Charon's Claw

Page 62

“What is it?” she quietly asked him as Entreri moved out ahead.
He looked at her curiously, but she grabbed his wrist, for his hand was again in that pouch.
Drizzt winced, his expression full of anger. “She is worth the lives of fifty Artemis Entreris,” he stated.
“What?”
He muttered something undecipherable and pushed past her to catch up to the assassin.
Hustling to be done with Entreri, once and for all, Dahlia presumed, and it struck her then how greatly, how viciously, her drow lover wanted Entreri to die. Perhaps it was the call of the sword again, or maybe, she mused, Drizzt simply hated Entreri that much.
Chapter 22: Fire God
Brack’thal breathed a sigh of relief that his invisibility spell lasted long enough for him to get through the small tunnel from the forge room and into the primordial’s chamber. He had lost his elemental pet, sending it down a corridor after some Shadovar, he believed, though he had not seen them. Without it, the drow wizard felt naked indeed.
So he had quietly slipped back to the forge room, and had entered invisibly, but to his dismay, had found no ongoing breaches, no little fiery creatures rushing around. The one forge that had not yet been repaired had been fully shut down.
Even worse, during his invisible creeping around, Brack’thal overheard Tiago Baenre telling his blacksmith friend that all of the drow would be retreating from the forge and into the deeper tunnels in light of the Netherese advance.
They would surrender this hall and the primordial, and Brack’thal couldn’t allow that.
This was his source of power. Through his ruby ring, the wizard felt the primal murmurs of ancient magic resonating powerfully within him. It was not a sensation he was about to let lapse.
He stood on the edge of the deep pit, cursing the water elementals swirling around its sides, trapping this godly creature of such beautiful power. He couldn’t dismiss those water elementals. His magic couldn’t touch them in any effective way. Because of his affinity with the Plane of Fire, those creatures from the Plane of Water were even farther from his influence, and even more dangerous foes to him.
Brack’thal could hear the beast below. Its whispers flitted around his mind, promising him all that he had lost and more. He had been formidable in the tunnels against the corbies and dwarf ghosts, formidable in his work on the stairwell, and formidable in his dealings with his wretched little brother. All because of this godlike primordial.
The old drow mage heard the call clearly. The primordial demanded release. But Ravel and his band had properly secured the mechanisms for controlled releases only, allowing a bit of the primordial to fire the furnaces. The ancient traps would keep the beast under control.
The primordial wanted release. Brack’thal could hear that lament most clearly of all.
And in that release, Brack’thal alone among his kin would find any gain, would rise in power above Ravel.
Brack’thal crossed the mushroom-stalk bridge to the anteroom and stood before the lever. This was the key, he believed, and if he pulled it, the primordial would be free. On a different and more pragmatic emotional level, the wizard surely understood the danger in such a scenario. Would he even be able to survive and escape the cataclysm sure to follow? The voice through his ring told him to trust, and he found himself reaching for the lever.
His hand didn’t quite get there, though, for a multitude of images came to him then—imparted from the primordial, he knew. He saw a glittering throne set with magnificent gems, a dwarven throne for dwarf kings.
Only a dwarf could pull this lever, Brack’thal understood then, and only one who had sat on that throne. This was a typical failsafe for dwarves, as it was for the drow, for both races elevated their own above all others. Only a Delzoun dwarf could pull this lever, and only one who sat on that powerfully enchanted throne, thus, only one of royal lineage.
With a growl, Brack’thal grasped the lever anyway and began to tug. When it wouldn’t budge, the wizard moved behind it and put his shoulder to it, pushing with all of his strength. When it still wouldn’t move at all, Brack’thal cast a spell of strength upon himself, his thin arms bulging with magical muscle.
He might as well have been trying to move a mountain.
Sometime later, the mage stood on the edge of the pit back across the bridge once more, but he didn’t look down to the primordial any longer, his eyes focused back on the narrow hallway that had led him there. His mind’s eye was looking past that corridor, too, to a forge that was not really a forge.
Perhaps there was another way.
Tiago Baenre’s eyes sparkled in fiery reflections and in clear intrigue as he looked at the strange items lying on the tray before Gol’fanin. He focused first on the delicate and narrow sword blade that seemed as much the stuff of magic as metal, silvery but nearly translucent, and with shining little points of light sparkling back at him from within their glow.
“Diamond dust,” he whispered.
“Mingled with the glassteel,” Gol’fanin confirmed. “Both creations are thick with the stuff, lending the metal its hardness and edge. You’ll not break this sword, nor dull its deadly cut, and that shield will deflect the cudgel of a mountain giant.”
“Magnificent,” Tiago breathed. His gaze moved lower on the sword, to the unfinished hilt and the quillon and guard, and truly they were nothing like Tiago had ever seen before, a conical cage of black metal crisscrossing into the likeness of a spider web and fanning out away from the blade to cover the wielder’s hand.
“If that was the extent of their powers, I’d agree,” the blacksmith replied, and he was grinning slyly when Tiago glanced at him.
“How strong?” Tiago asked, indicating the sword’s seemingly delicate quillon.
“Strong enough to block the blow of a giant’s cudgel,” Gol’fanin assured him. “And to defeat a considerable amount of magical energy thrown your way. A lightning bolt striking the blade will dissipate into a shower of harmless sparks when it runs across that quillon. If one even gets near the blade, for that shield can easily defeat such magic.”
Tiago almost giggled at that point. He had known that these would be exceptional implements, but now that he saw them in person, the extent of their magnificence was just beginning to dawn on him.
He looked from the sword and shield to the side of the tray, where the sword grip and matching shield grip and straps waited for the blacksmith’s expert hands. They, too, were black, gleaming like polished onyx. Each was shaped like an arachnid, with its legs pulled in tight, creating ridges to better secure grasping fingers.
Gol’fanin picked the sword grip up and handed it to Tiago, who grasped it as if the weapon was attached. Never had he felt such a secure grip on any sword! It seemed to him as if the handles were grabbing back, tightening and securing his hold. He brought the item up before his eyes, marveling at the fine detail, for indeed it seemed the perfect likeness of a beautiful spider, the pommel resembling the arachnid’s head and set with a pair of dull emeralds, little spider eyes. The other two for the shield were identical, except that their eyes were blue sapphires.
“How long?” the eager young warrior asked.
“There is much yet to do,” Gol’fanin replied, and he took the handle back and gently replaced it on the tray. “More enchantments and more hardening, and then I must, of course, properly attach the handles.”
“How long?” Tiago asked more insistently.
“Another tenday.”
The Baenre warrior slumped at that news. A tenday if they remained in the forge, but alas, it was not to be.
“Could you finish your work in Menzoberranzan?” Tiago had to ask.
Gol’fanin looked at him incredulously, his expression full of horror, and that alone provided all the answer the young Baenre needed. He looked over his shoulder to the room’s main exit, trying to formulate some defensive plans to secure and hold this particular room that would convince the Xorlarrins to stand their ground.
But it was a fool’s errand, he knew. The room was too open. It would favor their enemies if those enemies managed to get in. The losses would prove too great to the drow expedition, even if they ultimately held the forge.
Tiago looked back to the implements, the sword and shield that would make him the envy of every weapons master in Menzoberranzan. Items that would strike terror into the heart of Andzrel, the pretender who held that coveted rank within the hierarchy of House Baenre. Tiago would replace him. With these weapons in his hands, he would cast Andzrel aside and take his rightful place.
But not quite yet.
Gol’fanin smiled at him and took up a handle. With a grin, he moved for the sword blade.
Brack’thal couldn’t begin to sort out the many valves and blocking pins and pipes lining the small chamber beneath the false forge. “Dwarven idiocy,” he muttered, trying to follow this line or that, trying to figure out which piping might lead him to the one furnace that had been shut down because the goblins hadn’t yet repaired the feeds.
He moved to a wall where a throng of pipes exited through the stone, the image making him think of a great organ lying sideways. Which forge in line was the broken one, he asked himself?
“Which forge?”
The mage tried to envision the room above him, counting back to the broken forge . . . or should he be counting forward?
He did not know whether the top pipe or the bottom connected to the next forge in line. He couldn’t even remember which forge in the line he had just climbed through to get there!
“The script,” he said, growing desperate, and he found some lettering—ancient Dwarvish lettering. He couldn’t begin to decipher it, but there were spells for such things.
Brack’thal stepped back and took a deep breath, trying to recall the spell for comprehending such languages. A heartbeat later, he gave a little whimper as he realized that he had not memorized that particular dweomer this day, nor did he have any such scrolls in his possession.
“By the gods,” the frustrated wizard said, and he slapped his hand against the pipe in pure exasperation.
And the fire within the pipe began to talk to him.
He held his hand in place, staring at the ruby band, his connection to the Plane of Fire, and to the primordial godlike being in the nearby pit. He didn’t need to understand the ancient Dwarvish language, he realized, and he didn’t need to count the pipes. For the god-beast understood the design, its living fiery tendrils weaving their way through the maze. Now it spoke to Brack’thal. Now it showed him the controls, the valves, the plugs . . . the plug sealing off the broken forge.
He saw it all, so clearly, all the channels and controls, all the valves to dampen the flow of pure fiery power. He rushed around, spinning those valves wide, freeing the beast!
So giddy with power was he that Brack’thal sang as he danced, and laughed as he twirled the valves. He could feel the energy mounting all around, the primal scream of a primal god.
The pipes clanged and banged as if tiny gnomes were within them, rapping metal hammers. Valves groaned and hissed in protest as too much energy pressed at their huge screw mechanisms.