Now Drizzt did go out to scout as well, moving into the shadows in front of the front line, picking his careful and swift way, but never getting too far in front. As they at last neared the water, the drow, with his keen lowlight vision, thought he spotted a pair of figures slipping in through the open door of Gauntlgrym across the way, but he couldn’t be certain.
“Secure the bank,” Bruenor told them when he, too, came up to the pond’s edge. “And keep yerselves ready. Dark things in here, and in the water, too, not to doubt.”
“Engineers’ll be in tomorrow,” Emerus said quietly to Bruenor. “It’ll be a bit afore we can get a bridge across.”
“And yerself ain’t for waiting?” Bruenor asked, and Emerus shrugged. Bruenor pointed down the bank, where the hollowed cap of a giant mushroom sat in the darkness-the boat Bruenor and his friends had made when they had come in for Thibbledorf Pwent a year before. It was right where they had left it, Bruenor believed, and that seemed a good thing.
“Set a ferry?” Emerus asked.
“Dark things in the water, but aye,” Bruenor replied.
“The Harpells can get many across in short order,” Catti-brie said, moving to join the pair. “Old Kipper is well versed in the art of the dimension door.”
The work began immediately, setting a brigade of archers with crossbows on the bank directly opposite the door, while Catti-brie ran back to fetch Penelope, Kipper, and the other Harpells. Skilled craftsdwarves soon arrived with their tools and logs they had dragged down from the forest above. Within a few hours, as more dwarves swarmed into the huge cavern, the Harpells and Catti-brie erected magical gates, and several score dwarves, including the kings and their bodyguards, stepped through the portals onto the beach across the way.
Work on the ferry began immediately, with beams set in place on both sides of the small pond, turnstiles dug in and secured, and with Penelope Harpell taking magical flight, carrying the heavy rope from one side to the other. While the ferry was being completed, with several more mushroom-cap boats fashioned, dwarf clerics cast magical light onto stones and threw them into the water along the ferry route.
Tightly packed schools of fish flitted from the illumination and hovered in the shadows just beyond the light, and those few adventurers who had been this way before understood the danger of those vicious cave fish. And so the Harpells and Catti-brie stood guard, and whenever one of those schools encroached upon the lighted path, a lightning bolt greeted them and sent them scurrying, or had them floating up to the surface, stunned or even dead.
Strong-shouldered dwarves cranked the turnstiles, and tough warriors carried stones across and set to building defensive walls outside the opened door to the upper hall of Gauntlgrym.
Despite their impatience, prudence ruled the day, and it was many hours before the first team of Gutbusters rushed through the small tunnel and into the great throne room-and that only after Penelope Harpell and Kipper had sent magical disembodied wizard eyes into the chamber to scout in front of them.
At long last, King Bruenor Battlehammer and King Emerus Warcrown and King Connerad Brawnanvil strode side by side into that hallowed chamber. They had come not as explorers, as with Bruenor’s first journey here, in another time and another life. They had come not in desperation, as with Bruenor’s second visit when he sought the council of the dwarf gods, nor to save a friend, as Bruenor and the Companions of the Hall had done to rescue Thibbledorf Pwent.
They had come as conquerors now, heirs to the throne of Delzoun.
Bruenor kept his eyes on Emerus as they walked to the dais down to the right, where sat the Throne of the Dwarf Gods. Bruenor had been here several times, of course, and so he knew what to expect, both with this enchanted and ancient throne he had sat upon before, and with the two graves set not far to the other side of it, the cairns built for himself and for Thibbledorf Pwent when they had both fallen in Gauntlgrym.
He remembered his first journey into this chamber, when he had first come to know for certain that he had indeed found this most ancient Delzoun homeland. He noted the same expression he knew he had worn upon the face of his companion, Emerus, and surely Bruenor understood.
He nodded, and he kept staring at the old King of Citadel Felbarr, and he let Emerus’s sense of wonder and reverence bleed back to him, reminding him again of his own feelings on that first journey to this ancient and hallowed ground.
“That’s the throne?” Emerus asked, his voice shaky.
“Aye, and beyond it’s me own grave, and that o’ Thibbledorf Pwent, me battlerager,” Bruenor answered. “Ye go and put yer bum in the chair, and ye’ll know if yer heart’s pleasing Moradin.”
Ragged Dain came huffing and puffing up to the pair just before they reached the throne.
“When I put me arse in that seat and me heart wasn’t straight with the callings o’ the gods, the chair tossed me almost to the wall,” Bruenor explained. “Ah but ye’ll get yer thoughts sorted out quick enough when ye put yerself in that throne!”
“Can any of us go and sit, then?”
“Royal blood,” Bruenor replied. “So I’m guessin’. Though I’m thinking that any who’ve found the favor o’ Moradin would be welcomed. .”
His voice trailed off when Ragged Dain motioned ahead with his chin, and Bruenor turned to watch King Emerus moving for the seat. Without hesitation, the old king turned and plopped himself down on the throne. He slid back comfortably and placed his hands firmly on the burnished arms, grabbing tightly.
King Emerus closed his eyes. His breath came easy, his shoulders slumped in relaxation, as if all the tension was flowing out of his body.
Ragged Dain put his hand on Bruenor’s shoulder, as much to support himself as to comfort the dwarf he had known as little Arr Arr.
If King Emerus Warcrown’s life had ended at this very moment, he would have died a happy dwarf. Sitting on that throne in these hallowed halls seemed to Emerus to be the crowning achievement of a dwarf life well lived. He felt at peace, more so than ever in his long life, for a sense of divine contentment washed through him.
All of his major life decisions, like abandoning Felbarr to undertake this journey, rolled through him. Not all had been correct, he had learned, sometimes painfully, but he sensed now that the gods of the dwarves, Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin, were satisfied that Emerus Warcrown had made those choices, right and wrong, with good intent and a proper sense of dwarven purpose.
An image of the Forge of Gauntlgrym came clearly to him, as well as one of the small tunnel leading to the antechamber that housed the fire primordial that gave the Forge its supernatural heat and magical energy.
Emerus wore a wide smile, but only until he sensed, or feared, that the throne had shown him that place in his mind’s eye because he would never see it physically.
For he realized then that the dwarves were in for a long and bitter fight here, and that to truly secure Gauntlgrym would likely take them years. Longer than old King Emerus-who felt older now after months on the road-had left to live?
It seemed to Emerus a distinct possibility, but this, too, he accepted, and was content that Moradin and the other gods of his people agreed with his decision to abdicate his throne and journey to this place.
He felt their strength then, in his old and aching bones. And he heard their voices, speaking the old tongue of the dwarves, a language with which Emerus and every other dwarf alive had only cursory knowledge.
Every other dwarf alive except for the one standing in front of Emerus and watching him now, for Bruenor, too, had heard the voices of the ancients, of the gods.