“You said that you support me, and so I ask you to now,” said Wulfgar. “Trust in my judgment, in that I know what course I must follow. I take with me my love for you and for Drizzt and for Bruenor and for Regis. That is ever in the heart of Wulfgar. I will never let the image of you and the others fade from my thoughts, and never let the lessons I have learned from all of you escape me as I walk my road.”
“Your road so far away.”
Wulfgar nodded. “In the winds of Icewind Dale.”
CHAPTER 13
A CITY UNDWARVEN
The six companions stood just inside the opening they had carved through the stone, their mouths uniformly agape. They had their backs to the wall of a gigantic cavern that held a magnificent and very ancient city. Huge structures rose up all around them: a trio of stepped pyramids to their right and a beautifully crafted series of towers to their left, all interconnected with flying walkways, and every edge adorned with smaller spires, gargoyles, and minarets. A collection of smaller buildings sat before them, around an ancient pond that still held brackish water and many plants creeping up around its stone perimeter wall. The plants near the pool and scattered throughout the cavern, the common Underdark luminous fungi, provided a minimal light beyond the torches held by Torgar and Thibble dorf, and of course Regis, who would not let his go. The pool and surrounding architecture hardly held their attention at that moment, though, for beyond the buildings loomed the grandest structure of all, a domed building—a castle, cathedral, or palace. Many stone stairs led up to the front of the place, where giant columns stood in a line, supporting a heavy stone porch. In the shadowy recesses, the six could make out gigantic doors.
“Gauntlgrym,” Bruenor mouthed repeatedly, and his eyes were wet with tears.
Less willing to make such a pronouncement, Drizzt instead continued to survey the area. The ground was broken, but not excessively, and he could see that the entire area had been paved with flat stones, shaped and fitted to define specific avenues winding through the many buildings.
“The dwarves had different sensibilities then,” Regis remarked, and fittingly, Drizzt thought.
Indeed, the place was unlike any dwarven city he had known. No construction under Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale, or in Mirabar, Felbarr, or Mithral Hall, approached the height of even the smallest of the many grand structures around them, and the main building before them loomed larger even than the individual stalagmite-formed great houses of Menzoberranzan. That building was more suited to Waterdeep, he thought, or to Calimport and the marvelous palaces of the pashas.
As the overwhelming shock and awe faded a bit, the dwarves fanned out and moved away from the wall. Drizzt focused on Torgar, who went down to one knee and began scraping between the edges of two flagstones. He brought up a bit of dirt and tasted it then spat it aside, nodding his head and wearing an expression of concern.
Drizzt looked ahead to Bruenor, who seemed oblivious to his companions, walking zombielike toward the giant structure as if pulled by unseen forces.
And indeed the dwarf king was, Drizzt understood. He was tugged forward by pride and by hope, that it truly was Gauntlgrym, the fabulous city of his ancestors, glorious beyond his expectations, and that he would somehow find answers to the question of how to defeat Obould.
Thibble dorf Pwent walked behind Bruenor, while Cordio moved near to Torgar, the latter two striking up a quiet conversation.
One of doubt, Drizzt suspected.
“Is it Gauntlgrym?” Regis asked the drow.
“We will learn soon enough,” Drizzt replied and started after Bruenor.
But Regis grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to turn back around.
“It doesn’t sound like you believe it is,” the halfling said quietly.
Drizzt scanned the cavern, inviting Regis to follow his gaze. “Have you ever seen such structures as these?”
“Of course not.”
“No?” Drizzt asked. “Or is it that you have never seen such structures as these in such an environment as this?”
“What do you mean?” Regis asked, but his voice trailed away and his eyes widened as he finished, and Drizzt knew that he had caught on.
The pair scurried to catch up to Torgar and Cordio, who were fast gaining on the front two.
“Check the buildings as we pass,” Bruenor instructed, motioning to Pwent and Torgar. “Elf, ye take the flank, and Rumblebelly come close up to me and Cordio.”
As they moved by doorways, Pwent and Torgar alternately kicked them in, or rushed in through those that were already opened, as Bruenor continued his march, but more slowly, toward the huge structure, with Regis seemingly glued to his side. Cordio, though, kept hanging back, close enough to get to any of the other three dwarves in a hurry.
Drizzt, moving out into the shadows on the right flank, watched them all with quick glances while focusing his attention primarily on the deeper shadows. He wanted to unravel the mystery of the place, of course, but his main concern was ensuring that no current monstrous residents of the strange city made a sudden and unexpected appearance. Drizzt had been a creature of the Underdark long enough to know that few places so full of shelter would remain uninhabited for long.
“A forge!” Thibble dorf Pwent called from one building—one that had an open back, Drizzt noted, much like a smithy in the surface communities. “I got me a forge!”
Bruenor paused for just a moment before starting again for the huge building, his grin wide and his pace quicker. The other dwarves and Regis, even the stupidly grinning Pwent, hurried to catch up, and by the time Bruenor put his foot on the bottom step, all five were grouped together.
The stairs were wider than they were tall, and while they rose up a full thirty feet, they extended nearly twice that to Bruenor’s left and right. Over at the very edge to the right, Drizzt moved fast to get up ahead of the others. Silent as a shadow and nearly invisible in the dim light, Drizzt rushed along, and Bruenor had barely taken his tenth step up when Drizzt crested the top, coming under the darker shadows of the pillared canopy.
And in there, the drow saw that they were not alone, and that danger was indeed waiting for his friends, for behind one of the centermost pillars loomed a behemoth unlike any Drizzt had even seen. Tall and sinewy, the hairless humanoid was blacker than a drow, if that was possible. It stood easily thrice Drizzt’s height, perhaps four times, and exuded an aura of tremendous power, the strength of a mountain giant, monstrous and brutish despite its lean form.
And it moved with surprising speed.
Perched in the rafters of the canopy behind and above Drizzt, another beast of darkness studied the approaching group. Batlike in appearance, but huge and perfectly black, the nightwing took note of the movements, particularly those of the drow elf and the behemoth, a fellow denizen of the Plane of Shadow, a fearsome creature known as a nightwalker.
“Bruenor!” Drizzt cried as the giant started moving, and at the sound of his warning the dwarves reacted at once, particularly Thibble dorf Pwent, who leaped defensively before his king.
And when the giant, black-skinned nightwalker appeared, twenty feet of muscle and terror, Thibble dorf Pwent met its paralyzing gaze with a whoop of battlerager delight, and charged.
He got about three strides up the stairs before the nightwalker bent and reached forward, with long arms more akin in proportion to those of a great ape than to a human. Giant black hands clamped about the ferocious dwarf, long fingers fully engulfing him. Kicking and thrashing like a child in his father’s arms, Pwent lifted off the ground.
Behind him, Bruenor could not move quickly enough to stop the hoist, and Cordio fell to spellcasting, and Regis and Torgar didn’t move at all, both of them captured by the magical gaze of the powerful giant, both of them standing and trembling and gasping for breath.