For those who might be interested, Mae'rillar is the protagonist of an in-progress Hordes of the Underdark fiction of mine, called 'The Matron's Favoured Son'. Let me know what you think of him etc.! ;)
So apparently mountains like the one in this chapter are a real geological thing, though with less hyperbolic fire...(and obviously no Fire Giants...)
As always, reviews are welcomed and greatly appreciated xD
The Ironfist stronghold was not as impressive as Isaviel had hoped. It bore no resemblance to the stories of fabled Mithral Hall which she had heard in her youth. Its doors were no larger than the doors of Crossroad Keep, though of stone and embedded deep within a tunnel some half way up the closest mountain from their earlier campsite. The tunnels beyond were dimly lit, with low ceilings and dirt walls reinforced with wooden frames, and they descended ever downwards.
The further Khayar and his men had taken Isaviel and her friends – minus Karnwyr, who had refused flatly to enter the stronghold and slunk off back down the trail – the further down the tunnels wound. Many of the side passages, some no larger than crawlspaces, rang with the distant sound of hammers on metal, or pickaxes on stone. This place seemed to double up as a mine and a forge, but it was also dark, and cramped – if labyrinthine – and smelled of dirt.
Isaviel could not begin to understand why Khelgar kept looking around at her with proud, expectant smiles…until they had descended a flight of steep stone steps and passed through another set of stone doors, into a large stone hall – everything seemed to be made out of stone here. It was not sweeping, and hardly grand, but it was impressive in its own right, with gilded torch brackets and a sparkling floor of polished granite, the symbols of three gods carved into the otherwise smooth ceiling; the twin axes of Clangeddin, the anvil of Moradin and the jewel of Dumathoin. Beneath these gem-studded symbols milled scores of Dwarves, both male and female, some armoured, some dressed in the aprons of blacksmiths, others sporting the robes of clerics.
Directly across the room, upon a silver-veined throne of jagged obsidian, sat a Dwarf with hair as black as Khelgar's, braided with gems and gold wire. Lean and tall for his kind, his beard hung down to his broad belt and upon his head rested an ill-fitting crown of assuredly heavy obsidian to match his mighty throne. A huge hammer, shimmering like silk, glittering like the granite floor, waited upended by his side on a trolley with enough handles on one end to be dragged by ten workers. That had to be the heirloom of which Khelgar and Khayar had spoken, and the enthroned Dwarf who had glared so vehemently at the arriving group was certainly King Keros, Khelgar's younger brother.
By the time they had arrived in that throne room, Isaviel had been leaning heavily on Bishop, the injuries on her neck burning with pain, the gash on her chest bleeding once more. When Khayar informed Keros of her condition he had waved imperiously towards a group of clerics, who had come rushing over to lead her to their temple for healing. In the end Bishop had just scooped her up into his arms, evidently growing bored with her slow pace, and they had left Khelgar and Grobnar to face Keros. She wished she could have stayed to witness the conversation, but she had surreptitiously begun to cough blood, and Bishop had definitely noticed as well.
As they had travelled through the taller, cleaner, increasingly elaborately carved bustling stone passages, Dwarves jumping out of the way to let pass the healers and the tall human carrying his Elvish charge, Isaviel realised she would only get a glimpse of the enormous stronghold. Khelgar had assured her that the place had the population of a city, and was easily big enough to hold an even larger number.
The temple of Moradin was not impressive, with only an altar in the shape of a silver anvil at the centre of the unadorned room, a tall flame burning across its top. Her underwhelmed feelings had changed, however, once Bishop had been instructed to leave her slumped at the altar's foot and the priests had begun to pray to their god. The healing magic had spread through her quickly then, cool and soothing, no more intrusive than a warm bath, taking away all the pain she felt. She saw Bishop's eyes widen in surprise when the bruises on her neck disappeared and the scars there from the first Shadow Reaver attack faded as well. The gash on her chest took longer, but eventually she felt that close up and heal entirely as well.
When she had stood after this feat of healing magic, she had stretched in relief, smiling to the priests, who beamed back at her, proud of their work. Not only had her immediate afflictions been cured, but other lingering pains she had ignored, memories of injuries sustained longer ago, had vanished as well. She felt renewed, far more so than she had in the temple of Lathander after defeating Qaggoth-Yeg.
After that she and Bishop had been led to the chambers reserved for them and Grobnar, close to the rooms which were habitually Khelgar's. It had made her laugh to see that the Dwarves had rather unconcernedly given the three of them a suite of rooms which were connected – in Neverwinter, her gender would have separated her automatically from her travelling companions. By that time, Grobnar had already retired to his bed chamber, and Bishop seemed more than a little enamoured with Isaviel's new state of good health, following her to her room, kissing her until she laughed and pushed him onto her bed.
Sleep was, as so often of late, elusive for the Moon Elf and once the ranger was asleep she had dressed in the spare, unbloodied clothes she had brought with her and slipped out of her room. A passing guard in the corridor informed her that it was past midnight; when she enquired after Khelgar she was unsurprised to learn that he had not retired to bed and duly asked to be escorted to him.
Isaviel found Khelgar even further within the mountain, down several steep flights of stairs, down into the all but pitch black mausoleum of his ancestors. The tomb was huge, stretching around the stairway column and out of sight, but the torch he had placed in a sconce across the chamber alerted her to his whereabouts immediately. Upon approaching, remembering to keep her footsteps audible so as not to startle him, Isaviel saw that he stood before the statue of a broad, heavily-bearded Dwarf with a hammer at his feet. The hammer depicted stood upon its trolley as it had in the throne room, glittering with a light of its own, between the living Dwarf and the statue. She could not help but wonder how it had been transported to this place on such wheels, but suspected the ingenuity of the Dwarves was more than up to the task.
"Ye look well now, lass," Khelgar grunted when she reached his side, giving her only a cursory glance, not turning his face to look at her properly. He did not need to; she could see the tears glistening on his weathered cheeks.
"He was your father," Isaviel stated softly, staring at the statue just as Khelgar did, "He was the king of the Ironfist clan. Doesn't that make you a prince? The crown prince?"
"Aye, but I'm not feelin' it. And none o' me kin are, either."
It was an impressive work of art, as large as a human man but much broader, chiselled from white marble, showing a brawny Dwarf in his prime dressed in plain plate mail without the slightest hint of Khelgar's steadily growing beer-belly. The craftsmanship was realistic enough to depict the lines on the previous king's weathered face, the irises of his eyes glittering with diamonds, his expression stern, showing none of Khelgar's over-enthusiasm or Keros's evident earlier bitterness.
"Me brother says 'e won't march fer Crossroad Keep," the Dwarf sighed at last, "Not unless I can prove meself 'worthy of the clan's respect'. Pah! How could I 'a known, lass? I thought me father still ruled here…and I come home t' see me little brother playin' regent, wearin' the crown o' me ancestors, wi' the hammer o' me ancestors! What could I do that's better, eh lass?" he clenched his knuckles and ground his teeth, "I've gotta avenge me father. I've gotta take back th' belt, and prove me right to be an Ironfist again!"
Those words, spoken with such oblivious dejection, should not have made Isaviel smile, but for the realisation that came with them for her. How could Khelgar not see the obvious course here?
"But would that really help your position, or would it play right into Keros's hands?" Isaviel asked softly, and when Khelgar turned to look at her incredulously, she raised her hands in a peaceable gesture, a suggestion that he hear her out first, "I'm not proposing that you don't get the belt back…just do it in a different way."
"Like what? How many ways t' kill a Fire Giant king are there? Ye go in, ye storm the place, ye come out with 'is head."
"Anything but that, that's what I'm suggesting," Isaviel told him firmly, lowering her voice to a careful whisper that did not carry throughout the echoing hall, so Khelgar had to lean in closer to listen, "Don't you see? Keros wants you to do all that. If you do, what's to say there won't be a massacre like last time? They must be powerful for it to have taken this long for your clan to reclaim the belt," she reasoned, "Why not prove that you could be a wise king?"
"I never said I wanted t' be king," Khelgar complained, but there was a grin starting to show on his face, even as he gestured at himself, "Do I look like king material to ye, lass?"
"Tell me where Mount Galardrym is, and give me two days," Isaviel suggested, "I'll bring you the belt. You present it to Keros, with not a casualty to your name, and let's see what the Ironfist clan thinks of their wise crown prince then."
"Aye," Khelgar was grinning in earnest now, "If that's what it takes to get these thick-skulls to listen to me warnings o' death and shadow, then aye, do it lass. But…ye do one more thing fer me, and they'll know I loosed ye and yer mischief well. The Fire Giants, they'll scatter and run if their king is gone. It'll free us from their threat. I'd offer t' come with ye, but ye're lookin' to do some sneakin' aren't ye, lass?"
"Always," she shrugged, regarding the Dwarf with a fierce smile, "And I will bring you back the head of the Fire Giant king with that belt of yours."
Rejuvenated, not at all weary for the first time in tendays, Isaviel was more than ready for some adventure.
Mount Galardrym stood deep within the snowy Sword Mountains, an anomaly of black stone, steam and fire rising up from deep fissures on the steep climb up. The path which Isaviel and Bishop had taken was an easy one, for Khelgar had advised them to use the ancient Dwarvish track up as far as it would go. The road was narrow, its walls high and jagged, and thus useless to the Fire Giants who lived in the basin nearby.
Once the pair reached the end of their road it was almost midnight, the sky black with clouds, but even at this time of year the air was hot, uncomfortably so, smelling of sulphur, the fires burnings in the rock lighting up the road and banishing the night.
Once she and Bishop had scaled the rocks over the closed mine and around a natural, worryingly narrow ledge, Isaviel could understand how it had been so difficult for Khelgar's father to lead his raiders in a full assault of the basin in which the Fire Giants lived. Crouched on the edge, Isaviel leaned forward to look into the fiery heart of the mountain and the lumbering forms milling around the foul-smelling fires roaring at the centre of the deep, broad basin. The Fire Giants clearly had no fear of the flames, sitting cooking meat in their hands on boulders placed around the edge of the fires.
These creatures milling perhaps forty feet beneath them were loud in their rumbling arguments and in their equally thunderous laughter, and therefore clearly either very confident in their position at the top of the mountain, or very foolish. Tall, they were perhaps twice the height of Bishop but more than twice as broad, their brawny bodies more resembling their Dwarvish neighbours, with long red hair and even longer beards. They tore at the half-cooked meat they held with pointed teeth that looked sharper than daggers, and their tiny eyes blazed with red light as bright as fire in the half-darkness.
Looking straight down, Isaviel grinned in relief. The Giant king sat by himself upon a boulder directly beneath the Moon Elf, watching his unruly court, dressed in ill-fitting scraps of plate-mail, with a gnarled club resting across his knees. Around his neck lay the quarry of Isaviel's journey, the broad black belt of the Ironfist Clan, woven with shimmering strands of solid silver, sparkling with magical energy.
"You want to do this now, Captain?" Bishop hissed in her ear, putting an arm around her waist from behind as he peered over her shoulder, his breath tickling her neck, his muscular chest pressing distractingly against her back, "You're the only one who got a new lease of life last night, you know, after the healing spells of the Dwarves."
"Come now," Isaviel whispered with mock seriousness as they retreated back from the ledge to discuss their options, "Don't you want to recover the unrightfully stolen belt of Khelgar's dear clan? And more than that…how about showing those stupid creatures what fools they really are?"
"You want a distraction," Bishop noted immediately, and though he did not smile his dark eyes showed his fierce glee at the idea, running a hand thoughtfully along his bow, shrugging, "Why not. I spy more than a score of Giants, and there are only two of us," he did smile then, a vicious, mirthless smile, that made him look anything but beguiling…but her heart raced all the same, "Let's kill these fools."
The distant firelight was dancing in the ranger's eyes as he looked around the wall of stone shielding them from view, watching the scene below them, taking in the clear route down which Isaviel had already judged, nodding to himself before looking back at the Moon Elf and pausing. She wondered what he saw to make him look at her so differently, how his expression changed and his glance lingered on her, softening. Was he fearing for her? Did he wonder at her intention to kill the Giant king alone? A small frown appeared on his face even as his stare lingered and she took a step against him, kissing him softly. He hardly responded and she looked up at him curiously, so see that his expression was unreadable, his frown still there, though his hands remained on her waist, gripping hard.
"Don't forget to cut off his head," Bishop snarled at last, running a finger gently across her throat to highlight his brutal words, "I won't wait long for you. At the mine entrance. I don't have enough arrows for all of them."
Isaviel nodded, drawing back now and turning away, unsettled by his suddenly strange behaviour. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh when she heard him leave. It was a long wait, but just when Isaviel was beginning to wonder if his distant manner had been a portent of mutiny, she heard a roar of rage from across the crater, the distant thumping of heavy, running feet, out of sight beyond the flames.
As his minions lumbered away, brandishing clubs and rumbling ponderous oaths and threats, the king stood, hefting his own mighty weapon, but he was slower to head out, giving Isaviel time to nimbly descend to the ledge near his head and somersault over it, landing lightly on her feet facing him. He grunted in surprise, taking a half-step back, his broad brow furrowing in confusion and welling indignation, his fiery glance momentarily following the increasingly distant sounds of his raging subjects pursuing Bishop and his stinging arrows before once more settling on Isaviel. She gave him a vicious smile even as his glare only intensified, unsheathing the sword of Lord Halueth Never with an echoing ring.
"You," the king grunted, his voice a deep, bone-shaking rumble, "Tiny thing…you cannot defeat me."
"We'll see about that," Isaviel almost laughed in the face of his stupidity, and her own rising excitement. She felt strong. There was a power welling up beneath her scar… "I have the shadows on my side."
When the first mighty swing of the Fire Giant's tree-trunk club came, those shadows were waiting for her.
Two days, the lass had promised. It would take hardly less than that to get to Mount Galardrym and back again, but somehow he had never doubted her. She and the ranger returned less than forty-eight hours after their departure, in the evening of the second day, bursting through the door of Khelgar's apartment when he was just starting to pace anxiously by the fire. Grobnar had been playing an unrelentingly mournful tune on his lyre, but dropped the instrument onto the footstool in front of his seat with a startled cry when Isaviel stepped through the door and dropped the head of the Fire Giant king, crown and all, upon the polished black ground. She presented the unmistakable, glorious belt as well, and Khelgar approached slowly, a grin growing on his face as he met her triumphant gaze. A roaring laugh followed, and she smiled that vicious smile of hers as well.
"I knew ye'd do it, lass!" he cried, taking the belt she proffered and marvelling at it in the flickering firelight, "Aye, that's what we're needin'."
He took up the head she had left, raising it by its mane of red hair, and immediately began to march for the corridor ahead, aiming a cursory nod Bishop's way as he passed the ranger. Only Grobnar cast an uncomfortable glance at the blood which pooled, hopping over the empty bag left on the floor as he hurried after his companions.
"Where are we going, good Dwarf?" the Gnome asked breathlessly, and Khelgar paused in his march, almost forcing Isaviel to walk right into him, to cast Grobnar an incredulous glare.
"Where d'ye think, lad? To Keros! To get me crown! To get the lass her army!"
The words burst from his mouth with the weight of realisation behind them, not just conviction. Since when had he ever wanted the crown? He had never imagined his father would ever die. The Dwarf had been hale and healthy in his one hundred and fiftieth year, with not a grey hair upon his head or in his beard!
Keros was waiting for them in the throne room with most of the Dwarvish court. He had evidently heard of Isaviel's return, but also clearly had no idea what Khelgar intended, or what it was he carried with him. If he had, surely he would not have been so foolish as to allow his older brother such a crowd? Even Khelgar understood that was folly! The hammer even stood sparkling by his side, as it always did during his hours at court.
"What is this?" Keros growled, even as his eyes remained locked upon the gory trophy hanging by its thick red hair from Khelgar's fist, the younger brother's expression a mixture of horror, fear, and outrage, "What have you done?"
"It's not so much what I've done, so much as what me friend 'ere 'as done," Khelgar told him as he dropped the head of the Fire Giant king at Keros's immaculately booted feet, gesturing over his shoulder at Isaviel, who was just catching up to him, Bishop her glowering shadow.
"The Fire Giants have run from Mount Galardrym!" Khelgar continued, raising his voice as he looked at the curious, doubtful faces of the king's retainers, all gathered within the opulent hall.
"And they will no doubt turn on us next!" Keros threw in quickly, rising now – conveniently taking the opportunity to step away from the severed head, which was still oozing blood, "My wayward, treacherous brother has only given them more reason to turn on us!"
"Oh, come now," Bishop's drawl cut in through the mutterings that had begun to spread, and many curious Dwarven eyes turned upon the only human in the hall – though none could ever be so wide and curious as Grobnar's, and the Gnome's saucer-like eyes had turned their full force upon the ranger at that moment, "Everyone knows Fire Giants lose their agenda as soon as the king that taught it to them dies. Those among them who still live after the torment we gave them will be fighting amongst themselves and scattered halfway to the other side of Kryptgarden Forest by now."
Khelgar did not like the grin that Bishop shared with Isaviel as he spoke about harming the Fire Giants. The Moon Elf was hard, and she could be brutal…but she was not cruel. Not like the vicious, sneering ranger. But when she was with Bishop…something about her was…bad. Khelgar could not quite put his creeping feelings into words, but it was almost enough to distract him from his necessary addition to Bishop's point. It was probably the most necessary addition to anything that he, Khelgar Ironfist, would ever make in his life. Apart from maybe his inevitable – and undoubtedly numerous – future additions to the Dwarven population, of course…
"And it's not just the Fire Giants the lass and the ranger there got rid of fer us," Khelgar explained, and Keros's face fell when he swiftly buckled the Belt of Ironfist around his –ample – waist and strode toward the glittering hammer, a communal gasp going up around the hall as all those within shuffled closer, leaning in to watch.
Khelgar was grinning broadly as his hands closed around the hilt of the hammer, and he felt the spark of magical energy in his hands. As he raised the otherwise immovable weapon over his head, the roar of the crowd was deafening in the hall of his forebears.