Wulfgar listened intently, and with an amused expression, for the warrior barbarian hadn’t even learned the art of retreat, let alone faking his death to fool enemies!
And Catti-brie did not listen at all, hardly aware of her surroundings.
For in her head, the woman heard a call, quiet but insistent, a plea, and one from some being beyond her, some great creature, perhaps divine … though its mental intrusion seemed too foreign to be that of Mielikki’s song.
She didn’t understand. She unwittingly clenched her hand.
The woman leaned against the wall. Wulfgar’s laughter interrupted her thoughts and she turned to regard him, then followed his gaze and Afafrenfere’s to the Great Forge centering the room, and to Regis, who was trying to drag an enormous warhammer, a weapon made for a giant king, it seemed—and indeed it had been crafted for just that reason—from the work table.
“What’re ye about, Rumblebelly?” Bruenor called from across the way.
Regis lifted up his small belt pouch, which seemed barely large enough to contain his hand up to his wrist. With a wry grin, Regis slipped the bag over the end of the weapon’s long handle, and smiling all the wider, the mischievous halfling continued sliding the pouch up, the shaft disappearing within, seeming as if the magic was somehow devouring it.
“And how’re ye to get the hammer’s head over that little bag, magical or not?” Bruenor asked, for indeed, it didn’t seem possible.
“Well, come help me, then,” Regis argued back, and realizing his error, he began extracting the handle from the pouch.
Bruenor gave a great “harrumph” and stood with his hands on his hips, but Wulfgar pulled himself up and started over.
Catti-brie started to call out to him, to jokingly warn him not to let the light-fingered halfling near Aegis-fang, but she was interrupted before she ever begin by an insistent telepathic call, a plea to her, she felt, but in some language she could not decipher.
She glanced at the mithral door just down the way and crunched up her face curiously, seeing that liquid was spilling out around it, steaming and bubbling.
“Water?” she whispered, and realized that the door had opened a crack. She gathered up the bow and quiver, slinging both over her shoulder and moved to the door. She easily pulled it wide, revealing a low corridor beyond. She lifted her hand, the light from the spell she had placed upon her ring stealing the darkness before her and revealing to her a series of puddles along the floor, fast evaporating, billowing steam, though the woman, protected from fire as she was, couldn’t feel the heat.
“Girl?” she heard Bruenor call out as she entered the tunnel.
“Girl!” he yelled more frantically, but his voice was cut short as the heavy metal door swung closed behind her. Catti-brie went to it and pushed, but it would not budge. Strangely, she was not afraid, and the voice in her head beckoned her along. She made her way down the tunnel, pausing at one puddle where a broken pile of fast-cooling black rock lay. She found more of it along the path, like volcanic spit in a river bed, but she could make no sense of it.
She exited the tunnel into the steamy chamber, coming out right beside a pony-sized green spider that seemed to twitch at the sight of her. Catti-brie fell back and turned into a defensive crouch, her hand reflexively going to her bow. She shook her head and did not proceed, though, thinking that its movement must be a trick of her eye in the swirling steam of this place, for it seemed just a statue.
A beautiful jade statue, shining green against her light spell, and so intricate in detail as to appear lifelike. Still, when it didn’t move, Catti-brie couldn’t focus on it. The room around it seemed full of surprises, and oddly mixed shapes and items. To her right, beyond and above the spider, loomed tapestries of impossibly thick hanging webbing that shimmered and seemed alive in the pressing waves of steam.
Roving her eye out to the left and across the floor, Catti-brie noted an altar, black and shot with veins of red, as if carrying blood throughout the solid stone. Just past it loomed the ledge and a large pile of broken lava rock, steaming feverishly. Just past it lay the pit, with water raining down from above and steam billowing up from below, and Catti-brie felt herself drawn to the lip, to gaze in.
She saw the swirling cyclone of living water, and saw the fiery eye far below—and knew that fiery eye to be the source of the whispers in her head.
She closed her eyes tight and concentrated, trying to hear the call, and saw in her mind’s eye this very room, and her focus moved down along the ledge, to a bridge, an anteroom, a lever …
Catti-brie opened her eyes, shaking her head for she could make no sense of this.
She heard the call of the fiery primordial again, and saw again the small room under an archway, with a lever.
The fiery beast wanted her to go to it, to pull it. She could feel its plea, its heavy heart, like a panther trapped in a small cage, or an eagle with its wings tied.
She started along the ledge, past the altar, and through the swirling fog, she saw a bridge crossing the chasm. Then she was upon it, halfway and more. And she saw a surge of water within the small room, rising up like a wave, and rushing out suddenly at her, a great breaker rolling over itself, barreling toward her to throw her from her precarious perch.
Catti-brie turned away and cast a spell, just in time to magically jump back the way she had come. The water crashed against her, hastening her journey, sending her into a flight that nearly flung her into the webbing as the water broke all around her.
Broke but did not dissipate. It flew together past her and rose up like some thick bear, watery arms outstretched and ready to batter her.
Catti-brie felt its animosity, saw its rage, and as it rolled in at her, she lifted her hands, thumbs touching, and burst a fan of flames into it. That minor spell hardly slowed the great water elemental, of course, but in its hiss and the resulting gout of steam, Catti-brie managed a retreat. She ran to the altar and skidded around it, using it as a shield so that if the elemental tried to break upon her and wash her away, the altar stone would serve as a small seawall and breakwater.
Her mind raced. She pulled Taulmaril from her shoulder, but shook her head and dropped it to the floor immediately, realizing that using lightning energy against a water elemental might not be a good idea. Indeed, the only clear notion that cut through the jumble of her thoughts was the need for the opposing element, the need for fire.
And so she began spellcasting and the elemental charged, and she threw a fireball at her own feet as it swept upon her. Clenching her fist with her protective ring, she rushed away through the blinding flames, water battering her and crashing into her, and throwing her to the floor back near where she had entered the room. Instinctively she started for the tunnel, but scolded herself for her foolishness before she had taken her second step, for surely the malleable water elemental could rush along that narrow passage and even drown her against the door at the far end.
The elemental rose up around the altar, but not quite as huge, it seemed. The fireball had stolen some of its watery composition, turning part of the being to harmless drifting steam.
Catti-brie was already deep into her next spellcasting as the primal watery monster stalked in, rolling toward her like a giant ocean swell. Fires burned around her hands, sparkling and sizzling, and she punched them out, but not at the water elemental.
Instead she threw her last fiery spell, another wall of fire, running it the length of the ledge, splitting the bare area of the chamber in half and with the hot side of the wall burning back toward her and toward the door and the wall and the webbing.
When the water elemental didn’t come through, Catti-brie leaped through her fire wall and taunted it.
How she could feel its seething hatred, as if she were a creature of the opposing plane of existence, as if she were a fire elemental instead of a flesh-and-bones human.
Despite her towering wall of burning fire, the watery beast threw itself at her, roaring like a wave, breakin
g like the ocean surf.
She jumped back through the wall of fire, into the inferno, and the elemental, so full of irrational hatred, followed. The water break swept her from her feet, but did not wash her aside, and she scrambled along, just inside the fire wall, and the elemental pursued. The water rushed in around her, roiling and boiling and bubbling, those bubbles popping and spraying the woman. But she did not feel the heat of the boiling water, as she did not feel the flames.
Steam mixed with rolling, angry fires, and she stumbled on, and when she felt no water around her any longer, she turned aside and dived back through the wall, into the clear and just past the altar stone.
And there back the other way stood the water elemental, much smaller now, but no less angry.
Catti-brie taunted it and held her ground, and again it charged, rolling in with the anger of a hurricane-driven tide determined to smash a wharf to kindling.
At the last moment, Catti-brie dived back through the wall, and more blue mist came from her sleeves, though it could not be seen in the swirl of fire. This spell was divine in source, calling to the stone beneath her hand, and she melded in with it, sinking her arm into it just as the water elemental fell over her.
She could feel the anger in the sloshing waves. The beast roared in her ears, hating her, needing to destroy her. It tried to pull her back to the cool side of the wall, but the woman held her ground, her arm literally rooted to the stone floor.
The elemental could not pull her free, could not take her away, and so it fell over her completely, holding its form around her, drowning her where she kneeled!
She could not draw breath. She swatted with her free hand, but the water would not wipe aside, would not leave its press on her nose and mouth.
She could not breathe, could not cast a spell. She felt as if a mountain giant was pressing a wet pillow over her face, and so she thrashed but she could not budge the giant.
Desperation drove her on—she felt as if her lungs would explode.
And then she was moving at least, back and forth in her jerking action, for now the mountain giant seemed more like an ogre.
Her enemy had diminished.
Catti-brie calmed immediately with that realization, conserved what little breath she had remaining. Darkness rose up around her, at the edges of her vision, as if the floor itself was swallowing her.
With that troubling thought, the woman reflexively retracted her enchanted arm, breaking her meld, and now the water elemental could pull her from the flames that bit at it and bubbled it to harmless gas.
But no, it could not, and the watery gag was gone, and even the steam diminished now.
Catti-brie rolled through her fire wall and lay on her back, gasping for breath. She feared that the elemental, too, had come through to the cool side, and would now fall over her once more, but no, it was not there.
It was gone, destroyed, melted to steam and flown away.
And the voice in her head returned, cheering, and she could understand it now and knew it to be the primordial.
It spoke in the tongue of the Plane of Fire, and Catti-brie understood that tongue, though she should not.
Images filled her mind—an explanation from the primordial? She imagined a humanoid that seemed made of magma leap from the pit and rumble down the tunnel. That magma elemental had opened the door, but the water elemental had pursued it, and had battered it to pieces back along the corridor and had broken it fully, over there, by the altar, where the steaming rubble remained.
The primordial had opened the door for her, to bring her in here, to pull the lever, to free it. She could feel its outrage, and when she looked around at the room, she understood that outrage to be wrought in violation. And not from the dwarves who had built this place, no, nor the wizards who had contained the volcano beneath the power of the water elementals. This outrage was new, an anger wrought in pride, an anger festering because the drow had dared turn this place into a chapel for the Demon Queen of Spiders.
Catti-brie pulled herself up from the floor, shaking her head, silently denying the primordial’s pleas. How could this be? How could she understand the language of that otherworldly plane of existence?
Her gaze went to her magically brightened hand, to the ruby ring. She had thought it a simple ring of fire protection, a fairly common item, but no, she knew now. No, this ring’s enchantment went far deeper, was far older, and many times more powerful, and it was a magic that had to be unlocked, for the wielder to prove herself worthy. And Catti-brie had done so by destroying an elemental from the opposing plane, an elemental of water.
Now with its magic fully engaged, this ring attuned Catti-brie to the Plane of Fire, and that magical connection deciphered the primordial’s call.
And through this ring, she could call back to it.
Her fire wall came down then, the magic expired, but still some small flames burned, for they had caught the webbing, layer and layer stripped away as tiny flames sparked and climbed.
Movement turned her gaze to the right, to the jade spider, as it turned to her.
Movement to the left showed her a second spider, similarly turning to face her.
“They are mine,” came a voice directly above and in front of her, and Catti-brie looked up to see a last layer of webbing burn aside to reveal a woman, an elf woman, hanging there, her arms outstretched. Her raven hair, shot with red streaks so similar to the altar stone, braided in a single line atop her head, and her face was marked with a multitude of blue dots. As she smiled and whispered the name of Catti-brie, those dots seemed to shift and join into an image.
A spider.
The newcomer drove her arms forward and the pole from which she was hanging broke in half over her back. She dropped to the floor to land gracefully, half the metal pole in each hand, and she snapped her wrists suddenly, violently, and each of those poles became two, joined by a length of cord, became a flail, and the woman put the weapon into a spin.
“Catti-brie,” she said again, wickedly, and she laughed.
She turned her head left and right and called to the jade spiders.
“Come, my pets.”
And they did.
And Catti-brie, her magic all but exhausted, stood with her back to the primordial pit.
CHAPTER 26
PROXY WAR
DRIZZT AND ENTRERI MOVED SWIFTLY ALONG THE TUNNEL IN SHORT bursts, one darting to the next position at a bend or corner, then motioning the other to run past, to the next. They passed the back side of the lava-made tunnel to the primordial chamber, to find that it had been sealed by the drow, by a wall of iron with some new masonry work securing it. Drizzt paused there, staring at the new wall, thinking of this and the mithral door with its new adamantine jamb. The dark elves were protecting the primordial pit. They had taken this place as their home.
Drizzt knew this area of the complex fairly well, and he turned around to peer into the continuing tunnel on the other side of the corridor he and Entreri now traversed. He had battled a drow mage down there, along with the wizard’s pet magma beast, which had carved these tunnels. From that mage, Drizzt had looted the ruby ring he had recently given to Catti-brie.
He waved Entreri past the opening of the lava tunnel, knowing it to be a dead end.
On they ran, leapfrogging past each other with practiced skill, and soon came to the entrance to a downward sloping tunnel, wide and smooth and recently worked, including grooves from, and for, the metal wheels of laden ore carts.
Down they ran for many strides, now side-by-side, for the tunnel was wide and straight with nowhere to hide. They came to a wide intersection, one passage forking left and down, the corridor continuing straight ahead, and a third passage breaking perpendicularly to the right. Unlike the other two, this third corridor was not descending.
Drizzt motioned for Entreri to hold this position, then started away to the right. The tunnel opened left and right into alcoves—mining stations, Drizzt realized, seeing the picks and shovel
s, and empty shackles staked to the stone.
“They’ve taken their prisoners with them,” Entreri remarked, catching up to Drizzt in the culminating chamber of the wing, where three separate sets of shackles sat on the stone, mining tools beside them.
Drizzt led the way back, in full run, and turned down the main, central corridor and ran on for a long way. They found more side tunnels, more empty mining stations, and then a gruesome discovery: a pair of slain humans, very recently cut down where they worked.
“The drow have gone deeper,” Entreri reasoned. “We’ll find no living slaves.”
Drizzt wanted to argue, but the reasoning was sound. They were far below the level of the Forge already, and the tunnel before them sloped more steeply and would soon open into the deeper Underdark.
“We have to return,” Entreri said, or started to, but Drizzt held up his hand for silence.
Entreri looked at him curiously.
Drizzt moved over and put his ear against the stone wall, then pointed to that side. “The other passageway,” he whispered.
As he neared the wall, Entreri, too, heard the rhythmic tapping of a pick against stone.
In their hasty retreat, the dark elves hadn’t cleared all of their slaves, apparently.
The pair ran back up to the four-way intersection and broke to their right to the far fork. This one went on for some ways before they encountered any mining stations, but as they neared the initial one, they clearly heard the slave at work.
It was a woman, a human. She shrank back as they neared, covering defensively.
“From Port Llast,” Entreri said, moving for the shackle and working fast to open the rudimentary lock. He looked at the woman. “We’re here to free you,” he said, and even as he finished, he pulled the shackle from her ankle. “Where is Dahlia?”