That thought jolted Regis back into the present, and he hustled away, not wanting to intrude on Drizzt and Catti-brie’s private moment.
When he came back into the camp, he found Bruenor and Wulfgar scratching out a game of Xs and Os in the sand, each with a mug of beer. Bruenor looked up at him sternly and gave a little growl, and Regis skidded to an abrupt spot.
“Bah, ye little rat, pull up a log and I’ll get ye a beer,” the dwarf said. “Just ye promise me that when we find us some orcs, ye’ll fight just as well.”
“Better,” Regis promised, pulling up a seat and plopping down beside his friends, as Bruenor drew forth another mug from his strangely enchanted shield. “I was merely playing with you, for I did not wish to humiliate a proud dwarf before his friends.”
Bruenor had just begun to reach out with the beer when the taunt hit his ears, and he pulled the tankard back.
Wulfgar’s laugh jumped right to the dwarf, though, and then to the halfling, and the three lifted their tankards in a clinking, foam-flying toast.
On midsummer’s day, bright and sunny and particularly hot, the group at last came in sight of the town of Longsaddle. Many cheers and waves followed them as they wound their way through the town to the gates of the Ivy Mansion on the hill, but no folk followed them, most reclining in the shade and enjoying the heat as if it was an excuse for a bit of laziness.
Regis surely shared that notion.
“Word has already been sent forth for those who will help us,” Penelope Harpell assured them when they presented her with the cracked horn containing the spirit of Thibbledorf Pwent. “Our clairvoyants have been watching the road for your approach.”
She offered them all the hospitality the Harpells could muster, which was surely a considerable amount. Catti-brie soon went back to her old spot in the House library, brushing up on her old spells and seeking some new magical combinations she might employ, and old Kipper joined her, demanding that she entertain him at length with tales of their daring adventure in Gauntlgrym.
Regis was granted a special place at a small pond in the house’s back courtyard.
“Fish to your content,” Penelope bade him, smiling wide. “But be wary and quick, I warn, for you never know what you might hook in the pond of the Harpells.”
Regis grinned from ear-to-ear—until he fully realized the actual implications—this being a Harpell house—of what she had said. Then he looked at his flimsy pole a bit suspiciously, and it took him a long while to muster the courage to actually drop a line into the bright waters.
For Bruenor, the day was full of impatient pacing, and Drizzt stayed by his side, reassuring him and helping him plot their course of action upon their return to the Silver Marches. Was Bruenor to announce his true identity immediately to Clan Battlehammer? And if he did, what implications might such a remarkable revelation hold for King Connerad? Connerad was indeed King of Mithral Hall, and not merely a Steward in Waiting.
The hypothetical exercise was more to keep Bruenor calm than anything else, for Drizzt knew that they’d find unexpected allies and enemies when they returned to the Silver Marches, and he suspected that any plans they might now make would be altered by necessity in short order when the reality of the situation, whatever it might be, confronted them. Still, such planning was a positive and constructive way to pass the time.
And that was the point, for they all needed to pass the time busily that they didn’t dwell on the expected conclusion. They were awaiting a priest to properly finish their job.
A priest to destroy the vampire. A priest to destroy Thibbledorf Pwent.
Too many emotions and opposing thoughts punctured their patience whenever their minds were idle.
So they kept busy, planning, playing, studying, or whatever else they could find as a diversion.
“I thought I would find you out here,” Penelope Harpell said when she turned a corner around a trellis of grape vines to come into view of Wulfgar.
The barbarian smiled at her, a bit of wistfulness there as he, like Penelope, remembered their last encounter in this garden.
“It is cooler inside,” she added.
“I grew up in Icewind Dale, and so I have learned to appreciate the hot days,” Wulfgar replied. “And, too, I lived for many years in Mithral Hall, and so the sun shines all the brighter to me.”
Penelope grinned and walked off to the side, glancing at Wulfgar out of the corner of her eye and muttering something he could not make out. A moment later, she spun on him, and threw her hands his way and called out the final words of a spell she had quietly enacted.
Wulfgar’s expression went from curiosity to surprise to shock as a large volume of water appeared in the air above his head and splashed down upon him, and Penelope laughed riotously.
“What?” he sputtered, and shook his head, his long blond locks flying wide and throwing water around. He leaped at Penelope reaching for her hands, for she was into her spellcasting once again.
And she kept going when he caught her, and a second flood of conjured water appeared above them both and splashed down upon them.
Both were laughing then, and Wulfgar pulled back to wipe his face. His mirth ended abruptly, though, when he could not help but notice the effect of the water on Penelope’s thin blouse.
He swallowed hard.
And then again when Penelope came to him and took his hands, and went up to her tip-toes to kiss him. A sweet kiss it was, and Wulfgar wanted to pull away, but found he hadn’t the strength. Penelope Harpell was in her late forties, but he couldn’t deny her attractiveness, and it was a beauty that grew greater to him every time the intelligent wizard uttered a word. He lifted the woman in his arms, crushing her tightly against him, and pressed his lips into hers with a passion he had not known in a long, long while.
But then he broke free and pushed her back, stammering, “I … I cannot.”
“Of course you can,” she said, coming forward, and Wulfgar backed to keep distance between them.
“I cannot cuckold your husband,” he said, and Penelope was laughing before he finished the thought.
“Did you not once tell me that the aim of living was pleasure?”
“Not at the expense of …”
“There is no expense,” Penelope said, and she rushed up and caught him around the waist. “I exact no promises from Dowell, and he none from me.”
“He is your husband.”
“And I love him, and he loves me. And I would kill for him or die for him, and he for me, but this … this is simple play, and it is unimportant to us.”
“I am truly flattered,” Wulfgar said dryly.
“Not that,” Penelope laughed. “Fidelity is not a course we choose. We are loyal in spirit, but we indulge the flesh.” She pressed a bit closer, and laughed, clearly understanding that she had Wulfgar more than a little uncomfortable.
“Fear not, wonderful Wulfgar,” she whispered. “I do not ask for loyalty from you.”
“Then what do you ask?”
“Adventure,” she answered and kissed him again, and wearing a mischievous grin, pulled him down to the wet grass.
Candlelight filled the dark, thick-walled basement chamber beneath the Ivy Mansion, the dancing light reflecting off the glassy sheen of the many inks marking magic circles of protection.
“Shouldn’t we be doing this out in the daylight?” a nervous Regis asked.
“The sun would torment him terribly, and might even destroy him, before the spell was completed,” Kipper Harpell answered.
“Well, near sunlight, then?” offered the halfling. “A curtain or closed door away?”
Kipper laughed and turned away, and Penelope offered the halfling a comforting smile.
“I expect that Regis has seen enough of the dead of late,” Drizzt put in dryly, “chased as he was across the lands by a particularly nasty lich.”
Drizzt smiled as he finished, enjoying the tease of Regis, but that grin went away when he noted Penelope and Kippe
r exchanging what seemed to him to be a nervous glance. He made a mental note to inquire about Ebonsoul, the lich they had trapped in the phylactery the Harpells had prepared for Thibbledorf Pwent, before they left. He turned his attention to Catti-brie and Bruenor, who stood at the side of the room, quietly talking and both staring at the broken silver horn as Bruenor rolled it over in his hands. With the phylactery occupied by the spirit of the lich, the magical horn in Bruenor’s hand had come to serve as the vampire Pwent’s prison.
Wulfgar sat on the stone floor in the corner behind them, his gaze repeatedly going to Penelope Harpell, Drizzt noticed. Drizzt had a good idea of what that might be about, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it in this important moment. He scanned to the right, across the room, where a robed priest whispered incantations as he traced the magic circle. The old man bent, dipped his fingers in a pot of ash, and drew a glyph of runes above the symbols etched into the floor. This circle of protection had been designed to ward demons or devils, Penelope had previously explained to Drizzt, but this priest Kipper had brought in could alter it to strengthen its effectiveness against cursed undead beings.
After a long while, the priest stood up and brushed his hands together, then stretched his back, turned around, and offered a grim nod to the others.
Drizzt swallowed hard. It was time. He knew in his heart that this was certainly for the best, particularly for Thibbledorf Pwent, who was clearly losing his battle, indeed losing himself, against the unrelenting curse of vampirism.
But still …
It hurt. A lot. More than Drizzt expected, surely. He remembered when he had left Pwent in the cave in the Crags, just outside of Neverwinter. Holding faith in the tough dwarf, Drizzt had expected the coming dawn to be the end of Pwent, and he had accepted that and had moved on.
But still …
He watched as if in a distant dream as Penelope went to Bruenor and escorted him to the edge of the magical circle and bade him to enter it.
The dwarf’s hand trembled visibly as he lifted the silver horn to his lips, and he had to pause there and collect his breath, steadying himself as best he could and swallowing hard against the lump that had come into his throat.
“It is for Pwent,” Catti-brie said, and Drizzt glanced her way, to see Wulfgar beside her, his arm casually draped across her shoulders. On Penelope’s motion, Wulfgar walked from Catti-brie’s side to Bruenor.
He should go to Catti-brie, Drizzt knew, but he did not, instead turning his gaze back to Bruenor as the dwarf lifted the instrument to his lips.
The note he blew was not clear and melodic, as had come from the horn before. Far from it. The whole of the note vibrated discordantly from the crack the capture of Pwent had put in the instrument, the effect sounding more like the low and shivering rumble of a naval foghorn.
Or the rumble of a dwarf too full of Gutbuster and spicy foodstuffs, Drizzt thought, and he held back his giggle—an inappropriate bit of mirth, surely, and yet, a thought that helped him then, undeniably so.
Gray fog poured from the horn, floating down before the dwarf king. It started to spread wider, but the edges of the magical circle contained it fully as it took the shape of Thibbledorf Pwent.
“Me friend,” Bruenor said quietly when the vampire dwarf materialized, and he dropped his hand on Pwent’s shoulder.
“Me king!” Pwent cried happily, but his expression changed immediately and he looked around, his face darkening. “Me king?”
Across the room, the old priest began his powerful spell.
“Wulfgar,” Penelope whispered.
“Eh?” Pwent said, and he growled then, his eyes going wide with apparent fury—and with pain as the old priest’s cadence and volume increased.
When Bruenor made no move to back away, and seemed incapable of doing anything in that terrible moment, Wulfgar reached into the magical circle, grabbed the dwarf king by the shoulder, and tugged him across the edge of the protective circle.
And Pwent followed, leaping for the pair, shouting, “Ye treacherous dogs!”
If he had run into the side of a building, he would not have stopped any faster, for a wall of bright, holy light leaped up from the runes before the leaping vampire, burning at him and blocking his course. He staggered backward, clearly in pain.
Then Thibbledorf Pwent seemed more like a rabid animal than a dwarf. He leaped and spun around, spitting curses and rending the air. He darted this way and that, but the circle was complete, unbroken, and walls of brilliant light leaped up before him to defeat his progress whenever he drew too near the perimeter.
“Ah, but ye’re a liar and a fool!” he yelled at Bruenor.
Drizzt started to his friend, but stopped, for Bruenor steadied himself and stared back at Pwent without blinking. “Once ye would’ve given yer life for me, yer king,” he said. “And I’d’ve given me own for the likes o’ Pwent. And so now ye’re being telled to do just that, and for yer own sake, ye iron-gutted, stone-headed battlerager.”
Pwent stood in place and seemed to be battling against intense pain. “Ye … ye catched me and ye killed me to death …” he stammered angrily.
“Ye’re already dead, ye fool!” Bruenor shot back.
The old priest lifted his voice and the vampire was driven to his knees.
Bruenor fell back, but did not turn away. None of the Companions of the Hall turned away, knowing their duty to witness this, as friends to Pwent and to each other.
It went on and on for a long while, and with every word the old priest uttered, Pwent was clearly shot through with pain, the holy enchantment piercing the animating power of vampirism. Pwent continued to curse and to thrash. More than once he found the strength to hurl himself at Bruenor, only to be intercepted and rejected by the magic of the rune-etched circle of protection.
Still it went on, the priest unrelenting, and more than once Drizzt fought the urge to run over and stop the old man’s devastating chant.
Pwent’s agony could not be denied; it seemed as if he was being tortured here, brutally so, his face twisting, his words garbling as surely as if he had been staked to a post and jabbed with glowing hot pokers.
The vampire dwarf remained on his knees. He couldn’t begin to get up, obviously. He did manage to get his hands up over his ears, pitifully and futilely trying to block the magical intonations, the blessed chanting, that so profoundly pained him.
Finally the priest stopped, abruptly so, his last notes echoing off the stone chamber’s walls.
The glorious lights of the holy circle of protection died away, and there was only candlelight once more.
Pwent remained in place, and only after a long, long while did he bring his arms back down and manage to look up at Bruenor again. He didn’t cry out in rage, though, but in a very weak voice asked, “Me king?”
Bruenor didn’t even wait for permission, but pulled free of Wulfgar and leaped forward into the circle once more. He fell to his knees before the sobbing dwarf.
“Oh, ye forgive me, me king?” Pwent asked weakly, and he seemed to be aging with each word, his vitality falling aside as the protective cloak of vampirism dissipated into nothingness. “I weren’t strong enough,” he whispered, and he slumped forward and Bruenor grabbed him and hugged him close.
“Ye’re the strongest I e’er knowed,” Bruenor said to him. “And most loyal, and know that there’s to be a statue o’ Pwent in Mithral Hall, in a place of honor beside the kings. They still know ye, me friend. In Mithral Hall, aye, there’s still many the huzzahs for any mention o’ Thibbledorf Pwent, though ye ain’t been there in many the decade. I heared them meself, I tell ye and I’m not for lying to ye. Not now, no.”
He pulled Pwent back to arms’ length—he wanted Pwent to see the sincerity on his face as he reassured him.
But alas, Pwent wasn’t seeing anything.
Bruenor pulled him close and hugged him again.
They buried Pwent in a cairn behind the Ivy Mansion the next morning—a temporary grave, for
Bruenor assured the Harpells that he would return to collect the body so that it could be properly interred in a place of honor in Mithral Hall, as soon as he had set things in order among Clan Battlehammer. Few words were said as Pwent was lowered into the stones, and other rocks piled atop him, but as they neared the end of the solemn moment, Bruenor held up the silver horn and declared, “Know that I’ll blow it in me darkest battles, me old friend. And I’ll know yer spirit’s aside me, and woe to them standing afore me.”
He started to lower the horn, but Regis grabbed him by the arm and motioned for him to blow, and that seemed a fitting way to end the interment of Thibbledorf Pwent.
And so, on a sunny and hot summer’s day, the discordant blast of the broken silver horn sounded in Longsaddle, drifting on the slight summer breeze. And drifting, too, came a grayish fog, and all the friends watched, confused, as that fog formed into a familiar figure indeed.
“Pwent,” Bruenor breathed as the battlerager formed and began hopping around wildly, snarling “Me king!” repeatedly and clenching his fists as if looking for something to hit.
“Penelope!” Drizzt cried, drawing his blades. The leader of the Harpells rushed up beside him, shaking her head, clearly at a loss.
Pwent continued to hop about, glancing this way and that, but made no move to approach any of them. Finally, he turned to Bruenor and held up his hands as if at a loss, and faded to gray fog, which was collected once more by the silver horn.
“Oh grand,” Regis exclaimed.
“It wasn’t Pwent,” Catti-brie said. “Not his soul, but …” She looked to Penelope, who looked to the old priest, who could only shrug.
Kipper’s laughter brought all eyes upon him.
“The horn!” he cried and clapped his hands together. “Old magic dies hard, it would seem.”
“You don’t mean …” Wulfgar remarked.
“A rather unique berserker, I expect,” Kipper said. “Yes, King Bruenor, blow your horn when battle is joined, and find the strength of your old shield dwarf ready to defend you.”