Hero Page 7

  “Poison?”

  Charri Hunzrin scoffed. “Only the person caught by the gem will know it,” she explained. “To those around her … well, they will merely think their friend lost to a foul mood, if they suspect anything at all. They will never connect it to the necklace, and by the time they even realize the change, it will be too late—for her and for them.”

  The dwarves both frowned, and Toofless held up the empty gemstone again.

  The empty phylactery, he realized, and a wicked smile began to spread over his face.

  “Two tons does not seem so steep a price now, does it?” Charri Hunzrin asked.

  CHAPTER 3

  Homecoming?

  DWARVEN HAMMERS RANG OUT IN BRILLIANT CADENCE, A TEAM of industrious Mirabar boys chip-chipping carefully at the stone in the lava-sealed anteroom, taking great pains to not strike the lever controlling the flow of water elementals into the primordial pit.

  Another team, this one of former Felbarran dwarves, worked on the bridge spanning the pit, turning the makeshift walkway into a permanent, solid structure once more.

  Across the chasm and over by the embalming stone, where the drow altar had formerly sat, King Bruenor stood with hands on hips, watching the progress of the dwarven teams, but listening to the continuing argument raging around him among the principal wizards who were working on rebuilding the Hosttower of the Arcane.

  “We’ll need that spell, often and repeatedly!” the Shadovar woman named Lady Avelyere kept insisting, referring to some arcane enchantment to control elements, or some such.

  Bruenor wasn’t too concerned with the details, focusing more on the bigger picture, which meant that they, including—indeed prompted by—Catti-brie, were planning to let the primordial out of its hole.

  The dwarf king had argued against that strategy, of course. But in the end, he found that he had few other options, and none that would offer him any chance of long-term success here in Gauntlgrym. This plan involving the primordial was how they would, indeed, the only way they could, rebuild—or regrow, as Catti-brie had put it—the Hosttower of the Arcane, and without that construction, everything else became a moot point. Without the magic of the Hosttower, the primordial would soon enough break free, without hindrance, and without any power in the world able to stop it.

  Bruenor glanced over at the pit and could see the waves of heat radiating up with the steam as the swirling cadre of water elementals gave their all to contain the monster volcano. The wizards and priests wanted to stunt that safeguard, wanted Bruenor to pull the lever when the room was clear and all set in place up in Luskan. They would let the primordial escape, but just a bit, sending its power and heat and magical energy into the long underground tendrils and through them to the waiting trunk of the great structure of the Hosttower.

  It sounded crazy to Bruenor, suicidal even. He wondered how long his fledgling kingdom would last if the primordial found a way around their designs.

  “Directional barriers!” he heard Gromph declare. “Walls of magical force will corral the vomit of the primordial beast.”

  It sounded coherent to Bruenor, at least—until, of course, he considered the speaker, the Archmage of Menzoberranzan.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  “Hail and well met!” came a call from the room’s door, and Bruenor turned to see Jarlaxle rushing in, his smile as wide as any Bruenor had ever seen.

  “Truly?” an exasperated Catti-brie asked the mercenary, giving words to the expressions on all around the stone, for how could anyone interrupt this most important meeting in such a cavalier manner?

  “Drizzt Do’Urden is returned!” Jarlaxle announced, and that dour and serious mood changed instantly to hearty cheers from the dwarves and from many of the wizards and priests—even the Shadovar contingent and the cloud giant.

  But not from Gromph Baenre, Bruenor noted.

  No sooner had Jarlaxle announced him than the drow ranger entered the chamber. He looked around curiously, and seemed about to scratch his head, when Catti-brie hit him with a flying hug. Drizzt dropped the bag he was carrying to the ground at his side, and slowly lifted his arms up to reciprocate.

  “Do not ever leave me again,” she whispered, and she squeezed him tighter with all of her considerable strength, and plastered him with a wet kiss. Others came up then, all patting the drow on the back. Bruenor was there, of course, pushing to the front.

  “Me friend!” he said. “Ah, me friend! When Jarlaxle and them other two good-for-nothings came back without ye, well …” Bruenor stopped and shook his head, then he, too, launched himself into the hug with his adopted daughter and beloved companion.

  Drizzt nodded at him and offered a weak smile.

  “Elf?” Bruenor asked curiously. “Ye all right?”

  “I am tired, my friend. So very tired.”

  “Well, we got a bed for ye, don’t ye doubt!”

  A chorus of huzzahs went up, or started to, but then faded fast when another, less-known drow walked into the room.

  Gromph chewed his lip at the sight of Kimmuriel, but nodded his acceptance.

  “I accompanied Drizzt up from Menzoberranzan,” Kimmuriel explained to Bruenor and Catti-brie, both eyeing him suspiciously.

  “He did,” Drizzt confirmed. “And he brought me here with his … magic.” As he finished Drizzt cast a glance Kimmuriel’s way, and he couldn’t hide all of the suspicion in that look. If he was being deceived—about everything!—as he feared, then he fully expected that Kimmuriel Oblodra, the renowned psionicist, was likely playing a role.

  But what could he do?

  He bent and grabbed his bag, just at the time Bruenor was going for it.

  “Spoils of war,” Drizzt explained, and rolled it up over his shoulder. He took Catti-brie’s arm and she led him away, out of the chamber and to the complex’s higher levels, where their hearth and bed awaited.

  Bruenor watched them go, hands on hips, not even bothering to glance at Kimmuriel as the drow walked past him to join Jarlaxle and Gromph. The three whispered for a few moments while others returned to their work, but Bruenor just stood there, staring at the open doorway and the corridor that led to the Forge Room.

  “He has been through a great trial,” Jarlaxle said to the red-bearded dwarf, walking up to stand beside Bruenor, his own gaze following Bruenor’s to the open doorway and beyond.

  Bruenor didn’t even turn his head to regard the clever mercenary.

  “Good dwarf, what is it?” Jarlaxle asked.

  Bruenor shook his head.

  “Bruenor?” Jarlaxle asked, more insistently dropping a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, and finally, Bruenor did turn away from the empty wake of his dear friends to look the mercenary in the eye.

  “Something’s not right,” he said.

  “Drizzt has been …”

  “Yeah, ye telled me as much already,” the dwarf answered. “All about yer journey.” And he turned back to the empty corridor.

  “Not all,” said Jarlaxle. He gave a little laugh. “Not nearly all, I fear.” He, too, looked once more to the path the reunited couple had taken.

  A moment later, Jarlaxle put his hand back on Bruenor’s shoulder—neither was sure exactly why.

  “There’s something ye ain’t tellin’ me, elf,” Bruenor said.

  “He will be fine,” Jarlaxle replied. “He is surrounded by friends now.”

  Bruenor looked up at the drow then, and couldn’t miss the look of concern on Jarlaxle’s face.

  CATTI-BRIE ROLLED OVER to consider the dark elf sleeping beside her. They had not made love, surprisingly, for Drizzt had shown little interest. Or at least, he had not been eagerly receptive to her kisses and teasing touches.

  She reached over and brushed the long white hair from off his face. Then she returned her fingers to his cheek and delicately ran her fingers about the angles of his delicate features. He didn’t stir at all, and Catti-brie realized that this was probably the first true rest her husband had found
in many days.

  Though she knew that she had much work to do back in the primordial chamber, where momentous decisions had to be made, she spent a long, long time just lying there, staring at Drizzt, certain that she could not love another person more.

  She was afraid for him. Like Bruenor, she had seen the trouble simmering in his lavender eyes. Something had come back with him from the Underdark, from Menzoberranzan.

  At last, she rolled over and looked across the dimly lit room, to the bag Drizzt had placed by the sword rack. He had shown her the contents—the shield, sword, and armor of Tiago Baenre—and had told her that he didn’t want them, that he had only taken them because they were mightily enchanted, and if he had left them behind, some other drow, likely some other Baenre, would take them up and cause even greater mischief.

  Drizzt had assured her that there was no revenge planned against him for killing Tiago. The fight had been honorable and sanctioned by the highest priestesses of the city, and he had won, and so had then been chosen for some other task, one he promised to relate to her at a later time. Completion of that quest had bought freedom for Drizzt and his friends, and the priestess—Catti-brie wrongly assumed it to be the matron mother—had given to Drizzt these spoils, fairly won.

  But Drizzt didn’t want them. Of that, he was adamant.

  Catti-brie slowly rolled out of the bed and padded on bare feet across the floor to the bag. She lifted a small shield from it. “Orbbcress,” she whispered. Drizzt had told her of the remarkable item.

  She slid it over her bare arm, and cast a minor dweomer to identify the types of magic contained within the mightily enchanted shield. And she could tell that it was a marvelous thing, crafted with great care and tactile perfection. She would need to study another spell that night to better identify the item, she thought, but barely had she considered the possibility when she unexpectedly came to understand much more. She closed her eyes. With a thought, she made the shield wrap itself tighter, and it became a small buckler.

  She reversed the silent command and the shield spiraled outward, growing larger and larger.

  The woman laughed—she couldn’t help it—and glanced back to the bed with concern, not wanting to wake her beloved.

  Catti-brie slid the shield off her arm and brought forth Vidrinath, the beautiful sword the master drow craftsman Gol’fanin had created in the Great Forge of Gauntlgrym.

  And it was a beautiful creation, as fine as any weapon Catti-brie had ever held. She could feel the balance, the easy swing, the fine edge of the glassteel blade, translucent and full of tiny stars and with an edge that would never dull.

  She shook her head. This sword should be in Drizzt’s hands!

  She felt no malice from it, as with the malignant blades Khazid’hea and Charon’s Claw, but the magic here was at least equally strong, and the balance of the blade, the lightness, the edge, were all even finer. She looked back at Drizzt and shook her head.

  He had won this sword, and as much as she loved Icingdeath and the damaged Twinkle, as much as those two blades had carried Drizzt through so many trials, this one was finer—indeed, this was the very blade that had so damaged Twinkle here in these very halls, when Drizzt had battled Tiago. This, Vidrinath, was the blade that had so weakened the integrity of Twinkle that Doum’wielle’s subsequent strike with Khazid’hea had sheared the scimitar and passed right through Drizzt’s block, cutting him brutally across his chest.

  Catti-brie looked at her hand, at the ring Drizzt had given her, and her face twisted with puzzlement and she chewed her lip, trying to sort out a confusing epiphany.

  Then she smiled. She had an idea, a perfectly clever and wonderful idea.

  She replaced the sword in the sack, but removed it right away and set it instead on the weapon rack beside Drizzt’s blades. Then she dressed and returned to the sack, and took from it the magnificent shield.

  She looked at Drizzt one last time then headed back to the primordial chamber.

  “ARE YE SURE, girl?” Bruenor asked for the fiftieth time when he and Catti-brie crossed the Forge Room, heading for the Great Forge of Gauntlgrym, the one oven most completely and directly tied to the fire primordial. The hammers were silent now in the workroom, so early in the morning. The two yawning guards at the door had been ordered outside by the king, leaving him and his daughter alone in the place.

  There were no torches in here, and no illuminating lichen or glow worms. There didn’t need to be, for even when not in use, the furnaces offered an orange glow. This room was an extension of the primordial itself, a masterwork of dwarven engineering and powerful magic, an outlet for the hot breath of the primordial settled into the pit in the adjoining room.

  “If I was no’ sure, then I would no’ve bringed ye here,” Catti-brie answered, so easily reverting to her Dwarvish brogue—and more so in this place, where the ancient language of Delzoun was becoming more commonplace every day. She moved up to the tray of the Great Forge and placed the shield called Orbbcress, or Spiderweb, upon it.

  “Bah! But every mage’s thinkin’ that,” Bruenor replied. “Not for doubtin’ that Gromph was surer than yerself when he blowed up the Underdark!”

  “I’m not Gromph, and to be sure, I’m not bein’ tricked by a demon queen!”

  “Aye, but by a fire god?” Bruenor asked slyly.

  That gave Catti-brie pause, but only momentarily. It shocked her when she considered the truth of her denial, but the plain fact was that she had come to trust the fire primordial. It sounded crazy as she admitted that to herself—this was a beast, a volcano, that had not so long ago blown the top off the mountain above them and sent its fires and ash far to the south to destroy the city of Neverwinter. How might the burned and melted souls of that city respond to Catti-brie’s professed trust in the beast, she wondered?

  Even those realities didn’t cast much doubt upon the woman, though. She trusted, not in the beast, but in her understanding of it, in what it wanted and what it could not have.

  She held her hand out to Bruenor, but he gave her a smirk and reflexively dropped his left shoulder back.

  “Ye’re trustin’ me to have ye pull the lever and let the primordial out, bit by bit, to rebuild the tower, but not for this?” she asked incredulously.

  “This be personal,” said Bruenor.

  “Who made the shield?”

  The simple question had Bruenor flustered. His prized shield, with the foaming mug standard of Clan Battlehammer emblazoned on the front, had been with him for most of his life. But Catti-brie, with this very forge, had made the buckler so much more. No sword, not even Khazid’hea’s fine edge, could gash the shield. Bruenor was certain—and Catti-brie agreed with him—that it would hold back dragon’s breath!

  And the foaming mug shield offered one other thing that was not so small a deal for the dwarf king. To remind his daughter of that, he pulled it around in front of him, closed his eyes for a moment, then reached behind the buckler and produced a mug of ale, a gift from the shield. He looked at Catti-brie and let his own expression show her that he feared this might be the last time his shield could bestow such a gift to him!

  This conjuring magic had supplied all the drink for the solemn Rite of Kith’n’Kin that had bound the various dwarven communities under this one roof. To Bruenor, this magical facet of the shield was much more than a way to get a bit of mead, or ale, or beer foam on his beard.

  He began to slide the shield from his arm, but hesitated. “I’m not for understanding,” he said, shaking his head.

  “It’s the best gift o’ the Forge, I tell ye,” Catti-brie insisted.

  “But which’re ye givin’ to which?”

  Catti-brie considered the question for a moment, looking from Orbbcress to Bruenor’s foaming mug shield. It was an important question, but it had no definitive answer that she could relate. Each of the items was imbued with several magical properties, and so choices might have to be made as to which to keep and which to expel. But were those to
be her choices, or would the beast that fed the Forge’s firepot decide?

  And what if the primordial picked wrong? The notion that Bruenor’s shield might lose its ability to produce the “dwarven holy water” was not a comforting thought to Catti-brie, either, after all.

  Catti-brie took the shield from Bruenor and tentatively placed it on the tray beside Orbbcress. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes—she wasn’t sure how to begin.

  She let her thoughts flow into the magical ring on her finger, and wound them through the ring, glancing into the white hot flame in the shielded firepot, hotter than any peat fire, or coal, or even coke fire, or a wizard’s fireball. Hotter than anything that was not of the Elemental Plane of Fire.

  Her spirit began drifting toward those flames, that finger of the primordial.

  She felt a strong hand on her forearm and she opened her eyes to see a horrified Bruenor staring at her.

  “Ye gone bats, girl?” he asked.

  Catti-brie looked at him curiously.

  “Ye were puttin’ yer hand into the damn oven!” Bruenor shook his head, his expression one of disgust. He mumbled, “Whole durn world’s gone crazy,” and reached for his shield.

  Catti-brie grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back, and waved him aside.

  “If ye see me in pain, then pull me out,” she said, scolding him. “But if not, then ye know yer place, me Da, and yer place is to the side and with yer big mouth shut!”

  “Bah!” Bruenor snorted, stepping back as if he had been slapped. “Fine way ye be talkin’ to yer king.”

  “Bah!” Catti-brie echoed.

  “And better way ye be talkin’ to yer Da!” Bruenor retorted.

  “And only way to be talkin’ to a durned fool!” Catti-brie shot back. “Are we doin’ this or ain’t we doin’ this? Ye said ye wanted it, but if ye do no’, then I’ll find me another, don’t ye doubt!”

  “I’m wantin’ what ye said I’d be gettin’, but I’m not wantin’ me girl to stick her hand into the mouth o’ the damned fire beast!”