The magical door slid shut behind them, dimming the chamber even further. Catti-brie and Wulfgar moved close together for security, their eyes weak in the dimness, but Regis darted about, searching for the gems and other treasures that a dwarven skeleton might possess.
Bruenor had also seen something of interest. He moved over to two skeletons lying back to back. A pile of gray dwarves had fallen around them, and that alone told Bruenor who these two were, even before he saw the foaming mug crest upon their shields.
Drizzt moved behind him, but kept a respectable distance.
“Bangor, me father,” Bruenor explained. “And Garumn, me father’s father, King of Mithril Hall. Suren they took their toll before they fell!”
“As mighty as their next in line,” Drizzt remarked.
Bruenor accepted the compliment silently and bent to dust the dirt from Garumn’s helm. “Garumn wears still the armor and weapons of Bruenor, me namesake and the hero of me clan. Me guess is that they cursed this place as they died,” he said, “for the gray ones did not return and loot.”
Drizzt agreed with the explanation, aware of the power of the curse of a king when his homeland has fallen.
Reverently, Bruenor lifted Garumn’s remains and bore them into a side chamber. Drizzt did not follow, allowing the dwarf his privacy in this moment. Drizzt returned to Catti-brie and Wulfgar to help them comprehend the importance of the scene around them.
They waited patiently for many minutes, imagining the course of the epic battle that had taken place and their minds hearing clearly the sounds of axe on shield, and the brave war cries of Clan Battlehammer.
Then Bruenor returned and even the mighty images the friends’ minds had concocted fell short of the sight before them. Regis dropped the few baubles he had found in utter amazement, and in fear that a ghost from the past had returned to thwart him.
Cast aside was Bruenor’s battered shield. The dented and one-horned helm was strapped on his backpack. He wore the armor of his namesake, shining mithril, the mug standard on the shield of solid gold, and the helm ringed with a thousand glittering gemstones. “By me owns eyes, I proclaim the legends as true,” he shouted boldly, lifting the mithril axe high above him. “Garumn is dead and me father, too. Thus I claim me title: Eighth King of Mithril Hall!”
19. Shadows
“Garumn’s Gorge,” Bruenor said, drawing a line across the rough map he had scratched on the floor. Even though the effects of Alustriel’s potion had worn off, simply stepping inside the home of his youth had rekindled a host of memories in the dwarf. The exact location of each of the halls was not clear to him, but he had a general idea of the overall design of the place. The others huddled close to him, straining to see the etchings in the flickers of the torch that Wulfgar had retrieved from the corridor.
“We can get out on the far side,” Bruenor continued. “There’s a door, opening one way and for leaving only, beyond the bridge.”
“Leaving?” Wulfgar asked.
“Our goal was to find Mithril Hall,” Drizzt answered, playing the same argument he had used on Bruenor before this meeting. “If the forces that defeated Clan Battlehammer reside here still, we few would find reclaiming it an impossible task. We must take care that the knowledge of the hall’s location does not die in here with us.”
“I’m meaning to find out what we’re to face,” Bruenor added. “We mighten be going back out the door we came in; it’d open easy from the inside. Me thinking is to cross the top level and see the place out. I’m needing to know how much is left afore I call on me kin in the dale, and others if I must.” He shot Drizzt a sarcastic glance.
Drizzt suspected that Bruenor had more in mind than “seeing the place out,” but he kept quiet, satisfied that he had gotten his concerns through to the dwarf, and that Catti-brie’s unexpected presence would temper with caution all of Bruenor’s decisions.
“You will come back, then,” Wulfgar surmised.
“An army at me heels!” snorted Bruenor. He looked at Catti-brie and a measure of his eagerness left his dark eyes.
She read it at once. “Don’t ye be holding back for me!” she scolded. “Fought beside ye before, I have, and held me own, too! I didn’t want this road, but it found me and now I’m here with ye to the end!”
After the many years of training her, Bruenor could not now disagree with her decision to follow their chosen path. He looked around at the skeletons in the room. “Get yerself armed and armored then, and let’s be off—if we’re agreed.”
“‘Tis your road to choose,” said Drizzt. “For ‘tis your search. We walk beside you, but do not tell you which way to go.”
Bruenor smiled at the irony of the statement. He noted a slight glimmer in the drow’s eyes, a hint of their customary sparkle for excitement. Perhaps Drizzt’s heart for the adventure was not completely gone.
“I will go,” said Wulfgar. “I did not walk those many miles, to return when the door was found!”
Regis said nothing. He knew that he was caught up in the whirlpool of their excitement, whatever his own feelings might be. He patted the little pouch of newly acquired baubles on his belt and thought of the additions he might soon find if these halls were truly as splendid as Bruenor had always said. He honestly felt that he would rather walk the nine hells beside his formidable friends than go back outside and face Artemis Entreri alone.
As soon as Catti-brie was outfitted, Bruenor led them on. He marched proudly in his grandfather’s shining armor, the mithril axe swinging beside him, and the crown of the king firmly upon his head. “To Garumn’s Gorge!” he cried as they started from the entry chamber. “From there we’ll decide to go out, or down. Oh, the glories that lay before us, me friends. Pray that I be taking ye to them this time through!”
Wulfgar marched beside him, Aegis-fang in one hand and the torch in the other. He wore the same grim but eager expression. Catti-brie and Regis followed, less eager and more tentative, but accepting the road as unavoidable and determined to make the best of it.
Drizzt moved along the side, sometimes ahead of them, sometimes behind, rarely seen and never heard, though the comforting knowledge of his presence made them all step easier down the corridor.
The hallways were not smooth and flat, as was usually the case with dwarven construction. Alcoves jutted out on either side every few feet, some ending inches back, others slipping away into the darkness to join up with other whole networks of corridors. The walls all along the way were chipped and flaked with jutting edges and hollowed depressions, designed to enhance the shadowy effect of the ever-burning torches. This was a place of mystery and secret, where dwarves could craft their finest works in an atmosphere of protective seclusion.
This level was a virtual maze, as well. No outsider could have navigated his way through the endless number of splitting forks, intersections, and multiple passageways. Even Bruenor, aided by scattered images of his childhood and an understanding of the logic that had guided the dwarven miners who had created the place, chose wrong more often than right, and spent as much time backtracking as going forward.
There was one thing that Bruenor did remember, though. “Ware yer step,” he warned his friends. “The level ye walk upon is rigged for defending the halls, and a stoneworked trap’d be quick to send ye below!”