“A simple no would have sufficed.”
“Jarlaxle doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“Hmm,” the mercenary leader snorted, and he shrugged, tipped his hat in concession, and walked away, muttering as he made his way through the haunted corridors of Illusk.
Now he knew, without doubt, that Gromph blamed Kimmuriel for Demogorgon. “Ah, my tentacle-loving friend, what have you done?” Jarlaxle asked himself, but the question carried back no answers in its echoes.
The primordial chamber had been fully redone in the time Drizzt and Catti-brie had been away from Gauntlgrym. The altar block used by Matron Mother Zeerith had been efficiently removed by a team of dwarves, Bruenor centering them, who had merely pushed it into the pit to be devoured by the primordial beast. The webs were gone, the giant jade spiders rudely dismantled, and jade jewelry was all the rage in Gauntlgrym.
Another table, more a bathtub, rested where the drow altar had been, this one bound in mithral as if it were some altar for Bruenor’s homeland—though, of course, any altar shaped like a bathtub seemed out of place in a dwarven chapel. Still, in a sense, it was just that. The metal tub had been placed there for the most reverent and somber of circumstances: to commit the dead to their unique coffins.
Below the tub, the dwarves had dug a narrow tunnel. Using a mithral drill and crank, they had driven the channel deep into the stone, angling it toward the primordial pit, where it had broken out just below the swirl of the water elementals. Heavy plugs had been bolted into place—the primordial would not get up through this shaft unless called upon.
They laid Thibbledorf Pwent out to rest in that bowl and Catti-brie began her work, covering Pwent in the special shroud, one heavy with metals that would strengthen the lava. Her assistant dwarves removed the tunnel plug and the priestess reached through her ring to coax the beast forth.
The process would take a full day of labor, bringing forth a bit of lava, magically easing it into place, and then summoning the next molten spurt. It was painstaking and heavy work, but Catti-brie did not tire and paid attention to every last detail. This was Pwent, once her friend, and dear to her Da, and she considered this work to be as much a piece of art as a sarcophagus.
“Have you told him yet?” a voice asked late in the day, startling her when she thought she was alone.
She spun to see Jarlaxle standing in front of her.
“I apologize for surprising you,” the mercenary leader said, bowing low. He walked over and peered into the tub. “It is beautiful, a fitting tribute to a most heroic dwarf.”
Catti-brie’s first instinct was to snap at the uninvited drow—what would he know of Thibbledorf Pwent’s true heroism, after all? But she bit it back and reminded herself that Jarlaxle had been a major player in the fight in Gauntlgrym those decades ago when Pwent had fallen to his state of undeath. The mercenary drow and his dwarf companion Athrogate had come into Gauntlgrym with Bruenor and Drizzt to put the primordial back in its pit. Jarlaxle had witnessed the fight when Pwent and Bruenor had defeated not only a pit fiend, but the vampire that had ultimately infected Pwent.
Jarlaxle had been a hero to Bruenor that day, no doubt.
“How did you find me? How did you get in here?” Catti-brie asked, but not sharply. She glanced about, her gaze settling on the lava-filled antechamber across the way, where Archmage Gromph had set up his teleportation room.
“I have a friend who told me where to find you,” Jarlaxle replied. “He let me in.”
“Drizzt?”
“Shorter,” the drow replied, winking the eye that was not covered by a patch.
“Athrogate,” Catti-brie said, shaking her head. “Athrogate was supposed to be putting Bruenor ahead of you. So it’s not to be, then? Me Da will be interested in that bit of news, now won’t he?”
“Pray don’t tell him. Athrogate understood my purpose and so he thought allowing me in here to be the best course in serving King Bruenor’s interests, given the current situation.”
Catti-brie nodded for him to continue.
“You haven’t told King Bruenor?”
The woman sighed. “It is not so easy a thing, to tell a dwarf king that his newly reclaimed kingdom will soon be destroyed.”
“Then perhaps we should not allow that to happen.”
“It is daunting,” the woman admitted.
“You have Gromph Baenre.”
“Archmage Gromph, the Harpells, my own powers . . . will any of it, will all of it, be nearly enough? The Hosttower was physically obliterated, and its magic is older than any living memory.”
“That is not necessarily true,” Jarlaxle replied. “And I have a few more avenues we may search to find greater clues. Life is daunting, my dear girl, but it is also wondrous, is it not?”
Catti-brie looked at him incredulously.
“Yes, I am in a fine mood,” Jarlaxle added. “And believe me, your course is not the most daunting before me right now, nor the most dangerous.”
“Perhaps you should find a place to rest.”
“Perhaps I love the adventure.”
“And the danger?”
Jarlaxle smiled.
“Do you mean to be beside me when I tell King Bruenor?” Catti-brie asked. “If you would allow it.”
“I would welcome it.”
Jarlaxle’s smile was genuine. In that moment it occurred to them both that there was nothing out of place with Jarlaxle being allowed unescorted into this room. He was indeed a friend of the king—and of them all.
“Let me gather the dwarves so they can bring Pwent to his resting place in the audience chamber,” Catti-brie said. “They have to place him and properly pose him before the stone hardens fully.”
“First, though, I believe our black-bearded friend awaits you beside the Great Forge,” Jarlaxle said. “He said that he has something for you, and more importantly, that you have something for him.”
Catti-brie nodded and grinned and moved over to her pack, producing a heavy leather girdle that Jarlaxle had seen before—and with recognition, the mercenary drow’s eyes widened indeed.
“His belt?”
“Athrogate let me borrow it these last tendays,” the woman explained.
“You had something heavy to lift?” Jarlaxle quipped. He understood the magic of that belt, which offered great physical strength to the wearer.
“To study it in Luskan,” Catti-brie replied with a laugh.
Jarlaxle shook his head, hardly believing the sight in front of his eyes.
“He said he was a friend of King Bruenor’s, loyal to the last,” Cattibrie reminded. “He took the oath of kith’n kin more solemnly than any, so the whispers say.”
“You mean to make such a girdle for Bruenor?” the mercenary asked. “You are capable of making such a girdle?” Clear excitement filled Jarlaxle’s voice with that second question, as if he were seeing some real possibilities.
But Catti-brie laughed those away. “Someday, perhaps,” she said. “But no, a girdle of this quality is rare and filled with an older magic I fear broken by the Spellplague.”
“The Spellplague is gone.”
“But the Weave is not fully regained, and the Art of the time before is . . . well, this is our trial in trying to rebuild the Hosttower.”
Jarlaxle conceded that and preceded Catti-brie into the Forge room, where Athrogate stood waiting by the Great Forge of Gauntlgrym.
How his face brightened when Catti-brie handed him back his magical girdle, which he wasted no time in securing about his ample waist.
“And for me?” Catti-brie asked.
“Already in the oven,” the dwarf explained. “Ye got yer spells ready?”
Catti-brie nodded and motioned to the glowing oven, and Athrogate gathered up his tongs, set the heavy leather apron over his head, and leaned in.
Jarlaxle watched it all from behind, and his curiosity only heightened when the dwarf pulled forth, and quickly dipped in the water trough, a mithral piece, octagonal and about the size of Jarlaxle’s palm.
Athrogate drew it back out and held it up in front of Catti-brie’s eyes, the woman already deep in spellcasting. A blue mist curled out of the sleeves of her multicolored, shimmering blouse.
Jarlaxle edged closer, trying to get a better look. “A belt buckle?” he whispered under his breath. He noted a carving on its face of a bow, and one that looked like a tiny image of Taulmaril the Heartseeker, once Catti-brie’s bow, but now carried by Drizzt.
Catti-brie finished her spell and raised her hand to touch the item, and when she did a blue spark burst forth, sizzling in the air, and the woman fell back.
“Supposed to do that, is it?” Athrogate asked.
“I hope,” Catti-brie said with a laugh. She bit it back quickly, though, and turned to Jarlaxle. “If you tell him, you and I will have a problem,” she warned.
“Tell him? Tell who? And tell him what?”
The woman smiled and nodded. “Good,” she said, and took the buckle from Athrogate and dropped it into her pouch.
“Did you get the rest?”
“The blood? Aye. Amber’s got it. She’ll get it to ye shortly.”
“The blood?” Jarlaxle asked.
“The less you know, the better the chances that we will remain friends,” Catti-brie pointedly told him. She pointed to the other end of the room, where the solemn procession of dwarves had begun. The trio fell in with them as they made their way to the highest level of the complex. They found Drizzt in the throne room, then went with him to find King Bruenor in his upper war room, not far away. He was meeting with Ragged Dain, Oretheo Spikes, the Fellhammer sisters, and the other dwarf commanders around a table set with a detailed map of the complex. “Ah, time for a ceremony, then,” Bruenor said upon seeing them.
Catti-brie held up her hand. “Not just yet, me Da,” she replied. “Might we be speakin’ with ye?”
Bruenor glanced all around and nodded. “Aye.”
“Alone?” Catti-brie asked.
Bruenor glanced around again. “It is about the hall, then?”
The woman nodded.
“Then here and now,” Bruenor said, motioning for the other dwarves to rest easy. “Any word o’ the hall is a word for all gathered to hear. We’re four clans in one here, aye?”
“Aye,” said Shuggle Grunions of Mirabar, who led the Mirabarran members of Bruenor’s new kingdom. The others all nodded, as did Catti-brie’s companions. They had to know, after all, and better if they knew before they began emptying the halls of Mirabar, Adbar, Felbarr, and Mithral Hall as more and more flocked to the Delzoun homeland of Gauntlgrym.
“We intend to rebuild the Hosttower of the Arcane in Luskan,” Cattibrie stated.
“Aye, ye been whisperin’ as much,” Bruenor replied.
“Archmage Gromph has agreed to aid us,” Jarlaxle added.
Bruenor didn’t seem overly pleased by that. “Yer city,” he said. “Do what ye will. But be warned, drow, if ye’re thinking o’ rebuilding the tower as part o’ some plan to make me beholden . . .”
“We’re rebuilding it to save Gauntlgrym,” Catti-brie blurted. “Only for that.”
“Eh?” Bruenor and several others all said together.
“The power of the Hosttower brings forth the water elementals,” the woman explained. “Only their combined power keeps the beast in its pit.”
“Aye, and they’re swirling thick in there,” Bruenor replied.
“The residual magic is strong,” Catti-brie explained. “But it is only that, residual. And already it is thinning.”
“What’re ye saying?” Ragged Dain asked breathlessly.
Catti-brie took a deep breath and was glad indeed when Drizzt squeezed her hand. “If we canno’ rebuild the Hosttower and bring forth its magic once more, ye’re not to have many years in Gauntlgrym. The magic will diminish and the water elementals will sweep away.”
“And then the beast is free,” said Drizzt. “And we have seen that before.”
Bruenor grumbled indecipherably. He looked as if he was chewing on a pile of sharp rocks.
“How many years?” he finally asked, and all eyes turned to Catti-brie.
“I do’no know,” she replied. “Less than yer life, to be sure, and suren less than me own.”
“And ye know this?”
“Aye.”
“Because the beast telled ye?”
“More than just that, but aye.”
“And so ye’ll fix the durned tower,” Ragged Dain stated more than asked.
Catti-brie kept looking at Bruenor.
“Well?” the king of Gauntlgrym finally asked her.
“We are going to try, good King Bruenor,” Jarlaxle unexpectedly interjected. “Between your daughter and the Harpells, and all the forces I can muster, we will try.”
“And what’s yer play in this?” Bruenor demanded.
“You know my stake in Luskan. I have not hidden that from you.”
“So ye’re thinkin’ the volcano’d blow that way, are ye?”
“I have no idea, and suspect that Luskan is far enough out of its reach in any event,” Jarlaxle replied. “And no, I’ll not deny that rebuilding the Hosttower will be of great benefit to me, and in part because it will keep you here in Gauntlgrym, and that, good dwarf king, I prefer.”
Bruenor looked for a moment as if he would question that claim, but he rocked back on his heels and let it go with a nod.
“But to do this, we will need your help,” Jarlaxle added. “Send a thousand of your best builders to the City of Sails, I beg, that we can put them to use in physically reconstructing the Hosttower.”
“A thousand?” Bruenor balked.
“We got walls to build here,” Oretheo Spikes protested.
“Aye, and tunnels yet to secure,” added Ragged Dain.
“And to what point might we be doin’ that if the damned volcano’s to blow?” Mallabritches Fellhammer said above them all, and indeed, that quieted the ruckus before it could gather momentum.
“Ye’re askin’ me to walk a thousand o’ me boys into a city o’ pirates and drow?” Bruenor said.
“I will guarantee their safety, of course. Indeed, I will build barracks and all accommodations right there on Cutlass Island, which cannot be reached by land except by going through Closeguard Island, upon which sits the fortress of High Captain Kurth.”
“Yer boy?”
Jarlaxle confirmed that with a nod.
Bruenor looked around the room, and each dwarf in turn came to nod his or her agreement.
“And we might find that we will need more than a thousand,” Jarlaxle warned.