Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(113)

In went the bowl, the seventh of ten, and Jarlaxle moved up and handed him a vial. With the appropriate incantation, Bruenor emptied the magical water into the bowl and watched the swirl as the elemental took shape.

Almost immediately, the tendril’s magic grabbed it.

“No others in this hall,” Bruenor announced, closing the placard door. “Next one’s south.”

“Onward, then,” said Dahlia, moving past him, but Bruenor was quick to correct her.

“South,” he explained. “That’s to the left.”

Dahlia shrugged helplessly, and the dwarves and Jarlaxle led the way to a door at the side of the room, while Drizzt fell in with Dahlia.

“How can he know?” Dahlia asked.

“The throne, somehow …” Drizzt replied.

“Not the layout of the complex,” Dahlia clarified. “How can he—how can any of you—know which way is south, and which north?”

Drizzt smiled at her and nodded. He would have answered, if he knew the answer. Creatures of the Underdark just knew such things, felt them innately.

“Perhaps it is the pull of the heavenly bodies above,” he offered. “As the sun and moon cross the sky, perhaps their energy is felt even down here.”

“I don’t feel it,” the elf replied with a sour look.

Drizzt grinned wider. “When you are above and wish to determine the direction, how do you do it?”

Dahlia looked at him with a wrinkled brow.

“You look to the sky, or the horizon if it’s familiar,” said Drizzt. “You know where the sun rises and sets, and so you determine your four points based on that.”

“But you can’t know that down here.”

Drizzt shrugged again. “When you’re in the forest on a dark night, is not your hearing more keen?”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

Dahlia started to reply, but stopped, and stopped walking, too. She stared at the drow for a few heartbeats.

“You may find that after a while in the Underdark, you will come to sense direction as easily as you do in the World Above,” Drizzt said.

“Who would wish to spend any more time in the Underdark than we have already?”

The snide remark, and the short manner in which Dahlia had delivered it, caught Drizzt by surprise. He thought to tell her about all the beautiful things that could be found in the subterranean world beneath Faer?n. Even Menzoberranzan—which Dahlia, as a surface elf, could not likely see as anything but a slave—was a place of dazzling beauty. Drizzt had chosen the surface world as his home, and truly he loved the stars, and even the sunshine, though for years it had pained his sensitive eyes. He found beauty in the forests and the waterways, in the clouds and the rolling fields, and in the grandeur of the mountains. But there was no less beauty to be found below, he knew, though it didn’t often occur to him. He had rarely been in the Underdark in the last half-century and perhaps because of that fact, he had come to see it differently. He appreciated its beauty, both dwarf-worked and natural.

He didn’t tell any of that to Dahlia, however. She was at a disadvantage there, out of her element and surrounded by four companions who were not out of theirs. She didn’t like that, Drizzt realized, and in looking at her as she again walked beside him, he saw a vulnerability in her. She had started the wrong way before being corrected by Bruenor. She didn’t know which direction was which. Her perfect armor had revealed a seam, after all.

And in that seam, Drizzt noted a scar, an old and deep wound, a flicker of pain behind the always-intense gleam of her blue eyes, a hesitance in her always-confident stride, a defensive curl of her always-squared shoulders.

His intrigue surprised him. Her appeal at that moment overwhelmed him. Of course he’d marveled at the unusual beauty of the elf, particularly at the allure of her deadly fighting dance.

But something more had presented itself, something endearing, something interesting.



“Pull it down! Pull it down!” Stokely Silverstream commanded his dwarves. And the crack team did just that, hauling their ropes from either side and pinning the large red lizard to the floor. Up ahead, more dwarves, aided by the ghosts, battled the salamanders, but the dwarves’ victory over their enemy’s hidden weapon, a twenty-foot-long, voracious, fearsome fire lizard, had sealed the larger victory.

Stokely himself walked up and dispatched the monster, though it took several heavy blows from his axe to accomplish the task.

By the time he and the rear guard caught up to the others, the fighting had ended. Dead and wounded salamanders littered the wide, steamy tunnel, along with three of Stokely’s boys. The two priests accompanying the score of warriors went to work furiously, but one of those dwarves died there in the deep corridor of Gauntlgrym, and one of the other two had to be carried along.

But on the dwarves went, undeterred, following the ghosts and their destiny.

Barely an hour later, still before their midday meal, they heard more noise coming from a side tunnel—a force moving down at them.

Stokely stared ahead uncertainly. Perhaps they could outrun the elemental-kin, but if they tried and ran into more resistance ahead, they’d be trapped.

“Dig in yer heels, me boys,” the dwarf leader told his fellows. “More to kill.”

Not a dwarf complained, faces set grimly, weapons turning under white knuckles. The few ghosts that had silently led them from Icewind Dale drifted up the tunnel to meet the incoming force, but no sounds of battle echoed down at Stokely’s crew.