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 mithral, the mug standard on the shield of solid gold, and the helm ringed with a thousand glittering gemstones. “By me own eyes, I proclaim the legends as true,” he shouted boldly, lifting the mithral axe high above him. “Garumn is dead and me father, too. Thus I claim me title: Eighth King of Mithral Hall!”
arumn’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 Mithral 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 how 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 mithral 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 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 Mithral 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 Mithral 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 Mithral 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 tendays, 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.