Robert Salvatore - Streams of Silver

“Secret,” Bruenor gasped, on the edge of consciousness.

Drizzt pressed harder. “Time is short! The darkness is falling!” he shouted. “The way, dwarf, we must know the way!”

Bruenor mumbled some inaudible sounds and all the friends gasped in the knowledge that the drow had broken through the final mental barrier that hindered Bruenor from finding the hall.

“Louder!” Drizzt insisted.

“Fourthpeak!” Bruenor screamed back. “Up the high run and into Keeper’s Dale!”

Drizzt looked over to Old Night, who was nodding in recognition, then turned back to Bruenor. “Rest, mighty dwarf,” he said comfortingly. “Your clan shall be avenged!”

“With the description the book gives of Settlestone, Fourthpeak can describe only one place,” Old Night explained to Drizzt and Wulfgar when they got back to the library. Regis remained in the Chamber of the Dwarves to watch over Bruenor’s fretful sleep.

The herald pulled a scroll tube down from a high shelf, and unrolled the ancient parchment it held: a map of the central northland, between Silverymoon and Mirabar.

“The only dwarven settlement in the time of Mithril Hall above ground, and close enough to a mountain range to give a reference to a numbered peak, would be here,” he said, marking the southernmost peak on the southernmost spur of the Spine of the World, just north of Nesme and the Evermoors. “The deserted city of stone is simply called “the Ruins” now, and it was commonly known as Dwarvendarrows when the bearded race lived there. But the ramblings of your companion have convinced me that this is indeed the Settlestone that the book speaks of.”

“Why, then, would the book not refer to it as Dwarvendarrow?” asked Wulfgar.

“Dwarves are a secretive race,” Old Night explained with a knowing chuckle, “especially where treasure is concerned. Garumn of Mithril Hall was determined to keep the location of his trove hidden from the greed of the outside world. He and Elmor of Settlestone no doubt worked out an arrangement that included intricate codes and constructed names to reference their surroundings. Anything to throw prying mercenaries off the trail. Names that now appear in disjointed places throughout the tomes of dwarven history. Many scholars have probably even read of Mithril Hall, called by some other name that the readers assumed referred to another of the many ancient dwarven homelands now lost to the world.”

The herald paused for a moment to digest everything that had occurred. “You should be away at once,” he advised. “Carry the dwarf if you must, but get him to Settlestone before the effects of the potion wear away. Walking in his memories, Bruenor might be able to retrace his steps of two hundred years ago back up the mountains to Keeper’s Dale, and to the gate of Mithril Hall.”

Drizzt studied the map and the spot that Old Night had marked as the location of Settlestone. “Back to the west.” he muttered, echoing Alustriel’s suspicions. “Barely two days march from here.”

Wulfgar moved in close to view the parchment and added, in a voice that held both anticipation and a measure of sadness, “Our road nears its end.”

They left under stars and did not stop until stars filled the sky once again. Bruenor needed no support. Quite the opposite. It was the dwarf, recovered from his delirium and his eyes focused at last upon a tangible path to his long-sought goal, who drove them, setting the strongest pace since they had come out of Icewind Dale. Glassy-eyed and walking both in past and present, Bruenor’s obsession consumed him. For nearly two hundred years he had dreamed of this return, and these last few days on the road seemed longer than the centuries that had come before.

The companions had apparently beaten their worst enemy: time. If their reckoning at the Holdfast was correct, Mithril Hall loomed just a few days away, while the short summer had barely passed its midpoint. With time no longer a pressing issue, Drizzt, Wulfgar, and Regis had anticipated a moderate pace as they prepared to leave the Holdfast. But Bruenor, when he awoke and learned of the discoveries, would hear no arguments about his rush. None were offered, though, for in the excitement, Bruenor’s already surly disposition had grown even fouler.

“Keep yer feet moving!” he kept snapping at Regis, whose little legs could not match the dwarf’s frantic pace. “Ye should’ve stayed in Ten-Towns with yer belly hanging over yer belt!” The dwarf would then sink into quiet grumbling, bending even lower over his pumping feet, and driving onward, his ears blocked to any remarks that Regis might shoot back or any comments forthcoming from Wulfgar or Drizzt concerning his behavior.

They angled their path back to the Rauvin, to use its waters as a guide. Drizzt did manage to convince Bruenor to veer back to the northwest as soon as the peaks of the mountain range came into view. The drow had no desire to meet any patrols from Nesme again, certain that it was that city’s warning cries that had forced Alustriel to keep him out of Silverymoon.

Bruenor found no relaxation at the camp that night, even though they had obviously covered far more than half the distance to the ruins of Settlestone. He stomped about the camp like a trapped animal, clenching and unclenching his gnarly fists and mumbling to himself about the fateful day when his people had been pushed out of Mithril Hall, and the revenge he would find when he at last returned.

“Is it the potion?” Wulfgar asked Drizzt later that evening as they stood to the side of the camp and watched the dwarf.

“Some of it, perhaps,” Drizzt answered, equally concerned about his friend. “The potion has forced Bruenor to live again the most painful experience of his long life. And now, as the memories of that past find their way into his emotions, they keenly edge the vengeance that has festered within him all these years.”

“He is afraid,” Wulfgar noted.

Drizzt nodded. “This is the trial of his life. His vow to return to Mithril Hall holds within it all the value that he places upon his own existence.”

“He pushes too hard,” Wulfgar remarked, looking at Regis, who had collapsed, exhausted, right after they had supped. “The halfling cannot keep the pace.”

“Less than a day stands before us,” Drizzt replied. “Regis will survive this road, as shall we all.” He patted the barbarian on the shoulder and Wulfgar, not fully satisfied, but resigned to the fact that he could not sway the dwarf, moved away to find some rest. Drizzt looked back to the pacing dwarf, and his dark face bore a look of deeper concern than he had revealed to the young barbarian.

Drizzt truly wasn’t worried about Regis. The halfling always found a way to come through better off than he should. Bruenor, though, troubled the drow. He remembered when the dwarf had crafted Aegis-fang, the mighty warhammer. The weapon had been Bruenor’s ultimate creation in a rich career as a craftsman, a weapon worthy of legend. Bruenor could not hope to outdo that accomplishment, nor even equal it. The dwarf had never put hammer to anvil again.

Now the journey to Mithril Hall, Bruenor’s lifelong goal. As Aegis-fang had been Bruenor’s finest crafting, this journey would be his highest climb. The focus of Drizzt’s concern was more subtle, and yet more dangerous, than the success or failure of the search; the dangers of the road affected all of them equally, and they had accepted them willingly before starting out. Whether or not the ancient halls were reclaimed, Bruenor’s mountain would be crested. The moment of his glory would be passed.

“Calm yourself, good friend,” Drizzt said, moving beside the dwarf.

“It’s me home, elf!” Bruenor shot back, but he did seem to compose himself a bit.