wall of discordant notions and emotions, a cacophony of twisted notes that would have driven a wise man mad.
The growl rolled on.
It attacked every fear buried within Hephaestus. It conjured images of the exploding Crystal Shard from those years before, when the light had burned the eyes from Hephaestus’s head.
The growl rolled on. The mind flayer found no wedge between the dragon and the artifact. They were one, so completely united that even Yharaskrik couldn’t fathom where one ended and the other began, or which was in control, or which even, to the illithid’s great surprise and distress, was initiating the growl.
And it went on, unabated, unflinching, incessant and forevermore if necessary, the illithid understood.
Clever beast!
There was nothing left there for the mind flayer. It would have no control of the great dracolich limbs. It would find no conversation or debate. It would find nothing there but the growl, heartbeats and days and years and centuries. Just the growl, just the opaque wall of a singular note that would forevermore dull its own sensibilities, that would steal its curiosity, that would force it to stay within, confined to an endless battle.
Against Hephaestus alone, Yharaskrik knew it could prevail. Against Crenshinibon alone, Yharaskrik held confidence that it would find a way to win.
Against both of them, there was only the growl. It all came clear to the illithid, then. The Crystal Shard, as arrogant as Yharaskrik itself, and as stubborn as the dragon, as patient as time, had chosen. To the illithid, that choice at first seemed illogical, for why would Crenshinibon side with the lesser intellect of the dragon?
Because the Crystal Shard was more possessed of ego than the illithid had recognized. More than logic drove Crenshinibon. By joining with Hephaestus, the Crystal Shard would dominate.
The growl rolled on.
Time itself lost meaning in the rumble. There was no yesterday and no tomorrow, no hope nor fear, no pleasure nor pain.