"Let's find them, then," said Tordek. Once again he led the way, letting the stealthy Lidda scout the corners now that his darkvision was no longer an advantage. When they came to locked doors, Lidda listened for occupants on the other side before thwarting their mechanisms with her arsenal of picks. Each door took successively less time to unlock, as she became increasingly familiar with their type.
"There's a master key for most of these," she said. "Next time we see a goblin with a key ring, we should thump 'im."
"Thump 'im at the very least," agreedTordek. His tone was far darker than his words.
"Why the grudge?" asked Devis. "I mean, I don't like them, either. You've probably faced a lot of different foes over the years. I'm surprised that those little runts bother you so much. What is it with you and goblins?"
When Tordek did not immediately answer, Devis opened his mouth to voice another question, but Vadania put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head, No. The bard's jaw jutted in a brief display of petulance, but he drew a deep breath and nodded, sighing.
After half an hour of furtive exploration, they found another passage to the upper level. This one was also well lighted but with wide braziers set deep into the walls at dwarf height. Their coals cast a red glow upon the carved ceiling while their smoke drifted up through narrow ventilation shafts cleverly hidden by the ornamentation. The ancient dwarven curses marked the walls, absent the goblin scrawl.
The sound from the forge was louder here, especially from around a bend at the far end of the corridor, past three doors on the right side of the passage, where two goblins stood before a grand door. Their gazes were fixed on some bright area around the corner, so they remained oblivious to the intruders.
"Just two?" Lidda signed with the fingers of her left hand. Her right already held her short bow.
Tordek observed the way the two goblins chattered to each other and decided they were alone. He gestured an affirmative and aimed his own bow, noting that Devis had done the same, and Vadania's sling was already forming a loop in preparation for the throw.
At Tordek's signal, the missiles flew. Lidda, Vadania, and Devis were already running toward the goblins as the hapless guards slumped against the door they had been guarding. Tordek followed with Karnoth, careful not to cause too much of a clatter in his armor. By the time they reached the others, both goblins were dead, and Lidda was listening at the door. She shrugged, nodding toward the light from the balcony they had been facing to indicate the clamor that rose from the foundry prevented her from hearing anything.
After checking the hall for other occupants and spying none, Tordek approached the balcony rail to gaze into the forge of Andaron. He felt the first wave of heat as he rounded the corner, but as he looked down he felt it withering his eyebrows.
Larger than all of the lower caverns combined, the foundry was a blend of artifice and nature. Its floor was carved from the living rock in four increasingly deep, pentagonal levels. Around the outer ring were five separate entrances, four of them simple rectangular portals fortified by iron portcullises. The grand entrance was an arch over ten feet tall and almost twenty feet wide, its open doors blistering with spikes and steel bosses to rebuff and absorb any assault. Opposite the grand entrance was a line of round tunnels bored deep into the earth. A stone ramp jutted from each one like an impudent tongue. Beside two of the ramps lay ancient ore sledges, one of them piled with bins of the abandoned bounty collected before the fall of Andaron's Delve. Whatever business its current inhabitants had, it was not refining ore.
The rest of the outer ring was a clutter of water troughs, worktables, empty tool racks, and the makeshift beds of the slaves who labored in the inner rings. On one filthy pallet lay a burned and sweating dwarf stripped to the waist, restless in his torpor. Nearby stood a trio of grinning goblins, throwing dice and occasionally prodding the sick dwarf.
The third ring was filled with anvils and lesser forges, half of which rang with hammer blows as three dwarven and two human smiths beat points and edges into simple swords. The goblin guards scolded one of the dwarves for taking too long to complete his latest blade, but the proud smith balked at their warning and continued his work. For him it was torment enough to manufacture inferior weapons, even for his enslavers. He bore the threats and abuse with dwarven stoicism until at last he plunged the red and black blade into a water barrel and tossed it onto a table of similarly crude work. A young man with his face half covered in dirty bandages took the swords up to the outer level, where he and a companion fitted hilts and quillions to the blades.
Inside the ring of anvils were three foundry tables on which squatted the iron molds. Huge cauldrons of molten iron jerked and swayed on a battery of rails affixed to the ceiling. Their molten surfaces bubbled just three feet below the rail of the catwalks, close enough for workers to reach them with long ladles or hooks. Along the catwalks, a pair of ogres dragged the glowing pots from the great, central forge and provided the brute force to tip out the molten iron as a team of goblins guided its course. Black stains on the floor showed where accident or cruelty had recently spilled the ore over workers whose bone fragments were still fused into the stone.
Carved upon the floor of the inner level was a wicked sight: a five-pointed star whose every line overlapped another in a queer illusion that made the design appear in constant motion. Within its borders writhed the naked bodies of the damned, lost souls of every race and breed, grasping and tearing at each other, man against monster, elf entwined with beast, halfling and gnome and orc all destroying each other in a futile effort to escape their doom.
Tordek gasped, momentarily mesmerized by the illusion that the figures were alive rather than mere carvings. There was the look of dwarven craft about the pentacle and its vile embellishments, but some dark shadow had fallen over it and given it a glimmer of demonic life.
Whatever dread figure was destined to appear in the center of the star, Tordek could not guess. Upon it squatted the great forge of Andaron, a tremendous furnace carved within a pillar of red-streaked black rock too smooth to be iron, too dull to be obsidian. Three teams of men and dwarves worked the bellows, their bare chests blistering from the heat. One of the dwarves had already lost most of his beard to the flame, and one of the men pumped the lever with one hand and a blackened stump. Fire blazed white and yellow through the slits of the forge's great iron doors, each shaped like a devil's face. The edges of those that were closed glowed red, while those that were opened unleashed such an inferno that the big men who fired the blades wailed from the heat. When one fainted, another took his place, goaded by the long pikes of their goblin captors, who used the hooked tips of their weapons to drag the fallen away from the fire. Those who stirred back to wakefulness were flogged by cackling taskmasters. Those who rested too long felt the spear tips as well as the lash.
The air above the forge rippled with heat, and smoke rose up to vanish into huge ventilation shafts covered with iron grates. The catwalks rested on five spiral stairways on the outer level and hung from great iron rods embedded in the stone ceiling. They shuddered with every lunge of the ogres, zigzagging between the stalactites that pointed down from the ceiling like accusing fingers. The iron paths linked the vents to the forge's chimney and the black scaffold supporting the bellows. One of them led to the balcony on which Tordek stood, while another reached the platform's twin, twenty feet to his left.
"Look there," said Devis, pointing over Tordek's shoulder.
Someone-or something-quite large was moving on the other side of the Hellforge. All Tordek could see from this vantage was something that looked like a huge, red, leather cloak upon a gigantic back. Whatever creature it was thrust a blade into the forge and held it there unflinching, then it turned and placed the weapon on an unseen anvil. The resultant hammering suggested that at least three other smiths assisted with the task.