Streams of Silver frid-2

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  The companions wasted no more time in the area either. Wulfgar hoisted Regis from the ground and followed Bruenor and Catti-brie as they sped down the passageway, Drizzt lingering behind to cover their retreat.

  They had put many turns and halls behind them before Bruenor dared to slow the pace. Disturbing questions again hovered about the dwarf’s thoughts, concerns about his entire fantasy of reclaiming Mithril Hall, and even about the wisdom in bringing his dearest friends into the place. He looked at every shadow with dread now, expecting a monster at each turn.

  Even more subtle was the emotional shift that the dwarf had experienced. It had been festering within his subconscious since he had felt the vibrations on the floor, and now the fight with the monsters of darkness had pushed it to completion. Bruenor accepted the fact that he no longer felt as though he had returned home, despite his earlier boastings. His memories of the place, good memories of the prosperity of his people in the early days, seemed far removed from the dreadful aura that surrounded the fortress now. So much had been despoiled, not the least of which were the shadows of the ever-burning torches. Once representative of his god, Dumathoin, the Keeper of Secrets, the shadows now merely sheltered the denizens of darkness.

  All of Bruenor’s companions sensed the disappointment and frustration that he felt. Wulfgar and Drizzt, expecting as much before they had ever entered the place, understood better than the others and were now even more concerned. If, like the crafting of Aegis-fang, the return to Mithril Hall represented a pinnacle in Bruenor’s life—and they had worried about his reaction assuming the success of their quest—how crushing would be the blow if the journey proved disastrous?

  Bruenor pushed onward, his vision narrowed upon the path to Garumn’s Gorge and the exit. On the road these long weeks, and when he had first entered the halls, the dwarf had every intention of staying until he had taken back all that was rightfully his, but now all of his senses cried to him to flee the place and not return.

  He felt that he must at least cross the top level, out of respect for his long dead kin, and for his friends, who had risked so much in accompanying him this far. And he hoped that the revulsion he felt for his former home would pass, or at least that he might find some glimmer of light in the dark shroud that encompassed the halls. Feeling the axe and shield of his heroic namesake warm in his grasp, he steeled his bearded chin and moved on.

  The passageway sloped down, with fewer halls and side corridors. Hot drafts rose up all through this section, a constant torment to the dwarf, reminding him of what lay below. The shadows were less imposing here, though, for the walls were carved smoother and squared. Around a sharp turn, they came to a great stone door, its singular slab blocking the entire corridor.

  “A chamber?” Wulfgar asked, grasping the heavy pull ring.

  Bruenor shook his head, not certain of what lay beyond. Wulfgar pulled the door open, revealing another empty stretch of corridor that ended in a similarly unmarked door.

  “Ten doors,” Bruenor remarked, remembering the place again. “Ten doors on the down slope,” he explained. “Each with a locking bar behind it.” He reached inside the portal and pulled down a heavy metal rod, hinged on one end, so that it could be easily dropped across the locking latches on the door. “And beyond the ten, ten more going up, and each with a bar on th’ other side.”

  “So if ye fled a foe, either way, ye’d lock the doors behind ye,” reasoned Catti-brie. “Meeting in the middle with yer kin from the other side.”

  “And between the center doors, a passage to the lower levels,” added Drizzt, seeing the simple but effective logic behind the defensive structure.

  “The floor’s holding a trap door,” Bruenor confirmed.

  “A place to rest, perhaps,” said the drow.

  Bruenor nodded and started on again. His recollections proved accurate, and a few minutes later, they passed through the tenth door and into a small, oval-shaped room, facing a door with the locking bar on their side. In the very center of the room was a trap door, closed for many years, it seemed, and also with a bar to lock it shut. All along the room’s perimeter loomed the familiar darkened alcoves.

  After a quick search to ensure that the room was safe, they secured the exits and began stripping away some of their heavy gear, for the heat had become oppressive and the stuffiness of the unmoving air weighed in upon them.

  “We have come to the center of the top level,” Bruenor said absently. “Tomorrow we’re to be finding the gorge.”

  “Then where?” Wulfgar asked, the adventurous spirit within him still hoping for a deeper plunge into the mines.

  “Out, or down,” Drizzt answered, emphasizing the first choice enough to make the barbarian understand that the second was unlikely. “We shall know when we arrive.”

  Wulfgar studied his dark friend for some hint of the adventurous spirit he had come to know, but Drizzt seemed nearly as resigned to leaving as Bruenor. Something about this place had diffused the drow’s normally unstoppable verve. Wulfgar could only guess that Drizzt, too, battled unpleasant memories of his past in a similarly dark place.

  The perceptive young barbarian was correct. The drow’s memories of his life in the underworld had indeed fostered his hopes that they might soon leave Mithril Hall, but not because of any emotional upheaval he was experiencing upon his return to his childhood realm. What Drizzt now remembered keenly about Menzoberranzan were the dark things that lived in dark holes under the earth. He felt their presence here in the ancient dwarven halls, horrors beyond the surface dwellers’ imagination. He didn’t worry for himself. With his drow heritage, he could face these monsters on their own terms. But his friends, except perhaps the experienced dwarf, would be at a sorry disadvantage in such fighting, ill-equipped to battle the monsters they would surely face if they remained in the mines.

  And Drizzt knew that eyes were upon them.

  * * *

  Entreri crept up and put his ear against the door, as he had nine times before. This time, the clang of a shield being dropped to the stone brought a smile to his face. He turned back to Sydney and Bok and nodded.

  He had at last caught his prey.

  The door they had entered shuddered from the weight of an incredible blow. The companions, just settled in after their long march, looked back in amazement and horror just as the second blow fell and the heavy stone splintered and broke away. The golem crashed into the oval room, kicking Regis and Catti-brie aside before they could even reach for their weapons.

  The monster could have squashed both of them right there, but its target, the goal that pulled at all of its senses, was Drizzt Do’Urden. It rushed by the two into the middle of the room to locate the drow.

  Drizzt hadn’t been so surprised, slipping into the shadows on the side of the room and now making his way toward the broken door to secure it against further entry. He couldn’t hide from the magical detections that Dendybar had bestowed upon the golem, though, and Bok turned toward him almost immediately.

  Wulfgar and Bruenor met the monster head on.

  Entreri entered the chamber right after Bok, using the commotion caused by the golem to slip unnoticed through the door and off into the shadows in a manner strikingly similar to the drow. As they approached the midpoint of the oval room’s wall, each was met by a shadow so akin to his own that he had to stop and take measure of it before he engaged.

  “So at last I meet Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri hissed.

  “The advantage is yours,” replied Drizzt, “for I know naught of you.”

  “Ah, but you will, black elf!” the assassin said, laughing. In a blur, they came together, Entreri’s cruel saber and jeweled dagger matching the speed of Drizzt’s whirring scimitars.

  Wulfgar pounded his hammer into the golem with all his might, the monster, distracted by its pursuit of the drow, not even raising a pretense of defense. Aegis-fang knocked it back, but it seemed not to notice, and started again toward its prey. Bruenor and Wulfgar looked
at each other in disbelief and drove in on it again, hammer and axe flailing.

  Regis lay, unmoving against the wall, stunned by the kick of Bok’s heavy foot. Catti-brie, though, was back up on one knee, her sword in hand. The spectacle of grace and skill of the combatants along the wall held her in check for a moment.

  Sydney, just outside the doorway, was likewise distracted, for the battle between the dark elf and Entreri was unlike anything she had ever seen, two master swordsmen weaving and parrying in absolute harmony.

  Each anticipated the other’s movements exactly, countering the other’s counter, back and forth in a battle that seemed as though it could know no victor. One appeared the reflection of the other, and the only thing that kept the onlookers aware of the reality of the struggle was the constant clang of steel against steel as scimitar and saber came ringing together. They moved in and out of the shadows, seeking some small advantage in a fight of equals. Then they slipped into the darkness of one of the alcoves.

  As soon as they disappeared from sight, Sydney remembered her part in the battle. Without further delay, she drew a thin wand from her belt and took aim on the barbarian and the dwarf. As much as she would have liked to see the battle between Entreri and the dark elf played out to its end, her duty told her to free up the golem and let it take the drow quickly.

  Wulfgar and Bruenor dropped Bok to the stone, Bruenor ducking between the monster’s legs while Wulfgar slammed his hammer home, toppling Bok over the dwarf.

  Their advantage was short-lived. Sydney’s bolt of energy sliced into them, its force hurling Wulfgar backward into the air. He rolled to his feet near the opposite door, his leather jerkin scorched and smoking, and his entire body tingling in the aftermath of the jolt.

  Bruenor was slammed straight down to the floor and he lay there for a long moment. He wasn’t too hurt—dwarves are as tough as mountain stone and especially resistant to magic—but a specific rumble that he heard while his ear was against the floor demanded his attention. He remembered that sound vaguely from his childhood, but couldn’t pinpoint its exact source.

  He did know, though, that it foretold doom.

  The tremor grew around them, shaking the chamber, even as Bruenor lifted his head. The dwarf understood. He looked helplessly to Drizzt and yelled, “Ware elf!” the second before the trap sprang and part of the alcove’s floor fell away.

  Only dust emerged from where the drow and the assassin had been. Time seemed to freeze for Bruenor, who, was fixated upon that one horrible moment. A heavy block dropped from the ceiling in the alcove, stealing the very last of the dwarf’s futile hopes.

  The execution of the stonework trap only multiplied the violent tremors in the chamber. Walls cracked apart, chunks of stone shook loose from the ceiling. From one doorway, Sydney cried for Bok, while at the other, Wulfgar threw the locking bar aside and yelled for his friends.

  Catti-brie leaped to her feet and rushed to the fallen halfling. She dragged him by the ankles toward the far door, calling for Bruenor to help.

  But the dwarf was lost in the moment, staring vacantly at the ruins of the alcove.

  A wide crack split the floor of the chamber, threatening to cut off their escape. Catti-brie gritted her teeth in determination and charged ahead, making the safety of the hallway. Wulfgar screamed for the dwarf, and even started back for him.

  Then Bruenor rose and moved toward them—slowly, his head down, almost hoping in his despair that a crack would open beneath him and drop him into a dark hole.

  And put an end to his intolerable grief.

  20. End of a Dream

  When the last tremors of the cave-in had finally died away, the four remaining friends picked their way through the rubble and the veil of dust back to the oval chamber. Heedless of the piles of broken stone and the great cracks in the floor that threatened to swallow them up, Bruenor scrambled into the alcove, the others close on his heels.

  No blood or any other sign of the two master swordsmen was anywhere to be found, just the mound of rubble covering the hole of the stonework trap. Bruenor could see the edgings of darkness beneath the pile, and he called out to Drizzt. His reason told him, against his heart and hopes, that the drow could not hear, that the trap had taken Drizzt from him.

  The tear that rimmed his eye dropped to his cheek when he spotted the lone scimitar, the magical blade that Drizzt had plundered from a dragon’s lair, resting against the ruins of the alcove. Solemnly, he picked it up and slid it into his belt.

  “Alas for ye, elf,” he cried into the destruction. “Ye deserved a better end.” If the others had not been so caught up in their own reflections at that moment, they would have noticed the angry undertone to Bruenor’s mourning. In the face of the loss of his dearest and most trusted friend, and already questioning the wisdom of continuing through the halls before the tragedy, Bruenor found his grief muddled with even stronger feelings of guilt. He could not escape the part he had played in bringing about the dark elf’s fall. He remembered bitterly how he had tricked Drizzt into joining the quest, feigning his own death and promising an adventure the likes of which none of them had ever seen.

  He stood now, quietly, and accepted his inner torment.

  Wulfgar’s grief, was equally deep, and uncomplicated by other feelings. The barbarian had lost one of his mentors, the warrior who had transformed him from a savage, brutish warrior to a calculating and cunning fighter.

  He had lost one of his truest friends. He would have followed Drizzt to the bowels of the Abyss in search of adventure. He firmly believed that the drow would one day get them into a predicament from which they could not escape, but when he was fighting beside Drizzt, or competing against his teacher, the master, he felt alive, existing on the very dangerous edge of his limits. Often Wulfgar had envisioned his own death beside the drow, a glorious finish that the bards would write and sing about long after the enemies who had slain the two friends had turned to dust in unmarked graves.

  That was an end the young barbarian did not fear.

  “Ye’ve found yer peace now, me friend,” Catti-brie said softly, understanding the drow’s tormented existence better than anyone. Catti-brie’s perceptions of the world were more attuned to Drizzt’s sensitive side, the private aspect of his character that his other friends could not see beneath his stoic features. It was the part of Drizzt Do’Urden that had demanded he leave Menzoberranzan and his evil race, and had forced him into a role as an outcast. Catti-brie knew the joy of the drow’s spirit, and the unavoidable pain he had suffered at the snubbings of those who could not see that spirit for the color of his skin.

  She realized, too, that both the causes of good and evil had lost a champion this day, for in Entreri Catti-brie saw the mirror-image of Drizzt. The world would be better for the loss of the assassin.

  But the price was too high.

  Any relief that Regis might have felt at the demise of Entreri was lost in the swirling mire of his anger and sorrow. A part of the halfling had died in that alcove. No longer would he have to run—Pasha Pook would pursue him no more—but for the first time in his entire life Regis had to accept some consequences for his actions. He had joined up with Bruenor’s party knowing that Entreri would be close behind, and understanding the potential danger to his friends.

  Ever the confident gambler, the thought of losing this challenge had never entered his head. Life was a game that he played hard and to the edge, and never before had he been expected to pay for his risks. If anything in the world could temper the halfling’s obsession with chance, it was this, the loss of one of his few true friends because of a risk he had chosen to take.

  “Farewell, my friend,” he whispered into the rubble. Turning to Bruenor, he then said, “Where do we go? How do we get out of this terrible place?”

  Regis hadn’t meant the remark as an accusation, but forced into a defensive posture by the mire of his own guilt, Bruenor took it as such and struck back. “Ye did it yerself!” he snarled at Regis. �
��Ye bringed the killer after us!” Bruenor took a threatening step forward, his face contorted by mounting rage and his hands whitened by the intensity of their clench.

  Wulfgar, confused by this sudden pulse of anger, moved a step closer to Regis. The halfling did not back away, but made no move to defend himself, still not believing that Bruenor’s anger could be so consuming.

  “Ye thief!” Bruenor roared. “Ye go along picking yer way with no concern for what yer leaving behind—and yer friends pay for it!” His anger swelled with each word, again almost a separate entity from the dwarf, gaining its own momentum and strength.

  His next step would have brought him right up to Regis, and his motion showed them all clearly that he meant to strike, but Wulfgar stepped between the two and halted Bruenor with an unmistakable glare.

  Broken from his angry trance by the barbarian’s stern posture, Bruenor realized then what he was about to do. More than a little embarrassed, he covered his anger beneath his concern for their immediate survival and turned away to survey the remains of the room. Few, if any, of their supplies had survived the destruction. “Leave the stuff; no time for wasting!” Bruenor told the others, clearing the choked growls from his throat. “We’re to be putting this foul place far behind us!”

  Wulfgar and Catti-brie scanned the rubble, searching for something that could be salvaged and not so ready to agree with Bruenor’s demands that they press on without any supplies. They quickly came to the same conclusion as the dwarf, though, and with a final salute to the ruins of the alcove, they followed Bruenor back into the corridor.