Archmage (18 page)

Of all the travelers from the Silver Marches, Tiago and Doum’wielle were the first to enter the tunnels that would take them to the ancient dwarven complex, now the drow city of Q’Xorlarrin. Tiago knew this region well, having come forth to raid Port Llast in search of Drizzt, and he knew, too, that he and his companion would almost certainly find the upper reaches of the complex empty of drow.

“Remain alert,” he told Doum’wielle when they went into the long approach tunnels. “We will likely encounter enemies, goblins and kobolds at the least, in the upper chambers. Matron Mother Zeerith does not have the resources to secure the whole of the vast tunnels and chambers of the ancient dwarven homeland, particularly after her losses in the Silver Marches War, and I am sure that she remains in the lower tunnels.”

“We will go to her?”

“No,” Tiago sharply replied. “Once the dwarves are in the Underdark, Drizzt will almost surely serve as scout. We’ll find our place, and we’ll find him alone. Then we’ll go and see Zeerith, and perhaps she will accompany me to the Ruling Council in Menzoberranzan, where I will present the matron mother with the heretic’s head.”

He should be warning his family of the dwarves’ approach, Doum’wielle thought, but knew better than to say. Somehow, the necklace made her bolder about such thoughts.

She felt a sting of disapproval from Khazid’hea, a reminder to her that her own future likely hinged on this expected confrontation with the rogue Do’Urden.

She looked at Tiago and smiled and nodded, then obediently followed him down into the darkness.

Doum’wielle suppressed her wicked smile, secure in the notion that she, not he, would be the one presenting the head of Drizzt Do’Urden to Matron Mother Baenre.

With her father Tos’un dead, this was her only chance to find a place where she was not simply
iblith
, to be abused and discarded by the merciless drow.

T
he winds of change have lifted the hair from my neck. They tickle me and tease me, and take me to a place unexpected.

My road has wound in circles these last years, from hearth and home, to the open road, to trying to build anew with a group that was not of my own heart. And now the circle completes, back to where I began, it seems, but not so.

For these friends returned are not the friends I knew. They are very much akin in heart and duty, of course, and surely recognizable to me, but yet, they are different, in that they have seen a new light and way, a new perspective on mortality and death, and on the meaning of life itself. This attitude manifests itself most subtly, usually, but I see it there, in every Bruenor grumble, in every Catti-brie confidence, in every Regis fight, and in every Wulfgar laugh.

And now I see it in myself as well. For these last decades, after the passing of Catti-brie and the others, and even before Bruenor fell in Gauntlgrym, I was restless, and quite content to be. I wanted to know what was around the next bend, any bend in the road, be it the quest to find Gauntlgrym or the years afterward when I led the band of Artemis Entreri, Dahlia, and the others. My home was in my memories—I neither wanted nor needed a replacement. For those memories were enough to sustain me and nourish me. I nearly lost myself in that long and winding journey to that ultimate conclusion, and would have, I know, had I not refused Dahlia on that hillside in Icewind Dale. There, again, I found myself, and so in the end, I survived. Drizzt Do’Urden, this person I strive to be, survived the trials.

And now I find myself on the road of adventure again with Cattibrie and Bruenor, and could anything be better? Ours is a noble quest, as much so as the one that reclaimed Mithral Hall that century and more ago. We march with songs and the cadence of dwarven boots, under the flags of three kings and with the flagons of five thousand grinning dwarf warriors.

Could anything be better?

Perhaps so if Wulfgar and Regis were still with us, and truly I miss them every day. But at the same time, I am happy for them, and hold confidence that we will meet again. I noted the sparkle in Regis’s eyes whenever he spoke of Donnola Topolino, and I can only applaud the road he has chosen—and only be happier that mighty Wulfgar walks that road beside him! Woe to any ill-intentioned rogues who cross the path of that formidable pair!

They will come back. I have fretted on this for a while, but now I am convinced. This is not like the time long ago when Wulfgar abandoned us to return to Icewind Dale. Nay, on that occasion, I doubted that we would ever see Wulfgar again, and we would not have, none of us, except that Regis and I ventured to Icewind Dale. Even then, the reunion was . . . strange. For when Wulfgar left us those decades ago, he did so emotionally as well as physically.

That is not the case this time.

They will come back, and we will be victorious in Gauntlgrym. These things I believe, and so I am at peace, and excited and anxious all at once.

And nervous, I admit, and I am surprised by that truth. When we rejoined together atop Kelvin’s Cairn that dark night, there was only elation. And as the shock of my friends returned from the dead wore away, I was left simply giddy, feeling blessed and fortunate beyond what anyone should ever expect.

In the early days back together, even when we returned to the Silver Marches and found ourselves embroiled in a war, we all had the sense that the Companions of the Hall survived on time borrowed from the gods, and that our end, for any of us, could come at any moment, and it would be all right, because we had found each other again and had left no words unsaid. Even though my four friends had begun a new life, living two decades and more with new identities, with new family, new friends, and for Regis at least, a new love in his life, our existence was to be enjoyed and appreciated day by day.

And it was . . . all right.

Soon after, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and I had come to believe that Wulfgar and Regis had fallen in the tunnels of the Upperdark on our journey back to Mithral Hall. For months we had thought them lost to us forevermore, that they had journeyed once again into the realm of death, this time not to return.

And it was . . . all right.

The pain was there, to be sure, but still, we had been given the great gift of time together once more, and in the knowledge that our companionship was indeed rooted in mortality! I cannot emphasize that gift enough! Many times, I claim that a person must know he is going to die, must recognize and accept that basic truth of life, in order to defeat his fears and press on with a true sense of purpose in life. My friends knew that, and know that now, better than most.

They have seen the other side.

And when they are called again from this life, they go with acceptance, each, and not because they know a truth of immortality and eternity beyond the mortal coil—indeed, Wulfgar, and even Regis, remain skeptical of the gods, even after their ordeal in the enchanted forest of Iruladoon.

The close brush with death, indeed their decades in the clutches of something other than life, has given them, has given us all, both urgency and acceptance. It is a blessing, twice over.

Perhaps because of the passage of time, perhaps because of our victories and survival in the War of the Silver Marches, but now I have come to sense a change. That borrowed time seems less to me as I grow comfortable with the return of my friends, alive and vibrant, and hopefully with many decades ahead of them—indeed, even discounting the possibility of an enemy blade cutting one of us low, Bruenor could well outlive me in natural years!

Or our end, any of us or all of us, could come this very day, or tomorrow. I’ve always known this, and make it a part of my daily routine to remind myself of it, but now that the newness of my friends’ return has worn off, now that I have come to believe that they are here—they are really here, as surely and tangibly as they were when I first met Catti-brie on the slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn, and she introduced me to Bruenor and Regis, and then Wulfgar came to us when he was defeated in battle by Bruenor.

It is new again, it is fresh, and it is, in terms of an individual’s life, lasting.

And so I am nervous about going into battle, because now I am seeing the future once more as the comfort of home and of friends, and my Catti-brie, all about, and it is a future I long to realize!

In a strange way, I now see myself moving in the opposite direction of Wulfgar. He has returned carefree, ready to experience whatever the world might throw before him—in battle, in game and in love. He lives for each moment, without regret.

Fully without regret, and that is no small thing. “Consequence” is not a word that now enters Wulfgar’s conversation. He is returned to life to play, with joy, with lust, with passion.

I try to mirror that exuberance, and hope to find that joy, and know my lust in my love for Catti-brie, but while Wulfgar embraces the life of the free-spirited nomad, a rapscallion even, finding adventure and entertainment where he may, I find myself suddenly intrigued by the permanency of hearth and home, a husband, among friends.

A father?

—Drizzt Do’Urden

T
he tunnels did not seem cramped to them. The low ceilings and tons of stone above them did not bow their shoulders with apprehension. For the Delzoun dwarves, from the moment they entered the tunnel from the rocky dale, traveling down the long and winding subterranean corridor that Bruenor told them would take them to the outer wall of Gauntlgrym, the way, the smell, the aura, all spoke not of danger or foreign discomfort, or the threatening hush of a waiting predator, or the shadows of death fluttering all about.

To the dwarves of Delzoun, the tunnel spoke only of home. Their most ancient and hallowed home. The home of their earliest ancestors, the hearth that had spawned the smaller fires of Citadel Felbarr and Citadel Adbar, Mithral Hall and Kelvin’s Cairn, and all the other Delzoun kingdoms scattered about Faerûn.

This was the home-fire, the true home-fire, the spawn of the dwarven race on Toril, the greatest and earliest Forge that had propelled their kind to unparalleled heights of craftsmanship and reputation.

There were monsters all about, they knew. They could smell the stench of kobolds and goblins, and other, less-sentient denizens of dark places: carrion crawlers with waggling tentacles, and giant cave spiders who would suck the juices from a living victim and leave the pruned corpse for the vermin. The dwarves could smell them, or hear their distant skitters, but the dwarves didn’t fear them, any of them.

They were an army of Delzoun warriors, unified in stride and strike, and letting come whatever may come. It didn’t matter. They were on the path to Gauntlgrym, and so to Gauntlgrym they would go, and woe to any man or monster who dared to step in their way.

Despite the smells and scat and other goblinkin and monster sign, the dwarves only found a few skirmishes over the next few days, mostly with carrion crawlers, which were apparently so confident in their paralyzing poison, or simply so stupid, that they didn’t comprehend the numerical disadvantage. A few dwarves were put into that temporarily paralyzed state by the swatting tentacles, but before the creatures could crawl up and begin a meal, hordes of other dwarves were there to take up the fight and overwhelm the beasts.

So not a dwarf was lost in the trek into the Underdark, and only one injured—and that from a fall, with a wound that the clerics easily mended.

Bruenor remained near the front of the line all the way down, with Drizzt and Catti-brie and the four dwarves that made up his personal bodyguard. Beside Bruenor came King Emerus and his entourage, led by Ragged Dain, along with King Connerad and Bungalow Thump.

So long was the dwarven line that when Bruenor at last entered the lowest chamber, the antechamber to Gauntlgrym’s castle-like wall, the trailing dwarves were not even halfway down the long, descending tunnel from the surface.

Drizzt, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Athrogate all knew this cavern, full of stalagmites and leering stalactites, with many structures hollowed as guard stations, ancient ballistae and catapults rotting in place. They stood on the landing before the tunnel exit, at the western end of the cavern, looking over the low stone wall. Just enough illuminating lichen was scattered about for them to peer through the forest of rock mounds and see the dull reflections off the black water of the underground pond. Across that foreboding water was a small beach of fine sand, fronting the stone wall and the doorway to the throne room.

“Do ye feel it?” Bruenor asked Emerus when the old king moved up to stand beside him.

“Aye,” Emerus answered. “In me heart and in me bones. At the other end of this very cavern?”

“Across that water sits the wall, and just inside, the Throne o’ the Dwarf Gods,” Bruenor explained.

Despite the dim light, King Emerus’s eyes sparkled, and he had to work very hard just to draw in his breath.

“We’ll be startin’ our work right in here,” Bruenor told them all. “I’m thinking that we fix these guard posts—and might be buildin’ a bridge across that water.”

“One easy to drop,” Catti-brie offered.

“Aye,” said Emerus. “If them drow’re up high already in Gauntlgrym, then we’ll start our diggin’ in right here so they can get the whole o’ the army in their ugly faces.” He paused and looked at Drizzt, then shrugged and offered a slight bow.

Drizzt, surely not offended, merely chuckled in reply.

“Bring in a swarm o’ Gutbusters,” Bruenor instructed Bungalow Thump. “Ye take yer boys down first and spread the breadth o’ the place to the first mounds. Torch line, with none out o’ sight, and all ready to fight for them next to ’em.”

Bungalow Thump surveyed the place for a moment. “Wide cave,” he said doubtfully.

“Me and me boy’ll be with ye,” Ambergris remarked, elbowing Athrogate, who snickered and shoved her back.

“Grab them Wilddwarfs from Adbar, if ye need ’em,” said Bruenor, but Bungalow Thump shook his head.

“They’re all up near the back,” he explained.

Bruenor looked to King Emerus, the two of them shaking their heads knowingly. “King Connerad’s sure to miss all the fun, and his boys’ll find themselves in the back for his absence,” Emerus said. He turned to Ragged Dain and nodded.

“I’ll have enough o’ me boys to take the right half o’ the room,” Ragged Dain told Bungalow Thump, and the two rushed off back up the tunnel to gather their forces.

With great precision, two hundred hustling dwarves soon stretched along the cavern floor, wall-to-wall in front of the stairway exit. On a call from Bungalow Thump, scores of torches went up in fast order. The long line began its steady move, sweeping clean the cavern in front of them, while more dwarves filled in from behind. Those second ranks formed strike teams, and whenever the leading dwarves crossed a stalagmite mound that had been worked with stairs, one of those strike teams was fast up them to scout the nest and secure the post.

Now Drizzt did go out to scout as well, moving into the shadows in front of the front line, picking his careful and swift way, but never getting too far in front. As they at last neared the water, the drow, with his keen lowlight vision, thought he spotted a pair of figures slipping in through the open door of Gauntlgrym across the way, but he couldn’t be certain.

“Secure the bank,” Bruenor told them when he, too, came up to the pond’s edge. “And keep yerselves ready. Dark things in here, and in the water, too, not to doubt.”

“Engineers’ll be in tomorrow,” Emerus said quietly to Bruenor. “It’ll be a bit afore we can get a bridge across.”

“And yerself ain’t for waiting?” Bruenor asked, and Emerus shrugged. Bruenor pointed down the bank, where the hollowed cap of a giant mushroom sat in the darkness—the boat Bruenor and his friends had made when they had come in for Thibbledorf Pwent a year before. It was right where they had left it, Bruenor believed, and that seemed a good thing.

“Set a ferry?” Emerus asked.

“Dark things in the water, but aye,” Bruenor replied.

“The Harpells can get many across in short order,” Catti-brie said, moving to join the pair. “Old Kipper is well versed in the art of the dimension door.”

The work began immediately, setting a brigade of archers with crossbows on the bank directly opposite the door, while Catti-brie ran back to fetch Penelope, Kipper, and the other Harpells. Skilled craftsdwarves soon arrived with their tools and logs they had dragged down from the forest above. Within a few hours, as more dwarves swarmed into the huge cavern, the Harpells and Catti-brie erected magical gates, and several score dwarves, including the kings and their bodyguards, stepped through the portals onto the beach across the way.

Work on the ferry began immediately, with beams set in place on both sides of the small pond, turnstiles dug in and secured, and with Penelope Harpell taking magical flight, carrying the heavy rope from one side to the other. While the ferry was being completed, with several more mushroom-cap boats fashioned, dwarf clerics cast magical light onto stones and threw them into the water along the ferry route.

Tightly packed schools of fish flitted from the illumination and hovered in the shadows just beyond the light, and those few adventurers who had been this way before understood the danger of those vicious cave fish. And so the Harpells and Catti-brie stood guard, and whenever one of those schools encroached upon the lighted path, a lightning bolt greeted them and sent them scurrying, or had them floating up to the surface, stunned or even dead.

Strong-shouldered dwarves cranked the turnstiles, and tough warriors carried stones across and set to building defensive walls outside the opened door to the upper hall of Gauntlgrym.

Despite their impatience, prudence ruled the day, and it was many hours before the first team of Gutbusters rushed through the small tunnel and into the great throne room—and that only after Penelope Harpell and Kipper had sent magical disembodied wizard eyes into the chamber to scout in front of them.

At long last, King Bruenor Battlehammer and King Emerus Warcrown and King Connerad Brawnanvil strode side by side into that hallowed chamber. They had come not as explorers, as with Bruenor’s first journey here, in another time and another life. They had come not in desperation, as with Bruenor’s second visit when he sought the council of the dwarf gods, nor to save a friend, as Bruenor and the Companions of the Hall had done to rescue Thibbledorf Pwent.

They had come as conquerors now, heirs to the throne of Delzoun.

Bruenor kept his eyes on Emerus as they walked to the dais down to the right, where sat the Throne of the Dwarf Gods. Bruenor had been here several times, of course, and so he knew what to expect, both with this enchanted and ancient throne he had sat upon before, and with the two graves set not far to the other side of it, the cairns built for himself and for Thibbledorf Pwent when they had both fallen in Gauntlgrym.

He remembered his first journey into this chamber, when he had first come to know for certain that he had indeed found this most ancient Delzoun homeland. He noted the same expression he knew he had worn upon the face of his companion, Emerus, and surely Bruenor understood.

He nodded, and he kept staring at the old King of Citadel Felbarr, and he let Emerus’s sense of wonder and reverence bleed back to him, reminding him again of his own feelings on that first journey to this ancient and hallowed ground.

“That’s the throne?” Emerus asked, his voice shaky.

“Aye, and beyond it’s me own grave, and that o’ Thibbledorf Pwent, me battlerager,” Bruenor answered. “Ye go and put yer bum in the chair, and ye’ll know if yer heart’s pleasing Moradin.”

Ragged Dain came huffing and puffing up to the pair just before they reached the throne.

“When I put me arse in that seat and me heart wasn’t straight with the callings o’ the gods, the chair tossed me almost to the wall,” Bruenor explained. “Ah but ye’ll get yer thoughts sorted out quick enough when ye put yerself in that throne!”

“Can any of us go and sit, then?”

“Royal blood,” Bruenor replied. “So I’m guessin’. Though I’m thinking that any who’ve found the favor o’ Moradin would be welcomed . . .”

His voice trailed off when Ragged Dain motioned ahead with his chin, and Bruenor turned to watch King Emerus moving for the seat. Without hesitation, the old king turned and plopped himself down on the throne. He slid back comfortably and placed his hands firmly on the burnished arms, grabbing tightly.

King Emerus closed his eyes. His breath came easy, his shoulders slumped in relaxation, as if all the tension was flowing out of his body.

Ragged Dain put his hand on Bruenor’s shoulder, as much to support himself as to comfort the dwarf he had known as little Arr Arr.

If King Emerus Warcrown’s life had ended at this very moment, he would have died a happy dwarf. Sitting on that throne in these hallowed halls seemed to Emerus to be the crowning achievement of a dwarf life well lived. He felt at peace, more so than ever in his long life, for a sense of divine contentment washed through him.

All of his major life decisions, like abandoning Felbarr to undertake this journey, rolled through him. Not all had been correct, he had learned, sometimes painfully, but he sensed now that the gods of the dwarves, Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin, were satisfied that Emerus Warcrown had made those choices, right and wrong, with good intent and a proper sense of dwarven purpose.

An image of the Forge of Gauntlgrym came clearly to him, as well as one of the small tunnel leading to the antechamber that housed the fire primordial that gave the Forge its supernatural heat and magical energy.

Emerus wore a wide smile, but only until he sensed, or feared, that the throne had shown him that place in his mind’s eye because he would never see it physically.

For he realized then that the dwarves were in for a long and bitter fight here, and that to truly secure Gauntlgrym would likely take them years. Longer than old King Emerus—who felt older now after months on the road—had left to live?

It seemed to Emerus a distinct possibility, but this, too, he accepted, and was content that Moradin and the other gods of his people agreed with his decision to abdicate his throne and journey to this place.

He felt their strength then, in his old and aching bones. And he heard their voices, speaking the old tongue of the dwarves, a language with which Emerus and every other dwarf alive had only cursory knowledge.

Every other dwarf alive except for the one standing in front of Emerus and watching him now, for Bruenor, too, had heard the voices of the ancients, of the gods.

A long time later, King Emerus Warcrown opened his eyes.
“Chan eagnaidth drasta,”
he said.

“Tha,”
Bruenor replied.

“What’re ye about, then?” Ragged Dain asked, looking to each in turn. “Aye, to what?”

“King Emerus is wiser now,” Bruenor explained.

“Tha,”
Emerus added. “For I’m hearin’ the voice o’ Moradin."

“And learnin’ the tongue o’ Moradin, aye?” Ragged Dain asked. King Emerus smiled wide, then hopped off the throne, a spring in his step, and walked over to the pair. He nodded to his second and met the long gaze of Bruenor. Emerus lifted his hands and placed them solidly on his old friend’s shoulders, the two staring unblinkingly for a long time, sharing something they both now knew and understood, something divine and supernatural.