They stepped lightly, though their footfalls echoed in the quiet darkness. The daylight beyond the door offered little relief, as though some barrier remained between the inside of the tower and the world beyond.
“We should light a torch—” Regis began, but he stopped abruptly, frightened by the unintentional volume of his whisper.
“The door!” Wulfgar cried suddenly, noticing that the silent portal had begun to close behind them. He leaped to grab it before it shut completely, sinking them into absolute darkness, but even his great strength could not deny the magical force that moved it. It shut without a bang, just a hushed rush of air that resounded like a giant’s sigh.
The lightless tomb they all envisioned as the huge door blocked out the final slit of sunlight did not come to pass, for as soon as the door closed, a blue glow lit up the room, the entrance hall to the Herald’s Holdfast.
No words could they speak above the profound awe that enveloped them. They stood in view of the history of the race of Man within a bubble of timelessness that denied their own perspectives of age and belonging. In the blink of an eye they had been propelled into the position of removed observers, their own existence suspended in a different time and place, looking in on the passing of the human race as might a god. Intricate tapestries, their once-vivid colors faded and their distinct lines now blurred, swept the friends into a fantastic collage of images that displayed the tales of the race, each one retelling a story again and again; the same tale, it seemed, but subtly altered each time, to present different principles and varied outcomes.
Weapons and armor from every age lined the walls, beneath the standards and crests of a thousand long forgotten kingdoms. Bas-relief images of heroes and sages, some familiar but most unknown to any but the most studious of scholars, stared down at them from the rafters, their captured visages precise enough to emote the very character of the men they portrayed.
A second door, this one of wood, hung directly across the cylindrical chamber from the first, apparently leading into the hill behind the tower. Only when it began to swing open did the companions manage to break free of the spell of the place.
None went for their weapons, though, understanding that whoever, or whatever, inhabited this tower would be beyond such earthly strength.
An ancient man stepped into the room, older than anyone they had ever seen before. His face had retained its fullness, not hollowed with age, but his skin appeared almost wooden in texture, with lines that, seemed more like cracks and a rough edge that defied time as stubbornly as an ancient tree. His walk was more a flow of quiet movement, a floating passing that transcended the definition of steps. He came in close to the friends and waited, his arms, obviously thin even under the folds of his long, satiny robe, peacefully dropped to his sides.
“Are you the herald of the tower?” Drizzt asked.
“Old Night, I am,” the man replied in a voice singing with serenity. “Welcome, Companions of the Hall. The Lady Alustriel informed me of your coming, and of your quest.”
Even consumed in the solemn respect of his surroundings, Wulfgar did not miss the reference to Alustriel. He glanced over at Drizzt, meeting the drow’s eyes with a knowing smile.
Drizzt turned away and smiled, too.
“This is the Chamber of Man,” Old Night proclaimed. “The largest in the Holdfast, except for the library, of course.”
He noticed Bruenor’s disgruntled scowl. “The tradition of your race runs deep, good dwarf, and deeper yet does the elves’,” he explained. “But crises in history are more often measured in generations than in centuries. The short-lived humans might have toppled a thousand kingdoms and built a thousand more in the few centuries that a single dwarven king would rule his people in peace.”
“No patience!” Bruenor huffed, apparently appeased.
“Agreed,” laughed Old Night. “But come now, let us dine. We have much to do this night.”
He led them through the doorway and down a similarly lit hallway. Doors on either side of them identified the various chambers as they passed—one for each of the goodly races, and even a few for the history of orcs, goblins, and giantkind.
The friends and Old Night supped at a huge, round table, its ancient wood as hard as mountain stone. Runes were inscribed all around its edge, many in tongues long lost to the world, that even Old Night could not remember. The food, like everything else, gave the impression of a distant past. Far from stale, though, it was delicious, with a flavor somewhat different from anything the friends had ever eaten before. The drink, a crystalline wine, possessed a rich bouquet surpassing even the legendary elixirs of the elves.
Old Night entertained them as they ate, retelling grand tales of ancient heroes, and of events that had shaped the Realms into their present state. The companions were an attentive audience, though in all probability substantial clues about Mithral Hall loomed only a door or two away.
When the meal was finished, Old Night rose from his chair and looked around at them with a weird, curious intensity. “The day will come, a millennium from now, perhaps, when I shall entertain again. On that day, I am sure, one of the tales I tell will concern the Companions of the Hall and their glorious quest.”
The friends could not reply to the honor that the ancient man had paid them. Even Drizzt, even-keeled and unshakable, sat unblinking for a long, long moment.
“Come,” Old Night instructed, “let your road begin anew.” He led them through another door, the door to the greatest library in all the North.
Volumes thick and thin covered the walls and lay about in high piles on the many tables positioned throughout the large room. Old Night indicated one particular table, a smaller one off to the side, with a solitary book opened upon it.
“I have done much of your research for you,” Old Night explained. “And in all the volumes concerning dwarves, this was the only one I could find that held any reference to Mithral Hall.”
Bruenor moved to the book, grasping its edges with trembling hands. It was written in High Dwarven, the language of Dumathoin, Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, a script nearly lost in the Realms. But Bruenor could read it. He surveyed the page quickly, then read aloud the passages of concern.
“’King Elmor and his people profited mightily from the labors of Garumn and the kin of Clan Battlehammer, but the dwarves of the secret mines did not refute Elmor’s gains. Settlestone proved a valuable and trustworthy ally whence Garumn could begin the secret trail to market of the mithral works.’” Bruenor looked up at his friends, a gleam of revelation in his eye.
“Settlestone,” he whispered. “I know that name.” He dived back into the book.
“You shall find little else,” Old Night said. “For the words of Mithral Hall are lost to the ages. The book merely states that the flow of mithral soon ceased, to the ultimate demise of Settlestone.”
Bruenor wasn’t listening. He had to read it for himself, to devour every word penned about his lost heritage, no matter the significance.
“What of this Settlestone?” Wulfgar asked Old Night. “A clue?”
“Perhaps,” the old herald replied. “Thus far I have found no reference to the place other than this book, but I am inclined to believe from the work that Settlestone was rather unusual for a dwarven town.”
“Above the ground!” Bruenor suddenly cut in.
“Yes,” agreed Old Night. “A dwarven community housed in structures above the ground. Rare these days and unheard of back in the time of Mithral Hall. Only two possibilities, to my knowledge.”
Regis let out a cry of victory.
“Your enthusiasm may be premature,” remarked Old Night. “Even if we discern where Settlestone once lay, the trail to Mithral Hall merely begins there.”
Bruenor flipped through a few pages of the book, then replaced it on the table. “So close!” he growled, slamming his fist down on the petrified wood. “And I should know!”
Drizzt moved over to him and pulled a vial out from
under his cloak. “A potion,” he explained to Bruenor’s puzzled look, “that will make you walk again in the days of Mithral Hall.”
“A mighty spell,” warned Old Night. “And not to be controlled. Consider its use carefully, good dwarf.”
Bruenor was already moving, teetering on the verge of a discovery he had to find. He quaffed the liquid in one gulp, then steadied himself on the edge of the table against its potent kick. Sweat beaded on his wrinkled brow and he twitched involuntarily as the potion sent his mind drifting back across the centuries.
Regis and Wulfgar moved over to him, the big man clasping his shoulders and easing him into a seat.
Bruenor’s eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing in the room before him. Sweat lathered him now, and the twitch had become a tremble.
“Bruenor,” Drizzt called softly, wondering if he had done right in presenting the dwarf with such a tempting opportunity.
“No, me father!” Bruenor screamed. “Not here in the darkness! Come with me, then. What might I do without ye?”
“Bruenor,” Drizzt called more emphatically.
“He is not here,” Old Night explained, familiar with the potion, for it was often used by longlived races, particularly elves, when they sought memories of their distant past. Normally the imbibers returned to a more pleasant time, though. Old Night looked on with grave concern, for the potion had returned Bruenor to a wicked day in his past, a memory that his mind had blocked out, or at least blurred, to defend him against powerful emotions. Those emotions would now be laid bare, revealed to the dwarf’s conscious mind in all their fury:
“Bring him to the Chamber of the Dwarves,” Old Night instructed. “Let him bask in the images of his heroes. They will aid in remembering, and give him strength throughout his ordeal.”
Wulfgar lifted Bruenor and bore him gently down the passage to the Chamber of the Dwarves, laying him in the center of the circular floor. The friends backed away, leaving the dwarf to his delusions.
Bruenor could only half-see the images around him now, caught between the worlds of the past and present. Images of Moradin, Dumathoin, and all his deities and heroes looked down upon him from their perches in the rafters, adding a small bit of comfort against the waves of tragedy. Dwarven-sized suits of armor and cunningly crafted axes and warhammers surrounded him, and he bathed in the presence of the highest glories of his proud race.
The images, though, could not dispell the horror he now knew again, the falling of his clan, of Mithral Hall, of his father.
“Daylight!” he cried, torn between relief and lament. “Alas for me father, and me father’s father! But yea, our escape is at hand! Settlestone …” he faded from consciousness for a moment, overcome, “… shelter us. The loss, the loss! Shelter us!”
“The price is high,” said Wulfgar, pained at the dwarf’s torment.
“He is willing to pay,” Drizzt replied.
“It will be a sorry payment if we learn nothing,” said Regis. “There is no direction to his ramblings. Are we to sit by and hope against hope?”
“His memories have already brought him to Settlestone, with no mention of the trail behind him,” Wulfgar observed.
Drizzt drew a scimitar and pulled the cowl of his cloak low over his face.
“What?” Regis started to ask, but the drow was already moving. He rushed to Bruenor’s side and put his face close to the dwarf’s sweat-lathered cheek.
“I am a friend,” he whispered to Bruenor. “Come at the news of the falling of the hall! My allies await! Vengeance will be ours, mighty dwarf of Clan Battlehammer! Show us the way so that we might restore the glories of the hall!”
“Secret,” Bruenor gasped, on the edge of consciousness.
Drizzt pressed harder. “Time is short! The darkness is falling!” he shouted. “The way, dwarf, we must know the way!”
Bruenor mumbled some inaudible sounds and all the friends gasped in the knowledge that the drow had broken through the final mental barrier that hindered Bruenor from finding the hall.
“Louder!” Drizzt insisted.
“Fourthpeak!” Bruenor screamed back. “Up the high run and into Keeper’s Dale!”
Drizzt looked over to Old Night, who was nodding in recognition, then turned back to Bruenor. “Rest, mighty dwarf,” he said comfortingly. “Your clan shall be avenged!”
“With the description the book gives of Settlestone, Fourthpeak can describe only one place,” Old Night explained to Drizzt and Wulfgar when they got back to the library. Regis remained in the Chamber of the Dwarves to watch over Bruenor’s fretful sleep.
The herald pulled a scroll tube down from a high shelf and unrolled the ancient parchment it held: a map of the central northland, between Silverymoon and Mirabar.
“The only dwarven settlement in the time of Mithral Hall above ground, and close enough to a mountain range to give a reference to a numbered peak, would be here,” he said, marking the southernmost peak on the southernmost spur of the Spine of the World, just north of Nesmé and the Evermoors. “The deserted city of stone is simply called “the Ruins” now, and it was commonly known as Dwarvendarrows when the bearded race lived there. But the ramblings of your companion have convinced me that this is indeed the Settlestone that the book speaks of.”
“Why, then, would the book not refer to it as Dwarvendarrow?” asked Wulfgar.
“Dwarves are a secretive race,” Old Night explained with a knowing chuckle, “especially where treasure is concerned. Garumn of Mithral Hall was determined to keep the location of his trove hidden from the greed of the outside world. He and Elmor of Settlestone no doubt worked out an arrangement that included intricate codes and constructed names to reference their surroundings. Anything to throw prying mercenaries off the trail. Names that now appear in disjointed places throughout the tomes of dwarven history. Many scholars have probably even read of Mithral Hall, called by some other name that the readers assumed referred to another of the many ancient dwarven homelands now lost to the world.”
The herald paused for a moment to digest everything that had occurred. “You should be away at once,” he advised. “Carry the dwarf if you must, but get him to Settlestone before the effects of the potion wear away. Walking in his memories, Bruenor might be able to retrace his steps of two hundred years ago back up the mountains to Keeper’s Dale, and to the gate of Mithral Hall.”
Drizzt studied the map and the spot that Old Night had marked as the location of Settlestone. “Back to the west,” he muttered, echoing Alustriel’s suspicions. “Barely two days march from here.”
Wulfgar moved in close to view the parchment and added, in a voice that held both anticipation and a measure of sadness, “Our road nears its end.”
hey left under stars and did not stop until stars filled the sky once again. Bruenor needed no support. Quite the opposite. It was the dwarf, recovered from his delirium and his eyes focused at last upon a tangible path to his long-sought goal, who drove them, setting the strongest pace since they had come out of Icewind Dale. Glassy-eyed and walking both in past and present, Bruenor’s obsession consumed him. For nearly two hundred years he had dreamed of this return, and these last few days on the road seemed longer than the centuries that had come before.
The companions had apparently beaten their worst enemy: time. If their reckoning at the Holdfast was correct, Mithral Hall loomed just a few days away, while the short summer had barely passed its midpoint. With time no longer a pressing issue, Drizzt, Wulfgar, and Regis had anticipated a moderate pace as they prepared to leave the Holdfast. But Bruenor, when he awoke and learned of the discoveries, would hear no arguments about his rush. None were offered, though, for in the excitement, Bruenor’s already surly disposition had grown even fouler.
“Keep yer feet moving!” he kept snapping at Regis, whose little legs could not match the dwarfs frantic pace. “Ye should’ve stayed in Ten-Towns with yer belly hanging over yer belt!” The dwarf would then sink into quiet grumbling, bending
even lower over his pumping feet, and driving onward, his ears blocked to any remarks that Regis might shoot back or any comments forthcoming from Wulfgar or Drizzt concerning his behavior.
They angled their path back to the Rauvin, to use its waters as a guide. Drizzt did manage to convince Bruenor to veer back to the northwest as soon as the peaks of the mountain range came into view. The drow had no desire to meet any patrols from Nesmé again, certain that it was that city’s warning cries that had forced Alustriel to keep him out of Silverymoon.
Bruenor found no relaxation at the camp that night, even though they had obviously covered far more than half the distance to the ruins of Settlestone. He stomped about the camp like a trapped animal, clenching and unclenching his gnarly fists and mumbling to himself about the fateful day when his people had been pushed out of Mithral Hall, and the revenge he would find when he at last returned.
“Is it the potion?” Wulfgar asked Drizzt later that evening as they stood to the side of the camp and watched the dwarf.
“Some of it, perhaps,” Drizzt answered, equally concerned about his friend. “The potion has forced Bruenor to live again the most painful experience of his long life. And now, as the memories of that past find their way into his emotions, they keenly edge the vengeance that has festered within him all these years.”
“He is afraid,” Wulfgar noted.
Drizzt nodded. “This is the trial of his life. His vow to return to Mithral Hall holds within it all the value that he places upon his own existence.”
“He pushes too hard,” Wulfgar remarked, looking at Regis, who had collapsed, exhausted, right after they had supped. “The halfling cannot keep the pace.”
“Less than a day stands before us,” Drizzt replied. “Regis will survive this road, as shall we all.” He patted the barbarian on the shoulder and Wulfgar, not fully satisfied, but resigned to the fact that he could not sway the dwarf, moved away to find some rest. Drizzt looked back to the pacing dwarf, and his dark face bore at look of deeper concern than he had revealed to the young barbarian.