“He’s making a raft,” Vestra explained to her cohorts.
“Ye’re welcome to come in if ye’re wantin’, or might that ye’ll stay out here. I’ll not be long.”
Whisper was already by his side, helping to hollow out the mushroom cap, and from that action and the look on the halfling’s face, Bruenor knew that he wouldn’t be going into the complex alone.
Indeed, all four entered together, though it took three trips to ferry them all across the dark water.
Bruenor led the way, but his pace slowed considerably as he crossed the threshold to Gauntlgrym, his every step weighted by solemn and powerful memories. Vestra carried a torch behind him and his shadow reached out before him, wobbling in the flickering light, and somehow, that insubstantial dancing shadow seemed appropriate to him, as ethereal and unreal as this entire adventure. The burden on his shoulders only increased as they moved along the entry corridor and into the grand audience hall of Gauntlgrym. To the right, upon the dais, rested the throne of Gauntlgrym, the seat that had magically, but temporarily, imbued upon Bruenor the leadership of Moradin, the insight of Dumathoin, and the strength of Clangeddin in his battle with the balor Errtu. He remembered that vividly now, the ultimate victory to put the fire primordial back in its watery cage.
The dwarf focused on that throne as he made his way across the huge chamber. His three companions whispered impatiently behind him, but they did not cross before him.
He neared the throne and slowed to a stop, coming into view of the two rocky cairns that had been erected beyond it. He remembered the claim of Catti-brie in the magical forest and knew at once what these were, and who might be interred within: one for Bruenor, one for Thibbledorf Pwent.
The stones of one had been pushed aside, leaving an empty hole. Was that his grave, he wondered? Had his grave, his corpse, been desecrated and robbed? He looked at her curiously. o, seekingon swallowed hard in a moment of panic, at the notion that his entire purpose in coming here had just unraveled.
So caught up was he that he hardly noticed Vestra, Deventry, and Whisper moving past him, toward the throne.
“Keep yer hands off, for yer own sake!” Bruenor yelled in warning at the last moment, even as Whisper reached out to the burnished wood of the throne’s ornate arm.
“You took us here to threaten us?” Deventry came back at him angrily. “If there are treasures to be had, then they are ours as much as your own, dwarf, even if I have to cut out your throat to get my due!”
Bruenor stared hard at Deventry and moved past him. “A throne for dwarves, ye fool,” he said, and he marched up and sat down upon the great chair. Anticipations of enlightenment, assurance, and strength accompanied him, but they were shattered immediately when he felt the anger of the chair, a tangible emotional and physical rejection that launched him into the air, flying from the dais to land hard on the floor in a bouncing tumble.
Horrified, King Bruenor rolled to a sitting position and stared back at the throne.
Moradin had rejected him!
His three companions laughed at him.
“So it’s full of magic, then!” Vestra said. “Beneficent or malevolent, or more likely a bit of both.”
“But not so fond of dwarves, it would seem,” said Deventry with a mocking laugh.
Bruenor didn’t know how to respond. His thoughts spun around in confusing circles. Surely he had cursed Moradin and the others mightily in these twenty years of his second life, but that was behind him now. He had come to see the truth: that he had been returned to undo the wrongs of King Bruenor, that Mielikki had been but a pawn for a greater purpose. He had found the error of his ways, and had found contentment and purpose once more.
But then why had the throne rejected him?
Was it due to the physical changes, he wondered, the fact that his blood now was not that of a king, but of a guard captain? He looked like young Bruenor, to be sure, but the blood in his veins had come from Reginald Roundshield and Uween, and not the line of Gandalug.
It seemed so trite, almost mocking the purpose of the gods and the throne. He was King Bruenor. He had seen the truth and mended his ways and had corrected his attitude toward the gods who gave power to that throne.
“Ye mock me,” he whispered to his gods, dark thoughts climbing up from the floor around him where he sat, burying him in melancholy’s hopeless shadow. So lost was he that he almost didn’t notice his three companions standing around the throne in close discussion, drawing lots from a piece of broken straw bedding.
Bruenor pulled himself to his feet and staggered toward them. “Don’t ye dare,” he said.
“A throne for dwarves?” Deventry replied, turning around with a scowl. “It seems that the chair did not agree with your description.”
Bruenor shook his head, trying to find the words to properly explain. He noted Whisper rubbing his little hands together eagerly, and Vestra pushing him toward the seat.
“Don’t!” Bruenor warned.
“We’re all to take our turns!” Deventry shouted back.
The halfling leaped up into the of the DesaiI, given the onseat and spun around, hands on the arms. His expression remained one of eagerness for a few heartbeats, but then turned to a confused look that quickly showed discomfort. He began to jerk spasmodically, as if bolts of energy were stabbing at him from behind, which indeed they were! He tried to cry out, his mouth twisting weirdly.
“Get him off o’ there!” Bruenor yelled, staggering forward.
Vestra spun back on Whisper and lunged for him, but as she did, the chair ejected the halfling-not as it had done with Bruenor, but much more forcefully, heaving poor Whisper through the air. He clipped Vestra as he launched, bloodying her face and spinning her around and down to the floor. Off he flew, high and far, ten long strides and more from the throne. He landed awkwardly, one leg extended below him, and the snap of bone echoed through the chamber. Whisper cracked his shoulder and the side of his head on the stone, and rolled long and hard into the stone wall, where he thrashed in agony. Oh how the supposedly mute halfling screamed!
The other three ran to him, Vestra trying to turn him to his back, and from her own spasms it was clear that it was all she could manage to not vomit at the mere sight of the halfling’s wound. His shin had broken in half, the bones protruding through his ripped skin.
“What did you do?” Deventry shouted in Bruenor’s face.
“I telled ye to stop!” the dwarf yelled back.
But Deventry shoved him, and Bruenor only took a step back to better balance himself as he retaliated with a fearsome right hook that sent the man flying sidelong to the ground.
“Next time’ll be with me axe!” Bruenor warned.
“What do you know?” Vestra demanded, standing up from the halfling and moving in front of Deventry to hold the man back.
“I know that yer friend was thinkin’ o’ robbing this place, and he telled it to the throne that guards it, and he got what a thief deserves!”
Deventry started to shout at him, Whisper continued to scream and wail, but Vestra spoke over the tumult, “No, Bonnego, there’s more!” she insisted. “What do you know, of that throne, of this place?”
Bruenor swallowed hard. “Me name’s not Bonnego,” he said, but the others didn’t hear. He turned and motioned with his head for them to follow, then started off, angling to the right of the throne, toward the cairns.
“What are we to do with him?” he heard Deventry say behind him.
“Carry him along,” Vestra ordered.
Despite his desperate need to inspect the graves, to see if it was his own or Pwent’s that had been desecrated, Bruenor turned around to regard the trio. They should let Whisper rest for a bit, should make a splint for his leg and pop his shoulder back into place, of course, before trying to move him.
But Deventry wasn’t that smart, apparently, or compassionate. He moved to lift the halfling, who thrashed and screamed even louder. Whisper’s flailing hand poked the big
man in the eye, and how Whisper screamed even more when Deventry dropped him back to the stone.
“He’ll bring the whole place out against us!” Vestra cried. “Whisper, silence!”
Deventry clutched at his eye, his face a mask of rage. His free hand grabbed at his sword and pulled it from his belt, and before Vestra could ev!” Bruenor warned.5N3 enemiesonen yell at him, to call him back to his senses, the man brought the blade down hard and sure.
And Whisper screamed no more.
Bruenor trembled with disgust and anger at himself for bringing these three monsters into sacred Gauntlgrym. He looked at the throne-perhaps that was why it had rejected him.
He started for his grave more determinedly, but heard Deventry’s call behind him, “Stand and be counted, dwarf!”
He kept walking.
“Bonnego!” Deventry called, sounding much closer now, and Bruenor spun around to meet the challenge, axe in hand. He found both Deventry and Vestra facing him, weapons drawn and ready.
“Me name’s not Bonnego,” Bruenor said through gritted teeeth. “ ’Tis Bruenor, Bruenor Battlehammer. King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall. Might that ye’ve heared o’ me.”
The two looked to each other and shrugged, clearly oblivious, then turned back to the dwarf, brandishing tw, and had see
CHAPTER 23
THE GRINNING HALFLING HERO
The Year of the Grinning Halfling (1481 DR) Elturgard
The wagon bounced along the trade way, more than a hundred miles northwest of the town of Triel, and five times that distance, still, from Waterdeep.
Regis sat in the back, huddled under a heavy winter blanket, for the season grew late. His legs dangled off the tailgate, peeking out from under his cover and showing fabulous high black boots that had miraculously escaped the dirt of the road thus far.
“Smoke in the west!” came the expected call from one of the riders flanking the merchant caravan, and the halfling nodded at the confirmation of their location. Regis had been this way before, though many decades had passed since then. By his estimate, they were approaching the river called Winding Water and the famous span known as the Boareskyr Bridge.
The sun lowered before them, and looking back beyond the Forest of Wyrms and the Reaching Woods, Regis noted the aptly named glistening peaks of the Sunset Mountains, far in the distance. The halfling nodded again, taking measure of the journey that had begun on a dark late-summer’s night in Delthuntle.
On the far side of those mountains in the distance, their eastern foothills reached down to the westernmost banks of the Sea of Fallen Stars, the great sea that had been in his sight for every day of his second life until this very journey. He had sailed from Delthuntle to Procampur in the kingdom of Impiltur on the northern banks of the sea, and from there to the city of Suzail, seat of power for the great k sensationIes;font-weight: bold no less ingdom of Cormyr. Regis could only sigh now as he thought of that grand and bustling place, with its fine markets and the stirring parades of the armies of Purple Dragons. Thousands of people called Suzail home; truly Suzail stood among the greatest of Faerun’s cities.
And the palaces! Ah, but Regis could only smile and nod and pat his belt pouch, wherein rested his housebreaker harness, as he thought of those gilded mansions. He had seen the interior of many of them, though usually in the dark of night and without use of a torch.
He nodded more confidently, assuring himself that he would return there someday. Indeed, Regis would not have left Suzail so abruptly, except that a particular lord of the city also happened to be an accomplished wizard. If only Regis had known that before paying a visit to the man’s house one night …
Disguised as the gnome Nanfoodle-for indeed, his wondrous beret could even make him appear as a different race-a friend from another time and another life, Regis had departed the city by the end of the summer of the Year of the Grinning Halfling, buying passage on a caravan bound a hundred miles down the western road to Proskur and a hundred more after that on to the town of Irieabor, the very western edge of the kingdom of Cormyr.
And there Nanfoodle had simply disappeared, and so had come into being the dwarf Cordio Muffinhead. Cordio had traveled the length of the kingdom of Elturgard, riding the Trade Way to Triel, where again, it had been time for a change of identity.
And so, with the tip of a blue-speckled beret, Spider Pericolo Topolino, great nephew of the Pericolo Topolino of Aglarond, had been born.
What a year it had been, Regis mused! What a journey, full of sights and sounds and smells and foods any traveler would envy. He had lived as a street orphan, a gnome potion-maker, a dwarf adventurer, and now a halfling dilettante, dabbling in artwork, overpaying for all, then, of course, retrieving his spent coins in the dark of night.
He had traveled a thousand miles as the crow flies, and likely twice that distance in his meandering but enjoyable western journey.
Enjoyable, but only when he wasn’t looking back to the east, as he was now, images of beautiful Donnola Topolino so clear in his thoughts. When he closed his eyes, he could see her more clearly, and could feel her touch, her gentle fingers brushing his skin, her warm breath whispering into his ear. He could smell her sweetness, taste her …
“Runt!” he heard loudly, shattering his memories, and Regis nearly fell off the wagon as he wheeled around to regard the shouter, the dirty man driving the wagon.
“Get me some water, and be quick!” the man, Kermillon by name, ordered. “Or I’ll slap ye in the mud and suck the water out o’ yer ears!”
“Aye, and might be taking a bit of your brains with it, then, eh?” said Kermillon’s co-pilot, Yoger, a burly man who was dressed and bathed a bit cleaner, but by all accounts remained no less a ruffian than the other.
Regis climbed fully into the wagon and inched his way along the right-hand rail to the back of the driver’s seat, where Yoger handed him a waterskin. He quickly filled it at the tapped keg, then handed it back.
“Ye listen better and move quicker!” Kermillon warned.
Yoger took a deep drink, but never stopped staring at the halfling.
“You know my namesake, I t a long while to realize eesquonrust,” Regis said.
“Can’t say that I do,” said Yoger.
“They call him Grandfather Pericolo.”
“Thought he was your uncle.”
“Everyone calls him Grandfather,” Regis said slyly, but he could only snort and shake his head, for the obvious reference to Pericolo as the head of an assassin’s guild was clearly lost on this ignorant peasant.
“Get back and sit down and shut yer mouth,” Kermillon told him. “Ye paid for a ride to Daggerford, and ye might be getting there, but if ye’re too much the bother, I’m dropping ye in the mud and leaving ye.”
Regis was more than happy to comply. He started to turn, but paused just long enough to view the smoke of campfires rising above the trees not far ahead. He nodded, remembering the Boareskyr Bridge, and the merchant encampments perpetually set on either side.
“It is a good place,” he said, hardly thinking, and only realized he had spoken it out loud when both men turned to regard him curiously.
Regis just tipped his fabulous beret at them and moved to the back of the wagon.
The white tents dotted the sides of the road long before the mouth of the bridge, a virtual city of merchant kiosks and open markets. The ten wagons of the Daggerford caravan pulled up into an open field along the right side of the road, where corrals had been set up and smoke rose from blacksmith fires. This place was well-suited for resupply, for shoeing horses and even buying new ones if necessary, thoughads were empty for scores of miles on either side of the bridge, such services and goods did not come cheap.
Regis was glad to be away from his thuggish drivers, and glad to be wandering around the bustle of a marketplace. Dressed in silken finery, all purple and blue, with blue-dyed lambskin riding gloves, and with his beret and bejeweled rapier both prominently displayed, he played the r
ole of halfling aristocrat perfectly. Donnola had trained him well, after all, and that after decades of his previous life in the palaces of the pashas of Calimport. Many of the merchants around Boareskyr Bridge were from the kingdom of Amn, and Regis knew the traditions and customs of that land very well.
He was the perfect blend of experience and seeming innocence, floating around the tents with smiles and tips of his beret. He wandered from kiosk to kiosk, feigning approving looks at many trite trinkets and baubles, but then stopped at one table, his eyes locked on a square piece of whitened bone.
“You fancy the ivory?” said the chubby merchant dressed in the white robes and colorful vestments common in the southern deserts. “Very rare. Very rare! From the great beasts of Chult!”
Regis moved his hand toward the block, but paused and looked to the merchant for permission. The man nodded eagerly.
Regis rolled the block around his hands, the feel bringing him to another place and time.
“Ivory from the jungles,” the merchant proclaimed.
But Regis knew better. “Trout bone,” he corrected. “From the northern lakes.”
The merchant started to argue, but Regis fixed him with a look that brooked no debate. The halfling knew this material intimately, and just holding it now brought his thoughts careening back to the banks of Maer Dualdon in Icewind Dale.
“How much?” he asked, for he ne!” Bruenor warned.5N3And youoneded to have this piece. His gaze roamed the table and out to nearby tents. He had some items on his housebreaker harness, small-tipped knives and tiny files, that would suffice for many of the cuts, but he would need a true carving knife, he decided.
“Ivory,” the merchant insisted. “Five pieces of gold.”
“Knucklehead trout bone,” Regis corrected, “and I will give you two.”
“Two and twenty silver!”
“Two and five,” said Regis. “It is only impatience that makes me offer that, as I will be along the Sword Coast soon enough, traveling north, where the material is plentiful.”
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