Gauntlgrym

PARALLEL PASSAGEWAYS

GREAT COLUMNS LINED THE HALL, EVENLY SPACED IN THREE LONG ROWS. Each was, in itself, a work of art, a product of the labors of a hundred dwarf craftsmen. Each column was uniquely decorated, personally touched and carved with great love. Even the centuries of dust that had settled there couldn’t hide the majesty of the place. Walking through it, the five companions, particularly Bruenor and Athrogate, could well imagine the gatherings that had once been held there. The awakening of the primordial had caused considerable damage, but much of the glory that had once been Gauntlgrym remained intact. They had passed through dozens of chambers and along many stairways and corridors, with doors that opened into mansions and cellars, workshops and kitchens, dining halls and training rooms. Gauntlgrym had, before the escape of the primordial, been larger than Mithral Hall, Citadel Adbar, and Citadel Felbarr combined-a glorious homeland for Clan Delzoun.

“I lost me count,” Bruenor announced when they were nearly halfway through the vast chamber. Hands on hips, he stared at the metal placard on the nearest column and shook his head.

“Twenty-three,” Drizzt said, and all eyes turned to the drow. “That is the twenty-third plate in the hall.”

He said it with such certainty, and with Drizzt being ever reliable, no one doubted him, but all heads turned back the way they’d come, astonished to realize that they had passed so many of the giant columns. Indeed, the chamber was vast, with a ceiling out of sight in the shadows above.

Bruenor shook his head, looked left and right, then turned and pointed to the center column next in line. “Middle plate, two dozen in,” he announced, and he walked up to the plate with all confidence-both in the knowledge he had gained from the magical throne, and in Drizzt’s count-and grasped its edge, easily pulling it open and revealing the alcove behind, which was different from the previous six, both shallower and higher. Bruenor stuck his head in and glanced up, and in the distance far above, likely at the apex of the column itself, he saw a familiar green glow.

“Tendril,” he remarked triumphantly.

In went the bowl, the seventh of ten, and Jarlaxle moved up and handed him a vial. With the appropriate incantation, Bruenor emptied the magical water into the bowl and watched the swirl as the elemental took shape.

Almost immediately, the tendril’s magic grabbed it.

“No others in this hall,” Bruenor announced, closing the placard door. “Next one’s south.”

“Onward, then,” said Dahlia, moving past him, but Bruenor was quick to correct her.

“South,” he explained. “That’s to the left.”

Dahlia shrugged helplessly, and the dwarves and Jarlaxle led the way to a door at the side of the room, while Drizzt fell in with Dahlia.

“How can he know?” Dahlia asked.

“The throne, somehow…” Drizzt replied.

“Not the layout of the complex,” Dahlia clarified. “How can he-how can any of you-know which way is south, and which north?”

Drizzt smiled at her and nodded. He would have answered, if he knew the answer. Creatures of the Underdark just knew such things, felt them innately.

“Perhaps it is the pull of the heavenly bodies above,” he offered. “As the sun and moon cross the sky, perhaps their energy is felt even down here.”

“I don’t feel it,” the elf replied with a sour look.

Drizzt grinned wider. “When you are above and wish to determine the direction, how do you do it?”

Dahlia looked at him with a wrinkled brow.

“You look to the sky, or the horizon if it’s familiar,” said Drizzt. “You know where the sun rises and sets, and so you determine your four points based on that.”

“But you can’t know that down here.”

Drizzt shrugged again. “When you’re in the forest on a dark night, is not your hearing more keen?”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

Dahlia started to reply, but stopped, and stopped walking, too. She stared at the drow for a few heartbeats.

“You may find that after a while in the Underdark, you will come to sense direction as easily as you do in the World Above,” Drizzt said.

“Who would wish to spend any more time in the Underdark than we have already?”

The snide remark, and the short manner in which Dahlia had delivered it, caught Drizzt by surprise. He thought to tell her about all the beautiful things that could be found in the subterranean world beneath Faer?n. Even Menzoberranzan-which Dahlia, as a surface elf, could not likely see as anything but a slave-was a place of dazzling beauty. Drizzt had chosen the surface world as his home, and truly he loved the stars, and even the sunshine, though for years it had pained his sensitive eyes. He found beauty in the forests and the waterways, in the clouds and the rolling fields, and in the grandeur of the mountains. But there was no less beauty to be found below, he knew, though it didn’t often occur to him. He had rarely been in the Underdark in the last half-century and perhaps because of that fact, he had come to see it differently. He appreciated its beauty, both dwarf-worked and natural.

He didn’t tell any of that to Dahlia, however. She was at a disadvantage there, out of her element and surrounded by four companions who were not out of theirs. She didn’t like that, Drizzt realized, and in looking at her as she again walked beside him, he saw a vulnerability in her. She had started the wrong way before being corrected by Bruenor. She didn’t know which direction was which. Her perfect armor had revealed a seam, after all.

And in that seam, Drizzt noted a scar, an old and deep wound, a flicker of pain behind the always-intense gleam of her blue eyes, a hesitance in her always-confident stride, a defensive curl of her always-squared shoulders.

His intrigue surprised him. Her appeal at that moment overwhelmed him. Of course he’d marveled at the unusual beauty of the elf, particularly at the allure of her deadly fighting dance.

But something more had presented itself, something endearing, something interesting.

“Pull it down! Pull it down!” Stokely Silverstream commanded his dwarves. And the crack team did just that, hauling their ropes from either side and pinning the large red lizard to the floor. Up ahead, more dwarves, aided by the ghosts, battled the salamanders, but the dwarves’ victory over their enemy’s hidden weapon, a twenty-foot-long, voracious, fearsome fire lizard, had sealed the larger victory.

Stokely himself walked up and dispatched the monster, though it took several heavy blows from his axe to accomplish the task.

By the time he and the rear guard caught up to the others, the fighting had ended. Dead and wounded salamanders littered the wide, steamy tunnel, along with three of Stokely’s boys. The two priests accompanying the score of warriors went to work furiously, but one of those dwarves died there in the deep corridor of Gauntlgrym, and one of the other two had to be carried along.

But on the dwarves went, undeterred, following the ghosts and their destiny.

Barely an hour later, still before their midday meal, they heard more noise coming from a side tunnel-a force moving down at them.

Stokely stared ahead uncertainly. Perhaps they could outrun the elemental-kin, but if they tried and ran into more resistance ahead, they’d be trapped.

“Dig in yer heels, me boys,” the dwarf leader told his fellows. “More to kill.”

Not a dwarf complained, faces set grimly, weapons turning under white knuckles. The few ghosts that had silently led them from Icewind Dale drifted up the tunnel to meet the incoming force, but no sounds of battle echoed down at Stokely’s crew.

Just a call, and a cheer: “Mirabar!”

And out they came, two-score and ten, an elite squad of the Shield of Mirabar.

“Well met!” Stokely and others called back, and both sides knew great relief, for both groups had known battle after battle with minions of the primordial for the last several days.

“Stokely Silverstream of Icewind Dale, at yer service!” the leader from the North greeted.

An old graybeard stepped forward from the ranks of Mirabarran dwarves. “Icewind Dale?” he asked. “Be ye Battlehammers, then?”

“Aye, and well met,” Stokely replied. “Mithral Hall’s our older home, and Gauntlgrym’s older still!”

“Torgar Hammerstriker, at yer service, and well met indeed, cousin,” said the graybeard. “For two-score years I called Mithral Hall me home. Went in service to King Bruenor, Moradin kiss him, and served King Banak afore Mirabar called me home.”

“Ye were there when King Bruenor fell?”

“No bell can sing the tune sad enough,” Torgar replied, “and heavy weighed the stones o’ his grave. A dark day in Mithral Hall.”

Stokely nodded, but said nothing more at that time other than, “A dark day for all dwarf-kin.” Perhaps he would discuss the “end” of King Bruenor at length with Torgar later on. Protocol demanded discretion when discussing the death ruse of an abdicating dwarf king, but so many years removed, the whispers would not be out of order.

“Torgar!” came a cry from the side. “By Obould’s ugly arse!”

Torgar spotted the shouting dwarf and his face lit up with recognition, and with fired memories of an old war.

“Could that be ye, there?” the Mirabarran leader called back. “Or am I seein’ more ghosts than I thinked?”

It was no ghost.

Drizzt rolled ahead and to the right, ignoring the salamander he had just disengaged. He came to his feet, scimitars leading the way into the last pair of beasts, just as he heard a sickly splat behind him, then a grunt, and a thump as the leading salamander crumbled to the floor.

His parallel blades worked opposite circles, left hand under to the left, right hand under to the right, each wrapping back over spears, and with a powerful exhale, Drizzt threw his weapons and the spears out wide to either side and abruptly stopped his charge, leaning back and leaping up, double-kicking the two salamanders directly in front of him. The drow landed flat on his back, but his muscles moved so perfectly, arcing and snapping straight, that it seemed to any onlookers-and certainly to his two surprised opponents-as if some unknown counterweight had lifted him right back to his feet.

His scimitars struck, left and right, taking the throat from the beast to his right and gashing the shoulder of the other. And still, with help from Icingdeath, Drizzt ignored the blistering heat that radiated from the beasts.

The wounded salamander scrambled to put some ground between itself and the drow, trying to realign its weapon and find some measure of defense.

Before Drizzt could pursue, another form flew past from on high. Dahlia descended from her vault with a flying kick to the side of the monster’s head, throwing it to the ground. As she landed, straddling it, the elf woman sent her long staff into a sudden spin then drove it straight down and through the creature. When the metal struck the stone beneath, Kozah’s Needle let loose a blast of powerful lightning.

Holding it in one extended hand, her other arm out wide the other way, Dahlia seemed to bask in that energy, that power. She threw her head back, her eyes closed and her mouth wide, an expression of pure ecstasy on her fair face.

Drizzt couldn’t tear his eyes from her! If another enemy had crept in and charged at him, he surely would have been cut down!

Dahlia held the pose for a long while, and Drizzt stared at her through it all.

“We have a problem,” came a call, Jarlaxle’s voice, breaking the trance of both.

“He couldn’t summon the elemental?” Drizzt asked.

“The bowl is in place,” Jarlaxle replied. “Eight of ten. But the ninth placard is destroyed, as is the alcove behind it.”

Drizzt and Dahlia exchanged a concerned glance then followed Jarlaxle from the corridor and through the few small rooms back to the wider hall where Bruenor and Athrogate waited-waited with hands on hips, staring at an impenetrable pile of rubble and a collapsed wall.

“Was here,” Bruenor insisted. “Ain’t no more.”

“What does this mean?” Dahlia asked. “Can we not put the beast back in its hole?”

“Bah, but nine water monsters’ll do it then!” Athrogate bellowed.

The others looked at him.

“Ain’t no choice to it!” he answered with strength and conviction. To the side of him lay two dead salamanders, both swatted down by Athrogate when first they’d entered the room. To put a true exclamation point at the end of his proclamation, the dwarf spat upon the dead creatures then gave a hearty, “Bwahaha!” and thumped King Bruenor on the shoulder.

And to Drizzt’s surprise, Bruenor thumped Athrogate right back.

“Come on, then!” King Bruenor declared. “The devil worshipers can’t stop us, the fire worshipers can’t stop us, and not this primor… this prim… this volcano beast’ll be stoppin’ us neither! I got me one more water monster to set and a big lever to pull, and let all the world know that Gauntlgrym’s ghosts’ll be restin’ easy once more!”

And off they went. It did Drizzt’s heart good to see his old friend so animated and boisterous and full of fire, and he watched Bruenor for a long while. Gradually, though, his gaze slipped back to Dahlia, who walked quietly at his side. He noticed then three marks in her right ear, just above the single diamond stud set there.

Three missing earrings?

There was a story there, Drizzt knew, and he was surprised once again by the enigmatic woman, and by his own reaction to her, when he realized how much he wanted to hear that tale.

The sound of water rushing over their heads had all the Ashmadai looking up with alarm.

“The magic returns!” Valindra cried. “The Hosttower answers the call of our enemies!”

“What does it mean?” the Ashmadai commander begged.

“It means that you will fail, and your Dread Ring will not sing the praise of Asmodeus,” Beealtimatuche the pit fiend growled, and all save Valindra shrank back from the sheer power in the devil’s angry voice.

“Nay,” Valindra corrected, and she held forth her scepter to silence any further dissent from the fiend. “It means that we must press on with more speed.”

“Straight to the Forge,” offered the Ashmadai leader, who had been there those years before when Sylora had arrived to bolster the faltering Dahlia.

A huge bat came rushing up the corridor at them then, and flipped over itself in the air right before Valindra and Beealtimatuche, elongating as it came around to assume the human form of Dor’crae once more, his face a mask of concern.

“The water…” Valindra warned, but Dor’crae shook his head.

“Our enemies block the way,” he explained. “The primordial’s minions-not Dahlia’s troupe.”

“Then they die!” Beealtimatuche roared, and all the zealots cheered.

But Dor’crae was still shaking his head.

“They have a dragon,” he explained. “A red dragon.”

With a stomp of his clawed foot that gouged the floor and shook the walls of the corridor, the pit fiend stormed away, and how the cultists scrambled to get out of his path. And when one was too slow, the devil swatted her aside with his great fiery mace, mulching her shoulder, igniting her leathers and hair, and throwing her into the wall with a sickening crunch of her every bone.

She slumped into an almost formless mass of blood and burning flesh.

And the Ashmadai cheered.