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 arid 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
