Archmage

by R. A. Salvatore

  To the dwarves of Delzoun, the tunnel spoke only of home.

  Their most ancient and hallowed home. The home of their earliest ancestors, the hearth that had spawned the smaller fires of Citadel Felbarr and Citadel Adbar, Mithral Hall and Kelvin’s Cairn, and all the other Delzoun kingdoms scattered about Faerûn.

  This was the home-fire, the true home-fire, the spawn of the dwarven race on Toril, the greatest and earliest Forge that had propelled their kind to unparalleled heights of craftsmanship and reputation.

  There were monsters all about, they knew. They could smell the stench of kobolds and goblins, and other, less-sentient denizens of dark places: carrion crawlers with waggling tentacles, and giant cave spiders who would suck the juices from a living victim and leave the pruned corpse for the vermin. The dwarves could smell them, or hear their distant skitters, but the dwarves didn’t fear them, any of them.

  They were an army of Delzoun warriors, unified in stride and strike, and letting come whatever may come. It didn’t matter. They were on the path to Gauntlgrym, and so to Gauntlgrym they would go, and woe to any man or monster who dared to step in their way.

  Despite the smells and scat and other goblinkin and monster sign, the dwarves only found a few skirmishes over the next few days, mostly with carrion crawlers, which were apparently so confident in their paralyzing poison, or simply so stupid, that they didn’t comprehend the numerical disadvantage. A few dwarves were put into that temporarily paralyzed state by the swatting tentacles, but before the creatures could crawl up and begin a meal, hordes of other dwarves were there to take up the fight and overwhelm the beasts.

  So not a dwarf was lost in the trek into the Underdark, and only one injured—and that from a fall, with a wound that the clerics easily mended.

  Bruenor remained near the front of the line all the way down, with Drizzt and Catti-brie and the four dwarves that made up his personal bodyguard. Beside Bruenor came King Emerus and his entourage, led by Ragged Dain, along with King Connerad and Bungalow Thump.

  So long was the dwarven line that when Bruenor at last entered the lowest chamber, the antechamber to Gauntlgrym’s castle-like wall, the trailing dwarves were not even halfway down the long, descending tunnel from the surface.

  Drizzt, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Athrogate all knew this cavern, full of stalagmites and leering stalactites, with many structures hollowed as guard stations, ancient ballistae and catapults rotting in place. They stood on the landing before the tunnel exit, at the western end of the cavern, looking over the low stone wall. Just enough illuminating lichen was scattered about for them to peer through the forest of rock mounds and see the dull reflections off the black water of the underground pond. Across that foreboding water was a small beach of fine sand, fronting the stone wall and the doorway to the throne room.

  “Do ye feel it?” Bruenor asked Emerus when the old king moved up to stand beside him.

  “Aye,” Emerus answered. “In me heart and in me bones. At the other end of this very cavern?”

  “Across that water sits the wall, and just inside, the Throne o’ the Dwarf Gods,” Bruenor explained.

  Despite the dim light, King Emerus’s eyes sparkled, and he had to work very hard just to draw in his breath.

  “We’ll be startin’ our work right in here,” Bruenor told them all. “I’m thinking that we fix these guard posts—and might be buildin’ a bridge across that water.”

  “One easy to drop,” Catti-brie offered.

  “Aye,” said Emerus. “If them drow’re up high already in Gauntlgrym, then we’ll start our diggin’ in right here so they can get the whole o’ the army in their ugly faces.” He paused and looked at Drizzt, then shrugged and offered a slight bow.

  Drizzt, surely not offended, merely chuckled in reply.

  “Bring in a swarm o’ Gutbusters,” Bruenor instructed Bungalow Thump. “Ye take yer boys down first and spread the breadth o’ the place to the first mounds. Torch line, with none out o’ sight, and all ready to fight for them next to ’em.”

  Bungalow Thump surveyed the place for a moment. “Wide cave,” he said doubtfully.

  “Me and me boy’ll be with ye,” Ambergris remarked, elbowing Athrogate, who snickered and shoved her back.

  “Grab them Wilddwarfs from Adbar, if ye need ’em,” said Bruenor, but Bungalow Thump shook his head.

  “They’re all up near the back,” he explained.

  Bruenor looked to King Emerus, the two of them shaking their heads knowingly. “King Connerad’s sure to miss all the fun, and his boys’ll find themselves in the back for his absence,” Emerus said. He turned to Ragged Dain and nodded.

  “I’ll have enough o’ me boys to take the right half o’ the room,” Ragged Dain told Bungalow Thump, and the two rushed off back up the tunnel to gather their forces.

  With great precision, two hundred hustling dwarves soon stretched along the cavern floor, wall-to-wall in front of the stairway exit. On a call from Bungalow Thump, scores of torches went up in fast order. The long line began its steady move, sweeping clean the cavern in front of them, while more dwarves filled in from behind. Those second ranks formed strike teams, and whenever the leading dwarves crossed a stalagmite mound that had been worked with stairs, one of those strike teams was fast up them to scout the nest and secure the post.

  Now Drizzt did go out to scout as well, moving into the shadows in front of the front line, picking his careful and swift way, but never getting too far in front. As they at last neared the water, the drow, with his keen lowlight vision, thought he spotted a pair of figures slipping in through the open door of Gauntlgrym across the way, but he couldn’t be certain.

  “Secure the bank,” Bruenor told them when he, too, came up to the pond’s edge. “And keep yerselves ready. Dark things in here, and in the water, too, not to doubt.”

  “Engineers’ll be in tomorrow,” Emerus said quietly to Bruenor. “It’ll be a bit afore we can get a bridge across.”

  “And yerself ain’t for waiting?” Bruenor asked, and Emerus shrugged. Bruenor pointed down the bank, where the hollowed cap of a giant mushroom sat in the darkness—the boat Bruenor and his friends had made when they had come in for Thibbledorf Pwent a year before. It was right where they had left it, Bruenor believed, and that seemed a good thing.

  “Set a ferry?” Emerus asked.

  “Dark things in the water, but aye,” Bruenor replied.

  “The Harpells can get many across in short order,” Catti-brie said, moving to join the pair. “Old Kipper is well versed in the art of the dimension door.”

  The work began immediately, setting a brigade of archers with crossbows on the bank directly opposite the door, while Catti-brie ran back to fetch Penelope, Kipper, and the other Harpells. Skilled craftsdwarves soon arrived with their tools and logs they had dragged down from the forest above. Within a few hours, as more dwarves swarmed into the huge cavern, the Harpells and Catti-brie erected magical gates, and several score dwarves, including the kings and their bodyguards, stepped through the portals onto the beach across the way.

  Work on the ferry began immediately, with beams set in place on both sides of the small pond, turnstiles dug in and secured, and with Penelope Harpell taking magical flight, carrying the heavy rope from one side to the other. While the ferry was being completed, with several more mushroom-cap boats fashioned, dwarf clerics cast magical light onto stones and threw them into the water along the ferry route.

  Tightly packed schools of fish flitted from the illumination and hovered in the shadows just beyond the light, and those few adventurers who had been this way before understood the danger of those vicious cave fish. And so the Harpells and Catti-brie stood guard, and whenever one of those schools encroached upon the lighted path, a lightning bolt greeted them and sent them scurrying, or had them floating up to the surface, stunned or even dead.

  Strong-shouldered dwarves cranked the turnstiles, and tough warriors carried stones across and set to building defensive w
alls outside the opened door to the upper hall of Gauntlgrym.

  Despite their impatience, prudence ruled the day, and it was many hours before the first team of Gutbusters rushed through the small tunnel and into the great throne room—and that only after Penelope Harpell and Kipper had sent magical disembodied wizard eyes into the chamber to scout in front of them.

  At long last, King Bruenor Battlehammer and King Emerus Warcrown and King Connerad Brawnanvil strode side by side into that hallowed chamber. They had come not as explorers, as with Bruenor’s first journey here, in another time and another life. They had come not in desperation, as with Bruenor’s second visit when he sought the council of the dwarf gods, nor to save a friend, as Bruenor and the Companions of the Hall had done to rescue Thibbledorf Pwent.

  They had come as conquerors now, heirs to the throne of Delzoun.

  Bruenor kept his eyes on Emerus as they walked to the dais down to the right, where sat the Throne of the Dwarf Gods. Bruenor had been here several times, of course, and so he knew what to expect, both with this enchanted and ancient throne he had sat upon before, and with the two graves set not far to the other side of it, the cairns built for himself and for Thibbledorf Pwent when they had both fallen in Gauntlgrym.

  He remembered his first journey into this chamber, when he had first come to know for certain that he had indeed found this most ancient Delzoun homeland. He noted the same expression he knew he had worn upon the face of his companion, Emerus, and surely Bruenor understood.

  He nodded, and he kept staring at the old King of Citadel Felbarr, and he let Emerus’s sense of wonder and reverence bleed back to him, reminding him again of his own feelings on that first journey to this ancient and hallowed ground.

  “That’s the throne?” Emerus asked, his voice shaky.

  “Aye, and beyond it’s me own grave, and that o’ Thibbledorf Pwent, me battlerager,” Bruenor answered. “Ye go and put yer bum in the chair, and ye’ll know if yer heart’s pleasing Moradin.”

  Ragged Dain came huffing and puffing up to the pair just before they reached the throne.

  “When I put me arse in that seat and me heart wasn’t straight with the callings o’ the gods, the chair tossed me almost to the wall,” Bruenor explained. “Ah but ye’ll get yer thoughts sorted out quick enough when ye put yerself in that throne!”

  “Can any of us go and sit, then?”

  “Royal blood,” Bruenor replied. “So I’m guessin’. Though I’m thinking that any who’ve found the favor o’ Moradin would be welcomed …”

  His voice trailed off when Ragged Dain motioned ahead with his chin, and Bruenor turned to watch King Emerus moving for the seat. Without hesitation, the old king turned and plopped himself down on the throne. He slid back comfortably and placed his hands firmly on the burnished arms, grabbing tightly.

  King Emerus closed his eyes. His breath came easy, his shoulders slumped in relaxation, as if all the tension was flowing out of his body.

  Ragged Dain put his hand on Bruenor’s shoulder, as much to support himself as to comfort the dwarf he had known as little Arr Arr.

  IF KING EMERUS Warcrown’s life had ended at this very moment, he would have died a happy dwarf. Sitting on that throne in these hallowed halls seemed to Emerus to be the crowning achievement of a dwarf life well lived. He felt at peace, more so than ever in his long life, for a sense of divine contentment washed through him.

  All of his major life decisions, like abandoning Felbarr to undertake this journey, rolled through him. Not all had been correct, he had learned, sometimes painfully, but he sensed now that the gods of the dwarves, Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin, were satisfied that Emerus Warcrown had made those choices, right and wrong, with good intent and a proper sense of dwarven purpose.

  An image of the Forge of Gauntlgrym came clearly to him, as well as one of the small tunnel leading to the antechamber that housed the fire primordial that gave the Forge its supernatural heat and magical energy.

  Emerus wore a wide smile, but only until he sensed, or feared, that the throne had shown him that place in his mind’s eye because he would never see it physically.

  For he realized then that the dwarves were in for a long and bitter fight here, and that to truly secure Gauntlgrym would likely take them years. Longer than old King Emerus—who felt older now after months on the road—had left to live?

  It seemed to Emerus a distinct possibility, but this, too, he accepted, and was content that Moradin and the other gods of his people agreed with his decision to abdicate his throne and journey to this place.

  He felt their strength then, in his old and aching bones. And he heard their voices, speaking the old tongue of the dwarves, a language with which Emerus and every other dwarf alive had only cursory knowledge.

  Every other dwarf alive except for the one standing in front of Emerus and watching him now, for Bruenor, too, had heard the voices of the ancients, of the gods.

  A long time later, King Emerus Warcrown opened his eyes.

  “Chan eagnaidth drasta,” he said.

  “Tha,” Bruenor replied.

  “What’re ye about, then?” Ragged Dain asked, looking to each in turn. “Aye, to what?”

  “King Emerus is wiser now,” Bruenor explained.

  “Tha,” Emerus added. “For I’m hearin’ the voice o’ Moradin.”

  “And learnin’ the tongue o’ Moradin, aye?” Ragged Dain asked.

  King Emerus smiled wide, then hopped off the throne, a spring in his step, and walked over to the pair. He nodded to his second and met the long gaze of Bruenor. Emerus lifted his hands and placed them solidly on his old friend’s shoulders, the two staring unblinkingly for a long time, sharing something they both now knew and understood, something divine and supernatural.

  King Emerus couldn’t suppress his smile, and he began to nod.

  “Lord Moradin’s pleased by me choice,” he said, his voice a whisper, because if he tried to speak more loudly, his voice would surely break apart with sobs.

  “YOU WILL GO out to scout the upper halls?” Catti-brie asked Drizzt, the two off to the side of the entryway, just inside the throne room. They had watched Bruenor and Emerus’s solemn walk to the throne, had watched Emerus sit upon it.

  “Bruenor stays my hand,” Drizzt replied. “The dwarves have decided to take the ground one finger at a time, fully secure that taken ground, then plod ahead to the next room. We’ll not leave this room until Bruenor and the other dwarf leaders are satisfied that the chamber outside the wall is secured, or that this hall, too, has proper defenses set in place.”

  The sound of hammers and stones scraping across the floor lent credence to Drizzt’s claims, for work was already underway in the throne room. Sideslinger catapults were already assembled and in place on the walls of the tunnels leading to the mines, and in front of the back door, the main entrance into the formal Gauntlgrym complex, heavy work was underway in constructing defensive half-walls, behind which crossbowdwarves could keep a close watch on the narrow threshold.

  “Are you eager for battle?” Catti-brie asked. “Against your own kind?”

  “Eager? No. But I accept the journey before us. Bruenor will have Gauntlgrym, I believe, or he will surely die trying.”

  “And Drizzt?”

  “Owes his friend no less than that.”

  “So you’ll die for Bruenor’s dream?”

  “Did not Bruenor forsake his divine reward for my sake? He could have gone to his gods, justly rewarded for a life well lived, but his duty to a friend turned his course. Is that not the whole point of it? Of it all? If I offer my hand to another and he takes it, do I not also have his hand? We are stronger together, but only if the bond of friendship travels from both hands. I could no more forsake Bruenor in this quest than you could have remained from my side when you knew I needed you. Or Bruenor. This is our bond, our blood, our hands joined. I only wish that Regis and Wulfgar were here, that we five would walk …”

  He paused as
he noted his wife’s bemused smile.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Catti-brie said lightly. “Nothing of much importance. Only that I find it amusing when I consider that Wulfgar labels me as the preachy one.”

  A flabbergasted Drizzt tried to respond, but his lips moved without making a sound.

  “Oh, kiss me,” Catti-brie said and moved in close, and pecked Drizzt lightly before moving back with a laugh. “Do you know that I love you?” she asked. “Do you believe that I would rather be here beside you in this dark place, with danger all around and battle looming before us, than anywhere else in the world? Than in any garden Mielikki might fashion to my every sensual pleasure?”

  She moved back in front of him again, right in front of him, her blue eyes locking his lavender orbs. “Do you know that?”

  Drizzt nodded and kissed her again.

  “And we will survive this,” Catti-brie insisted. “Our road will not end in Gauntlgrym. We will not allow it!”

  “And then where?” The question carried more weight than Drizzt had intended, and the sound of the blunt words gave him pause as much as they stunned his wife. For so many years, in this life and Catti-brie’s last, Drizzt and Catti-brie had danced around this issue. They were adventurers, ever seeking the road and the wind in their faces.

  But was there more for them?

  “When Bruenor sits on Gauntlgrym’s throne, does Drizzt remain beside him?” Catti-brie asked.

  Drizzt’s hesitance spoke more loudly than any words he might have said.

  “I do not wish to live again in the halls of the dwarves,” Catti-brie bluntly added. “Nearby, surely, but this is not the place for me. I returned in the service of Mielikki, in the love of the open air, to feel the grass beneath my feet, to feel the wind and rain upon my face. I expect that I will spend many tendays in Gauntlgrym, beside my beloved Da, surely, but this is not to be my life.”