“We will fix it,” Danica breathlessly promised.

But Cadderly shook his head. “It isn’t a matter of wood and nails and stone,” he said.

“Then Deneir will fix it with you,” Jarlaxle said, drawing curious stares with his unexpected compassion.

Cadderly started to shake his head, then looked at the drow and nodded, for it was no time for any expression of pessimism.

“But first we must ready ourselves for the return of the Ghost King,” Jarlaxle remarked, and he led everyone’s gaze to Drizzt Do’Urden, who sat on the bed staring helplessly at Catti-brie.

“What’s she seeing, elf?” Athrogate demanded. “What memory this time?”

“No memory,” Drizzt whispered. He could hardly even find his voice. “She cowers before the raging Ghost King.”

“In the Shadowfell,” Cadderly reasoned, and Drizzt nodded.

“It is there, in all its fury, and there it heals its wounds,” the drow said, looking so pitifully, so helplessly, at his lost and terrified wife. He couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t help her. He could only look on and pray that somehow Catti-brie would find her way out of darkness.

For a fleeting moment, it occurred to Drizzt Do’Urden that his wife might truly be better off dead, for it seemed that her torment might have no end. He thought back to that quiet morning on the road from Silverymoon when, despite the troubles with the ways of magic, all had seemed so right in his world, beside the woman he loved. It had been only a matter of tendays since that falling magical strand had descended upon Catti-brie and had taken her from Drizzt, but to him, sitting on that bed, so near and yet so distant from his wife, it truly seemed a lifetime ago.

All of that pain and confusion showed on his face, he realized, when he looked at his companions. Bruenor stood in the doorway, trembling with rage, tears streaking his hairy cheeks, his strong fists balled at his sides so tightly that his grip could have crushed stone. He studied Danica, so troubled by her own spouse’s dilemma, still taking the time to alternate her gaze between Cadderly, whom she stood beside, and Drizzt, and with equal sympathy and fear showing for both.

Jarlaxle put a hand on Drizzt’s shoulder. “If there’s a way to get her back, we will find it,” he promised, and Drizzt knew he meant every word. When Drizzt looked past him to Bruenor, he recognized that the dwarf understood Jarlaxle’s sincerity.

But both also knew that it wouldn’t do any good.

“It heals, and it will return,” Cadderly said. “We must prepare, and quickly.”

“To what end?” asked a voice from the hallway, and they all turned to see Ginance and the others standing there. The speaker, a wizard, held one arm in close, for his robe’s sleeve had fallen to tatters and the arm underneath it had withered to dried skin and bone. One of the dracolich’s tail swipes had touched him there.

“If we defeat it again, will it not simply retreat once more to this other world of which you speak?” Ginance asked. Cadderly winced at the devastating question from his normally optimistic assistant.

Everyone understood Cadderly’s grimace, particularly Drizzt, for the simple truth of Ginance’s remark could not be denied. How could they defeat a beast who could so readily retreat, and so easily heal, as Drizzt had witnessed when he had hugged Catti-brie?

“We will find a way,” Cadderly promised. “Before Spirit Soaring, in the old structure that was the Edificant Library, we fought a vampire. That creature, too, could run from the field if the battle turned badly. But we found a way.”

“Aye, yer dwarfs sucked the gassy thing into a bellows!” howled Thibbledorf Pwent, who had made Ivan Bouldershoulder tell him that story over and over again during the time Ivan and Pikel had spent at Mithral Hall. “And spat him out into a running stream under the sunshine!”

“What’re ye saying?” Athrogate demanded, his eyes wide with intrigue and awe. “Are ye speaking true?”

“He is,” Cadderly confirmed, and he tossed a wink at the rest of the crew, all of them glad for the light-hearted respite.

“Bwahaha!” roared Athrogate. “I’m thinking that we’re needin’ a song for that one!”

The faces around them, particularly those in the hallway, didn’t change much, however, as the weight of the situation quickly pressed the brief respite away.

“We need to prepare,” Cadderly said again, when all had muted to an uncomfortable silence.

“Or we should leave this place, and quickly,” said the wizard with the withered arm. “Run fast for Baldur’s Gate, or some other great city where the beast daren’t approach.”

“Where an army of archers will greet it with doom too sudden for its clever retreat!” another voice chimed in from beyond the room’s door.

Drizzt watched Cadderly through it all, as the chorus for retreat grew louder and more insistent, and Drizzt understood the priest’s personal turmoil. Cadderly could not disagree with the logic of swift departure, of running far from that seemingly doomed place.

But Cadderly could not go. Damage to Spirit Soaring manifested in his personal being. And Cadderly and Danica could not go far, since their children were still missing and might be out there, or in Carradoon.

Drizzt looked to Bruenor for guidance.

“I ain’t leaving,” the dwarf king said without hesitation, commanding the gathering. “Let the beast come back, and we’ll pound it into dust.”

“That is foolish …” the wizard with the withered arm started to argue, but Bruenor’s expression stopped the debate before it could begin, and made the man blanch almost as surely as had the sight of the dracolich.

“I ain’t leaving,” Bruenor said again. “Unless it’s to go find Cadderly’s kids, or to go and find me missing friend, Pikel, who stood beside me and me kin in our time o’ trial. He’s lost his brother, so Lady Danica tells me, but he’s not to lose his friends from Mithral Hall.”

“Then you’ll be dead,” someone in the hall dared to say.

“We’re all to die,” Bruenor retorted. “Some of us’re already dead, though we’re not knowin’ it. For when ye’re to run and leave yer friends behind, then ye’re surely dead.”

Someone started to reply with an argument, but Cadderly shouted, “Not now!” So rare was it that the priest raised his voice in such a way that all conversation in the room and without stopped. “Go and assess the damage,” Cadderly instructed them all. “Count our wounds …”

“And our dead,” the withered wizard added with a hiss.

“And our dead,” Cadderly conceded. “Go and learn, go and think, and do so quickly.” He looked at Drizzt and asked, “How long do we have?”

But the drow could only shrug.

“Quickly,” Cadderly said again. “And for those who would leave, organize your wagons as fast as you can. It would not do you well to be caught on the road when the Ghost King returns.”

His giant hat in hand, Jarlaxle entered the private quarters of Cadderly and Danica, who sat around the priest’s desk, staring at his every step. “You surprise me,” Cadderly greeted him.

“You surprise everyone around you with this new magic you’ve found,” Jarlaxle replied, and he took the chair Danica indicated, beside her and opposite Cadderly.

“No,” Cadderly replied. “I have not found any new magic. It has found me. I can’t even begin to explain it, and so how can I claim ownership of it? I know not from where it comes, or if it will be there when I need it in the next crisis.”

“Let us hope,” said Jarlaxle.

Outside the room’s south window came a commotion, horses whinnying and men calling out orders.

“They’re all leaving,” Jarlaxle said. “Even your friend Ginance.”

“I told her to go,” said Cadderly. “This is not her fight.”

“You would flee, too, if you could,” Jarlaxle gathered from his tone.

With a heavy sigh, Cadderly stood up and walked to the window to glance at the activity in the courtyard. “This battle has confirmed an old fear,” he explained. “When I built Spirit Soaring, weaving the magic Deneir allowed to flow through this mere mortal coil, it aged me. As the cathedral neared completion, I became an old man.”