GAUNTLGRYM
JARLAXLE KEPT HIMSELF IN THE REAR OF THE GROUP OF FIVE. THE TUNNELS underneath Luskan were long natural corridors that reached out to the southeast and the Crags. Korvin Dor’crae led the group and served as its scout, often moving off ahead of the others. Next came Athrogate, eager to see the place Dahlia had described, and always ready to serve as point-dwarf of any patrol—he always wanted to be the first into any fight. Dahlia and Valindra formed the third rank. The elf walked with a measure of calm and patience Jarlaxle would have expected in a much older and more seasoned warrior, and Valindra glided along as if in a daze, with hardly the presence—of mind or body—one would expect of a creature as powerful as a lich.
Not that Jarlaxle was complaining. Valindra Shadowmantle had been no minor spellcaster in life, commanding an entire wing of the powerful Hosttower of the Arcane. Should she ever regain her acuity and confidence, she would only prove more formidable in undeath—and thinking straight, honestly reflecting on the events of the last days of her living existence, she wouldn’t likely be too pleased with the meddling drow.
They moved easily for more than a day, and though they heard the shuffling and scratching of ghouls and other lesser undead echo all around them, they never actually encountered any. Jarlaxle found that confusing. After all, ghouls feared nothing, their hunger for living flesh insatiable, and their ability to smell and track living flesh quite keen. Why didn’t they approach? But soon he came to recognize the true nature of one of his companions.
“We been lucky,” Athrogate said to him during a break the next day. “Lots o’ side tunnels, and full o’ ghouls and such.”
“No luck,” Jarlaxle replied. He nodded ahead, drawing Athrogate’s attention to Dahlia and Dor’crae, who were discussing their next move. The tunnel forked, and Dor’crae reported that each of those tunnels split again, not much far away. Both Dahlia and Dor’crae kept pointing to the ceiling and tunnel walls, where the glistening tendrils reflected a wet, shiny green in the torchlight.
“What’re ye meaning?” Athrogate asked. “A magic tunnel?”
“Come along,” Jarlaxle instructed, and he rose and moved toward Dahlia as Dor’crae started off along the left-hand divide.
“We will solve it quickly,” Dahlia promised as the pair neared.
Jarlaxle motioned for Athrogate to keep walking, along the same path Dor’crae had taken. “I have no doubt of that, dear lady,” he said, drawing out a wand and pointing it down the tunnel.
Dahlia’s expression changed to one of shock and trepidation, but Jarlaxle spoke the command word before she could react, and the tunnel brightened with magical light.
“What the—?” Athrogate yelped in surprise, for the light stung his eyes. As his temporary blindness subsided, though, the dwarf caught a glimpse of Dor’crae—or at least it should have been Dor’crae. Instead, a large bat fluttered away, out of the light and down the tunnel.
“Why did you do that?” Dahlia scolded.
“To mark Dor’crae’s return,” Jarlaxle replied, moving toward the conjured light. “And to better view these strange veins along the tunnel walls. I had thought it a vein of gemstone—perhaps some variant of bloodstone—at first.” He kept walking, Dahlia hustling to catch up. “But now I see them differently,” Jarlaxle said as he came into the light and peered closer at a nearby vein. “They appear almost as hollow tubes, and full of some liquid.” He drew out another wand, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply, and pointed it at the tendril.
Dahlia grabbed the wand. “Take great care!” she warned in no uncertain terms. “Do not break the tendril.”
“The what?” asked Athrogate.
Jarlaxle pulled the wand away and executed its dweomer, which detected the presence of magic. He appeared quite impressed as he turned back to Dahlia and said, “Powerful magic.”
“Residual magic,” she replied.
“Well, obviously you know more of this than I do,” Jarlaxle said.
Dahlia started to answer, but then caught on to the ruse and put her hands on her hips, glaring at the drow. “You knew the undercity of Luskan well,” she said.
“Not so well.”
“Enough to know that these are not gemstone veins.”
“What’s she babbling about?” Athrogate demanded.
“They are the roots of the fallen Hosttower,” Jarlaxle explained, “sapping the strength of the sea and the earth, so we thought, though never did we imagine they spread so far from the city.”
Dahlia offered up a wry grin.
“And they follow the left fork here, but not the right,” Jarlaxle went on.
Dahlia shrugged.
“We’re following them,” the drow said, and he let a bit of suspicion creep into his voice.
“Ah, but what’s yer game, then?” Athrogate demanded of the elf. “What of the dwarven city ye telled me to get me to come along? What o’ the treasures, elf, and ye best be telling me true!”
“The tendrils lead to the place I described,” Dahlia said. “Following them was how Dor’crae found the mines and the great forge and structures that will steal your breath, dwarf. Perhaps in an age long lost, the dwarves crafted more than weapons, perhaps they forged a pact with the great wizards of the Hosttower. Even dwarven-forged weapons needed a wizard’s enchantments, yes? And armor blessed by the magic of great mages can withstand much stronger blows.”
“Are ye sayin’ my own ancestors used these … these roots, so the wizards could send a bit o’ magic their way?”
“It is possible,” said Dahlia. “That is one—and one likely—explanation.”
“And what are the others, I wonder?” Jarlaxle asked with unmasked suspicion.
Dahlia offered no answer.
“We’ll know soon enough, then,” said Athrogate. “What, right?”
Dahlia replied with a disarming smile and a nod. “Dor’crae thinks there may be a shortcut. Perhaps you’ll find your treasures sooner than we expected, good dwarf.”
She smiled again and walked back the other way, to where Valindra stood, eyes closed and singing some strange song. Every so often, the lich stopped singing and scolded herself, “No, that’s not right, oh, I’ve forgotten. That’s not right. It’s not right, you know. No, that’s not right,” and all without ever opening her eyes, before launching back into a voice-lifting refrain of, “Ara … Arabeth …”
“You saw Dor’crae?” Jarlaxle asked the dwarf when they were alone.
“Was him, eh? Good cloak he’s got there.”
“It wasn’t his cloak.”
Athrogate eyed him. “What do ye know?”
“It’s his nature, not a magic item,” Jarlaxle explained.
Athrogate mulled on that for just a moment, before his eyes went wide and he slapped his hands onto his hips. “Ye ain’t sayin’ …”
“I just did.”
“Elf …?”
“Fear not, my friend. Some of my best friends were vampires.” Jarlaxle patted Athrogate on the shoulder and moved back toward Dahlia and Valindra.
“ ‘Were?’ ” Athrogate remarked, trying to sort out that bit of information. He realized then that he was standing alone, and with a vampire out there somewhere with him. He glanced over his shoulder and hurried to catch up to Jarlaxle.
“He knows the way,” Jarlaxle explained to Athrogate a couple of days later. “And he’s valuable in keeping the undead in check.”
“Bah, but there ain’t no more, and them what was would’ve kissed me morningstar balls,” the dwarf grumbled back.
Jarlaxle cringed and replied, “He moves swiftly, and silently, and again, he knows the way.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m knowin’,” Athrogate grumbled and waved the drow away.
Up ahead in the line, Valindra began to sing again, still questioning every line, scolding herself for getting it wrong before launching once more into “Ara … Arabeth … Arararar … Arabeth!”
“So I’m gettin’ why she bringed the bat-boy,” Athrogate said. “But why that idiot?”
“That idiot is not without power … great power.”
“I’m hardly waitin’ for her to blow us all up with a fireball.”
“Great power,” Jarlaxle said again. “And Dahlia can control it.”
“What? How’re ye knowing that?”
Jarlaxle just held up his hand and stared ahead at the two women. For years, Kimmuriel Oblodra, Jarlaxle’s lieutenant and the current leader of Bregan D’aerthe, had used his psionic abilities to scout Valindra’s mind. Only Kimmuriel had kept Valindra from utter insanity in those first days after Arklem Greeth had converted her to her undead state. And in those sessions, Kimmuriel had assured Jarlaxle that within the trappings of apparent dementia, there remained the quite powerful, quite sinister, and quite cogent being who had once been Valindra Shadowmantle, Mistress of the North Tower of the Hosttower of the Arcane … not just a wizard, but an overwizard. That Valindra had begun to emerge again soon after.
And Dahlia was too careful to not know that. She would never have brought such an unpredictable and potent creature along if she wasn’t sure she could control her.
Jarlaxle considered the consequences if Dahlia somehow managed to return Valindra her full consciousness. Valindra Shadowmantle had been formidable in life, by all accounts. The drow could only imagine the trouble she might affect as a lich.
“If the vampire knows the way, and the lich is such a ‘great power,’ then what in all Nine Hells’re we doin’ here, elf?” Athrogate asked.
Jarlaxle scrutinized his friend, a formidable sight indeed in his heavy coat of chainmail links, his iron helmet, and those devastating morningstars crisscrossed on his back. He thought back to his original conversation with Dahlia, when she had explained why she needed them. Had he allowed his own hubris to take her at face value on that?
No, he reminded himself. Dahlia needed him, needed his connections so that she could dispense with the promised trove of artifacts and coins.
He looked again at Athrogate. Dahlia had specifically explained her need for the dwarf, of course, and perhaps gaining the services of Athrogate meant also bringing along Jarlaxle, as the two were inseparable.
Was Jarlaxle, then, just add-on baggage?
Jarlaxle never answered Athrogate’s question. A few moments later they caught up to Dahlia and the others, who stood at the edge of a deep pit, staring down.
“We’ve arrived,” Dahlia announced when they joined her at the edge.
“Not much of a city,” Athrogate grumbled.
“The shaft drops fifty feet,” Dahlia explained. “Then curves at a steep but traversable decline off to the left a bit. It winds in various directions for a few hundred feet beyond that, and ends at a … well, you’ll see soon enough.”
She turned to Valindra, and Jarlaxle noticed that Dahlia reached under the edge of her tunic to a strange brooch, touching her fingers to its onyx stone.
“Valindra,” she whispered. “Is there something you can do to help our friends go down this hole?”
“Throw them in!” the lich keened. With Ara … oh, yes, with that one!”
“Valindra!” Dahlia barked, and the lich shook her head and sputtered as if Dahlia had thrown a bucket of water in her face. “Safely down,” Dahlia clarified.
With an exaggerated sigh and hardly any effort at all, Valindra waved one hand and a blue-glowing disc appeared in the air, suspended over the hole.
“You, too,” Dahlia explained to the lich, taking her by the hand and guiding her to stand on the disc. “We’ll need more, I think, for the drow and the dwarf.”
With another exhale and a wave of her left hand, then one more and a wave of her right, Valindra created floating discs in front of Jarlaxle and Athrogate.
Dahlia let go of Valindra’s hand and bade her to proceed. Valindra’s disc floated down into the pit. A nod from Dahlia to Dor’crae had him lifting his cape up behind him. It fluttered over his head, and as it descended, obscuring his form, he became a large bat and dived off after Valindra.
Dahlia motioned to the two remaining discs then grabbed the edges of her own magical cloak—the cloak she’d taken from Borlann.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked before she’d gone. “About Valindra, I mean?”
“I expect that, in a strange way, her insanity protected her from the Spellplague,” the elf replied. “She’s a unique combination of what was and what is. Or perhaps she’s simply a wizard gone mad, undead and gone beyond any hope. But whatever she is, I know she’s useful.”
“So to you she’s just a tool … a magic item,” Jarlaxle accused.
“Pray tell me what use you and your drow have had for her these many years.”
Jarlaxle grinned at the astute comeback and tipped his wide-brimmed hat. He started to step on his disc and bade Athrogate to do the same, but as soon as the dwarf hopped up, Jarlaxle hopped back down. “After you, good lady.”
“I ain’t likin’ this,” the dwarf said, in a crouch with his hands out to the sides, as if he expected the disc to vanish and leave him scrambling to find something to hold onto.
“You will be soon, I promise,” Dahlia said, and she pulled the magical cloak around her and in the blink of an eye had transformed herself into a crow. She dived into the pit.
Next went Athrogate, with Jarlaxle bringing up the rear. Before he stepped back onto Valindra’s conjured disc, the drow put his hand near the insignia he wore, of House Baenre of Menzoberranzan. He had his own levitation magic, just in case.
But he needn’t have feared any mischief from the lich, he soon discovered. The discs floated steadily and easily, moving to the mental commands of their riders. Fifty feet down, the tunnel changed from a sheer drop to a steep decline, as Dahlia had said, but they didn’t dismiss the discs or step off them. It was easier to float above the broken, uneven floor than to walk.
The corridor grew tighter around them, forcing a crouch or a lean here and there, and at one point, they actually had to lie down on their discs to pass under a low overhang. Still, they wound their way left and right, and ever downward.
Because of one last obstacle, Athrogate pulled a bit ahead of Jarlaxle over the final expanse of broken tunnel, and just as the drow came to see that the narrow passage widened up ahead, he heard Athrogate mutter in tones reverent and awe-filled, “By Dumathoin.”
The reference to Dumathoin, in dwarven lore the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, somewhat prepared the drow for what might be beyond, but still he found it hard to breathe when he came out onto the ledge beside his four companions.
They were on a natural balcony overlooking a huge chamber, perhaps a third the size of Menzoberranzan. Whether from natural lichen or residual magic, there was enough light for him to make out the general contours of the cavern. A pond lay before them, its still, dark waters interrupted by a series of large stalagmites, some ringed by stairwells and balconies that must once have served as guard posts or trade kiosks. Stalactites hung from the ceiling on their end of the cavern as well, and Jarlaxle noted similar construction on several of them. The dwarves who had worked the cavern had adopted the fashion of the drow, he realized, and had used the natural formations as dwellings. Jarlaxle had never heard of such a thing before, but he had little doubt in his guess. The work on the stalagmites and stalactites was surely not drow in nature, not delicate and curving, nor limned with glowing faerie fire.
“There are ballistae up there,” Dor’crae, who had returned to his human form, explained, pointing to the stalactites. “Guard stations overlooking the entrance.”
“No … no it canno’ be,” Athrogate whispered, and he slouched on his disc as if the strength simply fled his body.
But Jarlaxle heard hope in the dwarf’s voice more than anything else, a recognition beyond anything Athrogate had, perhaps, dared to hope, and so Jarlaxle paid the dwarf no concern at that moment and continued instead his study of the cavern.
On the far side of the dark pond, a couple hundred feet or more from their balcony, stood half a dozen clusters of small structures, each grouping set at the end of a mine rail, and more than one of those lines held an ancient mine cart, battered and rusted. The rail lines converged straight away from the balcony, running toward the back of the expansive cavern beyond even his superior darkvision.
“Come,” Dahlia bade them, her voice whistling like a giant bird. She slipped over the balcony’s low natural rail and glided on black feathered wings down to the water and across. Dor’crae became a bat once more and quickly followed, as did Valindra on her disc.
“Are you joining us?” Jarlaxle asked Athrogate when he saw that the dwarf made no move to follow.
Athrogate looked at him as if he’d just awakened from a deep, though tumultuous slumber. “It canno’ be,” he whispered, barely able to get the words out.
“Well, let us see what it be, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied, and started away.
He’d barely descended to skim above the pond on his disc when Athrogate passed him by, the dwarf apparently shaking off his stupor and willing his own disc on with all speed.
On the far side of the pond, Dahlia, an elf once more, was helping Valindra off her disc, and Athrogate simply leaped down from his, which was still half a dozen feet above the ground. The fall didn’t hinder the dwarf at all, though—in fact, he didn’t even seem to notice it as he bounced right back to his feet and stumbled and scrambled forward, following the central rail line.
“This place knew much battle,” Dor’crae remarked after shedding his bat form and bending low to pick up a whitened bone. “Goblin, or a small orc.”
Jarlaxle glanced around to confirm the vampire’s observations. The soft ground was scarred and many bits of bone showed clearly. More interesting, though, were the sights that lay ahead, the image that had Athrogate on his knees, and though his back was to the drow, Jarlaxle could well imagine the tears streaming down his hairy face.
And who could blame him? For even Jarlaxle, only partially acquainted with the legends of the Delzoun dwarves, could guess easily enough that they had stumbled upon Gauntlgrym, the legendary homeland of the Delzoun dwarves, the most sacred legend of their history, the place Bruenor Battlehammer himself had sought for more than half a century.
A great wall faced them, sealing off the end of the cavern. It was built much like one would expect of a surface castle, with gate towers on either side of a massive set of mithral doors, and a crenellated battlement lining the top of the wall that spanned the cavern and seemed as if it had been built deep into the stone at either end. The strangest part, aside from the huge silvery doors, was the tightness of it all. Looking up the wall, Jarlaxle almost expected to see it give way to open sky, but instead there was only a very short space to the natural ceiling of the cavern. A tall human would have a hard time even standing straight up there, and even Jarlaxle would have to crouch in many places.
“It canno’ be,” Athrogate was saying as Jarlaxle came up beside him, and confirmed that the dwarf was indeed crying.
“I can think of no other place it could be, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied, patting Athrogate’s strong shoulder.
“You know it, then?” asked Dahlia, moving up behind them with Dor’crae and Valindra in tow.
“Behold Gauntlgrym,” Jarlaxle explained. “Ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves, a place thought to be but a legend—”
“Never did a dwarf doubt it!” Athrogate bellowed.
“… by many nondwarves,” Jarlaxle finished, flashing a smile at his friend. “It’s been a mystery even among the elves, with memories long, and among the drow, who know the Underdark better than any. And doubt not that we have searched for it all these centuries. If one-tenth of the claims of the treasures of Gauntlgrym are true, then there is unimaginable wealth behind that wall, behind those doors.” He paused and considered the sight before him, and their location and depth in a region that was far from remote, by Underdark standards.
“Great magic must have masked this place all these years,” he said. “Such a place as this cavern alone could not have gone unnoticed in the Northdark through so many centuries.”
“How do you know this is Gauntlgrym?” Dor’crae asked. “The dwarves have built, and abandoned, many kingdoms.”
Before Jarlaxle could respond, Athrogate broke out into verse:
Silver halls and mithral doors
Stone walls to seal the cavern
Grander sights than e’er before
In smithy, mine, and tavern
Toil hard in endless night
In toast, oh lift yer flagon!
Ye’ll need the drink to keep ye right
At forge that bakes the dragon.
Come, Delzoun, come one and all!
Rush to grab yer kin
And tell ’em that their home awaits
In grandest Gauntlgrym!