“Gauntlgrym’s ghosts,” Bruenor said, his voice still very shaky.
“Did they tell you that? Or are you guessing?”
“They telled me, elf. It’s real.”
Those words struck Drizzt curiously, particularly coming from Bruenor, who had led him on a merry chase for Gauntlgrym for decades. But as he thought about it, he understood Bruenor’s surprise, for even when one believes strongly in something, the actual confirmation comes most often as a shock.
Bruenor looked away for a moment, staring off into the distance, then blinked his eyes as if some revelation had just come over him. “The beast, elf,” he said.
“What beast?”
“It’s wakin’ up… again.”
The emphasis on that last word was purposeful, Drizzt knew, but he still didn’t quite get where Bruenor might be going.
“And when it woke up last time, Neverwinter went away,” Bruenor clarified.
“The volcano?” Drizzt asked, and Bruenor kept nodding as if it was all coming clear to him.
“Aye, that’s it. That’s the beast.”
“They told you that?”
“No,” Bruenor readily admitted. “But that’s it.”
“You can’t know that.”
But Bruenor kept nodding. “Ye feel the earth moving beneath yer feet,” he said. “Ye seen the mountain growin’. It’s waking up. The beast. The beast o’ Gauntlgrym.” He looked Drizzt directly in the eye and nodded. “And they’re askin’ for me help, elf, and so they’re to get it, or I’m a bearded gnome!”
He nodded with even more determination then rushed for his pack, fumbling with his maps. “And now we’re knowing the general area o’ the place! It’s real, elf! Gauntlgrym is real!”
“So we’re going to go there?” Drizzt asked, and Bruenor looked at him as if the answer was so obvious that Drizzt must have lost his mind to even ask.
“And stop a volcano?” Drizzt explained.
Bruenor’s jaw hung open and he stopped fumbling with his maps.
After all, how did one stop a volcano?
ALL ROADS LEAD TO LUSKAN
WITH A PILE OF SMALL, SMOOTH STONES BESIDE HIM, BRUENOR WENT TO work. One by one, he pulled the parchment maps from his pack, gently unrolling them and placing them on the mossy ground, securing each corner with a stone.
He tried to categorize them by region first, searching for the ones that seemed to place Gauntlgrym nearest the volcano that had erupted. The dwarf leaned back, kneeling, scratched his head repeatedly, and kept thinking about those ghosts that had come to him, pleading for his help.
Gauntlgrym. It was real. It still existed.
Anyone looking at Bruenor Battlehammer at that moment would have thought him a hundred and fifty years younger, a feisty young dwarf eager for adventure. The years didn’t bend his strong shoulders, and rarely had Bruenor’s eyes sparkled as they did just then, full of promise and hope.
And indeed, someone was watching him. Someone with coal black skin. Someone lithe and swift, and deadly. And it was not Drizzt.
Bruenor thought he’d suddenly been blinded. Everything just went black. He yelped and fell back, rolling down to his hip and lifting one arm defensively in front of him while fumbling around on the ground with his other hand, trying to find his axe.
A small pop sounded beside him and a sharp jolt stung his arm. Then another and another, a series of tiny explosions disorienting him, biting at him.
“Elf!” he yelled out, hoping Drizzt was near, and despite the discomfort, he continued furiously searching for his weapon.
At last he grabbed it, and only then, the popping sounds continuing, did he also notice the sound of parchment rustling.
“Elf!” he yelled again, and realizing his error in falling backward, the dwarf scrambled the other way.
He came out of the strange globe of impenetrable darkness in short order, crawling, stumbling onto the mossy patch where he’d placed the maps.
They were gone.
The horrified dwarf looked to the forest and the rustling brush. He scrambled up to his feet and flung himself forward in pursuit, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of the thief, his heart sank and his legs slowed. It was a dark elf, and one he couldn’t hope to catch.
“Elf!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and he took up the chase anyway, trying at least to keep in sight of the fleeing drow. “Call yer damned cat, elf!” Bruenor yelled. “Call yer cat!”
He continued the chase over a ridge and down into a tree-filled dell, and he kept on running right up the far ridge, though he had lost all sight of the thief. Over that ridge, the underbrush was light, the field of view clear, but the thief was nowhere to be seen.
Bruenor skidded to a stop, hopping about, craning his stocky neck, but with the growing realization that he had lost his treasured maps. Gasping for breath, he ran back the way he’d come, veering to the right, the southeast, hoping against hope that he could make that ridge and catch sight of the thief once more.
He didn’t.
Bruenor howled for Drizzt again, repeatedly, as he ran to the western ridge then back to the north and to the east, and finally to the west once more.
Some time later, Bruenor caught a sign of movement to one side of his camp. He took up his axe, hoping the thief had returned, but the dark form showed herself more clearly. Guenhwyvar bounded up to him, her ears flattened, her lips curled back.
“Find him, cat!” Bruenor implored her. “A damned drow elf stole me maps!”
Guenhwyvar’s ears came up and she turned her head left and right, taking in the wider view.
“Go! Go!” the dwarf yelled at her, and with a roar that reverberated all around them, Guenhwyvar leaped away, straight to the west.
Moments later, with Bruenor nodding enthusiastically at the departing panther, Drizzt rushed up beside him, scimitars in hand.
“An elf took me maps!” Bruenor cried at him. “Drow elf!”
“Where did he run?”
The dwarf glanced all around, but threw his axe down, sticking it into the ground, and helplessly lifted his empty, trembling hands.
“Which way?” Drizzt prompted.
Bruenor waved his hands and head in despair.
“Where were you when he struck?” Drizzt asked, and for a moment, the flustered dwarf even seemed to be confused about that.
Finally, Bruenor collected himself enough to lead Drizzt back to the mossy patch. The darkness enchantment was gone by then, revealing the pile of stones, a few of them scattered about on the moss. But no maps were to be seen, nor the pack Bruenor had used to carry them.
“He put a damned darkness globe over me,” Bruenor grumbled, stamping his foot in outrage. “Blinded me and hit me with…”
Drizzt leaned in, prompting the dwarf to explain in detail, but all Bruenor could offer was, “Bees.”
“Bees?”
“Felt like bees,” Bruenor tried to explain. “Bitin’ at me, stingin’ me. Something…” He shook his hairy head and held forth one arm, and indeed, between his heavy bracer and short sleeve, his bare skin showed many small welts. “Kept me back while he swooped through, taking me maps.”
“You’re sure it was a drow?”
“I seen him when I came out o’ the darkness,” Bruenor asserted.
“Where?”
Bruenor led him to the spot and pointed to the ridge leading back to the dell, and Drizzt dropped to his knees, examining the shrubs and the dirt. An expert tracker, Drizzt easily found the trail-surprisingly easily, given Bruenor’s description of the robber as a dark elf. He followed that trail into the dell, and there it got far more confusing, for any tracks or bent fronds had been muddled by the tumultuous traffic the low ground had seen, a dwarf running back and forth.
Finally, though, Drizzt did rediscover the trail, and found it to lead out to the northwest. He and Bruenor ascended the ridge there, peering out.
“The road is that way,” Drizzt remarked.
“Road?”
“The road to Port Llast.”
Bruenor turned his eyes to the west more directly. “Cat went that way. She might’ve found him.”
Off they went, Drizzt easily following the trail-again, too easily.