R. Salvatore: Night of the Hunter

Bruenor had just gotten to work on that shield, reinforcing the bands, when the woman pulled forth the glowing helm, and those rubies set in the front sparkled most of all, and indeed, small flames burned clearly within them. The horns seemed untouched, as did the leather inset of the item.

Catti-brie didn’t put this down beside Bruenor’s worktable. There was no need. She dipped it in the forge’s water tray to cool it, hot steam shooting up with an angry hiss.

Then, as Bruenor continued his song and his work, the woman plopped the helm atop his head.

And Bruenor’s face lit up with profound joy and he hoisted his axe.

And he sang, and tossed mithral flakes all around him.

The rubies glowed and Bruenor heard their call. He uttered a word that he did not understand, though Catti-brie surely did, and she nodded as the rubies flared with mounting inner fire.

The head of Bruenor’s axe burst into flames.

Not flames to eat the weapon, though, but to enhance it, adding the enchantment of flametongue to an axe that had already known hundreds of battles.

Bruenor slid his shield over his other arm and extinguished the axe’s fires with a thought.

“Now we can go, elf,” he said, as if coming out of a trance. “Aye, now we can go.”

Drizzt looked over to Ambergris, who was shaking her head in clear awe of the scene before her. He tapped her on the shoulder and pointed across the way, to the huge, broken drider and the weapon lying on the ground in front of it.

With a squeal, Amber Gristle O’Maul ran across to retrieve her beloved Skullcrusher, and when she returned, she looked to Bruenor and to the oven pleadingly.

“No, girl,” the dwarf said. “Not now. I’m not for knowin’ what just happened, but ‘tweren’t no simple bit o’ smithin’.”

“It was a gift,” Catti-brie said. “To you. A gift of the dwarf gods, a gift from Gauntlgrym.” She paused and matched intense stares with her dwarf father. “And it was a request.”

Bruenor nodded. “Aye. A deal I’m glad to make.”

“A request?” Regis and Wulfgar asked together.

“We’ve a long road,” Bruenor replied, and started away. “And one that just got longer.”

The others followed, Drizzt bringing up the rear of the line.

He looked back several times, toward the primordial chamber, thinking of Dahlia, thinking of Entreri. Truly the death of the elf woman stung him-more than he would have expected. Perhaps he had never really loved her-certainly not as he loved Catti-brie-but he had cared for her, and deeply.

She was at peace, he hoped. At long last, perhaps Dahlia had found peace.

And Entreri’s last words to him rang in his head and in his heart. He wished that the man was leaving with them, out of this place and back to their own place.

But Drizzt took heart, confident in this one’s skill and resourcefulness, certain that he would see Artemis Entreri again.

The wondrous things I have witnessed , Gromph Baenre heard in his mind, and the thought had been offered with excitement. That alone alerted the archmage that something tremendous indeed had occurred, for when had he ever known an illithid to show excitement?

He felt a further communication, a request that he go to Methil with all haste, and with the matron mother. Normally, the archmage would have ignored such a request, but the excitement in Methil’s thoughts had surely intrigued him.

Within a short while, he and Quenthel joined the illithid in the anteroom of the primordial chamber.

“My elemental?” he asked at once, with surprise and alarm. “Where is the guard?”

“Destroyed,” Methil replied in his watery voice. The mind flayer’s tentacles waved toward the archway and the bridge beyond, motioning them out.

The matron mother was no less alarmed, and surely more horrified, when she crossed through the steam and mist to witness the defilement of the chapel. One jade spider was missing, the other lying inverted and quite destroyed back the other way, by the tunnel to the Forge. And most of the webs were gone, the floor beneath the remaining strands littered with the crispy bodies of scores of burned spiders.

“What is this sacrilege?” Matron Mother Quenthel demanded, and Gromph looked to Methil for an explanation.

“The battle of gods,” Gromph answered his sister a moment later, his voice full of incredulity. He lifted his gaze above the altar stone, to the missing centerpiece of this sacred chapel.

“The darthiir sacrifice,” he mumbled.

Both he and Quenthel looked to the cave-in as Methil telepathically relayed the images of the last moments of the battle. The illithid started for the pile, the other two in tow. He held up one arm to Gromph, who joined hands with the creature.

Gromph nodded as Methil silently explained.

“What is it?” Matron Mother Quenthel demanded.

Gromph offered her his hand. “Come,” he bade her.

Quenthel hesitated, looking at him and particularly at that strange mind flayer, suspiciously. When Gromph didn’t retract his offered hand, though, she took it, and immediately she felt strange, lighter.

“Whatever you do, do not let go,” Gromph solemnly warned as Methil led the way to the pile-and into it.

Quenthel did well not to cry out in revulsion and fear as her less than corporeal form slipped through the stones and dirt. Not between them, as a priestess or mage might do with some wraithform spell, but through them, as if her own corporality and that of the stones had somehow moved into different dimensions.

She could feel the stones slipping through her, and it was not a comfortable sensation.

When they came into an open area past the pile, the closed chamber was too dark even for drow lowlight vision. With a few words and a wave of his hand, Gromph created a muted red light. They were about halfway along the tunnel, the archmage estimated, glancing at his magically created metal wall a bit farther along.

“What is that?” he heard the matron mother say and he looked back, to see that Methil had collected something in their strange journey.

“The darthiir ’s staff,” Gromph said, taking Kozah’s Needle, then handing it to his sister.

Methil pointed down at the rubble pile and waggled his tentacles, the emanating psionic magic pushing a few small stones aside to reveal a foot, delicate and light-skinned, the foot of a darthiir woman.

“She is dead, then,” the matron mother stated flatly, for clearly Dahlia had been buried under tons of stone.

But a moment later, Gromph began to chuckle, and he and his sister watched as Methil became nearly translucent once more, then reached down and grabbed Dahlia’s foot, sharing the psionic state with her.

Illithids were not physically strong creatures, but Dahlia slid easily out from under the pile. In that moment, she simply did not exist in the same dimension as the crushing stones.

Methil left her lying on the ground when he and Dahlia came back fully to their material state, and the darthiir did not stir in the least, and indeed, seemed quite dead.

But Methil knew better and he explained it to Gromph and to Quenthel.

“Strange are the powers of these creatures of the mind,” Gromph remarked. “Often I am reminded to be glad that Matron Mother Yvonnel destroyed House Oblodra.”

Quenthel could only shake her head and mutter, “Kinetic barrier?” without any understanding of the psionic dweomer at all.

“Come, and be quick!” Gromph said suddenly. He grabbed Dahlia’s hand and held out his other one for Quenthel, who took it, then shuddered in revulsion as she grabbed hold of Methil’s offered hand as well.