Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(129)

“What magic?” he asked.

“That remains to be seen,” said the blacksmith. “The djinni will imbue them.”

“You must know more than that!”

“Vidrinath,” Gol’fanin said, nodding to the weapon Tiago held, the one with the emerald eyes. He looked to the shield. “Orbbcress.”

Tiago rolled Vidrinath over in his hand and spoke the name, the drow word for the songs priestesses would sing to the young students at the Academy when they went into their Reverie repose. He understood then the power of this blade, so akin to that of the hand crossbow bolts, and spoke the name again, “Lullaby.”

And for the shield, “Spiderweb.”

He considered the potential. He let his mind wander down the paths hinted at by those particular names—names hardly chosen at random, he knew. “Tell me more,” he bade Gol’fanin, or started to, for his words were lost in a rumbling deep within the cavern stone, and a cacophony of sharp metallic rapping sounds.

Tiago looked curiously at the blacksmith, who could only shrug. Together, they turned back to the main forge. Inside the oven, the fires danced wildly, forming angry faces and spitting sparks at them.

For a moment, the young Baenre wondered if this was expected, but Gol’fanin’s expression dispelled that notion. “What is it?” he asked.

A half-dozen structures down to their left sat the darkened forge, the forge of the last breach which had not yet been repaired or refired, and from that oven came a tremendous bang. Suddenly, it teemed with fire, so fully that an angry orange glow emanated from its stones. Other dark elves cried out in warning, goblins scrambled, falling all over each other. Tiago and Gol’fanin ducked behind the main forge for protection.

The broken forge exploded, a giant fireball reaching across the cavern. Spurts of lava and lines of fire blasted from the wreckage of the forge. Amid the rubble, where the oven used to be, stood a mighty fire elemental, roaring and crackling and swinging its torchlike arms all around.

Other forges, too thick with primordial fuel, began to vomit, spewing forth jets of white-hot flames, and from those flames leaped more elementals, smaller ones, darting in frenzy, chasing down goblins and biting at them, dragging them down and swarming over them, lighting their clothes and hair aflame, shriveling their pallid green skin.

Screams mixed with the roaring flames and the continued throaty rumbling within the stones, and above that symphony of insanity, Tiago could not be heard. He shouted anyway, “Flee! Flee!” for the room was lost, the fight over before it had even begun. They could do nothing before the bared might of the primordial.

Nothing but burn.

A barrage of fire and lava came forth from the main forge, tossing aside the trays and the unfinished shield, and the implements: the tools, the scroll tube, the djinni bottle.

Tiago’s eyes widened with horror and he started forward. “Orbbcress,” he whispered as if he was speaking of his child. Gol’fanin tried to hold him back, but he broke free and rushed amid the flames, ignoring the heat and the stings. He would not lose these items, even at the cost of his own life.

He came out of the sub-chamber unafraid of the firestorm engulfing the forge room. Torrents of flames whipped around, elementals leaping to and fro, consuming the flesh of those creatures, goblinkin and drow alike, who had not escaped the conflagration.

Brack’thal did not care. The smell of burning flesh hung thick around him, but that only meant that his god-beast was feasting well this day. The wizard stepped right through the deep fires, his ring protecting him fully. Even more, he heard the song of the elementals, reveling in their freedom and calling to him, who had freed them.

He imagined himself as the Chosen of this primordial—did these ancient god-beasts even have such minions? He could be the first, a being of great power, with deadly fire at his easy disposal, ever ready to smite his enemies.

Or to melt his brother.

He continued across the room, moving for the small tunnel to the primordial pit. It was calling him, then, he believed, likely to congratulate him.

Brack’thal slowed his steps as the primordial voice rang out loudly, and once again, the room began to resonate with elemental power.

The forge of Gauntlgrym was not merely a dwarven contraption, was not simply a clever clockwork of levers and pins and valves and piping. It was a magical construct, full of energy as old as the fabled Hosttower of the Arcane of Luskan. And as such and given its role in containing such a beast as a primordial of fire, it had been carefully imbued with magical contingencies.

Brack’thal started again for the tunnel at a swift pace, then a trot, then a sprint. Just before he reached the entrance, though, his nostrils filled with a new odor, salty and pungent.

“Brine?” he asked, puzzled.

He looked up at the corner where the wall met the ceiling, to those curious green rootlike tendrils running like veins through the lower complex. Small knots, like tiny corks, popped from a thousand places at once, and water sprayed like rain across the room. Salt water. Brack’thal couldn’t begin to sort it out, for he did not understand that those tendrils ran to the harbor in distant Luskan, out into the dark and cold waters of the Sword Coast.

The fire elementals roared and fought back, reaching up to throw flames at the tendrils, and so great and pure was their fury that it seemed to Brack’thal as if they would surely win out against the clever irrigation.