Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 27

Drizzt and Entreri ran along the back corridor, passing the lava tube, an open tunnel to their left, a wall of iron blocking the passage to their right.

They paid it no heed, other than to use it as a guide-point in their rush to rejoin the others in the Forge.

But then they were flying, falling, tumbling, as a great retort rumbled all around them, dust and stones bursting out from their left, from around the magical wall of stone. Pelted and bounced around, the two crashed in across the way, Entreri several steps into the open lava tube.

“The beast,” Drizzt breathed, picking himself up from the ground. On he ran, Entreri, his limp noticeably more pronounced, struggling to keep up.

Entering the brightly lit Forge, Drizzt first noted Brother Afafrenfere leaning on the open mithral door on legs surely wobbly. He called out to the monk, who looked his way and pointed emphatically down the tunnel.

Drizzt never slowed, turning in fast, Entreri hustling close behind.

The two came into the primordial chamber, Drizzt leading and skidding to a stop as he took in the remarkable scene: the webbing, the dead green spider, the altar block, the pile of magma near the ledge, and the Companions of the Hall, standing together before a pile of collapsed rubble-right at the entrance to the lava tube, Drizzt knew.

Catti-brie leaned heavily on Bruenor, looking dazed and weak and covered with dust, and Drizzt ran to her with all speed.

“We found yer Dahlia,” Bruenor said to him, nodding to the rubble.

Drizzt sucked in his breath. Entreri, who had heard, ran by him to the rubble pile and began hopping all around the broken stones and dust, shoving some aside.

“Dahlia!” he yelled and he threw a rock at the rubble and spun back on the others. “What did you do?”

Drizzt pulled Catti-brie closer, expecting Entreri to leap at her, but the woman straightened, stepped away from him, and lifted her chin resolutely. “She was not the elf you once knew,” she said confidently. “She was possessed of a demon. She would hear no reason.”

Entreri picked up another stone, swung around, and threw it with all his might into the pile. He sat down there, as if his legs had simply collapsed beneath him, staring at the stone.

“We should be leaving,” Regis remarked. “Did you find the dwarf?”

Drizzt never stopped looking at Catti-brie or at the burn and bruise across her throat. “She is close behind, and with others we freed, as well,” he answered. “And yes, it is time to go, and with all speed.”

He took Catti-brie by the shoulders then, and pushed her past him to the waiting support of Wulfgar. He nodded to his friends, and they started back for the Forge.

“We have to go,” Drizzt said to Entreri a few moments later, moving near to the man and bending low beside him.

“Then go,” Entreri replied.

“There is nothing here for you.”

Entreri looked up at him, and the assassin’s crestfallen expression spoke to Drizzt before Entreri corrected the assertion with, “There is nothing for me.”

“There is always something.”

“Go, drow,” Entreri said. “Your place is with your friends.”

“You will find …” Drizzt started to say, but Entreri cut him short. “Go,” he said more firmly, and he turned back to the wall of broken stone.

Drizzt let his stare linger for a bit longer, but really had nothing more he could say. He rose, patting Entreri on the shoulder, and started away.

“I will never forget that you came for me, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri called after him, and for some reason he didn’t quite yet understand, those words filled Drizzt’s heart.

By the time he got back to the Forge, Drizzt found Ambergris and the three freed humans with the others. Catti-brie had no spells available to help the cursed dwarf, but Regis reached into his magical pouch and produced a potion he thought might be of use, and indeed, before the group of ten had even started off, Ambergris was already speaking once more, and nonstop as she recounted her adventures to any who would listen.

“Gutbuster,” Regis whispered to Drizzt and Bruenor, nodding his chin at the recovering female dwarf. “I figured that it could cut through any sickly venom.”

“Bwahaha,” Bruenor laughed, and Drizzt was glad of his own smile. He was thinking of Dahlia, and with a heavy heart, and thinking of Entreri, with great sympathy.

Ambergris moved over to her dear friend Afafrenfere and placed her thick hand on his forehead as she began her chant, calling upon her god to infuse the battered man with healing warmth and strength.

Afafrenfere stood taller almost immediately and nodded his gratitude.

“I’ve some more magic prepared,” the cleric offered.

“Use it upon yourself, then,” said Regis, breaking away from Bruenor and Drizzt. “I’m not sure how long my potion will hold back the curse of the drow.”

“Curse o’ the damned drow,” Bruenor muttered beside Drizzt, who nodded.

“Don’t like seein’ ’em here, elf,” the dwarf went on. “Yerself excepted, o’ course.”

“Of course,” Drizzt agreed with a grin.

Bruenor started to reply, but stopped short, and a curious expression crossed his face. He held up his hand to halt Drizzt’s forthcoming question, and turned to the Great Forge.

“Bruenor?” Drizzt asked after a long while had passed, the dwarf just standing there, staring.

Without a word, Bruenor started across the room, for the forge. When he got there, he laid his axe, helm, and shield atop the metal tray leading to the closed oven doors. He looked around, ignoring the questions from Drizzt, and found a pole with a hooked tip and a pair of long tongs.

The others joined the pair then, Catti-brie and Wulfgar similarly asking what Bruenor might be up to, but still the dwarf ignored them all. He reached along the tray, between the blocking walls, with the hooked pole and used it to pull open the heavy oven door.

Inside, the primal fire burned angrily, and Bruenor nodded and smiled.

Then he rushed around, collecting the tools he’d need.

“We haven’t the time,” Drizzt said to him when he figured it out.

“Hold the room,” the dwarf answered, and distantly, his tone brooking no debate.

“Bruenor?”

“Just ye hold the room, elf!” the dwarf demanded. He looked past Drizzt to the others. “All o’ ye!”

“We have injured,” Catti-brie reminded him. “And innocents. Every moment we delay …”

The dwarf looked at her soberly.

“We have to g-” Catti-brie started to insist, but she stopped short and stared at the opened oven, and heard the call of the primordial. “The axe,” she told the dwarf. “And the helm …”

Catti-brie looked to Bruenor, her expression suddenly one of excitement. To the horror of the others, she hopped up onto the tray and stepped between the guard walls, where it should have been too hot for any person to venture, and reached down to pick up the dwarf’s implements.

“Girl!” Bruenor said with alarm.

Catti-brie glanced back with a wide smile, holding Bruenor’s axe. She tossed it into the oven.

“Girl!” the dwarf cried and the others, too, gasped.

And in went the dwarf’s shield, which was mostly made of wood, like the axe handle-and surely the primordial fires would eat it to nothingness.

Catti-brie held up the helm and inspected it. It was made of metal, one horn sticking out one side, set into a metal holding circlet, and the stub of a horn sticking out the other. Two rubies were set one above the other in the front, and Catti-brie focused on these, the others could tell, as she began to softly chant.

“Prepare yourself, and quickly,” she told the dwarf. “Your hammer and mithral plating.”

“Girl?”

“Listen to them,” Catti-brie said to him. “To Dumathoin. He knows.” Bruenor closed his eyes and fell within himself, and pictured the throne, remembering the sensation, the sounds of the gods.

Like Catti-brie, he began to chant, but while hers was a mixture of songs, the melody of Mielikki and the foreign sounds of the Plane of Fire, his was the dwarven brogue, the song of workers and miners, an ancient song that had once echoed off these very halls, in ages lost to the world.

Catti-brie kissed the rubies on the helm and tossed it into the oven. She turned to Bruenor and motioned to the tongs, and the dwarf handed them to her. She turned and reached in, and dragged back the many-notched axe.

Its handle was smoking a bit, but seemed, amazingly, unharmed.

Catti-brie picked it up, examining the glowing metal head. She put it down before Bruenor, who began sprinkling it with silver flakes, then tap-tapped with a hammer, singing all the while.

Next came the shield, and the wood seemed a bit darker, but again unharmed, and the metal band around its edge glowed, and the relief of the foaming mug standard seemed to somehow have more depth to it. Catti-brie considered it for a moment, then laughed and cast an enchantment upon it as she put it beside Bruenor’s work table.

Bruenor had just gotten to work on that shield, reinforcing the bands, when the woman pulled forth the glowing helm, and those rubies set in the front sparkled most of all, and indeed, small flames burned clearly within them. The horns seemed untouched, as did the leather inset of the item.

Catti-brie didn’t put this down beside Bruenor’s worktable. There was no need. She dipped it in the forge’s water tray to cool it, hot steam shooting up with an angry hiss.

Then, as Bruenor continued his song and his work, the woman plopped the helm atop his head.

And Bruenor’s face lit up with profound joy and he hoisted his axe.

And he sang, and tossed mithral flakes all around him.

The rubies glowed and Bruenor heard their call. He uttered a word that he did not understand, though Catti-brie surely did, and she nodded as the rubies flared with mounting inner fire.

The head of Bruenor’s axe burst into flames.

Not flames to eat the weapon, though, but to enhance it, adding the enchantment of flametongue to an axe that had already known hundreds of battles.

Bruenor slid his shield over his other arm and extinguished the axe’s fires with a thought.

“Now we can go, elf,” he said, as if coming out of a trance. “Aye, now we can go.”

Drizzt looked over to Ambergris, who was shaking her head in clear awe of the scene before her. He tapped her on the shoulder and pointed across the way, to the huge, broken drider and the weapon lying on the ground in front of it.

With a squeal, Amber Gristle O’Maul ran across to retrieve her beloved Skullcrusher, and when she returned, she looked to Bruenor and to the oven pleadingly.

“No, girl,” the dwarf said. “Not now. I’m not for knowin’ what just happened, but ‘tweren’t no simple bit o’ smithin’.”

“It was a gift,” Catti-brie said. “To you. A gift of the dwarf gods, a gift from Gauntlgrym.” She paused and matched intense stares with her dwarf father. “And it was a request.”

Bruenor nodded. “Aye. A deal I’m glad to make.”

“A request?” Regis and Wulfgar asked together.

“We’ve a long road,” Bruenor replied, and started away. “And one that just got longer.”

The others followed, Drizzt bringing up the rear of the line.

He looked back several times, toward the primordial chamber, thinking of Dahlia, thinking of Entreri. Truly the death of the elf woman stung him-more than he would have expected. Perhaps he had never really loved her-certainly not as he loved Catti-brie-but he had cared for her, and deeply.

She was at peace, he hoped. At long last, perhaps Dahlia had found peace.

And Entreri’s last words to him rang in his head and in his heart. He wished that the man was leaving with them, out of this place and back to their own place.

But Drizzt took heart, confident in this one’s skill and resourcefulness, certain that he would see Artemis Entreri again.