Bruenor looked at the ceiling, then at Drizzt, but the drow could only nod his agreement.
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted. “Gauntlgrym was akin to Mirabar, then, and ye’re for knowin’ that. So this must be the top o’ the place, with more below. All we need be looking for is a shaft to take us to the lower levels, akin to that rope and come-along dumbwaiter ye got in Mirabar. Now let’s see what this big place is all about—important building, I’m thinking. Might be a throne room.”
Torgar nodded and Pwent ran up in front of Bruenor to lead the way up the stairs, with Cordio close on his heels. Torgar, though, lagged behind, something Drizzt didn’t miss.
“Not akin to Mirabar,” the dwarf whispered to Drizzt and Regis.
“A dwarf city above ground?” Regis asked.
Torgar shrugged. “I’m not for knowing.” He reached to his side and pulled an item from his belt, one he had taken from the smithy he had found back across the plaza. “Lots of these and little of anything else,” he said.
Regis sucked in his breath, and Drizzt nodded his agreement with the dwarf’s assessment of the muddy catastrophe that had hit the place. For in his hand, Torgar held an item all too common on the surface and all too rare in the Underdark: a horseshoe.
At Drizzt’s insistence, he, and not the noisy Thibble dorf, led the way into the building with Guenhwyvar beside him. The drow and panther filtered out to either side of the massive, decorated doors—doors filled with color and gleaming metal much more indicative of a construction built under the sun. The drow and his cat melted into the shadows of the great hall that awaited them, moving with practiced coordination. They sensed no danger. The place seemed still and long dead.
It was no audience chamber, though, no palace for a dwarf king. When the others came in and they filled the room with torchlight, it became apparent that the place had been a library and gallery, a place of art and learning.
Rotted scrolls filled ancient wooden shelves all around the room and along the walls, interspersed with tapestries whose images had long ago faded, and with sculptures grand and small alike.
Those sculptures set off the first waves of alarm in the companions, particularly in Bruenor, for while some depicted dwarves in their typically heroic battle poses and regalia, others showed orc warriors standing proud. And more than one depicted orcs in other dress, in flowing robes or with pen in hand.
The most prominent of all stood upon a dais at the far end of the room, directly across from the doors. The image of Moradin, stocky and strong, was quite recognizable to the dwarves.
So was the image of Gruumsh One-eye, god of the orcs, standing across from him, and while the two were shown eyeing each other with expressions that could be considered suspicious, the simple fact that they were not shown with Moradin standing atop the vanquished Gruumsh’s chest elicited stares of disbelief on the faces of all four dwarves. Thibble dorf Pwent even babbled something undecipherable.
“What place was this?” Cordio asked, giving sound to the question that was on all their minds. “What hall? What city?”
“Delzoun,” muttered Bruenor. “Gauntlgrym.”
“Then she’s no place akin to the tales,” said Cordio, and Bruenor shot a glare his way.
“Grander, I’m saying,” the priest quickly added.
“Whatever it was, it was grand indeed,” said Drizzt. “And beyond my expectations when we set out from Mithral Hall. I had thought we would find a hole in the ground, Bruenor, or perhaps a small, ancient settlement.”
“I telled ye it was Gauntlgrym,” Bruenor replied.
“If it is, then it is a place to do your Delzoun heritage proud,” said the drow. “If it is not, then let us discover other accomplishments of which you can be rightly proud.”
Bruenor’s stubborn expression softened a bit at those words, and he offered Drizzt a nod and moved off deeper into the room, Thibbledorf at his heel. Drizzt looked to Cordio and Torgar, both of whom nodded their appreciation of his handling of the volatile king.
It was not Gauntlgrym, all three of them knew—at least, it was not the Gauntlgrym of dwarven legend. But what then?
There wasn’t much to salvage in the library, but they did find a few scrolls that hadn’t fully succumbed to the passage of time. None of them could read the writing on the ancient paper, but there were a few items that could give hints about the craftsmanship of the former residents, and even one tapestry that Regis believed could be cleaned enough to reveal some hints of its former depictions. They gathered their hoard together with great care, rolling and tying the tapestry and softly packing the other items in bags that had held the food they had thus far consumed.
They were done scouring the hall in less than an afternoon’s time, and finished with a cursory and rather unremarkable examination of the rest of the cavern for just as long after that. Abruptly, and at Bruenor’s insistence, so ended their expedition. Soon after, they climbed back up through the hole that had brought them underground and were greeted by a late winter’s quiet night. At the next break of dawn they began their journey home, where they hoped to find some answers.
CHAPTER 14
POSSIBILITIES
King Obould normally liked the cheering of the many orcs that surrounded his temporary palace, a heavy tent set within a larger tent, set within a larger tent. All three were reinforced with metal and wood, and their entrances opened at different points for further security. Obould’s most trusted guards, heavily armored and with great gleaming weapons, patrolled the two outer corridors.
The security measures were relatively new, as the orc king cemented his grip and began to unfold his strategy—a plan, the cheering that day only reminded him, that might not sit well with the warlike instincts of some of his subjects. He had already waged the first rounds of what he knew would be his long struggle among the stones of Keeper’s Dale. His decision to stand down the attack on Mithral Hall had been met with more than a few mutterings of discontent.
And that had only been the beginning, of course.
He moved along the outer ring of his tent palace to the opened flap and looked out on the gathering on the plaza of the nomadic orc village. At least two hundred of his minions were out there, cheering wildly, thrusting weapons into the air, and clapping each other on the back. Word had come in of a great orc victory in the Moonwood, tales of elf heads spiked on the riverbank.
“We should go there and see the heads,” Kna said to Obould as she curled at his side. “It is a sight that would fill me with lust.”
Obould swiveled his head to regard her, and he offered a smile, knowing that stupid Kna would never understand it to be one of pity.
Out in the plaza, the cheering grew a backbone chant: “Karuck! Karuck! Karuck!”
It was not unexpected. Obould, who had received word of the fight in the east the previous night, before the public courier had arrived, motioned to the many loyalists he had set in place, and on his nod, they filtered into the crowd.
A second chant bubbled up among the first, “Many-Arrows! Many-Arrows! Many-Arrows!” And gradually, the call for kingdom overcame the cheer for clan.
“Take me there and I will love you,” Kna whispered in the orc king’s ear, tightening her hold on his side.
Obould’s bloodshot eyes narrowed as he turned to regard her again. He brought his hand up to grab the back of her hair and roughly bent her head back so that she could see the intensity on his face. He envisioned those elf heads he’d heard of, set on tall pikes. His smile widened as he considered putting Kna’s head in that very line.