Gauntlgrym (59 page)

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

D
RIZZT 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.

In a dark, dark place, Jarlaxle Baenre opened his eyes and dared bring forth a bit of light. He could hear the rush of water, and knew what it meant. And he heard Athrogate stirring beside him.

He saw his elemental, the last of the ten, the one that had not been set in place, still standing guard at the entrance of the portable hole he had used to pull himself and Athrogate away from the primordial. That creature of the Elemental Plane of Water seemed diminished, no doubt from holding back the fires of destruction, and Jarlaxle sensed that it was agitated as well, eager and frustrated all at once.

“I release you,” the drow said, and just that easily the elemental leaped out of the hole and into the sidelong swirl of the enchanted water.

The drow slipped a ring onto a finger, adjusted his eyepatch, and left his body in a spell of clairvoyance, seeking answers—which he found as soon as his vision lifted out of the pit. He saw Drizzt and Dahlia, and the dwarves across the way, and still forms lying under the archway.

Jarlaxle turned to Athrogate, who lay broken, his skin blistered, one leg shattered beneath his prone form.

“It’s time to go,” Jarlaxle whispered to him, and the drow produced another ring, a teleportation device that would send them home.

“I ain’t to make it,” Athrogate whispered back, barely able to draw breath.

Jarlaxle smiled at him. “My priests will find us in Luskan. They will tend you, my friend. Now is not your time to die. Your kind has lost enough today.”

He began to enact his magic, but Athrogate grabbed him roughly by the arm, commanding his attention.

“Ye could’ve left me!” he snarled.

Jarlaxle just nodded and smiled, and started to chant once more, but again, Athrogate interrupted.

“Wait,” the dwarf begged. “Is it done? Did King Bruenor win the day?”

Jarlaxle smiled warmly, a hint of a tear in his crimson eyes. “Long live the king,” he assured his bearded friend. “Long live King Bruenor.”

They buried Bruenor Battlehammer, Eighth King of Mithral Hall, under rocks beside the cairn of Thibbledorf Pwent. They buried him with his one-horned helm, with his enchanted shield, and his mighty, many-notched axe—for what dwarf other than Bruenor Battlehammer would deserve such weapons?

There had been talk of bringing Bruenor home to Mithral Hall for burial—Stokely had even suggested Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale as an appropriate resting place. But Gauntlgrym, the most hallowed and ancient of Delzoun halls, somehow seemed more fitting.