concentrated on Drizzt and Dahlia, looking for openings as they weaved, leaped, and spun back and forth past each other. Whenever he found such an opening, the agile dark elf flung a dagger through it, almost unerringly striking one of the creatures.
The four of them fought well together—much like three of them had back at Spirit Soaring those many years before—yet King Bruenor alone was cutting a wider swath of devastation through the massing salamanders.
Drizzt had begun to swing toward his friend as soon as Bruenor had entered the fray. Dahlia, playing off his every move, followed, but Drizzt had quickly changed his mind. Watching Bruenor at that moment, he held back and focused instead on holding his ground.
The tide of battle turned quickly as more and more dwarf ghosts filtered into the chamber. On the far side of the room, the salamanders tried to surround Bruenor, and seemed to be doing just that. Drizzt cried out for his friend, and second-guessed his earlier decision not to help him. He thought Bruenor doomed, and believed it was his own hesitance that had guaranteed that.
But Bruenor faced his enemies with wild eyes and a wicked grin. He lifted his foot, stomped it down hard, and an explosion of lightning flashed out in a circle around him, throwing salamanders through the air like dry leaves in a strong gale.
“What in the Nine Hells?” Athrogate asked.
“Drizzt?” a clearly befuddled Jarlaxle inquired.
Beside Drizzt, Dahlia, whose own weapon could loose such bursts of lightning, gasped in disbelief.
And Drizzt Do’Urden could only shake his head.
High in the shadows of the great room, another set of eyes watched the battle unfolding with great hope that the primordial’s minions would do his work for him. Perhaps he, Dor’crae, could fly right back out of the chamber and back to the caves to tell Valindra and the Ashmadai to turn back for Neverwinter Wood.
He dearly hoped that would be the case.
But then Dor’crae stared with increasing disbelief at the spectacle of the godly-empowered Bruenor Battlehammer, and he watched the tide of battle quickly turn. He looked back at the throne and was afraid. Events seemed to be moving past him, first with Valindra and the powerful gift Sylora had given her, then the sight of the mighty dwarf.…
He glanced back toward the cavern beyond Gauntlgrym, the approach the Ashmadai and Valindra would soon take, and he considered Sylora’s words of warning, and the power she had entrusted to the lich. The thought of trusting Valindra, and more than that, of trusting the power she had been given, made Dor’crae want to flee back to Thay and take his chances with Szass Tam.
He turned back to the battle, hoping against all reason that the minions of the primordial would somehow find a way to put an end to the threat to his mistress’s plans.
That blast of godlike power proved the end of the assault, with the salamanders rushing for any exit they could find as fast as they could find them, leaving fiery trails in their wakes.
Bruenor chased one group, leaping high and fully thirty feet across the stones to land in their midst, his axe chopping them down viciously, one after another. The dwarf seemed to get stabbed several times in that mad rush, each drawing a cry of pain from Drizzt, who rushed to join him.
And Bruenor seemed not to notice any of the strikes.
By the time the four others arrived by his side, the dwarf king stood amidst half a dozen slain creatures. The rest of the beasts had fled the room, and the dwarf ghosts had given chase.
Bruenor blinked repeatedly as he considered his friends.
“What did you do?” Jarlaxle asked.
Bruenor could only shrug.
Drizzt studied his friend more closely, even pulling aside Bruenor’s collar, but he could find no wound.
“How did you do that?” Dahlia asked. “Stomping your foot as if you were a god of lightning?”
Bruenor shrugged and shook his head. He seemed quite perplexed for a few moments, but then just shook his head again and let it all go, turning to Jarlaxle instead.
“I know where to put yer bowls,” he said to Jarlaxle.
“How could you know?”
Bruenor considered that for a short while. How indeed?
“Gauntlgrym telled me,” he said with a grin.
POWERS OLDER, POWERS DEEPER
THE ASHMADAI CAME INTO THE CIRCULAR CHAMBER WITH TENTATIVE STEPS, though the echoes of battle had long since faded. Valindra Shadowmantle led the way, flanked by two score of Sylora’s best warriors. The lich focused almost immediately on the throne, and