The Orc King

by R. A. Salvatore

Chapter 13 A CITY UNDWARVEN

 

  The six companions stood just inside the opening they had carved through the stone, their mouths uniformly agape. They had their backs to the wall of a gigantic cavern that held a magnificent and very ancient city. Huge structures rose up all around them: a trio of stepped pyramids to their right and a beautifully crafted series of towers to their left, all interconnected with flying walkways, and every edge adorned with smaller spires, gargoyles, and minarets. A collection of smaller buildings sat before them, around an ancient pond that still held brackish water and many plants creeping up around its stone perimeter wall. The plants near the pool and scattered throughout the cavern, the common Underdark luminous fungi, provided a minimal light beyond the torches held by Torgar and Thibble dorf, and of course Regis, who would not let his go. The pool and surrounding architecture hardly held their attention at that moment, though, for beyond the buildings loomed the grandest structure of all, a domed building - a castle, cathedral, or palace. Many stone stairs led up to the front of the place, where giant columns stood in a line, supporting a heavy stone porch. In the shadowy recesses, the six could make out gigantic doors.

  "Gauntlgrym," Bruenor mouthed repeatedly, and his eyes were wet with tears.

  Less willing to make such a pronouncement, Drizzt instead continued to survey the area. The ground was broken, but not excessively, and he could see that the entire area had been paved with flat stones, shaped and fitted to define specific avenues winding through the many buildings.

  "The dwarves had different sensibilities then," Regis remarked, and fittingly, Drizzt thought.

  Indeed, the place was unlike any dwarven city he had known. No construction under Kelvin's Cairn in Icewind Dale, or in Mirabar, Felbarr, or Mithral Hall, approached the height of even the smallest of the many grand structures around them, and the main building before them loomed larger even than the individual stalagmite-formed great houses of Menzoberranzan. That building was more suited to Waterdeep, he thought, or to Calimport and the marvelous palaces of the pashas.

  As the overwhelming shock and awe faded a bit, the dwarves fanned out and moved away from the wall. Drizzt focused on Torgar, who went down to one knee and began scraping between the edges of two flagstones. He brought up a bit of dirt and tasted it then spat it aside, nodding his head and wearing an expression of concern.

  Drizzt looked ahead to Bruenor, who seemed oblivious to his companions, walking zombielike toward the giant structure as if pulled by unseen forces.

  And indeed the dwarf king was, Drizzt understood. He was tugged forward by pride and by hope, that it truly was Gauntlgrym, the fabulous city of his ancestors, glorious beyond his expectations, and that he would somehow find answers to the question of how to defeat Obould.

  Thibble dorf Pwent walked behind Bruenor, while Cordio moved near to Torgar, the latter two striking up a quiet conversation.

  One of doubt, Drizzt suspected.

  "Is it Gauntlgrym?" Regis asked the drow.

  "We will learn soon enough," Drizzt replied and started after Bruenor.

  But Regis grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to turn back around.

  "It doesn't sound like you believe it is," the halfling said quietly.

  Drizzt scanned the cavern, inviting Regis to follow his gaze. "Have you ever seen such structures as these?"

  "Of course not. "

  "No?" Drizzt asked. "Or is it that you have never seen such structures as these in such an environment as this?"

  "What do you mean?" Regis asked, but his voice trailed away and his eyes widened as he finished, and Drizzt knew that he had caught on.

  The pair scurried to catch up to Torgar and Cordio, who were fast gaining on the front two.

  "Check the buildings as we pass," Bruenor instructed, motioning to Pwent and Torgar. "Elf, ye take the flank, and Rumblebelly come close up to me and Cordio. "

  As they moved by doorways, Pwent and Torgar alternately kicked them in, or rushed in through those that were already opened, as Bruenor continued his march, but more slowly, toward the huge structure, with Regis seemingly glued to his side. Cordio, though, kept hanging back, close enough to get to any of the other three dwarves in a hurry.

  Drizzt, moving out into the shadows on the right flank, watched them all with quick glances while focusing his attention primarily on the deeper shadows. He wanted to unravel the mystery of the place, of course, but his main concern was ensuring that no current monstrous residents of the strange city made a sudden and unexpected appearance. Drizzt had been a creature of the Underdark long enough to know that few places so full of shelter would remain uninhabited for long.

  "A forge!" Thibble dorf Pwent called from one building - one that had an open back, Drizzt noted, much like a smithy in the surface communities. "I got me a forge!"

  Bruenor paused for just a moment before starting again for the huge building, his grin wide and his pace quicker. The other dwarves and Regis, even the stupidly grinning Pwent, hurried to catch up, and by the time Bruenor put his foot on the bottom step, all five were grouped together.

  The stairs were wider than they were tall, and while they rose up a full thirty feet, they extended nearly twice that to Bruenor's left and right. Over at the very edge to the right, Drizzt moved fast to get up ahead of the others. Silent as a shadow and nearly invisible in the dim light, Drizzt rushed along, and Bruenor had barely taken his tenth step up when Drizzt crested the top, coming under the darker shadows of the pillared canopy.

  And in there, the drow saw that they were not alone, and that danger was indeed waiting for his friends, for behind one of the centermost pillars loomed a behemoth unlike any Drizzt had even seen. Tall and sinewy, the hairless humanoid was blacker than a drow, if that was possible. It stood easily thrice Drizzt's height, perhaps four times, and exuded an aura of tremendous power, the strength of a mountain giant, monstrous and brutish despite its lean form.

  And it moved with surprising speed.

  Perched in the rafters of the canopy behind and above Drizzt, another beast of darkness studied the approaching group. Batlike in appearance, but huge and perfectly black, the nightwing took note of the movements, particularly those of the drow elf and the behemoth, a fellow denizen of the Plane of Shadow, a fearsome creature known as a nightwalker.

  "Bruenor!" Drizzt cried as the giant started moving, and at the sound of his warning the dwarves reacted at once, particularly Thibble dorf Pwent, who leaped defensively before his king.

  And when the giant, black-skinned nightwalker appeared, twenty feet of muscle and terror, Thibble dorf Pwent met its paralyzing gaze with a whoop of battlerager delight, and charged.

  He got about three strides up the stairs before the nightwalker bent and reached forward, with long arms more akin in proportion to those of a great ape than to a human. Giant black hands clamped about the ferocious dwarf, long fingers fully engulfing him. Kicking and thrashing like a child in his father's arms, Pwent lifted off the ground.

  Behind him, Bruenor could not move quickly enough to stop the hoist, and Cordio fell to spellcasting, and Regis and Torgar didn't move at all, both of them captured by the magical gaze of the powerful giant, both of them standing and trembling and gasping for breath.

  That would have been the sudden end of Thibble dorf Pwent, surely, for the nightwalker could turn solid stone to dust in the crush of its tremendous grasp, but from the stairs above and to the right came Drizzt Do'Urden, leaping high, scimitars drawn. He executed a vicious double slash across the upper left arm of the nightwalker, his magical blades tearing through flesh and muscle.

  In its lurch, the nightwalker dropped its left hand away, and so lost half the vice with which to crush the wildly flailing dwarf. So the behemoth took the second best option and instead of crushing Thibble dorf Pwent, it flung him high and far.

  Pwent's cry changed pitch like the screech of a diving hawk, and he slammed hard agai
nst the front of the porch's canopy, some forty feet from the ground. He somehow kept the presence of mind to smash his spiked gauntlets against that facing, and luck was with him as one caught fast in a seam in the stone and left him hanging helplessly, but very much alive.

  Down below, Drizzt landed on the stairs, more than a dozen feet below where he had begun his leap, and only his quickness and great agility kept him from serious harm, as he scrambled down the steps to absorb his momentum, even keeping the presence of mind to swat Torgar with the flat of one blade as he rushed past.

  Torgar blinked and came back to his senses, just a bit, and turned to regard the running drow.

  Drizzt finally stopped his run and swung around, to see Bruenor darting between the nightwalker's legs, his axe chopping hard against one. The behemoth roared - a strange and otherworldly howl that changed pitch multiple times, as if several different creatures had been given voice through the same horn. Again the nightwalker moved with deceiving speed, twisting and turning, lifting one foot and slamming it down at the dwarf.

  But Bruenor saw it coming and threw himself back the other way, and even managed to whack at the other leg as he tumbled past. The nightwalker hit only stone with its stomp, but it cracked and crushed that stone.

  Drizzt charged to join his friend, but noted a movement to his right that he could not dismiss. Looking past the thrashing, cursing, hanging Thibble dorf, he saw the gigantic, batlike creature drop from the canopy, spreading black wings fully forty feet across as it commenced its swoop. The air shimmered in front of it before it ever really began, though. It sent forth a wave of devastating magical energy that struck the drow with tremendous force.

  Drizzt felt his heart stop as if it had been grabbed by a giant hand. Blood came from his eyes and blackness filled his vision. He staggered and stumbled, and as the nightwing came on, he knew he was helpless. He did see, but didn't consciously register, Thibble dorf Pwent curling up against the canopy, tucking his feet against the stone.

  Torgar Hammerstriker, proud warrior from Mirabar, whose family had served the various Marchions of Mirabar for generations, and who had bravely marched from that city to Mithral Hall, pledging allegiance to King Bruenor, could not believe his fright. Torgar Hammerstriker, who had leaped headlong into an army of orcs, who had battled giants and giant mottled worms, who had once fought a dragon, cursed himself for being held in the paralysis of fear from the black-skinned behemoth.

  He saw Drizzt stagger and stumble, and noted the swoop of the giant batlike creature. But he went for Bruenor, only for Bruenor, his king, his great-axe held high.

  Beside him as he sped past, Cordio Muffinhead cast the first of his spells, throwing a wave of magic out at Bruenor that infused the dwarf king with added strength so that with his next swing, his many-notched axe bit in a little deeper. Cordio, too, turned to meet the rush of the nightwing, and deduced immediately that it had somehow rendered Drizzt helpless. The dwarf began another spell, but doubted he could cast it in time.

  But Thibble dorf Pwent loosed his own type of spell, a battlerager dweomer, indeed. With a roar of defiance, the already battered dwarf shoved off with all his strength, his powerful legs tearing free his embedded hand spikes with a terrible screeching noise. Pwent flew out and up backward from the canopy and executed a half-twist, half-somersault as he went.

  He came around as the nightwing glided under him, and he punched out, one fist after another, latching on with forged metal spikes.

  The nightwing dipped under the dwarf's weight as he crashed down on its back, then it shrieked in protest. It finished with a great intake of breath, and Pwent felt it grow cold beneath him - not as if in death, but magically so, as if he had leaped not on a living, giant bat, but upon the Great Glacier itself.

  The nightwing started to swing its head, but Pwent moved faster, tucking his chin and snapping every muscle in his body to propel himself forward and down, driving his head spike into the base of the nightwing's skull. The sheer power of the dwarf's movement straightened the creature's head back out and facing forward as the nightwing executed its magic, breathing a cone of freezing air before it.

  Unfortunately for the humanoid giant, it stood right in the path of the devastating cone of cold.

  The behemoth roared in protest and thrashed its arms to block the blinding and painful breath. White frost appeared all over the black skin of its head, arms, and chest, and strictly on reflex the giant punched out as the frantic night wing fluttered past, scoring a solid slam against the base of its wing that sent both bat and dwarf into a fast-spinning plummet. They soared over the stairs and off toward the towers, skipped off the top of one building and barreled into another, crashing down in a tangled heap.

  Thibble dorf Pwent never stopped shouting, cursing, or thrashing.

  Drizzt fought through the pain and wiped the blurriness from his bloodied eyes. He had no time to go after Pwent and the giant shadowy bat. None of them did, for the black-skinned giant was far from defeated.

  Bruenor and Torgar raced across the stairs, swatting at the tree-like legs with their masterwork weapons, and indeed several gashes showed on those legs, and from them issued grayish ooze that smoked as it dribbled to the ground. But they would have to hit the giant a hundred times to fell it, Drizzt realized, and if the behemoth connected solidly on either of them but once. . . .

  Drizzt winced as the nightwalker kicked out, just clipping the dodging Torgar, but still hitting him hard enough to send him bouncing down the stone stairs, his axe flying from his grasp. Knowing that Bruenor couldn't stand alone against the beast, Drizzt started for him, but stumbled, still weak and wounded, disoriented from the magical attack of the flying creature.

  The drow felt another magical intrusion then, a wave of soothing, healing energy, and as he renewed his charge Bruenor's way, he managed a quick glance, a quick nod of appreciation, to Cordio.

  As he did, he noted Regis simply walking away, muttering to himself, as if oblivious to the events unfolding around him.

  As with Pwent, though, the drow had no time to concern himself with it, and when he refocused on his giant target, he winced in fear, for the behemoth chopped down its huge hand, leaving a trail of blackness hanging in the air, and more than opaque, that blackness had dimension.

  A magical gate. And one with shapes already moving within its inviting swirls.

  Drizzt took heart as Bruenor scored a solid hit, nearly tripping up the giant as it lifted a foot to stomp at him. The nightwalker howled and grabbed at its torn foot, giving Bruenor time to move safely aside, and more importantly, giving Torgar time to begin his charge back up the stairs, limping though he was.

  Drizzt, though, had stopped his own advance. The warnings of the priests echoing in his thoughts, the drow pulled forth his onyx figurine. He could see the dangers clearly, the instability of the region, the appearance of a gate to the Plane of Shadow. But as the first wraith-like form began to slide through that smoky portal, Drizzt knew they could not win without help.

  "Come to me, Guenhwyvar!" he yelled, and dropped the statue to the stone. "I need you. "

  "Drizzt, no!" Cordio cried, but it was too late, already the gray mist that would become the panther had begun to form.

  Torgar sprinted by the drow, taking the stairs two at a time. He veered from his path to the behemoth to intercept the first floating, shadowy creature to emerge from the gate, which resembled an emaciated human dressed in tattered dark gray robes. Torgar leaped at it with a great two-handed swipe of his axe, and the creature, a dread wraith, met that with a sweep of its arm, trailing tendrils of smoke.

  The axe struck home and the creature's hand slapped across the dwarf's shoulder, its permeating and numbing touch reaching into Torgar and leaching his life-force. Blanching, weaker, Torgar growled through the sudden weariness and pulled back his axe, spinning a complete circuit the other way and coming around with a second chop that bludgeoned the drea
d wraith straight back into the smoky portal.

  But another was taking its place, and Torgar's legs shook beneath him. He hadn't the strength to charge, so he tried to firm himself up to meet the newest wraith's approach.

  Leaving Drizzt with a dilemma, to be sure, for while Torgar obviously needed his help, so did Bruenor up above, where the giant was moving deliberately, cutting off the dwarf's avenues of escape.

  But the choice didn't materialize, for there came a flash of blackness and time seemed to stand still for many long heartbeats.

  Light turned to dark and dark to light, so that the giant seemed to become a brighter gray in hue, as did Drizzt, and the dwarves' faces darkened. Everything reversed, torches flaring black, and the hush of surprise engulfed the creatures of shadow and the companions alike.

  Guenhwyvar's roar broke the spell.

  When Drizzt turned to see his beloved companion, his hope turned to horror, for Guenhwyvar, whiter than Drizzt or the behemoth, seemed only half-formed, and she elongated as she leaped for the second emerging wraith, as if she were somehow dragging her magical gate with her very form. She hit the wraith and went back into the shadow portal with it, and as those two portals merged into a weird weave of conflicting energies, there came another blinding burst of black energy. The wraith hissed in protest, and Guenhwyvar's roar flooded with pain.

  The behemoth howled, too, its agony obvious. The portal stretched, twisted, and reached out to grab at the gigantic creature of shadow, as if to bring it home.

  No, Drizzt realized, his eyes straining to make sense through the myriad of free-flowing shapes, not to bring it home but as if to engulf the giant and swallow it, and the behemoth's howls only confirmed that the assault of the twisting portals was no pleasant embrace.

  The giant proved the stronger, though, and the portals winked out, and the light returned to normal torch-and lichen light, and all was as it had been before the giant had enacted its gate and Drizzt had responded with one of his own.

  Except that the behemoth was clearly wounded, clearly off-balance and staggering. And not everyone had been frozen by the stunning events of the merging gates and the dizzying reversals of light and dark.

  Far up the stairs, King Bruenor Battlehammer seized the moment of opportunity. He came down like a rolling boulder, skipped out to the edge of a stair, and leaped as high and as far as his short legs would carry him.

  Drizzt charged at the behemoth, demanding its attention with a wild flurry of his blades and a piercing battle cry, and so the giant was fully focused on him when Bruenor's axe, clutched in both his hands, cracked into its spine.

  The behemoth threw its shoulders back in pain and surprise, its elbows tucked against its ribs, its forearms and long fingers flailing and grabbing at the empty air.

  Drizzt's charge became real, focused, and he went right for the giant's most obviously injured leg, his scimitars digging many lines as he quick-stepped past.

  The behemoth whirled to follow the movements of the drow, and Bruenor could not hold on. His axe remained deep into the giant's back as the dwarf flew off down the stairs. He crashed in a twisted mess, but Cordio was there at once, infusing him with waves of magical healing.

  The giant grimaced and staggered, and Drizzt easily got out of reach. He turned fast, thinking to charge right back in.

  But he paused when he saw a tell-tale mist reappearing by the small figurine lying on the stairs.

  The giant set itself again. It tried to reach back to extract the dwarf's axe, but the placement prevented it from getting any grip. Down below, Torgar tried to join in, but his legs gave out and he slumped to the stone. No help would come soon from Bruenor, either, Drizzt could see, nor from Cordio, who attended the dwarf king. And Regis was nowhere to be seen.

  Giving up on the axe, the behemoth turned its hateful glare at Drizzt. The drow felt a wave of energy flow forth, and for just an instant, he forgot where he was or what was happening. In that split second, he even thought about leaping down at the dwarves, somehow envisioning them as mortal enemies.

  But the spell, a dizzying enchantment of confusion, could not take hold on the veteran dark elf the way it had so debilitated Regis, and Drizzt leaped down to the side, coming to the same level as the giant, surrendering the higher ground to limit the giant's attack options. Better to force it to reach for him, he thought, and better still for it to try to stomp or kick at him.

  The giant did just that, lifting its leg, and Guenhwyvar did just as Drizzt wanted and sprang upon the one planted leg, raking at the back of the behemoth's knee.

  In charged Drizzt, forcing the giant to twist, or try to twist, to keep pace. The drow's magical anklets allowed him to accelerate suddenly past the stomping foot, and he reversed immediately, spinning and slashing at the back of the leading leg. The giant twisted and tried to kick, but Guenhwyvar clamped powerful jaws on the back of its knee, feline fangs tearing deep into dark muscle.

  That leg buckled. Arms flailing, the giant fell over backward down the stairs, landing with a tremendous, stone-crunching crash, and just missing crushing poor unconscious Torgar.

  Drizzt sprinted and leaped atop it, running down its length to reach its neck before it could bring its arms in to fend him off. Drizzt found less resistance than he expected, for the giant's fall had driven Bruenor's axe in all the deeper, severing its spine.

  The behemoth was helpless, and Drizzt showed it no mercy. He crossed its massive chest. Its head was back due to the angle of the stairs, leaving its neck fully exposed.

  He leaped from the gurgling, dying behemoth a moment later, landing gracefully on the stairs in full run, angling toward where the batlike creature and Pwent had tumbled. It was quiet there, the fight apparently ended, and Drizzt winced when he saw a leathery wing flop, thinking the monster still alive.

  But it was just Pwent, he saw, grumbling as he extracted himself from the broken body.

  Drizzt veered back the way they'd come, thinking to go after Regis, but before he could even begin, Regis appeared between the buildings, walking back swiftly toward the group, his mace in hand, his chubby cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

  "It took me strength, me king," Torgar Hammerstriker was saying when Drizzt, Guenhwyvar in tow, moved back to the three dwarves. "Like it pulled me spine right out. "

  "A wraith," explained Cordio, who was still working on the battered Bruenor, bandaging a cut along the dwarf king's scalp. "Their chilling touch steals yer inner strength - and it can suren kill ye to death if it gets enough o' the stuff from ye! Take heart, for ye'll be fine in a short bit. "

  "As will me king?" Torgar asked.

  "Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Got me a bigger bounce fallin' off me throne after a proper blessing to Moradin. A night o' the holy mead's hurtin' me more than that thing e'er could!"

  Torgar moved over to the dead giant and tried to lift its shoulder. He looked back at the others, shaking his head. "Gonna be a chore for ten in gettin' back yer axe," he said.

  "Then take yer own and cut yer way through the durned thing," Bruenor ordered.

  Torgar considered the giant, then looked to his great-axe. He gave a "hmm" and a shrug, spat in both his hands, and hoisted the weapon. "Won't take long," he promised. "But take care with yer axe when I get it for ye, for the handle's sure to be slick. "

  "Nah, it crusts when it dries," came a voice from the side, and the group turned to regard Thibble dorf Pwent, who certainly knew of what he spoke. For Pwent was covered in blood and gore from the thrashing he had given the batlike monster, and a piece of the creature's skull was still stuck to his great head spike, with gobs of bloody brain sliding slowly down the spike's stem. To emphasize his point, Pwent held up his hand and clenched and unclenched his fist, making sounds both sloppy wet and crunchy.

  "And what happened to yerself?" Pwent demanded of Regis as the halfling approached. "Ye find something to hit back there, did ye?"

 
"I don't know," the halfling honestly answered.

  "Bah, let off the little one," Bruenor told Pwent, and he included all the others as he swept his gaze around. "Ain't nothing chasing Rumblebelly off. "

  "I don't know what happened," Regis said to Bruenor, and he looked at the dead giant and shrugged. "For any of it. "

  "Magic," said Drizzt. "The creatures were possessed of more than physical prowess, as is typical of extraplanar beings. One of those spells attacked the mind. A disorienting dweomer. "

  "True enough, elf," Cordio agreed. "It delayed me spellcasting. "

  "Bah, but I didn't feel nothing," said Pwent.

  "Attacked the mind," Bruenor remarked. "Yerself was well defended. "

  Pwent paused and pondered that for a few moments before bursting into laughter.

  "What is this place?" Torgar asked at length, finding the strength to rise and walk, taking in the sights, the sculpture, the strange designs.

  "Gauntlgrym," Bruenor declared, his dark eyes gleaming with intensity.

  "Then yer Gauntlgrym was a town above the ground," said Torgar, and Bruenor glared at him.

  "This place was above ground, me king," Torgar answered that look. "All of it. This building and those, too. This plaza, set with stones to protect from the mud o' the spring melt. . . . " He looked at Cordio, then Drizzt, who nodded his agreement. "Something must've melted the tundra beneath the whole of it. Turned it all to mud and sank this place from sight. "

  "And the melts bring water, every year," Cordio added, pointing to the north. "Washing away the mud, bucket by bucket, but leaving the stones behind. "

  "Yer answer's in the ceiling," Torgar explained, pointing up. "Can ye get a light up there, priest?"

  Cordio nodded and moved away from Bruenor. He began casting again, gently waving his arms, creating a globe of light up at the cavern's ceiling, right at the point where it joined in with the top of the great building before them. Some tell-tale signs were revealed with that light, confirming Torgar's suspicions.

  "Roots," the Mirabarran dwarf explained. "Can't be more than a few feet o' ground between that roof and the surface. And these taller buildings're acting like supports to keep that ceiling up. The tangle o' roots and the frozen ground're doin' the rest. Whole place sank, I tell ye, for these buildings weren't built for the Underdark. "

  Bruenor looked at the ceiling, then at Drizzt, but the drow could only nod his agreement.

  "Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Gauntlgrym was akin to Mirabar, then, and ye're for knowin' that. So this must be the top o' the place, with more below. All we need be looking for is a shaft to take us to the lower levels, akin to that rope and come-along dumbwaiter ye got in Mirabar. Now let's see what this big place is all about - important building, I'm thinking. Might be a throne room. "

  Torgar nodded and Pwent ran up in front of Bruenor to lead the way up the stairs, with Cordio close on his heels. Torgar, though, lagged behind, something Drizzt didn't miss.

  "Not akin to Mirabar," the dwarf whispered to Drizzt and Regis.

  "A dwarf city above ground?" Regis asked.

  Torgar shrugged. "I'm not for knowing. " He reached to his side and pulled an item from his belt, one he had taken from the smithy he had found back across the plaza. "Lots of these and little of anything else," he said.

  Regis sucked in his breath, and Drizzt nodded his agreement with the dwarf's assessment of the muddy catastrophe that had hit the place. For in his hand, Torgar held an item all too common on the surface and all too rare in the Underdark: a horseshoe.

  At Drizzt's insistence, he, and not the noisy Thibble dorf, led the way into the building with Guenhwyvar beside him. The drow and panther filtered out to either side of the massive, decorated doors - doors filled with color and gleaming metal much more indicative of a construction built under the sun. The drow and his cat melted into the shadows of the great hall that awaited them, moving with practiced coordination. They sensed no danger. The place seemed still and long dead.

  It was no audience chamber, though, no palace for a dwarf king. When the others came in and they filled the room with torchlight, it became apparent that the place had been a library and gallery, a place of art and learning.

  Rotted scrolls filled ancient wooden shelves all around the room and along the walls, interspersed with tapestries whose images had long ago faded, and with sculptures grand and small alike.

  Those sculptures set off the first waves of alarm in the companions, particularly in Bruenor, for while some depicted dwarves in their typically heroic battle poses and regalia, others showed orc warriors standing proud. And more than one depicted orcs in other dress, in flowing robes or with pen in hand.

  The most prominent of all stood upon a dais at the far end of the room, directly across from the doors. The image of Moradin, stocky and strong, was quite recognizable to the dwarves.

  So was the image of Gruumsh One-eye, god of the orcs, standing across from him, and while the two were shown eyeing each other with expressions that could be considered suspicious, the simple fact that they were not shown with Moradin standing atop the vanquished Gruumsh's chest elicited stares of disbelief on the faces of all four dwarves. Thibble dorf Pwent even babbled something undecipherable.

  "What place was this?" Cordio asked, giving sound to the question that was on all their minds. "What hall? What city?"

  "Delzoun," muttered Bruenor. "Gauntlgrym. "

  "Then she's no place akin to the tales," said Cordio, and Bruenor shot a glare his way.

  "Grander, I'm saying," the priest quickly added.

  "Whatever it was, it was grand indeed," said Drizzt. "And beyond my expectations when we set out from Mithral Hall. I had thought we would find a hole in the ground, Bruenor, or perhaps a small, ancient settlement. "

  "I telled ye it was Gauntlgrym," Bruenor replied.

  "If it is, then it is a place to do your Delzoun heritage proud," said the drow. "If it is not, then let us discover other accomplishments of which you can be rightly proud. "

  Bruenor's stubborn expression softened a bit at those words, and he offered Drizzt a nod and moved off deeper into the room, Thibbledorf at his heel. Drizzt looked to Cordio and Torgar, both of whom nodded their appreciation of his handling of the volatile king.

  It was not Gauntlgrym, all three of them knew - at least, it was not the Gauntlgrym of dwarven legend. But what then?

  There wasn't much to salvage in the library, but they did find a few scrolls that hadn't fully succumbed to the passage of time. None of them could read the writing on the ancient paper, but there were a few items that could give hints about the craftsmanship of the former residents, and even one tapestry that Regis believed could be cleaned enough to reveal some hints of its former depictions. They gathered their hoard together with great care, rolling and tying the tapestry and softly packing the other items in bags that had held the food they had thus far consumed.

  They were done scouring the hall in less than an afternoon's time, and finished with a cursory and rather unremarkable examination of the rest of the cavern for just as long after that. Abruptly, and at Bruenor's insistence, so ended their expedition. Soon after, they climbed back up through the hole that had brought them underground and were greeted by a late winter's quiet night. At the next break of dawn they began their journey home, where they hoped to find some answers.