When the pond’s water stilled once more, Oretheo Spikes, Nigel Thunderstorm, and all the remaining dwarves looked about at the carnage and knew that Comragh na fo Aster, the Battle of the Cavern, had come to a glorious and victorious end.
CHAPTER 20
Bruenor and Emerus stood beside the outline of the stone door the wizards had identified as the ancient portal connecting dwarf lands. Over and over, the dwarf kings ran their hands along the ancient stonework, nodding as if they could feel the power thrumming within the stone-and likely they could feel it, Cattibrie and the others realized. Ever since they had sat on the throne, these two and Connerad seemed more attuned to this place than any non-dwarf could ever hope to understand.
“Where’d it go?” Emerus asked, his gravelly old voice filled with wonder and awe.
“Another dwarf kingdom, they’re saying. And aye, but I’m thinkin’ that’s the truth of it,” Bruenor replied. Then he added slyly, “If they were thinking o’ what might be the greatest place to go of all, they’d’ve had it set in line with Mithral Hall, eh?”
“Aye,” Emerus said without missing a beat, “that hole’d be a great musterin’ field for them dwarfs heading over to Citadel Felbarr.”
The two kings smirked at each other, both glad for the levity, and Bruenor truly needing it with his dearest friend lying so broken back in the main complex.
Behind them, Ambergris and Athrogate began to laugh, then to howl, drawing curious looks from Ragged Dain and Fist and Fury, and a curious glance back from the two kings.
Shaking her head, Catti-brie walked past the onlooking dwarves, Penelope and Kipper beside her.
“So if we’re to get it working, then how’re we to know where we’re going?” Emerus asked them. “Could be anywhere. I’m not knowing o’ any other dwarf homes as old as Gauntlgrym, and I’m guessing this was put in early on.”
“Right after they got the Great Forge fired, I’d wager,” Catti-brie agreed. “Might be that it opened into Waterdeep-or whatever city was thereabouts back in the day o’ Gauntlgrym’s making. Easy journey for trade.”
“No,” Kipper Harpell insisted. “It opened to another dwarven complex, likely in a mine not far from the other complex, but not readily accessible to the place. Certainly not in any city not of dwarves.”
“Aye,” Bruenor said, and Emerus nodded, coming to agree that his off-the-cuff theory really didn’t hold up. Even to this day, in the Realms dwarves were clannish-Bruenor’s choices in assembling the Companions of the Hall had raised more than a few bushy dwarf eyebrows over the years, and when Bruenor had appointed Regis as Steward of Mithral Hall, even King Emerus had gasped with surprise.
But still, despite that obvious xenophobia, by all accounts and historical text, the dwarves were much more tolerant of the other races now than they had been in the days of Gauntlgrym’s glory.
“If you were given a choice of where to place a complementary gate, good King Emerus, would you choose Waterdeep?” Kipper asked.
“I’d be sticking it up Moradin’s hairy bum afore I’d be doin’ that!” the dwarf said, and the point was made.
Emerus looked to Bruenor, but the red-bearded dwarf was immersed in the contours of the ancient portal once more. Perhaps he was sulking, perhaps deep in thought, but in any case, he had clearly stepped out of the conversation.
“Wait, are ye sayin’ that we might be choosing the location o’ th’ other gate, the exit?” Emerus asked, his thoughts sharpening with the possibilities.
How grand might it be to connect Gauntlgrym to the tunnels under the Silver Marches, a place easily accessible to all three of the dwarf kingdoms of the North? If the dwarves could have easy transport back and forth, all four fortresses would be more secure by far, with combined armies ready to muster at a moment’s notice.
“We do no’ even know if we can power the durned thing,” Catti-brie reminded them all. “She’s an old magic, like the one firing the Forge, like the magic keeping the primordial in its pit.”
“But it is possible!” Kipper jumped in quickly and enthusiastically. “I have been studying this for decades, my friend, and this gate! Oh, but how long have I searched for such an opportunity as-”
The tunnel shook then under the force of something weighty, some resounding thud that rolled through the stone and right up the legs of the ten standing in front of the ancient gate.
“That ain’t sounding good,” Ragged Dain remarked as he moved closer to Emerus and set himself defensively to protect his friend and king.
“I’ll go and have a look,” Athrogate offered and he sprinted back through the secret doorway to the portal room, with Ambergris close behind. They paused in the outer mine tunnel for a moment, glancing left and right, and when another heavy thud resounded, the pair took off to the right.
“We should be getting this place closed, and quickly,” Ragged Dain offered.
“Aye,” Emerus agreed over Kipper’s protestations. “Keepin’ this room secret’s more important than the lives of all.”
The eight started for the doorway, but before they even neared the open portal, Ambergris came rushing back in, Athrogate right behind her.
“Can ye close the door from in here?” Ambergris asked Catti-brie. “Lock us in, then?”
“Aye, and be quick about it!” Athrogate added.
Both looked terribly unraveled, and both were gasping for breath, as if they had come back in a sprint.
“I canno’,” Catti-brie replied.
“Out, then, out!” Athrogate ordered. “Don’t ye get caught in this corner!”
“Caught by. .?” Penelope asked, and she was answered by a bellowing roar. It is not an easy thing to describe a sound as “evil,” but to the ten in the small room this rumbling, raspy, screeching combination of noise, all blended in one discordant note, surely seemed to be just that.
“Out! Out!” they all began shouting together, and they tumbled all over each other to get to the door. Before they had all even come through and out into the tunnel beyond, Catti-brie began her chant to the ancient magic of the fire primordial to close the secret doorway.
“Demons!” she heard Penelope gasp before the door even started coming down, but the woman wouldn’t stop now, determined that their enemies would not get into the special chamber beyond.
She heard the dwarves calling for formations, and was glad to hear Bruenor’s voice lifting above the others. If anything could get Bruenor Battlehammer out of his worrying malaise, it would be a good fight!
Finally, the door began its downward slide, and the woman spun around-and nearly lost all hope.
Demons indeed, she saw and heard, the ravenous beasts coming at the group from both directions in the long tunnel. She noted manes-so many of those disgusting lesser Abyssal creatures-leading the charge left and right, but mostly she noted the leaders of the beasts, a hulking glabrezu to her right, back the way they had come, and an even greater beast, massive and thick, with short wings beating crazily, but with no hope of lifting the tremendously fat demon from the floor. And others, too, scrambled for the fight: vulture-like creatures she knew to be vrocks, and thick and short beasts that looked like a rough carving of human, only with dwarf-like proportions and a huge head set upon broad shoulders that seemed to be conspicuously missing a neck.
“You stay with us,” she heard Penelope tell Emerus and Ragged Dain. Out to the left in front of the Felbarrans stood Athrogate and Ambergris, setting their feet and ready to brawl.
Out to the right, Bruenor and the Fellhammers similarly waited.
The demons came in an organized fashion, the disposable fodder, the manes, filtering to the front.
Catti-brie wasn’t waiting. She stamped her staff upon the ground, shouting “Syafa!” and the silvery wood turned black again, streaked with red, while the blue sapphire became a red sapphire.