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.
