harder at his chest. “Tell me it hurts.”
Dor’crae’s head went back and he began shaking, and smoke began wafting from his skin.
Dahlia’s wooden stake stabbed at his heart again.
“Ah … me king,” she heard from the floor behind her, a voice gurgling with thick liquid, and she glanced back to see a bloody, strangely armored dwarf somehow rolling himself over to one elbow, his other arm coming across to grab at Bruenor Battlehammer.
Somehow, impossibly, Pwent got his knees under him and heaved Bruenor upward, then fell forward with him, right beside the lever. Like a loving father, Pwent lifted Bruenor’s hand, cupping it with his own, and set it against the angled pole.
“Me king,” Pwent said again, and it seemed the end of his strength. His head dropped down and he lay there very still.
“Me friend,” Bruenor answered, and with just a glance at Dahlia, the dwarf king summoned his strength and pulled.
Dor’crae was babbling for mercy the entire time, pleading with Dahlia to let him live, promising her that he would make everything all right for her with Sylora.
“You think I will let you fly away, when I am surely doomed?” Dahlia said, face to face, letting him see the absence of mercy in her freezing blue eyes. As if in response to her, perhaps, but surely to the reversed lever, the primordial roared again and the room lurched.
Dahlia tried to drive the wooden stake in harder, but the tremor stole her balance and the desperate Dor’crae managed to slip aside. Sorely wounded, the vampire wanted nothing more to do with Dahlia. Once more, he took the form of a bat.
The splattering lava and bouncing black stones had Drizzt shielding himself and ducking away, and thinking that they had failed, that the volcano had again fully erupted. To his great relief, though, the lava column again dropped back down below the rim, and the drow was fast to the ledge, bow in hand.
Without the protection of Icingdeath, the heat proved too intense, but he couldn’t help but look down, though he feared what he might see.
The lava had climbed far up the pit, and was barely twenty feet below the rim, waves of heat assaulting the drow. And it was up above the ledge where Athrogate had lain, and there was, of course, no sign of Jarlaxle, who had descended almost as the lava had rushed back up.
For the second time that day, Drizzt had to shake off the loss of Jarlaxle, for not even Icingdeath could have protected him from that rush of lava.
His next arrow flew, setting a second rope near where the first had been—before the lava had rushed up to burn it to nothingness. Without even testing the rope, without even a thought that the lava might leap up at him, the anxious drow sprang from the ledge and swung away, landing easily across the way.
Even as he caught his balance, he had to duck aside once more, as that same giant bat flew out from under the archway. Its flight was noticeably unsteady, as if it were gravely wounded, and Drizzt dropped his bow off his shoulder, thinking to shoot it from the sky.
He needn’t have bothered, though. As soon as the bat crossed the lip of the pit, it seemed as if all the water of the Sea of Swords had come charging in to battle the fire primordial. It poured from the hole in the ceiling like a giant waterfall, and through that thunderous, translucent veil, Drizzt could still see the bat. Obviously, its flight was as much magical as physical—it resisted the downpour.
But that didn’t much help the creature. The bat became a man again, and the vampire looked back at Drizzt, though whether he could actually see the drow, Drizzt couldn’t know. He reached out plaintively, hanging there in the curtain of water, his face a mask of agony.
Then he blew apart, like so many black flakes, and was washed down with the waterfall.
It stopped as abruptly as it had started, but Drizzt knew the primordial’s trap was back in place, knew that they had won, for below the rim, he could see the water, not like a pond or puddle, but spinning furiously along the sides of the pit.
Down below, the primordial responded, the ground shaking violently, the lava column trying to rise, the room filling with steam. The water did not relent, though, and the beast sank back, far below, and the room went quiet, a stillness that