“Are you certain?” Penelope asked breathlessly.
“I can feel it through the stone,” Kipper explained. “Just being near the gate excites the magical energies within the orb.”
“What gate?” asked Drizzt, standing with Catti-brie, and quite confused by the sudden change in the conversation. Penelope and Catti-brie had been chatting easily about the Bidderdoos and Longsaddle’s library, when Kipper had bounded over with his proclamation.
“Gates to connect dwarven homelands,” Catti-brie explained. “There was one here, millennia ago,” Kipper insisted.
“Magical portals?” Drizzt asked. “So that one might walk from Gauntlgrym to Mithral Hall. . instantly?”
“If Mithral Hall had one,” Penelope explained. “And if we’ve the stones to power the portals.” She reached into her own belt pouch, which was apparently one much like Regis had worn, a magical pouch of holding that could carry far more extradimensionally than its size and shape would indicate. She drew forth a large tome, bound in some gray leathery material, and locked with silver chains. “As Cattie-brie and I discussed back in Longsaddle,” Penelope said, “considerable thought should still be put into the wisdom of opening such magical portals anywhere near a city like Gauntlgrym, which is so well-known to the powers of Menzoberranzan.” Cattie-brie nodded gravely, and when her eyes met Drizzt’s he could tell she had decided to proceed.
“Many hints in here about the ancient portals,” Penelope went on, patting the book. “And in the other tomes I’ve brought along."
“I’m surprised you would bring such old and valuable books out of Longsaddle,” Drizzt replied.
“Shared extradimensional space,” Kipper explained. “The books are in a trunk in the Ivy Mansion, but Penelope can access them through her belt pouch. Quite a clever twist on simple bags of holding, don’t you agree?"
“A twist Kipper no doubt perfected,” Catti-brie noted slyly, and the old wizard grinned with pride.
“Well, if you have something like that already, could it not be used as a gate?” Drizzt asked. “Could I not crawl through Penelope’s pouch and out of the chest in your home?”
“No, no!” Kipper said. “This is not nearly powerful enough for such extradimensional walking. And the risks would be too severe, for the connection is not secured. You might fall into the Nine Hells or some other unpleasant place. Or were you to bring another bag of holding along. . well. . if your little friend Regis tried to crawl through, his belt pouch would tear a rift to the Astral Plane and he would be drifting and lost forever!"
“But as you can surmise, Kipper has spent many years mulling over extra dimensions and teleportation and the like,” Penelope said. “We have come to Gauntlgrym out of loyalty to our old friends of Mithral Hall, and loyalty to Bruenor and to yourself, and mostly to our beloved Catti-brie there, who lived among us for so many years. But we have also come with good fortune. The possibility that an ancient dwarven gate remains thrills us. Perhaps we will find it and learn from it. Perhaps we will build portals, even minor portals, to connect Mithral Hall and this reclaimed dwarven hall.”
She looked at Catti-brie and offered a little wink as she added, “Perhaps a door for Catti-brie to easily visit her adoptive father.”
“My hope has now been confirmed,” Kipper said, bringing the conversation back to his original interruption. He looked into the stone of power again. “There is a gate here, and the stone can sense it, and that will make finding it, and perhaps even finding another stone to power it, all the easier!”
Drizzt wasn’t about to play the contrarian, though he shared Penelope’s grave doubts. Perhaps not in the near future, but at some time, surely, the drow would likely find a way to use such a shortcut to attack yet again the Delzoun enclave.
But that was a fear for another day, Drizzt reminded himself. “The dwarves will be securing the cavern and throne room for a few more days,” he told the others. “They will only gradually make their way forward from the throne room to the other chambers of this level.
Wherever that gemstone might take you, Kipper, take care not to strike out beyond our forward perimeter. Gauntlgrym is full of enemies-drow, goblinkin, monstrous, animal, and even magical. You will go looking for your portal, but will more likely find yourself in a desperate fight or flight."
“Agreed, Master Do’Urden,” Kipper replied. “But do prod your friend Bruenor, I beg.” He replaced the stone in his belt pouch and eagerly rubbed his wrinkled old hands together, even giving a small cackle to complete the picture of his giddy energy.
Drizzt was glad of the old wizard’s enthusiasm, but he wasn’t about to ignore the more immediate problem. Penelope had referred to Gauntlgrym as a reclaimed dwarven hall, but it was no such thing. And with a major noble House of Menzoberranzan dug into the lower levels, such a reality might take years to achieve, if it could be reclaimed at all
CHAPTER 9
Lightning flashed repeatedly, revealing strobing, startling images of the great cavern that housed Menzoberranzan. On and on, it went, sizzling through the streets and boulevards, frying rothé as they tried to flee, sending dark elves tumbling desperately into alleyways.
At the top of the cavern, similar bolts, some white light, some red, some green, deflected off the thick stone bases of stalactites, illuminating the targets, demonic or drow.
“Impressive,” Kimmuriel said sarcastically from the window of Gromph’s Sorcere residence. “So chaos reigns supreme in Menzoberranzan. The priestesses must be thrilled, unless of course, that chaos blunts the ambitions of any in particular.”
“Order within the chaos,” Gromph corrected. “In the madness outside, none can gather in unison to strike back at Matron Mother Baenre.”
“How long can she hold the chaos from her own door?” the psionicist dared to ask. He turned away from the spectacle to regard Gromph of House Baenre as he uttered that warning.
Gromph didn’t seem upset at all by the suggestion, and reaching deeper, reaching into his student’s mind, Kimmuriel understood that the calm facade accurately reflected the calmness inside the archmage.
“There is always that danger when playing with demons,” Gromph said with a shrug.
“Powerful demons,” Kimmuriel replied. “In my journey through the city, I witnessed every type of demon I know short of balors, and in numbers. A flock of glabrezu? Or should it be called a herd, I wonder? Or a murder, as with the large black crows in the World Above? Yes, that would seem most appropriate.”
“Yes, well, we will see where it leads,” Gromph replied. “It is all quite above us mere males, after all, for it is in the province of Lady Lolth herself and her chosen Matron Mother.”
Kimmuriel detected a background snicker in his voice, an expression of confidence that belied the words he had spoken, and the psionicist nodded and smiled, ostensibly to agree with the archmage. Truthfully, though, Kimmuriel’s grin was rooted in his own recognition that his suggestions to Gromph had taken root. Gromph believed that he could control this situation, that he was finding some heretofore unknown combination of psionics and arcane magic that would grant him superiority over even Quenthel in this roiling demon game.
Just as Kimmuriel had hoped, just as his mother had shown him.
How surprised would Gromph be, Kimmuriel wondered in the deepest and most protected corners of his organized and disciplined brain, when he brought forth K’yorl Odran in all her uncontrollable wrath?
The image of K’yorl taking revenge on House Baenre was an undeniably pleasing one to Kimmuriel. He hoped that K’yorl wouldn’t destroy Gromph’s mind, catching him by surprise as she surely would. For he couldn’t wait to witness the flow of unfiltered thoughts in the archmage when he realized his foolish hubris and the ruin he had brought upon his own House.