Gauntlgrym

GAUNTLGRYM

JARLAXLE KEPT HIMSELF IN THE REAR OF THE GROUP OF FIVE. THE TUNNELS underneath Luskan were long natural corridors that reached out to the southeast and the Crags. Korvin Dor’crae led the group and served as its scout, often moving off ahead of the others. Next came Athrogate, eager to see the place Dahlia had described, and always ready to serve as point-dwarf of any patrol-he always wanted to be the first into any fight. Dahlia and Valindra formed the third rank. The elf walked with a measure of calm and patience Jarlaxle would have expected in a much older and more seasoned warrior, and Valindra glided along as if in a daze, with hardly the presence-of mind or body-one would expect of a creature as powerful as a lich.

Not that Jarlaxle was complaining. Valindra Shadowmantle had been no minor spellcaster in life, commanding an entire wing of the powerful Hosttower of the Arcane. Should she ever regain her acuity and confidence, she would only prove more formidable in undeath-and thinking straight, honestly reflecting on the events of the last days of her living existence, she wouldn’t likely be too pleased with the meddling drow.

They moved easily for more than a day, and though they heard the shuffling and scratching of ghouls and other lesser undead echo all around them, they never actually encountered any. Jarlaxle found that confusing. After all, ghouls feared nothing, their hunger for living flesh insatiable, and their ability to smell and track living flesh quite keen. Why didn’t they approach? But soon he came to recognize the true nature of one of his companions.

“We been lucky,” Athrogate said to him during a break the next day. “Lots o’ side tunnels, and full o’ ghouls and such.”

“No luck,” Jarlaxle replied. He nodded ahead, drawing Athrogate’s attention to Dahlia and Dor’crae, who were discussing their next move. The tunnel forked, and Dor’crae reported that each of those tunnels split again, not much far away. Both Dahlia and Dor’crae kept pointing to the ceiling and tunnel walls, where the glistening tendrils reflected a wet, shiny green in the torchlight.

“What’re ye meaning?” Athrogate asked. “A magic tunnel?”

“Come along,” Jarlaxle instructed, and he rose and moved toward Dahlia as Dor’crae started off along the left-hand divide.

“We will solve it quickly,” Dahlia promised as the pair neared.

Jarlaxle motioned for Athrogate to keep walking, along the same path Dor’crae had taken. “I have no doubt of that, dear lady,” he said, drawing out a wand and pointing it down the tunnel.

Dahlia’s expression changed to one of shock and trepidation, but Jarlaxle spoke the command word before she could react, and the tunnel brightened with magical light.

“What the-?” Athrogate yelped in surprise, for the light stung his eyes. As his temporary blindness subsided, though, the dwarf caught a glimpse of Dor’crae-or at least it should have been Dor’crae. Instead, a large bat fluttered away, out of the light and down the tunnel.

“Why did you do that?” Dahlia scolded.

“To mark Dor’crae’s return,” Jarlaxle replied, moving toward the conjured light. “And to better view these strange veins along the tunnel walls. I had thought it a vein of gemstone-perhaps some variant of bloodstone-at first.” He kept walking, Dahlia hustling to catch up. “But now I see them differently,” Jarlaxle said as he came into the light and peered closer at a nearby vein. “They appear almost as hollow tubes, and full of some liquid.” He drew out another wand, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply, and pointed it at the tendril.

Dahlia grabbed the wand. “Take great care!” she warned in no uncertain terms. “Do not break the tendril.”

“The what?” asked Athrogate.

Jarlaxle pulled the wand away and executed its dweomer, which detected the presence of magic. He appeared quite impressed as he turned back to Dahlia and said, “Powerful magic.”

“Residual magic,” she replied.

“Well, obviously you know more of this than I do,” Jarlaxle said.

Dahlia started to answer, but then caught on to the ruse and put her hands on her hips, glaring at the drow. “You knew the undercity of Luskan well,” she said.

“Not so well.”

“Enough to know that these are not gemstone veins.”

“What’s she babbling about?” Athrogate demanded.

“They are the roots of the fallen Hosttower,” Jarlaxle explained, “sapping the strength of the sea and the earth, so we thought, though never did we imagine they spread so far from the city.”

Dahlia offered up a wry grin.

“And they follow the left fork here, but not the right,” Jarlaxle went on.

Dahlia shrugged.

“We’re following them,” the drow said, and he let a bit of suspicion creep into his voice.

“Ah, but what’s yer game, then?” Athrogate demanded of the elf. “What of the dwarven city ye telled me to get me to come along? What o’ the treasures, elf, and ye best be telling me true!”

“The tendrils lead to the place I described,” Dahlia said. “Following them was how Dor’crae found the mines and the great forge and structures that will steal your breath, dwarf. Perhaps in an age long lost, the dwarves crafted more than weapons, perhaps they forged a pact with the great wizards of the Hosttower. Even dwarven-forged weapons needed a wizard’s enchantments, yes? And armor blessed by the magic of great mages can withstand much stronger blows.”

“Are ye sayin’ my own ancestors used these… these roots, so the wizards could send a bit o’ magic their way?”

“It is possible,” said Dahlia. “That is one-and one likely-explanation.”

“And what are the others, I wonder?” Jarlaxle asked with unmasked suspicion.

Dahlia offered no answer.

“We’ll know soon enough, then,” said Athrogate. “What, right?”

Dahlia replied with a disarming smile and a nod. “Dor’crae thinks there may be a shortcut. Perhaps you’ll find your treasures sooner than we expected, good dwarf.”

She smiled again and walked back the other way, to where Valindra stood, eyes closed and singing some strange song. Every so often, the lich stopped singing and scolded herself, “No, that’s not right, oh, I’ve forgotten. That’s not right. It’s not right, you know. No, that’s not right,” and all without ever opening her eyes, before launching back into a voice-lifting refrain of, “Ara… Arabeth…”

“You saw Dor’crae?” Jarlaxle asked the dwarf when they were alone.

“Was him, eh? Good cloak he’s got there.”

“It wasn’t his cloak.”

Athrogate eyed him. “What do ye know?”

“It’s his nature, not a magic item,” Jarlaxle explained.

Athrogate mulled on that for just a moment, before his eyes went wide and he slapped his hands onto his hips. “Ye ain’t sayin’…”

“I just did.”

“Elf…?”

“Fear not, my friend. Some of my best friends were vampires.” Jarlaxle patted Athrogate on the shoulder and moved back toward Dahlia and Valindra.

“ ‘Were?’ ” Athrogate remarked, trying to sort out that bit of information. He realized then that he was standing alone, and with a vampire out there somewhere with him. He glanced over his shoulder and hurried to catch up to Jarlaxle.

“He knows the way,” Jarlaxle explained to Athrogate a couple of days later. “And he’s valuable in keeping the undead in check.”

“Bah, but there ain’t no more, and them what was would’ve kissed me morningstar balls,” the dwarf grumbled back.

Jarlaxle cringed and replied, “He moves swiftly, and silently, and again, he knows the way.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m knowin’,” Athrogate grumbled and waved the drow away.

Up ahead in the line, Valindra began to sing again, still questioning every line, scolding herself for getting it wrong before launching once more into “Ara… Arabeth… Arararar… Arabeth!”

“So I’m gettin’ why she bringed the bat-boy,” Athrogate said. “But why that idiot?”

“That idiot is not without power… great power.”

“I’m hardly waitin’ for her to blow us all up with a fireball.”

“Great power,” Jarlaxle said again. “And Dahlia can control it.”

“What? How’re ye knowing that?”

Jarlaxle just held up his hand and stared ahead at the two women. For years, Kimmuriel Oblodra, Jarlaxle’s lieutenant and the current leader of Bregan D’aerthe, had used his psionic abilities to scout Valindra’s mind. Only Kimmuriel had kept Valindra from utter insanity in those first days after Arklem Greeth had converted her to her undead state. And in those sessions, Kimmuriel had assured Jarlaxle that within the trappings of apparent dementia, there remained the quite powerful, quite sinister, and quite cogent being who had once been Valindra Shadowmantle, Mistress of the North Tower of the Hosttower of the Arcane… not just a wizard, but an overwizard. That Valindra had begun to emerge again soon after.

And Dahlia was too careful to not know that. She would never have brought such an unpredictable and potent creature along if she wasn’t sure she could control her.

Jarlaxle considered the consequences if Dahlia somehow managed to return Valindra her full consciousness. Valindra Shadowmantle had been formidable in life, by all accounts. The drow could only imagine the trouble she might affect as a lich.

“If the vampire knows the way, and the lich is such a ‘great power,’ then what in all Nine Hells’re we doin’ here, elf?” Athrogate asked.

Jarlaxle scrutinized his friend, a formidable sight indeed in his heavy coat of chainmail links, his iron helmet, and those devastating morningstars crisscrossed on his back. He thought back to his original conversation with Dahlia, when she had explained why she needed them. Had he allowed his own hubris to take her at face value on that?

No, he reminded himself. Dahlia needed him, needed his connections so that she could dispense with the promised trove of artifacts and coins.

He looked again at Athrogate. Dahlia had specifically explained her need for the dwarf, of course, and perhaps gaining the services of Athrogate meant also bringing along Jarlaxle, as the two were inseparable.

Was Jarlaxle, then, just add-on baggage?

Jarlaxle never answered Athrogate’s question. A few moments later they caught up to Dahlia and the others, who stood at the edge of a deep pit, staring down.

“We’ve arrived,” Dahlia announced when they joined her at the edge.

“Not much of a city,” Athrogate grumbled.

“The shaft drops fifty feet,” Dahlia explained. “Then curves at a steep but traversable decline off to the left a bit. It winds in various directions for a few hundred feet beyond that, and ends at a… well, you’ll see soon enough.”

She turned to Valindra, and Jarlaxle noticed that Dahlia reached under the edge of her tunic to a strange brooch, touching her fingers to its onyx stone.

“Valindra,” she whispered. “Is there something you can do to help our friends go down this hole?”

“Throw them in!” the lich keened. With Ara… oh, yes, with that one!”

“Valindra!” Dahlia barked, and the lich shook her head and sputtered as if Dahlia had thrown a bucket of water in her face. “Safely down,” Dahlia clarified.

With an exaggerated sigh and hardly any effort at all, Valindra waved one hand and a blue-glowing disc appeared in the air, suspended over the hole.

“You, too,” Dahlia explained to the lich, taking her by the hand and guiding her to stand on the disc. “We’ll need more, I think, for the drow and the dwarf.”

With another exhale and a wave of her left hand, then one more and a wave of her right, Valindra created floating discs in front of Jarlaxle and Athrogate.

Dahlia let go of Valindra’s hand and bade her to proceed. Valindra’s disc floated down into the pit. A nod from Dahlia to Dor’crae had him lifting his cape up behind him. It fluttered over his head, and as it descended, obscuring his form, he became a large bat and dived off after Valindra.

Dahlia motioned to the two remaining discs then grabbed the edges of her own magical cloak-the cloak she’d taken from Borlann.

“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked before she’d gone. “About Valindra, I mean?”

“I expect that, in a strange way, her insanity protected her from the Spellplague,” the elf replied. “She’s a unique combination of what was and what is. Or perhaps she’s simply a wizard gone mad, undead and gone beyond any hope. But whatever she is, I know she’s useful.”

“So to you she’s just a tool… a magic item,” Jarlaxle accused.

“Pray tell me what use you and your drow have had for her these many years.”

Jarlaxle grinned at the astute comeback and tipped his wide-brimmed hat. He started to step on his disc and bade Athrogate to do the same, but as soon as the dwarf hopped up, Jarlaxle hopped back down. “After you, good lady.”

“I ain’t likin’ this,” the dwarf said, in a crouch with his hands out to the sides, as if he expected the disc to vanish and leave him scrambling to find something to hold onto.

“You will be soon, I promise,” Dahlia said, and she pulled the magical cloak around her and in the blink of an eye had transformed herself into a crow. She dived into the pit.

Next went Athrogate, with Jarlaxle bringing up the rear. Before he stepped back onto Valindra’s conjured disc, the drow put his hand near the insignia he wore, of House Baenre of Menzoberranzan. He had his own levitation magic, just in case.

But he needn’t have feared any mischief from the lich, he soon discovered. The discs floated steadily and easily, moving to the mental commands of their riders. Fifty feet down, the tunnel changed from a sheer drop to a steep decline, as Dahlia had said, but they didn’t dismiss the discs or step off them. It was easier to float above the broken, uneven floor than to walk.

The corridor grew tighter around them, forcing a crouch or a lean here and there, and at one point, they actually had to lie down on their discs to pass under a low overhang. Still, they wound their way left and right, and ever downward.

Because of one last obstacle, Athrogate pulled a bit ahead of Jarlaxle over the final expanse of broken tunnel, and just as the drow came to see that the narrow passage widened up ahead, he heard Athrogate mutter in tones reverent and awe-filled, “By Dumathoin.”

The reference to Dumathoin, in dwarven lore the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, somewhat prepared the drow for what might be beyond, but still he found it hard to breathe when he came out onto the ledge beside his four companions.

They were on a natural balcony overlooking a huge chamber, perhaps a third the size of Menzoberranzan. Whether from natural lichen or residual magic, there was enough light for him to make out the general contours of the cavern. A pond lay before them, its still, dark waters interrupted by a series of large stalagmites, some ringed by stairwells and balconies that must once have served as guard posts or trade kiosks. Stalactites hung from the ceiling on their end of the cavern as well, and Jarlaxle noted similar construction on several of them. The dwarves who had worked the cavern had adopted the fashion of the drow, he realized, and had used the natural formations as dwellings. Jarlaxle had never heard of such a thing before, but he had little doubt in his guess. The work on the stalagmites and stalactites was surely not drow in nature, not delicate and curving, nor limned with glowing faerie fire.

“There are ballistae up there,” Dor’crae, who had returned to his human form, explained, pointing to the stalactites. “Guard stations overlooking the entrance.”

“No… no it canno’ be,” Athrogate whispered, and he slouched on his disc as if the strength simply fled his body.

But Jarlaxle heard hope in the dwarf’s voice more than anything else, a recognition beyond anything Athrogate had, perhaps, dared to hope, and so Jarlaxle paid the dwarf no concern at that moment and continued instead his study of the cavern.

On the far side of the dark pond, a couple hundred feet or more from their balcony, stood half a dozen clusters of small structures, each grouping set at the end of a mine rail, and more than one of those lines held an ancient mine cart, battered and rusted. The rail lines converged straight away from the balcony, running toward the back of the expansive cavern beyond even his superior darkvision.

“Come,” Dahlia bade them, her voice whistling like a giant bird. She slipped over the balcony’s low natural rail and glided on black feathered wings down to the water and across. Dor’crae became a bat once more and quickly followed, as did Valindra on her disc.

“Are you joining us?” Jarlaxle asked Athrogate when he saw that the dwarf made no move to follow.

Athrogate looked at him as if he’d just awakened from a deep, though tumultuous slumber. “It canno’ be,” he whispered, barely able to get the words out.

“Well, let us see what it be, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied, and started away.

He’d barely descended to skim above the pond on his disc when Athrogate passed him by, the dwarf apparently shaking off his stupor and willing his own disc on with all speed.

On the far side of the pond, Dahlia, an elf once more, was helping Valindra off her disc, and Athrogate simply leaped down from his, which was still half a dozen feet above the ground. The fall didn’t hinder the dwarf at all, though-in fact, he didn’t even seem to notice it as he bounced right back to his feet and stumbled and scrambled forward, following the central rail line.

“This place knew much battle,” Dor’crae remarked after shedding his bat form and bending low to pick up a whitened bone. “Goblin, or a small orc.”

Jarlaxle glanced around to confirm the vampire’s observations. The soft ground was scarred and many bits of bone showed clearly. More interesting, though, were the sights that lay ahead, the image that had Athrogate on his knees, and though his back was to the drow, Jarlaxle could well imagine the tears streaming down his hairy face.

And who could blame him? For even Jarlaxle, only partially acquainted with the legends of the Delzoun dwarves, could guess easily enough that they had stumbled upon Gauntlgrym, the legendary homeland of the Delzoun dwarves, the most sacred legend of their history, the place Bruenor Battlehammer himself had sought for more than half a century.

A great wall faced them, sealing off the end of the cavern. It was built much like one would expect of a surface castle, with gate towers on either side of a massive set of mithral doors, and a crenellated battlement lining the top of the wall that spanned the cavern and seemed as if it had been built deep into the stone at either end. The strangest part, aside from the huge silvery doors, was the tightness of it all. Looking up the wall, Jarlaxle almost expected to see it give way to open sky, but instead there was only a very short space to the natural ceiling of the cavern. A tall human would have a hard time even standing straight up there, and even Jarlaxle would have to crouch in many places.

“It canno’ be,” Athrogate was saying as Jarlaxle came up beside him, and confirmed that the dwarf was indeed crying.

“I can think of no other place it could be, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied, patting Athrogate’s strong shoulder.

“You know it, then?” asked Dahlia, moving up behind them with Dor’crae and Valindra in tow.

“Behold Gauntlgrym,” Jarlaxle explained. “Ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves, a place thought to be but a legend-”

“Never did a dwarf doubt it!” Athrogate bellowed.

“… by many nondwarves,” Jarlaxle finished, flashing a smile at his friend. “It’s been a mystery even among the elves, with memories long, and among the drow, who know the Underdark better than any. And doubt not that we have searched for it all these centuries. If one-tenth of the claims of the treasures of Gauntlgrym are true, then there is unimaginable wealth behind that wall, behind those doors.” He paused and considered the sight before him, and their location and depth in a region that was far from remote, by Underdark standards.

“Great magic must have masked this place all these years,” he said. “Such a place as this cavern alone could not have gone unnoticed in the Northdark through so many centuries.”

“How do you know this is Gauntlgrym?” Dor’crae asked. “The dwarves have built, and abandoned, many kingdoms.”

Before Jarlaxle could respond, Athrogate broke out into verse: Silver halls and mithral doors Stone walls to seal the cavern Grander sights than e’er before In smithy, mine, and tavern Toil hard in endless night In toast, oh lift yer flagon! Ye’ll need the drink to keep ye right At forge that bakes the dragon. Come, Delzoun, come one and all! Rush to grab yer kin And tell ’em that their home awaits In grandest Gauntlgrym!

“Old song,” Athrogate explained. “And known to every dwarfling.”

“The stone walls and mithral doors, I see, but that alone is all the evidence-”

“All the evidence I’m needin’,” Athrogate replied. “None other place’s built with such doors as that. No dwarf’d do it, out o’ respect. None’d try to imitate that which can’t be copied. It’d be an insult, I tell ye!”

“We’ll know more once we get inside,” Jarlaxle conceded.

“I’ve been inside,” Dor’crae explained, “and can’t confirm the silver halls, nor did I discover any great hoards of treasure, but I understand the verse about the forge.”

“Ye seen the forge?”

“You can feel its warmth levels away.”

“It’s still fired? How is that possible?” Jarlaxle asked.

The vampire had no answer.

“Are ye saying someone’s living in there?” Athrogate demanded.

Dor’crae sent a nervous glance Dahlia’s way and said, “I found nothing… living in there,” he explained, “but the complex is not deserted. And yes, there is a great forge several levels below us that is indeed still fired. Heat like I’ve never felt before. Heat that could melt an inferior sword to a puddle.”

“Heat that could bake a dragon?” Jarlaxle asked with a wry grin.

“There are crawl tunnels down from the parapet,” the vampire explained. “But they’re all blocked.”

“Ye said ye been inside.”

“I have my ways, dwarf,” Dor’crae replied. “But I expect we’ll need to do some tunneling of our own if you are to gain entrance.”

“Bah!” Athrogate snorted. He turned and walked up to the gates. “By Moradin’s arm and Clangeddin’s horn, by Dumathoin’s tricks and Delzoun true born, open I tell ye, open yer gates! Me name’s Athrogate, me blood’s Delzoun, and I’m told me home awaits!”

Illuminations of shining silver appeared on the door, runes and images of ancient dwarven crests, and like a great exhale from some sleeping mountain giant, the doors cracked open. Then, without a whisper of sound, they drifted apart, sweeping wide to reveal a narrow, low tunnel beyond, lined with murder holes.

“By the bearded gods,” Athrogate muttered. He looked back at the others in amazement.

“A rhyme told to every dwarfling?” Jarlaxle asked with a grin.

“Telled ye it was Gauntlgrym!” he snapped his stubby fingers at them and started in.

Dor’crae rushed to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Likely trapped!” he warned. “Heavily guarded by ancient wards and mechanical springs that I assure you still operate.”

“Bah!” Athrogate snorted, tearing away. “Ain’t no Delzoun trap or ward to hit a Delzoun dwarf, ye dolt!”

Without hesitation, Athrogate started into the complex and the others were quick to follow-and quicker still when Jarlaxle warned them that perhaps it would be a good idea for them to stay very close to the dwarf.

Halfway in, Dahlia brought up the sparking blue light on her walking stick. Not to be outdone, Jarlaxle flicked his wrist, producing a dagger from a magical bracer, then flicked it again to elongate that dagger into a fine sword. He whispered something into the hilt and the sword glowed white, illuminating the area as well as a bright lantern.

Only then did they see the forms ahead, shuffling to escape the light.

“Me brothers?” Athrogate asked, clearly at a loss.

“Ghosts,” Dor’crae whispered. “The place is thick with them.”

They soon came into a huge chamber, circular and crossed by rail tracks, one from each of the three other exits. Along the curving wall of the chamber were building facades, and many with shingles hanging to describe the place therein-an armor merchant, a weaponsmith, a barracks, a tavern (of course), another tavern (of course), and on and on.

“Like Mirabar’s Undercity,” Jarlaxle remarked, though on a grander scale by far.

As they moved out toward the middle of the chamber, Athrogate grabbed Jarlaxle’s arm and pulled it lower so that the sword would illuminate the floor. It was a mosaic, a great mural, and they had to scurry about with the light for a while before they realized that it depicted the three dwarf gods of old: Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin.

In the very center of the floor was a raised circular dais, a singular throne atop it, and the sparkles as they approached marked it as no ordinary seat. Gem-studded and grand, with sweeping arms and a high, wide back of mithral, silver, and gold, it was the throne of a great king. Even the dais was no ordinary block of stone, but a composite design of those same precious metals, and set with lines of glittering jewels.

Jarlaxle waved his glowing sword near it, showing the rich purple fabric still intact. “Mighty magic,” he remarked.

“Undo it, that we might pilfer the gems,” Dor’crae insisted.

That brought him a hateful glare from Athrogate. “Ye pluck one stone from that chair and know that I’m filling the hole with yer black heart, vampire,” the dwarf warned.

“Did we come here as mere visitors, then?” Dor’crae retorted. “To gasp and fawn over its beauties?”

“I’m bettin’ ye’ll find plenty o’ treasures-more than we can carry-layin’ about,” Athrogate answered. “But some things ye’re not defiling.”

“Enough,” said Dahlia. “Let us not presume, and not quarrel. We are merely at the entrance. There is so much more we need learn about this place.”

Athrogate moved as if to do exactly that. He stepped tentatively toward the throne and turned to sit down. He paused there, not quite sitting, his hands not yet even touching the carved, jeweled arms of the great seat.

“Take care with that,” Jarlaxle warned. He pulled forth a wand, pointed it at the chair, and spoke a command word. His eyes popped open wide when he sensed the strength of the magic in that throne-ancient magic, powerful magic, as mighty as anything Jarlaxle had ever encountered before.

“Athrogate, no,” he said, his voice raspy and breathless.

“A dwarf seat!” Athrogate argued and before Jarlaxle could stop him, he sat down.

The dwarf’s eyes opened wide, and his mouth opened wider in a silent scream as he glanced all around.

“Not a king,” he gasped, but he didn’t even know he was saying it.

Athrogate was thrown from the throne, sent flying a dozen feet to skid down on the mosaic floor. He lay there for a long while, trembling and covering his face, until Jarlaxle finally coxed him up to his knees.

“What did you see?” Dahlia asked, moving toward the throne.

“Ye ain’t no dwarf!” Athrogate yelled at her.

“But you are, and still it rejected you,” Dahlia shot back.

“It’ll shrivel ye!”

“Dahlia, do not,” Jarlaxle warned her.

The elf paused in front of the throne and reached out one hand, her fingers barely away from the seat. But she didn’t touch it.

“You said ‘not a king’ right before you were thrown,” Jarlaxle said.

Athrogate could only look at him, befuddled, and shake his hairy head. He looked past Jarlaxle to the throne then, and nodded in deep respect.

Jarlaxle helped him to his feet and left him to his own accord, and the dwarf immediately went back to admire the throne. He didn’t touch it, though, and certainly entertained no thoughts of ever sitting in it again.

“Let us take our rest here,” Jarlaxle suggested. He paused and tilted his head, as if listening to a sound far in the distance. “I suspect we’ll need all our strength to pass these halls. You’ve been here, Dor’crae,” he added. “What… residents might we find?”

The vampire shrugged and shook his head. “I saw only the dwarf ghosts, and hundreds of them,” he replied. “I was here only briefly, following the Hosttower’s tendrils, a narrow course in a huge complex, and one you cannot walk directly. But I saw only dwarf ghosts. I doubt not that they would swarm us were we not armed against them. But we are.” He looked to Athrogate, then to Dahlia, to make his point. “They welcome those of Delzoun blood, as you saw with the doors.”

“Because they’re trustin’ that I won’t let ye defile the place,” Athrogate replied. “And I’m telling ye that their trust is well placed. Ye scratch one altar, poke a jeweled eye out o’ one king’s image, and them ghosts’ll be the least o’ yer problems.”

“Not ghosts,” Jarlaxle assured Dor’crae. “Something with footfalls. Something… corporeal.”

“Ghouls, perhaps,” answered the vampire. “Or living dwarves?”

“By the bearded gods,” Athrogate muttered, imagining what he might say to a dwarf of Gauntlgrym.

“They would have been on the walls to greet us, and none too kindly,” Jarlaxle reasoned.

“What then?” asked Athrogate, obviously a bit peeved at the drow for stealing his moment of fantasy.

“Pick from a long list, friend,” Jarlaxle answered. “Many are the choices, and it has been my long experience that rarely will you find a deserted cave in the Underdark.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Dahlia interjected. “Take your rest and let us be on our way.” She looked to Dor’crae and nodded, and the vampire walked off to the far edge of the circular room and disappeared from sight.

“He will scout out our route,” Dahlia explained. “To find those tunnels that most closely mirror his own journey to the forge of Gauntlgrym.”

They sorted out areas around the central dais and set their bedrolls, but none found much rest, particularly Athrogate, who was so agitated, so overwhelmed. What dwarf in all Faer?n hadn’t dreamed of that moment-of the discovery of Gauntlgrym?

Dor’crae returned some hours later, confident that he had discovered the tunnels that would bring them to the forge. He confirmed Jarlaxle’s suspicions, as well, for though he hadn’t seen any monsters-dwarves, ghouls, goblins, or whatever they might be-he had heard some shuffling in the dark.

That ominous report did nothing to daunt the eagerness of the group, though, for they were confident they could handle whatever might come their way.

Athrogate led the way, with Dor’crae close behind and calling out directions. They exited the circular room straight back from the gate that had brought them in, moving along wide corridors with still more shops, and a temple of Clangeddin, where Athrogate had to stop to offer a prayer.

Always at the corner of their vision, they caught the dreamy movements of gliding ghosts, inquisitive, perhaps, but never approaching.

They came to a great sweeping stairway, descending in a gentle arc, and only after they had gone down several dozen steps, down below the thick stone that supported the upper level, did they begin to realize the enormity of both the stairway and the complex. The view opened wide below them, a gigantic cavern with hundred-foot-tall buttresses climbing up from the far-distant floor like massive, stoic sentries. Two lines of giant pillars supported a lower section of the vast, multi-sectioned chamber, each decorated with thousands of reliefs and carved symbols.

Two hundred more steps down, nearing the floor, they saw that the stairway would continue through the floor to lower levels, which Dor’crae indicated they should follow.

“Ye canno’ ask me to walk through this place without a look!” Athrogate argued, raising his voice a bit too loudly. It echoed all around them, over and over again.

“We can come back to it, good dwarf,” Dahlia said.

“Bah!” Athrogate snorted.

“Athrogate… there,” Jarlaxle said, and he pointed a wand back toward the nearest wall. As the others peered in the indicated direction, Jarlaxle activated the wand and its magic illuminated the area of interest. Even Valindra gave a little cry of surprise and awe at the sight.

The wall had been carved, and colored with various metals, jewels, and paint into the giant likeness of the god Moradin, ten times the size of a mortal dwarf. The Soulforger had his shoulder turned in behind a bejeweled shield, a great warhammer raised in his other hand up behind him. His bearded face seemed a mask of bloodlust, battle hungry, ready to meet and destroy any foe.

Jarlaxle glanced down at Athrogate, who was on his knees, his face in one palm, trying to control his gasping breath.

Eventually, they went on, level after level down, along corridors wide and narrow, through grand halls and modest chambers. For a long while, the only disturbance in the thick dust that had settled about the place was their own footprints, and it stayed that way until they came to a strong stone door, barred on their side with thick iron.

“This is the end of the city proper,” Dor’crae explained, motioning for Athrogate to move the locking bars aside. “The areas beyond are less worked, open to the mines, and with one path leading to the forge.”

“Ah, but I wish we might lock it behind us,” Athrogate said as the last bar was pulled aside. “I’d not be the one to open Gauntlgrym to whatever walks the depths below.”

“When we leave, we’ll secure the door behind us,” Dahlia assured him.

The change in the atmosphere was palpable the moment they passed through the door. Where before there had been ghostly silence, only their own scuffling accompanying their march-and even that muted by the thick dust and heavy air-on the other side of the stone door there was sound: creaking and groaning, the scraping of stone on stone. Before they’d walked in the normally comfortable temperatures of the Upperdark, but that had given away to a great increase in both heat and humidity. The stone stairs beyond were slick with moisture, and blacker somehow, unlike the muted, dusty gray of the city.

They pressed on, though the treacherous footing made them move slowly and carefully down the stairs. Dahlia and Valindra both commented on the sudden humidity-it felt almost as if they were walking through a misty spring rain-and the elf asked how that might be possible, but none of her charges offered an explanation.

At the next landing, two hundred steps or more below the door, the corridor broke off into three directions. One corridor was of worked stone, while the other two were either natural caves or rough-cut mines. Dor’crae hesitated at what seemed the obvious choice-the carefully-worked corridor.

“We’re close,” he assured his companions.

“Listen,” Jarlaxle bade them, and he tilted his head.

“Don’t hear nothing,” Athrogate replied.

“I do,” Dahlia said. “Furnaces. The forge, far below.”

“Get us there,” the dwarf demanded of Dor’crae. “The Forge of Gauntlgrym…”

Despite his reservations about the direction, the vampire led them along the worked tunnel, which brought them to wider chambers and longer tunnels still. But more importantly, it brought them through a closed door and into a gray and impenetrable veil of steam.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Athrogate asked

Jarlaxle held his glowing sword up in front of him, and even tried shifting the hue of the light, but to no avail. All it did was reflect back in his eyes. He moved to the side of the room, found another door, and pushed through, but all the rooms seemed similarly filled with opaque mist, and worse, they discovered that the steam was beginning to sweep out into the corridors they’d left behind.

“This is not the way,” Dor’crae decided, and led them back the way they’d come, closing the doors behind them as they went. After a long while they at last returned to the three-way intersection, and Dor’crae pointed to one of the more natural tunnels, which seemed to go in the right direction.

“I thought ye scouted it,” Athrogate grumbled at him.

“I couldn’t have gotten to the forge and back in so short a time if I walked,” the vampire retorted.

“Oh, but that’s a smart reply,” said the dwarf. “I’m likin’ ye less and less, and soon enough to be needin’ ye less and less, if ye get me meanin’.”

Jarlaxle noticed Dahlia looking at him as if asking him to intervene, but the drow found the whole affair quite amusing, and wouldn’t much regret the destruction of a vampire, so he just smiled back at her.

The tunnel wound on but didn’t seem to be descending. They passed many side corridors and the place soon became a maze.

“Perhaps we should camp again and let Dor’crae sort it out,” Dahlia offered, but Athrogate just rambled along.

She was about to repeat that suggestion when the dwarf called out, and when the others caught up to him, they found him standing in front of another amazing mithral door, this one perfectly dwarf-sized, and with no apparent handle.

Athrogate repeated the Delzoun rhyme that had opened the great front gates of the complex, and again it worked, the ancient door gliding open with not a whisper of sound.

They heard the furnaces of Gauntlgrym then-angry, grumbling fires-though Jarlaxle had no idea how the furnaces could still be burning. Beyond the portal, a narrow stair wound downward. It wasn’t as pitch dark as before, but flashed with the orange-red glow of some distant fire.

Athrogate didn’t hesitate, hustling along the stair, moving down at such a pace that the others, except for Dor’crae, had to run to keep up.

“I will be with you presently,” Dor’crae explained when Dahlia turned back to regard him. “There’s one other corridor I wish to inspect.”

She nodded and ran off to catch up with the other two, as the vampire turned back the other way.

Dor’crae turned back, but didn’t leave. Instead, he produced the skull gem and placed it in a sheltered nook next to the door, where it wouldn’t be obvious. He stared at it with great lament, wondering, and not for the first time, if he’d been wise to enlist such dangerous allies. But Dor’crae looked back to the stairwell and thought of Dahlia and the lone diamond stud she wore in her right ear, the stud to represent her only remaining lover.

What choice had she given him?

He glanced down at the skull gem. “Down the stair, Sylora,” he whispered. He paused only a moment longer before moving off to catch up to the rest of the band.

The vampire was barely out of sight when the eyes of the skull gem began to glow red once more, the artifact coming alive with the spirit of Sylora. A short while later, it did more than that, blowing forth a magical mist that took the form of the great Thayan lady.

Once she was through, opening a gate for her minions proved no difficult task.