Gauntlgrym (28 page)

Watching the mountain break apart reminded him of when Catti-brie had lifted her sand-covered legs. The stones in the distance seemed to come apart like beach sand, but revealing lines of angry red lava instead of the smooth flesh of Catti-brie’s calf.

Strangely silent for many heartbeats, the lifting mountain expanded and stretched, twisting and blending with the heavy cloud into a weird shape, like the neck and head of a bird.

Only then did Drizzt realize that the silence was only because the shockwave, the devastating wall of sound, hadn’t yet reached him. He saw trees in the far distance falling over toward him, falling over away from the mountain.

Then the ground beneath his feet lurched and rolled, and the sound of a hundred roaring dragons had him falling aside and covering his ears. He caught one last glimpse of the volcano as the mountain stone tumbled down, a wall of stone and ash many times taller than the tallest tree, running madly for the ocean, burying and burning everything in its path.

“By the gods,” Herzgo Alegni whispered.

The mountain leaped, tumbled, and had begun to roll at tremendous speed, devouring everything in its path.

And its path led directly for Neverwinter.

“The end of the world,” Barrabus the Gray whispered, and those words from that man, so out of place, so hyperbolic and yet so … inadequate, spoke volumes to them both.

“I go,” Alegni announced just moments later. He looked at Barrabus and shrugged. “Farewell.”

And Herzgo Alegni stepped into the Shadow Fringe, leaving Barrabus alone on the bridge.

Alone, but not for long, for the folk of Neverwinter saw their doom then and took to the streets, running and screaming, crying and calling for loved ones.

Barrabus watched people rush into buildings, but one look at the coming avalanche of fiery rock and it was clear the waddle and daub buildings of Neverwinter would provide no shelter.

Where could he run? How could he possibly escape?

The assassin looked to the water, naturally, and thought for just a moment of leaping into the river to swim for the sea. But when he glanced back the other way, he saw that the mountain was almost upon him, and there, in the river, lay certain doom.

Huge, fiery stones began raining down around him, splashing into the river, shattering houses.

What could survive?

Barrabus the Gray went over the side of the bridge, but didn’t jump or fall. He climbed right under it and tucked himself into the iron substructure.

Around him the screams of the Neverwintan increased in pitch and magnitude, until the roar of a hundred dragons drowned them out. Then came the crunching explosions of more buildings being shattered, the splash of water, and the hiss of protest as the hot flow swept over the river.

Barrabus shielded himself as much as he could, not even daring to look as the flow rushed beneath him, nearly reaching him. He felt the intense heat, as if he was sitting with his face inches from the hot fires of a blacksmith’s oven. The bridge shook, and he thought it would surely crumble to pieces and drop
him to his death.

On and on it went, the thunder and fire, the falling fireballs, the ultimate devastation of an entire city.

Then, as instantly as the first wave of sound had roared in his ears, there was silence.

A dead, muted silence.

Not a scream, not a groan, not a wail. A bit of wind, but nothing more.

After a long while, an hour or more, Barrabus the Gray dared crawl out from under the Herzgo Alegni Bridge. He had to put his cloak over his face as a filter against the burning ash that permeated the air.

Everything was gray and deep, and dead.

Neverwinter was dead.

The fights are increasing and it pleases me.

The world around me has grown darker, more dangerous … and it pleases me.

I have just passed a period of my life most adventurous and yet, strangely, most peaceful, where Bruenor and I have climbed through a hundred hundred tunnels and traveled as deep into the Underdark as I have been since my last return to Menzoberranzan. We found our battles of course, mostly with the oversized vermin that inhabit such places, a few skirmishes with goblins and orcs, a trio of trolls here, a clan of ogres there. Never was there any sustained battle, though, never anything to truly test my blades, and indeed, the most perilous day I have known since our departure from Mithral Hall those many years ago was when an earthquake threatened to bury us in some tunnels.

But no more is that the case, I find, and it pleases me. Since that day of cataclysm, a decade ago, when the volcano roared forth and painted a line of devastation from the mountain all the way to the sea, burying Neverwinter in its devastating run, the tone of the region has changed. It is almost as if that one event had sent forth a call for conflict, a clarion call for sinister beings.

In a sense, it did just that. The loss of Neverwinter in essence severed the North from the more civilized regions along the Sword Coast, where Waterdeep has now become the vanguard against the wilderness. Traders no longer travel through the region, except by sea, and the lure of Neverwinter’s former treasures has pulled adventurers—often unsavory, often unprincipled—in great numbers to the devastated city.

Some are trying to rebuild, desperate to restore the busy port and the order it once imposed upon these inhospitable lands. But they battle as much as they build. They carry a carpenter’s hammer in one hand, a warhammer in the other.

Enemies abound: Shadovar, those strange cultists sworn to a devil god, opportunistic highwaymen, goblinkin, giants, and monsters alive and undead. And other things, darker things from deeper holes.

In the years since the cataclysm, the northern Sword Coast has grown darker by far.

And it pleases me.

When I am in battle, I am free. When my blades cut low a scion of evil, only then do I feel as if there is purpose to my life. Many times have I
wondered if this rage within is just a reflection of a heritage I have never truly shaken. The focus of battle, the intensity of the fight, the satisfaction of victory … are they all merely an admission that I am, after all, drow?

And if that is the truth, then what did I actually know about my homeland and my people, and what did I merely paste onto a caricature I had created of a society whose roots lay in passion and lust I had not yet begun to understand or experience?

Was there, I wonder—and I fear—some deeper wisdom to the Matron Mothers of Menzoberranzan, some understanding of drow joy and need that perpetuated the state of conflict in the drow city?

It seems a ridiculous thought, and yet only through battle have I endured the pain. Only through battle have I found again a sense of accomplishment, of forward movement, of bettering community.

This truth surprises me, angers me, and paradoxically, even as it offers me hope to continue, it hints at some notion that perhaps I should not, that this existence is only a futile thing, after all, a mirage, a self-delusion.

Like Bruenor’s quest.

I doubt he’ll find Gauntlgrym, I doubt it exists and I doubt that he believes he’ll find it, either, or that he ever believed he would find it. And yet every day he pores over his collection of maps and clues, and leaves no hole unexplored. It is his purpose. The search gives meaning to the life of Bruenor Battlehammer. Indeed, it seems the nature of the dwarf, and of the dwarves in general, who are always talking of things gone by and reclaiming the glory that once was.

What is the nature of the drow, then?

Even before I lost her, my love Catti-brie, and my dear halfling friend, I knew that I was no creature of calm and respite. I knew my nature was that of the warrior. I knew I was happiest when adventure and battle summoned me forth, demanding of those skills I had spent my entire life perfecting.

I relish it more now—is that because of my pain and loss, or is it merely a truer reflection of my heritage?

And if that is the case, will the cause of battle widen, will the code that guides my scimitars weaken to accommodate more moments of joy? At what point, I wonder—and I fear—does my desire for battle, that which is in my heart, interfere with that which is in my conscience? Is it easier now to justify drawing my blades?

That is my true fear, that this rage within me will come forth in all its madness—explosively, randomly, murderously.

My fear?

Or my hope?

—Drizzt Do’Urden

BATTLING THE DARKNESS

H
ERE THEY COME
! O
H, BE BRAVE BOYS AND HOLD THE TEAMS!” THE CARAVAN
boss cried out to the men and women crouched in and around the wagons, weapons in hand. Off to the side of the road, the thicket shook with the approaching storm of enemies.

“Scrabblers,” one man said, his nickname for the agile and swift undead humanoids that had infested the region.

“Dustwalkers,” corrected another, and that name seemed equally fitting, for those marauders, undead monsters, left rails of gray powder in their wake, as if every step they took was their first out of the ashes of a burned out hearth—and indeed, the rumors said that the monsters were the animated corpses of those who had been buried beneath the volcanic ash a decade before.

“Guard!” the boss called out after a few more tense moments passed, without any clear sight of the enemy. “Go and scout the tree line.”

The hired guard, a stocky old dwarf with a beard of silver and orange, a shield emblazoned with the crest of the foaming mug, a many-notched axe, and a one-horned helmet, turned a wary eye on the leader.

The man swallowed hard under that withering gaze, but to his credit, managed to summon enough courage to once again motion toward the trees.

“I telled ye when ye hired me,” the dwarf warned. “Ye might be telling me what to fight, but ye ain’t telling me how to fight.”

“We cannot just sit here while they plot!”

“Plot?” the dwarf echoed with a belly laugh. “They’re dumb dead, ye dolt. They ain’t plottin’.”

“Then where are they?” another man cried, who seemed on the verge of desperation.

“Maybe they aren’t out there. Maybe it’s just the wind,” said a woman from a wagon near the back.

“Ye all ready for a fight?” the dwarf asked. “Ye got yer weapons in hand?” He looked at the boss, who stood tall, scanned the five wagons, and nodded.

Bruenor stood up, stuck his thumbs in this mouth, and blew a loud whistle.

Everyone but the dwarf reflexively ducked then as a shot of lightning creased the air to the side of the caravan, emanating from somewhere behind and streaking horizontally across the way to disappear into the trees. A horrid shriek came back, and a rustle of branches.