And above all the pain from those furious warriors, above the continuing sting of Jarlaxle’s lightning bolts and the hindrance of the drow’s viscous globs, there was the ever-intrusive agony of Cadderly’s light. That awful light, divine spurs that permeated every inch of the Ghost King’s being.

The beast breathed its fire into the room again, but Cadderly’s ward remained to repel the effect, and his light healed his friends as soon as they were stung by the flames.

The effort cost the Ghost King dearly, for all the while it locked its great head in position to fill the room with its fires, Drizzt, who scrambled onto its leg and up to its neck, found the unhindered opportunity to pummel the dragon’s skull. Again and again, Icingdeath came down with fury, bone and flesh and scales exploding under each thunderous strike.

The dragon’s fiery breath ended abruptly with Drizzt’s last strike. The Ghost King shuddered with such force that all, Drizzt and Athrogate included, were thrown aside. The creature leaped back, far out into the courtyard.

“Finish it!” Jarlaxle cried to all, and indeed, it seemed at that moment that the dracolich was in its last throes, that a concerted assault could actually bring the beast down.

And so they tried, but their weapons and spells and missiles passed through the Ghost King without consequence. For there was suddenly nothing tangible to the beast, just its shape outlined in blue light. Thibbledorf Pwent went charging out from the base of Spirit Soaring, roaring as only a battlerager could bellow, and leaped with abandon—right through the intangible beast to bounce down on the turf.

Even more significant to Drizzt, as he moved to follow Pwent, was the apparition of Guenhwyvar across the courtyard. The panther did not charge at the Ghost King. Ears flattened with uncharacteristic trepidation, Guenhwyvar, never afraid of anything, turned and fled.

Drizzt gawked in surprise. He looked to the beast on the field, to Pwent as he ran all around the glowing form, inside it even, thrashing to no effect.

Then suddenly, nothing at all remained to be seen of the Ghost King as the beast faded, just faded to nothingness. It was gone.

The defenders looked on with shock. Cadderly stared with amazement after the blue-white image and gasped at his memories of the Prophecies of Alaundo and of this year, 1385, the Year of Blue Fire. Coincidence, or fitting representation of their greater catastrophe? Before he could delve any deeper into his contemplations, from a room much farther inside Spirit Soaring, Catti-brie screamed in abject terror.

PART 4

SACRIFICE

The recognition of utter helplessness is more than humbling; it is devastating. On those occasions when it is made clear to someone, internally, that willpower or muscle or technique will not be enough to overcome the obstacles placed before him, that he is helpless before those obstacles, there follows a brutal mental anguish.

When Wulfgar was taken by Errtu in the Abyss, he was beaten and physically tortured, but on those few occasions I was able to coax my friend to speak of that time, those notes he sang most loudly in despair were those of his helplessness. The demon, for example, would make him believe that he was free and was living with the woman he loved, then would slaughter her and their illusionary children before Wulfgar’s impotent gaze.

That torture created Wulfgar’s most profound and lasting scars.

When I was a child in Menzoberranzan, I was taught a lesson universal to male drow. My sister Briza took me out to the edge of our cavern homeland where a gigantic earth elemental waited. The beast was harnessed and Briza handed me the end of the rein.

“Hold it back,” she instructed.

I didn’t quite understand, and when the elemental took a step away, the rope was pulled from my hand.

Briza struck me with her whip, of course, and no doubt, she enjoyed it.

“Hold it back,” she said again.

I took the rope and braced myself. The elemental took a step and I went flying after it. It didn’t even know that I existed, or that I was tugging with all my insignificant strength to try to hinder its movement.

Briza scowled as she informed me that I would try again.

This test must be a matter of cleverness, I decided, and instead of just bracing myself, I looped the rope around a nearby stalagmite, to Briza’s approving nods, and dug in my heels.

The elemental, on command, took a step and whipped me around the stone as if I were no more than a bit of parchment in a furious gale. The monster didn’t slow, didn’t even notice.

In that moment, I was shown my limitations, without equivocation. I was shown my impotence.

Briza then held the elemental in place with an enchantment and dismissed it with a second one. The point she was trying to make was that the divine magic of Lolth overwhelmed both muscle and technique. This was no more than another subjugation tactic by the ruling matron mothers, to make the males of Menzoberranzan understand their lowly place, their inferiority, particularly to those more in Lolth’s favor.

For me, and I suspect for many of my kin, the lesson was more personal and less societal, for that was my first real experience encountering a force supremely beyond my willpower, utterly beyond my control. It wasn’t as if had I tried harder or been more clever I might have changed the outcome. The elemental would have stepped away unhindered and unbothered no matter my determination.

To say I was humbled would be an understatement. There, in that dark cavern, I learned the first truth of both mortality and mortal flesh.

And now I feel that terrible measure of impotence again. When I look at Catti-brie, I know that she is beyond my ability to help. We all dream about being the hero, about finding the solution, about winning the moment and saving the day. And we all harbor, to some degree, the notion that our will can overcome, that determination and strength of mind can push us to great ends—and indeed they can. To a point.

Death is the ultimate barrier, and when faced with impending death, personally or for someone you love, a mortal being will encounter, most of all, ultimate humility.

We all believe that we can defeat that plague or that disease, should it befall us, through sheer willpower. It is a common mental defense against the inevitability we all know we share. I wonder, then, if the worst reality of a lingering death is the sense that your own body is beyond your ability to control.

In my case, the pain I feel in looking at Catti-brie is manifold, and not least among the variations is my own sense of helplessness. I deny the looks that Cadderly and Jarlaxle exchanged, expressions that revealed their hearts and minds. They cannot be right in their obvious belief that Catti-brie is beyond our help and surely doomed!

I demand that they are not right.

And yet I know that they are. Perhaps I only “know” because I fear beyond anything I have ever known that they are correct, and if they are, then I will know no closure. I cannot say goodbye to Catti-brie because I fear that I already have.

And thus, in moments of weakness, I lose faith and know that they are right. My love, my dearest friend, is lost to me forever—and there again lurches my stubbornness, for my first instinct was to write “likely forever.” I cannot admit the truth even as I admit the truth!

So many times have I seen my friends return from the brink of death: Bruenor on the back of a dragon, Wulfgar from the Abyss, Catti-brie from the dark plane of Tarterus. So many times have the odds been beaten. In the end, we always prevail!

But that is not true. And perhaps the cruelest joke of all is the confidence, the surety, that our good fortune and grand exploits have instilled in my friends, the Companions of the Hall.