“The second gem,” Kipper realized. “We need the second gem to keep the magic contained within the portal.”
“We do not have a second gem,” Catti-brie reminded him.
“Well of course not!” said Kipper. “But that is what we need to activate and hold open the portal.”
“The fire, you mean,” Penelope corrected. “Who would walk into such a thing as that?”
But Catti-brie was thinking along different lines, remembering the clairvoyance spells she had enacted when staring into the flames. Others saw fires as individual events, contained in the stones of an oven, perhaps, or in a campfire, or on a torch.
But Catti-brie, with her ring and with the primordial of Gauntlgrym whispering to her, understood differently. All the flames were alive- indeed, all part of a singular living entity, the Elemental Plane of Fire. They could phase into her plane of existence, coaxed by flint and steel or the strike of lightning, or any other manner, but even though those summoned flames seemed like individual events, they retained their ties to that other plane of existence, where they were all one.
So Catti-brie could look into a hearth in Mithral Hall and see through it, through the Elemental Plane of Fire, and to the hearth of King Emerus in Citadel Felbarr.
So here, a dwarf could enter the portal and travel through the flames to a corresponding gate in another location, could literally step into the Elemental Plane of Fire and step out again back to the Prime Material Plane on the other end.
So the primordial was telling her. So her instincts and her memories of her clairvoyance spell were telling her.
But still she shook her head, not convinced that this wasn’t some trick. Would she find a way to empower the gate, only to have Bruenor or another step in and get incinerated?
“Retrieve your gem,” she told Kipper, “and let us be gone from here, back to Bruenor and the others to relay our discovery.”
“Shouldn’t we inspect it a bit more?” Kipper asked, his eager tone showing that he clearly believed they should.
“Me Da will get answers on the Throne of the Dwarf Gods,” Catti-brie said. “We have other riddles to solve.”
“Like?”
“Like finding the other gem,” the young woman said.
Kipper retrieved the gemstone and the three went back into the hallway, Catti-brie turning back to the doorway and casting another spell, her accent returning heavily, a brogue so thick and words so foreign that it seemed to the others, even to her, as if she wasn’t actually speaking the words but rather that they were being spoken through her.
The wall grumbled and groaned and slowly lowered back into place, sealing without a seam to be found.
“But the cladding is gone from it,” Penelope said when Catti-brie motioned for them to leave. “Anyone coming this way will see the revealed magical stone.”
“And none will get through it,” Catti-brie assured her.
“None save those who have become intimate with the primordial guardian of Gauntlgrym, it would seem,” old Kipper whispered sarcastically, but loud enough for both his companions to hear.
“More fightin’ in the east,” Bruenor said.
“Aye, the boys’re battlin’ for every room,” Emerus agreed. “Kobolds, goblins, orcs, and them damned ugly birdman creatures. Stubborn things.
But not a drow yet to be seen.”
“They’re holding tight about the Forge and the lower mines, not to doubt,” said Bruenor.
“Them orcs we caught’re sayin’ as much,” Ragged Dain interjected. “So fightin’ now and tougher fightin’ ahead,” Bruenor acknowledged.
“We never thinked it’d be any different, eh?”
“Eh,” Emerus agreed.
“Good news coming from th’ other way, though,” said Ragged Dain.
“Connerad’s got the tunnel cleared and almost secured all the way to the dale. Once he’s done with his fortifyin’, we’ll get another five hunnerd warriors back to clean the rooms!”
The door to the war room opened then and Catti-brie entered, flanked by Penelope and Kipper.
“What do ye know, girl?” Bruenor asked. “We got many wounded needing yer spells!”
“Aye, I saw Ambergris on me way here,” Catti-brie answered, and both Penelope and Kipper turned to regard her curiously as she slipped once more into her Dwarvish accent.
“So where ye been?” Bruenor asked. “Chasin’ the durned elf?"
“Chasing the spreading veins of the primordial, more accurately,”
Penelope replied, drawing concerned looks from all the dwarves in the room.
“A tendril that’s been in place since the founding o’ Gauntlgrym, I’d guess,” Catti-brie quickly added. “And one that’s showin’ me and me friends here clues about the powers yer ancestors gained from their fiery pet.”
“What do ye know?” Emerus asked.
Catti-brie shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing to tell right now.
But soon, I’m hoping.”
“But we’re not to fear this. . vein o’ fire?” Emerus pressed. “The being’s not breaking free,” Catti-brie assured him. In her mind, she completed the thought with “not yet, at least,” but she held that part silent.
“Just finding a bit of exercise,” Penelope added. “The primordial seems to see your girl here as a bit of an ally.”
“My guess would be that the primordial isn’t happy about having the dark elves holding its home in their thrall,” said Kipper. “From what Catti-brie has told us of their altar right in the primordial’s chamber, I suspect the ancient being might consider their religious antics akin to a bit of sacrilege."
“Are ye sayin’ the beast might be helpin’ us, then?” Bruenor and Emerus asked together, and both with equally hopeful tones.
Catti-brie quickly dispelled that notion. “The primordial’s not viewing the world as we mortals might. Through some fortunate magic, I been able to gain some insights from the great being-I find meself less inclined to call it a beast!”
“She’s talking to it,” Kipper explained.
“In fits and starts and nothing much more,” Catti-brie added before Kipper had even finished. She wanted no misperceptions, and no false hope. There might be ways in which she could turn her connection to the primordial and to the Elemental Plane of Fire into a benefit in these battles, as she had done with the kobolds, but it was nothing she wished the dwarves to factor into their planning, for indeed it was nothing Cattibrie would even dare depend upon.
She did hold out some hopes, though. The magma elemental the primordial had spat up to her on the ledge in the drow altar room had aided her in turning the battle against Dahlia and the great construct spiders the drow had set out as guards.
“Most help I can be would be looking to the flame, looking into the flame, and looking through the flame to get us a glimpse of what’s what in the lower levels,” she said. “If other chances come up, like blowing up some kobold bombs, I’ll be using them, don’t ye doubt.”
That seemed to satisfy Bruenor and the gathered dwarves, who nodded their appreciation one after the other.
Catti-brie was glad of that, and glad to leave it at that. She didn’t want to get their hopes up. There was a tentative nature to all of this, and a level of power she knew she could never control if it found a way to break free. Most of all, her communion with the primordial had taught her respect for the primal being-it seemed to her as strong as a god! More than helping her, it wanted to escape, to erupt again in all its magnificent and destructive glory.
And Catti-brie knew something else, without the slightest bit of doubt: the magic of the Hosttower of the Arcane was truly failing, and if that erosion could not be stopped, even reversed, the reign of the dwarves in Gauntlgrym, should they retake the complex, would be short indeed, and would end explosively.
CHAPTER 13