“Smart cat would’ve run off long before that,” said Bruenor.

“Guenhwyvar fears no battle, but she understands the dilemma of dimensions joined. Remember when the crystal tower in Icewind Dale collapsed?”

“Aye,” said Bruenor, his face brightening just a bit. “And Rumblebelly rode the damned cat to her home.”

“Remember Pasha Pook’s palace in Calimport?”

“Aye, a sea o’ cats following yer Guenhwyvar from her home. What’re ye thinking, elf? That yer cat might get you to me girl on the other plane, and might bring ye both back?”

“I don’t know,” Drizzt admitted.

“But ye’re thinking there might be a way?” Bruenor asked in a tone as desperately hopeful as any the drow had ever heard from his dwarf friend.

He fixed Bruenor with a stare and a grin. “Isn’t there always a way?”

Bruenor managed a nod at that, and as Drizzt turned his gaze outward from the balcony, he looked to the trees.

“What are they doing?” Drizzt asked a moment later, when Thibbledorf Pwent and Athrogate bobbed out of the forest, carrying a heavy log shoulder to shoulder.

“If we’re meaning to stay and fight, then we’re meaning to win,” said Bruenor.

“But what are they doing, exactly?” Drizzt asked.

“I’m afraid to ask them two,” Bruenor admitted, and he and Drizzt shared a much-needed chuckle.

“Ye going to bring in the damned cat again this fight?” Bruenor asked.

“I fear to. The seam between these worlds, between life and death as well, is too unpredictable. I would not lose Guen as I have lost …”

His voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish the thought for Bruenor to understand.

“World’s gone crazy,” the dwarf said.

“Or maybe it always was.”

“Nah, but don’t ye start talking like that,” Bruenor scolded. “We’ve put a lot o’ good years and good work under our girdles, and ye know it.”

“And we even made peace with orcs,” said Drizzt, and Bruenor’s face tightened and he let out a little growl.

“Ye’re a warm fire on a cold winter night, elf,” he muttered.

Drizzt smiled all the wider, stood up straight, and stretched his arms and back. “We’re staying and we’re fighting, my friend. And one more thing we’re doing …”

“Winning,” said Bruenor. “We might get me girl back and we might not, elf, but I’m meaning to stay mad for a bit.” He punched Drizzt in the shoulder. “Ye ready to kill us a dragon, elf?”

Drizzt didn’t answer, but the look he gave to Bruenor, his lavender eyes full of a fire the dwarf king had seen so many times before, made Bruenor almost pity the dracolich.

Down on the courtyard below, Pwent, who was leading the pair, stumbled and the two dwarves crashed down in a heap with their heavy cargo.

“If them two don’t kill us all with their plannin’, that wyrm ain’t getting back to its hiding place,” Bruenor declared. “Or if it does, then I’m meaning to find a way to chase it there and be done with it!”

Drizzt nodded, more than ready for the fight, but mixed with his expression of determination was a bit of intrigue at that last statement. His hand went to his belt pouch, to Guenhwyvar, and he wondered.

He had traveled the planes with the cat before, after all.

“What’re ye thinking, elf?” Bruenor asked.

Drizzt flashed him those eyes again, so full of determination and simmering anger.

Bruenor nodded and smiled, no less determined and no less angry.

“Is there no way to learn?” Danica asked Cadderly.

Cadderly shook his head. “I’ve tried. I’ve asked, of Deneir or of any sentience I might find anywhere.”

“I can’t do this any more,” Danica admitted. She slumped in her chair and put her hands over her face. Cadderly was at her side in a heartbeat, hugging her, but he had little to offer. He was no less tormented than she.

Their children were out there somewhere, maybe alive and maybe, very possibly, dead.

“I have to go back out,” Danica said, straightening and taking a deep, steadying breath. “I have to go to Carradoon.”

“You tried already, and it nearly killed you,” Cadderly reminded. “The forest is no less—”

“I know!” Danica snapped at him. “I know and I don’t care. I can’t stay here and just wait and hope.”

“I cannot go!” Cadderly shouted back at her.

“I know,” Danica said softly, tenderly, and she reached up and ran her fingers across Cadderly’s cheek. “You are bound here, tied to this place, I know. You cannot desert it, because if it falls, you fall, and our enemies win. But I have recovered from my wounds, and we have driven off the beast for now.” Cadderly started to interrupt, but Danica silenced him by putting a finger over his lips. “I know, my love,” she said. “The Ghost King will return and attack Spirit Soaring once more. I know. And it is a fight I welcome, for I will see that creature destroyed. But …”

“But our children are out there,” Cadderly finished for her. “They’re alive—I know they are! If any of them had fallen, Spirit Soaring would feel the loss.”

Danica looked at him, curious.

“They are of me, as this place is of me,” Cadderly tried to explain. “They are alive, I am sure.”

Danica fell back a bit and stared at her husband. She understood his confidence, but knew, too, that it was based more on a need to believe that the children were alive and well than on anything substantive.

“You cannot stay here,” Cadderly said, surprising her, and she sat up straight, her eyes wide.

“You are about to fight the most desperate battle of your life, and you would send me away?”

“If the Ghost King returns and is to be defeated …” Cadderly paused there, seeming almost embarrassed.

“It will be by the power of Cadderly, and not the fists of Danica,” she reasoned.

Cadderly shrugged. “We are a powerful team, we seven, each armed in our own ways to do battle with such a beast as the Ghost King.”

“But I least of all,” the woman said. She held up her empty hands. “My weapons are less effective than Bruenor’s axe, and I haven’t the tricks of Jarlaxle.”

“There is no one I would rather have fighting beside me than you,” Cadderly said. “But truly, there is no one in all the world who might better elude the monsters in the forest and find our children. And if we don’t have them, then …”

“Then what is the point?” Danica finished for him. She leaned in and kissed him passionately.

“They are alive,” Cadderly said.

“And I will find them,” Danica whispered back.

She was out of Spirit Soaring within the hour, moving among the trees alongside the road to Carradoon, invisible and silent in the dark night.

CHAPTER 26

DAWN

Why aren’t we fighting?” Temberle whispered to Ivan. Even his hushed tone seemed to echo in the too-quiet tunnels. “Not for knowin’,” Ivan replied to Temberle and to all the remaining refugees in the group, which numbered less than twenty. “Hoping it’s your da’s work.”

“Boom,” Pikel said hopefully, and loudly, drawing gasps from all the others. “Oops,” the green-bearded dwarf apologized, slapping his hand over his mouth.

“Or they’re setting a trap for us,” Hanaleisa interjected. Ivan was nodding as she spoke, about to make the same observation. “Perhaps they’ve learned from the slaughter.”

“So what are we to do?” asked Rorick, and when she looked at her younger brother, Hanaleisa saw real fear there, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“We go on, for what choice do we got?” said Ivan, and he purposely lifted his voice. “If they be lying in wait for us, then we’ll just kill ‘em and walk on over their rottin’ bodies.”

Ivan slapped his bloodstained axe across his open hand and nodded with determination, then stomped away.

“Oo oi!” Pikel agreed, and adjusted his cooking pot helmet and scrambled to follow.

Not far from that site, the beleaguered band entered a room that presented yet another puzzle, but a welcome one at first glance. The chamber floor was littered with dead crawlers and dead giant bats, and even a dead giant.