Gauntlgrym

Still confused, the drow watched the creature fly across the pit, and on the other side, right before the archway, it flopped over weirdly in mid-air and landed, no longer a bat but a man, staring back at Drizzt.

Cursing himself for his hesitance, Drizzt sheathed his blades and leaped back for his bow. He took up the arrow and knocked the rope aside, setting the missile and letting fly.

But the vampire was quicker, slipping under the archway, and the arrow hit nothing but stones, exploding in a shower of sparks.

“No, Bruenor, no,” Drizzt mouthed, grabbing up the rope, pulling forth another arrow and taking aim. He let fly high above the archway, the arrow driving hard into the wall, burrowing the rope deeply into the solid stone.

More commotion came from behind Drizzt, and he turned just in time to see Dahlia speeding his way.

“Dor’crae!” she yelled, and she dropped her staff to the floor as she charged right past Drizzt, yanking the rope from his hand and swinging across the open lava pit. She leaped off and landed in a run, disappearing under the archway.

Frantically, cursing with every movement, Drizzt fumbled for another length of rope. He glanced back as yet another figure entered the chamber, and how his eyes widened when he saw that it was Jarlaxle.

“How?” he asked.

The drow mercenary replied with a grin and brought his hand up to his mouth to flash the same ring he had given to Dahlia before the fight in the Cutlass.

“Get me across!” Drizzt yelled at him, not having the time to sort it out.

The room shook then, so violently that it threw Drizzt from his feet. Jarlaxle, though, managed to stay standing, and even collected a pair of morningstars lying on the floor. He held them up, his face a mask of puzzlement and horror.

“Athrogate?” Drizzt explained, and as if on cue, they heard the dwarf cry out from the pit below.

Jarlaxle tucked the morningstars into a magical bag as he sprinted to the ledge and looked down.

“Bruenor is across the way!” Drizzt yelled at him. “The lever!”

Jarlaxle turned to face him, the mercenary’s face twisted in pain.

“You cannot!” Drizzt cried.

“My friend, I must, as you must go to your Bruenor,” Jarlaxle replied with a shrug. He put his hand over his House Baenre emblem then, and with a tip of his cap to Drizzt, he hopped off the ledge.

Drizzt growled at the frustration, at the insanity of it all, and went back to his rope, knotting the end.

And the primordial roared, a column of lava once again leaping up from the pit, rushing skyward to the ceiling and beyond.

“Jarlaxle,” Drizzt wailed repeatedly, shaking his head, but he didn’t cover his ears against the roar of the volcano. Instead he kept working at the rope.

Dahlia rushed under the archway just in time to see Thibbledorf Pwent, his throat torn, tumble to the stone beside Bruenor. Gasping, the dwarf reached up, his hands clawing the air as he tried futilely and pitifully to grasp the vampire.

Dor’crae turned to face Dahlia, his face bright with Pwent’s blood.

“You wretched beast,” she said.

“You can leave this place and be redeemed,” Dor’crae replied. “What have you gained, my love?”

He finished abruptly as Dahlia leaped across the small room at him, all punches and kicks.

But just punches and kicks, for she had left Kozah’s Needle behind. As fine a fighter as Dahlia was, even unarmed, the supernaturally strong vampire had no trouble pinning her arms and spinning her around, slamming her into the wall.

“At last, I feast,” Dor’crae promised.

But then he froze in place, only his eyes widening.

“Does it hurt?” Dahlia asked him, poking her finger, tipped with the wooden spike from her ring, harder at his chest. “Tell me it hurts.”

Dor’crae’s head went back and he began shaking, and smoke began wafting from his skin.

Dahlia’s wooden stake stabbed at his heart again.

“Ah … me king,” she heard from the floor behind her, a voice gurgling with thick liquid, and she glanced back to see a bloody, strangely armored dwarf somehow rolling himself over to one elbow, his other arm coming across to grab at Bruenor Battlehammer.

Somehow, impossibly, Pwent got his knees under him and heaved Bruenor upward, then fell forward with him, right beside the lever. Like a loving father, Pwent lifted Bruenor’s hand, cupping it with his own, and set it against the angled pole.

“Me king,” Pwent said again, and it seemed the end of his strength. His head dropped down and he lay there very still.

“Me friend,” Bruenor answered, and with just a glance at Dahlia, the dwarf king summoned his strength and pulled.

Dor’crae was babbling for mercy the entire time, pleading with Dahlia to let him live, promising her that he would make everything all right for her with Sylora.

“You think I will let you fly away, when I am surely doomed?” Dahlia said, face to face, letting him see the absence of mercy in her freezing blue eyes. As if in response to her, perhaps, but surely to the reversed lever, the primordial roared again and the room lurched.

Dahlia tried to drive the wooden stake in harder, but the tremor stole her balance and the desperate Dor’crae managed to slip aside. Sorely wounded, the vampire wanted nothing more to do with Dahlia. Once more, he took the form of a bat.

The splattering lava and bouncing black stones had Drizzt shielding himself and ducking away, and thinking that they had failed, that the volcano had again fully erupted. To his great relief, though, the lava column again dropped back down below the rim, and the drow was fast to the ledge, bow in hand.

Without the protection of Icingdeath, the heat proved too intense, but he couldn’t help but look down, though he feared what he might see.

The lava had climbed far up the pit, and was barely twenty feet below the rim, waves of heat assaulting the drow. And it was up above the ledge where Athrogate had lain, and there was, of course, no sign of Jarlaxle, who had descended almost as the lava had rushed back up.

For the second time that day, Drizzt had to shake off the loss of Jarlaxle, for not even Icingdeath could have protected him from that rush of lava.

His next arrow flew, setting a second rope near where the first had been—before the lava had rushed up to burn it to nothingness. Without even testing the rope, without even a thought that the lava might leap up at him, the anxious drow sprang from the ledge and swung away, landing easily across the way.

Even as he caught his balance, he had to duck aside once more, as that same giant bat flew out from under the archway. Its flight was noticeably unsteady, as if it were gravely wounded, and Drizzt dropped his bow off his shoulder, thinking to shoot it from the sky.

He needn’t have bothered, though. As soon as the bat crossed the lip of the pit, it seemed as if all the water of the Sea of Swords had come charging in to battle the fire primordial. It poured from the hole in the ceiling like a giant waterfall, and through that thunderous, translucent veil, Drizzt could still see the bat. Obviously, its flight was as much magical as physical—it resisted the downpour.

But that didn’t much help the creature. The bat became a man again, and the vampire looked back at Drizzt, though whether he could actually see the drow, Drizzt couldn’t know. He reached out plaintively, hanging there in the curtain of water, his face a mask of agony.

Then he blew apart, like so many black flakes, and was washed down with the waterfall.

It stopped as abruptly as it had started, but Drizzt knew the primordial’s trap was back in place, knew that they had won, for below the rim, he could see the water, not like a pond or puddle, but spinning furiously along the sides of the pit.

Down below, the primordial responded, the ground shaking violently, the lava column trying to rise, the room filling with steam. The water did not relent, though, and the beast sank back, far below, and the room went quiet, a stillness that seemed more complete than it had been for many years.

Drizzt wasn’t watching, though. As soon as he regained his balance, the drow sprinted under the arch.

Dahlia sat against the far wall, exhausted and sweating, but she nodded to Drizzt that she was all right. He wasn’t looking at her, anyway. He couldn’t with the other sight before him.

Thibbledorf Pwent had met his end. He lay on his back, blood on his throat, his eyes open wide, his chest not lifting with breath. There was a serenity to him, Drizzt recognized. The battlerager had died in a manner befitting his life, in service to his king.

And there lay that king, Drizzt’s dearest friend, half on his side, half face down, one arm extended with his fingers still gripping the lever.

Drizzt fell beside him and gently turned him over, and the drow was shocked to find that Bruenor Battlehammer was still alive.

“I found it, elf,” he said with that smile that had brought Drizzt joy for most of his life. “I found me answers. I found me peace.”

Drizzt wanted to comfort him, wanted to assure him that the priests would be right in and that everything would be all right. But he knew beyond doubt that it was over, that the wounds were too much for an old dwarf.

“Rest easy, my dearest friend,” he mouthed, not sure that any sound came out.

But the look of comfort on Bruenor’s face, the slightest of nods, the slightest of contented smiles, told Drizzt that his departing friend had indeed heard him, and that it was indeed all right.

EPILOGUE

DRIZZT STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE PIT, LOOKING DOWN AT THE SWIRL OF the water and the elementals. Every now and then, he could make out a watery face in the unending swirl around the pit, and far, far below, he could see the primordial, like an angry eye of liquid staring back up at him.

“It is as it was when first we found it,” Dahlia said to him, walking up beside him and draping her arm casually around his lower back. “We did it. Bruenor did it.”

Drizzt continued to scan the opposite wall, trying to make out through the water the ledge where Athrogate had been, where Jarlaxle had gone, but alas, there was nothing. Of course there was nothing. What could have survived the breath of the primordial?

It surprised the drow how badly it all hurt. Not just Bruenor, but the loss of Pwent, and not just that, but the loss of Jarlaxle, and even of Athrogate! He’d hardly seen either Jarlaxle or Athrogate over the years, but somehow, just knowing they were there, in Luskan, never far from reach, had brought him some comfort.

And they were gone, and so was Thibbledorf Pwent, and Bruenor Battlehammer himself—and though his dear friend had died as he would have chosen, not only having found Gauntlgrym, but saving it from total destruction, the profound pain launched Drizzt back to another time and another place, when he had watched Catti-brie and Regis melt through Mithral Hall’s solid wall on the back of a spiritual unicorn, gone to Mielikki’s rest.

He had never thought he could feel such pain again.

He was wrong.

Across the way, some dwarves stumbled into the room. Stokely Silverstream and Torgar Hammerstriker spotted Drizzt and Dahlia and began calling out as more of their brethren entered the chamber.

Dahlia let her hand slip from Drizzt’s back, coming to his side where she grasped his hand.

“Shoot an arrow and let us be gone from here,” she whispered.