Gauntlgrym

“I understand,” the boss said. “The offer stands—at twice the pay.”

“It’s possible,” Drizzt said with a wry grin aimed at Bruenor. “My friend here has a fondness for maps … one that oft empties our purses.”

Bruenor’s responding look was not in jest, the dwarf upset with Drizzt for giving away so much information.

“Maps?” the boss asked. “We’ll be re-drawing the map of Neverwinter soon, to be sure, with such fine craftsmen and brave warriors who have come to rebuild and defend her. We’ll be battling the darkness, do not doubt, and in a way that will make all of Faerûn look to Neverwinter with hope.”

Cheers again erupted all around them.

“The city is always recruiting new guards and scouts,” the boss said, another offer.

Drizzt smiled, but wisely deferred to Bruenor, who repeated, “We got roads o’ our own to walk.”

“As you will,” the boss replied with a bow. “Though every road in these parts seems filled with danger now.” He shook his head and looked back in the general direction of their last fight. “What were those things?”

“What did they look like?” Drizzt replied.

“Like children buried under the ash of the rolling mountain.”

“Not children,” Bruenor explained. “Burned and shriveled by the hot ash, we’re fighting them that once lived in Neverwinter, and ye might be wise to take care to keep yer new buildings off any old spots that would’ve been filled with folk, if ye catch me meaning.”

“And they rise again from their natural tombs?” the boss said with a shake of his head. “Did the catastrophe carry such magic in its hot flow?”

Drizzt and Bruenor just shrugged, for no one had an answer yet about the recent turn of events, where undead monsters walked forth in such large numbers.

“Just zombies,” said Bruenor against the dispirited look on the face of the boss.

“Quicker, more agile, more fierce,” the drow added.

“They been seen all about Neverwinter Wood,” a driver on the next wagon informed them.

Drizzt nodded. “So many killed in the cataclysm.…” he lamented. “A feast for necromancers and carrion birds alike.”

“Consider my offer,” the boss said, turning to leave. “Both of them.”

When the caravan started moving again, Drizzt looked at Bruenor.

“Our own roads, elf,” the dwarf remarked.

Drizzt just smiled and let it go at that.

They arrived in Neverwinter soon after, to cheers and greetings from all in the camp, and even Drizzt’s dark skin and drow heritage did little to quell the enthusiasm toward the newcomers. The wagons were stripped in short order, craftsmen and merchants of all types rushing up to fill their orders then bustling back to work. The sound of hammers and saws filled the air, men and women rushing to and fro with purpose and good spirits.

It reminded Drizzt and Bruenor of Icewind Dale, of their earlier days. So full of hope. So full of purpose. So full of determination. Bruenor knew his current quest didn’t quite live up to that, by the drow’s estimation. He didn’t doubt that Drizzt would recommend that they remain in Neverwinter through the winter, that they should scout and fight for those good folk who were indeed battling the darkness to rebuild a city.

But Drizzt let it go, and as the pair departed the town early the next morning, they both took care to not even look back.

They traveled north along the road, thinking to stop in at Port Llast and strike out into the Crags again from there. When they sat at their midday meal, the conversation was one-sided. Bruenor could hear himself babbling on about his newest acquisition and where they might meet up with some of the landmarks mentioned on the map. Hardly listening in the first place, Drizzt appeared distracted by his water bottle, which the dwarf could see shivering—so much so that it seemed to be crawling across the ground, as if something alive was trapped within it.

“A water sprite?” the dwarf asked after a moment, but even as he spoke the words, the ground beneath them began to shake.

Both dropped low to secure themselves as the momentum of the quake grew, the ground jostling violently.

It passed quickly.

“Might be that they’re not so smart in putting Neverwinter back where it was,” Bruenor remarked. “Them quakes’re startin’ again.”

Indeed, after a decade of quiet, the last few months had brought several heavy tremors, as if some malevolent force was stirring once more.

Bruenor looked to the east, toward where the twin-peaked mountain had once stood, but only a single peak remained. It seemed to him that the mountain stood a bit larger than he remembered, as if it was some dwarf warrior puffing out his chest. He shook his head, thinking it to be his imagination, so soon after the recent tremor. Drizzt had traveled to that mountain soon after the destruction of Neverwinter, seeking some clue as to what had happened, but had found nothing beyond the cooling crater of Mount Hotenow. Bruenor’s observation was undeniable, though. The quakes were beginning again, though the ground had been silent soon after the eruption for ten years.

The dwarf glanced back the way they’d come, back to the fledgling city of Neverwinter. Perhaps it would be better if distant Waterdeep remained as the vanguard of the North, he thought.

But only briefly, for as he considered the determined looks on the faces of those he’d seen rebuilding Neverwinter, the dwarf couldn’t believe they were wasting their time.

Even if pursuing their purpose came at the price of their lives.

There was no real communication between them, no hierarchy, king, or government. The ghosts of Gauntlgrym had been trapped by the cataclysm that destroyed their ancient homeland in millennia past, events lost to the ages in Faerûn. But they did have purpose, to defend the halls against intruders. And they had regret. It had been a dwarf, a Delzoun dwarf and his companions, allowed passage by the defenders of the hall, who had released the primordial. Confused and saddened by the destruction the primordial had wrought, the ghosts had nevertheless continued their quiet vigil.

But the tremors had returned. The beast stirred once more.

There was no conversation, no directive, but even those pale spirits knew they couldn’t stop the coming storm, could not fulfill their purpose. It began with one defection, not so much a conscious thought as a desperate flight. Then out of Gauntlgrym went the spirits, drifting along the reaches of the Underdark, seeking aid.

Others followed, and many left, walking forlornly from their ancestral home, seeking Delzoun blood—living allies who could entrap the beast once more. Following the tendrils of the Hosttower, some were drawn toward Luskan. Others found darker roads, descending to the deeper Underdark, endless corridors few living dwarves would dare to walk.

They carried with them their sorrow for what once had been, their pain for what had recently been marred, and their fears for what would yet come when the primordial awakened in all its mad rage.

Chapter 11 - The War of Dark and Darker

BLACK SMOKE ROSE IN SERPENTINE SPIRALS ABOVE THE DEATH-SCORCHED ground. Like a river of death, a line of decay and necromantic magic reached out from the main hub of disaster across a field and into the pyroclast, seeking spirits that had been trapped within the shriveled corporeal husks and calling them forth to serve.

Sylora Salm watched this newest outreach with her typically sparkling eyes and satisfied grin. Though nearing forty, the years had not yet dulled the Thayan sorceress’s beauty—changed it, perhaps, making her a bit thicker about the waist, her skin a bit less smooth, and some small wrinkles had appeared around her eyes. But more than counterbalancing those unavoidable physical changes, there had come to the formidable woman even more inner substance and strength, more confidence and an increased air of power. It showed in her eyes, and in her grin.

Her Dread Ring was becoming a reality at long last, though the number of dead in the sparsely populated area of Neverwinter Wood, even before the cataclysm, had been deemed inadequate by several of Szass Tam’s ambassadors, most of whom were Sylora’s rivals. Szass Tam had trusted in Sylora’s judgment, though, and she continued to have faith that she would deliver on that trust, that her Dread Ring would come to fruition, giving the lich lord the hold he had so long desired on the Sword Coast.

The pyroclast began to stir, a shaking of the black volcanic stone. Some loose ash and dirt fell into growing cracks. A small gray hand appeared, withered and shriveled, its fingers twisted in a pose of perpetual agony. Slowly at first, but with increasing frenzy, the hand clawed and shoved at the rock. A pair of Ashmadai attendants started toward the spot to help the newest child of Szass Tam break free from its decades-old tomb, but Sylora held them back with an upraised hand.

She smiled widely, even giggled as the zombie pushed aside enough of the debris to poke forth its other arm, then prying the two limbs apart, shoved its head from its pyroclastic womb. Its scrabbling movements grew increasingly frenetic, the creature demanding to come free, desperate to hunt the living—but only those living, of course, who were not attuned to His Omnipotence Szass Tam.

Standing beside Sylora, Dahlia was far less imposing than she had been a decade before, though she looked exactly the same, her elf heritage protecting her from the ravages of a mere decade. She wore her traveling garb: the high black boots, the red-banded black hat, the white blouse under the black leather vest, the black skirt that climbed diagonally nearly to her hip, and the nine diamond studs in her left ear and one in her right. She had been ordered not to remove them, or to change the pattern—a reminder to Korvin Dor’crae that Sylora’s intervention had been to his benefit. And of course she still commanded Kozah’s Needle. But as there seemed something more formidable about Sylora, more solid and confident, so Dahlia appeared diminished.

She didn’t smile as she watched the birth of their newest minion—she hardly ever smiled anymore.

“Take heart, young one,” Sylora said to her, more of a tease than a gesture of goodwill. “See what we have done.”

The obedient Dahlia nodded, and wondered, not for the first time, how it had happened, how she’d fallen so far. Obviously her descent in the ranks of Szass Tam’s hierarchy had been facilitated by those long-ago pangs of conscience, her failure to finish the deed and begin that which she had promised. It hadn’t helped her, of course, that Sylora Salm had been the one to rescue her mission. That Dahlia had even been allowed to live after being captured in Luskan had surprised her, and still she wasn’t sure if the mercy had been because of her work in locating the primordial, or simply so that Sylora could subjugate her, and keep her in thrall.

Many were the days when Dahlia wished they’d killed her.

Beyond her predictable descent in the hierarchy, though, it was the other fall that had troubled Dahlia even more, the loss of swagger, of lust, of the devil-may-care attitude that had guided her life for so very long.

“I have spoken with Szass Tam about you,” Sylora remarked as she sent the zombie on its way, out into the forest to hunt Shadovar. She turned a wry grin on Dahlia. “He is pleased by your willingness to submit to my will.”