Archmage

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Aye, me friend,” Emerus said, and he clapped Bruenor on the shoulder. His smile didn’t last, though, and he quickly grew more somber.

  “They’ve not changed their song about ye,” he said. “We might still be turning aside, tellin’ ’em that our road’s to the north and Icewind Dale.”

  “The dwarfs o’ Mirabar’re Delzoun,” Bruenor said. “They got a right to know. They got a right to come along and fight for our home, for the Throne o’ the Dwarf Gods and the ancient Forge that burns with the power of a primordial beast o’ fire. A fine Delzoun leader I’m being if I walk aside this place without leavin’ the truth!”

  His mounting speech fell off when he noted the approach of Drizzt, Catti-brie, Ragged Dain, and Connerad Brawnanvil.

  “If ye’re tellin’ the dwarfs o’ Mirabar, ye’re tellin’ the marchion and all the rest,” Emerus reminded. “Them humans in Mirabar ain’t much for likin’ Mithral Hall or yerself, even if they’re not believin’ ye’re who ye say ye be. They owe ye no loyalty and so ye should be expectin’ none.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “And where’re ye thinkin’ the news’ll go?” Emerus said.

  “Right to the Sword Coast,” Drizzt interjected.

  “Aye,” said Emerus. “To Waterdeep and to Neverwinter, and no doubt them dark elves in Gauntlgrym’ve got spies all about, and agents in Neverwinter. And so if ye go into Mirabar and tell the dwarfs the truth o’ yer—of our march, then ye’re likely tellin’ them drow that we’re coming for ’em!”

  “Aye, and so be it,” said Bruenor, and he strode forward to step up a low bluff and better view the distant city. “We got four thousand Delzoun dwarfs standing behind us. Them drow’ll know we’re comin’ long afore we’re crossin’ the underground lake to Gauntlgrym’s top door. And so be it. Once we got the top floor and the throne, we’ll chase them into the Underdark.”

  “It is one drow House,” Drizzt said to Emerus. “Powerful with magic, but not numerous.”

  “How many?”

  “They will have slaves to fight for them—goblins and …”

  “How many drow?” Emerus pressed. “Not much worried for goblins and the like.”

  “I have not been to Menzoberranzan in more than a century, but from what I knew, perhaps two hundred drow in House Xorlarrin, perhaps three hundred. Many are wizards, though, and no minor practitioners of the Art.”

  “Couple hundred,” Emerus mulled, and he looked to Ragged Dain and chuckled. “Go to Mirabar, Bruenor,” he said. “Come on then, I’ll be right aside ye.”

  He waved to the others to follow, but Drizzt stepped back.

  “Mirabar will not have him,” Catti-brie explained. “Or they would not when last he passed this way.”

  “Bah, been a hunnerd years!” said Bruenor.

  But Drizzt was shaking his head, for it had not been a hundred years since he had last futilely approached Mirabar’s imposing, and closed, gates. But it didn’t matter anyway. He wasn’t about to put his pride and stubbornness ahead of the good of the expedition. “Better that I remain here,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll scout ahead along the western road while you finish your business.”

  Bruenor and Drizzt shared a long look of complete understanding, both ways, the dwarf nodding his agreement, the drow responding in kind.

  “I’ll go with you,” Catti-brie said, but Drizzt shook his head.

  “Bruenor will need you.”

  The woman agreed with a sigh. She missed Wulfgar and Regis then—they all did. She didn’t like having to leave Drizzt alone with the harsh reality of the prejudiced world lifting its dark wings once more, and she couldn’t argue the truth of his statement that Bruenor would need her.

  “If the marchion o’ Mirabar’s speakin’ one ill word of ye, or of me husband,” she said in her best Dwarvish accent, “then I’m turning him into a frog and squashing him flat on the floor, don’t ye doubt!”

  She stormed ahead to the southwest, toward the distant city, and all the others were smiling widely as they trotted to catch up.

  Drizzt was smiling, too, so glad to have this woman in his life. He grasped the unicorn pendant on the chain around his neck, thinking to call in Andahar, but paused as the rest of the entourage hustled to catch up to the principals.

  Athrogate and Ambergris trotted side by side and very close to each other, often bumping and always laughing, and Drizzt was glad for that.

  The sisters Fellhammer, Fist and Fury, seemed in a bit of a race to see who could get to Bruenor’s side first.

  They had been doing that a lot along this march, Drizzt had noted, and he wondered then if his old friend would perhaps find something in this life that had somehow eluded him for most of his last existence.

  When the ranger looked at Catti-brie, and considered his own good fortune, he hoped that to be the case.

  THOUGH FROM A long distance, Drizzt was visible to the two. However, even with the sun far behind them, lowering in the west, and even with some overcast dulling its brilliance, Tiago had to squint hard. He wasn’t enjoying the World Above as much now that Tsabrak’s Darkening was no more.

  He and Doum’wielle crouched atop a hillock and looked back to the east at the vast dwarf army. And now they saw the unicorn, thundering past the ranks as the dwarves set up their encampment, riding out to the southeast toward the road.

  “He goes to scout,” Tiago said, grinning with every word. “Perhaps it is time to claim my prize.” He went up to his hands and knees and began to crawl back from the lip of the hillock, taking great caution even though it would have been next to impossible for any of the enemy force to spot him among the trees at such a distance.

  Doum’wielle noted that caution, and wisely mimicked it—wisely, because she saw the intensity of the look on Tiago’s face and knew that if she in any way compromised his plans, he would more likely murder her than simply beat her.

  And yet, that is exactly what we will do, Khazid’hea whispered in her thoughts, in response to her fears.

  “Quick to the road,” Tiago instructed. “We can intercept him.”

  “Astride a great steed that will leap past us or trample us down,” Doum’wielle said, hustling to keep up.

  “He’ll do no such thing to an elf of the Moonwood,” Tiago said slyly.

  But Doum’wielle was shaking her head. “Drizzt knows me, and knows my mother well. No doubt he has seen much of her these past months of war, and she will surely have told him of her wayward Little Doe.”

  Tiago’s eyes narrowed as if he wanted to strike out at her, and she was confident that he certainly did.

  “You will intrigue him!” he said, a bit too desperately. “Disguise yourself as we go. Or tell him that you escaped the clutches of his foul kin. I am sure you could easily offer that lie. Just look into your heart.”

  The last part had Doum’wielle slowing and staring hatefully at her vile companion, to the point where Tiago skidded to a stop and swung around to face her.

  “Faster!” he demanded.

  Doum’wielle didn’t dare disobey, but Tiago’s suggestions rang in her thoughts as a clear warning, and an offering that he knew how much she hated him. Thus, she knew, he was telling her rather clearly that she would not catch him off his guard.

  Patience, Khazid’hea’s telepathic voice whispered soothingly.

  Doum’wielle picked up her pace, running hard and closing in on Tiago. As she neared, though, the drow suddenly skidded to a stop again, and held up his hand to hold her back. She slowed and stopped, and followed Tiago’s gaze to the southwest. At first she saw nothing, but Tiago’s sniffing tipped her off.

  Smoke.

  There was a campfire down along the road.

  They moved more cautiously, Tiago turning directly south to intercept the road. They hadn’t quite arrived there when they heard the passage of a horse—of a unicorn! Drizzt had passed them by.

  Tiago continued, but slowly and cautiously. He held out one hand, fingers working in the sil
ent drow language.

  A flustered Doum’wielle, with only rudimentary knowledge of the hand language, couldn’t keep up, but she thought he was indicating that they’d lay in wait and catch the ranger on the way back.

  A shout, then, from not so far to the west, a chorus of dwarf voices, made Doum’wielle doubt that.

  THEY WERE ALL standing as he neared, close to fifty dwarves, weapons in hands, and all wearing an expression showing that he or she was more than ready to wield a sword, or pick, or battle-axe.

  “Far enough!” one barked.

  Drizzt held up his hand and backed Andahar a couple short steps. He looked at the group curiously for a few moments, thinking that he recognized more than one.

  “Icewind Dale,” he said.

  “Ah, but it’s Drizzt Do’Urden!” said one, a round-bellied, sturdy fellow Drizzt knew to be Hominy Pestler.

  “Aye, o’ House Do’Urden!” another chimed in, in unfriendly tones.

  “Wh-what?” Drizzt stammered and he looked from dwarf to dwarf, noting that few expressions had softened with the recognition. Something was wrong. These dwarves were a long way from home, and this was a sizable fraction of the clan settled under Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale.

  And Stokely Silverstream was not among their ranks.

  “Why are you here?” Drizzt asked.

  “Might be askin’ yerself the same question, drow,” answered another, a yellow-bearded fellow with a long scar down one cheek and a blue eye dulled by the scrape of a blade, now filmy and barely functional.

  Drizzt knew this one, as well. “I am here with King Bruenor, Master Ironbelt,” he replied. He swiveled in his seat and pointed back to the east. “With Bruenor and Emerus Warcrown, and four thousand shield dwarves. We have fought a war in the Silver Marches against hordes of orcs and giants, drow of my home city, and even a pair of white dragons.”

  The dwarves seemed taken aback at that remark—clearly from their reactions, they had not heard of the war—and so another theory Drizzt held of why they might be this far from home was lost.

  “Yerself’s been fightin?” Master Toivo Ironbelt asked.

  “For a year,” Drizzt replied.

  “We heared rumors in Waterdeep.”

  “Waterdeep?”

  “We had ourselfs a fight, too, elf,” Ironbelt said. “A fight with drow. Drow sayin’ they come from House Do’Urden, saying they’re yer kin.”

  Drizzt slid off the side of Andahar to the ground and approached the dwarves. “They said the same here,” he admitted, holding out his hands, far from the hilts of his deadly blades. “If you think me complicit, then take me as your prisoner back to the west, to King Bruenor.”

  “We was heading to Mirabar,” Hominy chimed in. “To learn what we might o’ Mithral Hall.”

  “Bruenor is there now, meeting with the marchion.” Drizzt held his arms out in front of him, crossed at the wrist, inviting a rope if Ironbelt so desired.

  “Nah, put ’em back,” the dwarf said. “And well met to ye again, Master Drizzt Do’Urden.”

  “You have a tale to tell,” Drizzt said thoughtfully.

  “Aye, and not a good one.”

  “How many of Clan Battlehammer remain in the shadows of Kelvin’s Cairn?” Drizzt asked, and he was afraid that he knew the answer.

  Still, when Ironbelt confirmed that these were the last of the Clan Battlehammer dwarves of Icewind Dale, save a score who had moved to Bryn Shander and a couple of the other towns, Drizzt found it hard to breathe. An era had ended, brutally, he realized, as Ironbelt detailed the drow raid that had killed so many and taken so many more away into the Underdark.

  “We put together a force and followed ’em,” Ironbelt explained. “Aye, and the folk o’ Ten-Towns came out in force to help us. But there weren’t no trail.”

  “They went back to Gauntlgrym,” Hominy added.

  “Aye, and dropped the tunnels behind ’em, and we could’no find another way,” Ironbelt explained. “We spent a long time tryin’, don’t ye doubt.”

  “I do not doubt you at all, of course,” Drizzt replied. “And now you’ve deserted the tunnels beneath Kelvin’s Cairn? Seeking Bruenor, I would expect.”

  “Aye, we went to Waterdeep, and there spent the winter,” Ironbelt answered. “We tried to find another way to get back to Gauntlgrym …”

  “This group alone? You would have been slaughtered to a dwarf.”

  Some of them bristled at that.

  “A drow noble House has entrenched itself in the bowels of Gauntlgrym,” Drizzt started to explain, but he was cut off by Hominy’s remark.

  “House Do’Urden!”

  “No, House Xorlarrin, more grand and powerful by far than anything House Do’Urden had ever achieved,” Drizzt said. “Thick with magic and soldiers, and with many hundreds of goblin and kobold slaves.”

  “Don’t mean we wouldn’t try!” Toivo Ironbelt insisted.

  “No, of course not, and I would expect no less from Clan Battlehammer. But you’ll be trying with better odds, my friend. King Bruenor has assembled a mighty force, and Gauntlgrym is his goal. Come, I’ll take you to your kin, and you can tell your tale to Bruenor.”

  “CURSE THE GODS,” muttered Tiago, he and Doum’wielle on a bluff overlooking the road, where Drizzt had just passed with fifty dwarves in tow on his way back to the army.

  “We know their destination now,” Doum’wielle said, for the dwarves had taken up a cheer of “Gauntlgrym!” right before they had broken camp.

  “You didn’t know it all along? Fool. Why would such an army of three kingdoms, all fresh from a difficult war, begin such a march? Could there be any doubt?”

  He raised his hand as if to strike her, but Doum’wielle shrank away quickly.

  Tiago turned back to the road, and the now-distant Drizzt and company. He knew that duty called for him to flee back to Menzoberranzan and warn the city of the dwarves’ march on Q’Xorlarrin—but he had known that since first he had learned of the army assembled outside of Mithral Hall back in the Silver Marches.

  It wouldn’t matter—the extra tendays Tiago might offer to the Xorlarrins and their allies to prepare paled beside the trophy that now rode away from him down the road. Drizzt was acting as a scout for the dwarves, so it seemed, and so Tiago decided to bide his time, to continue to shadow the force.

  He’d get his chance at Drizzt before they reached Q’Xorlarrin, he hoped. And if not, he’d find his way inside the complex ahead of the dwarves and kill Drizzt in the tunnels.

  He glanced back at Doum’wielle. His first instinct was to go over and take out his frustrations on her. But Tiago realized that he’d need her if Drizzt was out scouting on that magnificent unicorn he rode.

  “Patience,” Tiago whispered to himself, much the way Khazid’hea had whispered to Doum’wielle.

  BRUENOR, WHO HAD experience with a similar marchion a century before, wasn’t much surprised by the cold shoulder offered him in Mirabar. Indeed, on that previous occasion, those dwarves who had left Mirabar to join in Clan Battlehammer’s war with the first Obould had done so as an act of treason against Mirabar, according to then-Marchion Elastul.

  Nothing that had happened since those days had given Bruenor any reason to believe that the atmosphere of rivalry and ambivalence between Mirabar and Mithral Hall would be any bit improved.

  “Every time a representative of Mithral Hall appears at our gates, it is to ask for help,” Marchion Devastul answered when Bruenor and King Emerus had explained their march, after an exhaustive introductory meeting that contained more niceties and nonsense than anything Bruenor had ever imagined possible. “You would have me offer free run to the dwarves of Mirabar to join in with your … quest? The cost to Mirabar would be enormous, of course, and you understand that, of course. Are Citadel Felbarr, Citadel Adbar, and Mithral Hall offering to pay me to keep my coffers balanced while my loyal subjects are off playing war with an old king, a young whatever you are, and the soldiers of Adbar, whose
ruler thinks so much of this expedition that he didn’t deign to join it himself?”

  The advisers around the marchion, including the city’s newest sceptrana, all had a good chuckle at the preposterous proposition Devastul had just outlined. Mirabar was a rich city, her lords and ladies well luxuriated, and in no small part because of their industrious dwarf workforce, nearly two thousand strong.

  “Me kin here in Mirabar are Delzoun,” Bruenor said. “I’m thinkin’ ye’re to find a bit o’ wrath if ye’re to deny them the chance to march for their ancient home. The warmth o’ Gauntlgrym’s in the blood o’ every dwarf, the hope o’ findin’ it’s in the dreams of every dwarf. And now I found it, and so we’re to take it back.”

  “Of course, and you are the reincarnation of King Bruenor Battlehammer,” the sceptrana said with obvious, and amused, skepticism.

  “Aye, and Gauntlgrym’s a choice for any dwarf that goes deeper than the place he’s now callin’ home,” Emerus added, and there was no mistaking the edge that had come into his voice. “I gived up me crown—or are ye doubtin’ me own name as well?”

  “Your sanity, perhaps,” the sceptrana dared to remark, and Ragged Dain bristled at Emerus’s side.

  “No, I know you, King Emerus, of course,” Marchion Devastul said. “Though yes, I question the … wisdom, of your choice. This seems a rather eccentric quest, particularly in this time so soon after war. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “What happened before’s not to matter,” said Emerus. “The road afore us is clear.”

  “You leave your fortresses vulnerable—”

  “Orcs’re gone and not coming back,” Bruenor interrupted, his voice reflecting his rising temper. “The Marches are blasted, but sure to mend, and there’re enough in all the dwarf homes to hold off anything that’s coming.”

  “And two kings, Emerus and Connerad, won’t be there to lead if something does come,” said the sceptrana.

  “Two kings replaced,” Emerus replied. “And enough o’ yer snickerin’ and thin-veiled insults, good woman. We’re marchin’ to Gauntlgrym, and we’re not needin’ yer permission. We thinked to stop here that ye might be givin’ yer dwarfs the choice to join in—suren this is a quest that every Delzoun lad or lass should—”