"No," agreed Tordek, "but they were mindful of its value as a barrier to the south. Few armies would choose this path."
"No kidding," said Devis, flinging a particularly nasty bit of black slime from his sleeve.
Vadania nearly exhausted her spells healing Gulo, who had suffered by far the worst wounds of the day's battle. The great wolverine did not seem to mind the smell and the muck that clung to them, but Devis complained steadily until the druid promised to conjure some clean water for their morning ablutions.
They rested uneasily after the fattening moon rose up to whiten the treetops and cast the rest of the world in stark shadow. The double-watch left only Vadania enough time to recuperate from the day's trials. The elf never truly slept but merely meditated in reverie while Tordek and Lidda watched over her and the gently snoring Devis. When Lidda grew sleepy eyed, Tordek indulged her in a silent game of finger signs. He scowled each time she bested him, and she grinned in triumph as they turned away after each brief match to look outward from the banked campfire to spy any threatening movement beneath the trees.
True to her word, Vadania conjured a small pool of fresh water at dawn. After everyone including Gulo had drunk from it, Devis stripped off his clothes and made a hasty bath. Lidda joked about the effects of the cool water on his retractable bits, but the bard didn't seem to mind the teasing. He was happy to be clean again. After he was finished, the others washed quickly before setting off once more.
Vadania led them out of the wet terrain and up into rocky hills before noon. Tordek sighed in relief as he felt the firm ground beneath his feet once more. He could feel the solid bedrock through his boot soles and the topsoil. The realm of frogs and serpents was behind them, and even the rain abated as they climbed higher into the hills. They were entering dwarf country.
On the second night after leaving the swamp, the full moon soared high in a cloudless sky. Lidda and Devis slept under the shelter of a deep outcropping while Tordek kept watch with Vadania nearer the hilltop for a far vantage, careful not to climb so high as to present a silhouette against the moon.
"There," said the elf, pointing toward the northwestern horizon. "Jorgund Peak."
Tordek squinted at the point she indicated. He saw a roughly triangular promontory jutting from the forested hills like the prow of a half-sunken ship sailing southeast. It was too small to be a mountain, too sharp and conspicuous to be merely a hill. Trees covered its crest and ran down the gently sloping back of its northwestern face. Its western and eastern sides formed sheer cliffs streaked black and white with years of droppings. Tordek hoped that what flocked there were merely birds, but a cold premonition settled in his stomach. At Vadania's indication, he spied a trio of pale oval spots running along the limestone cliffs before vanishing into shadow, their alignment suggesting a regular progression around the escarpment.
"Eight of them," said Vadania. "They look as though something large was cut away from the stone."
Tordek could barely make out the spots she indicated. Judging from the distance, he guessed that each one must be around twenty feet high. He made a low, almost inaudible thinking sound deep in his chest. "Perhaps," he said.
Vadania watched him, expectant of more information. When he did not offer any, she looked back at the peak and said, "I see smoke against the stars. There is a camp near the summit."
Tordek took her word for it. By dint of his dwarven blood, he could see through subterranean blackness without so much as the light of a spark. Even so, no dwarf could hope to see so far and clearly as an elf on a moonlit night.
"Uh oh," said Vadania.
"What?"
"Something is moving among the trees up there. Something big."
"Giants?"
She nodded. "Probably. There were none in the area a month ago. I would have seen their tracks."
"He is wasting no time," said Tordek. "Already he summons an army for his champions to lead."
"You think it is Hargrimm?"
"Who else?" saidTordek.
"Why haven't you told the others about him?"
Tordek ignored the question. "Where is the secret entrance you found?"
"They deserve to know what manner of foe we face, Tordek. Your brother's was not the only soul the barghest devoured."
"Where is the entrance?" insisted the dwarf. He jutted his jaw obstinately, but there was more entreaty than warning in his tone.
The elf pointed to the base of the nearest cliff. Tordek saw the glimmer of water coursing below the promontory. Even at this distance, he saw that where it passed the cliffs its surface turned dark and unreflective.
"Can we reach it without alerting the troops on the summit?"
Vadania raised one eyebrow at the word "troops." She said, "This is no war, Tordek. We are no army."
"Can we reach it undetected?"
"Yes," sighed the elf, "if we are careful of their scouts. I can take wing tonight and try for a better look at the camp on top."
Tordek considered the offer but shook his head. "I think of those spider-eaters and do not like the thought of their catching you alone. Besides, we won't have to go anywhere near the camp. At first light we go down past the eyes and fingers of the fiend and strike at his heart, down in Andaron's Delve."
Four hours after dawn, they stood on the narrow shore at the base of the southwestern cliffs of Jorgund Peak. Thirty paces to either side, steaming trails of iron slag and some other hellish substances oozed out of narrow sluices and into the river. Already befouled by the grates on the other side of the promontory, the stream burbled and blushed as it received the noxious runoff. As much as the pollutants offended the two-legged companions, whose legs it had stained dark red as they waded across the stream, their stench drove the usually silent Gulo to whining like a kit.
"I've got nothing," said Lidda, rocking back on her heels as she squatted before the cliff wall.
"Keep looking," said Tordek. He stood on her right and peered along a hairline crack, blowing dust out here and there. "How about you, bard?"
At the other side of the door, Devis traced a faint line of dwarven characters and compared them with what he had written on a sheet of parchment. "Still the same," Devis said.
For the past two hours, Tordek and Lidda had taken turns examining the nearly invisible outline of the secret door for some sign of a catch and the surrounding wall and ground for any indication of a counterweight. While they sought a mechanical solution, Devis considered the weathered runes, which he translated literally and inscribed on parchment. Tordek did not fully trust the bard's ability with the dwarven tongue, but for a dabbler who was not fluent in the language, the half-elf had done a creditable job. The dialect was peculiar even to Tordek, and a few characters had been effaced by centuries of erosion. The bard summed it in Common: "In siege or mutiny, friends of Andaron, come silently through the secret under the mountain."
"I give up!" sighed Lidda. "Either this is a false door, or else the dwarves never finished cutting it."
"Nonsense," said Tordek. "Who would write a welcome on a door that was not finished? It would be an affront to the delve and to the gods that protect it."
"You said it yourself," said Devis. He blew one last time to assure himself the ink was dry, then rolled the parchment and put it in the bag with his other scrolls. "It sounds solid when you rap it. My spell detected no trace of magic on the wall. There must be some dwarven trick to it."
Tordek grumbled a nonspecific complaint and looked up at the sky. The sun was rising toward its zenith, and the shadow that helped shield them from view was rapidly shrinking. High above, brilliant white clouds rode high in a bright blue sky. A great, lozenge-shaped formation slowly glided past one of the flat spots pointed out by Vadania the night before, giving the illusion of steam rising from a white pool set into the cliff. The spots were smooth except for the mark of chisels and stone saws, which Tordek could identify even from the base of the cliff, thirty feet below. Each was about eight feet wide and ten or twelve feet high. They had distinct outlines that hinted at giant faces.