And there lay that king, Drizzt’s dearest friend, half on his side, half face down, one arm extended with his fingers still gripping the lever.
Drizzt fell beside him and gently turned him over, and the drow was shocked to find that Bruenor Battlehammer was still alive.
“I found it, elf,” he said with that smile that had brought Drizzt joy for most of his life. “I found me answers. I found me peace.”
Drizzt wanted to comfort him, wanted to assure him that the priests would be right in and that everything would be all right. But he knew beyond doubt that it was over, that the wounds were too much for an old dwarf.
“Rest easy, my dearest friend,” he mouthed, not sure that any sound came out.
But the look of comfort on Bruenor’s face, the slightest of nods, the slightest of contented smiles, told Drizzt that his departing friend had indeed heard him, and that it was indeed all right.
EPILOGUE
DRIZZT STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE PIT, LOOKING DOWN AT THE SWIRL OF the water and the elementals. Every now and then, he could make out a watery face in the unending swirl around the pit, and far, far below, he could see the primordial, like an angry eye of liquid staring back up at him.
“It is as it was when first we found it,” Dahlia said to him, walking up beside him and draping her arm casually around his lower back. “We did it. Bruenor did it.”
Drizzt continued to scan the opposite wall, trying to make out through the water the ledge where Athrogate had been, where Jarlaxle had gone, but alas, there was nothing. Of course there was nothing. What could have survived the breath of the primordial?
It surprised the drow how badly it all hurt. Not just Bruenor, but the loss of Pwent, and not just that, but the loss of Jarlaxle, and even of Athrogate! He’d hardly seen either Jarlaxle or Athrogate over the years, but somehow, just knowing they were there, in Luskan, never far from reach, had brought him some comfort.
And they were gone, and so was Thibbledorf Pwent, and Bruenor Battlehammer himself-and though his dear friend had died as he would have chosen, not only having found Gauntlgrym, but saving it from total destruction, the profound pain launched Drizzt back to another time and another place, when he had watched Catti-brie and Regis melt through Mithral Hall’s solid wall on the back of a spiritual unicorn, gone to Mielikki’s rest.
He had never thought he could feel such pain again.
He was wrong.
Across the way, some dwarves stumbled into the room. Stokely Silverstream and Torgar Hammerstriker spotted Drizzt and Dahlia and began calling out as more of their brethren entered the chamber.
Dahlia let her hand slip from Drizzt’s back, coming to his side where she grasped his hand.
“Shoot an arrow and let us be gone from here,” she whispered.
In a dark, dark place, Jarlaxle Baenre opened his eyes and dared bring forth a bit of light. He could hear the rush of water, and knew what it meant. And he heard Athrogate stirring beside him.
He saw his elemental, the last of the ten, the one that had not been set in place, still standing guard at the entrance of the portable hole he had used to pull himself and Athrogate away from the primordial. That creature of the Elemental Plane of Water seemed diminished, no doubt from holding back the fires of destruction, and Jarlaxle sensed that it was agitated as well, eager and frustrated all at once.
“I release you,” the drow said, and just that easily the elemental leaped out of the hole and into the sidelong swirl of the enchanted water.
The drow slipped a ring onto a finger, adjusted his eyepatch, and left his body in a spell of clairvoyance, seeking answers-which he found as soon as his vision lifted out of the pit. He saw Drizzt and Dahlia, and the dwarves across the way, and still forms lying under the archway.
Jarlaxle turned to Athrogate, who lay broken, his skin blistered, one leg shattered beneath his prone form.
“It’s time to go,” Jarlaxle whispered to him, and the drow produced another ring, a teleportation device that would send them home.
“I ain’t to make it,” Athrogate whispered back, barely able to draw breath.
Jarlaxle smiled at him. “My priests will find us in Luskan. They will tend you, my friend. Now is not your time to die. Your kind has lost enough today.”
He began to enact his magic, but Athrogate grabbed him roughly by the arm, commanding his attention.
“Ye could’ve left me!” he snarled.
Jarlaxle just nodded and smiled, and started to chant once more, but again, Athrogate interrupted.
“Wait,” the dwarf begged. “Is it done? Did King Bruenor win the day?”
Jarlaxle smiled warmly, a hint of a tear in his crimson eyes. “Long live the king,” he assured his bearded friend. “Long live King Bruenor.”
They buried Bruenor Battlehammer, Eighth King of Mithral Hall, under rocks beside the cairn of Thibbledorf Pwent. They buried him with his one-horned helm, with his enchanted shield, and his mighty, many-notched axe-for what dwarf other than Bruenor Battlehammer would deserve such weapons?
There had been talk of bringing Bruenor home to Mithral Hall for burial-Stokely had even suggested Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale as an appropriate resting place. But Gauntlgrym, the most hallowed and ancient of Delzoun halls, somehow seemed more fitting.
So they buried their heroes, and there were many that fateful day, and they took their tour of what remained of ancient Gauntlgrym. Outside the main wall, in the vast cavern with the pond, they said their farewells. Both Stokely and Torgar offered Drizzt a home, Icewind Dale or Mirabar.
But he refused them, without even giving any real thought to their offers. Neither place was for him, he knew, nor was Mithral Hall.
Nor was anywhere, it seemed.
When he at last exited the tunnels east of the mountains, Guenhwyvar beside him, Drizzt Do’Urden turned to stare to the north, toward Icewind Dale, the place that had been his truest home, the place where he had known his truest friends.
And he was alone.
“Where’s your road lead, drow?” Dahlia said, walking up beside him.
Guenhwyvar favored her with a low purr.
“Where is yours?” he asked in return.
“Oh, I mean to finish this with Sylora Salm, don’t you doubt that,” the elf warrior promised without the slightest hesitation. “To Neverwinter Wood, for me. I will tell the witch to her face that her Dread Ring has failed, that her beast is trapped once more. I will tell her that, right before I kill her.”
Drizzt considered the declaration for a few moments then corrected, “Before we kill her.”
Dahlia stared at him with a grin that told that was exactly what she wanted to hear.
Drizzt looked her over, head to toe, and he realized only then that she had moved the last diamond stud out of her right ear and set it in her left.
There was a story there. There were many stories in the memories and the heart of that most curious elf.
He wanted to hear them all.
Bruenor Battlehammer pulled himself up to his elbows, opened his eyes, and shook his head to clear his jumbled thoughts.
He only became more confused, though, when he noted his surroundings: a springtime forest, and not the dark halls of Gauntlgrym.
“Eh?” he muttered as he hopped to his feet with energy and youth he hadn’t known in centuries.
“Pwent?” he called. “Drizzt?”
“Well met,” said a voice behind him, and he spun to see Regis standing there, looking in the prime of health and life, with a grin from ear to ear.
“Rumblebelly…?” Bruenor managed to gasp.
He stuttered as he tried to continue, when from out of a door in a small house behind Regis stepped another. Bruenor’s jaw fell limp and he didn’t even try to speak. His eyes welled with tears, for there stood his boy, Wulfgar, a young man once more, tall and strong.
“You mentioned Pwent,” Regis said. “Were you with him when you fell?”
Those last words hit the dwarf like a thrown stone, for indeed, he had fallen, indeed, he was dead. And so were the two before him, in a place that so confused him-even more, for surely it was not the Halls of Moradin.