“How did you know?” Dahlia asked, breathless.
“Damn smart throne, eh?” Athrogate said with a giggle.
“Onward, and quickly,” Jarlaxle bade them.
Drizzt started for the opening, but Bruenor held out a strong arm and kept the drow at bay.
The dwarf king led the way into the deeper, long-unused corridor, a tunnel that became a steep staircase only a few feet inside.
Last in was Athrogate, who shoved the heavy stone door back in place behind them.
Down they went, Bruenor making a swift pace on the treacherous stone stair. He didn’t think of the danger of falling. He knew what was coming.
The stairs spilled out into a narrow corridor, and the narrow corridor spilled out into a wider chamber, lit in orange: the Forge of Gauntlgrym.
Bruenor skidded to a stop, eyes wide, mouth agape. “Ye see it, elf?” he managed to whisper.
“I see it, Bruenor,” Drizzt replied in hushed and reverent tones.
One did not have to be a Delzoun dwarf to understand the solemn significance of the place, and the majesty of it. As if being pulled by unseen forces, Bruenor drifted toward the large central forge, and the dwarf seemed to grow with every stride, as ancient magic and ancient strength swelled his corporeal form.
He came to a stop right in front of the open forge, staring into the blazing fires, which were fully alive since the primordial had first been released. His face fast reddened under that heat, but he didn’t mind.
He stood there for a long, long while.
“Bruenor?” Drizzt dared ask after many heartbeats. “Bruenor, we must be quick.”
If the dwarf even heard him, he didn’t show it.
Drizzt moved around to gain Bruenor’s stare, but he couldn’t. The dwarf stood with his eyes closed. And when he opened them after a bit, he still felt far away and hardly noticed Drizzt and the others at all.
He lifted his axe and stepped toward the open forge.
“Bruenor?”
He pulled off his shield and laid it on the small ledge in front of the fires, then laid the axe upon it.
“Bruenor?”
Not even using an implement, the dwarf grabbed the iron-bound edge of the shield and slid it into the open forge, chanting in a language he knew none of the others would understand, a language Bruenor didn’t even understand himself.
“Bruenor!”
They must all have expected the shield, fashioned mostly of wood, to burst into flames, but it didn’t.
Bruenor kept up his chant for a short while then reached in and grasped the edge of the shield once more.
“Bruenor!” Drizzt went for him, perhaps thinking to push him aside. But the drow might as well have tried to move the forge itself. He hit Bruenor’s arm hard, his whole weight behind the charge, but didn’t move the dwarf’s arm at all. Bruenor hardly even noticed the collision. He just pulled out his shield, and on it, his many-notched axe.
He didn’t cool them in water, but just picked them up, sliding the shield into place and hoisting the axe. Then he stepped back and turned to the others, shaking his head, coming out of his trance.
“How are your arms not blistering to the bone?” Dahlia asked. “How is it the skin didn’t slough off your fingers like parchment?”
“Huh?” the dwarf replied. “What’re ye talking about?”
“The shield,” said Jarlaxle, and Athrogate began to giggle.
“Huh?” Bruenor asked again and he turned the shield to get a look.
The wood remained exactly as it had been, though perhaps a bit darker, burnished by the fires. The banding, though, once black iron, shone silver in hue, and showed not a dent, though it had been marked by many before. And most magnificent of all was the foaming mug set in the middle. It, too, shone silver, and the foam seemed almost real, white in hue and brilliant in design.
“The axe,” Jarlaxle added, and all had noticed that, for how could one miss the changes that had come over the weapon? The head gleamed silver, a sparkle running along its vicious edge. It still showed the notches of its many battles—no doubt, the dwarf gods would have thought it an insult to Bruenor to remove those badges of honor—but there was a strength about it that was visible to all, an inner power, glowing as if begging release.
“What have you done?” Jarlaxle asked.
Bruenor just muttered, “Talked to them what was,” and banged his axe against his shield.
A noise from the far end of the hall turned them all that way. Drizzt slid Taulmaril off his shoulder as Athrogate then Bruenor came up to flank him. Jarlaxle shrank back a few steps, drawing out a pair of wands.
“Here they come,” remarked Dahlia, standing right behind Drizzt. She used her staff to nudge him aside, and stepped up between him and Athrogate.
Drizzt looked over at Bruenor, who wore a curious expression. With only a cursory glance back at the drow, the dwarf put his axe in his shield hand and brought that shield arm out in front of him. Staring at the shield’s backing, he grew even more curious and he brought his free hand forward, as if reaching right inside the shield.
How all their eyes widened when Bruenor retracted that arm, for he held a flagon, a great foamy head spilling over its side. He looked back at the shield, eyes widening once more. He handed the flagon to Drizzt then reached in again and produced a second one.
“Here now, one for meself?” Athrogate demanded.
Drizzt handed the first to the dwarf, and turned back just in time to get the second from Bruenor, who already produced the third and gave it to Drizzt as the second went to Dahlia. The fourth he gave to Jarlaxle, and Bruenor took up the fifth and final mug.
“Now there’s a shield worth wearin’!” said Athrogate.
“We got us some good gods,” Bruenor remarked, and Athrogate grinned.
“What is it?” Dahlia asked.
“Gutbuster, I’m hopin’!” said Athrogate.
The two drow and the elf looked to each other and at the drinks uncertainly, but Bruenor and Athrogate didn’t hesitate, lifting their flagons in toast then taking great swallows.
And both seemed to swell with power. Athrogate brought forth his empty metal flagon and crushed it in his hand, then threw it aside and took up his morningstars.
“By Moradin’s bum and Clangeddin’s beard, who’d ever be seein’ such a sight?” he recited. “A party o’ five with weapons in hand and ready to take up the fight. But me gods are all posin’ and scratching and shakin’ and got to be questionin’ theirself, to think a royal would be sharin’ their spoils with the likes o’ two drows and an elf!”
“Bwahaha!” It was Bruenor howling, not Athrogate.
“Drink it, ye fools!” Athrogate told the elves. “And feel the power o’ the dwarf gods flowing through yer limbs!”
Drizzt went first, taking a deep, deep gulp, and he looked to the others and nodded, then finished his drink and tossed the flagon aside.
Bruenor blinked. The room seemed clearer to him suddenly, more focused and crisp, and when he hefted his axe and shield, they seemed lighter in his hands.
“Some kind of potion,” Jarlaxle remarked. “What a remarkable shield.”
“Behold the Forge o’ Gauntlgrym,” said Bruenor. “Old magic. Good magic.”
“Dwarf magic,” said Athrogate.
More noise in the corridor across the way brought them back to the moment at hand.
“They have a dragon,” Drizzt reminded them. “We should spread out.”
“Stay by me side, elf,” Bruenor remarked as the others shifted out to either flank.
“No, we should send Bruenor straightaway to the lever,” said Jarlaxle.
“Aye,” said Athrogate, “and I be knowin’ the way.”
Just as he took a step toward the small side door on the wall to the side of the main forge, however, a tumult the other way stopped him, and he, and the others, saw the dragon leap from the tunnel.
Or at least, that’s what it appeared to be, momentarily, until they realized that it was only the dragon’s head, tossed out of the tunnel. It bounced across the floor and rolled, coming to a stop staring at the five through dead eyes.
“Lolth preserve us,” Jarlaxle breathed.
Out of the tunnel came the fiend, slamming his fiery mace on one wall with a thunderous report. He leaped forward and skidded to a stop, arms out wide, chest puffed up, tail flicking eagerly behind him and head thrown back with a devilish roar.
“Well,” Bruenor said, “at least the dragon’s dead.”
Out of the tunnel behind the fiend came the Ashmadai forces, led by a quartet of hellish legionnaires, devil warriors likely summoned by the pit fiend. The Ashmadai rushed out behind, running wide to either flank. If that display wasn’t enough to unnerve the five companions, the last to make an appearance surely was.
Valindra Shadowmantle seemed a long way from the confused creature Jarlaxle had known those last decades. Holding high a shining scepter, she floated out of the tunnel, grinning hatefully, her eyes twinkling for revenge.
“Die well,” Dahlia remarked.
“Josi Puddles,” Drizzt whispered to Bruenor.
“Eh?”
“The rat-faced man in the Cutlass of old.”
“Ah …” said Bruenor, and he looked at Drizzt curiously. “Ye’re tellin’ me now?”
Drizzt shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to die with a faded memory nagging at my thoughts. I thought the same of you.”
Bruenor started to respond, but just shrugged and turned back to the approach of doom itself.
“Athrogate and Bruenor, go,” Jarlaxle said quietly from the back. “Slowly, and now.”
Athrogate slid behind Drizzt to get to Bruenor, and tried to pull him along. But the dwarf king wouldn’t budge. “I ain’t for leavin’ me friend.”
“A thousand friends of a thousand friends will die if we don’t finish this,” Drizzt said. “Go.”
“Elf …” Bruenor replied, grabbing Drizzt’s forearm.
Drizzt looked at his oldest and dearest friend and nodded solemnly. “Go,” he bade.
And a burst of fire exploded from the mouths of all the forges in the room, potent lines of flame leaping across the room to scorch the walls.
“The beast!” Dahlia cried. “It knows of our plan!”
The room began to shake violently, the floor bucking and buckling, dust and debris raining from the ceiling.
“Go! Go!” Drizzt shouted at Bruenor, and before the dwarf king could argue, Athrogate tugged him so hard his feet came right off the floor.
The pit fiend roared and directed his left flank to charge behind the main forge and cut off the dwarves. Then the devil staggered backward, then again, hit by a pair of lightning bolts from Jarlaxle’s wands, and again a third time, even more profoundly, as Taulmaril’s arrow slammed into his chest.
But Beealtimatuche only grinned wider then vanished, disappearing in the blink of a drow’s eye, only to reappear right in front of one of the two dark elves, his four-bladed mace up high, spitting fire as it descended on the helpless figure.
Sprinting the other way at that moment, trying to block for Bruenor and Athrogate, Drizzt didn’t see the mighty blow, but in the small doorway ahead and to his right, Athrogate did, and cried out, “Jarlaxle!” with such emotion and pain that it seemed to Drizzt as if the tough dwarf had just lost his best friend.