Horrified, King Bruenor rolled to a sitting position and stared back at the throne.
Moradin had rejected him!
His three companions laughed at him.
“So it’s full of magic, then!” Vestra said. “Beneficent or malevolent, or more likely a bit of both.”
“But not so fond of dwarves, it would seem,” said Deventry with a mocking laugh.
Bruenor didn’t know how to respond. His thoughts spun around in confusing circles. Surely he had cursed Moradin and the others mightily in these twenty years of his second life, but that was behind him now. He had come to see the truth: that he had been returned to undo the wrongs of King Bruenor, that Mielikki had been but a pawn for a greater purpose. He had found the error of his ways, and had found contentment and purpose once more.
But then why had the throne rejected him?
Was it due to the physical changes, he wondered, the fact that his blood now was not that of a king, but of a guard captain? He looked like young Bruenor, to be sure, but the blood in his veins had come from Reginald Roundshield and Uween, and not the line of Gandalug.
It seemed so trite, almost mocking the purpose of the gods and the throne. He was King Bruenor. He had seen the truth and mended his ways and had corrected his attitude toward the gods who gave power to that throne.
“Ye mock me,” he whispered to his gods, dark thoughts climbing up from the floor around him where he sat, burying him in melancholy’s hopeless shadow. So lost was he that he almost didn’t notice his three companions standing around the throne in close discussion, drawing lots from a piece of broken straw bedding.
Bruenor pulled himself to his feet and staggered toward them. “Don’t ye dare,” he said.
“A throne for dwarves?” Deventry replied, turning around with a scowl. “It seems that the chair did not agree with your description.”
Bruenor shook his head, trying to find the words to properly explain. He noted Whisper rubbing his little hands together eagerly, and Vestra pushing him toward the seat.
“Don’t!” Bruenor warned.
“We’re all to take our turns!” Deventry shouted back.
The halfling leaped up into the of the DesaiI, given the onseat and spun around, hands on the arms. His expression remained one of eagerness for a few heartbeats, but then turned to a confused look that quickly showed discomfort. He began to jerk spasmodically, as if bolts of energy were stabbing at him from behind, which indeed they were! He tried to cry out, his mouth twisting weirdly.
“Get him off o’ there!” Bruenor yelled, staggering forward.
Vestra spun back on Whisper and lunged for him, but as she did, the chair ejected the halfling-not as it had done with Bruenor, but much more forcefully, heaving poor Whisper through the air. He clipped Vestra as he launched, bloodying her face and spinning her around and down to the floor. Off he flew, high and far, ten long strides and more from the throne. He landed awkwardly, one leg extended below him, and the snap of bone echoed through the chamber. Whisper cracked his shoulder and the side of his head on the stone, and rolled long and hard into the stone wall, where he thrashed in agony. Oh how the supposedly mute halfling screamed!
The other three ran to him, Vestra trying to turn him to his back, and from her own spasms it was clear that it was all she could manage to not vomit at the mere sight of the halfling’s wound. His shin had broken in half, the bones protruding through his ripped skin.
“What did you do?” Deventry shouted in Bruenor’s face.
“I telled ye to stop!” the dwarf yelled back.
But Deventry shoved him, and Bruenor only took a step back to better balance himself as he retaliated with a fearsome right hook that sent the man flying sidelong to the ground.
“Next time’ll be with me axe!” Bruenor warned.
“What do you know?” Vestra demanded, standing up from the halfling and moving in front of Deventry to hold the man back.
“I know that yer friend was thinkin’ o’ robbing this place, and he telled it to the throne that guards it, and he got what a thief deserves!”
Deventry started to shout at him, Whisper continued to scream and wail, but Vestra spoke over the tumult, “No, Bonnego, there’s more!” she insisted. “What do you know, of that throne, of this place?”
Bruenor swallowed hard. “Me name’s not Bonnego,” he said, but the others didn’t hear. He turned and motioned with his head for them to follow, then started off, angling to the right of the throne, toward the cairns.
“What are we to do with him?” he heard Deventry say behind him.
“Carry him along,” Vestra ordered.
Despite his desperate need to inspect the graves, to see if it was his own or Pwent’s that had been desecrated, Bruenor turned around to regard the trio. They should let Whisper rest for a bit, should make a splint for his leg and pop his shoulder back into place, of course, before trying to move him.
But Deventry wasn’t that smart, apparently, or compassionate. He moved to lift the halfling, who thrashed and screamed even louder. Whisper’s flailing hand poked the big man in the eye, and how Whisper screamed even more when Deventry dropped him back to the stone.
“He’ll bring the whole place out against us!” Vestra cried. “Whisper, silence!”
Deventry clutched at his eye, his face a mask of rage. His free hand grabbed at his sword and pulled it from his belt, and before Vestra could ev!” Bruenor warned.5N3 enemiesonen yell at him, to call him back to his senses, the man brought the blade down hard and sure.
And Whisper screamed no more.
Bruenor trembled with disgust and anger at himself for bringing these three monsters into sacred Gauntlgrym. He looked at the throne-perhaps that was why it had rejected him.
He started for his grave more determinedly, but heard Deventry’s call behind him, “Stand and be counted, dwarf!”
He kept walking.
“Bonnego!” Deventry called, sounding much closer now, and Bruenor spun around to meet the challenge, axe in hand. He found both Deventry and Vestra facing him, weapons drawn and ready.
“Me name’s not Bonnego,” Bruenor said through gritted teeeth. “ ’Tis Bruenor, Bruenor Battlehammer. King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall. Might that ye’ve heared o’ me.”
The two looked to each other and shrugged, clearly oblivious, then turned back to the dwarf, brandishing tw, and had see
CHAPTER 23
The Year of the Grinning Halfling (1481 DR) Elturgard
The wagon bounced along the trade way, more than a hundred miles northwest of the town of Triel, and five times that distance, still, from Waterdeep.
Regis sat in the back, huddled under a heavy winter blanket, for the season grew late. His legs dangled off the tailgate, peeking out from under his cover and showing fabulous high black boots that had miraculously escaped the dirt of the road thus far.
“Smoke in the west!” came the expected call from one of the riders flanking the merchant caravan, and the halfling nodded at the confirmation of their location. Regis had been this way before, though many decades had passed since then. By his estimate, they were approaching the river called Winding Water and the famous span known as the Boareskyr Bridge.
The sun lowered before them, and looking back beyond the Forest of Wyrms and the Reaching Woods, Regis noted the aptly named glistening peaks of the Sunset Mountains, far in the distance. The halfling nodded again, taking measure of the journey that had begun on a dark late-summer’s night in Delthuntle.