Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(48)

The wall had been carved, and colored with various metals, jewels, and paint into the giant likeness of the god Moradin, ten times the size of a mortal dwarf. The Soulforger had his shoulder turned in behind a bejeweled shield, a great warhammer raised in his other hand up behind him. His bearded face seemed a mask of bloodlust, battle hungry, ready to meet and destroy any foe.

Jarlaxle glanced down at Athrogate, who was on his knees, his face in one palm, trying to control his gasping breath.

Eventually, they went on, level after level down, along corridors wide and narrow, through grand halls and modest chambers. For a long while, the only disturbance in the thick dust that had settled about the place was their own footprints, and it stayed that way until they came to a strong stone door, barred on their side with thick iron.

“This is the end of the city proper,” Dor’crae explained, motioning for Athrogate to move the locking bars aside. “The areas beyond are less worked, open to the mines, and with one path leading to the forge.”

“Ah, but I wish we might lock it behind us,” Athrogate said as the last bar was pulled aside. “I’d not be the one to open Gauntlgrym to whatever walks the depths below.”

“When we leave, we’ll secure the door behind us,” Dahlia assured him.

The change in the atmosphere was palpable the moment they passed through the door. Where before there had been ghostly silence, only their own scuffling accompanying their march—and even that muted by the thick dust and heavy air—on the other side of the stone door there was sound: creaking and groaning, the scraping of stone on stone. Before they’d walked in the normally comfortable temperatures of the Upperdark, but that had given away to a great increase in both heat and humidity. The stone stairs beyond were slick with moisture, and blacker somehow, unlike the muted, dusty gray of the city.

They pressed on, though the treacherous footing made them move slowly and carefully down the stairs. Dahlia and Valindra both commented on the sudden humidity—it felt almost as if they were walking through a misty spring rain—and the elf asked how that might be possible, but none of her charges offered an explanation.

At the next landing, two hundred steps or more below the door, the corridor broke off into three directions. One corridor was of worked stone, while the other two were either natural caves or rough-cut mines. Dor’crae hesitated at what seemed the obvious choice—the carefully-worked corridor.

“We’re close,” he assured his companions.

“Listen,” Jarlaxle bade them, and he tilted his head.

“Don’t hear nothing,” Athrogate replied.

“I do,” Dahlia said. “Furnaces. The forge, far below.”

“Get us there,” the dwarf demanded of Dor’crae. “The Forge of Gauntlgrym.…”

Despite his reservations about the direction, the vampire led them along the worked tunnel, which brought them to wider chambers and longer tunnels still. But more importantly, it brought them through a closed door and into a gray and impenetrable veil of steam.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Athrogate asked

Jarlaxle held his glowing sword up in front of him, and even tried shifting the hue of the light, but to no avail. All it did was reflect back in his eyes. He moved to the side of the room, found another door, and pushed through, but all the rooms seemed similarly filled with opaque mist, and worse, they discovered that the steam was beginning to sweep out into the corridors they’d left behind.

“This is not the way,” Dor’crae decided, and led them back the way they’d come, closing the doors behind them as they went. After a long while they at last returned to the three-way intersection, and Dor’crae pointed to one of the more natural tunnels, which seemed to go in the right direction.

“I thought ye scouted it,” Athrogate grumbled at him.

“I couldn’t have gotten to the forge and back in so short a time if I walked,” the vampire retorted.

“Oh, but that’s a smart reply,” said the dwarf. “I’m likin’ ye less and less, and soon enough to be needin’ ye less and less, if ye get me meanin’.”

Jarlaxle noticed Dahlia looking at him as if asking him to intervene, but the drow found the whole affair quite amusing, and wouldn’t much regret the destruction of a vampire, so he just smiled back at her.

The tunnel wound on but didn’t seem to be descending. They passed many side corridors and the place soon became a maze.

“Perhaps we should camp again and let Dor’crae sort it out,” Dahlia offered, but Athrogate just rambled along.

She was about to repeat that suggestion when the dwarf called out, and when the others caught up to him, they found him standing in front of another amazing mithral door, this one perfectly dwarf-sized, and with no apparent handle.

Athrogate repeated the Delzoun rhyme that had opened the great front gates of the complex, and again it worked, the ancient door gliding open with not a whisper of sound.

They heard the furnaces of Gauntlgrym then—angry, grumbling fires—though Jarlaxle had no idea how the furnaces could still be burning. Beyond the portal, a narrow stair wound downward. It wasn’t as pitch dark as before, but flashed with the orange-red glow of some distant fire.

Athrogate didn’t hesitate, hustling along the stair, moving down at such a pace that the others, except for Dor’crae, had to run to keep up.