Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)

Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3) Page 71

Gradually, the assassin opened his eyes and glanced over at the others. “You threw it in?” he asked.

Drizzt glanced over the rim, into the pit, and shrugged.

“You threw it in?” Entreri asked again.

“The primordial has it, surely.”

“Ye think?” Ambergris put in with a snort.

“Do you feel anything?” Drizzt asked. “Pain? A sense of impending doom?”

“Are you asking, or hoping?” Entreri replied, and Ambergris laughed all the louder. At that moment, the monk broke away from her and leaped at Drizzt—or started to, for the dwarf kicked Afafrenfere’s trailing ankle, tripping him up, and he skidded down to all fours. Before he could regain his footing, Ambergris grabbed him roughly by the shirt and his hair and hoisted him to his feet.

“Now ye hear me, boy, and ye hear me good!” the dwarf roared in his face. Still holding him by the hair, she dropped her other hand into her pouch and brought it forth, her fat thumb covered in some blue substance. As the others looked on, perplexed, she used it to draw a symbol on the monk’s face, and she chanted out what seemed to be a spell in the ancient Dwarvish tongue.

“Now ye’re geased,” she announced, letting go and shoving Afafrenfere backward.

“What?”

“Ye got me god’s wrath lurkin’ on yer forehead, ye dolt,” Ambergris explained. “Ye make a move at me drow friend here, or either o’ his friends, and Dumathoin’s sure to melt yer brains that they’ll flow from yer nose like so much snot.”

“B-but . . .” Afafrenfere stuttered, hopping all around and stabbing his finger in Drizzt’s direction. “He killed Parbid!”

“Bah, yerselfs started the fight and ye lost, and so be it.”

“But . . . Parbid!” Afafrenfere said with a great wail and keen.

Ambergris rushed up and grabbed him by the hair again and pulled him very close, so that her long and fat nose touched his. “If ye’re wantin’ to see yer dearest boy again, then go and strike at the drow,” she said. “Been hoping to watch a good brain melt—been years and years since the last I seen.”

Afafrenfere stuttered and gasped, but when Ambergris let him go, he moved back and said no more.

“Well, what of ye?” the dwarf asked of Entreri. “Ye dyin’ yet?”

Entreri stared at her incredulously.

“Then let’s be gone afore we’re all dying,” the dwarf said. “That silence spell I throwed in the hallway ain’t for lastin’!”

She started off, slapping Afafrenfere to fall in line beside her as she made for the elemental’s tunnel. She pulled out her magical decanter as she entered and summoned its spraying water once more, wetting the hot stones before her, and laughing indeed as the swirls of steam arose around her.

“Nothing?” Drizzt asked Entreri again. He walked over and crouched beside the sobbing Dahlia, hugging her close.

“Well?” he asked of Entreri yet again.

The assassin just shrugged. If he was dying, he didn’t feel it.

Drizzt gently pulled Dahlia up beside him and started off. Entreri fell in line, following the dwarf.

Entreri looked at Drizzt coldly.

“Not even a bit of pain?” Drizzt asked, and he tried hard to sound disappointed.

Artemis Entreri snorted and looked away. He was alive. How could it be? For the sword had been keeping him alive for all of these decades, surely, and now the sword was gone. Or perhaps the primordial hadn’t destroyed it—perhaps its magic was strong enough to survive the bite of that most ancient and powerful beast.

Or maybe it was destroyed, and the mortal coil of Entreri would begin to age again, that he might live out the remainder of his life as if he had been in stasis all these years.

Either way, he figured, he was still alive, and more than that, and he knew it profoundly: he was free.

He put his arm around Dahlia and pulled her close, signaling for Drizzt, who seemed less than thrilled at that movement, to take up the lead.

They moved through the complex with all speed, and encountered no shades, who, unbeknownst to them, were fast departing through magical gateways, and encountered no Menzoberranyr drow, who had moved to the deeper tunnels of the Underdark to weather the Shadovar advance.

Expecting pursuit, of course, Drizzt didn’t slow the pace at all. With the help of Dahlia’s raven cape, they got through to the upper levels and pressed on to the throne room and the complex exit.

Many hours later, Tiago Baenre and Gol’fanin moved quietly to the entrance of the forge room and peered in. The battle of elementals continued, water against fire, but were much diminished, for the floor was ankle-deep in water, a situation surely not conducive to the spawning of creatures of fire.

Still, the forges glowed orange, overheated by the flow of primordial power, and every so often, one erupted, spewing forth a line of blazing flames that hissed angrily across the giant puddle and sent swirls of steam into the air.

We can get to the underchamber, Tiago’s hands flashed.

Where we’ll be cornered and slaughtered? the old blacksmith signaled back. By whom?

Gol’fanin looked at him doubtfully.

“They’ve left,” Tiago announced aloud, for if he believed those words, after all, then why was he bothering to use the silent hand language?

“All of them?”

“We’ve seen no sign of the Shadovar.”

“We’ve gone no farther than this place,” Gol’fanin reminded. “Perhaps they came in and engaged in battle with the elemental forces in the forge, then fell back to a more defensible position. Would that not be your own choice, as it was Ravel’s?”

Tiago had to admit that.

“Wait for the scouts,” Gol’fanin advised. “Before we go in there, let us make sure that our efforts are worthwhile.”

Tiago put a hand on Byok’s saddlebag and the unfinished sword and translucent shield strapped beneath it. Truly he was torn, for in those few moments before the primordial had broken free and chased them from the room, Tiago had felt the promise of Lullaby and Spiderweb.

“If we restore control of the room and the Shadovar come back to this magnificent place, will they so willingly depart a second time?” Gol’fanin asked.

Despite his desires, Tiago knew that he was waging a losing argument.

“It will take tendays to ensure that they are truly gone from this vast complex,” Tiago lamented. “I’ll not wait that long.”

Gol’fanin stared into the room for a few moments before offering a compromise. “We can discern in but a few hours if our enemies are far enough removed from the forge room for us to venture in. So let us not restore it until we are certain of the security of the complex. Not fully, at least. For I need only the one forge fired, and only for short amounts of time. I understand the design of the subchamber well enough to facilitate that which is needed.”

Tiago’s eyes flashed with hunger. “Then go.”

“When the scouts—”

“Go now,” Tiago ordered. “I will stay here and watch over you. The scouts will catch up to us soon enough, and I will put them all around the area.”

The old blacksmith looked him over for a bit, then shook his head at the impatient young warrior and splashed into the room. He discerned the pattern of the fire-spewing forges easily enough and made his way to the trap door disguised as another forge. Fortunately, the chamber within the fake oven was not full of water, and when Gol’fanin managed to open the door, he saw that the room below was neither flooded nor full of fire. Still, the pipes below glowed angrily and threateningly, so the blacksmith adjusted and tightened his magical garments and put on his magical gloves before venturing below.

Sometime later, Gol’fanin was back at the room’s great forge, implements and unfinished items at hand, preparing to continue his solemn work. The rest of the room continued to roar with unbridled fire, hiss with angry steam, and rain briny water, but Gol’fanin expected that would prove to be no more than a minor nuisance. Coincidentally, the blacksmith had just tapped his small finishing hammer against the flat of the shield, had just begun his actual work on the items, when he noted the return of Tiago, and surprisingly, the young Baenre approached from out of the corridor to the primordial pit, though Gol’fanin had not seen him go down that way, and as far as the blacksmith knew, there were no other entrances to that critical chamber.

“We found the wayward Xorlarrin brother,” he said.

“And Brack’thal has information?”

“He is quite dead.”

“My sympathies to the Xorlarrins,” Gol’fanin replied, and of course he meant no such thing.

“He was killed by the blade,” Tiago explained. “And found in a new tunnel, recently dug, or melted, it seems.”

Gol’fanin didn’t hide his intrigue, but Tiago had no answers for him.

“Perhaps the work of his own pet elemental,” the young Baenre offered. “We cannot know.”

“Your Xorlarrin lovers can find out. The dead are not so silent to the calls of a priestess.”

Tiago shrugged as if it did not really matter. Berellip’s main concern and motivation in talking to the dead Xorlarrin mage would be to learn if Ravel or his agents had killed Brack’thal, which wasn’t likely the case.

“And the Shadovar?” Gol’fanin asked.

“We have found signs of their march to this place, but none of their retreat. Yet they are not to be found.”

“Back to the Shadowfell, then.”

“And so Gauntlgrym is ours.”

“Counsel Ravel to proceed cautiously,” the blacksmith advised.

“But you will continue your work?”

“Of course.”

“Then I hold no sense of urgency.”

The five companions rested in Gauntlgrym’s great entry hall, far to the side of the great throne and the graves.

“Touched it,” Ambergris said to Drizzt when he walked up beside her, to find her staring across at the throne.

“Come,” Drizzt bade her, and he started that way. He led her right past the throne, though, to the small group of graves.

“King Bruenor,” he explained, pointing to the largest. “Here in Gauntlgrym, he fell.”

“Word was that he died in Mithral Hall,” Ambergris replied. “We held a great drunk in his honor.” She paused and laughed. “But we knowed, elf, we knowed,” she said.

The way she addressed him, “elf,” had Drizzt back on his heels, for it was a nickname he had heard before, and spoken with similar inflection and affection.

“Glad that he found his road,” Ambergris said solemnly. “His reputation always called him as one for the road and not the throne.”

“His shield dwarf,” Drizzt explained as they paced to the other larger cairn.

“The Pwent,” Ambergris mumbled, and that came as a bit of confirmation to Drizzt that this one could indeed be trusted.

“And the others who fell in the fight for this place,” Drizzt explained of the other graves. “Battlehammer dwarves from Icewind Dale.”