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the lower levels. Wulfgar doused the torch and Bruenor led them on under the protective dimness of the
gloom.
Their caution soon proved prudent, for as they entered yet another immense cavern, Regis grabbed
Bruenor by the shoulder, stopping him, and motioned for all of them to be silent. Bruenor almost burst
out in rage, but saw at once the sincere look of dread on Regis's face.
His hearing sharpened by years of listening for the click of a lock's tumblers, the halfling had picked
out a sound in the distance other than the dripping of water. A moment later, the others caught it, too, and
soon they identified it as the marching steps, of many booted feet. Bruenor took them into a dark recess
where they watched and waited.
They never saw the passing host clearly enough to count its numbers or identify its members, but they
could tell by the number of torches crossing the far end of the cavern that they were outnumbered by at
least ten to one, and they could guess the nature of the marchers.
"Gray ones, or me mother's a friend of orcs," Bruenor grumbled. He looked at Wulfgar to see if the
barbarian had any further complaints about his decision to leave Mithril Hall.
Wulfgar accepted the stare with a conceding nod. "How far to Garumn's Gorge?" he asked, fast
becoming as resigned to leaving as the others. He still felt as though he was deserting Drizzt, but he
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understood the wisdom of Bruenor's choice. It grew obvious now that if they remained, Drizzt Do'Urden
would not be the only one of them to die in Mithril Hall.
"An hour to the last passage," Bruenor answered. "Another hour, no more, from there."
The host of gray dwarves soon cleared the cavern and the companions started off again, using even
more caution and dreading each shuffling footfall that thumped the floor harder than intended.
His memories coming clearer with each passing step, Bruenor knew exactly where they were, and
made for the most direct path to the gorge, meaning to be out of the halls as quickly as possible. After
many minutes of walking, though, he came across a side passage that he simply could not pass by. Every
delay was a risk, he knew, but the temptation emanating from the room at the end of this short corridor
was too great for him to ignore. He had to discover how far the despoilment of Mithril Hall had gone; he
had to learn if the most treasured room of the upper level had survived.
The friends followed him without question and soon found themselves standing before a tall, ornate
metal door inscribed with the hammer of Moradin, the greatest of the dwarven gods, and a series of runes
beneath it. Bruenor's heavy breathing belied his calmness.
"Herein lie the gifts of our friends," Bruenor read solemnly, "and the craftings of our kin. Know ye as
ye enter this hallowed hall that ye look upon the heritage of Clan Battlehammer. Friends be welcome,
thieves beware!" Bruenor turned to his companions, beads of nervous sweat on his brow. "The Hall of
Dumathoin," he explained.
"Two hundred years of your enemies in the halls," Wulfgar reasoned. "Surely it has been pillaged."
"Not so," said Bruenor. "The door is magicked and would not open for enemies of the clan. A hundred
traps are inside to take the skin from a gray one who was to get through!" He glared at Regis, his gray
eyes narrowed in a stern warning. "Watch to yer own hands, Rumblebelly. Mighten be that a trap won't
know ye to be a friendly thief!"
The advice seemed sound enough for Regis to ignore the dwarf's biting sarcasm. Unconsciously
admitting the truth of Bruenor's words, the halfling slipped his hands into his pockets.
"Fetch a torch from the wall," Bruenor told Wulfgar. "Me thoughts tell me that no lights burn within."
Before Wulfgar even returned to them, Bruenor began opening the huge door. It swung easily under
the push of the hands of a friend, swinging wide into a short corridor that ended in a heavy black curtain.
A pendulum blade hung ominously in the center of the passage, a pile of bones beneath it. -
"Thieving dog," Bruenor chuckled with grim satisfaction. He stepped by the blade and moved to the
curtain, waiting for all of his friends to join him before he entered the chamber.
Bruenor paused, mustering the courage to open the last barrier to the hall, sweat glistening on all the
friends' faces now as the dwarf's anxiety swept through them.
With a determined grunt, Bruenor pulled the curtain aside. "Behold the Hall of Duma-" he began, but
the words stuck in his throat as soon as he looked beyond the opening. Of all the destruction they had
witnessed in the halls, none was more complete than this. Mounds of stone littered the floor. Pedestals
that had once held the finest works of the clan lay broken apart, and others had been trampled into dust.
Bruenor stumbled in blindly, his hands shaking and a great scream of outrage lumped in his throat. He
knew before he even looked upon the entirety of the chamber that the destruction was complete.
"How?" Bruenor gasped. Even as he asked, though, he saw the huge hole in the wall. Not a tunnel
carved, around the blocking door, but a gash in the stone, as though some incredible ram had blasted
through.
"What power could have done such a thing?" Wulfgar asked, following the line of the dwarf's stare to
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the hole.
Bruenor moved over, searching for some clue, Catti-brie and Wulfgar with him. Regis headed the
other way, just to see if anything of value remained.
Catti-brie caught a rainbowlike glitter on the floor and moved to what she thought was a puddle of
some dark liquid. Bending close, though, she realized that it wasn't liquid at all, but a scale, blacker than
the blackest night and nearly the size of a man. Wulfgar and Bruenor rushed to her side at the sound of
her gasp.
"Dragon!" Wulfgar blurted, recognizing the distinctive shape. He grasped the thing by its edge and
hoisted it upright to better inspect it. Then he and Catti-brie turned to Bruenor to see if he had any
knowledge of such a monster.
The dwarf's wide-eyed, terror-stricken stare answered their question before it was asked.
"Blacker than the black," Bruenor whispered, speaking again the most common words of that fateful
day those two hundred years ago. "Me father told me of the thing," he explained to Wulfgar and Catti-
brie. "A demon-spawned dragon, he called it, a darkness blacker than the black. 'Twas not the gray ones
that routed us - we would've fought them head on to the last. The dragon of darkness took our numbers
and drove us from the halls. Not one in ten remained to stand against its foul hordes in the smaller halls
at th'other end."
A hot draft of air from the hole reminded them that it probably connected to the lower halls, and the
dragon's lair.
"Let's be leaving," Catti-brie suggested, "afore the beast gets a notion that we're here."
Regis then cried out from the other side of the chamber. The friends rushed to him, not knowing if he
had stumbled upon treasure or danger.
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