“I have seen the pit,” Catti-brie reminded her. “Not all the wizards of the Ivy Mansion could control a small fraction of the water elementals dancing along the walls of the primordial’s cage if they did nothing else, not even sleep or eat. It would take all the wizards of the world, Elminster himself and Khelben beside him, and with a renewed Mystra with her hands upon their shoulders.”
“So often do we make wide eyes at the ancient relics and powers we uncover,” Penelope interrupted. “We gasp in astonishment and awe at that which those long past have made and have done. When really, if we look closer, we oft find that their ways can be replicated, their artifacts reproduced, their marvelous engineering improved upon. Are we to surrender hope now, then? Is this escape a foregone conclusion? For if so, then go to your father, King Bruenor, and tell him that we must be gone from this place.”
“That one wouldn’t listen,” Kipper muttered.
“No,” Catti-brie answered. “It has not happened, so it is not a certainty.”
“Then lead us, and let us investigate more, discuss more, and reason more, and let us see what we shall see,” said Penelope. “Did you come to this particular place at the primordial’s call?”
Catti-brie looked around. They were in the same area as where she had helped Bruenor and Drizzt turn the tide on the kobolds, and the monsters had been sent running. Back the way she had come, toward the throne room, the dwarves were hard at work repairing doors and patching corridors, and the other way, deeper into the complex, many dwarves had gone, securing the next steps in the reclamation of Gauntlgrym. Drizzt was out there too, patrolling the corridors ahead of Bruenor’s battle force.
“I came to learn what I might now that the region is secured from the kobolds,” she answered.
“Not so secure that you should be out alone.”
“But I am not alone, am I?”
Penelope smiled. “Lead on, my friend.”
Catti-brie turned back to the mound. With a slow breath, she placed her hands upon the glowing pile once more, and followed its tendrils. She visualized the main vein, reaching back to the primordial pit, and noted, too, the tributaries. Most were new, she understood, and tiny and inconsequential-for now-but one seemed quite old to her, a continuation of this same ancient vein that had produced the eruption point.
She nodded to her left, toward the mines, the natural tunnels that ran alongside the area the ancient Delzoun dwarves had carved out as the upper chambers of their homeland.
“They’ve got the mines blocked just outside of the throne room,” Penelope said. “They’ll not let us pass through.”
As she spoke, though, old Kipper moved to the chamber’s left-hand wall. He muttered a few words in the arcane tongue of wizards and brought his hands up, feeling the stone.
“Kipper?” Penelope asked.
“Not so thick here,” the old mage replied with a wink.
“And a nest of drow on the other side?”
“Now, now,” Kipper teased. “Let us not dive into grim Penelope’s well of eternal darkness.”
That brought a laugh from both of the women.
“You’ve a passwall enchantment prepared, no doubt,” Catti-brie said dryly.
“Several,” Kipper confirmed. “And a few dimensional doorways ready as well. Very handy spells when navigating a maze, especially when one is fleeing hordes of enemies, you know.”
Catti-brie shrugged. “I do now.”
“Shall we see what we can see?” Kipper asked, rubbing his hands together, and before either had begun to answer, the old mage began his spellcasting. Soon after, a section of the room’s wall disappeared, creating a ten-foot deep tunnel that ended in more solid stone.
“Not to worry, the next will get us through!’ Kipper assured them, walking forward and beginning a second spell.
As he did so, Penelope conjured a stronger magical light, placing it on the end of her long staff.
Shortly after, the three entered the naturally sloped tunnels of the complex’s northern mines. They lingered about the magical opening for a bit, protecting the unexpectedly opened flank of the dwarf workers, and when the passwall effect ended, the solid stone returning, the three made their way, side by side, down into the maze of ancient mines.
The kobold died without a sound, and fell to the ground with not a whisper of noise, guided expertly by a strong dark hand.
Drizzt stepped over the body, slowing only a moment to wipe his bloodied scimitar on the creature’s ragged fur.
On he went, picking his way from door to door, through rooms that looked as they had millennia before, and others that had been twisted and blasted, ravaged by time, by the eruption of the volcano, and by other mighty denizens of the Underdark. At one point, Drizzt found a tunnel that had most likely been cut by an umber hulk entering a side wall to a narrow room and exiting through the opposite wall. The floor between the tunnel holes showed the deep scratches reminiscent of an umber hulk’s powerfully clawed feet, leaving an impression as clearly on the solid stone as a bear might leave on a forest’s dirt path.
A closer inspection of the tunnel edges showed Drizzt that this was not a new cut, but neither was it centuries old.
The drow nodded, reminded of the many obstacles the dwarves would find in trying to fully reclaim and reopen this place. Complexes like Gauntlgrym, so vast and far-reaching, tied to mines that wound deeper into other Underdark tunnels, would not remain empty in a land where creatures benign and malignant alike were always seeking security. . or food.
Drizzt moved along, as invisible as a shadow in a lightless room, so quiet that the skittering of a rat would sound more akin to the scrabbling of a tunneling umber hulk beside him. He kept his bearings at all times, and occasionally heard the ring of a dwarven hammer, another comforting reminder that he was not too far outside the perimeter of the lands Bruenor’s kin had tamed.
But then he came upon the remains of a most curious encampment.
Someone had set a cooking fire-Drizzt had never known kobolds to cook their food, or at least had never known them to go to such trouble as to cook their food in an environment with little kindling to burn.
He noted a footprint in some soot residue.
“Drow?” he whispered under his breath, for the boot was too thin, its edges too refined, to be something he would expect from a kobold, and the step appeared far too light to be that of an orc or even a human.
He searched the small room and happened upon a curious parchment, a wrapper, he knew, much like those surface elves used to preserve their foodstuffs when they journeyed the open road.
Some scratches in the wall not far from that caught his eye. No, not scratches, he realized upon closer inspection-someone had purposely and efficiently cut deep lines-letters! — into the hard stone.
Drizzt recognized the lettering as Elvish, surface Elvish and not Drow, though he did not know the word they spelled out.
“ ‘Tierf,’ ” he read aloud, his expression quizzical.
He looked back at the cuts, marveling at the sharp edges and clean lines. Some fabulous tool had been employed.
Drizzt stood back up as if he had been slapped.
“Tierflin?” he asked more than said, his thoughts going to Sinnafein’s dead son, and by extension, to Tos’un Armgo, whom he knew to be in possession of Khazid’hea, a sword that could so gracefully and easily mar any but the hardest of stones. Was Tos’un Armgo in this place?
No, it could not be. Tos’un had died on the mountainside of Fourthpeak, crashing down with the smaller white dragon sent spiraling to the mountainside by Tazmikella and Ilnezhara and finished off by Brother Afafrenfere. Drizzt had seen that firsthand.
Doum’wielle, perhaps, the daughter of Tos’un and Sinnafein, who had reportedly run off with the sword?
Why would she be in here? How could she be in here? Drizzt shook his head. More likely the dark elves had taken the blade from her-it was a drow sword, after all-but then, how would they know, or care, to so inscribe those letters into the stone?