As the battle was joined, Ashmadai and dire corbie alike tumbled to their deaths. Sylora and her main group continued down, at last coming to the tunnels. A few broken bird-men and a room scarred by flames marked their path, and whenever a choice lay before them, Sylora held aloft the skull gem in her open palm and let it point the way toward Dor’crae.
She could even sense how far ahead the vampire might be, for the multi-magical gem had attuned to him well.
A finger to her pursed lips reminded the eager Ashmadai to be silent, and on they went.
Through several sets of broken doors and under a low arch, the five adventurers came upon the remains of varied creatures, most recently those of dire corbies, and when they glanced around the wide, long, pillared corridor before them, they saw the ghosts of Gauntlgrym, watching them.
At the other end of the hall, through another arch and a barred portcullis, came the glow of furnaces, and despite the ghosts, or perhaps in part because of them, Athrogate was compelled to move forward. The others huddled close behind him, warily watching the spirits that mirrored their every step.
But the ward of a Delzoun dwarf proved effective yet again.
No cranking mechanism could be found near the heavy gate, so Athrogate tried his poem a third time.
Nothing happened.
Before Jarlaxle or Dahlia could offer a suggestion, the dwarf growled and leaned against the grate, grabbing a crossbar in both hands. He could clearly see the ultimate goal of his expedition in front of him: a line of furnaces and forges, the great Forge of Gauntlgrym itself, and the heat on his face as he peered through that portcullis surely warmed an old dwarf’s heart.
With a growl and a heave, Athrogate tugged hard at the portcullis. At first, nothing happened, but then the dwarf broke through an old lock, it seemed, and the gate inched upward.
“There must be a lever,” Jarlaxle offered, but Athrogate wasn’t listening, not with the Forge of Gauntlgrym so near at hand.
A fog rolled past him and Dor’crae rematerialized on the other side of the portcullis.
“No ghosts in here,” the vampire reported. “Shall I look for a way to open the gate?”
The sight of the vampire within the Forge of Gauntlgrym only drove the dwarf on harder. He growled and groaned, and lifted with all his tremendous strength, his magical girdle lending the power of a giant to his thick limbs. Up inched the portcullis. He grabbed lower, the next bar down, and heaved again, lifting it to his waist. With a sudden jerk and a roll of his hands, he dropped down into a crouch under it, and straining and groaning with every inch, Athrogate stood up straight once more.
Jarlaxle went under, Dahlia right after him, and she coaxed the distracted Valindra in behind her.
“I’ll try to help,” Jarlaxle offered, moving up in front of Athrogate and grabbing at the bars, “but I haven’t your strength.”
Even as he finished talking, a clicking sound came from the stone surrounding the heavy portcullis, and both drow and dwarf backed off just enough to realize that the heavy grate had been set in place.
“A room to the side,” Dahlia explained, tipping her chin toward a door through which Dor’crae passed.
Athrogate hustled into the forge, stumbling as he moved near the central furnace, the largest of the many within. It had a wide, thick tray in front of the grate of the furnace, and in looking at that, Athrogate felt as if he was peering through the faceplate of the helmet of some great fire god.
Little did he know how close to right he was.
“Ye ever seen such power, elf?” he asked Jarlaxle when the drow moved up beside him.
“How can it still be fueled, after all these centuries?” Jarlaxle asked. On a whim, the drow brought forth a throwing dagger and flipped it through the grate.
It never even seemed to land against anything, just turned to liquid and fell away, dispersing into the flames.
“ ‘To bake the dragon,’ ” Athrogate muttered.
“Incredible,” the drow agreed.
They finally managed to move aside from the blinding image to study the decorated anvil on the other side of the tray, and to note a mithral door set against the wall at the side of the main forge.
“There is more to see back there,” Dor’crae explained, “but I couldn’t open that door when I was here before. I had to slip in around the hatch using other means.”
Athrogate was already at the door. He started his rhyme once more, but paused and just pushed on the hatch, which swung in easily, revealing a short passageway to another gleaming door.
Doubting eyes fixed on the vampire, who merely shrugged.
Dahlia led the way to the next door, but found that it would not open no matter how hard she shoved against it. Until Athrogate came up, that is, and merely touched it, and like the one before, it swung open easily.
“It would seem that these old dwarves were possessed of great magic, if their doors recognize one of their blood,” Jarlaxle remarked.
“And can tell a king from a peasant,” Athrogate added, remembering the throne above.
Athrogate led the way through another doorway then a fourth, and as that one opened, the group heard the sounds of a tremendous rush of water, like a waterfall, and the air grew moist and thick. The tunnel wound for a fair distance before emptying onto a ledge that ringed a steamy oblong chamber, centered by a very wide, very deep, deep pit. And there the riddle of Gauntlgrym took away the breath of dwarf, drow, elf, vampire, and lich alike.
Looking down that great shaft, they could hardly see the pit’s walls. A rushing swirl of water spun continuously, like the breaking wave of a hurricane’s tide, or a perpetual sidelong waterfall. All the way down the water spun, giving way at the bottom to a bubbling lake of lava. Water hissed loudly in the heat, steam forming and rushing up into chimneys far above.
And somehow, that orange-red glow seemed more than just molten rock, more than inanimate magma. It appeared almost like a great eye staring back at them … with hate.
“We’re below them steamy rooms,” Athrogate noted. “A chimney must be plugged up there.”
“Over there,” Dor’crae remarked, pointing to a narrow metal walkway, thankfully with railings, that spanned the pit and ended at a ledge across the way, with a wide, decorated archway leading to a small room, barely visible, beyond. “There’s more.”
Sylora and the Ashmadai could feel the hatred of the dwarf ghosts all around them, but the Thayan wizard held aloft the skull gem, shining with power, and it was great enough to keep the ancient defenders of Gauntlgrym at bay.
They passed by the foolish and eager Ashmadai woman who had entered the room before consulting with Sylora. She had been quickly and horribly torn limb from limb by the ghosts right before their eyes.
But so be it. They were Ashmadai, and the tiefling female had died in the service of her god. Each uttered a prayer to Asmodeus for their lost sister as they stepped over various severed body parts.
“I can’t touch it,” Dor’crae explained, standing in front of a large lever set in the floor of the room, barely more than an alcove, beyond the archway from the water-encircled lava pit. “When I tried, it threw me back. Some great magic wards it.”
“Only a dwarf could pull it, ye fool. Like them doors.”
“And don’t you dare,” said Jarlaxle, who stood a few steps away, studying the old runes inscribed on the archway’s curving top. He enacted one of the powers of his enchanted eyepatch, which could allow him to comprehend almost any known language, even many magical ones, but this writing was beyond even the eyepatch’s power. “We know not what it would unleash.”
He continued studying the runes—he understood that they were very ancient, some in an old Elvish tongue that had more than a little connection to Jarlaxle’s own drow tongue, and some in ancient Dwarvish. He couldn’t make out the exact wording, but thought it was a memoriam of sorts, a tribute, perhaps a celebratory accounting of something grand represented by this chamber.
As the moments passed by, Athrogate inevitably slid toward the lever, licking his lips in anticipation. He was right in front of the thing when Jarlaxle put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Glancing up at the drow, the dwarf followed his gaze to the walls and ceiling of the chamber, which were heavily veined with the tendrils of the Hosttower.
“What is it?” Athrogate asked.
“I believe it’s the lever to power all of Gauntlgrym,” Dor’crae replied. “Magical lights and rail carts that move of their own power—magic to give the city life once more!”
Athrogate started forward eagerly, but again Jarlaxle held him back. The drow turned to Dahlia with a questioning expression.
“Dor’crae … knows the place better than I,” the woman explained.
Jarlaxle let go of Athrogate, who leaned toward the lever, but the drow kept staring at Dahlia and made no move to stop him.
“What is it?” Jarlaxle asked her, for there was something in Dahlia’s voice then, some great uncertainty, some hesitation, that Jarlaxle had never heard from her before.
“I … agree with Dor’crae that it will bring Gauntlgrym back to life,” Dahlia remarked, aiming the words at Athrogate.
“Or set loose the power of the fallen Hosttower upon us all,” the drow argued. He knew she was lying, and knew that she was struggling with those lies.
“So we should just leave it and seek out the treasury?” Dahlia asked, waving her hand as if the thought was absurd—waving her hand a bit too dismissively.
“A fine idea,” Jarlaxle agreed. “I am ever in favor of baubles.”
Behind the drow, though, Dor’crae whispered to Athrogate, “Pull the lever, dwarf.”
Jarlaxle knew then that there was more to that request, that the vampire was trying to exert his undead willpower over the dwarf. That, of course, came as a clear warning to Jarlaxle. He stepped toward Athrogate, but stopped abruptly as Valindra materialized right in front of him, staring at the drow with hunger, her fingers waggling in the air between them.
“What do you know?” the drow demanded of Dahlia.
“I like you, Jarlaxle,” Dahlia replied. “I might even allow you to live.”
“Athrogate, no!” Jarlaxle cried, but Dor’crae kept whispering and the strong dwarf moved to grasp the lever.
In her thoughts, she was a girl again, barely a teenager, standing on the edge of a cliff, her baby in her hands.
Herzgo Alegni’s child.
She threw it. She killed it.
Dahlia proudly wore nine diamond studs in her left ear, one for every lover she had defeated in mortal combat. She always counted her kills as nine.
But what of the baby?
Why didn’t she wear ten studs in her left ear?
Because she was not proud of that kill. Because, among everything that she had done in her flawed life, that moment struck Dahlia as the most wrong, the most wicked. It was Alegni’s child, but it had not deserved its fate. Alegni the Shadovar barbarian, the rapist, the murderer, had deserved its fate, had deserved to witness that long fall, but not the child, never the child.
She knew what the lever would do. She had enlisted the drow because of the dwarf. Only a Delzoun dwarf could close that lever. And that was the point after all, to close the lever, to initiate the cataclysm, to free the power that fueled Gauntlgrym, to create the Dread Ring.