Free The Ghost King by R.A. Salvatore Page A

was perhaps the most desperate struggle Jarlaxle had ever known, and one he would not have survived were it not for the intervention of a third weapons master, one of a lower-ranked House—House Do’Urden, actually, though that battle had been fought many decades before Drizzt drew his first breath.
    That memory had long been crystallized in the mind of Jarlaxle Baenre, with images distinct and clear, and a level of tumult enough to keep his thoughts occupied. And with such emotional mental churning, the drow hoped he wouldn’t surrender his current position to the intrusive Hephaestus.
    Well done, drow!
Hephaestus congratulated him.
But it will not matter in the end. Do you truly believe you can so easily hide from me? Do you truly believe your simple, but undeniably clever trick, would destroy one of the Seven?
    One of
what
‘Seven’? Jarlaxle asked himself.
    He put the question to the back of his mind quickly and resumed his mental defense. He understood that his bold stand did little or nothing to shake the confidence of Hephaestus, but he remained certain that the hunting dragon wasn’t making much headway. Then a notion occurred to him and he was jolted from his confrontation with the dragon, and from his Reverie entirely. He stumbled away from the tree upon which he was leaning.
    “The Seven,” he said, and swallowed hard, trying to recall all that he had learned about the origins of the Crystal Shard—
    —and the seven liches who had created it.
    “The Seven …” Jarlaxle whispered again, and a shiver ran up his spine.
    * * * * *
    Jarlaxle set the pace even swifter the next day, nightmare and hell boar running hard along the road. When they saw the smoke of an encampment not far ahead, Jarlaxle pulled to a halt.
    “Orcs, likely,” he explained to the dwarf. “We are near the border of King Obould’s domain.”
    “Let’s kill ‘em, then.”
    Jarlaxle shook his head. “You must learn to exploit your enemies, my hairy little friend,” he explained. “If these are Obould’s orcs, they are not enemies of Mithral Hall.”
    “Bah!” Athrogate said, and spat on the ground.
    “We go to them not as enemies, but as fellow travelers,” Jarlaxle ordered. “Let us see what we might learn.” Noting the disappointment on Athrogate’s face, he added, “But do keep your morningstars near at hand.”
    It was indeed a camp of Many Arrow orcs, who served Obould, and though they sprang to readiness, brandishing weapons, at the casual approach of the curious pair—dwarf and drow—they held their arrows.
    “We are travelers from Luskan,”
Jarlaxle greeted them in perfect command of Orcish,
“trade emissaries to King Obould and King Bruenor.”
Out of the corner of his mouth, he bade Athrogate to remain calm and to keep his mount’s pace steady and slow.
“We have good food to share,”
Jarlaxle added.
“And better grog.”
    “What’d’ye tell ‘em?” Athrogate asked, seeing the porcine soldiers brighten and nod at one another.
    “That we’re all going to get drunk together,” Jarlaxle whispered back. “In a pig’s fat rump!” the dwarf protested.
    “Wherever you please,” the drow replied. He slid down from his saddle and dismissed his hell-spawned steed. “Come, let us learn what we may.”
    It all started rather tentatively, with Jarlaxle producing both food and “grog” aplenty. The drink went over well with the orcs, even more so when the dwarf spat out his first taste of it with disgust. He looked to Jarlaxle as if dumbstruck, as if he never could have imagined anything potent tasting so wretched. Jarlaxle responded with a wink and held out his flask to replenish Athrogate’s mug, but with a different mixture, the dwarf noted.
    Gutbuster.
    Not another word of complaint came from Athrogate.
    “You friends with Drizzt Do’Urden?”
one of the orcs asked Jarlaxle, the creature’s tongue loosened by the drink.
    “You know of him?”
the drow replied, and several of the orcs