The Orc King

by R. A. Salvatore

Chapter 9 AT DESTINYS DOOR

 

  I don't like this place. "

  A trick of the wind, blowing down a channel between a pair of towering snow dunes, amplified Regis's soft-spoken words so that they seemed to fill the space around his four dwarf companions. The words blended with the mourn of the cold breeze, a harmony of fear and lament that seemed so fitting in a place called Fell Pass.

  Bruenor, who was too anxious to be anywhere but up front, turned, and appeared as if he was about to scold the halfling. But he didn't. He just shook his head and left it at that, for how could he deny the undeniable?

  The region was haunted, palpably so. They had felt it on their journey through the pass the previous spring, moving west to east toward Mithral Hall. That same musty aura remained very much alive in Fell Pass, though the surroundings had been transformed by the season. When they'd first come through, the ground was flat and even, a wide and easily-traversed pass between a pair of distant mountain ranges. Perhaps the winds from both of those ranges continually met here in battle, flattening the ground. Deep snow had since fallen in the teeth of those competing winds, forming a series of drifts that resembled the dunes of the Calim Desert, like a series of gigantic, bright white scallop shells evenly spaced perpendicular to the east-west line that marked the bordering mountain ranges. With the melting and refreezing of the late winter, the top surface of the snow had been crusted with ice, but not enough to bear the weight of a dwarf. Thus they had to make their trudging way along the low points of the still-deep snow, through the channels between the dunes.

  Drizzt served as their guide. Running lightly, every now and then chopping a ledge into the snow with one of his scimitars, the drow traversed the dunes as a salmon might skip the waves of a slow river. Up one side and down another he went, pausing at the high points to set his bearings.

  It had taken the party of six - Bruenor, Regis, Drizzt, Thibbledorf Pwent, Cordio, and Torgar Hammerstriker - four days to get to the eastern entrance of Fell Pass. They'd kept up a fine pace considering the snow and the fact that they had to circumvent many of King Obould's guard posts and a pair of orc caravans. Once in the pass, even with the scallop drifts, they had continued to make solid progress, with Drizzt scaling the dunes and instructing Pwent where to punch through.

  Seven days out, the pace had slowed to a crawl. They were certain they were near to where they'd found the hole that Bruenor believed was the entrance to the legendary dwarven city of Gauntlgrym.

  They had mapped the place well on that journey from the west, and had taken note, as Bruenor had ordered, of all the landmarks - the angles to notable mountain peaks north and south, and such. But with the wintry blanket of snow, Fell Pass appeared so different that Drizzt simply could not be certain. The very real possibility that they might walk right past the hole that had swallowed one of their wagons weighed on all of them, particularly Bruenor.

  And there was something else there, a feeling hanging in the air that had the hairs on the backs of all their necks tingling. The mournful groan of the wind was full of the laments of the dead. Of that, there was no doubt. The cleric, Cordio, had cast divination spells that told him there was indeed something supernatural about the place, some rift or outsider presence. On the journey to Mithral Hall, Bruenor's priests had urged Drizzt not to call upon Guenhwyvar, for fear of inciting unwanted attention from other extraplanar sources in the process, and once again Cordio had reiterated that point. The Fell Pass, the dwarf priest had assured his companions, was not stable in a planar sense - though even Cordio admitted that he wasn't really sure what that meant.

  "Ye got anything for us, elf?" Bruenor called up to Drizzt. His gruff voice, full of irritation, echoed off the frozen snow.

  Drizzt came into view atop the drift to the party's left, the west. He shrugged at Bruenor then stepped forward and began a balanced slide down the glistening white dune. He kept his footing perfectly, and slipped right past the halfling and dwarves to the base of the drift on their other side, where he used its sharp incline to halt his momentum.

  "I have snow," he replied. "As much snow as you could want, extending as far as I can see to the west. "

  "We're goin' to have to stay here until the melt, ain't we?" Bruenor grumbled. He put his hands on his hips and kicked his heavy boot through the icy wall of one mound.

  "We will find it," Drizzt replied, but his words were buried by the sudden grumbling of Thibble dorf Pwent.

  "Bah!" the battlerager snorted, and he banged his hands together and stomped about, crunching the icy snow beneath his heavy steps. While the others wore mostly furs and layers of various fabrics, Pwent was bedecked in his traditional Gutbuster battle mail, a neck-to-toe suit of overlapping ridged metal plates, spiked at all the appropriate strike zones: fists, elbows, shoulders, and knees. His helmet, too, carried a tall, barbed spike, one that had skewered many an orc in its day.

  "Ye got no magic to help me?" Bruenor demanded of Cordio.

  The cleric shrugged helplessly. "The riddles of this maze extend beyond the physical, me king," he tried to explain. "Questions asked in spells're getting me nothin' but more questions. I'm knowin' that we're close, but more because I'm feeling that rift with me every spellcasting. "

  "Bah!" Pwent roared. He lowered his head and rammed through the nearest snow drift, disappearing behind a veil of white that fell behind him as he plowed through to the channel on the other side.

  "We'll find it, then," said Torgar Hammerstriker. "If it was here when ye came through, then here it is still. And if me king's thinking it's Gauntlgrym, then nothin's stopping meself from seein' that place. "

  "Aye and huzzah!" Cordio agreed.

  They all jumped as the snow erupted from up ahead. Drizzt's scimitars appeared in his hands as if they had been there all along.

  From that break in the dune emerged a snow-encrusted Thibbledorf Pwent, roaring still. He didn't slow, but plowed through the dune across the way, crunching through the icy wall with ease and disappearing from sight.

  "Will ye stop it, ye durned fool?" Bruenor chastised, but Pwent was already gone.

  "I am certain that we're near the entrance," Drizzt assured Bruenor, and the drow slid his blades away. "We are the right distance from the mountains north and south. Of that, I am sure. "

  "We are close," Regis confirmed, still glancing all around as if he expected a ghost to leap out and throttle him at any moment. In that regard, Regis knew more than the others, for he had been the one who had gone into the hole after the wagon those months before, and who had encountered, down in the dark, what he believed to be the ghost of a long-dead dwarf.

  "Then we'll just keep looking," said Bruenor. "And if it stays in hiding under the snow, its secrets won't be holding, for the melt's coming soon. "

  "Bah!" they heard Pwent growl from behind the dune to the east and they all scrambled, expecting him to burst through in their midst, and likely with that lethal helmet spike lowered.

  The dune shivered as he hit it across the way, and he roared again fiercely. But his pitch changed suddenly, his cry going from defiance to surprise. Then it faded rapidly, as if the dwarf had fallen away.

  Bruenor looked at Drizzt. "Gauntlgrym!" the dwarf declared.

  Torgar and Cordio dived for the point on the drift behind which they had heard Pwent's cry. They punched through and flung the snow out behind them, working like a pair of dogs digging for a bone. As they weakened the integrity of that section of the drift, it crumbled down before them, complicating their dig. Still, within moments, they came to the edge of a hole in the ground, and the remaining pile of snow slipped in, but seemed to fill the crevice.

  "Pwent?" Torgar called into the snow, thinking his companion buried alive.

  He leaned over the edge, Cordio stabilizing his feet, and plunged his hand down into the snow pile. That blockage, though, was neither solid nor thick, and had merely packed in to seal the shaft below. When Torgar's hand broke the integrity of
the pack, the collected snow broke and fell away, leaving the dwarf staring down into a cold and empty shaft.

  "Pwent?" he called more urgently, realizing that his companion had fallen quite far.

  "That's it!" Bruenor yelled, rushing up between the kneeling pair. "The wagon went in right there!" As he made the claim, he fell to his knees and brushed aside some more of the snow, revealing a rut that had been made by the wagon wheel those months before. "Gauntlgrym!"

  "And Pwent fell in," Drizzt reminded him.

  The three dwarves turned to see the drow and Regis feeding out a line of rope that Drizzt had already tied around his waist.

  "Get the line, boys!" Bruenor yelled, but Cordio and Torgar were already moving anyway, rushing to secure the rope and find a place to brace their heavy boots.

  Drizzt dropped down beside the ledge and tried to pick a careful route, but a cry came up from far below, followed by a high-pitched, sizzling roar that sounded unlike anything any of them had ever heard, like a cross between the screech of an eagle and the hiss of a gigantic lizard.

  Drizzt rolled over the lip, turning and setting his hands, and Bruenor dived to add his strength to the rope brace.

  "Quickly!" Drizzt instructed as the dwarves began to let out the line. Trusting in them, the drow let go of the lip and dropped from sight.

  "There's a ledge fifteen feet down," Regis called, scrambling past the dwarves to the hole. He moved as if he would go right over, but he stopped suddenly, just short of the lip. There he held as the seconds passed, his body frozen by memories of his first journey into the place that Bruenor called Gauntlgrym.

  "I'm on the ledge," Drizzt called up, drawing him from his trance. "I can make my way, but keep ready on the rope. "

  Regis peered over and could just make out the form of the drow in the darkness below.

  "Ye be guidin' us, Rumblebelly," Bruenor instructed, and Regis found the fortitude to nod.

  A loud crash from far below startled him again, though, followed by a cry of pain and another otherworldly shriek. More noise arose, metal scraping on stone, hissing snakes and eagle screams, and Dwarvish roars of defiance.

  Then a cry of absolute terror, Pwent's cry, shook them all to their spines, for when had Thibble dorf Pwent ever cried out in terror?

  "What do ye see?" Bruenor called out to Regis.

  The halfling peered in and squinted. He could just make out Drizzt, inching down the wall below the ledge. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Regis realized it wasn't really a ledge, or a wall, but rather a stalagmite mound that had grown up beside the side of the cave below. He looked back to Drizzt, and the drow dropped from sight. The dwarves behind him gave a yelp and fell over backward as the rope released.

  "Set it!" Bruenor yelled at Torgar and Cordio, and the dwarf king charged for the hole, yelling, "What do ye see, Rumblebelly?"

  Regis pulled back and turned, shaking his head, but Bruenor wasn't waiting for an explanation anyway. The dwarf dived to the ground and grabbed up the rope, and without hesitation, flung himself over the lip, rapidly descending into the gloom. Back from the hole, Torgar and Cordio grunted from the strain and tried hard to dig their boots in.

  Regis swallowed. He heard a grunt and a shriek from far below. Images of a dwarf ghost haunted him and told him to run far away. But Drizzt was down there, Bruenor was down there, Pwent was down there.

  The halfling swallowed again and rushed to the hole. He fell to the ground atop the rope and with a glance back at Torgar and Cordio, he disappeared from sight.

  As soon as he hit the ledge, Drizzt recognized it for what it was. The tall stalagmite mound rose up at an angle, melding with the sheerer stone of the wall behind him.

  Even though he was only fifteen feet down from the lip, Drizzt's sensibilities switched to those of the person he used to be, a creature of the Underdark. He started down tentatively, feeding out the rope behind him, for just a couple of steps.

  His eyes focused in the gloom, and he saw the contours of the stalagmite and the floor some twenty feet below. On that floor rested the broken remains of the wagon that had been lost in the journey east those months before. Also on that floor, Drizzt saw a familiar boot, hard and wrapped in metal. Below and to the left, he heard a muffled cry, and the sound of metal scraping on stone, as if an armored dwarf was being dragged.

  With a flick of his wrist, Drizzt disengaged himself from the rope, and so balanced was he as he ran down the side of the stalagmite that he not only did not bend low and use his hands, but he drew out both his blades as he descended. He hit the floor in a run, thinking to head off down the narrow tunnel he had spotted ahead and to the right. But his left-hand scimitar, Twinkle, glowed with a blue light, and the drow's keen eyes and ears picked out a whisper of movement and a whisper of sound over by the side wall.

  Skidding to a stop, Drizzt whirled to meet the threat, and his eyes went wide indeed when he saw the creature, unlike anything he had ever known, coming out fast for him.

  Half again Drizzt's height from head to tail, it charged on strong back legs, like a bipedal lizard, back hunched low and tail suspended behind it, counterbalancing its large head - if it could even be called a head. It seemed no more than a mouth with three equidistant mandibles stretched out wide. Black tusks as large as Drizzt's hands curled inward at the tips of those mandibles, and Drizzt could make out rows of long, sharp teeth running back down its throat, a trio of ridged lines.

  Even stranger came the glow from the creature's eyes - three of them - each centered on the flap of mottled skin stretched wide between the respective mandibles. The creature bore down on the drow like some triangular-mouthed snake unhinging its jaw to swallow its prey.

  Drizzt started out to the left then reversed fast as the creature swerved to follow. Even with his speed-enhancing anklets, though, the drow could not get far enough back to the right to avoid the turning creature.

  The mandibles snapped powerfully, but hit only air as Drizzt leaped and tumbled forward, over the top mandible. He slashed down hard with both hands as he went over, and used the contact to push himself even higher as he executed a twist and brought his feet fast under him. The creature issued a strange roaring, hissing protest - a fitting, otherworldly sound for an otherworldly beast, Drizzt thought.

  Tucking and turning, Drizzt planted his feet against the side of the creature's shoulder and kicked out, but the beast was more solid than he'd thought. His strike did no more than bend it away from him at the shoulder as he went out to the side. And that bend, of course, again turned the terrible jaws his way.

  But Drizzt flew backward with perfect balance and awareness. As the beast swung around he cut his scimitars across, one-two, scoring hits on the thick muscle and skin of the jaws' connecting flap.

  The creature howled again and bit down at the passing blades, its three mandible tips not quite aligning as they clicked together. It opened wide its maw again as it turned to face Drizzt.

  His blades worked in a flash, the backhand of Icingdeath slicing the opposing skin flap, and a hard strike of Twinkle passing through the muscle and flesh, then turning straight down to slash the base flap that connected the lower two mandible tips. Drizzt turned the blade just a bit as it connected, and leaned forward hard, forcing the jaws to angle down.

  The creature snapped its head back up, accepting the cut, and leaped straight up, turning its back end under so that it landed on its outstretched tail with its hind legs free to claw at its opponent. Formidable indeed were the three claws tipping the feet of those powerful legs, and Drizzt barely dodged back in time to avoid the vicious rake.

  Somehow the creature hopped forward in pursuit, using just its tail for propulsion. Its tiny front legs waved frantically in the air as its long, powerful rear legs slashed wildly at the drow.

  Drizzt worked his scimitars in a blur to defend, connecting repeatedly, but never too solidly for fear of having a blade torn from his grasp. He retracted a blade and th
e creature's hind leg flailed free, then he stabbed straight out, piercing its foot.

  The creature threw back its head and howled again - from up above there came a crash as a form rolled over the ledge - and Drizzt didn't miss the opportunity offered by the distraction. Rolling around those flailing legs and slashing across with Icingdeath, then with Twinkle in close pursuit, he scored two hits on the creature's thin neck. There was a sucking of air and Drizzt saw the bubbling of blood as his blades passed through flesh.

  Not even slowing in his turn as the creature fell silent, then just fell over, the drow sprinted down the tunnel. A roar from behind made him glance back, to see Bruenor flying down the last few feet beside the stalagmite, axe over his head. The dwarf timed his landing perfectly with his overhand chop, driving his axe through the already mortally wounded creature's backbone with a sickening sound.

  "Wait here!" Drizzt called to him, and the drow was gone.

  Bruenor held on as the creature thrashed in its death throes. It tried to turn around to snap at him, but Drizzt had completely disabled the once-formidable jaws' ability to inflict any real damage. The mandibles flopped awkwardly and without coordination, most of the supporting muscles severed. Similarly, the creature's tail and hind legs exhibited only the occasional spasmodic twitch, for Bruenor's axe had cleaved its spine.

  So the dwarf stayed at arms' length, holding his axe out far from his torso to avoid any incidental contact.

  "Hurry, elf!" Bruenor called after Drizzt when he glanced to the side and noted Thibble dorf's boot lying on the stone floor. No longer willing to wait out the dying beast, Bruenor leaped atop its back and ripped through tendon and bone as he tugged and yanked his axe free. He thought to run off after Drizzt, but before he even had the weapon set in his hands, a movement to the side caught his eye.

  The dwarf watched curiously as a darker patch of shadow coalesced near the side wall and the broken wagon, gradually taking shape - the shape of another of the strange beasts.

  It came out hard and fast at him, and Bruenor wisely dropped down behind the fallen creature. On came the second beast, jaws snapping furiously, and the dwarf fell to the stone floor and heaved the fallen creature up as a meaty shield. The dwarf finally saw the damage those strange triangular jaws could inflict, for the ravenous newcomer tore through great chunks of flesh and bone in seconds.

  Movement behind Bruenor had him half turning to his right.

  "Just me!" Regis called to him before he came around, and the dwarf refocused on the beast before him.

  Then Bruenor glanced left, to see Drizzt backing frantically out of the tunnel, his scimitars working fast and independently, each slashing quick lines to hold the snapping mouths of two more creatures at bay.

  "Rumblebelly, ye help the elf!" Bruenor called, but when he glanced back, Regis was gone.

  Bruenor's foe plowed over its fallen comrade then, and the dwarf king had no time to look for his halfling companion.

  Drizzt noticed Regis flattened against the wall as he, and the pair of monsters pursuing him, moved past the halfling.

  Regis nodded and waited for a responding nod. As soon as Drizzt offered it, the halfling came out fast and slapped his small mace against the tail of the creature on the left. Predictably, the beast wheeled to snap at this newest foe, but anticipating that, Drizzt moved faster, bringing his right hand blade over and across, cutting a gash across the side of the turning beast's neck.

  With a roar of protest, the creature spun back, and the other, seeing the opening, came on suddenly.

  But Drizzt was the quicker, and he managed to backstep fast enough to buy the time to realign his blades. He gave an approving nod to Regis as the halfling slipped down the tunnel.

  Regis moved deliberately, but nervously, into the darkness, expecting a monster to spring out at him from every patch of shadow. Soon he heard the scraping of metal, and an occasional grumble and Dwarvish curse, and he could tell from the lack of bluster that Thibble dorf Pwent was in serious trouble.

  Propelled by that, Regis moved with more speed, coming up to the edge of a side chamber from which issued the terrible, gnashing, metallic sounds. Regis summoned his courage and peeked around the rim of the opening. There in the room, silhouetted by the glow of lichen along the far wall, stood another creature, one larger than the others and easily more than ten feet from maw to tail tip. It stood perfectly still, except that it thrashed its head back and forth. Looking at it from the back, but on a slight angle, Regis could see why it did so. For out of the side of that mouth hung an armored dwarf leg with a dirty bare foot dangling limply at its end. Regis winced, thinking that his friend was being torn apart by that triangular maw. He could picture the black teeth crunching through Pwent's armored shell, tearing his flesh with fangs and ripped metal.

  And the dwarf wasn't moving, other than the flailing caused by the limp limbs protruding from the thing's mouth, and no further protests or groans came forth.

  Trembling with anger and terror, Regis charged with abandon, leaping forward and lifting high his small mace. But where could he even hit the murderous beast to hurt it?

  He got his answer as the creature noticed him, whipping its head around. It was then that the halfling first came to understand the strange head, with its three equidistant eyes set in the middle of each of the skin flaps that connected the mandibles. Purely on instinct, the halfling swung for the nearest eye, and the creature's short forelimbs could not reach forward far enough to block.

  The mace hit true, and the flap, taut about the knee and upper leg of the trapped dwarf, had no give that it might absorb the blow. With a sickening splat, the eye popped, gushing liquid all over the horrified halfling.

  The creature hissed and whipped its head furiously - an attempt to throw the dwarf free.

  But Pwent wasn't dead. He had gone into a defensive curl, a "turtle" maneuver that tightened the set of his magnificent armor, strengthening its integrity and hiding its vulnerable seams. As the creature loosened its death grip on him, the dwarf came out of his curl with a defiant snarl. He had no room to punch, or to maneuver his head spike, so he simply thrashed, shaking like a wide-leafed bush in a gale.

  The creature lost interest in Regis, and tried to clamp down on the dwarf instead. But too late, for Pwent was in a frenzy, insane with rage.

  Finally the creature managed to open wide its maw and angle down, expelling the dwarf. When Pwent came free, Regis's eyes widened to see the amount of damage - torn skin, broken teeth, and blood - the dwarf had inflicted on the beast.

  And Pwent was far from done. He hit the ground in a turn that put his feet under him, and his little legs bent, then propelled him right back at the creature, head - and helmet spike - leading. He drove into and through the apex of the jaws, and the dwarf bored on, bending the creature backward. The dwarf punched out, both hands at the same time, launching twin roundhouse hooks that pounded the beast on opposite sides of its neck, fist-spikes digging in. Again and again, the dwarf retracted and punched back hard, both hands together, mashing the flesh.

  And the dwarf's legs ground on, pushing the beast backward, up against the side-chamber's wall, and by the time they got there, the creature was not resisting at all, was not pushing back, and without the barrage it would have likely fallen over.

  But Pwent kept hitting it, muttering profanities all the while.

  Bruenor thrust his axe out horizontally before him, defeating the first attack. He turned the weapon and used it to angle the charging creature aside as he, too, ran ahead, sprinting by the beast to the remains of the wagon. All of the supply crates and sacks had been destroyed, either from the fall or torn apart thereafter, but Bruenor found what he was looking for in an intact portion of the side of the wagon, angling up to about waist height. Knowing the creature to be in full pursuit, the dwarf dived right over that, falling to the floor at its base and rolling to his back, axe up above his head along the ground.

  The creature
leaped over the planks, not realizing that Bruenor was so close to them until the dwarf's axe hit it hard in the side, cutting a long gash just behind its small, twitching foreleg.

  Bruenor fell back flat and continued the momentum to roll him right over, coming back up to his feet. He didn't pause to look over his handiwork, but propelled himself forward, lifting his axe high over one shoulder as he went.

  The creature was ready, though, and as the dwarf bore in, it snapped its mouth out at him, and when it had to retract far short of the mark to avoid a swipe of that vicious axe, the creature just fell back on its tail, as the other one had done, and brought up its formidable rear legs.

  One blocked Bruenor's next swing, kicking out and catching the axe below the head, while the other lashed out, scraping deep lines on the dwarf's armor. Following that, the creature snapped its upper body forward, the triangular maw biting hard at the dwarf, who only managed at the last instant to get back out of range.

  And right back came Bruenor, with a yell and a spit and a downward chop.

  The creature rocked back and the axe whipped past cleanly. The creature reversed, coming in behind.

  Bruenor didn't stop the axe's momentum and reverse it to parry. Rather, he let it flow through, turning sidelong as the blade came low, then turning some more, daring to roll his back around before the beast in the belief that he would be the quicker.

  And so he was.

  Bruenor came around, the axe in both hands and at full extension in a great sidelong slash. The creature scrambled to block. Bruenor shortened his grip, bringing the axe head in closer. When the creature kicked out to block, the axe met it squarely, removing one of the three toes and cleaving the blocking foot in half.

  The creature threw itself forward, screaming in pain and anger, coming at Bruenor with blind rage. And the dwarf king backed frantically, his axe working to-and-fro to fend off the snapping assaults.

  "Elf! I'm needin' ye!" the desperate dwarf bellowed.

  Drizzt was in no position to answer. The wound he had inflicted on one of the beasts wasn't quite as serious as he'd hoped, apparently, for that creature showed no signs of relenting. Worse for Drizzt, he had been backed into a wider area, giving the creatures more room to maneuver and spread out before him.

  They went wide, left and right, amazingly well coordinated for unthinking beasts - if they were indeed unthinking beasts. Drizzt worked his blades as far to either side as he could, and when that became impractical and awkward, the drow rushed ahead suddenly, back toward the tunnel.

  Both creatures turned to chase, but Drizzt reversed even faster, spinning to meet their pursuit with a barrage of blows. He scored a deep gash on the side of one's mouth, and poked the other in its bottom eye.

  Up above he heard a crash, and from the side Bruenor called for him. All he could do was look for options.

  His gaze followed the trail of falling rocks, to see Torgar Hammer striker in a wild and overbalanced run down the side of the stalagmite. The dwarf held a heavy crossbow before him, and just before his stumbling sent him into a headlong slide, he let fly a bolt, somehow hitting the creature to Drizzt's right. The crossbow went flying and so did Torgar, crashing and bouncing the rest of the way down.

  The creature he had hit stumbled then spun to meet the dwarf's charge. But its jaws couldn't catch up to the bouncing and flailing Torgar, and the dwarf slammed hard against the back and side of the beast, bringing it down in a heap. Dazed beyond sensibility, Torgar couldn't begin to defend himself in that tumble as the creature moved to strike.

  But Drizzt moved around the remaining creature and struck hard at the fallen beast, his scimitars slicing at its flesh in rapid succession, tearing deep lines. Drizzt had to pause to fend off the other, but as soon as that attack was repelled, he went back to the first, ensuring that it was dead.

  Then the drow smiled, seeing that the tide had turned, seeing the lowered head spike rushing in hard at the standing creature's backside.

  Even as Pwent connected, skewering the beast from behind, Drizzt broke off and ran toward the wagon. By the time he got there, he found Bruenor and his opponent in a wild back and forth of snapping and slashing.

  Drizzt leaped up to the lip of the wagon side, looking for an opening. Noting him, Bruenor rushed out the other way, and the creature turned with the dwarf.

  Drizzt leaped astride its back, his scimitars going to quick and deadly work.

  "What in the Nine Hells are them things?" Bruenor asked when the vicious thing at last lay still.

  "What from the Nine Hells, perhaps," said Drizzt with a shrug.

  The two moved back to the center of the room, where Pwent continued pummeling the already dead beast and Regis tended to the dazed and battered Torgar.

  "I can't be getting down," came a call from above, and all eyes lifted to see Cordio peering over the entrance, far above. "Ain't no place to set the rope. "

  "I'll get him," Drizzt assured Bruenor.

  With agility that continued to awe, the drow ran up the side of the stalagmite, sliding his scimitars away. At the top, he searched and found his handholds, and between those and the rope, which Cordio had braced once more, Drizzt soon disappeared back out of the hole.

  A few moments later, Cordio came down on the rope, gaining to the top of the mound, then, with Drizzt's help, he worked his way gingerly down to the ground. Drizzt came back into the cavern soon after, hanging by his fingertips. He fell purposely, landing lightly atop the stalagmite mound. From there, the drow trotted down to join his friends.

  "Stupid, smelly lizards," Pwent muttered as he tried to put his boot back on. The metal bands had been bent, though, crimping the opening in the shoe, and so it was no easy task.

  "What were them things?" Bruenor asked any and all.

  "Extraplanar creatures," said Cordio, who was inspecting one of the bodies - one of the bodies that was smoking and dissipating before his very eyes. "I'd be keeping yer cat in its statue, elf. "

  Drizzt's hand went reflexively to his pouch, where he kept the onyx figurine he used to summon Guenhwyvar to the Prime Material Plane. He nodded his agreement with Cordio. If ever he had needed the panther, it would have been in the last fight, and even then, he hadn't dared call upon her. He could sense it, too, a pervasive aura of strange otherworldliness. The place was either truly haunted or somehow dimensionally unstable.

  He slipped his hand in the pouch and felt the contours of the panther replica. He hoped the situation wouldn't force him to chance a call to Guenhwyvar, but in glancing around at his already battered companions, he had little confidence that it could be avoided for long.