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Only then did they see the forms ahead, shuffling to escape the light.
“Me brothers?” Athrogate asked, clearly at a loss.
“Ghosts,” Dor’crae whispered. “The place is thick with them. ”
They soon came into a huge chamber, circular and crossed by rail tracks, one from each of the three other exits. Along the curving wall of the chamber were building facades, and many with shingles hanging to describe the place therein—an armor merchant, a weaponsmith, a barracks, a tavern (of course), another tavern (of course), and on and on.
“Like Mirabar’s Undercity,” Jarlaxle remarked, though on a grander scale by far.
As they moved out toward the middle of the chamber, Athrogate grabbed Jarlaxle’s arm and pulled it lower so that the sword would illuminate the floor. It was a mosaic, a great mural, and they had to scurry about with the light for a while before they realized that it depicted the three dwarf gods of old: Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin.
In the very center of the floor was a raised circular dais, a singular throne atop it, and the sparkles as they approached marked it as no ordinary seat. Gem-studded and grand, with sweeping arms and a high, wide back of mithral, silver, and gold, it was the throne of a great king. Even the dais was no ordinary block of stone, but a composite design of those same precious metals, and set with lines of glittering jewels.
Jarlaxle waved his glowing sword near it, showing the rich purple fabric still intact. “Mighty magic,” he remarked.
“Undo it, that we might pilfer the gems,” Dor’crae insisted.
That brought him a hateful glare from Athrogate. “Ye pluck one stone from that chair and know that I’m filling the hole with yer black heart, vampire,” the dwarf warned.
“Did we come here as mere visitors, then?” Dor’crae retorted. “To gasp and fawn over its beauties?”
“I’m bettin’ ye’ll find plenty o’ treasures—more than we can carry—layin’ about,” Athrogate answered. “But some things ye’re not defiling. ”
“Enough,” said Dahlia. “Let us not presume, and not quarrel. We are merely at the entrance. There is so much more we need learn about this place. ”
Athrogate moved as if to do exactly that. He stepped tentatively toward the throne and turned to sit down. He paused there, not quite sitting, his hands not yet even touching the carved, jeweled arms of the great seat.
“Take care with that,” Jarlaxle warned. He pulled forth a wand, pointed it at the chair, and spoke a command word. His eyes popped open wide when he sensed the strength of the magic in that throne—ancient magic, powerful magic, as mighty as anything Jarlaxle had ever encountered before.
“Athrogate, no,” he said, his voice raspy and breathless.
“A dwarf seat!” Athrogate argued and before Jarlaxle could stop him, he sat down.
The dwarf’s eyes opened wide, and his mouth opened wider in a silent scream as he glanced all around.
“Not a king,” he gasped, but he didn’t even know he was saying it.
Athrogate was thrown from the throne, sent flying a dozen feet to skid down on the mosaic floor. He lay there for a long while, trembling and covering his face, until Jarlaxle finally coxed him up to his knees.
“What did you see?” Dahlia asked, moving toward the throne.
“Ye ain’t no dwarf!” Athrogate yelled at her.
“But you are, and still it rejected you,” Dahlia shot back.
“It’ll shrivel ye!”
“Dahlia, do not,” Jarlaxle warned her.
The elf paused in front of the throne and reached out one hand, her fingers barely away from the seat. But she didn’t touch it.
“You said ‘not a king’ right before you were thrown,” Jarlaxle said.
Athrogate could only look at him, befuddled, and shake his hairy head. He looked past Jarlaxle to the throne then, and nodded in deep respect.
Jarlaxle helped him to his feet and left him to his own accord, and the dwarf immediately went back to admire the throne. He didn’t touch it, though, and certainly entertained no thoughts of ever sitting in it again.
“Let us take our rest here,” Jarlaxle suggested. He paused and tilted his head, as if listening to a sound far in the distance. “I suspect we’ll need all our strength to pass these halls. You’ve been here, Dor’crae,” he added. “What … residents might we find?”
The vampire shrugged and shook his head. “I saw only the dwarf ghosts, and hundreds of them,” he replied. “I was here only briefly, following the Hosttower’s tendrils, a narrow course in a huge complex, and one you cannot walk directly. But I saw only dwarf ghosts. I doubt not that they would swarm us were we not armed against them. But we are. ” He looked to Athrogate, then to Dahlia, to make his point. “They welcome those of Delzoun blood, as you saw with the doors. ”
“Because they’re trustin’ that I won’t let ye defile the place,” Athrogate replied. “And I’m telling ye that their trust is well placed. Ye scratch one altar, poke a jeweled eye out o’ one king’s image, and them ghosts’ll be the least o’ yer problems. ”
“Not ghosts,” Jarlaxle assured Dor’crae. “Something with footfalls. Something … corporeal. ”
“Ghouls, perhaps,” answered the vampire. “Or living dwarves?”
“By the bearded gods,” Athrogate muttered, imagining what he might say to a dwarf of Gauntlgrym.
“They would have been on the walls to greet us, and none too kindly,” Jarlaxle reasoned.
“What then?” asked Athrogate, obviously a bit peeved at the drow for stealing his moment of fantasy.
“Pick from a long list, friend,” Jarlaxle answered. “Many are the choices, and it has been my long experience that rarely will you find a deserted cave in the Underdark. ”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Dahlia interjected. “Take your rest and let us be on our way. ” She looked to Dor’crae and nodded, and the vampire walked off to the far edge of the circular room and disappeared from sight.
“He will scout out our route,” Dahlia explained. “To find those tunnels that most closely mirror his own journey to the forge of Gauntlgrym. ”
They sorted out areas around the central dais and set their bedrolls, but none found much rest, particularly Athrogate, who was so agitated, so overwhelmed. What dwarf in all Faerûn hadn’t dreamed of that moment—of the discovery of Gauntlgrym?
Dor’crae returned some hours later, confident that he had discovered the tunnels that would bring them to the forge. He confirmed Jarlaxle’s suspicions, as well, for though he hadn’t seen any monsters—dwarves, ghouls, goblins, or whatever they might be—he had heard some shuffling in the dark.
That ominous report did nothing to daunt the eagerness of the group, though, for they were confident they could handle whatever might come their way.
Athrogate led the way, with Dor’crae close behind and calling out directions. They exited the circular room straight back from the gate that had brought them in, moving along wide corridors with still more shops, and a temple of Clangeddin, where Athrogate had to stop to offer a prayer.
Always at the corner of their vision, they caught the dreamy movements of gliding ghosts, inquisitive, perhaps, but never approaching.
They came to a great sweeping stairway, descending in a gentle arc, and only after they had gone down several dozen steps, down below the thick stone that supported the upper level, did they begin to realize the enormity of both the stairway and the complex. The view opened wide below them, a gigantic cavern with hundred-foot-tall buttresses climbing up from the far-distant floor like massive, stoic sentries. Two lines of giant pillars supported a lower section of the vast, multi-sectioned chamber, each decorated with thousands of reliefs and carved symbols.
Two hundred more steps down, nearing the floor, they saw that the stairway would continue through the floor to lower levels, which Dor’crae indicated they should follow.
“Ye canno’
ask me to walk through this place without a look!” Athrogate argued, raising his voice a bit too loudly. It echoed all around them, over and over again.
“We can come back to it, good dwarf,” Dahlia said.
“Bah!” Athrogate snorted.
“Athrogate … there,” Jarlaxle said, and he pointed a wand back toward the nearest wall. As the others peered in the indicated direction, Jarlaxle activated the wand and its magic illuminated the area of interest. Even Valindra gave a little cry of surprise and awe at the sight.
The wall had been carved, and colored with various metals, jewels, and paint into the giant likeness of the god Moradin, ten times the size of a mortal dwarf. The Soulforger had his shoulder turned in behind a bejeweled shield, a great warhammer raised in his other hand up behind him. His bearded face seemed a mask of bloodlust, battle hungry, ready to meet and destroy any foe.
Jarlaxle glanced down at Athrogate, who was on his knees, his face in one palm, trying to control his gasping breath.
Eventually, they went on, level after level down, along corridors wide and narrow, through grand halls and modest chambers. For a long while, the only disturbance in the thick dust that had settled about the place was their own footprints, and it stayed that way until they came to a strong stone door, barred on their side with thick iron.
“This is the end of the city proper,” Dor’crae explained, motioning for Athrogate to move the locking bars aside. “The areas beyond are less worked, open to the mines, and with one path leading to the forge. ”
“Ah, but I wish we might lock it behind us,” Athrogate said as the last bar was pulled aside. “I’d not be the one to open Gauntlgrym to whatever walks the depths below. ”
“When we leave, we’ll secure the door behind us,” Dahlia assured him.
The change in the atmosphere was palpable the moment they passed through the door. Where before there had been ghostly silence, only their own scuffling accompanying their march—and even that muted by the thick dust and heavy air—on the other side of the stone door there was sound: creaking and groaning, the scraping of stone on stone. Before they’d walked in the normally comfortable temperatures of the Upperdark, but that had given away to a great increase in both heat and humidity. The stone stairs beyond were slick with moisture, and blacker somehow, unlike the muted, dusty gray of the city.
They pressed on, though the treacherous footing made them move slowly and carefully down the stairs. Dahlia and Valindra both commented on the sudden humidity—it felt almost as if they were walking through a misty spring rain—and the elf asked how that might be possible, but none of her charges offered an explanation.
At the next landing, two hundred steps or more below the door, the corridor broke off into three directions. One corridor was of worked stone, while the other two were either natural caves or rough-cut mines. Dor’crae hesitated at what seemed the obvious choice—the carefully-worked corridor.
“We’re close,” he assured his companions.