Streams of Silver

16. Days of Old

A squat stone tower stood in a small dell against the facing of a steep hill. Because it was ivy covered and overgrown, a casual passer-by would not even have noticed the structure.

But the Companions of the Hall were not casual in their search. This was the Herald’s Holdfast, possibly the solution to their entire search.

“Are you certain that this is the place?” Regis asked Drizzt as they peered over a small bluff. Truly the ancient tower appeared more a ruin. Not a thing stirred anywhere nearby, not even animals, as though an eerie, reverent hush surrounded the place.

“I am sure,” Drizzt replied. “Feel the age of the tower. It has stood for many centuries. Many centuries.”

“And how long has it been empty?” Bruenor asked, thus far disappointed in the place that had been described to him as the brightest promise to his goal.

“It is not empty,” Drizzt replied. “Unless the information I received was in err.”

Bruenor jumped to his feet and stormed over the bluff. “Probably right,” he grumbled. “Some troll or scab yeti’s inside the door watching us right now, I’ll wager, drooling for us to come in! Let’s be on with it, then! Sundabar’s a day more away than when we left!”

The dwarf’s three friends joined him on the remnants of the overgrown path that had once been a walkway to the tower’s door. They approached the ancient stone door cautiously, with weapons drawn.

Moss-covered and worn to a smooth finish by the toll of time, apparently it hadn’t been opened in many, many years.

“Use yer arms, boy,” Bruenor told Wulfgar. “If any man can get this thing opened, it’s yerself!”

Wulfgar leaned Aegis-fang against the wall and moved before the huge door. He set his feet as best he could and ran his hands across the stone in search of a good niche to push against.

But as soon as he applied the slightest pressure to the stone portal, it swung inward, silently and without effort.

A cool breeze wafted out of the still darkness within, carrying a blend of unfamiliar scents and an aura of great age. The friends sensed the place as otherworldly, belonging to a different time, perhaps, and it was not without a degree of trepidation that Drizzt led them in.

They stepped lightly, though their footfalls echoed in the quiet darkness. The daylight beyond the door offered little relief, as though some barrier remained between the inside of the tower and the world beyond.

“We should light a torch—” Regis began, but he stopped abruptly, frightened by the unintentional volume of his whisper.

“The door!” Wulfgar cried suddenly, noticing that the silent portal had begun to close behind them. He leaped to grab it before it shut completely, sinking them into absolute darkness, but even his great strength could not deny the magical force that moved it. It shut without a bang, just a hushed rush of air that resounded like a giant’s sigh.

The lightless tomb they all envisioned as the huge door blocked out the final slit of sunlight did not come to pass, for as soon as the door closed, a blue glow lit up the room, the entrance hall to the Herald’s Holdfast.

No words could they speak above the profound awe that enveloped them. They stood in view of the history of the race of Man within a bubble of timelessness that denied their own perspectives of age and belonging. In the blink of an eye they had been propelled into the position of removed observers, their own existence suspended in a different time and place, looking in on the passing of the human race as might a god. Intricate tapestries, their once-vivid colors faded and their distinct lines now blurred, swept the friends into a fantastic collage of images that displayed the tales of the race, each one retelling a story again and again; the same tale, it seemed, but subtly altered each time, to present different principles and varied outcomes.

Weapons and armor from every age lined the walls, beneath the standards and crests of a thousand longforgotten kingdoms. Bas-relief images of heroes and sages, some familiar but most unknown to any but the most studious of scholars, stared down at them from the rafters, their captured visages precise enough to emote the very character of the men they portrayed.

A second door, this one of wood, hung directly across the cylindrical chamber from the first, apparently leading into the hill behind the tower. Only when it began to swing open did the companions manage to break free of the spell of the place.

None went for their weapons, though, understanding that whoever, or whatever, inhabited this tower would be beyond such earthly strength.

An ancient man stepped into the room, older than anyone they had ever seen before. His face had retained its fullness, not hollowed with age, but his skin appeared almost wooden in texture, with lines that seemed more like cracks and a rough edge that defied time as stubbornly as an ancient tree. His walk was more a flow of quiet movement, a floating passing that transcended the definition of steps. He came in close to the friends and waited, his arms, obviously thin even under the folds of his long, satiny robe, peacefully dropped to his sides.

“Are you the herald of the tower?” Drizzt asked.

“Old Night, I am,” the man replied in a voice singing with serenity. “Welcome, Companions of the Hall. The Lady Alustriel informed me of your coming, and of your quest.”

Even consumed in the solemn respect of his surroundings, Wulfgar did not miss the reference to Alustriel. He glanced over at Drizzt, meeting the drow’s eyes with a knowing smile.

Drizzt turned away and smiled, too.

“This is the Chamber of Man,” Old Night proclaimed. “The largest in the Holdfast, except for the library, of course.”

He noticed Bruenor’s disgruntled scowl. “The tradition of your race runs deep, good dwarf, and deeper yet does the elves’,” he explained. “But crises in history are more often measured in generations than in centuries. The short-lived humans might have toppled a thousand kingdoms and built a thousand more in the few centuries that a single dwarven king would rule his people in peace.”

“No patience!” Bruenor huffed, apparently appeased.

“Agreed,” laughed Old Night. “But come now, let us dine. We have much to do this night.”

He led them through the doorway and down a similarly lit hallway. Doors on either side of them identified the various chambers as they passed—one for each of the goodly races, and even a few for the history of orcs and goblins and the giantkind.

The friends and Old Night supped at a huge, round table, its ancient wood as hard as mountain stone. Runes were inscribed all around its edge, many in tongues long lost to the world, that even Old Night could not remember. The food, like everything else, gave the impression of a distant past. Far from stale, though, it was delicious, with a flavor somewhat different from anything the friends had ever eaten before. The drink, a crystalline wine, possessed a rich bouquet surpassing even the legendary elixirs of the elves.

Old Night entertained them as they ate, retelling grand tales of ancient heroes, and of events that had shaped the Realms into their present state. The companions were an attentive audience, though in all probability substantial clues about Mithril Hall loomed only a door or two away.

When the meal was finished, Old Night rose from his chair and looked around at them with a weird, curious intensity. “The day will come, a millennium from now, perhaps, when I shall entertain again. On that day, I am sure, one of the tales I tell will concern the Companions of the Hall and their glorious quest.”

The friends could not reply to the honor that the ancient man had paid them. Even Drizzt, even-keeled and unshakable, sat unblinking for a long, long moment.

“Come,” Old Night instructed, “let your road begin anew.” He led them through another door, the door to the greatest library in all the North.

Volumes thick and thin covered the walls and lay about in high piles on the many tables positioned throughout the large room. Old Night indicated one particular table, a smaller one off to the side, with a solitary book opened upon it.

“I have done much of your research for you,” Old Night explained. “And in all the volumes concerning dwarves, this was the only one I could find that held any reference to Mithril Hall.”

Bruenor moved to the book, grasping its edges with trembling hands. It was written in High Dwarven, the language of Dumathoin, Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, a script nearly lost in the Realms. But Bruenor could read it. He surveyed the page quickly, then read aloud the passages of concern.

“King Elmor and his people profited mightily from the labors of Garumn and the kin of Clan Battlehammer, but the dwarves of the secret mines did not refute Elmor’s gains. Settlestone proved a valuable and trustworthy ally whence Garumn could begin the secret trail to market of the mithril works.” Bruenor looked up at his friends, a gleam of revelation in his eye.

“Settlestone,” he whispered. “I know that name.” He dove back into the book.

“You shall find little else,” Old Night said. “For the words of Mithril Hall are lost to the ages. The book merely states that the flow of mithril soon ceased, to the ultimate demise of Settlestone!”

Bruenor wasn’t listening. He had to read it for himself, to devour every word penned about his lost heritage, no matter the significance.

“What of this Settlestone?” Wulfgar asked Old Night. “A clue?”

“Perhaps,” the old herald replied. “Thus far I have found no reference to the place other than this book, but I am inclined to believe from the work that Settlestone was rather unusual for a dwarven town.”

“Above the ground!” Bruenor suddenly cut in.

“Yes,” agreed Old Night. “A dwarven community housed in structures above the ground. Rare these days and unheard of back in the time of Mithril Hall. Only two possibilities, to my knowledge.”

Regis let out a cry of victory.

“Your enthusiasm may be premature,” remarked Old Night. “Even if we discern where Settlestone once lay, the trail to Mithril Hall merely begins there.”

Bruenor flipped through a few pages of the book, then replaced it on the table. “So close!” he growled, slamming his fist down on the petrified wood. “And I should know!”

Drizzt moved over to him and pulled a vial out from under his cloak. “A potion,” he explained to Bruenor’s puzzled look, “that will make you walk again in the days of Mithril Hall.”

“A mighty spell,” warned Old Night. “And not to be controlled. Consider its use carefully, good dwarf.”

Bruenor was already moving, teetering on the verge of a discovery he had to find. He quaffed the liquid in one gulp, then steadied himself on the edge of the table against its potent kick. Sweat beaded on his wrinkled brow and he twitched involuntarily as the potion sent his mind drifting back across the centuries.

Regis and Wulfgar moved over to him, the big man clasping his shoulders and easing him into a seat.

Bruenor’s eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing in the room before him. Sweat lathered him now, and the twitch had become a tremble.

“Bruenor,” Drizzt called softly, wondering if he had done right in presenting the dwarf with such a tempting opportunity.

“No, me father!” Bruenor screamed. “Not here in the darkness! Come with me, then. What might I do without ye?”

“Bruenor,” Drizzt called more emphatically.

“He is not here,” Old Night explained, familiar with the potion, for it was often used by long-lived races, particularly elves, when they sought memories of their distant past. Normally the imbibers returned to a more pleasant time, though. Old Night looked on with grave concern, for the potion had returned Bruenor to a wicked day in his past, a memory that his mind had blocked out, or at least blurred, to defend him against powerful emotions. Those emotions would now be laid bare, revealed to the dwarf’s conscious mind in all their fury.

“Bring him to the Chamber of the Dwarves,” Old Night instructed. “Let him bask in the images of his heroes. They will aid in remembering, and give him strength throughout his ordeal.”

Wulfgar lifted Bruenor and bore him gently down the passage to the Chamber of the Dwarves, laying him in the center of the circular floor. The friends backed away, leaving the dwarf to his delusions.

Bruenor could only half-see the images around him now, caught between the worlds of the past and present. Images of Moradin, Dumathoin, and all his deities and heroes looked down upon him from their perches in the rafters, adding a small bit of comfort against the waves of tragedy. Dwarven-sized suits of armor and cunningly crafted axes and warhammers surrounded him, and he bathed in the presence of the highest glories of his proud race.

The images, though, could not dispell the horror he now knew again, the falling of his clan, of Mithril Hall, of his father.

“Daylight!” he cried, torn between relief and lament. “Alas for me father, and me father’s father! But yea, our escape is at hand! Settlestone…” he faded from consciousness for a moment, overcome, “…shelter us. The loss, the loss! Shelter us!”

“The price is high,” said Wulfgar, pained at the dwarf’s torment.

“He is willing to pay,” Drizzt replied.

“It will be a sorry payment if we learn nothing,” said Regis. “There is no direction to his ramblings. Are we to sit by and hope against hope?”

“His memories have already brought him to Settlestone, with no mention of the trail behind him,” Wulfgar observed.

Drizzt drew a scimitar and pulled the cowl of his cloak low over his face.

“What?” Regis started to ask, but the drow was already moving. He rushed to Bruenor’s side and put his face close to the dwarf’s sweat-lathered cheek.

“I am a friend,” he whispered to Bruenor. “Come at the news of the falling of the hall! My allies await! Vengeance will be ours, mighty dwarf of Clan Battlehammer! Show us the way so that we might restore the glories of the hall!”

“Secret,” Bruenor gasped, on the edge of consciousness.

Drizzt pressed harder. “Time is short! The darkness is falling!” he shouted. “The way, dwarf, we must know the way!”

Bruenor mumbled some inaudible sounds and all the friends gasped in the knowledge that the drow had broken through the final mental barrier that hindered Bruenor from finding the hall.

“Louder!” Drizzt insisted.

“Fourthpeak!” Bruenor screamed back. “Up the high run and into Keeper’s Dale!”

Drizzt looked over to Old Night, who was nodding in recognition, then turned back to Bruenor. “Rest, mighty dwarf,” he said comfortingly. “Your clan shall be avenged!”

“With the description the book gives of Settlestone, Fourthpeak can describe only one place,” Old Night explained to Drizzt and Wulfgar when they got back to the library. Regis remained in the Chamber of the Dwarves to watch over Bruenor’s fretful sleep.

The herald pulled a scroll tube down from a high shelf, and unrolled the ancient parchment it held: a map of the central northland, between Silverymoon and Mirabar.

“The only dwarven settlement in the time of Mithril Hall above ground, and close enough to a mountain range to give a reference to a numbered peak, would be here,” he said, marking the southernmost peak on the southernmost spur of the Spine of the World, just north of Nesme and the Evermoors. “The deserted city of stone is simply called “the Ruins” now, and it was commonly known as Dwarvendarrows when the bearded race lived there. But the ramblings of your companion have convinced me that this is indeed the Settlestone that the book speaks of.”

“Why, then, would the book not refer to it as Dwarvendarrow?” asked Wulfgar.

“Dwarves are a secretive race,” Old Night explained with a knowing chuckle, “especially where treasure is concerned. Garumn of Mithril Hall was determined to keep the location of his trove hidden from the greed of the outside world. He and Elmor of Settlestone no doubt worked out an arrangement that included intricate codes and constructed names to reference their surroundings. Anything to throw prying mercenaries off the trail. Names that now appear in disjointed places throughout the tomes of dwarven history. Many scholars have probably even read of Mithril Hall, called by some other name that the readers assumed referred to another of the many ancient dwarven homelands now lost to the world.”

The herald paused for a moment to digest everything that had occurred. “You should be away at once,” he advised. “Carry the dwarf if you must, but get him to Settlestone before the effects of the potion wear away. Walking in his memories, Bruenor might be able to retrace his steps of two hundred years ago back up the mountains to Keeper’s Dale, and to the gate of Mithril Hall.”

Drizzt studied the map and the spot that Old Night had marked as the location of Settlestone. “Back to the west.” he muttered, echoing Alustriel’s suspicions. “Barely two days march from here.”

Wulfgar moved in close to view the parchment and added, in a voice that held both anticipation and a measure of sadness, “Our road nears its end.”

17. The Challenge

They left under stars and did not stop until stars filled the sky once again. Bruenor needed no support. Quite the opposite. It was the dwarf, recovered from his delirium and his eyes focused at last upon a tangible path to his long-sought goal, who drove them, setting the strongest pace since they had come out of Icewind Dale. Glassy-eyed and walking both in past and present, Bruenor’s obsession consumed him. For nearly two hundred years he had dreamed of this return, and these last few days on the road seemed longer than the centuries that had come before.

The companions had apparently beaten their worst enemy: time. If their reckoning at the Holdfast was correct, Mithril Hall loomed just a few days away, while the short summer had barely passed its midpoint. With time no longer a pressing issue, Drizzt, Wulfgar, and Regis had anticipated a moderate pace as they prepared to leave the Holdfast. But Bruenor, when he awoke and learned of the discoveries, would hear no arguments about his rush. None were offered, though, for in the excitement, Bruenor’s already surly disposition had grown even fouler.

“Keep yer feet moving!” he kept snapping at Regis, whose little legs could not match the dwarf’s frantic pace. “Ye should’ve stayed in Ten-Towns with yer belly hanging over yer belt!” The dwarf would then sink into quiet grumbling, bending even lower over his pumping feet, and driving onward, his ears blocked to any remarks that Regis might shoot back or any comments forthcoming from Wulfgar or Drizzt concerning his behavior.

They angled their path back to the Rauvin, to use its waters as a guide. Drizzt did manage to convince Bruenor to veer back to the northwest as soon as the peaks of the mountain range came into view. The drow had no desire to meet any patrols from Nesme again, certain that it was that city’s warning cries that had forced Alustriel to keep him out of Silverymoon.

Bruenor found no relaxation at the camp that night, even though they had obviously covered far more than half the distance to the ruins of Settlestone. He stomped about the camp like a trapped animal, clenching and unclenching his gnarly fists and mumbling to himself about the fateful day when his people had been pushed out of Mithril Hall, and the revenge he would find when he at last returned.

“Is it the potion?” Wulfgar asked Drizzt later that evening as they stood to the side of the camp and watched the dwarf.

“Some of it, perhaps,” Drizzt answered, equally concerned about his friend. “The potion has forced Bruenor to live again the most painful experience of his long life. And now, as the memories of that past find their way into his emotions, they keenly edge the vengeance that has festered within him all these years.”

“He is afraid,” Wulfgar noted.

Drizzt nodded. “This is the trial of his life. His vow to return to Mithril Hall holds within it all the value that he places upon his own existence.”

“He pushes too hard,” Wulfgar remarked, looking at Regis, who had collapsed, exhausted, right after they had supped. “The halfling cannot keep the pace.”

“Less than a day stands before us,” Drizzt replied. “Regis will survive this road, as shall we all.” He patted the barbarian on the shoulder and Wulfgar, not fully satisfied, but resigned to the fact that he could not sway the dwarf, moved away to find some rest. Drizzt looked back to the pacing dwarf, and his dark face bore a look of deeper concern than he had revealed to the young barbarian.

Drizzt truly wasn’t worried about Regis. The halfling always found a way to come through better off than he should. Bruenor, though, troubled the drow. He remembered when the dwarf had crafted Aegis-fang, the mighty warhammer. The weapon had been Bruenor’s ultimate creation in a rich career as a craftsman, a weapon worthy of legend. Bruenor could not hope to outdo that accomplishment, nor even equal it. The dwarf had never put hammer to anvil again.

Now the journey to Mithril Hall, Bruenor’s lifelong goal. As Aegis-fang had been Bruenor’s finest crafting, this journey would be his highest climb. The focus of Drizzt’s concern was more subtle, and yet more dangerous, than the success or failure of the search; the dangers of the road affected all of them equally, and they had accepted them willingly before starting out. Whether or not the ancient halls were reclaimed, Bruenor’s mountain would be crested. The moment of his glory would be passed.

“Calm yourself, good friend,” Drizzt said, moving beside the dwarf.

“It’s me home, elf!” Bruenor shot back, but he did seem to compose himself a bit.

“I understand,” Drizzt offered. “It seems that we shall indeed look upon Mithril Hall, and that raises a question we must soon answer.”

Bruenor looked at him curiously, though he knew well enough what Drizzt was getting at.

“So far we have concerned ourselves only with finding Mithril Hall, and little has been said of our plans beyond the entrance to the place.”

“By all that is right, I am King of the Hall,” Bruenor growled.

“Agreed,” said the drow, “but what of the darkness that may remain? A force that drove your entire clan from the mines. Are we four to defeat it?”

“It may have gone on its own, elf,” Bruenor replied in a surly tone, not wanting to face the possibilities. “For all our knowing, the halls may be clean.”

“Perhaps. But what plans have you if the darkness remains?”

Bruenor paused for a moment of thought. “Word’ll be sent to Icewind Dale,” he answered. “Me kin’ll be with us in the spring.”

“Barely a hundred strong!” Drizzt reminded him.

“Then I’ll call to Adbar if more be needed!” Bruenor snapped. “Harbromm’ll be glad to help, for a promise of treasure.”

Drizzt knew that Bruenor wouldn’t be so quick to make such a promise, but he decided to end the stream of disturbing but necessary questions. “Sleep well,” he bid the dwarf. “You shall find your answers when you must.”

The pace was no less frantic the morning of the next day. Mountains soon towered above them as they ran along, and another change came over the dwarf. He stopped suddenly, dizzied and fighting for his balance. Wulfgar and Drizzt were right beside him, propping him up.

“What is it?” Drizzt asked.

“Dwarvendarrow,” Bruenor answered in a voice that seemed far removed. He pointed to an outcropping of rock jutting from the base of the nearest mountain.

“You know the place?”

Bruenor didn’t answer. He started off again, stumbling, but rejecting any offers of help. His friends shrugged helplessly and followed.

An hour later, the structures came into view. Like giant houses of cards, great slabs of stone had been cunningly laid together to form dwellings, and though they had been deserted for more than a hundred years, the seasons and the wind had not reclaimed them. Only dwarves could have imbued such strength into the rock, could have laid the stones so perfectly that they would last as the mountains themselves lasted, beyond the generations and the tales of the bards, so that some future race would look upon them in awe and marvel at their construction without the slightest idea of who had created them.

Bruenor remembered. He wandered into the village as he had those many decades ago, a tear rimming his gray eye and his body trembling against the memories of the darkness that had swarmed over his clan.

His friends let him go about for a while, not wanting to interrupt the solemn emotions that had found their way through his thick hide. Finally, as afternoon waned, Drizzt moved over to him.

“Do you know the way?” he asked.

Bruenor looked up at a pass that climbed along the side of the nearest mountain. “Half a day,” he replied.

“Camp here?” Drizzt asked.

“It would do me good,” said Bruenor. “I’ve much to think over, elf. I’ll not forget the way, fear not.” His eyes narrowed in tight focus at the trail he had fled on the day of darkness, and he whispered, “I’ll never forget the way again.”

Bruenor’s driven pace proved fortunate for the friends, for Bok had easily continued along the drow’s trail outside of Silverymoon and had led its group with similar haste. Bypassing the Holdfast altogether—the tower’s magical wards would not have let them near it in any case—the golem’s party had made up considerable ground.

In a camp not far away, Entreri stood grinning his evil smile and staring at the dark horizon, and at the speck of light he knew to be the campfire of his victim.

Catti-brie saw it, too, and knew that the next day would bring her greatest challenge. She had spent most of her life with the battle-seasoned dwarves, under the tutelage of Bruenor himself. He had taught her both discipline and confidence. Not a facade of cockiness to hide deeper insecurities, but a true self-belief and measured evaluation of what she could and could not accomplish. Any trouble that she had finding sleep that night was more due to her eagerness to face this challenge than her fear of failure.

They broke camp early and arrived at the ruins just after dawn. No more anxious than Bruenor’s party, though, they found only the remnants of the companions’ campsite.

“An hour—perhaps two,” Entreri observed, bending low to feel the heat of the embers.

“Bok has already found the new trail,” said Sydney, pointing to the golem moving off toward the foothills of the closest mountain.

A smile filled Entreri’s face as the thrill of the chase swept over him. Catti-brie paid little attention to the assassin, though, more concerned with the revelations painted on Jierdan’s face.

The soldier seemed unsure of himself. He took up after them as soon as Sydney and Entreri started behind Bok, but with forced steps. He obviously wasn’t looking forward to the pending confrontation, as were Sydney and Entreri.

Catti-brie was pleased.

They charged ahead through the morning, dodging sharp ravines and boulders, and picking their way up the side of the mountains. Then, for the first time since he had begun his search more than two years before, Entreri saw his prey.

The assassin had come over a boulder-strewn mound and was slowing his strides to accommodate a sharp dip into a small dell thick with trees, when Bruenor and his friends broke clear of some brush and made their way across the facing of a steep slope far ahead. Entreri dropped into a crouch and signaled for the others to slow behind him.

“Stop the golem,” he called to Sydney, for Bok had already disappeared into the copse below him and would soon come crashing out of the other side and onto another barren mound of stone, in clear sight of the companions.

Sydney rushed up. “Bok, return to me!” she yelled as loudly as she dared, for while the companions were far in the distance, the echoes of noises on the mountainside seemed to carry forever.

Entreri pointed to the specks moving across the facing ahead of them. “We can catch them before they get around the side of the mountain,” he told Sydney. He jumped back to meet Jierdan and Catti-brie, and roughly bound Catti-brie’s hands behind her back. “If you cry out, you will watch your friends die,” he assured her. “And then your own end will be most unpleasant.”

Catti-brie painted her most frightened look across her face, all the while pleased that the assassin’s latest threat seemed quite hollow to her. She had risen above the level of terror that Entreri had played against her when they had first met back in Ten-Towns. She had convinced herself, against her instinctive revulsion of the passionless killer, that he was, after all, only a man.

Entreri pointed to the steep valley below the facing and the companions. “I will go through the ravine,” he explained to Sydney, “and make the first contact. You and the golem continue along the path and close in from behind.”

“And what of me?” Jierdan protested.

“Stay with the girl!” Entreri commanded, as absently as if he was speaking to a servant. He spun away and started off, refusing to hear any arguments.

Sydney did not even turn to look at Jierdan as she stood waiting for Bok’s return. She had no time for such squabbles and figured that if Jierdan could not speak for himself, he wasn’t worth her trouble.

“Act now,” Catti-brie whispered to Jierdan, “for yerself and not for me!” He looked at her, more curious than angry, and vulnerable to any suggestions that might help him from this uncomfortable position.

“The mage has thrown all respect for ye, man,” Catti-brie continued. “The assassin has replaced ye, and she’d be liken to stand by him above ye. This is yer chance to act, yer last one if me eyes be tellin’ me right! Time to show the mage yer worth, Soldier of Luskan!”

Jierdan glanced about nervously. For all of the manipulations he expected from the woman, her words held enough truth to convince him that her assessment was correct.

His pride won over. He spun on Catti-brie and smacked her to the ground, then rushed past Sydney in pursuit of Entreri.

“Where are you going?” Sydney called after him, but Jierdan was no longer interested in pointless talk.

Surprised and confused, Sydney turned to check on the prisoner. Catti-brie had anticipated this and she groaned and rolled on the hard stone as though she had been knocked senseless, though in truth she had turned enough away from Jierdan’s blow that he had merely glanced her. Fully conscious and coherent, her movements were calculated to position her where she could slip her tied hands down around her legs and bring them up in front of her.

Catti-brie’s act satisfied Sydney enough so that the mage put her attention fully on the coming confrontation between her two comrades. Hearing Jierdan’s approach, Entreri had spun on him, his dagger and saber drawn.

“You were told to stay with the girl!” he hissed.

“I did not come on this journey to play guard to your prisoner!” Jierdan retorted, his own sword out.

The characteristic grin made its way onto Entreri’s face again. “Go back,” he said one last time to Jierdan, though he knew, and was glad, that the proud soldier would not turn away.

Jierdan took another step forward.

Entreri struck.

Jierdan was a seasoned fighter, a veteran of many skirmishes, and if Entreri expected to dispatch him with a single thrust, he was mistaken. Jierdan’s sword knocked the blow aside and he returned the thrust.

Recognizing the obvious contempt that Entreri showed to Jierdan, and knowing the level of the soldier’s pride, Sydney had feared this confrontation since they had left the Hosttower. She didn’t care if one of them died now—she suspected that it would be Jierdan—but she would not tolerate anything that put her mission in jeopardy. After the drow was safely in her hands, Entreri and Jierdan could settle their differences.

“Go to them!” she called to the advancing golem. “Stop this fight!” Bok turned at once and rushed toward the combatants, and Sydney, shaking her head in disgust, believed that the situation would soon be under control and they could resume their hunt.

What she didn’t see was Catti-brie rising up behind her.

Catti-brie knew that she had only one chance. She crept up silently and brought her clasped hands down on the back of the mage’s neck. Sydney dropped straight to the hard stone and Catti-brie ran by, down into the copse of trees, her blood coursing through her veins. She had to get close enough to her friends to yell a clear warning before her captors overtook her.

Just after Catti-brie slipped into the thick trees, she heard Sydney gasp, “Bok!”

The golem swung back at once, some distance behind Catti-brie, but gaining with each long stride.

Even if they had seen her flight, Jierdan and Entreri were too caught up in their own battle to be concerned with her.

“You shall insult me no more!” Jierdan cried above the clang of steel.

“But I shall!” Entreri hissed. “There are many ways to defile a corpse, fool, and know that I shall practice every one on your rotting bones.” He pressed in harder, his concentration squarely on his foe, his blades gaining deadly momentum in their dance.

Jierdan countered gamely, but the skilled assassin had little trouble in meeting all of his thrusts with deft parries and subtle shifts. Soon the soldier had exhausted his repertoire of feints and strikes, and he hadn’t even come close to hitting his mark. He would tire before Entreri—he saw that clearly even this early in the fight.

They exchanged several more blows, Entreri’s cuts moving faster and faster, while Jierdan’s double-handed swings slowed to a crawl. The soldier had hoped that Sydney would intervene by this point. His weakness of stamina had been clearly revealed to Entreri, and he couldn’t understand why the mage had not said anything about the battle. He glanced about, his desperation growing. Then he saw Sydney, lying face down on the stone…

An honorable way out, he thought, still more concerned with himself. “The, mage!” he cried to Entreri. “We must help her!” The words fell upon deaf ears.

“And the girl!” Jierdan yelled, hoping to catch the assassin’s interest. He tried to break free of the combat, jumping back from Entreri and lowering his sword. “We shall continue this later,” he declared in a threatening tone, though he had no intention of engaging the assassin in a fair fight again.

Entreri didn’t answer, but lowered his blades accordingly. Jierdan, ever the honorable soldier, turned about to see to Sydney.

A jeweled dagger whistled into his back.

Catti-brie stumbled along, unable to hold her balance with her hands bound together. Loose stone slipped beneath her and more than once she tumbled to the ground. As agile as a cat, she was up quickly.

But Bok was the swifter.

Catti-brie fell again and rolled over a sharp crest of stone. She started down a dangerous slope of slippery rocks, heard the golem stomping behind her, and knew that she could not possibly outrun the thing. Yet she had no choice. Sweat burned a dozen scrapes and stung her eyes, and all hope had flown from her. Still she ran, her courage denying the obvious end.

Against her despair and terror, she found the strength to search for an option. The slope continued down another twenty feet, and right beside her was the slender and rotting stump of a long-dead tree. A plan came to her then, desperate, but with enough hope for her to try it. She stopped for a moment to survey the root structure of the rotting stump, and to estimate the effect that uprooting the thing might have on the stones.

She backed a few feet up the slope and waited, crouched for her impossible leap. Bok came over the crest and bore down on her, rocks bouncing away from the heavy plodding of its booted feet. It was right behind her, reaching out with horrid arms.

And Catti-brie leaped.

She hooked the rope that bound her hands over the stump as she flew past, throwing all of her weight against the hold of its roots.

Bok lumbered after her, oblivious to her intentions. Even as the stump toppled, and the network of dead roots pulled up from the ground, the golem couldn’t understand the danger. As the loose stones shifted and began their descent, Bok kept its focus straight ahead on its prey.

Catti-brie bounced down ahead and to the side of the rockslide. She didn’t try to rise, just kept rolling and scrambling in spite of the pain to gain every inch between herself and the crumbling slope. Her determination got her to the thick trunk of an oak, and she rolled around behind it and turned back to look at the slope.

Just in time to see the golem go down under a ton of bouncing stone.

18. The Secret of Keeper’s Dale

“Keeper’s Dale,” Bruenor declared solemnly. The companions stood on a high ledge, looking down hundreds of feet to the broken floor of a deep and rocky gorge.

“How are we to get down there?” Regis gasped, for every side appeared absolutely sheer, as though the canyon had been purposely cut from the stone.

There was a way down, of course, and Bruenor, walking still with the memories of his youth, knew it well. He led his friends around to the eastern rim of the gorge and looked back to the west, to the peaks of the three nearest mountains. “Ye stand upon Fourthpeak,” he explained, “named for its place beside th’ other three.”

“Three peaks to seem as one,” the dwarf recited, an ancient line from a longer song that all the young dwarves of Mithril Hall were taught before they were even old enough to venture out of the mines.

“Three peaks to seem as one, Behind ye the morning sun.”

Bruenor shifted about to find the exact line of the three western mountains, then moved slowly to the very edge of the gorge and looked over. “We have come to the entrance of the dale,” he stated calmly, though his heart was pounding at the discovery.

The other three moved up to join him. Just below the rim they saw a carved step, the first in a long line moving down the face of the cliff, and shaded perfectly by the coloration of the stone to make the entire construction virtually invisible from any other angle.

Regis swooned when he looked over, nearly overwhelmed by the thought of descending hundreds of feet on a narrow stair without even a handhold. “We’ll surely fall to our deaths!” he squeaked and backed away.

But again Bruenor wasn’t asking for opinions or arguments. He started down, and Drizzt and Wulfgar moved to follow, leaving Regis with no choice but to go. Drizzt and Wulfgar sympathized with his distress, though, and they helped him as much as they could, Wulfgar even scooping him up in his arms when the wind began to gust.

The descent was tentative and slow, even with Bruenor in the lead, and it seemed like hours before the stone of the canyon floor had moved any closer to them.

“Five hundred to the left, then a hundred more,” Bruenor sang when they finally got to the bottom. The dwarf moved along the wall to the south, counting his measured paces and leading the others past towering pillars of stone, great monoliths of another age that had seemed as mere piles of fallen rubble from the rim. Even Bruenor, whose kin had lived here for many centuries, did not know any tales that spoke of the monoliths’ creation or purpose. But whatever the reason, they had stood a silent and imposing vigil upon the canyon floor for uncounted centuries, ancient before the dwarves even arrived, casting ominous shadows and belittling mere mortals who had ever walked here.

And the pillars bent the wind into an eerie and mournful cry and gave the entire floor the sensation of something beyond the natural, timeless like the Holdfast, and imposing a realization of mortality upon onlookers, as though the monoliths mocked the living with their ageless existence.

Bruenor, unbothered by the towers, finished his count.

“Five hundred to the left, then a hundred more. The hidden lines of the secret door.”

He studied the wall beside him for any marking that would indicate the entrance to the halls.

Drizzt, too, ran his sensitive hands across the smooth stone. “Are you certain?” he asked the dwarf after long minutes of searching, for he had felt no cracks at all.

“I am!” Bruenor declared. “Me people were cunning with their workings and I fear that the door is too well in hiding for an easy find.”

Regis moved in to help, while Wulfgar, uncomfortable beneath the shadows of the monoliths, stood guard at their backs.

Just a few seconds later, the barbarian noticed movement from where they’d come, back over by the stone stair. He dipped into a defensive crouch, clutching Aegis-fang as tightly as ever before. “Visitors,” he said to his friends, the hiss of his whisper echoing around as though the monoliths were laughing at his attempt at secrecy.

Drizzt sprang out to the nearest pillar and started making his way around, using Wulfgar’s frozen squint as a guide. Angered at the interruption, Bruenor pulled a small hatchet from his belt and stood ready beside the barbarian, and Regis behind them.

Then they heard Drizzt call out, “Catti-brie!” and were too relieved and elated to pause and consider what might have possibly brought their friend all the way from Ten-Towns, or how she had ever found them.

Their smiles disappeared when they saw her, bruised and bloodied and stumbling toward them. They rushed to meet her, but the drow, suspecting that someone might be in pursuit, slipped along through the monoliths and took up a lookout.

“What bringed ye?” Bruenor cried, grabbing Catti-brie and hugging her close. “And who was it hurt ye? He’ll feel me hands on his neck!”

“And my hammer!” Wulfgar added, enraged at the thought of someone striking Catti-brie.

Regis hung back now, beginning to suspect what had happened.

“Fender Mallot and Grollo are dead,” Catti-brie told Bruenor.

“On the road with ye? But why?” asked the dwarf.

“No, back in Ten-Towns,” Catti-brie answered. “A man, a killer, was there, looking for Regis. I chased after him, trying to get to ye to warn ye, but he caught me and dragged me along.”

Bruenor spun a glare upon the halfling, who was even farther back now, and hanging his head.

“I knew ye’d found trouble when ye came running up on the road outside the towns!” He scowled. “What is it, then? And no more of yer lying tales!”

“His name is Entreri,” Regis admitted. “Artemis Entreri. He came from Calimport, from Pasha Pook.” Regis pulled out the ruby pendant. “For this.”

“But he is not alone,” Catti-brie added. “Wizards from Luskan search for Drizzt.”

“For what reason?” Drizzt called from the shadows.

Catti-brie shrugged. “They been taking care not to tell, but me guess is that they seek some answers about Akar Kessell.”

Drizzt understood at once. They sought the Crystal Shard, the powerful relic that had been buried beneath the avalanche on Kelvin’s Cairn.

“How many?” asked Wulfgar. “And how far behind?”

“Three they were,” Catti-brie answered. “The assassin, a mage, and a soldier from Luskan. A monster they had with them. A golem, they called it, but I’ve ne’er seen its likes before.”

“Golem,” Drizzt echoed softly. He had seen many such creations in the undercity of the dark elves. Monsters of great power and undying loyalty to their creators. These must be mighty foes indeed, to have one along.

“But the thing is gone,” Catti-brie continued. “It chased me on me flight, and would have had me, no doubting, but I pulled a trick on it and sent a mountain of rock on its head!”

Bruenor hugged her close again. “Well done, me girl,” he whispered.

“And I left the soldier and the assassin in a terrible fight,” Catti-brie went on. “One is dead, I guess, and the soldier seems most likely. A pity, it is, for he was a decent sort.”

“He’d have found me blade for helping the dogs at all!” Bruenor retorted. “But enough of the tale; there’ll be time for telling. Ye’re at the hall, girl, do ye know? Ye’re to see for yerself the splendors I been telling ye about all these years! So go and rest up.” He turned around to tell Wulfgar to see to her, but noticed Regis instead. The halfling had problems of his own, hanging his head and wondering if he had pushed his friends too far this time.

“Fear not, my friend,” said Wulfgar, also seeing Regis’s distress. “You acted to survive. There is no shame in that. Though you should have told us the danger!”

“Ah, put yer head up, Rumblebelly!” Bruenor snapped. “We expect as much from ye, ye no-good trickster! Don’t ye be thinkin’ we’re surprised!” Bruenor’s rage, an angry possessor somehow growing of its own volition, suddenly mounted as he stood there chastising the halfling.

“How dare ye to put this on us?” he roared at Regis, moving Catti-brie aside and advancing a step. “And with me home right before me!”

Wulfgar was quick to block Bruenor’s path to Regis, though he was truly amazed at the sudden shift in the dwarf. He had never seen Bruenor so consumed by emotion. Catti-brie, too, looked on, stunned.

“‘Twas not the halfling’s fault,” she said. “And the wizards would’ve come anyway!”

Drizzt returned to them then. “No one has made the stair yet,” he said, but when he took a better notice of the situation, he realized that his words had not been heard.

A long and uncomfortable silence descended upon them, then Wulfgar took command. “We have come too far along this road to argue and fight among ourselves!” he scolded Bruenor.

Bruenor looked at him blankly, not knowing how to react to the uncharacteristic stand Wulfgar had taken against him. “Bah!” the dwarf said finally, throwing up his hands in frustration. “The fool halfling’ll get us killed…but not to worry!” he grumbled sarcastically, moving back to the wall to search for the door.

Drizzt looked curiously at the surly dwarf, but was more concerned with Regis at this point. The halfling, thoroughly miserable, had dropped to a sitting position and seemed to have lost all desire to go on. “Take heart,” Drizzt said to him. “Bruenor’s anger will pass. The essence of his dreams stands before him.”

“And about this assassin who seeks your head,” Wulfgar said, moving to join the two. “He shall find a mighty welcome when he gets here, if ever he does.” Wulfgar patted the head of his warhammer. “Perhaps we can change his mind about this hunt!”

“If we can get into the mines, our trail might be lost to them,” Drizzt said to Bruenor, trying to further soothe the dwarf’s anger.

“They’ll not make the stair,” said Catti-brie. “Even watching your climb down, I had trouble finding it!” .

“I would rather stand against them now!” Wulfgar declared. “They have much to explain, and they’ll not escape my punishment for the way they have treated Catti-brie!”

“Ware the assassin,” Catti-brie warned him. “His blades mean death, and no mistaking!”

“And a wizard can be a terrible foe,” added Drizzt. “We have a more important task before us—we do not need to take on fights that we can avoid.”

“No delays!” said Bruenor, ending any rebuttals from the big barbarian. “Mithril Hall stands before me, and I’m meaning to go in! Let them follow, if they dare.” He turned back to the wall to resume his search for the door, calling for Drizzt to join him. “Keep the watch, boy,” he ordered Wulfgar. “And see to me girl.”

“A word of opening, perhaps?” Drizzt asked when he stood alone again with Bruenor before the featureless wall.

“Aye,” said Bruenor, “there be a word. But the magic that holds to it leaves it after a while, and a new word must be named. None were here to name it!”

“Try the old word, then.”

“I have, elf, a dozen times when we first came here.” He banged his fist on the stone. “Another way there be, I know,” he growled in frustration.

“You will remember,” Drizzt assured him. And they set back to inspecting the wall.

Even the stubborn determination of a dwarf does not always pay off, and the night fell and found the friends sitting outside the entrance in the darkness, not daring to light a fire for fear of alerting their pursuers. Of all their trials on the road, the waiting so very close to their goal was possibly the most trying. Bruenor began to second-guess himself, wondering if this was even the correct place for the door. He recited the song he had learned as a child in Mithril Hall over and over, searching for some clues he might have missed.

The others slept uneasily, especially Catti-brie, who knew that the silent death of an assassin’s blade stalked them. They would not have slept at all, except that they knew that the keen, ever vigilant eyes of a drow elf watched over them.

A few miles down the trail behind them, a similar camp had been set. Entreri stood quietly, peering to the trails of the eastern mountains for signs of a campfire, though he doubted that the friends would be so careless as to light one if Catti-brie had found and warned them. Behind him, Sydney lay wrapped in a blanket upon the cool stone, resting and recovering from the blow Catti-brie had struck her.

The assassin had considered leaving her—normally he would have without a second thought—but Entreri needed to take some time anyway to regroup his thoughts and figure out his best course of action.

Dawn came and found him standing there still, unmoving and contemplative. Behind him, the mage awoke.

“Jierdan?” she called, dazed. Entreri stepped back and crouched over her.

“Where is Jierdan?” she asked.

“Dead,” Entreri answered, no hint of remorse in his voice. “As is the golem.”

“Bok?” Sydney gasped.

“A mountain fell on him,” Entreri replied.

“And the girl?”

“Gone.” Entreri looked back to the east. “When I have seen to your needs, I will go,” he said. “Our chase is ended.”

“They are close,” Sydney argued. “You will give up your hunt?”

Entreri grinned. “The halfling will be mine,” he said evenly, and Sydney had no doubt that he spoke the truth. “But our party is disbanded. I will return to my own hunt, and you to yours, though I warn you, if you take what is mine, you will mark yourself as my next prey.”

Sydney considered the words carefully. “Where did Bok fall?” she asked on a sudden thought.

Entreri looked along the trail to the east. “In a vale beyond the copse.”

“Take me there,” Sydney insisted. “There is something that must be done.”

Entreri helped her to her feet and led her along the path, figuring that he would part with her when she had put her final business to rest. He had come to respect this young mage and her dedication to her duty, and he trusted that she would not cross him. Sydney was no wizard, and no match for him, and they both knew that his respect for her would not slow his blade if she got in his way.

Sydney surveyed the rocky slope for a moment, then turned on Entreri, a knowing smile upon her face. “You say that our quest together is ended, but you are wrong. We may prove of value to you still, assassin.”

“We?”

Sydney turned to the slope. “Bok!” she called loudly and kept her gaze upon the slope.

A puzzled look crossed Entreri’s face. He, too, studied the stones, but saw no sign of movement.

“Bok!” Sydney called again, and this time there was indeed a stir. A rumble grew beneath the layer of boulders, and then one shifted and rose into the air, the golem standing beneath it, stretching into the air. Battered and twisted, but apparently feeling no pain, Bok tossed the huge stone aside and moved toward its master.

“A golem is not so easily destroyed,” Sydney explained, drawing satisfaction from the amazed expression on Entreri’s normally emotionless face. “Bok still has a road to travel, a road it will not so easily forsake.”

“A road that will again lead us to the drow,” Entreri laughed. “Come, my companion,” he said to Sydney, “let us be on with the chase.”

The friends still had found no clues when dawn came. Bruenor stood before the wall, shouting a tirade of arcane chants, most of which had nothing to do with words of opening.

Wulfgar took a different approach. Reasoning that a hollow echo would help them ensure that they had come to the correct spot, he moved methodically along with his ear to the wall, tapping with Aegis-fang. The hammer chimed off the solid stone, singing in the perfection of its crafting.

But one blow did not reach its mark. Wulfgar brought the hammer’s head in, but just as it reached the stone, it was stopped by a blanket of blue light. Wulfgar jumped back, startled. Creases appeared in the stone, the outline of a door. The rock continued to shift and slide inward, and soon it cleared the wall and slid aside, revealing the entry hall to the dwarven homeland. A gust of air, bottled up within for centuries and carrying the scents of ages past, rushed out upon them.

“A magic weapon!” cried Bruenor. “The only trade me people would accept at the mines!”

“When visitors came here, they entered by tapping the door with a magical weapon?” Drizzt asked.

The dwarf nodded, though his attention was now fixed squarely on the gloom beyond the wall. The chamber directly before them was unlit, except by the daylight shining through the open door, but down a corridor behind the entry hall, they could see the flicker of torches.

“Someone is here,” said Regis.

“Not so,” replied Bruenor, many of his long-forgotten images of Mithril Hall flooding back to him. “The torches ever burn, for the life of a dwarf and more.” He stepped through the portal, kicking dust that had settled untouched for two hundred years.

His friends gave him a moment alone, then solemnly joined him. All around the chamber lay the remains of many dwarves. A battle had been fought here, the final battle of Bruenor’s clan before they were expelled from their home.

“By me own eyes, the tales be true,” the dwarf muttered. He turned to his friends to explain. “The rumors that came down to Settlestone after me and the younger dwarves arrived there told of a great battle at the entry hall. Some went back to see what truth the rumors held, but they never returned to us.”

Bruenor broke off, and on his lead, the companions moved about to inspect the place. Dwarven-sized skeletons lay about in the same poses and places where they had fallen. Mithril armor, dulled by the dust but not rusted, and shining again with the brush of a hand, clearly marked the dead of Clan Battlehammer. Intertwined with those dead were other, similar skeletons in strangely crafted mail, as though the fighting had pitted dwarf against dwarf. It was a riddle beyond the surface-dwellers’ experience, but Drizzt Do’Urden understood. In the city of the dark elves, he had known the Duergar, the malicious gray dwarves, as allies. Duergar were the dwarven equivalent of the drow, and because their surface cousins sometimes delved deep into the earth, and into their claimed territory, the hatred between the dwarven races was even more intense than the clash between the races of elves. The Duergar skeletons explained much to Drizzt, and to Bruenor, who also recognized the strange armor, and who for the first time understood what had driven his kin out of Mithril Hall. If the gray ones were in the mines still, Drizzt knew, Bruenor would be hard-pressed to reclaim the place.

The magical door slid shut behind them, dimming the chamber even further. Catti-brie and Wulfgar moved close together for security, their eyes weak in the dimness, but Regis darted about, searching for the gems and other treasures that a dwarven skeleton might possess.

Bruenor had also seen something of interest. He moved over to two skeletons lying back to back. A pile of gray dwarves had fallen around them, and that alone told Bruenor who these two were, even before he saw the foaming mug crest upon their shields.

Drizzt moved behind him, but kept a respectable distance.

“Bangor, me father,” Bruenor explained. “And Garumn, me father’s father, King of Mithril Hall. Suren they took their toll before they fell!”

“As mighty as their next in line,” Drizzt remarked.

Bruenor accepted the compliment silently and bent to dust the dirt from Garumn’s helm. “Garumn wears still the armor and weapons of Bruenor, me namesake and the hero of me clan. Me guess is that they cursed this place as they died,” he said, “for the gray ones did not return and loot.”

Drizzt agreed with the explanation, aware of the power of the curse of a king when his homeland has fallen.

Reverently, Bruenor lifted Garumn’s remains and bore them into a side chamber. Drizzt did not follow, allowing the dwarf his privacy in this moment. Drizzt returned to Catti-brie and Wulfgar to help them comprehend the importance of the scene around them.

They waited patiently for many minutes, imagining the course of the epic battle that had taken place and their minds hearing clearly the sounds of axe on shield, and the brave war cries of Clan Battlehammer.

Then Bruenor returned and even the mighty images the friends’ minds had concocted fell short of the sight before them. Regis dropped the few baubles he had found in utter amazement, and in fear that a ghost from the past had returned to thwart him.

Cast aside was Bruenor’s battered shield. The dented and one-horned helm was strapped on his backpack. He wore the armor of his namesake, shining mithril, the mug standard on the shield of solid gold, and the helm ringed with a thousand glittering gemstones. “By me owns eyes, I proclaim the legends as true,” he shouted boldly, lifting the mithril axe high above him. “Garumn is dead and me father, too. Thus I claim me title: Eighth King of Mithril Hall!”

19. Shadows

“Garumn’s Gorge,” Bruenor said, drawing a line across the rough map he had scratched on the floor. Even though the effects of Alustriel’s potion had worn off, simply stepping inside the home of his youth had rekindled a host of memories in the dwarf. The exact location of each of the halls was not clear to him, but he had a general idea of the overall design of the place. The others huddled close to him, straining to see the etchings in the flickers of the torch that Wulfgar had retrieved from the corridor.

“We can get out on the far side,” Bruenor continued. “There’s a door, opening one way and for leaving only, beyond the bridge.”

“Leaving?” Wulfgar asked.

“Our goal was to find Mithril Hall,” Drizzt answered, playing the same argument he had used on Bruenor before this meeting. “If the forces that defeated Clan Battlehammer reside here still, we few would find reclaiming it an impossible task. We must take care that the knowledge of the hall’s location does not die in here with us.”

“I’m meaning to find out what we’re to face,” Bruenor added. “We mighten be going back out the door we came in; it’d open easy from the inside. Me thinking is to cross the top level and see the place out. I’m needing to know how much is left afore I call on me kin in the dale, and others if I must.” He shot Drizzt a sarcastic glance.

Drizzt suspected that Bruenor had more in mind than “seeing the place out,” but he kept quiet, satisfied that he had gotten his concerns through to the dwarf, and that Catti-brie’s unexpected presence would temper with caution all of Bruenor’s decisions.

“You will come back, then,” Wulfgar surmised.

“An army at me heels!” snorted Bruenor. He looked at Catti-brie and a measure of his eagerness left his dark eyes.

She read it at once. “Don’t ye be holding back for me!” she scolded. “Fought beside ye before, I have, and held me own, too! I didn’t want this road, but it found me and now I’m here with ye to the end!”

After the many years of training her, Bruenor could not now disagree with her decision to follow their chosen path. He looked around at the skeletons in the room. “Get yerself armed and armored then, and let’s be off—if we’re agreed.”

“‘Tis your road to choose,” said Drizzt. “For ‘tis your search. We walk beside you, but do not tell you which way to go.”

Bruenor smiled at the irony of the statement. He noted a slight glimmer in the drow’s eyes, a hint of their customary sparkle for excitement. Perhaps Drizzt’s heart for the adventure was not completely gone.

“I will go,” said Wulfgar. “I did not walk those many miles, to return when the door was found!”

Regis said nothing. He knew that he was caught up in the whirlpool of their excitement, whatever his own feelings might be. He patted the little pouch of newly acquired baubles on his belt and thought of the additions he might soon find if these halls were truly as splendid as Bruenor had always said. He honestly felt that he would rather walk the nine hells beside his formidable friends than go back outside and face Artemis Entreri alone.

As soon as Catti-brie was outfitted, Bruenor led them on. He marched proudly in his grandfather’s shining armor, the mithril axe swinging beside him, and the crown of the king firmly upon his head. “To Garumn’s Gorge!” he cried as they started from the entry chamber. “From there we’ll decide to go out, or down. Oh, the glories that lay before us, me friends. Pray that I be taking ye to them this time through!”

Wulfgar marched beside him, Aegis-fang in one hand and the torch in the other. He wore the same grim but eager expression. Catti-brie and Regis followed, less eager and more tentative, but accepting the road as unavoidable and determined to make the best of it.

Drizzt moved along the side, sometimes ahead of them, sometimes behind, rarely seen and never heard, though the comforting knowledge of his presence made them all step easier down the corridor.

The hallways were not smooth and flat, as was usually the case with dwarven construction. Alcoves jutted out on either side every few feet, some ending inches back, others slipping away into the darkness to join up with other whole networks of corridors. The walls all along the way were chipped and flaked with jutting edges and hollowed depressions, designed to enhance the shadowy effect of the ever-burning torches. This was a place of mystery and secret, where dwarves could craft their finest works in an atmosphere of protective seclusion.

This level was a virtual maze, as well. No outsider could have navigated his way through the endless number of splitting forks, intersections, and multiple passageways. Even Bruenor, aided by scattered images of his childhood and an understanding of the logic that had guided the dwarven miners who had created the place, chose wrong more often than right, and spent as much time backtracking as going forward.

There was one thing that Bruenor did remember, though. “Ware yer step,” he warned his friends. “The level ye walk upon is rigged for defending the halls, and a stoneworked trap’d be quick to send ye below!”

For the first stretch of their march that day, they came into wider chambers, mostly unadorned and roughly squared, and showing no signs of habitation. “Guard rooms and guest rooms,” Bruenor explained. “Most for Elmor and his kin from Settlestone when they came to collect the works for market.”

They moved deeper. A pressing stillness engulfed them, their footfalls and the occasional crackle of a torch the only sounds, and even these seemed stifled in the stagnant air. To Drizzt and Bruenor, the environment only enhanced their memories of their younger days spent under the surface, but for the other three, the closeness and the realization of tons of stone hanging over their heads was a completely foreign experience, and more than a little uncomfortable.

Drizzt slipped from alcove to alcove, taking extra care to test the floor before stepping in. In one shallow depression, he felt a sensation on his leg, and upon closer inspection found a slight draft flowing in through a crack at the base of the wall. He called his friends over.

Bruenor bent low and scratched his beard, knowing at once what the breeze meant, for the air was warm, not cool as an outside draft would be. He removed a glove and felt the stone. “The furnaces,” he muttered, as much to himself as to his friends.

“Then someone is below,” Drizzt reasoned.

Bruenor didn’t answer. It was a subtle vibration in the floor, but to a dwarf, so attuned to the stone, its message came as clear as if the floor had spoken to him; the grating of sliding blocks far below, the machinery of the mines.

Bruenor looked away and tried to realign his thoughts, for he had nearly convinced himself, and had always hoped, that the mines would be empty of any organized group and easy for the taking. But if the furnaces were burning, those hopes were flown.

“Go to them. Show them the stair,” Dendybar commanded.

Morkai studied the wizard for a long moment. He knew that he could break free of Dendybar’s weakening hold and disobey the command. Truly Morkai was amazed that Dendybar had dared to summon him again so soon, for the wizard’s strength had obviously not yet returned. The mottled wizard hadn’t yet reached the point of exhaustion, upon which Morkai could strike at him, but Dendybar had indeed lost most of his power to compel the specter.

Morkai decided to obey this command. He wanted to keep this game with Dendybar going for as long as possible. Dendybar was obsessed with finding the drow, and would undoubtedly call upon Morkai another time soon. Perhaps then the mottled wizard would be weaker still.

“And how are we to get down?” Entreri asked Sydney. Bok had led them to the rim of Keeper’s Dale, but now they faced the sheer drop.

Sydney looked to Bok for the answer, and the golem promptly started over the edge. Had she not stopped it, it would have dropped off the cliff. The young mage looked at Entreri with a helpless shrug.

They then saw a shimmering blur of fire, and the specter; Morkai, stood before them once again. “Come,” he said to them. “I am bid to show you the way.”

Without another word, Morkai led them to the secret stair, then faded back into flames and was gone.

“Your master proves to be of much assistance,” Entreri remarked as he took the first step down.

Sydney smiled, masking her fears. “Four times, at least,” she whispered to herself, figuring the instances when Dendybar had summoned the specter. Each time Morkai had seemed more relaxed in carrying out his appointed mission. Each time Morkai had seemed more powerful. Sydney moved to the stair behind Entreri. She hoped that Dendybar would not call upon the specter again—for all their sakes.

When they had descended to the gorge’s floor, Bok led them right to the wall and the secret door. As if realizing the barrier that it faced, it stood patiently out of the way, awaiting further instructions from the mage.

Entreri ran his fingers across the smooth rock, his face close against it as he tried to discern any substantial crack in it.

“You waste your time,” Sydney remarked. “The door is dwarven crafted and will not be found by such inspection.”

“If there is a door,” replied the assassin.

“There is,” Sydney assured him. “Bok followed the drow’s trail to this spot, and knows that it continues through the wall. There is no way that they could have diverted the golem from the path.”

“Then open your door,” Entreri sneered. “They move farther from us with each moment!”

Sydney took a steadying breath and rubbed her hands together nervously. This was the first time since she had left the Hosttower that she had found opportunity to use her magical powers, and the extra spell energy tingled within her, seeking release.

She moved through a string of distinct and precise gestures, mumbled several lines of arcane words, then commanded, “Bausin saumine!” and threw her hands out in front of her, toward the door.

Entreri’s belt immediately unhitched, dropping his saber and dagger to the ground.

“Well done,” he remarked sarcastically, retrieving his weapons.

Sydney looked at the door, perplexed. “It resisted my spell,” she said, observing the obvious. “Not unexpected from a door of dwarven crafting. The dwarves use little magic themselves, but their ability to resist the spellcastings of others is considerable.”

“Where do we turn?” hissed Entreri. “There is another entrance, perhaps?”

“This is our door,” Sydney insisted. She turned to Bok and snarled, “Break it down!” Entreri jumped far aside when the golem moved to the wall.

Its great hands pounding like battering rams, Bok slammed the wall, again and again, heedless of the damage to its own flesh. For many seconds, nothing happened, just the dull thud of the fists punching the stone.

Sydney was patient. She silenced Entreri’s attempt to argue their course and watched the relentless golem at work. A crack appeared in the stone, and then another. Bok knew no weariness; its tempo did not slow.

More cracks showed, then the clear outline of the door. Entreri squinted his eyes in anticipation.

With one final punch, Bok drove its hand through the door, splitting it asunder and reducing it to a pile of rubble.

For the second time that day, the second time in nearly two hundred years, the entry chamber of Mithril Hall was bathed in daylight.

“What was that?” Regis whispered after the echoes of the banging had finally ended.

Drizzt could guess easily enough, though with the sound bouncing at them from the bare rock walls in every direction, it was impossible to discern the direction of its source.

Catti-brie had her suspicions, too, remembering well the broken wall in Silverymoon.

None of them said anything more about it. In their situation of ever-present danger, echoes of a potential threat in the distance did not spur them to action. They continued on as though they had heard nothing, except that they walked even more cautiously, and the drow kept himself more to the rear of the party.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Bruenor sensed danger huddling in around them, watching them, poised to strike. He could not be certain if his fears were justified, or if they were merely a reaction to his knowledge that the mines were occupied and to his rekindled memories of the horrible day, when his clan had been driven out.

He forged ahead, for this was his homeland, and he would not surrender it again.

At a jagged section of the passageway, the shadows lengthened into a deeper, shifting gloom.

One of them reached out and grabbed Wulfgar.

A sting of deathly chill shivered into the barbarian. Behind, him, Regis screamed, and suddenly moving blots of darkness danced all around the four.

Wulfgar, too stunned to react, was hit again. Catti-brie charged to his side, striking into the blackness with the short sword she had picked up in the entry hall. She felt a slight bite as the blade knifed through the darkness, as though she had hit something that was somehow not completely there. She had no time to ponder the nature of her weird foe, and she kept flailing away.

Across the corridor, Bruenor’s attacks were even more desperate. Several black arms stretched out to strike the dwarf at once, and his furious parries could not connect solidly enough to push them away. Again and again he felt the stinging coldness as the darkness grasped him.

Wulfgar’s first instinct when he had recovered was to strike with Aegis-fang, but recognizing this, Catti-brie stopped him with a yell. “The torch!” she cried. “Put the light into the darkness!”

Wulfgar thrust the flame into the shadows’ midst. Dark shapes recoiled at once, slipping away from the revealing brightness. Wulfgar moved to pursue and drive them even farther away, but he tripped over the halfling, who was huddled in fear, and fell to the stone.

Catti-brie scooped up the torch and waved it wildly to keep the monsters at bay.

Drizzt knew these monsters. Such things were commonplace in the realms of the drow, sometimes even allied with his people. Calling again on the powers of his heritage, he conjured magical flames to outline the dark shapes, then charged in to join the fight.

The monsters appeared humanoid, as the shadows of men might appear, though their boundaries constantly shifted and melded with the gloom about them. They outnumbered the companions, but their greatest ally, the concealment of darkness, had been stolen by the drow’s flames. Without the disguise, the living shadows had little defense against the party’s attacks and they quickly slipped away through nearby cracks in the stone.

The companions wasted no more time in the area either. Wulfgar hoisted Regis from the ground and followed Bruenor and Catti-brie as they sped down the passageway, Drizzt lingering behind to cover their retreat.

They had put many turns and halls behind them before Bruenor dared to slow the pace. Disturbing questions again hovered about the dwarf’s thoughts, concerns about his entire fantasy of reclaiming Mithril Hall, and even about the wisdom in bringing his dearest friends into the place. He looked at every shadow with dread now, expecting a monster at each turn.

Even more subtle was the emotional shift that the dwarf had experienced. It had been festering within his subconscious since he had felt the vibrations on the floor, and now the fight with the monsters of darkness had pushed it to completion. Bruenor accepted the fact that he no longer felt as though he had returned home, despite his earlier boastings. His memories of the place, good memories of the prosperity of his people in the early days, seemed far removed from the dreadful aura that surrounded the fortress now. So much had been despoiled, not the least of which were the shadows of the ever-burning torches. Once representative of his god, Dumathoin, the Keeper of Secrets, the shadows now merely sheltered the denizens of darkness.

All of Bruenor’s companions sensed the disappointment and frustration that he felt. Wulfgar and Drizzt, expecting as much before they had ever entered the place, understood better than the others and were now even more concerned. If, like the crafting of Aegis-fang, the return to Mithril Hall represented a pinnacle in Bruenor’s life—and they had worried about his reaction assuming the success of their quest—how crushing would be the blow if the journey proved disastrous?

Bruenor pushed onward, his vision narrowed upon the path to Garumn’s Gorge and the exit. On the road these long weeks, and when he had first entered the halls, the dwarf had every intention of staying until he had taken back all that was rightfully his, but now all of his senses cried to him to flee the place and not return.

He felt that he must at least cross the top level, out of respect for his long dead kin, and for his friends, who had risked so much in accompanying him this far. And he hoped that the revulsion he felt for his former home would pass, or at least that he might find some glimmer of light in the dark shroud that encompassed the halls. Feeling the axe and shield of his heroic namesake warm in his grasp, he steeled his bearded chin and moved on.

The passageway sloped down, with fewer halls and side corridors. Hot drafts rose up all through this section, a constant torment to the dwarf, reminding him of what lay below. The shadows were less imposing here, though, for the walls were carved smoother and squared. Around a sharp turn, they came to a great stone door, its singular slab blocking the entire corridor.

“A chamber?” Wulfgar asked, grasping the heavy pull ring.

Bruenor shook his head, not certain of what lay beyond. Wulfgar pulled the door open, revealing another empty stretch of corridor that ended in a similarly unmarked door.

“Ten doors,” Bruenor remarked, remembering the place again. “Ten doors on the down slope,” he explained. “Each with a locking bar behind it.” He reached inside the portal and pulled down a heavy metal rod, hinged on one end, so that it could be easily dropped across the locking latches on the door. “And beyond the ten, ten more going up, and each with a bar on th’ other side.”

“So if ye fled a foe, either way, ye’d lock the doors behind ye,” reasoned Catti-brie. “Meeting in the middle with yer kin from the other side.”

“And between the center doors, a passage to the lower levels,” added Drizzt, seeing the simple but effective logic behind the defensive structure.

“The floor’s holding a trap door,” Bruenor confirmed.

“A place to rest, perhaps,” said the drow.

Bruenor nodded and started on again. His recollections proved accurate, and a few minutes later, they passed through the tenth door and into a small, oval-shaped room, facing a door with the locking bar on their side. In the very center of the room was a trap door, closed for many years, it seemed, and also with a bar to lock it shut. All along the room’s perimeter loomed the familiar darkened alcoves.

After a quick search to ensure that the room was safe, they secured the exits and began stripping away some of their heavy gear, for the heat had become oppressive and the stuffiness of the unmoving air weighed in upon them.

“We have come to the center of the top level,” Bruenor said absently. “Tomorrow we’re to be finding the gorge.”

“Then where?” Wulfgar asked, the adventurous spirit within him still hoping for a deeper plunge into the mines.

“Out, or down,” Drizzt answered, emphasizing the first choice enough to make the barbarian understand that the second was unlikely. “We shall know when we arrive.”

Wulfgar studied his dark friend for some hint of the adventurous spirit he had come to know, but Drizzt seemed nearly as resigned to leaving as Bruenor. Something about this place had diffused the drow’s normally unstoppable verve. Wulfgar could only guess that Drizzt, too, battled unpleasant memories of his past in a similarly dark place.

The perceptive young barbarian was correct. The drow’s memories of his life in the underworld had indeed fostered his hopes that they might soon leave Mithril Hall, but not because of any emotional upheaval he was experiencing upon his return to his childhood realm. What Drizzt now remembered keenly about Menzoberranzan were the dark things that lived in dark holes under the earth. He felt their presence here in the ancient dwarven halls, horrors beyond the surface dwellers’ imagination. He didn’t worry for himself. With his drow heritage, he could face these monsters on their own terms. But his friends, except perhaps the experienced dwarf, would be at a sorry disadvantage in such fighting, ill-equipped to battle the monsters they would surely face if they remained in the mines.

And Drizzt knew that eyes were upon them.

Entreri crept up and put his ear against the door, as he had nine times before. This time, the clang of a shield being dropped to the stone brought a smile to his face. He turned back to Sydney and Bok and nodded.

He had at last caught his prey.

The door they had entered shuddered from the weight of an incredible blow. The companions, just settled in after their long march, looked back in amazement and horror just as the second blow fell and the heavy stone splintered and broke away. The golem crashed into the oval room, kicking Regis and Catti-brie aside before they could even reach for their weapons.

The monster could have squashed both of them right there, but its target, the goal that pulled at all of its senses, was Drizzt Do’Urden. It rushed by the two into the middle of the room to locate the drow.

Drizzt hadn’t been so surprised, slipping into the shadows on the side of the room and now making his way toward the broken door to secure it against further entry. He couldn’t hide from the magical detections that Dendybar had bestowed upon the golem, though, and Bok turned toward him almost immediately.

Wulfgar and Bruenor met the monster head on.

Entreri entered the chamber right after Bok, using the commotion caused by the golem to slip unnoticed through the door and off into the shadows in a manner strikingly similar to the drow. As they approached the midpoint of the oval room’s wall, each was met by a shadow so akin to his own that he had to stop and take measure of it before he engaged.

“So at last I meet Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri hissed.

“The advantage is yours,” replied Drizzt, “for I know naught of you.”

“Ah, but you will, black elf!” the assassin said, laughing. In a blur, they came together, Entreri’s cruel saber and jeweled dagger matching the speed of Drizzt’s whirring scimitars.

Wulfgar pounded his hammer into the golem with all his might, the monster, distracted by its pursuit of the drow, not even raising a pretense of defense. Aegis-fang knocked it back, but it seemed not to notice, and started again toward its prey. Bruenor and Wulfgar looked at each other in disbelief and drove in on it again, hammer and axe flailing.

Regis lay, unmoving against the wall, stunned by the kick of Bok’s heavy foot. Catti-brie, though, was back up on one knee, her sword in hand. The spectacle of grace and skill of the combatants along the wall held her in check for a moment.

Sydney, just outside the doorway, was likewise distracted, for the battle between the dark elf and Entreri was unlike anything she had ever seen, two master swordsmen weaving and parrying in absolute harmony.

Each anticipated the other’s movements exactly, countering the other’s counter, back and forth in a battle that seemed as though it could know no victor. One appeared the reflection of the other, and the only thing that kept the onlookers aware of the reality of the struggle was the constant clang of steel against steel as scimitar and saber came ringing together. They moved in and out of the shadows, seeking some small advantage in a fight of equals. Then they slipped into the darkness of one of the alcoves.

As soon as they disappeared from sight, Sydney remembered her part in the battle. Without further delay, she drew a thin wand from her belt and took aim on the barbarian and the dwarf. As much as she would have liked to see the battle between Entreri and the dark elf played out to its end, her duty told her to free up the golem and let it take the drow quickly.

Wulfgar and Bruenor dropped Bok to the stone, Bruenor ducking between the monster’s legs while Wulfgar slammed his hammer home, toppling Bok over the dwarf.

Their advantage was short-lived. Sydney’s bolt of energy sliced into them, its force hurling Wulfgar backward into the air. He rolled to his feet near the opposite door, his leather jerkin scorched and smoking, and his entire body tingling in the aftermath of the jolt.

Bruenor was slammed straight down to the floor and he lay there for a long moment. He wasn’t too hurt—dwarves are as tough as mountain stone and especially resistant to magic—but a specific rumble that he heard while his ear was against the floor demanded his attention. He remembered that sound vaguely from his childhood, but couldn’t pinpoint its exact source.

He did know, though, that it foretold doom.

The tremor grew around them, shaking the chamber, even as Bruenor lifted his head. The dwarf understood. He looked helplessly to Drizzt and yelled, “Ware elf!” the second before the trap sprang and part of the alcove’s floor fell away.

Only dust emerged from where the drow and the assassin had been. Time seemed to freeze for Bruenor, who, was fixated upon that one horrible moment. A heavy block dropped from the ceiling in the alcove, stealing the very last of the dwarf’s futile hopes.

The execution of the stonework trap only multiplied the violent tremors in the chamber. Walls cracked apart, chunks of stone shook loose from the ceiling. From one doorway, Sydney cried for Bok, while at the other, Wulfgar threw the locking bar aside and yelled for his friends.

Catti-brie leaped to her feet and rushed to the fallen halfling. She dragged him by the ankles toward the far door, calling for Bruenor to help.

But the dwarf was lost in the moment, staring vacantly at the ruins of the alcove.

A wide crack split the floor of the chamber, threatening to cut off their escape. Catti-brie gritted her teeth in determination and charged ahead, making the safety of the hallway. Wulfgar screamed for the dwarf, and even started back for him.

Then Bruenor rose and moved toward them—slowly, his head down, almost hoping in his despair that a crack would open beneath him and drop him into a dark hole.

And put an end to his intolerable grief.

20. End of a Dream

When the last tremors of the cave-in had finally died away, the four remaining friends picked their way through the rubble and the veil of dust back to the oval chamber. Heedless of the piles of broken stone and the great cracks in the floor that threatened to swallow them up, Bruenor scrambled into the alcove, the others close on his heels.

No blood or any other sign of the two master swordsmen was anywhere to be found, just the mound of rubble covering the hole of the stonework trap. Bruenor could see the edgings of darkness beneath the pile, and he called out to Drizzt. His reason told him, against his heart and hopes, that the drow could not hear, that the trap had taken Drizzt from him.

The tear that rimmed his eye dropped to his cheek when he spotted the lone scimitar, the magical blade that Drizzt had plundered from a dragon’s lair, resting against the ruins of the alcove. Solemnly, he picked it up and slid it into his belt.

“Alas for ye, elf,” he cried into the destruction. “Ye deserved a better end.” If the others had not been so caught up in their own reflections at that moment, they would have noticed the angry undertone to Bruenor’s mourning. In the face of the loss of his dearest and most trusted friend, and already questioning the wisdom of continuing through the halls before the tragedy, Bruenor found his grief muddled with even stronger feelings of guilt. He could not escape the part he had played in bringing about the dark elf’s fall. He remembered bitterly how he had tricked Drizzt into joining the quest, feigning his own death and promising an adventure the likes of which none of them had ever seen.

He stood now, quietly, and accepted his inner torment.

Wulfgar’s grief, was equally deep, and uncomplicated by other feelings. The barbarian had lost one of his mentors, the warrior who had transformed him from a savage, brutish warrior to a calculating and cunning fighter.

He had lost one of his truest friends. He would have followed Drizzt to the bowels of the Abyss in search of adventure. He firmly believed that the drow would one day get them into a predicament from which they could not escape, but when he was fighting beside Drizzt, or competing against his teacher, the master, he felt alive, existing on the very dangerous edge of his limits. Often Wulfgar had envisioned his own death beside the drow, a glorious finish that the bards would write and sing about long after the enemies who had slain the two friends had turned to dust in unmarked graves.

That was an end the young barbarian did not fear.

“Ye’ve found yer peace now, me friend,” Catti-brie said softly, understanding the drow’s tormented existence better than anyone. Catti-brie’s perceptions of the world were more attuned to Drizzt’s sensitive side, the private aspect of his character that his other friends could not see beneath his stoic features. It was the part of Drizzt Do’Urden that had demanded he leave Menzoberranzan and his evil race, and had forced him into a role as an outcast. Catti-brie knew the joy of the drow’s spirit, and the unavoidable pain he had suffered at the snubbings of those who could not see that spirit for the color of his skin.

She realized, too, that both the causes of good and evil had lost a champion this day, for in Entreri Catti-brie saw the mirror-image of Drizzt. The world would be better for the loss of the assassin.

But the price was too high.

Any relief that Regis might have felt at the demise of Entreri was lost in the swirling mire of his anger and sorrow. A part of the halfling had died in that alcove. No longer would he have to run—Pasha Pook would pursue him no more—but for the first time in his entire life Regis had to accept some consequences for his actions. He had joined up with Bruenor’s party knowing that Entreri would be close behind, and understanding the potential danger to his friends.

Ever the confident gambler, the thought of losing this challenge had never entered his head. Life was a game that he played hard and to the edge, and never before had he been expected to pay for his risks. If anything in the world could temper the halfling’s obsession with chance, it was this, the loss of one of his few true friends because of a risk he had chosen to take.

“Farewell, my friend,” he whispered into the rubble. Turning to Bruenor, he then said, “Where do we go? How do we get out of this terrible place?”

Regis hadn’t meant the remark as an accusation, but forced into a defensive posture by the mire of his own guilt, Bruenor took it as such and struck back. “Ye did it yerself!” he snarled at Regis. “Ye bringed the killer after us!” Bruenor took a threatening step forward, his face contorted by mounting rage and his hands whitened by the intensity of their clench.

Wulfgar, confused by this sudden pulse of anger, moved a step closer to Regis. The halfling did not back away, but made no move to defend himself, still not believing that Bruenor’s anger could be so consuming.

“Ye thief!” Bruenor roared. “Ye go along picking yer way with no concern for what yer leaving behind—and yer friends pay for it!” His anger swelled with each word, again almost a separate entity from the dwarf, gaining its own momentum and strength.

His next step would have brought him right up to Regis, and his motion showed them all clearly that he meant to strike, but Wulfgar stepped between the two and halted Bruenor with an unmistakable glare.

Broken from his angry trance by the barbarian’s stern posture, Bruenor realized then what he was about to do. More than a little embarrassed, he covered his anger beneath his concern for their immediate survival and turned away to survey the remains of the room. Few, if any, of their supplies had survived the destruction. “Leave the stuff; no time for wasting!” Bruenor told the others, clearing the choked growls from his throat. “We’re to be putting this foul place far behind us!”

Wulfgar and Catti-brie scanned the rubble, searching for something that could be salvaged and not so ready to agree with Bruenor’s demands that they press on without any supplies. They quickly came to the same conclusion as the dwarf, though, and with a final salute to the ruins of the alcove, they followed Bruenor back into the corridor.

“I’m meaning to make Garumn’s Gorge afore the next rest,” Bruenor exclaimed. “So ready yerselves for a long walk.”

“And then where?” Wulfgar asked, guessing, but not liking, the answer.

“Out!” Bruenor roared. “Quick as we can!” He glared at the barbarian, daring him to argue.

“To return with the rest of your kin beside us?” Wulfgar pressed.

“Not to return,” said Bruenor. “Never to return!”

“Then Drizzt has died in vain!” Wulfgar stated bluntly. “He sacrificed his life for a vision that will never be fulfilled.”

Bruenor paused to steady himself in the face of Wulfgar’s sharp perception. He hadn’t looked at the tragedy in that cynical light, and he didn’t like the implications. “Not for nothing!” he growled at the barbarian. “A warning it is to us all to be gone from the place. Evil’s here, thick as orcs on mutton! Don’t ye smell it, boy? Don’t yer eyes and nose tell ye to be gone from here?”

“My eyes tell me of the danger,” Wulfgar replied evenly. “As often they have before. But I am a warrior and pay little heed to such warnings!”

“Then ye’re sure to be a dead warrior,” Catti-brie put in.

Wulfgar glared at her. “Drizzt came to help take back Mithril Hall, and I shall see the deed done!”

“Ye’ll die trying,” muttered Bruenor, the anger off his voice now. “We came to find me home, boy, but this is not the place. Me people once lived here, ‘tis true, but the darkness that creeped into Mithril Hall has put an end to me claim on it. I’ve no wish to return once I’m clear of the stench of the place, know that in yer stubborn head. It’s for the shadows now, and the gray ones, and may the whole stinkin’ place fall in on their stinkin’ heads!”

Bruenor had said enough. He turned abruptly on his heel and stamped off down the corridor, his heavy boots pounding into the stone with uncompromising determination.

Regis and Catti-brie followed closely, and Wulfgar, after a moment to consider the dwarf’s resolve, trotted to catch up with them.

Sydney and Bok returned to the oval chamber as soon as the mage was certain the companions had left. Like the friends before her, she made her way to the ruined alcove and stood for a moment reflecting on the effect this sudden turn of events would have on her mission. She was amazed at the depth of her sorrow for the loss of Entreri, for though she didn’t fully trust the assassin and suspected that he might actually be searching for the same powerful artifact she and Dendybar sought, she had come to respect him. Could there have been a better ally when the fighting started?

Sydney didn’t have a lot of time to mourn for Entreri, for the loss of Drizzt Do’Urden conjured more immediate concerns for her own safety. Dendybar wasn’t likely to take the news lightly, and the mottled wizard’s talent at punishment was widely acknowledged in the Hosttower of the Arcane.

Bok waited for a moment, expecting some command from the mage, but when none was forthcoming, the golem stepped into the alcove and began removing the mound of rubble.

“Stop,” Sydney ordered.

Bok kept on with its chore, driven by its directive to continue its pursuit of the drow.

“Stop!” Sydney said again, this time with more conviction. “The drow is dead, you stupid thing!” The blunt statement forced her own acceptance of the fact and set her thoughts into motion. Bok did stop and turn to her, and she waited a moment to sort out the best course of action.

“We will go after the others,” she said offhandedly, as much trying to enlighten her own thoughts with the statement as to redirect the golem. “Yes, perhaps, if we deliver the dwarf and the other companions to Dendybar he will forgive our stupidity in allowing the drow to die.”

She looked to the golem, but of course its expression had not changed to offer any encouragement.

“It should have been you in the alcove,” Sydney muttered, her sarcasm wasted on the thing. “Entreri could at least offer some suggestions. But no matter, I have decided. We shall follow the others and find the time when we might take them. They will tell us what we need to know about the Crystal Shard!”

Bok remained motionless, awaiting her signal. Even with its most basic of thought patterns, the golem understood that Sydney best knew how they could complete their mission.

The companions moved through huge caverns, more natural formations than dwarf-carved stone. High ceilings and walls stretched out into the blackness, beyond the glow of the torches, leaving the friends dreadfully aware of their vulnerability. They kept close together as they marched, imagining a host of gray dwarves watching them from the unlit reaches of the caverns, or expecting some horrid creature to swoop down upon them from the darkness above.

The ever-present sound of dripping water paced them with its rhythm, its “plip, plop” echoing through every hall, accentuating the emptiness of the place.

Bruenor remembered this section of the complex well, and found himself once again deluged by long-forgotten images of his past. These were the Halls of Gathering, where all of Clan Battlehammer would come together to hear the words of King Garumn, or to meet with important visitors. Battle plans were laid here, and strategies set for commerce with the outside world. Even the youngest dwarves were present at the meetings, and Bruenor recalled fondly the many times he had sat beside his father, Bangor, behind his grandfather, King Garumn, with Bangor pointing out the king’s techniques for capturing the audience, and instructing the young Bruenor in the arts of leadership that he would one day need.

The day he became King of Mithril Hall.

The solitude of the caverns weighed heavily on the dwarf, who had heard them ring out in the common cheering and chanting of ten-thousand dwarves. Even if he were to return with all of the remaining members of the clan, they would fill only a tiny corner of one chamber.

“Too many gone,” Bruenor said into the emptiness, his soft whisper louder than he had intended in the echoing stillness. Catti-brie and Wulfgar, concerned for the dwarf and scrutinizing his every action, noted the remark and could easily enough guess the memories and emotions that had prompted it. They looked to each other and Catti-brie could see that the edge of Wulfgar’s anger at the dwarf had dissipated in a rush of sympathy.

Hall after great hall loomed up with only short corridors connecting them. Turns and side exits broke off every few feet, but Bruenor felt confident that he knew the way to the gorge. He knew, too, that anyone below would have heard the crashing of the stonework trap and would be coming to investigate. This section of the upper level, unlike the areas they had left behind, had many connecting passages to the lower levels. Wulfgar doused the torch and Bruenor led them on under the protective dimness of the gloom.

Their caution soon proved prudent, for as they entered yet another immense cavern, Regis grabbed Bruenor by the shoulder, stopping him, and motioned for all of them to be silent. Bruenor almost burst out in rage, but saw at once the sincere look of dread on Regis’s face.

His hearing sharpened by years of listening for the click of a lock’s tumblers, the halfling had picked out a sound in the distance other than the dripping of water. A moment later, the others caught it, too, and soon they identified it as the marching steps, of many booted feet. Bruenor took them into a dark recess where they watched and waited.

They never saw the passing host clearly enough to count its numbers or identify its members, but they could tell by the number of torches crossing the far end of the cavern that they were outnumbered by at least ten to one, and they could guess the nature of the marchers.

“Gray ones, or me mother’s a friend of orcs,” Bruenor grumbled. He looked at Wulfgar to see if the barbarian had any further complaints about his decision to leave Mithril Hall.

Wulfgar accepted the stare with a conceding nod. “How far to Garumn’s Gorge?” he asked, fast becoming as resigned to leaving as the others. He still felt as though he was deserting Drizzt, but he understood the wisdom of Bruenor’s choice. It grew obvious now that if they remained, Drizzt Do’Urden would not be the only one of them to die in Mithril Hall.

“An hour to the last passage,” Bruenor answered. “Another hour, no more, from there.”

The host of gray dwarves soon cleared the cavern and the companions started off again, using even more caution and dreading each shuffling footfall that thumped the floor harder than intended.

His memories coming clearer with each passing step, Bruenor knew exactly where they were, and made for the most direct path to the gorge, meaning to be out of the halls as quickly as possible. After many minutes of walking, though, he came across a side passage that he simply could not pass by. Every delay was a risk, he knew, but the temptation emanating from the room at the end of this short corridor was too great for him to ignore. He had to discover how far the despoilment of Mithril Hall had gone; he had to learn if the most treasured room of the upper level had survived.

The friends followed him without question and soon found themselves standing before a tall, ornate metal door inscribed with the hammer of Moradin, the greatest of the dwarven gods, and a series of runes beneath it. Bruenor’s heavy breathing belied his calmness.

“Herein lie the gifts of our friends,” Bruenor read solemnly, “and the craftings of our kin. Know ye as ye enter this hallowed hall that ye look upon the heritage of Clan Battlehammer. Friends be welcome, thieves beware!” Bruenor turned to his companions, beads of nervous sweat on his brow. “The Hall of Dumathoin,” he explained.

“Two hundred years of your enemies in the halls,” Wulfgar reasoned. “Surely it has been pillaged.”

“Not so,” said Bruenor. “The door is magicked and would not open for enemies of the clan. A hundred traps are inside to take the skin from a gray one who was to get through!” He glared at Regis, his gray eyes narrowed in a stern warning. “Watch to yer own hands, Rumblebelly. Mighten be that a trap won’t know ye to be a friendly thief!”

The advice seemed sound enough for Regis to ignore the dwarf’s biting sarcasm. Unconsciously admitting the truth of Bruenor’s words, the halfling slipped his hands into his pockets.

“Fetch a torch from the wall,” Bruenor told Wulfgar. “Me thoughts tell me that no lights burn within.”

Before Wulfgar even returned to them, Bruenor began opening the huge door. It swung easily under the push of the hands of a friend, swinging wide into a short corridor that ended in a heavy black curtain. A pendulum blade hung ominously in the center of the passage, a pile of bones beneath it.

“Thieving dog,” Bruenor chuckled with grim satisfaction. He stepped by the blade and moved to the curtain, waiting for all of his friends to join him before he entered the chamber.

Bruenor paused, mustering the courage to open the last barrier to the hall, sweat glistening on all the friends’ faces now as the dwarf’s anxiety swept through them.

With a determined grunt, Bruenor pulled the curtain aside. “Behold the Hall of Duma—” he began, but the words stuck in his throat as soon as he looked beyond the opening. Of all the destruction they had witnessed in the halls, none was more complete than this. Mounds of stone littered the floor. Pedestals that had once held the finest works of the clan lay broken apart, and others had been trampled into dust.

Bruenor stumbled in blindly, his hands shaking and a great scream of outrage lumped in his throat. He knew before he even looked upon the entirety of the chamber that the destruction was complete.

“How?” Bruenor gasped. Even as he asked, though, he saw the huge hole in the wall. Not a tunnel carved, around the blocking door, but a gash in the stone, as though some incredible ram had blasted through.

“What power could have done such a thing?” Wulfgar asked, following the line of the dwarf’s stare to the hole.

Bruenor moved over, searching for some clue, Catti-brie and Wulfgar with him. Regis headed the other way, just to see if anything of value remained.

Catti-brie caught a rainbowlike glitter on the floor and moved to what she thought was a puddle of some dark liquid. Bending close, though, she realized that it wasn’t liquid at all, but a scale, blacker than the blackest night and nearly the size of a man. Wulfgar and Bruenor rushed to her side at the sound of her gasp.

“Dragon!” Wulfgar blurted, recognizing the distinctive shape. He grasped the thing by its edge and hoisted it upright to better inspect it. Then he and Catti-brie turned to Bruenor to see if he had any knowledge of such a monster.

The dwarf’s wide-eyed, terror-stricken stare answered their question before it was asked.

“Blacker than the black,” Bruenor whispered, speaking again the most common words of that fateful day those two hundred years ago. “Me father told me of the thing,” he explained to Wulfgar and Catti-brie. “A demon-spawned dragon, he called it, a darkness blacker than the black. ‘Twas not the gray ones that routed us—we would’ve fought them head on to the last. The dragon of darkness took our numbers and drove us from the halls. Not one in ten remained to stand against its foul hordes in the smaller halls at th’ other end.”

A hot draft of air from the hole reminded them that it probably connected to the lower halls, and the dragon’s lair.

“Let’s be leaving,” Catti-brie suggested, “afore the beast gets a notion that we’re here.”

Regis then cried out from the other side of the chamber. The friends rushed to him, not knowing if he had stumbled upon treasure or danger.

They found him crouched beside a pile of stone, peering into a gap in the blocks.

He held up a silver-shafted arrow. “I found it in there,” he explained. “And there’s something more—a bow, I think.”

Wulfgar moved the torch closer to the gap and they all saw clearly the curving arc that could only be the wood of a longbow, and the silvery shine of a bowstring. Wulfgar grasped the wood and tugged lightly, expecting it to break apart in his hands under the enormous weight of the stone.

But it held firmly, even against a pull of all his strength. He looked around at the stones, seeking the best course to free the weapon.

Regis, meanwhile, had found something more, a golden plaque wedged in another crack in the pile. He managed to slip it free and brought it into the torchlight to read its carved runes.

“ ‘Taulmaril the Heartseeker,’ “ he read. “ ‘Gift of—’ “

“Anariel, Sister of Faerun,” Bruenor finished without even looking at the plaque. He nodded in recognition to Catti-brie’s questioning glance.

“Free the bow, boy,” he told Wulfgar. “Suren it might be put to a better use than this.”

Wulfgar had already discerned the structure of the pile and started lifting away specific blocks at once. Soon Catti-brie was able to wiggle the longbow free, but she saw something else beyond its nook in the pile and asked Wulfgar to keep digging.

While the muscled barbarian pushed aside more stones, the others marveled at the beauty of the bow. Its wood hadn’t even been scratched by the stones and the deep finish of its polish returned with a single brush of the hand. Catti-brie strung it easily and held it up, feeling its solid and even draw.

“Test it,” Regis offered, handing her the silver arrow.

Catti-brie couldn’t resist. She fitted the arrow to the silvery string and drew it back, meaning only to try its fit and not intending to fire.

“A quiver!” Wulfgar called, lifting the last of the stones. “And more of the silver arrows.”

Bruenor pointed into the blackness and nodded. Catti-brie didn’t hesitate.

A streaking tail of silver followed the whistling missile as it soared into the darkness, ending its flight abruptly with a crack. They all rushed after it, sensing something beyond the ordinary. They found the arrow easily, for it was buried halfway to its fletches in the wall!

All about its point of entry, the stone had been scorched, and even tugging with all of his might, Wulfgar couldn’t budge the arrow an inch.

“Not to fret,” said Regis, counting the arrows in the quiver that Wulfgar held. “There are nineteen…twenty more!” He backed away, stunned. The others looked at him in confusion.

“Nineteen, there were,” Regis explained. “My count was true.”

Wulfgar, not understanding, quickly counted the arrows. “Twenty,” he said.

“Twenty now,” Regis answered. “But nineteen when I first counted.”

“So the quiver holds some magic, too,” Catti-brie surmised. “A mighty gift, indeed, the Lady Anariel gave to the clan!”

“What more might we find in the ruins of this place?” Regis asked, rubbing his hands together.

“No more,” Bruenor answered gruffly. “We’re for leaving, and not a word of arguin’ from ye!”

Regis knew with a look at the other two that he had no support against the dwarf, so he shrugged helplessly and followed them back through the curtain and into the corridor.

“The gorge!” Bruenor declared, starting them off again.

“Hold, Bok,” Sydney whispered when the companions’ torchlight re-entered the corridor a short distance ahead of them.

“Not yet,” she said, an anticipating smile widening across her dust-streaked face. “We shall find a better time!”

21. Silver in the Shadows

Suddenly, he found a focus in the blur of gray haze, something tangible amid the swirl of nothingness. It hovered before him and turned over slowly.

Its edges doubled and rolled apart, then rushed together again. He fought the dull ache in his head, the inner blackness that had consumed him and now fought to keep him in its hold. Gradually, he became aware of his arms and legs, who he was, and how he had come to be here.

In his startled awareness, the image sharpened to a crystalline focus. The tip of a jeweled dagger.

Entreri loomed above him, a dark silhouette against the backdrop of a single torch set into the wall a few yards beyond, his blade poised to strike at the first sign of resistance. Drizzt could see that the assassin, too, had been hurt in the fall, though he had obviously been the quicker to recover.

“Can you walk?” Entreri asked, and Drizzt was smart enough to know what would happen if he could not.

He nodded and moved to rise, but the dagger shot in closer.

“Not yet,” Entreri snarled. “We must first determine where we are, and where we are to go!”

Drizzt turned his concentration away from the assassin then and studied their surroundings, confident that Entreri would have already killed him if that was the assassin’s intent. They were in the mines, that much was apparent, for the walls were roughly carved stone supported by wooden columns every twenty feet or so.

“How far did we fall?” he asked the assassin, his senses telling him that they were much deeper than the room they had fought in.

Entreri shrugged. “I remember landing on hard stone after a short drop, and then sliding down a steep and twisting chute. It seemed like many moments before we finally dropped in here.” He pointed to an opening at the corner of the ceiling, where they had fallen through. “But the flow of time is different for a man thinking he is about to die, and the whole thing may have been over much more quickly than I remember.”

“Trust in your first reaction,” Drizzt suggested, “for my own perceptions tell me that we have descended a long way indeed.”

“How can we get out?”

Drizzt studied the slight grade in the floor and pointed to his right. “The slope is up to that direction,” he said.

“Then on your feet,” Entreri said, extending a hand to help the drow.

Drizzt accepted the assistance and rose cautiously and without giving any sign of a threat. He knew that Entreri’s dagger would cut him open long before he could strike a blow of his own.

Entreri knew it, too, but didn’t expect any trouble from Drizzt in their present predicament. They had shared more than an exchange of swordplay up in the alcove, and both looked upon the other with grudging respect.

“I need your eyes,” Entreri explained, though Drizzt had already figured as much. “I have found but one torch, and that will not last long enough to get me out of here. Your eyes, black elf, can find their way in the darkness. I will be close enough to feel your every move, close enough to kill you with a single thrust!” He turned the dagger over again to emphasize his point, but Drizzt understood him well enough without the visual aid.

When he got to his feet, Drizzt found that he wasn’t as badly injured as he had feared. He had twisted his ankle and knee on one leg and knew as soon as he put any weight upon it that every step would be painful. He couldn’t let on to Entreri, though. He wouldn’t be much of an asset to the assassin if he couldn’t keep up.

Entreri turned to retrieve the torch and Drizzt took a quick look at his equipment. He had seen one of his scimitars tucked into Entreri’s belt, but the other, the magical blade, was nowhere around. He felt one of his daggers still tucked into a hidden sheath in his boot, though he wasn’t sure how much it would help him against the saber and dagger of his skilled enemy. Facing Entreri with any kind of a disadvantage was a prospect reserved only for the most desperate situation.

Then, in sudden shock, Drizzt grabbed at his belt pouch, his fear intensifying when he saw that its ties were undone. Even before he had slipped his hand inside, he knew that Guenhwyvar was gone. He looked about frantically, and saw only the fallen rubble.

Noting his distress, Entreri smirked evilly under the cowl of his cloak. “We go,” he told the drow.

Drizzt had no choice. He certainly couldn’t tell Entreri of the magical statue and take the risk that Guenhwyvar would once again fall into the possession of an evil master. Drizzt had rescued the great panther from that fate once, and would rather that it remained forever buried under the tons of stone than return to an unworthy master’s hands. A final mourning glance at the rubble, and he stoically accepted the loss, taking comfort that the cat lived, quite unharmed, on its own plane of existence.

The tunnel supports drifted past them with disturbing regularity, as though they were passing the same spot again and again. Drizzt sensed that the tunnel was arcing around in a wide circle as it slightly climbed. This made him even more nervous. He knew the prowess of dwarves in tunneling, especially where precious gems or metals were concerned, and he began to wonder how many miles they might have to walk before they even reached the next highest level.

Although he had less keen underground perception and was unfamiliar with dwarven ways, Entreri shared the same uneasy feelings. An hour became two and still the line of wooden supports stretched away into the blackness.

“The torch burns low,” Entreri said, breaking the silence that had surrounded them since they had started. Even their footfalls, the practiced steps of stealthy warriors, died away in the closeness of the low passage. “Perhaps the advantage will shift to you, black elf.”

Drizzt knew better. Entreri was a creature of the night as much as he, with heightened reflexes and ample experience to more than compensate for his lack of vision in the blackness. Assassins did not work under the light of the midday sun.

Without answering, Drizzt turned back to the path ahead, but as he was looking around, a sudden reflection of the torch caught his eye. He moved to the corridor wall, ignoring Entreri’s uneasy shuffle behind him, and started feeling the surface’s texture, and peered intently at it in hopes of seeing another flash. It came for just a second as Entreri shifted behind him, a flicker of silver along the wall.

“Where silver rivers run,” he muttered in disbelief.

“What?” demanded Entreri.

“Bring the torch,” was Drizzt’s only reply. He moved his hands eagerly over the wall now, seeking the evidence that would overcome his own stubborn logic and vindicate Bruenor from his suspicions that the dwarf had exaggerated the tales of Mithril Hall.

Entreri was soon beside him, curious. The torch showed it clearly: a stream of silver running along the wall, as thick as Drizzt’s forearm and shining brightly in its purity.

“Mithril,” Entreri said, gawking. “A king’s hoard!”

“But of little use to us,” Drizzt said, to diffuse their excitement. He started again down the hall, as though the lode of mithril did not impress him. Somehow he felt that Entreri should not look upon this place, that the assassin’s mere presence fouled the riches of Clan Battlehammer. Drizzt did not want to give the assassin any reason to seek these halls again. Entreri shrugged and followed.

The grade in the passageway became more apparent as they went along, and the silvery reflections of the mithril veins reappeared with enough regularity to make Drizzt wonder if Bruenor may have even understated the prosperity of his clan.

Entreri, always no more than a step behind the drow, was too intent upon watching his prisoner to take much notice of the precious metal, but he understood well the potential that surrounded him. He didn’t care much for such ventures himself, but knew that the information would prove valuable and might serve him well in future bargaining.

Before long the torch died away, but the two found that they could still see, for a dim light source was somewhere up ahead, beyond the turns of the tunnel. Even so, the assassin closed the gap between he and Drizzt, putting the dagger tip against Drizzt’s back and taking no chances of losing his only hope of escape if the light faded completely.

The glow only brightened, for its source was great indeed. The air grew warmer around them and soon they heard the grinding of distant machinery echoing down the tunnel. Entreri tightened his reins even further, grasping Drizzt’s cloak and pulling himself closer. “You are as much an intruder here as I,” he whispered. “Avoidance is ally to both of us.”

“Could the miners prove worse than the fate you offer?” Drizzt asked with a sarcastic sigh.

Entreri released the cloak and backed away. “It seems I must offer you something more to ensure your agreement,” he said.

Drizzt studied him closely, not knowing what to expect. “Every advantage is yours,” he said.

“Not so,” replied the assassin. Drizzt stood perplexed as Entreri slid his dagger back into its sheath. “I could kill you, I agree, but to what gain? I take no pleasure in killing.”

“But murder does not displease you,” Drizzt retorted.

“I do as I must,” Entreri said, dismissing the biting comment under a veil of laughter.

Drizzt recognized this man all too well. Passionless and pragmatic, and undeniably skilled in the ways of dealing death. Looking at Entreri, Drizzt saw what he himself might have become if he had remained in Menzoberranzan among his similarly amoral people. Entreri epitomized the tenets of drow society, the selfish heartlessness that had driven Drizzt from the bowels of the world in outrage. He eyed the assassin squarely, detesting every inch of the man, but somehow unable to detach himself from the empathy he felt.

He had to make a stand for his principles now, he decided, just as he had those years ago in the dark city. “You do as you must,” he spat in disgust, disregarding the possible consequences. “No matter the cost.”

“No matter the cost,” Entreri echoed evenly, his self-satisfying smile distorting the insult into a compliment. “Be glad that I am so practical, Drizzt Do’Urden, else you would never have awakened from your fall.

“But enough of this worthless arguing. I have a deal to offer you that might prove of great benefit to us both.” Drizzt remained silent and gave no hints to the level of his interest.

“Do you know why I am here?” Entreri asked.

“You have come for the halfling.”

“You are in error,” replied Entreri. “Not for the halfling, but for the halfling’s pendant. He stole it from my master, though I doubt that he would have admitted as much to you.”

“I guess more than I am told,” Drizzt said, ironically leading into his next suspicion. “Your master seeks vengeance as well, does he not?”

“Perhaps,” said Entreri without a pause. “But the return of the pendant is paramount. So I offer this to, you: We shall work together to find the road back to your friends. I offer my assistance on the journey and your life in exchange for the pendant. Once we are there, persuade the halfling to surrender it to me and I shall go on my way and not return. My master retrieves his treasure and your little friend lives out the rest of his life without looking over his shoulder.”

“On your word?” Drizzt balked.

“On my actions,” Entreri retorted. He pulled the scimitar from his belt and tossed it to Drizzt. “I have no intentions of dying in these forsaken mines, drow, nor do you, I would hope.”

“How do you know I will go along with my part when we rejoin my companions?” asked Drizzt, holding the blade out before him in inspection, hardly believing the turn of events.

Entreri laughed again. “You are too honorable to put such doubts in my mind, dark elf. You will do as you agree, of that I am certain! A bargain, then?”

Drizzt had to admit the wisdom of Entreri’s words. Together, they stood a fair chance of escaping from the lower levels. Drizzt wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to find his friends, not for the price of a pendant that usually got Regis into more trouble than it was worth. “Agreed,” he said.

The passageway continued to brighten at each turn, not with flickering light, as with torches, but in a continuous glow. The noise of machinery increased proportionately and the two had to shout to each other to be understood.

Around a final bend, they came to the abrupt end of the mine, its last supports opening into a huge cavern. They moved tentatively through the supports and onto a small ledge that ran along the side of a wide gorge—the great undercity of Clan Battlehammer.

Luckily they were on the top level of the chasm, for both walls had been cut into huge steps right down to the floor, each one holding rows of the decorated doorways that had once marked the entrances to the houses of Bruenor’s kin. The steps were mostly empty now, but Drizzt, with the countless tales Bruenor had told to him, could well imagine the past glory of the place. Ten thousand dwarves, untiring in their passion for their beloved work, hammering at the mithril and singing praises to their gods.

What a sight that must have been! Dwarves scrambling from level to level to show off their latest work, a mithril item of incredible beauty and value. And yet, judging from what Drizzt knew of the dwarves in Icewind Dale, even the slightest imperfection would send the artisans scurrying back to their anvils, begging their gods for forgiveness and the gift of skill sufficient to craft a finer piece. No race in all the Realms could claim such pride in their work as the dwarves, and the folk of Clan Battlehammer were particular even by the standards of the bearded people.

Now only the very floor of the chasm bustled in activity, for, hundreds of feet below them and stretching off in either direction, loomed the central forges of Mithril Hall, furnaces hot enough to melt the hard metal from the mined stone. Even at this height Drizzt and Entreri felt the searing heat, and the intensity of the light made them squint. Scores of squat workers darted about, pushing barrows of ore or fuel for the fires. Duergar, Drizzt assumed, though he couldn’t see them clearly in the glare from this height.

Just a few feet to the right of the tunnel exit, a wide, gently arching ramp spiraled down to the next lower step. To the left, the ledge moved on along the wall, narrow and not designed for casual passage, but farther down its course, Drizzt could see the black silhouette of a bridge arching across the chasm.

Entreri motioned him back into the tunnel. “The bridge seems our best route,” the assassin said. “But I am wary of moving out across the ledge with so many about.”

“We have little choice,” Drizzt reasoned. “We could backtrack and search for some of the side corridors that we passed, but I believe them to be no more than extensions of the mine complex and I doubt that they would lead us back even this far.”

“We must go on,” Entreri agreed. “Perhaps the noise and glare will provide us ample cover.” Without further delay, he slipped out onto the ledge and began making his way to the dark outline of the chasm bridge, Drizzt right behind.

Although the ledge was no more than two feet wide at any point and much narrower than that at most, the nimble fighters had no trouble navigating it. Soon they stood before the bridge, a narrow walk of stone arching over the bustle below.

Creeping low, they moved out easily. When they crossed the midpoint and began the descent down the back half of the arch, they saw a wider ledge running along the chasm’s other wall. At the end of the bridge loomed a tunnel, torchlit like the ones they had left on the upper level. To the left of the entrance, several small shapes, Duergar, stood huddled in conversation, taking no notice of the area. Entreri looked back at Drizzt with a sneaky smile and pointed to the tunnel.

As silent as cats and invisible in the shadows, they crossed into the tunnel, the group of Duergar oblivious to their passing.

Wooden supports rolled past the two easily now as they took up a swift gait, leaving the undercity far behind. Roughhewn walls gave them plenty of shadowy protection in the torchlight, and as the noise of the workers behind them dimmed to a distant murmur they relaxed a bit and began looking ahead to the prospect of meeting back up with the others.

They turned a bend in the tunnel and nearly ran over a lone Duergar sentry.

“What’re yer fer?” the sentry barked, mithril broadsword gleaming with each flicker of the torchlight. His armor, too, chain mail, helm, and shining shield, were of the precious metal, a king’s treasure to outfit a single soldier!

Drizzt passed his companion and motioned for Entreri to hold back. He didn’t want a trail of bodies to follow their escape route. The assassin understood that the black elf might have some luck in dealing with this other denizen of the underworld. Not wanting to let on that he was human, and possibly hinder the credibility of whatever story Drizzt had concocted, he hitched his cloak up over his face.

The sentry jumped back a step, his eyes wide in amazement when he recognized Drizzt as a drow. Drizzt scowled at him and did not reply.

“Er…what might ye be doin’ in the mines?” the Duergar asked, rephrasing both his question and tone politely.

“Walking,” Drizzt replied coldly, still feigning anger at the gruff greeting he had initially received.

“And…uh…who might ye be?” stuttered the guard.

Entreri studied the gray dwarf’s obvious terror of Drizzt. It appeared that the drow carried even more fearful respect among the races of the underworld than among the surface dwellers. The assassin made a mental note of this, determined to deal with Drizzt even more cautiously in the future.

“I am Drizzt Do’Urden, of the house of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, ninth family of the throne to Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt said, seeing no reason to lie.

“Greetings!” cried the sentry, overly anxious to gain the favor of the stranger. “Mucknuggle, I be, of Clan Bukbukken.” He bowed low, his gray beard sweeping the floor. “Not often do we greet guests in the mines. Be it someone ye seek? Or something that I could be helpin’ ye with?”

Drizzt thought for a moment. If his friends had survived the cave-in, and he had to go on his hopes that they had, they would be making for Garumn’s Gorge. “My business here is complete,” he told the Duergar. “I am satisfied.”

Mucknuggle looked at him curiously. “Satisfied?”

“Your people have delved too deep,” Drizzt explained. “You have disturbed one of our tunnels with your digging. Thus we have come to investigate this complex, to ensure that it is not again inhabited by enemies of the drow. I have seen your forges, gray one, you should be proud.”

The sentry straightened his belt and sucked in his belly. Clan Bukbukken was indeed proud of its setup, though they had in truth stolen the entire operation from Clan Battlehammer. “And ye’re satisfied, ye say. Then where might ye be headin’ now, Drizzt Do’Urden? T’see the boss?”

“Who would I seek if I were?”

“Ain’t ye not heared o’ Shimmergloom?” answered Mucknuggle with a knowing chuckle. “The Drake o’ Darkness, he be, black as black and fiercer than a pinstuck demon! Don’t know ‘ow he’ll take to drow elves in his mines, but we’ll be seein’!”

“I think not,” replied Drizzt. “I have learned all that I came to learn, and now my trail leads home. I shan’t disturb Shimmergloom, nor any of your hospitable clan again.”

“Me thinkin’s that ye’re goin’ to the boss,” said Mucknuggle, drawing more courage from Drizzt’s politeness and from the mention of his mighty leader’s name. He folded his gnarly arms across his chest, the mithril sword resting most visibly on the shining shield.

Drizzt resumed his scowl and poked a finger into the fabric under his cloak, pointing in the Duergar’s direction. Mucknuggle noted the move, as did Entreri, and the assassin nearly fell back in confusion at the reaction of the Duergar. A noticeable ashen pall came over Mucknuggle’s already gray features and he stood perfectly still, not even daring to draw breath.

“My trail leads home,” Drizzt said again.

“Home, it do!” cried Mucknuggle. “Mighten I be of some help in findin’ the way? The tunnels get rightly mixed up back that way.”

Why not? Drizzt thought, figuring their chances would be better if they at least knew the quickest route. “A chasm,” he told Mucknuggle. “In the time before Clan Bukbukken, we heard it named as Garumn’s Gorge.”

“Shimmergloom’s Run it is now,” Mucknuggle corrected. “The left tunnel at the next fork,” he offered, pointing down the hallway. “And a straight run from there.”

Drizzt didn’t like the sound of the gorge’s new name. He wondered what monster his friends might find waiting for them if they reached the gorge. Not wanting to waste any more time, he nodded to Mucknuggle and walked past. The Duergar was all too willing to let him by without further conversation, stepping, as far aside as he could.

Entreri looked back at Mucknuggle as they passed and saw him wiping nervous sweat from his brow. “We should have killed him,” he told Drizzt when they were safely away. “He will bring his kin after us.”

“No faster than a dead body, or a missing sentry would have set off a general alarm,” replied Drizzt. “Perhaps a few will come to confirm his tale, but at least we now know the way out. He would not have dared to lie to me, in fear that my inquiry was just a test of the truth of his words. My people have been known to kill for such lies.”

“What did you do to him?” Entreri asked.

Drizzt couldn’t help but chuckle at the ironic benefits of his people’s sinister reputation. He poked the finger under the fabric of his cloak again. “Envision a crossbow small enough to fit into your pocket,” he explained. “Would it not make such an impression when pointed at a target? The drow are well known for such crossbows.”

“But how deadly could so small a bolt prove against a suit of mithril?” Entreri asked, still not understanding why the threat had been so effective.

“Ah, but the poison,” Drizzt smirked, moving away down the corridor.

Entreri stopped and grinned at the obvious logic. How devious and merciless the drow must be to command so powerful a reaction to so simple a threat! It seemed that their deadly reputation was not an exaggeration.

Entreri found that he was beginning to admire these black elves.

The pursuit came faster than they had expected, despite their swift pace. The stamp of boots sounded loudly and then disappeared, only to reappear at the next turn even closer than before. Side-passages, Drizzt and Entreri both understood, cursing every turn in their own twisting tunnel. Finally, when their pursuers were nearly upon them, Drizzt stopped the assassin.

“Just a few,” he said, picking out each individual footfall.

“The group from the ledge,” Entreri surmised. “Let us make a stand. But be quick, there are more behind them, no doubt!” The excited light that came into the assassin’s eyes seemed dreadfully familiar to Drizzt.

He didn’t have time to ponder the unpleasant implications. He shook them from his head, regaining full concentration for the business at hand, then pulled the hidden dagger out of his boot—no time for secrets from Entreri now—and found a shadowed recess on the tunnel wall. Entreri did likewise, positioning himself a few feet farther down from the drow and across the corridor.

Seconds passed slowly with only the faint shuffle of boots. Both companions held their breath and waited patiently, knowing that they had not been passed by.

Suddenly the sound multiplied as the Duergar came rushing out of a secret door and into the main tunnel.

“Can’t be far now!” Drizzt and Entreri heard one of them say.

“The drake’ll be feedin’ us well fer this catch!” hooted another.

All clad in shining mail and wielding mithril weapons, they rounded the last bend and came into sight of the hidden companions.

Drizzt looked at the dull steel of his scimitar and considered how precise his strikes must be against armor of mithril. A resigned sigh escaped him as he wished that he now held his magical weapon.

Entreri saw the problem, too, and knew that they had to somehow balance the odds. Quickly he pulled a pouch of coins from his belt and hurled it farther down the corridor. It sailed through the gloom and clunked into the wall where the tunnel twisted again.

The Duergar band straightened as one. “Just ahead!” one of them cried, and they bent low to the stone and charged for the next bend. Between the waiting drow and assassin.

The shadows exploded into movement and fell over the stunned gray dwarves. Drizzt and Entreri struck together, seizing the moment of best advantage, when the first of the band had reached the assassin and the last was passing Drizzt.

The Duergar shrieked in surprised horror. Daggers, saber, and scimitar danced all about them in a flurry of flashing death, poking at the seams of their armor, seeking an opening through the unyielding metal. When they found one, they drove the point home with merciless efficiency.

By the time the Duergar recovered from the initial shock of the attack, two lay dead at the drow’s feet, a third at Entreri’s, and yet another stumbled away, holding his belly in with a blood-soaked hand.

“Back to back!” Entreri shouted, and Drizzt, thinking the same strategy, had already begun quick-stepping his way through the disorganized dwarves. Entreri took another one down just as they came together, the unfortunate Duergar looking over its shoulder at the approaching drow just long enough for the jeweled dagger to slip through the seam at the base of its helmet.

Then they were together, back against back, twirling in the wake of each other’s cloak and maneuvering their weapons in blurred movements so similar that the three remaining Duergar hesitated before their attack to sort out where one enemy ended and the other began.

With cries to Shimmergloom, their godlike ruler, they came on anyway.

Drizzt scored a series of hits at once that should have felled his opponent, but the armor was of tougher stuff than the steel scimitar and his thrusts were turned aside. Entreri, too, had trouble finding an opening to poke through against the mithril mail and shields.

Drizzt turned one shoulder in and let the other fall away from his companion. Entreri understood and followed the drow’s lead, dipping around right behind him.

Gradually their circling gained momentum, as synchronous as practiced dancers, and the Duergar did not even try to keep up. Opponents changed continually, the drow and Entreri coming around to parry away the sword or axe that the other had blocked on the last swing. They let the rhythm hold for a few turns, allowed the Duergar to fall into the patterns of their dance, and then, Drizzt still leading, stuttered their steps, and even reversed the flow.

The three Duergar, evenly spaced about the pair, did not know which direction would bring the next attack.

Entreri, practically reading the drow’s every thought by this point, saw the possibilities. As he moved away from one particularly confused dwarf, he feigned a reversed attack, freezing the Duergar just long enough for Drizzt, coming in from the other side, to find an opening.

“Take him!” the assassin cried in victory.

The scimitar did its work.

Now they were two against two. They stopped the dance and faced off evenly.

Drizzt swooped about his smaller foe with a sudden leap and shuffle along the wall. The Duergar, intent on the killing blades of the drow, hadn’t noticed Drizzt’s third weapon join the fray.

The gray dwarf’s surprise was only surmounted by his anticipation of the coming fatal blow when Drizzt’s trailing cloak floated in and fell over him, enshrouding him in a blackness that would only deepen into the void of death.

Contrary to Drizzt’s graceful technique, Entreri worked with sudden fury, tying up his dwarf with undercuts and lightning-fast counters, always aimed at the weapon hand. The gray dwarf understood the tactic as his fingers began to numb under the nicks of several minor hits.

The Duergar overcompensated, turning his shield in to protect the vulnerable hand.

Exactly as Entreri had expected. He rolled around opposite the movement of his opponent, finding the back of the shield, and a seam in the mithril armor just beneath the shoulder. The assassin’s dagger drove in furiously, taking a lung and hurling the Duergar to the stone floor. The gray dwarf lay there, hunched up on one elbow, and gasped out his final breaths.

Drizzt approached the final dwarf, the one who had been wounded in the initial attack, leaning against the wall only a few yards away, torchlight reflecting grotesque red off the pool of blood below him. The dwarf still had fight in him. He raised his broadsword to meet the drow.

It was Mucknuggle, Drizzt saw, and a silent plea of mercy came into the drow’s mind and took the fiery glow from his eyes.

A shiny object, glittering in the hues of a dozen distinct gemstones, spun by Drizzt and ended his internal debate.

Entreri’s dagger buried deep into Mucknuggle’s eye.

The dwarf didn’t even fall, so clean was the blow. He just held his position, leaning against the stone. But now the blood pool was fed from two wounds.

Drizzt stopped himself cold in rage and did not even flinch as the assassin walked coolly by to retrieve the weapon.

Entreri pulled the dagger out roughly then turned to face Drizzt as Mucknuggle tumbled down to splash in the blood.

“Four to four,” the assassin growled. “You did not believe that I would let you get the upper count?”

Drizzt did not reply, nor blink.

Both felt the sweat in their palms as they clutched their weapons, a pull upon them to complete what they had started in the alcove above.

So alike, yet so dramatically different.

The rage at Mucknuggle’s death did not play upon Drizzt at that moment, no more than to further confirm his feelings about his vile companion. The longing he held to kill Entreri went far deeper than the anger he might hold for any of the assassin’s foul deeds. Killing Entreri would mean killing the darker side of himself, Drizzt believed, for he could have been as this man. This was the test of his worth, a confrontation against what he might have become. If he had remained among his kin, and often were the times that he considered his decision to leave their ways and their dark city a feeble attempt to distort the very order of nature, his own dagger would have found Mucknuggle’s eye.

Entreri looked upon Drizzt with equal disdain. What potential he saw in the drow! But tempered by an intolerable weakness. Perhaps in his heart the assassin was actually envious for the capacity for love and compassion that he recognized in Drizzt. So much akin to him, Drizzt only accentuated the reality of his own emotional void.

Even if those feelings were truly within, they would never gain a perch high enough to influence Artemis Entreri. He had spent his life building himself into an instrument for killing, and no shred of light could ever cut through that callous barrier of darkness. He meant to prove, to himself and to the drow, that the true fighter has no place for weakness.

They were closer now, though neither of them knew which one had moved, as if unseen forces were acting upon them. Weapons twitched in anticipation, each waiting for the other to show his hand.

Each wanting the other to be the first to yield to their common desire, the ultimate challenge of the tenets of their existence.

The stamp of booted feet broke the spell.

22. The Dragon of Darkness

At the heart of the lower levels, in an immense cavern of uneven and twisting walls pocketed with deep shadows, and a ceiling too high for the light of the brightest fire to find, rested the present ruler of Mithril Hall, perched upon a solid pedestal of the purest mithril that rose from a high and wide mound of coins and jewelry, goblets and weapons, and countless other items pounded from the rough blocks of mithril by the skilled hands of dwarven craftsmen.

Dark shapes surrounded the beast, huge dogs from its own world, obedient, long-lived, and hungry for the meat of human or elf, or anything else that would give them the pleasure of their gory sport before the kill.

Shimmergloom was not now amused. Rumblings from above foretold of intruders, and a band of Duergar spoke of murdered kin in the tunnels and whispered rumors that a drow elf had been seen.

The dragon was not of this world. It had come from the Plane of Shadows, a dark image of the lighted world, unknown to the dwellers here except in the less substantial stuff of their blackest nightmares. Shimmergloom had been of considerable standing there, old even then, and in high regard among its dragon kin that ruled the plane. But when the foolish and greedy dwarves that once inhabited these mines had delved into deep holes of sufficient darkness to open a gate to its plane, the dragon had been quick to come through. Now possessing a treasure tenfold beyond the greatest of its own plane, Shimmergloom had no intentions of returning.

It would deal with the intruders.

For the first time since the routing of Clan Battlehammer, the baying of the shadow hounds filled the tunnels, striking dread even into the hearts of their gray dwarf handlers. The dragon sent them west on their mission, up toward the tunnels around the entry hall in Keeper’s Dale, where the companions had first entered the complex. With their powerful maws and incredible stealth, the hounds were indeed a deadly force, but their mission now was not to catch and kill—only to herd.

In the first fight for Mithril Hall, Shimmergloom alone had routed the miners in the lower caverns and in some of the huge chambers on the eastern end of the upper level. But final victory had escaped the dragon, for the end had come in the western corridors, too tight for its scaly bulk.

The beast would not miss the glory again. It set its minions in motion, to drive whoever or whatever had come into the halls toward the only entrance that it had to the upper levels: Garumn’s Gorge.

Shimmergloom stretched to the limit of its height and unfolded its leathery wings for the first time in nearly two hundred years, blackness flowing out under them as they extended to the sides. Those Duergar who had remained in the throne room fell to their knees at the sight of their rising lord, partly in respect, but mostly in fear.

The dragon was gone, gliding down a secret tunnel at the back of the chamber, to where it had once known glory, the place its minions had named Shimmergloom’s Run in praise of their lord.

A blur of indistinguishable darkness, it moved as silently as the cloud of blackness that followed.

Wulfgar worried just how low he would be crouching by the time they reached Garumn’s Gorge, for the tunnels became dwarven sized as they neared the eastern end of the upper level. Bruenor knew this as a good sign, the only tunnels in the complex with ceilings below the six foot mark were those of the deepest mines and those crafted for defense of the gorge.

Faster than Bruenor had hoped, they came upon the secret door to a smaller tunnel breaking off to the left, a spot familiar to the dwarf even after his two-century absence. He ran his hand across the unremarkable wall beneath the torch and its telltale red sconce, searching for the brailed pattern that would lead his fingers to the precise spot. He found one triangle, then another, and followed their lines to the central point, the bottommost point in the valley between the peaks of the twin-mountains that they signified, the symbol of Dumathoin, the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain. Bruenor pushed with a single finger, and the wall fell away, opening yet another low tunnel. No light came from this one, but a hollow sound, like the wind across a rock face, greeted them.

Bruenor winked at them knowingly and started right in, but slowed when he saw the runes and sculpted reliefs carved into the walls. All along the passage, on every surface, dwarven artisans had left their mark. Bruenor swelled with pride, despite his depression, when he saw the admiring expressions upon his friends’ faces.

A few turns later they came upon a portcullis, lowered and rusted, and beyond it saw the wideness of another huge cavern.

“Garumn’s Gorge,” Bruenor proclaimed, moving up to the iron bars. “‘Tis said ye can throw a torch off the rim and it’ll burn out afore ever it hits.”

Four sets of eyes looked through the gate in wonder. If the journey through Mithril Hall had been a disappointment to them, for they had not yet seen the grander sights Bruenor had often told them of, the sight before them now made up for it. They had reached Garumn’s Gorge, though it seemed more a full-sized canyon than a gorge, spanning hundreds of feet across and stretching beyond the limits of their sight. They were above the floor of the chamber, with a stairway running down to the right on the other site of the portcullis. Straining to poke as much of their heads as they could through the bars, they could see the light of another room at the base of the stairs, and hear clearly the ruckus of several Duergar.

To the left, the wall arced around to the edge, though the chasm continued on beyond the bordering wall of the cavern. A single bridge spanned the break, an ancient work of stone fitted so perfectly that its slight arch could still support an army of the hugest mountain giants.

Bruenor studied the bridge carefully, noting that something about its understructure did not seem quite right. He followed the line of a cable across the chasm, figuring it to continue under the stone flooring and connect to a large lever sticking up from a more recently constructed platform across the way. Two Duergar sentries milled about the lever, though their lax attitude spoke of countless days of boredom.

“They’ve rigged the thing to fall!” Bruenor snorted.

The others immediately understood what he was talking about. “Is there another way across, then?” Catti-brie asked.

“Aye,” replied the dwarf. “A ledge to the south end of the gorge. But hours o’ walking, and the only way to it is through this cavern!”

Wulfgar grasped the iron bars of the portcullis and tested them. They held fast, as he suspected. “We could not get through these bars, anyway,” he put in. “Unless you know where we might find their crank.”

“Half a day’s walking,” Bruenor replied, as though the answer, perfectly logical to the mindset of a dwarf protecting his treasures, should have been obvious. “The other way.”

“Fretful folk,” Regis said under his breath.

Catching the remark, Bruenor growled and grabbed Regis by the collar, hoisting him from the ground and pressing their faces together. “Me people are a careful lot,” he snarled, his own frustration and confusion boiling out again in his misdirected rage. “We like to keep what’s our own to keep, especially from little thieves with little fingers and big mouths.”

“Suren there’s another way in,” Catti-brie reasoned, quick to diffuse the confrontation.

Bruenor dropped the halfling to the floor. “We can get to that room,” he replied, indicating the lighted area at the base of the stairs.

“Then let’s be quick,” Catti-brie demanded. “If the noise of the cave-in called out alarms, the word might not have reached this far.”

Bruenor led them back down the small tunnel swiftly, and back to the corridor behind the secret door.

Around the next bend in the main corridor, its walls, too, showing the runes and sculpted reliefs of the dwarven craftsmen, Bruenor was again engulfed in the wonder of his heritage and quickly lost all thoughts of anger at Regis. He heard again in his mind the ringing of hammers in Garumn’s day, and the singing of common gatherings. If the foulness that they had found here, and the loss of Drizzt, had tempered his fervent desire to reclaim Mithril Hall, the vivid recollections that assaulted him as he moved along this corridor worked to refuel those fires.

Perhaps he would return with his army, he thought. Perhaps the mithril would again ring out in the smithies of Clan Battlehammer.

Thoughts of regaining his people’s glory suddenly rekindled, Bruenor looked around to his friends, tired, hungry, and grieving for the drow, and reminded himself that the mission before him now was to escape the complex and get them back to safety.

A more intense glow ahead signaled the end of the tunnel. Bruenor slowed their pace and crept along to the exit cautiously. Again the companions found themselves on a stone balcony, overlooking yet another corridor, a huge passageway, nearly a chamber in itself, with a high ceiling and decorated walls. Torches burned every few feet along both sides, running parallel below them.

A lump welled in Bruenor’s throat when he looked upon the carvings lining the opposite wall across the way, great sculpted bas reliefs of Garumn and Bangor, and of all the patriarchs of Clan Battlehammer. He wondered, and not for the first time, if his own bust would ever take its place alongside his ancestors’.

“Half-a-dozen to ten, I make them,” Catti-brie whispered, more intent on the clamor rolling out of a partly opened door down to the left, the room they had seen from their perch in the chamber of the gorge. The companions were fully twenty feet above the floor of the larger corridor. To the right, a stairway descended to the floor, and beyond it the tunnel wound its way back into the great halls.

“Side rooms where others might be hiding?” Wulfgar asked Bruenor.

The dwarf shook his head. “One anteroom there be, and only one,” he answered. “But more rooms lay within the cavern of Garumn’s Gorge. Whether they be filled with gray ones or no, we cannot know. But no mind to them; we’re to get through this room, and through the door across its way to come to the gorge.”

Wulfgar slapped his hammer into a fighting grip. “Then let us go,” he growled, starting for the stair.

“What about the two in the cavern beyond?” asked Regis, staying the anxious warrior with his hand.

“They’ll drop the bridge afore we ever make the gorge,” added Catti-brie.

Bruenor scratched his beard, then looked to his daughter. “How well do ye shoot?” he asked her.

Catti-brie held the magical bow out before her. “Well enough to take the likes of two sentries!” she answered.

“Back to th’ other tunnel with ye,” said Bruenor. “At first sound of battle, take ‘em out. And be fast, girl; the cowardly scum’re likely to drop the bridge at the first signs of trouble!”

With a nod, she was gone. Wulfgar watched her disappear back down the corridor, not so determined to have this fight now, without knowing that Catti-brie would be safe behind him. “What if the gray ones have reinforcements near?” he asked Bruenor. “What of Catti-brie? She will be blocked from returning to us.”

“No whinin’, boy!” Bruenor snapped, also uncomfortable with his decision to separate. “Y’er heart’s for her is me guess, though ye aren’t to admit it to yerself. Keep in yer head that Cat’s a fighter, trained by meself. The other tunnel’s safe enough, still secret from the gray ones by all the signs I could find. The girl’s battle-smart to taking care of herself! So put yer thoughts to the fight before ye. The best ye can do for her is to finish these gray-bearded dogs too quick for their kin to come!”

It took some effort, but Wulfgar tore his eyes away from the corridor and refocused his gaze on the open door below, readying himself for the task at hand.

Alone now, Catti-brie quietly trotted back the short distance down the corridor and disappeared through the secret door.

“Hold!” Sydney commanded Bok, and she, too, froze in her tracks, sensing that someone was just ahead. She crept forward, the golem on her heel, and peeked around the next turn in the tunnel, expecting that she had come up on the companions. There was only empty corridor in front of her.

The secret door had closed.

Wulfgar took a deep breath and measured the odds. If Catti-brie’s estimate was correct, he and Bruenor would be outnumbered several times when they burst through the door. He knew that they had no options open before them. With another breath to steady himself, he started again down the stairs, Bruenor moving on his cue and Regis following tentatively behind.

The barbarian never slowed his long strides, or turned from the straightest path to the door, yet the first sounds that they all heard were not the thumps of Aegis-fang or the barbarian’s customary war cry to Tempos, but the battle song of Bruenor Battlehammer.

This was his homeland and his fight, and the dwarf placed the responsibility for the safety of his companions squarely upon his own shoulders. He dashed by Wulfgar when they reached the bottom of the stairs and crashed through the door, the mithril axe of his heroic namesake raised before him.

“This one’s for me father!” he cried, splitting the shining helm of the closest Duergar with a single stroke. “This one’s for me father’s father!” he yelled, felling the second. “And this one’s for me father’s father’s father!”

Bruenor’s ancestral line was long indeed. The gray dwarves never had a chance.

Wulfgar had started his charge right after he realized Bruenor was rushing by him, but by the time he got into the room, three Duergar lay dead and the furious Bruenor was about to drop the fourth. Six others scrambled around trying to recover from the savage assault, and mostly trying to get out the other door and into the cavern of the gorge where they could regroup. Wulfgar hurled Aegis-fang—and took another, and Bruenor pounced upon his fifth victim before the gray dwarf got through the portal.

Across the gorge, the two sentries heard the start of battle at the same time as Catti-brie, but not understanding what was happening, they hesitated.

Catti-brie didn’t.

A streak of silver flashed across the chasm, exploding into the chest of one of the sentries, its powerful magic blasting through his mithril armor and hurling him back ward into death.

The second lunged immediately for the lever, but Catti-brie coolly completed her business. The second streaking arrow took him in the eye.

The routed dwarves in the room below poured out into the cavern below her, and others from rooms beyond the first charged out to join them. Wulfgar and Bruenor would come through soon, too, Catti-brie knew, right into the midst of a ready host!

Bruenor’s evaluation of Catti-brie had been on target. A fighter she was, and as willing to stand against the odds as any warrior alive. She buried any fears that she might have had for her friends and positioned herself to be of greatest assistance to them. Eyes and jaw steeled in determination, she took up Taulmaril and launched a barrage of death at the assembling host that put them into chaos and sent many of them scrambling for cover.

Bruenor roared out, blood-spattered, his mithril axe red from kills, and still with a hundred great-great ancestors as yet unavenged. Wulfgar was right behind, consumed by the blood lust, singing to his war god, and swatting aside his smaller enemies as easily as he would part ferns on a forest path.

Catti-brie’s barrage did not relent, arrow after streaking arrow finding its deadly mark. The warrior within her possessed her fully and her actions stayed on the edges of her conscious thoughts. Methodically, she called for another arrow, and the magical quiver of Anariel obliged. Taulmaril played its own song, and in the wake of its notes lay the scorched and blasted bodies of many Duergar.

Regis hung back throughout the fight, knowing that he would be more trouble than use to his friends in the main fray, just adding one more body for them to protect when they already had all they could handle in looking out for themselves. He saw that Bruenor and Wulfgar had gained enough of an early advantage to claim victory, even against the many enemies that had come into the cavern to face them, so Regis worked to make sure their fallen opponents in the room were truly down and would not come sneaking up behind.

Also, though, to make sure that any valuables these gray ones possessed were not wasted on corpses.

He heard the heavy thump of a boot behind him. He dove aside and rolled to the corner just as Bok crashed through the doorway, oblivious to his presence. When Regis recovered his voice, he moved to yell a warning to his friends.

But then Sydney entered the room.

Two at a time fell before the sweeps of Wulfgar’s warhammer. Spurred by the snatches that he caught of the enraged dwarf’s battle cries, “…for me father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s…” Wulfgar wore a grim smile as he moved through the Duergar’s disorganized ranks. Arrows burned lines of silver right beside him as they sought their victims, but he trusted enough in Catti-brie not to fear a stray shot. His muscles flexed in another crushing blow, even the Duergar’s shining armor offering no protection against his brute strength.

But then arms stronger than his own caught him from behind.

The few Duergar that remained before him did not recognize Bok as an ally. They fled in terror to the chasm bridge, hoping to cross and destroy the route of any pursuit behind them.

Catti-brie cut them down.

Regis didn’t make any sudden moves, knowing Sydney’s power from the encounter back in the oval room. Her bolt of energy had flattened both Bruenor and Wulfgar; the halfling shuddered to think what it could do to him.

His only chance was the ruby pendant, he thought. If he could get Sydney caught in its hypnotizing spell, he might hold her long enough for his friends to return.

Slowly, he moved his hand under his jacket, his eyes trained upon the mage, wary for the beginnings of any killing bolt.

Sydney’s wand remained tucked into her belt. She had a trick of her own planned for the little one. She muttered a quick chant, then rolled her hand open to Regis and puffed gently, launching a filmy string in his direction.

Regis understood the spell’s nature when the air around him was suddenly saturated with floating webs—sticky spiders’ webs. They clung to every part of him, slowing his movements, and filled the area around him. He had his hand around the magical pendant, but the web had him fully within its own grip.

Pleased in the exercising of her power, Sydney turned to the door and the battle beyond. She preferred calling upon the powers within her, but understood the strength of these other enemies, and drew her wand.

Bruenor finished the last of the gray dwarves facing him. He had taken many hits, some serious, and much of the blood covering him was his own. The rage within him that he had built over the course of centuries, though, blinded him to the pain. His blood lust was sated now, but only until he turned back toward the anteroom and saw Bok lifting Wulfgar high into the air and crushing the life out of him.

Catti-brie saw it, too. Horrified, she tried to get a clear shot at the golem, but with Wulfgar’s desperate struggling, the combatants stumbled about too often for her to dare. “Help him!” she begged to Bruenor under her breath, as all that she could do was watch.

Half of Wulfgar’s body was numbed under the incredible force of Bok’s magically strengthened arms. He did manage to squirm around and face his foe, though, and he put a hand in-the golem’s eye and pushed with all his strength, trying to divert some of the monster’s energy from the attack.

Bok seemed not to notice.

Wulfgar slammed Aegis-fang into the monster’s face with all the force he could muster under the tight circumstances, still a blow that would have felled a giant.

Again Bok seemed not to notice.

The arms closed relentlessly. A wave of dizziness swept through the barbarian. His fingers tingled with numbness. His hammer dropped to the ground.

Bruenor was almost there, axe poised and ready to begin chopping. But as the dwarf passed the open door to the anteroom, a blinding flash of energy shot out at him. It struck his shield, luckily, and deflected up to the cavern ceiling, but the sheer force of it hurled Bruenor from his feet. He shook his head in disbelief and struggled to a sitting position.

Catti-brie saw the bolt and remembered the similar blast that had dropped both Bruenor and Wulfgar back in the oval room. Instinctively, without the slightest hesitation or concern for her own safety, she was off, running back down the passageway, driven by the knowledge that if she couldn’t get to the mage, her friends didn’t have a chance.

Bruenor was more prepared for the second bolt. He saw Sydney inside the anteroom lift the wand at him. He dove on his belly and threw his shield above his head, facing the mage. It held again against the blast, deflecting the energy harmlessly away, but Bruenor felt it weaken under the impact and knew that it would not withstand another.

The stubborn survival instincts of the barbarian brought his drifting mind from the swoon and back into focus on the battle. He didn’t call for his hammer, knowing it to be of little use against the golem and doubting that he could have clasped it anyway. He summoned his own strength, wrapping his huge arms around Bok’s neck. His corded muscles tensed to their limits and ripped beyond as he struggled. No breath would come to him; Bruenor would not get there in time. He growled away the pain and the fear, grimaced through the sensations of numbness.

And twisted with all his might.

Regis at last managed to get his hand and the pendant out from under his jacket. “Wait, mage!” he cried at Sydney, not expecting her to listen, but only hoping to divert her attention long enough for her to glimpse the gemstone, and praying that Entreri had not informed her of its hypnotizing powers.

Again the mistrust and secrecy of the evil party worked against them. Oblivious to the dangers of the halfling’s ruby, Sydney glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, more to ensure that her web still held him tightly than to listen to any words he might have to say.

A sparkle of red-light caught her attention more fully than she had intended, and long moments passed before she would look away.

In the main passage, Catti-brie crouched low and sped along as swiftly as she could. Then she heard the baying.

The hunting shadow hounds filled the corridors with their excited cries, and filled Catti-brie with dread. The hounds were far behind, but her knees went weak as the unearthly sound descended upon her, echoing from wall to wall and encasing her in a dizzying jumble. She gritted her teeth against the assault and pressed on. Bruenor needed her, Wulfgar needed her. She would not fail them.

She made the balcony and sprinted down the stairs, finding the door to the anteroom closed. Cursing the luck, for she had hoped to get a shot at the mage from a distance, she slung Taulmaril over her shoulder, drew her sword, and boldly, blindly, charged through.

Locked in a killing embrace, Wulfgar and Bok stumbled around the cavern, sometimes dangerously close to the gorge. The barbarian matched his muscle against Dendybar’s magical work; never before had he faced such a foe. Wildly, he jerked Bok’s massive head back and forth, breaking the monster’s ability to resist. Then he began turning it in one direction, driving on with every ounce of power that he had left to give. He couldn’t remember the last time he had found a breath; he no longer knew who he was, or where he was.

His sheer stubbornness refused to yield.

He heard the snap of bone, and couldn’t be sure if it had been his own spine or the golem’s neck. Bok never flinched, nor loosened its vicelike grip. The head turned easily now, and Wulfgar, driven on by the final darkness that began its descent upon him, tugged and turned in a final flurry of defiance.

Skin ripped away. The blood-stuff of the wizard’s creation poured onto Wulfgar’s arms and chest, and the head tore free. Wulfgar, to his own amazement, thought that he had won.

Bok seemed not to notice.

The beginnings of the ruby pendant’s hypnotizing spell shattered when the door crashed in, but Regis had played his part. By the time Sydney recognized the coming danger, Catti-brie was too close for her to cast her spells.

Sydney’s gaze locked into a stunned, wide-eyed stare of confused protest. All of her dreams and future plans fell before her in that one instant. She tried to scream out a denial, certain that the gods of fate had a more important role planned for her in their scheme of the universe, convinced that they would not allow the shining star of her budding power to be extinguished before it ever came to its potential.

But a thin, wooden wand is of little use in parrying a metal blade.

Catti-brie saw nothing but her target, felt nothing in that instant but the necessity of her duty. Her sword snapped through the feeble wand and plunged home.

She looked at Sydney’s face for the first time. Time itself seemed to halt.

Sydney’s expression had not changed, her eyes and mouth still open in denial of this possibility.

Catti-brie watched in helpless horror as the last flickers of hope and ambition faded from Sydney’s eyes. Warm blood gushed over Catti-brie’s arm. Sydney’s final gasp of breath seemed impossibly loud.

And Sydney slid, ever so slowly, from the blade and into the realm of death.

A single, vicious cut from the mithril axe severed one of Bok’s arms, and Wulfgar fell free. He landed on one knee, barely on the edge of consciousness. His huge lungs reflexively sucked in a volume of revitalizing oxygen.

Sensing the dwarf’s presence clearly, but without eyes to focus upon its target, the headless golem lunged confusedly at Bruenor and missed badly.

Bruenor had no understanding of the magical forces that guided the monster, or kept it alive, and he had little desire to test his fighting skills against it. He saw another way. “Come on, ye filthy mold of orc-dung,” he teased, moving toward the gorge. In a more serious tone, he called to Wulfgar, “Get yer hammer ready, boy.”

Bruenor had to repeat the request over and over, and by the time Wulfgar began to hear it, Bok had backed the dwarf right up to the ledge.

Only half aware of his actions, Wulfgar found the warhammer returned to his hand.

Bruenor stopped, his heels clear of the stone floor, a smile on his face that accepted death. The golem paused, too, somehow understanding that Bruenor had nowhere left to run.

Bruenor dropped to the floor as Bok lunged forward, Aegis-fang slammed into its back, pushing it over the dwarf. The monster fell silently, with no ears to hear the sound of the air rushing past.

Catti-brie was still standing motionless over the mage’s body when Wulfgar and Bruenor entered the anteroom. Sydney’s eyes and mouth remained open in silent denial, a futile attempt to belie the pool of blood that deepened around her body.

Lines of tears wetted Catti-brie’s face. She had felled goblinoids and gray dwarves, once an ogre and a tundra yeti, but never before had she killed a human. Never before had she looked into eyes akin to her own and watched the light leave them. Never before had she understood the complexity of her victim, or even that the life she had taken existed outside the present field of battle.

Wulfgar moved to her and embraced her in full sympathy while Bruenor cut the halfling free of the remaining strands of webbing.

The dwarf had trained Catti-brie to fight and had reveled in her victories against orcs and the like, foul beasts that deserved death by all accounts. He had always hoped, though, that his beloved Catti-brie would be spared this experience.

Again Mithril Hall loomed as the source of his friends’ suffering.

Distant howls echoed from beyond the open door behind them. Catti-brie slid the sword into its sheath, not even thinking to wipe the blood from it, and steadied herself. “The pursuit is not ended,” she stated flatly. “It is past time we leave.”

She led them from the room then, but left a part of herself, the pedestal of her innocence, behind.

23. The Broken Helm

Air rolled across its black wings like the continuous rumble of distant thunder as the dragon swept out of the passageway and into Garumn’s Gorge, using the same exit that Drizzt and Entreri had passed just a few moments before. The two, a few dozen yards higher on the wall, held perfectly still, not even daring to breathe. They knew that the dark lord of Mithril Hall had come.

The black cloud that was Shimmergloom rushed by them, unnoticing, and soared down the length of the chasm. Drizzt, in the lead, scrambled up the side of the gorge, clawing at the stone to find whatever holds he could and trusting to them fully in his desperation. He had heard the sounds of battle far above him when he first entered the chasm, and knew that even if his friends had been victorious thus far, they would soon be met by a foe mightier than anything they had ever faced.

Drizzt was determined to stand beside them.

Entreri matched the drow’s pace, wanting to keep close to him, though he hadn’t yet formulated his exact plan of action.

Wulfgar and Catti-brie supported each other as they walked. Regis kept beside Bruenor, concerned for the dwarf’s wounds, even if the dwarf was not. “Keep yer worries for yer own hide, Rumblebelly,” he kept snapping at the halfling, though Regis could see that the depth of Bruenor’s gruffness had diminished. The dwarf seemed somewhat embarrassed for the way he had acted earlier. “Me wounds’ll heal; don’t ye be thinking ye’ve gotten rid of me so easy! There’ll be time for looking to them once we’ve put this place behind us.”

Regis had stopped walking, a puzzled expression on his face. Bruenor looked back at him, confused, too, and wondered if he had somehow offended the halfling again. Wulfgar and Catti-brie stopped behind Regis and waited for some indication of the trouble, not knowing what had been said between him and the dwarf.

“What’s yer grief?” Bruenor demanded.

Regis was not bothered by anything Bruenor had said, nor with the dwarf at all at that moment. It was Shimmergloom that he had sensed, a sudden coldness that had entered the cavern, a foulness that insulted the companions’ caring bond with its mere presence.

Bruenor was about to speak again, when he, too, felt the coming of the dragon of darkness. He looked to the gorge just as the tip of the black cloud broke the chasm’s rim, far down to the left beyond the bridge, but speeding toward them.

Catti-brie steered Wulfgar to the side, then he was pulling her with all his speed. Regis scurried back toward the anteroom.

Bruenor remembered.

The dragon of darkness, the ultimately foul monster that had decimated his kin and sent them fleeing for the smaller corridors of the upper level. His mithril axe raised, his feet frozen to the stone below them, he waited.

The blackness dipped under the arch of the stone bridge, then rose to the ledge. Spearlike talons gripped the rim of the gorge, and Shimmergloom reared up before Bruenor in all its horrid splendor, the usurping worm facing the rightful King of Mithril Hall.

“Bruenor!” Regis cried, drawing his little mace and turning back to the cavern, knowing that the best he could do would be to die beside his doomed friend.

Wulfgar threw Catti-brie behind him and spun back on the dragon.

The worm, eyes locked with the dwarf’s unyielding stare, did not even notice Aegis-fang spinning toward it, nor the fearless charge of the huge barbarian.

The mighty warhammer struck home against the raven black scales, but was harmlessly turned away. Infuriated that someone had interrupted the moment of its victory, Shimmergloom snapped its glare at Wulfgar.

And it breathed.

Absolute blackness enveloped Wulfgar and sapped the strength from his bones. He felt himself falling, forever falling, though there seemed to be no stone to catch him.

Catti-brie screamed and rushed to him, oblivious to her own danger as she plunged into the black cloud of Shimmergloom’s breath.

Bruenor trembled in outrage, for his long-dead kin and for his friend. “Get yerself from me home!” he roared at Shimmergloom, then charged head-on and dove into the dragon, his axe flailing wildly, trying to drive the beast over the edge. The mithril weapon’s razored edge had more effect on the scales than the warhammer, but the dragon fought back.

A heavy foot knocked Bruenor back to the ground, and before he could rise, the whiplike neck snapped down upon him and he was lifted in the dragon’s maw.

Regis fell back again, shaking with fear. “Bruenor!” he cried again, this time his words coming out as no more than a whisper.

The black cloud dissipated around Catti-brie and Wulfgar, but the barbarian had taken the full force of Shimmergloom’s insidious venom. He wanted to flee, even if the only route of escape meant plunging headlong over the side of the gorge. The shadow hounds’ baying, though it was still many minutes behind them, closed in upon him. All of his wounds, the crushing of the golem, the nicks the gray dwarves had put into him, hurt him vividly, making him flinch with every step, though his adrenaline of battle had many times before dismissed far more serious and painful injuries.

The dragon seemed ten times mightier to Wulfgar, and he couldn’t even have brought himself to raise a weapon against it, for he believed in his heart that Shinmergloom could not be defeated.

Despair had stopped him where fire and steel had not. He stumbled back with Catti-brie toward another room, having no strength to resist her pull.

Bruenor felt his breath blasted out, as the terrible maw crunched into him. He stubbornly held onto the axe, and even managed a swing or two.

Catti-brie pushed Wulfgar through the doorway and into the shelter of the small room, then turned back to the fight in the cavern. “Ye bastard son of a demon lizard!” she spat, as she set Taulmaril into motion. Silver-streaking arrows blasted holes into Shimmergloom’s black armor. When Catti-brie understood the measure of the effectiveness of her weapon, she grasped at a desperate plan. Aiming her next shots at the monster’s feet, she sought to drive it from the ledge.

Shimmergloom hopped in pain and confusion as the stinging bolts whistled in. The seething hatred of the dragon’s narrowed eyes bore down upon the brave young woman. It spat Bruenor’s broken form across the floor and roared, “Know fear, foolish girl! Taste of my breath and know you are doomed!” The black lungs expanded, perverting the intaken air into the foul cloud of despair.

Then the stone at the edge of the gorge broke away.

Little joy came to Regis when the dragon fell. He managed to drag Bruenor back into the anteroom, but had no idea of what to do next. Behind him, the relentless pursuit of the shadow hounds drew closer, he was separated from Wulfgar and Catti-brie, and he didn’t dare cross the cavern without knowing if the dragon was truly gone. He looked down at the battered and blood-covered form of his oldest friend, having not the slightest notion of how he might begin to help him, or even if Bruenor was still alive.

Only surprise delayed Regis’s immediate squeals of joy when Bruenor opened his gray eyes and winked.

Drizzt and Entreri flattened themselves against the wall as the rockslide from the broken ledge tumbled dangerously close. It was over in a moment and Drizzt started up at once, desperate to get to his friends.

He had to stop again, though, and wait nervously as the black form of the dragon dropped past him, then recovered quickly and moved back up toward the rim.

“How?” Regis asked, gawking at the dwarf.

Bruenor shifted uncomfortably and struggled to his feet. The mithril mail had held against the dragon’s bite, though Bruenor had been squeezed terribly and bore rows of deep bruises, and probably a host of broken ribs, for the experience. The tough dwarf was still very much alive and alert, though, dismissing his considerable pain for the more important matter before him—the safety of his friends.

“Where’s the boy, and Catti-brie?” he pressed immediately, the background howls of the shadow hounds accentuating the desperation of his tone.

“Another room,” Regis answered, indicating the area to the right beyond the door to the cavern.

“Cat!” Bruenor shouted. “How do ye fare?”

After a stunned pause, for Catti-brie, too, had not expected to hear Bruenor’s voice again, she called back, “Wulfgar’s gone for the fight, I fear! A dragon’s spell, for all I can make it! But for meself, I’m for leaving! The dogs’ll be here sooner than I like!”

“Aye!” agreed Bruenor, clutching at a twinge of pain in his side when he yelled. “But have ye seen the worm?”

“No, nor heared the beast!” came the uncertain reply.

Bruenor looked to Regis.

“It fell, and has been gone since,” the halfling answered the questioning stare, equally unconvinced that Shimmergloom had been defeated so easily.

“Not a choice to us, then!” Bruenor called out. “We’re to make the bridge! Can ye bring the boy?”

“It’s his heart for fightin’ that’s been bruised, no more!” replied Catti-brie. “We’ll be along!”

Bruenor clasped Regis’s shoulder, lending support to his nervous friend. “Let’s be going, then!” he roared in his familiar voice of confidence.

Regis smiled in spite of his dread at the sight of the old Bruenor again. Without further coaxing, he walked beside the dwarf out of the room.

Even as they took the first step toward the gorge, the black cloud that was Shimmergloom again crested the rim.

“Ye see it?” cried Catti-brie.

Bruenor fell back into the room, viewing the dragon all too clearly. Doom closed in all around him, insistent and inescapable. Despair denied his determination, not for himself, for he knew that he had followed the logical course of his fate in coming back to Mithril Hall—a destiny that had been engraved upon the fabric of his very being from the day his kin had been slaughtered—but his friends should not perish this way. Not the halfling, who always before could find an escape from every trap. Not the boy, with so many glorious adventures left before him upon his road.

And not his girl, Catti-brie, his own beloved daughter. The only light that had truly shone in the mines of Clan Battlehammer in Icewind Dale.

The fall of the drow alone, willing companion and dearest friend, had been too high a price for his selfish daring. The loss that faced him now was simply too much for him to bear.

His eyes darted around the small room. There had to be an option. If ever he had been faithful to the gods of the dwarves, he asked them now to grant him this one thing. Give him an option.

There was a small curtain against one of the room’s walls. Bruenor looked curiously at Regis.

The halfling shrugged. “A storage area,” he said. “Nothing of value. Not even a weapon.”

Bruenor wouldn’t accept the answer. He dashed through the curtain and started tearing through the crates and sacks that lay within. Dried food. Pieces of wood. An extra cloak. A skin of water.

A keg of oil.

Shimmergloom swooped back and forth along the length of the gorge, waiting to meet the intruders on its own terms in the open cavern and confident that the shadow hounds would flush them out.

Drizzt had nearly reached the level of the dragon, pressing on in the face of peril with no other concerns than those he felt for his friends.

“Hold!” Entreri called to him from a short distance below. “Are you so determined to get yourself killed?”

“Damn the dragon!” Drizzt hissed back. “I’ll not cower in the shadows and watch my friends be destroyed.”

“There is value in dying with them?” came the sarcastic reply. “You are a fool, drow. Your worth outweighs that of all your pitiful friends!”

“Pitiful?” Drizzt echoed incredulously. “It is you that I pity, assassin.”

The drow’s disapproval stung Entreri more than he would have expected. “Then pity yourself!” he shot back angrily. “For you are more akin to me than you care to believe!”

“If I do not go to them, your words will hold the truth,” Drizzt continued, more calmly now. “For then my life will be of no value, less even than your own! Beyond my embrace of the heartless emptiness that rules your world, my entire life would then be no more than a lie.” He started up again, fully expecting to die, but secure in his realization that he was indeed very different from the murderer that followed him.

Secure, too, in the knowledge that he had escaped his own heritage.

Bruenor came back through the curtain, a wild smirk upon his face, an oil-soaked cloak slung over his shoulder, and the keg tied to his back. Regis looked upon him in complete confusion, though he could guess enough of what the dwarf had in mind to be worried for his friend.

“What are ye lookin’ at?” Bruenor said with a wink.

“You are crazy,” Regis replied, Bruenor’s plan coming into clearer focus the longer he studied the dwarf.

“Aye, we agreed on that afore our road e’er began!” snorted Bruenor. He calmed suddenly, the wild glimmer mellowing to a caring concern for his little friend. “Ye deserve better’n what I’ve given ye, Rumblebelly,” he said, more comfortable than he had ever been in apology.

“Never have I known a more loyal friend than Bruenor Battlehammer,” Regis replied.

Bruenor pulled the gem-studded helmet from his head and tossed it to the halfling, confusing Regis even more. He reached around to his back and loosened a strap fastened between his pack and his belt and took out his old helm. He ran a finger over the broken horn, smiling in remembrance of the wild adventures that had given this helm such a battering. Even the dent where Wulfgar had hit him, those years ago, when first they met as enemies.

Bruenor put the helm on, more comfortable with its fit, and Regis saw him in the light of old friend.

“Keep the helm safe,” Bruenor told Regis. “It’s the crown of the King of Mithril Hall!”

“Then it is yours,” Regis argued, holding the crown back out to Bruenor.

“Nay, not by me right or me choice. Mithril Hall is no more, Rumble—Regis. Bruenor of Icewind Dale, I am, and have been for two hundred years, though me head’s too thick to know it!

“Forgive me old bones,” he said. “Suren me thoughts’ve been walking in me past and me future.”

Regis nodded and said with genuine concern, “What are you going to do?”

“Mind to yer own part in this!” Bruenor snorted, suddenly the snarling leader once more. “Ye’ll have enough gettin’ yerself from these cursed halls when I’m through!” He growled threateningly at the halfling to keep him back, then moved swiftly, pulling a torch from the wall and dashing through the door to the cavern before Regis could even make a move to stop him.

The dragon’s black form skimmed the rim of the gorge, dipping low beneath the bridge and returning to its patrolling level. Bruenor watched it for a few moments to get a feel for the rhythm of its course.

“Yer mine, worm!” he snarled under his breath, and then he charged. “Here’s one from yer tricks, boy!” he cried at the room holding Wulfgar and Catti-brie. “But when me mind’s to jumping on the back of a worm, I ain’t about to miss!”

“Bruenor!” Catti-brie screamed when she saw him running out toward the gorge.

It was too late. Bruenor put the torch to the oil-soaked cloak and raised his mithril axe high before him. The dragon heard him coming and swerved in closer to the rim to investigate—and was as amazed as the dwarf’s friends when Bruenor, his shoulder and back aflame, leaped from the edge and streaked down upon it.

Impossibly strong, as though all of the ghosts of Clan Battlehammer had joined their hands with Bruenor’s upon the weapon handle and lent him their strength, the dwarf’s initial blow drove the mithril axe deep into Shimmergloom’s back. Bruenor crashed down behind, but held fast to the embedded weapon, even though the keg of oil broke apart with the impact and spewed flames all across the monster’s back.

Shimmergloom shrieked in outrage and swerved wildly, even crashing into the stone wall of the gorge.

Bruenor would not be thrown. Savagely, he grasped the handle, waiting for the opportunity to tear the weapon free and drive it home again.

Catti-brie and Regis rushed to the edge of the gorge, helplessly calling out to their doomed friend. Wulfgar, too, managed to drag himself over, still fighting the black depths of despair.

When the barbarian looked upon Bruenor, sprawled amid the flames, he roared away the dragon’s spell and, without the slightest hesitation, launched Aegis-fang. The hammer caught Shimmergloom on the side of its head and the dragon swerved again in its surprise, clipping the other wall of the gorge.

“Are ye mad?” Catti-brie yelled at Wulfgar.

“Take up your bow,” Wulfgar told her. “If a true friend of Bruenor’s you be, then let him not fall in vain!” Aegis-fang returned to his grasp and he launched it again, scoring a second hit.

Catti-brie had to accept the reality. She could not save Bruenor from the fate he had chosen. Wulfgar was right—she could aid the dwarf in gaining his desired end. Blinking away the tears that came to her, she took Taulmaril in hand and sent the silver bolts at the dragon.

Both Drizzt and Entreri watched Bruenor’s leap in utter amazement. Cursing his helpless position, Drizzt surged ahead, nearly to the rim. He shouted out for his remaining friends, but in the commotion, and with the roaring of the dragon, they could not hear.

Entreri was directly below him. The assassin knew that his last chance was upon him, though he risked losing the only challenge he had ever found in this life. As Drizzt scrambled for his next hold, Entreri grabbed his ankle and pulled him down.

Oil found its way in through the seams in Shimmergloom’s scales, carrying the fire to the dragon flesh. The dragon cried out from a pain it never believed it could know.

The thud of the warhammer! The constant sting of those streaking lines of silver! And the dwarf! Relentless in his attacks, somehow oblivious to the fires.

Shimmergloom tore along the length of the gorge, dipping suddenly, then swooping back up and rolling over and about. Catti-brie’s arrows found it at every turn. And Wulfgar, wiser with each of his strikes, sought the best opportunities to throw the warhammer, waiting for the dragon to cut by a rocky outcropping in the wall, then driving the monster into the stone with the force of his throw.

Flames, stone, and dust flew wildly with each thunderous impact.

Bruenor held on. Singing out to his father and his kin beyond that, the dwarf absolved himself of his guilt, content that he had satisfied the ghosts of his past and given his friends a chance for survival. He didn’t feel the bite of the fire, nor the bump of stone. All he felt was the quivering of the dragon flesh below his blade, and the reverberations of Shimmergloom’s agonized cries.

Drizzt tumbled down the face of the gorge, desperately scrambling for some hold. He slammed onto a ledge twenty feet below the assassin and managed to stop his descent.

Entreri nodded his approval and his aim, for the drow had landed just where he had hoped. “Farewell, trusting fool!” he called down to Drizzt and he started up the wall.

Drizzt never had trusted in the assassin’s honor, but he had believed in Entreri’s pragmatism. This attack made no practical sense. “Why?” he called back to Entreri. “You could have had the pendant without recourse!

“The gem is mine,” Entreri replied.

“But not without a price!” Drizzt declared. “You know that I will come after you, assassin!”

Entreri looked down at him with an amused grin. “Do you not understand, Drizzt Do’Urden? That is exactly the purpose!”

The assassin quickly reached the rim, and peered above it. To his left, Wulfgar and Catti-brie continued their assault on the dragon. To his right, Regis stood enamored of the scene, completely unaware.

The halfling’s surprise was complete, his face blanching in terror, when his worst nightmare rose up before him. Regis dropped the gem-studded helm and went limp with fear as Entreri silently picked him up and started for the bridge.

Exhausted, the dragon tried to find another method of defense. Its rage and pain had carried it too far into the battle, though. It had taken too many hits, and still the silver streaks bit into it again and again.

Still the tireless dwarf twisted and pounded the axe into its back.

One last time the dragon cut back in mid-flight, trying to snake its neck around so that it could at least take vengeance upon the cruel dwarf. It hung motionless for just a split second, and Aegis-fang took it in the eye.

The dragon rolled over in blinded rage, lost in a dizzying swirl of pain, headlong into a jutting portion of the wall.

The explosion rocked the very foundations of the cavern, nearly knocking Catti-brie from her feet and Drizzt from his precarious perch.

One final image came to Bruenor, a sight that made his heart leap one more time in victory: the piercing gaze of Drizzt Do’Urden’s lavender eyes bidding him farewell from the darkness of the wall.

Broken and beaten, the flames consuming it, the dragon of darkness glided and spun, descending into the deepest blackness it would ever know, a blackness from which there could be no return. The depths of Garumn’s Gorge.

And bearing with it the rightful King of Mithril Hall.

24. Eulogy for Mithril Hall

The burning dragon drifted lower and lower, the light of the flames slowly diminishing to a mere speck at the bottom of Garumn’s Gorge.

Drizzt scrambled up over the ledge and came up beside Catti-brie and Wulfgar, Catti-brie holding the gem-studded helm, and both of them staring helplessly across the chasm. The two of them nearly fell over in surprise when they turned to see their drow friend returned from the grave. Even the appearance of Artemis Entreri had not prepared Wulfgar and Catti-brie for the sight of Drizzt.

“How?” Wulfgar gasped, but Drizzt cut him short. The time for explanations would come later; they had more urgent business at hand.

Across the gorge, right next to the lever hooked to the bridge, stood Artemis Entreri, holding Regis by the throat before him and grinning wickedly. The ruby pendant now hung around the assassin’s neck.

“Let him go,” Drizzt said evenly. “As we agreed. You have the gem.”

Entreri laughed and pulled the lever. The stone bridge shuddered, then broke apart, tumbling into the darkness below.

Drizzt had thought that he was beginning to understand the assassin’s motivations for this treachery, reasoning now that Entreri had taken Regis to ensure pursuit, continuing his own personal challenge with Drizzt. But now with the bridge gone and no apparent escape open before Drizzt and his friends, and the incessant baying of the shadow hounds growing closer at their backs, the drow’s theories didn’t seem to hold up. Angered by his confusion, he reacted quickly. Having lost his own bow back in the alcove, Drizzt grabbed Taulmaril from Catti-brie and fitted an arrow.

Entreri moved just as fast. He rushed to the ledge, scooped Regis up by an ankle, and held him by one hand over the edge. Wulfgar and Catti-brie sensed the strange bond between Drizzt and the assassin and knew that Drizzt was better able to deal with this situation. They moved back a step and held each other close.

Drizzt kept the bow steady and cocked, his eyes unblinking as he searched for the one lapse in Entreri’s defenses.

Entreri shook Regis dangerously and laughed again. “The road to Calimport is long indeed, drow. You shall have your chance to catch up with me.”

“You have blocked our escape,” Drizzt retorted.

“A necessary inconvenience,” explained Entreri. “Surely you will find your way through this, even if your other friends do not. And I will be waiting!”

“I will come,” Drizzt promised. “You do not need the halfling to make me want to hunt you down, foul assassin.”

“‘Tis true,” said Entreri. He reached into his pouch, pulled out a small item, and tossed it into the air. It twirled up above him then dropped. He caught it just before it passed beyond his reach and would have fallen into the gorge. He tossed it again. Something small, something black.

Entreri tossed it a third time, teasingly, the smile widening across his face as Drizzt lowered the bow.

Guenhwyvar.

“I do not need the halfling,” Entreri stated flatly and he held Regis farther out over the chasm.

Drizzt dropped the magical bow behind him, but kept his glare locked upon the assassin.

Entreri pulled Regis back in to the ledge. “But my master demands the right to kill this little thief. Lay your plans, drow, for the hounds draw near. Alone, you stand a better chance. Leave those two, and live!

“Then come, drow. Finish our business.” He laughed one more time and spun away into the darkness of the final tunnel.

“He’s out, then,” said Catti-brie. “Bruenor named that passage as a straight run to a door out of the halls.”

Drizzt looked all around, trying to find some means to get them across the chasm.

“By Bruenor’s own words, there is another way,” Catti-brie offered. She pointed down to her right, toward the south end of the cavern. “A ledge,” she said, “but hours of walking.”

“Then run,” replied Drizzt, his eyes still fixed upon the tunnel across the gorge.

By the time the three companions reached the ledge, the echoes of howls and specks of light far to the north told them that Duergar and shadow hounds had entered the cavern. Drizzt led them across the narrow walkway, his back pressed against the wall as he inched his way toward the other side. All the gorge lay open before him, and the fires still burned below, a grim reminder of the fate of his bearded friend. Perhaps it was fitting that Bruenor died here, in the home of his ancestors, he thought. Perhaps the dwarf had finally satisfied the yearning that had dictated so much of his life.

The loss remained intolerable to Drizzt, though. His years with Bruenor had shown him a compassionate and respected friend, a friend he could rely upon at any time, in any circumstance. Drizzt could tell himself over and over that Bruenor was satisfied, that the dwarf had climbed his mountain and won his personal battle, but in the terrible immediacy of his death, those thoughts did little to dispel the drow’s grief.

Catti-brie blinked away more tears, and Wulfgar’s sigh belied his stoicism when they moved out across the gorge that had become Bruenor’s grave. To Catti-brie, Bruenor was father and friend, who taught her toughness and touched her with tenderness. All of the constants of her world, her family and home, lay burning far below, on the back of a hell-spawned dragon.

A numbness descended over Wulfgar, the cold chill of mortality and the realization of how fragile life could be. Drizzt had returned to him, but now Bruenor was gone. Above any emotions of joy or grief came a wave of instability, a tragic rewriting of heroic images and bard-sung legends that he had not expected. Bruenor had died with courage and strength, and the story of his fiery leap would be told and retold a thousand times. But it would never fill the void that Wulfgar felt at that moment.

They made their way across to the chasm’s other side and raced back to the north to get to the final tunnel and be free of the shadows of Mithril Hall. When they came again into the wide end of the cavern, they were spotted. Duergar shouted and cursed at them; the great black shadow hounds roared their threats and scratched at the lip of the other side of the gorge. But their enemies had no way to get at them, short of going all the way around to the ledge, and Drizzt stepped unopposed into the tunnel that Entreri had entered a few hours earlier.

Wulfgar followed, but Catti-brie paused at the entrance and looked back across the gorge at the gathered host of gray dwarves.

“Come,” Drizzt said to her. “There is nothing that we can do here, and Regis needs our help.”

Catti-brie’s eyes narrowed and the muscles in her jaw clenched tightly as she fitted an arrow to her bow and fired. The silver streak whistled into the crowd of Duergar and blasted one from life, sending the others scurrying for cover. “Nothing now,” Catti-brie replied grimly, “but I’ll be comin’ back! Let the gray dogs know it for truth.

“I’ll be back!”