Many hours later, Tiago Baenre and Gol’fanin moved quietly to the entrance of the forge room and peered in. The battle of elementals continued, water against fire, but were much diminished, for the floor was ankle-deep in water, a situation surely not conducive to the spawning of creatures of fire.
Still, the forges glowed orange, overheated by the flow of primordial power, and every so often, one erupted, spewing forth a line of blazing flames that hissed angrily across the giant puddle and sent swirls of steam into the air.
We can get to the underchamber, Tiago’s hands flashed.
Where we’ll be cornered and slaughtered? the old blacksmith signaled back. By whom?
Gol’fanin looked at him doubtfully.
“They’ve left,” Tiago announced aloud, for if he believed those words, after all, then why was he bothering to use the silent hand language?
“All of them?”
“We’ve seen no sign of the Shadovar.”
“We’ve gone no farther than this place,” Gol’fanin reminded. “Perhaps they came in and engaged in battle with the elemental forces in the forge, then fell back to a more defensible position. Would that not be your own choice, as it was Ravel’s?”
Tiago had to admit that.
“Wait for the scouts,” Gol’fanin advised. “Before we go in there, let us make sure that our efforts are worthwhile.”
Tiago put a hand on Byok’s saddlebag and the unfinished sword and translucent shield strapped beneath it. Truly he was torn, for in those few moments before the primordial had broken free and chased them from the room, Tiago had felt the promise of Lullaby and Spiderweb.
“If we restore control of the room and the Shadovar come back to this magnificent place, will they so willingly depart a second time?” Gol’fanin asked.
Despite his desires, Tiago knew that he was waging a losing argument.
“It will take tendays to ensure that they are truly gone from this vast complex,” Tiago lamented. “I’ll not wait that long.”
Gol’fanin stared into the room for a few moments before offering a compromise. “We can discern in but a few hours if our enemies are far enough removed from the forge room for us to venture in. So let us not restore it until we are certain of the security of the complex. Not fully, at least. For I need only the one forge fired, and only for short amounts of time. I understand the design of the subchamber well enough to facilitate that which is needed.”
Tiago’s eyes flashed with hunger. “Then go.”
“When the scouts—”
“Go now,” Tiago ordered. “I will stay here and watch over you. The scouts will catch up to us soon enough, and I will put them all around the area.”
The old blacksmith looked him over for a bit, then shook his head at the impatient young warrior and splashed into the room. He discerned the pattern of the fire-spewing forges easily enough and made his way to the trap door disguised as another forge. Fortunately, the chamber within the fake oven was not full of water, and when Gol’fanin managed to open the door, he saw that the room below was neither flooded nor full of fire. Still, the pipes below glowed angrily and threateningly, so the blacksmith adjusted and tightened his magical garments and put on his magical gloves before venturing below.
Sometime later, Gol’fanin was back at the room’s great forge, implements and unfinished items at hand, preparing to continue his solemn work. The rest of the room continued to roar with unbridled fire, hiss with angry steam, and rain briny water, but Gol’fanin expected that would prove to be no more than a minor nuisance. Coincidentally, the blacksmith had just tapped his small finishing hammer against the flat of the shield, had just begun his actual work on the items, when he noted the return of Tiago, and surprisingly, the young Baenre approached from out of the corridor to the primordial pit, though Gol’fanin had not seen him go down that way, and as far as the blacksmith knew, there were no other entrances to that critical chamber.
“We found the wayward Xorlarrin brother,” he said.
“And Brack’thal has information?”
“He is quite dead.”
“My sympathies to the Xorlarrins,” Gol’fanin replied, and of course he meant no such thing.
“He was killed by the blade,” Tiago explained. “And found in a new tunnel, recently dug, or melted, it seems.”
Gol’fanin didn’t hide his intrigue, but Tiago had no answers for him.
“Perhaps the work of his own pet elemental,” the young Baenre offered. “We cannot know.”
“Your Xorlarrin lovers can find out. The dead are not so silent to the calls of a priestess.”
Tiago shrugged as if it did not really matter. Berellip’s main concern and motivation in talking to the dead Xorlarrin mage would be to learn if Ravel or his agents had killed Brack’thal, which wasn’t likely the case.
“And the Shadovar?” Gol’fanin asked.
“We have found signs of their march to this place, but none of their retreat. Yet they are not to be found.”
“Back to the Shadowfell, then.”
“And so Gauntlgrym is ours.”
“Counsel Ravel to proceed cautiously,” the blacksmith advised.
“But you will continue your work?”
“Of course.”
“Then I hold no sense of urgency.”
The five companions rested in Gauntlgrym’s great entry hall, far to the side of the great throne and the graves.
“Touched it,” Ambergris said to Drizzt when he walked up beside her, to find her staring across at the throne.
“Come,” Drizzt bade her, and he started that way. He led her right past the throne, though, to the small group of graves.
“King Bruenor,” he explained, pointing to the largest. “Here in Gauntlgrym, he fell.”
“Word was that he died in Mithral Hall,” Ambergris replied. “We held a great drunk in his honor.” She paused and laughed. “But we knowed, elf, we knowed,” she said.
The way she addressed him, “elf,” had Drizzt back on his heels, for it was a nickname he had heard before, and spoken with similar inflection and affection.
“Glad that he found his road,” Ambergris said solemnly. “His reputation always called him as one for the road and not the throne.”
“His shield dwarf,” Drizzt explained as they paced to the other larger cairn.
“The Pwent,” Ambergris mumbled, and that came as a bit of confirmation to Drizzt that this one could indeed be trusted.
“And the others who fell in the fight for this place,” Drizzt explained of the other graves. “Battlehammer dwarves from Icewind Dale.”
Ambergris nodded and quietly whispered a prayer for them all.
Drizzt patted her on the shoulder and led her back to the others. He paused before he got there, though, and looked the dwarf straight in the eye. “Geas?” he asked, his voice full of suspicion.
Ambergris looked at him stupidly.
“Your shade friend,” Drizzt clarified, and the dwarf snickered.
“Chalk,” she explained. “Blue chalk and nothing more . . . well, a bit o’ magic suggestion to convince the dolt.”
“So if this Afafa . . . Afrenfafa . . .”
“Afafrenfere,” Ambergris explained.
“So if this Afafrenfere tries to kill me, I’ll not find Dumathoin coming to my rescue?”
The dwarf showed a gap-toothed smile. “He won’t try,” she assured Drizzt. “That one’s a flower, but he ain’t hopin’ to be a daisy. Not the smartest, not the bravest, but a gooder heart than them Netherese butchers e’er deserved. Ye got me personal guarantee on that.”
For some inexplicable reason, that seemed more than good enough to Drizzt.
In the dark of Gauntlgrym’s throne room, a shifting stone stole the quiet.
Then came a grunt, and more sounds of rocks sliding against each other. A black-bearded dwarf crawled from under the pile, then reached back and grabbed at something he had left behind, grunting with exertion as he tried to extricate it. “Durned thing’s stuck,” he muttered, and with a great tug, he pulled free a most curious helmet, one set with a long and oft-bloodied spike. His effort sent him flying over backward to crash against the stones of the nearest cairn, where he lay on his back as the dust settled.
“Durn it,” he cursed, seeing the trouble he had caused, and he rolled to his feet and began replacing the dislodged stones. “Don’t mean to be desecratin’ yer tomb . . .”
The words caught in his throat, and the rocks fell from his hands. There in the disturbed tomb before him was a curious helm, with a single curving horn, the other having long before been broken away.
The dwarf fell to his knees and dug the helm free, and saw too the face of the dead dwarf interred within.
“Me king,” Thibbledorf Pwent breathed.
Nay, not breathed, for creatures in the state of Thibbledorf Pwent did not draw breath.
He fell back to his bum, staring in shock, his mouth wide in a silent scream. If he’d had a mirror, or a reflection that would actually show up in a mirror,
Thibbledorf Pwent might have noticed his newest weapon: canine fangs.