Archmage (22 page)

Movement behind him and to his right almost had him sending Vidrinath out on a sweeping backhand, for only at the last moment did he realize that it was Doum’wielle, come to join him.

To join him and even step past him, her free arm held in tight, her tunic smoking still.

Without hesitation, the elf struck, but not at a kobold. Khazid’hea cleaved the stalactite several feet up from its dripping end.

Doum’wielle leaped back, as did Tiago, their elf reflexes saving them as a flood of red lava dropped from the opening, striking the ground and splashing all over, stinging and burning kobold legs and sending the two remaining creatures leaping away, howling in agony.

Both went for the open door in the back, but the one coming from the left tripped over the feet of the other, quicker creature, and down it stumbled right into the splashing lava.

How it shrieked! How it spasmed, with superheated, molten rock grabbing at it, biting at it, melting it . . .

From the opening came a volley of grenades, but Doum’wielle was behind Tiago now, and Tiago behind his shield, the magnificent Orbbcress defeating the jarring and explosive barrage.

Out through the oval went the pair, back into the hallway where they sprinted back the way they had come. In the days they had been in Gauntlgrym, this had been their first encounter with the kobolds, and they hoped it would be their last.

“Clever,” Doum’wielle said through a grimace when they had put the enemy far behind. She lifted her left arm from her side and inspected an angry welt and blister where a drop of lava had bit her.

“Too clever,” Tiago spat, openly on edge—for he was not used to being chased off by kobolds. “The drow of Q’Xorlarrin have trained them as an upper guard, no doubt, and taught them well.”

“You are drow,” Doum’wielle reminded him.

“They saw you,” Tiago accused. “Were you not with me—”

“You would have faced a dozen lava bombs from the doorway,” Doum’wielle interrupted.

The two stared at each other for a long while, and it crossed Tiago’s mind more than once to cut the impertinent elf down where she stood. He held his strike, though, and his temper, for he couldn’t deny, to himself at least, that Doum’wielle’s clever trick with the stalactite had broken them free of the ambush.

Nor could he deny, again to himself, that without Doum’wielle’s trick, they would not have survived that assault.

Against kobolds.

More than once, Tiago glanced back in the direction of that chamber. He wanted to believe his own words that Matron Mother Zeerith’s soldiers had trained the beasts, but he knew that was not the truth. These kobolds, wretched little creatures though they were, had found harmony with the mountain and the under-chambers—enough so to effectively use the blood of the primordial as a weapon.

Tiago had to remember that.

He glanced about curiously. He had expected Drizzt to come forth to scout for the dwarves, but so far, that had not happened. From his own scouting, it seemed to him that the dwarves were being very cautious, fortifying every inch of ground they had secured.

Or perhaps that would end with the grand entry cavern and the throne room, and once those positions were secured, the dwarves would come forth, and once the dwarves moved along, Drizzt would come forth.

Tiago had to be ready for that, doubly now, for he suspected that if he wanted the kill, he would have to find the ranger before the kobolds did.

Kobolds!

Tiago shook his head and again glanced in the direction of the nowdistant ambush chamber. He had never known kobolds to be so clever and industrious.

The chasm called the Clawrift, which split the grand cavern of Menzoberranzan, housed tens of thousands of kobolds, perhaps hundreds of thousands.

Tiago blew a deep sigh, visibly shaken.

They knew a fight was coming. Indeed, they were going to start one! And so Bruenor and the other kings decided that they could not delay the Rite of Fealty. This would bring the dwarves closer together, a bonded force marching in unison.

Bruenor stood at the end of the receiving line, with Emerus first, Connerad to his left, and Bruenor to Connerad’s left, all three facing the Throne of the Dwarf Gods. Bruenor held his breath a bit as the first of the dwarves not of royal blood stepped up to the throne. Fittingly, and unanimously approved by the trio, Ragged Dain would be the first.

He moved up to the throne, turned and bowed respectfully to the three kings, closed his eyes, and sat down. Immediately his eyes opened, but the throne did not reject him or wound him, as Bruenor knew it could.

Ragged Dain remained seated for only a few heartbeats, then hopped off and moved down to kneel before King Emerus.

“Ar tariseachd, na daoine de a bheil mise, ar righ,”
he said reverently, ancient Delzoun for “Me dying fealty, me kith’n kin, me king.”

Emerus placed his hand on Ragged Dain’s head with genuine affection. The two had been close for more than a century. Then the king nodded and released his hand, and Ragged Dain rose, accepted a kiss on the check from Emerus, and stepped over to kneel before King Connerad.

He repeated his words, and Connerad did as Emerus had done, accepting the fealty, not to himself, but to kith and kin, to Gauntlgrym and the dwarves—all the dwarves—assembled in her halls.

On to Bruenor went Ragged Dain, and it was repeated a third time, and at the end, Bruenor, on sudden impulse, reached behind his shield and brought forth a flagon of ale and handed it to Ragged Dain, waggling a finger to indicate that he should not drink it at that time.

The second dwarf, Oretheo Spikes, was already at King Connerad by then, with the third, Bungalow Thump, kneeling before King Emerus.

And so it went, one after another in fast order, and all walked off to the side with a flagon of Bruenor’s ale in hand—there seemed to be no limit to the shield’s production this day!

It went on for hour after hour. At the very back of the line, still outside the entryway, Athrogate and Amber fidgeted nervously. Would the throne accept them? Both had committed crimes against their previous kings, Athrogate in Citadel Felbarr, Amber in Citadel Adbar. Would the dwarf gods forgive them, or reject them?

Four hours passed, five hours, then six and they were in the throne room, though still in the back of a long and winding line. Athrogate caught Bruenor’s eye, and the dwarf king smiled at him and nodded confidently.

Another hour passed, and now there were only a few score ahead of the couple, with near to five thousand others filling the large hall, many singing softly and using words that those still in line, who had not sat upon the throne, could not begin to understand.

Athrogate lost himself in that song, trying to make sense of it, and so distracted was he that he was caught by surprise when Amber tugged on his sleeve and said, “Here I go, then.”

He held his breath as this woman he had come to love moved up to the throne. She bowed to the kings, added a shrug to Bruenor, then took her seat.

With a wide smile and tears flowing from her eyes, Amber Gristle O’Maul of the Adbar O’Mauls hopped back up and verily ran to kneel before King Emerus.

That left Athrogate standing alone in front of the throne, the eyes of all upon him. He bowed to the kings, accepted Bruenor’s nod . . .

But still he hesitated.

Athrogate allowed himself a deep sigh. Many of those nearest stopped singing and stared. They wouldn’t take him, he knew in his heart. Too far had he strayed. He shook his hairy head and looked at Amber, now holding her flagon, and his tears fell thicker than hers.

Tears of regret.

Tears for a life that had not been lived as well as it should have.

The great hall was silent, not a whisper to be heard. Athrogate looked around at the thousands of faces, and one by one, they began to nod. At the back of the hall, near the exit to the tunnels, he noted Drizzt and Catti-brie, the two beaming at him with wide smiles.

“Suidh!”
one called, then another, then all of them.

“Suidh! Suidh!”
and Athrogate understood that they were telling him to sit. But not to judge him, he realized, but rather to welcome him.

So he sat upon the throne.

He was not thrown free.

And he heard the language and then knew their song, and knew, too, that he was kith’n kin.

To the side of Tiago, not far away and nursing her wounded arm, Doum’wielle did not miss the noble Baenre’s expression of dismay—nor did her sentient sword, which had guided her to strike the stalactite and had warned her to offer a quick retreat after she had.

She watched Tiago’s face go through a range of expressions, anger to trepidation to frustration. She understood that he feared for Drizzt’s life more than he feared that she would be killed by kobolds.

Nothing else seemed to matter to that one.

Drizzt is Tiago’s way of ascendance in the hierarchy of Menzoberranzan,
Khazid’hea explained to her.
He envisions no other journey to lift him from the lower environs, where drow males reside.

“Even as a noble,” Doum’wielle whispered, shaking her head in disbelief, and Khazid’hea affirmed that.

I will be stealing his dream from him,
Doum’wielle imparted to the sword, given their plans.

You will be saving yourself from a life of slavery and brutality,
the sword reminded her.

Doum’wielle nodded in agreement, and her eyes narrowed as she stared back at Tiago, silently scolding herself for even thinking of allowing any hint of sympathy toward her brutal rapist.

The trophy of Drizzt would be all the sweeter knowing the gain to her, and indeed, knowing the cost to Tiago.

“Lock!” came the command of General Connerad Brawnanvil, and the ten dwarves leading the square down the wide corridor interlocked their great shields, forming a solid wall of metal.

And not a moment too soon, for even as the shields clanged into place, the first bombs began to rain down upon them from the darkness down the corridor.

“Double-step, boys!” yelled Bruenor, in the middle of the second rank. Beside him, Drizzt popped up tall, above the shield line, and let fly an arrow that lit up the corridor the length of its travels, albeit briefly— long enough to reveal the horde of kobolds lifting these exploding rocks from a pile, though there was one less monster grenadier when the arrow found its mark.

Drizzt was fast down in a crouch beside Catti-brie.

“Too many,” he started to say, but he noted that the woman wasn’t listening to him. She moved with her eyes closed, her hand on the shoulder of Ambergris to her other side. She was whispering, but Drizzt could not make out the words, and could not discern to whom she was speaking.

“Charge!” Connerad ordered, and the front rank ran off as one, only gradually decoupling their cleverly designed shields.

Up tall again, Drizzt paced about the second rank while firing off a line of silvery death.

The corridor lit up then in a light more profound than any Drizzt’s arrows might achieve, as a wall of rock bombs hurtled down upon the dwarves, smashing against shields and exploding, one after another, with tremendous force.

“Bah!” cried Athrogate, to the other side of Ambergris, when the shield dwarf in front of him was knocked flat and the lava splattered back over Athrogate to strike the dwarves behind him.

Before the bending Athrogate could help the shield dwarf back up, another grenade crashed in just in front of the fallen dwarf’s feet, the splash reaching up at his feet and legs—and how he howled.

“Come on, then!” Athrogate yelled, sending his morningstars into a spin and leaping over the shield dwarf to spur the others forward.

But a second barrage had them all backing and ducking beneath nowdented shields—blockers that dripped with molten lava!

Then came the greatest kobold trap of all, as the ceiling above the front lines of the dwarves cracked open, loosing a river of red liquid stone.

Catti-brie wasn’t hearing Bruenor or Athrogate, or even the grunts and cries of the dwarves in the front line. Her focus remained solely on the ring she wore on her right hand, the Ring of Elemental Power that Drizzt had taken from a drow wizard, Brack’thal Xorlarrin, and then given to her.

She knew these lines of lava to be an extension of the primordial, sending its tendrils far and wide, relishing in the momentary freedom from the water elementals trapping it, a little bit at least. She sensed no kinship from the great and godlike being toward the kobolds, just a measure of acceptance that they would allow the lifeblood lava to drip, drip, drip. For that was the purpose and calling of the primordial, to throw its molten heat far and wide, to consume with liquefied stone. To burn, as the Elemental Plane of Fire itself burned.

Catti-brie felt the flow of lava as surely as she could feel the pulse in her own arm. She sensed it and understood it, and felt it keenly as it pooled in the ceiling just above her and the others.

And so when the ceiling cracked open, Catti-brie was ready for it. The spell came to her lips in an instant. Blue mist encircled her arms, and blasts of water burst from her staff and sprayed upward to intercept the lava. Instead of an immolating, fiery death raining upon her and the dwarves, there came a tumble of hot stones that bounced off helmets and upraised shields. Catti-brie blocked one, painfully, with her upraised forearm, and felt herself stumbling. But Drizzt had her, tugging her along, and then Athrogate barreled into her, shoving the whole pile back, back.

“To the throne room!” General Connerad ordered, and the dwarves methodically and efficiently pivoted and rushed back the way they had come.

Not all of them, though. Catti-brie grabbed Bruenor by the arm and held him, then pulled back against Drizzt’s incessant tug.

“Let’s go, girl. Too many!” Bruenor said to her.

“Only because of their trick,” Catti-brie argued.

“Aye, and a stinging one!”

“No more,” the woman insisted.

“What d’ye know, girl?” Bruenor asked, but Catti-brie was already turning away from him and twisting aside from the driving Athrogate, who fell forward on his face, grunted, and hopped back to his feet.