brooch, touching her fingers to its onyx stone.
“Valindra,” she whispered. “Is there something you can do to help our friends go down this hole?”
“Throw them in!” the lich keened. With Ara… oh, yes, with that one!”
“Valindra!” Dahlia barked, and the lich shook her head and sputtered as if Dahlia had thrown a bucket of water in her face. “Safely down,” Dahlia clarified.
With an exaggerated sigh and hardly any effort at all, Valindra waved one hand and a blue-glowing disc appeared in the air, suspended over the hole.
“You, too,” Dahlia explained to the lich, taking her by the hand and guiding her to stand on the disc. “We’ll need more, I think, for the drow and the dwarf.”
With another exhale and a wave of her left hand, then one more and a wave of her right, Valindra created floating discs in front of Jarlaxle and Athrogate.
Dahlia let go of Valindra’s hand and bade her to proceed. Valindra’s disc floated down into the pit. A nod from Dahlia to Dor’crae had him lifting his cape up behind him. It fluttered over his head, and as it descended, obscuring his form, he became a large bat and dived off after Valindra.
Dahlia motioned to the two remaining discs then grabbed the edges of her own magical cloak-the cloak she’d taken from Borlann.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked before she’d gone. “About Valindra, I mean?”
“I expect that, in a strange way, her insanity protected her from the Spellplague,” the elf replied. “She’s a unique combination of what was and what is. Or perhaps she’s simply a wizard gone mad, undead and gone beyond any hope. But whatever she is, I know she’s useful.”
“So to you she’s just a tool… a magic item,” Jarlaxle accused.
“Pray tell me what use you and your drow have had for her these many years.”
Jarlaxle grinned at the astute comeback and tipped his wide-brimmed hat. He started to step on his disc and bade Athrogate to do the same, but as soon as the dwarf hopped up, Jarlaxle hopped back down. “After you, good lady.”
“I ain’t likin’ this,” the dwarf said, in a crouch with his hands out to the sides, as if he expected the disc to vanish and leave him scrambling to find something to hold onto.
“You will be soon, I promise,” Dahlia said, and she pulled the magical cloak around her and in the blink of an eye had transformed herself into a crow. She dived into the pit.
Next went Athrogate, with Jarlaxle bringing up the rear. Before he stepped back onto Valindra’s conjured disc, the drow put his hand near the insignia he wore, of House Baenre of Menzoberranzan. He had his own levitation magic, just in case.
But he needn’t have feared any mischief from the lich, he soon discovered. The discs floated steadily and easily, moving to the mental commands of their riders. Fifty feet down, the tunnel changed from a sheer drop to a steep decline, as Dahlia had said, but they didn’t dismiss the discs or step off them. It was easier to float above the broken, uneven floor than to walk.
The corridor grew tighter around them, forcing a crouch or a lean here and there, and at one point, they actually had to lie down on their discs to pass under a low overhang. Still, they wound their way left and right, and ever downward.
Because of one last obstacle, Athrogate pulled a bit ahead of Jarlaxle over the final expanse of broken tunnel, and just as the drow came to see that the narrow passage widened up ahead, he heard Athrogate mutter in tones reverent and awe-filled, “By Dumathoin.”
The reference to Dumathoin, in dwarven lore the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, somewhat prepared the drow for what might be beyond, but still he found it hard to breathe when he came out onto the ledge beside his four companions.
They were on a natural balcony overlooking a huge chamber, perhaps a third the size of Menzoberranzan. Whether from natural lichen or residual magic, there was enough light for him to make out the general contours of the cavern. A pond lay before them, its still, dark waters interrupted by a series of large stalagmites, some ringed by stairwells and balconies that must once have served as guard posts or trade kiosks. Stalactites hung from the ceiling on their end of the cavern as well, and Jarlaxle noted similar construction on several of them. The dwarves who had worked the cavern had adopted the fashion of the drow, he realized, and had used the natural formations as dwellings. Jarlaxle had never heard of such a thing before, but he had little doubt in his guess. The work on the stalagmites and stalactites was surely not drow in nature, not delicate and curving, nor limned with glowing faerie fire.
“There are ballistae up there,” Dor’crae, who had returned to his human form, explained, pointing to the stalactites. “Guard stations overlooking the entrance.”
“No… no it canno’ be,” Athrogate whispered, and he slouched on his disc as if the strength simply fled his body.
But Jarlaxle heard hope in the dwarf’s voice more than anything else, a recognition beyond anything Athrogate had, perhaps, dared to hope, and so Jarlaxle paid the dwarf no concern at that moment and continued instead his study of the cavern.
On the far side of the dark pond, a couple hundred feet or more from their balcony, stood half a dozen clusters of small structures, each grouping set at the end of a mine rail, and more than one of those lines held an ancient mine cart, battered and rusted. The rail lines converged straight away from the balcony, running toward the back of the expansive cavern beyond even his superior darkvision.
“Come,” Dahlia bade them, her voice whistling like a giant bird. She slipped over the balcony’s low natural rail and glided on black feathered wings down to the water and across. Dor’crae became a bat once more and quickly followed, as did Valindra on her disc.
“Are you joining us?” Jarlaxle asked Athrogate when he saw that the dwarf made no move to follow.
Athrogate looked at him as if he’d just awakened from a deep, though tumultuous slumber. “It canno’ be,” he whispered, barely able to get the words out.
“Well, let us see what it be, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied, and started away.
He’d barely descended to skim above the pond on his disc when Athrogate passed him by, the dwarf apparently shaking off his stupor and willing his own disc on with all speed.
On the far side of the pond, Dahlia, an elf once more, was helping Valindra off her disc, and Athrogate simply leaped down from his, which was still half a dozen feet above the ground. The fall didn’t hinder the dwarf at all, though-in fact, he didn’t even seem to notice it as he bounced right back to his feet and stumbled and scrambled forward, following the central rail line.
“This place knew much battle,” Dor’crae remarked after shedding his bat form and bending low to pick up a whitened bone. “Goblin, or a small orc.”
Jarlaxle glanced around to confirm the vampire’s observations. The soft ground was scarred and many bits of bone showed clearly. More interesting, though, were the sights that lay ahead, the image that had Athrogate on his knees, and though his back was to the drow, Jarlaxle could well imagine the tears streaming down his hairy face.
And who could blame him? For even Jarlaxle, only partially acquainted with the legends of the Delzoun dwarves, could guess easily enough that they had stumbled upon Gauntlgrym, the legendary homeland of the Delzoun dwarves, the most sacred legend of their history, the place Bruenor Battlehammer himself had sought for more than half a century.
A great wall faced them, sealing off the end of the cavern. It was built much like one would expect of a surface castle, with gate towers on either side of a massive set of mithral doors, and a crenellated battlement lining the top of the wall that spanned the cavern and seemed as if it had been built deep into the stone at either end. The strangest part, aside from the huge silvery doors, was the tightness of it all. Looking up the wall, Jarlaxle almost expected to see it give way to open sky, but instead there was only a very short space to the natural ceiling of the cavern. A tall human would have a hard time even standing straight up there, and even Jarlaxle would have to crouch in many places.
“It canno’ be,” Athrogate was saying as Jarlaxle came up beside him, and confirmed that the dwarf was indeed crying.
“I can think of no other place it could be, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied, patting Athrogate’s strong shoulder.
“You know it, then?” asked Dahlia, moving up behind them with Dor’crae and Valindra in tow.
