Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(54)

The poor priestess didn’t seem to know how to react, and she was simply not as skilled as Berellip in covering everything up with anger.

Emboldened by Saribel’s quandary, Ravel glanced at Tiago, who sat beside Jearth, and there he found allies. Tiago even nodded and smiled.

If his sisters’ unease had bolstered him, the salute from House Baenre had him standing even taller.

Behind the two weapons masters, the drider Yerrininae squatted on eight bent legs, and he, too, seemed eager—and why wouldn’t he be, for this was the promise to an existence with dignity and possibility.

They owned the forge.

Ravel paced slowly past the group, including the other House wizards and a few of the more important melee squad leaders, on his way to the nearest in the line of actual forges, a large firebrick oven, taller than Ravel. To the drow warrior, it looked like any other forge, but he had been told differently, and he understood now as he examined the oven.

There was no place to load fuel to burn.

Behind the forge loomed what seemed like a chimney, stretching floor to ceiling, of thick bricks, mortared with workmanship so amazing that the centuries seemed to not have touched them. After a cursory glance at the loading and cooling trays, Ravel found himself drawn to this chimney. He ran his hands along the stone, feeling the integrity.

He looked down the length of the large chamber, the row of similar forges, the line of similar chimneys.

“Untouched by the millennia,” he said, coming around to face the group once more.

“They will need minor repairs, likely,” Yerrininae replied. “But yes.”

“Where is Brack’thal?” Berellip interjected, her tone sharp, unyielding and prideful, as always.

Ravel smiled, the look of a displacer beast as it closed in on its prey, and moved toward the group, looking to his fellow wizards.

“Have you figured out the workings?” he asked.

“We’ve found the source,” the spellspinner started to reply, but was cut short by Berellip.

“Where is Brack’thal?” she demanded.

“He is doing his job,” Ravel curtly replied.

“He should be among us.”

“The perimeter chambers must be secured before our work begins in earnest,” Ravel countered. “That is no small task.”

“It is a task for that one,” Berellip replied, pointing to Jearth. “And his Baenre friend. And the driders—why are they even here?”

Tiago laughed aloud at the priestess’s flustered pronouncements, and Ravel understood that he had done so for Ravel’s benefit. Yes, the Xorlarrin son had a powerful ally here, and one who would not blink before Berellip’s intimidating glare.

“My dear sister, I am Xorlarrin,” Ravel replied. He looked to Jearth and bowed in what seemed like an apology as he finished, “I would not trust such a critical duty to a mere warrior.”

For a moment, he thought Berellip might swallow her lips, so tight did her face become.

“Nor would I trouble you and your priestesses, who have far more important duties in ensuring that this place, this city of Xorlarrin, will prove suitable to the goddess we all hold dear,” he added, looking more to Tiago, who nodded his approval.

For the time being, Ravel had disarmed his sister.

“We have much to do,” Jearth interjected. “My scouts have assured me that this complex is huge, even without the miles and miles of mines running beneath and beside it. There are other groups here in addition to our forces and the stubborn dwarf ghosts. We have found dire corbies—they will need to be cleaned out.”

“Seems a minor distraction,” said the usually quiet Saribel, and her look to Berellip as she spoke tipped Ravel off to her true purpose, that of pleasing their dominant sister.

“Many of the interesting chambers we have discovered are unsound,” Jearth went on with hesitation, for he, like Ravel, had perfected the art of ignoring the annoying Saribel. “This place was wracked by the cataclysm of recent years. There may be untold treasures and secrets lying around, defenses we might put to our use, side chambers that will provide better quarters for the nobles.”

Saribel moved as if to interject, but Jearth pressed on before her. “There may be a source for these bothersome ghosts, as well, a temple to a dwarf god, and that we cannot abide in any place House Xorlarrin might come to call home.”

The younger of the Xorlarrin sisters slumped back at that remark.

“We have much to do,” Jearth reiterated, and there would be no arguments coming forth in reply.

“Yes, much,” Ravel agreed, and he glanced down the line of forges to the great and huge oven that centered the room’s rear wall. “And first we must discover how to fire these ovens.” He wore a sly look as he made the comment, hinting that he knew more than he was letting on, which, of course, he did.

“The source is nearby,” Berellip said. “It must be, along with the fuel . . .”

“The source is there,” Ravel said, pointing to the wall near the large forge, to an archway which they had not explored, as the passage it indicated had been bricked up and sealed.

“How can you know?”

“I am a spellspinner,” Ravel replied. “You do not believe that a pile of stones could block my way, do you?”

He focused on Tiago, the most important one in his audience, and watched the young Baenre warrior, obviously intrigued, glance from the archway back to him and back again.