Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(105)

Bruenor blinked repeatedly as he considered his friends.

“What did you do?” Jarlaxle asked.

Bruenor could only shrug.

Drizzt studied his friend more closely, even pulling aside Bruenor’s collar, but he could find no wound.

“How did you do that?” Dahlia asked. “Stomping your foot as if you were a god of lightning?”

Bruenor shrugged and shook his head. He seemed quite perplexed for a few moments, but then just shook his head again and let it all go, turning to Jarlaxle instead.

“I know where to put yer bowls,” he said to Jarlaxle.

“How could you know?”

Bruenor considered that for a short while. How indeed?

“Gauntlgrym telled me,” he said with a grin.





POWERS OLDER, POWERS DEEPER


THE ASHMADAI CAME INTO THE CIRCULAR CHAMBER WITH TENTATIVE STEPS, though the echoes of battle had long since faded. Valindra Shadowmantle led the way, flanked by two score of Sylora’s best warriors. The lich focused almost immediately on the throne, and she drifted that way, floating, not walking, while her minions spread out to examine the corpses scattered about the floor.

She stopped in front of the throne, sensing its great magic. Valindra had spent her life studying the Art, as a wizard in the famed Hosttower of the Arcane. Before the Spellplague, and before she had fallen into death then undeath at the hand of Arklem Greeth, Valindra had been a wizard of great power, impeccable scholarship, and considerable renown.

As a lich, Valindra had survived the Spellplague, though it had surely harmed her mind. But at long last, she was returning to her senses, and gathering her newfound powers in the unfamiliar energies of post-Spellplague arcana.

Its powers having transcended even the dramatic changes that had been visited upon Faer?n, the throne knocked her back to that time before. The magic in it was ancient, and reverberated within Valindra, taking her to a place of familiar comfort she had not known in decades.

She “cooed” and “ahh’d” before the throne, her emaciated, pale hands reaching out but never quite touching the powerful artifact. Lost in her thoughts and memories, in the better times she had known as a living wizard, Valindra failed even to notice when a pair of her Ashmadai commanders came up beside her.

“Lady Valindra,” one, a large male tiefling, said.

When she didn’t respond, he repeated the words much more loudly.

Valindra started and turned on him, her ghostly eyes flickering with threatening red flames.

“The dead are of the Plane of Fire, we believe,” the tiefling explained. “Minions of the primordial?”

Valindra’s perplexed expression conveyed that she hadn’t even really heard the question, let alone digested it.

“Yes,” another voice answered, and the two Ashmadai commanders and Valindra turned just as a bat fluttering up behind the throne seemed to fall over itself and take humanoid form.

“Minions of the primordial—worshipers, really,” Dor’crae explained. “These salamanders, and large red lizards deeper in the complex, even a small red dragon, have come to the call of the volcano.”

“There are more?” the male Ashmadai asked.

“They are many,” Dor’crae replied, walking around the dais to join the trio.

“Perhaps they will do our job for us, then,” said the Ashmadai. “Perhaps they already have.”

Dor’crae laughed at that notion, and waved out his arm, inviting the others to take another look at the result of the battle—a battle he had watched from the shadows of the room’s high ceiling.

“I would not …” he started to say, but he paused as he noticed that Valindra paid him no heed, that she had turned her attention back to the throne.

“I wouldn’t count on the inhabitants of the complex to defeat the likes of Jarlaxle and his mighty dwarf,” Dor’crae told the Ashmadai, “or of Dahlia and Drizzt Do’Urden.” He glanced at Valindra again, watching as she ascended the dais, still staring at the throne as if in a trance. “They are formidable enough, or were, but now are even more so. I watched them in this very room, and the other dwarf with them, a king of the dwarves it would seem, has somehow been magically … enhanced.”

The two Ashmadai scrunched up their faces, glanced at each other, then turned back to Dor’crae with obvious confusion.

“Through the power in that very throne,” Dor’crae explained, turning to Valindra as he spoke.

The lich didn’t seem to hear him.

“There is some ancient magic there that empowered him,” Dor’crae warned them all.

“Magic, yes,” Valindra cooed, her hand waving over the arm of the throne. Then, suddenly, the lich slapped her hand down and grabbed the throne.

Her eyes went wide and she issued a hiss of protest. It was clear that she was struggling mightily to hold onto the throne, as if it was trying to throw her aside. Stubbornly, the lich growled and fought back, then she turned and sat down on the throne, grasping the arms with both hands.

She growled and snarled, thrashing about, hissing, and sputtering a stream of curses. Her back arched as if some unseen force lifted her free, and she growled again and uttered a curse at some dwarf king and forced herself back down. To the onlookers, the three before the throne and many others about the room, she seemed like a halfling trying to hold back the charge of an umber hulk.