Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(90)

The two drow locked stares then, each trying to scrutinize the other, each seemingly trying to make sense out of the nonsensical.

“Can coin unwind time?” Drizzt whispered.

Jarlaxle’s gaze became the more judgmental, a look of frustration and disappointment, even anger on his face—one that only heightened as Drizzt remained so stoic and unblinking.

“Damned bird’s chasin’ ’em right to the docks and into the water!” Athrogate announced then, breaking the moment. The two turned to see the dwarf bobbing up beside Bruenor at the Cutlass’s door.

“Come,” Jarlaxle bade them all. “We have much to discuss.”

He snapped his wrists up instead of down, and his swords became daggers, which he flipped up into the air. They hit the ceiling and stuck fast.

“What about her?” Bruenor asked, motioning to the blob on the wall.

“We shall see,” Jarlaxle replied.

With Athrogate leading, the four rushed away, sprinting down the street and turning into an alley. The shouts and calls of guards soon followed them. Jarlaxle flipped a portable hole from his hat and flattened it against the wall at the alley’s end.

Athrogate jumped through, and when Bruenor hesitated, the other dwarf reached back from the blackness, grabbed him by the shirt, and yanked him through as well. Drizzt jumped nimbly through after his friend, with Jarlaxle following, and from the other side, he pulled the hole from the wall, leaving it impassable, as it had been before.

So ended the pursuit, but the four kept up a swift, though not desperate pace back to Jarlaxle’s apartment.

“Ye give me back me maps!” Bruenor insisted as they came to the door.

Just inside the small but lavishly furnished flat, Jarlaxle reached to a side table and tossed Bruenor his stolen pack.

“All but one are in there,” Jarlaxle explained. “Perhaps they will lead to great treasures and mysterious places—adventures for another day.”

“All but one?” Bruenor growled.

“All but this one, good dwarf,” the drow explained, reaching into a drawer and producing a tightly rolled and tied parchment. “This one, which will lead to that which you most desire. Yes, King Bruenor, I speak of Gauntlgrym. I have been there, and though I cannot retrace my steps since the explosion collapsed the tunnels, I know where Gauntlgrym lies.” He brought the map up in front of him. “And this is the way.”

Bruenor fumbled for words. He looked to Drizzt, who just returned his shrug with a like movement.

The dwarf king looked back to Jarlaxle, licking his lips, which had gone dry. “I’m not for playin’ yer games on this,” he warned.

“No game,” Jarlaxle replied in all seriousness. “Gauntlgrym.”

“Gauntlgrym,” Athrogate said from the side, and Bruenor turned to regard him. “I been there. I seen the forge. I seen the throne. I seen the ghosts.”

That last proclamation had Bruenor, who had so recently met those very ghosts, sucking in his breath in a futile attempt to steady himself.

Drizzt looked at Bruenor with a look of some satisfaction then, but also an unsettling detachment.

Jarlaxle didn’t miss that last part, and he found to his surprise that it bothered him profoundly.





DESPERATE TIME, DESPERATE PLAN


BRUENOR ALMOST DISAPPEARED INTO THE OVERSTUFFED CHAIR, HAVING sunk just a bit deeper with Jarlaxle’s every word. The drow explained his plan to retake Gauntlgrym, and if Bruenor had thought it a daunting task in the abstract, it sounded positively horrifying in plain language.

“So the beast didn’t let the volcano blow,” Bruenor said, his voice barely a whisper. “The beast is the volcano?” He looked at Drizzt as he asked that question, remembering their flippant discussions about stopping a volcano.

“A primordial of fire, as old as the gods,” Jarlaxle replied.

“And as strong,” said Bruenor, but Jarlaxle shook his head.

“But without a god’s mind. It is catastrophe, devoid of malice. It is power, without intellect.”

“It won’t raise an army of fanatical cultists,” Drizzt added.

Jarlaxle’s expression on that point was less than reassuring.

Bruenor glanced over at the table that held the magical bowls they were to use to summon the water elementals, bowls they hoped would hold the monsters long enough for them to re-open the tendrils of the Hosttower of the Arcane, thus setting the old cage back in place. Bowls they had to place precisely, though they knew not precisely where.…

“King Bruenor, it is an adventure!” Jarlaxle said, excited, bouncing from foot to foot. “King Bruenor, this is the way to Gauntlgrym! The real Gauntlgrym! Is that not what you sought when you abdicated the throne of Mithral Hall?”

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted and waved the drow away.

Jarlaxle grinned and tossed a wink at Drizzt. “We may have more options, more allies,” he said, taking up his wide-brimmed hat and plopping it on his head. “I will return presently.”

And with that, he was gone, leaving the three of them sitting in the apartment.

“Ye needed me maps,” Bruenor said to Athrogate.

The black-bearded dwarf shrugged and nodded. “The tunnels we walked to Gauntlgrym collapsed. Can’t go back that way.”

Bruenor turned a concerned look to Drizzt.