Bruenor wasn’t listening. He had to read it for himself, to devour every word penned about his lost heritage, no matter the significance.

“What of this Settlestone?” Wulfgar asked Old Night. “A clue?”

“Perhaps,” the old herald replied. “Thus far I have found no reference to the place other than this book, but I am inclined to believe from the work that Settlestone was rather unusual for a dwarven town.”

“Above the ground!” Bruenor suddenly cut in.

“Yes,” agreed Old Night. “A dwarven community housed in structures above the ground. Rare these days and unheard of back in the time of Mithril Hall. Only two possibilities, to my knowledge.”

Regis let out a cry of victory.

“Your enthusiasm may be premature,” remarked Old Night. “Even if we discern where Settlestone once lay, the trail to Mithril Hall merely begins there.”

Bruenor flipped through a few pages of the book, then replaced it on the table. “So close!” he growled, slamming his fist down on the petrified wood. “And I should know!”

Drizzt moved over to him and pulled a vial out from under his cloak. “A potion,” he explained to Bruenor’s puzzled look, “that will make you walk again in the days of Mithril Hall.”

“A mighty spell,” warned Old Night. “And not to be controlled. Consider its use carefully, good dwarf.”

Bruenor was already moving, teetering on the verge of a discovery he had to find. He quaffed the liquid in one gulp, then steadied himself on the edge of the table against its potent kick. Sweat beaded on his wrinkled brow and he twitched involuntarily as the potion sent his mind drifting back across the centuries.

Regis and Wulfgar moved over to him, the big man clasping his shoulders and easing him into a seat.

Bruenor’s eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing in the room before him. Sweat lathered him now, and the twitch had become a tremble.

“Bruenor,” Drizzt called softly, wondering if he had done right in presenting the dwarf with such a tempting opportunity.

“No, me father!” Bruenor screamed. “Not here in the darkness! Come with me, then. What might I do without ye?”

“Bruenor,” Drizzt called more emphatically.

“He is not here,” Old Night explained, familiar with the potion, for it was often used by long-lived races, particularly elves, when they sought memories of their distant past. Normally the imbibers returned to a more pleasant time, though. Old Night looked on with grave concern, for the potion had returned Bruenor to a wicked day in his past, a memory that his mind had blocked out, or at least blurred, to defend him against powerful emotions. Those emotions would now be laid bare, revealed to the dwarf’s conscious mind in all their fury.

“Bring him to the Chamber of the Dwarves,” Old Night instructed. “Let him bask in the images of his heroes. They will aid in remembering, and give him strength throughout his ordeal.”

Wulfgar lifted Bruenor and bore him gently down the passage to the Chamber of the Dwarves, laying him in the center of the circular floor. The friends backed away, leaving the dwarf to his delusions.

Bruenor could only half-see the images around him now, caught between the worlds of the past and present. Images of Moradin, Dumathoin, and all his deities and heroes looked down upon him from their perches in the rafters, adding a small bit of comfort against the waves of tragedy. Dwarven-sized suits of armor and cunningly crafted axes and warhammers surrounded him, and he bathed in the presence of the highest glories of his proud race.

The images, though, could not dispell the horror he now knew again, the falling of his clan, of Mithril Hall, of his father.

“Daylight!” he cried, torn between relief and lament. “Alas for me father, and me father’s father! But yea, our escape is at hand! Settlestone…” he faded from consciousness for a moment, overcome, “…shelter us. The loss, the loss! Shelter us!”

“The price is high,” said Wulfgar, pained at the dwarf’s torment.

“He is willing to pay,” Drizzt replied.

“It will be a sorry payment if we learn nothing,” said Regis. “There is no direction to his ramblings. Are we to sit by and hope against hope?”

“His memories have already brought him to Settlestone, with no mention of the trail behind him,” Wulfgar observed.

Drizzt drew a scimitar and pulled the cowl of his cloak low over his face.

“What?” Regis started to ask, but the drow was already moving. He rushed to Bruenor’s side and put his face close to the dwarf’s sweat-lathered cheek.

“I am a friend,” he whispered to Bruenor. “Come at the news of the falling of the hall! My allies await! Vengeance will be ours, mighty dwarf of Clan Battlehammer! Show us the way so that we might restore the glories of the hall!”

“Secret,” Bruenor gasped, on the edge of consciousness.

Drizzt pressed harder. “Time is short! The darkness is falling!” he shouted. “The way, dwarf, we must know the way!”

Bruenor mumbled some inaudible sounds and all the friends gasped in the knowledge that the drow had broken through the final mental barrier that hindered Bruenor from finding the hall.

“Louder!” Drizzt insisted.

“Fourthpeak!” Bruenor screamed back. “Up the high run and into Keeper’s Dale!”

Drizzt looked over to Old Night, who was nodding in recognition, then turned back to Bruenor. “Rest, mighty dwarf,” he said comfortingly. “Your clan shall be avenged!”

“With the description the book gives of Settlestone, Fourthpeak can describe only one place,” Old Night explained to Drizzt and Wulfgar when they got back to the library. Regis remained in the Chamber of the Dwarves to watch over Bruenor’s fretful sleep.

The herald pulled a scroll tube down from a high shelf, and unrolled the ancient parchment it held: a map of the central northland, between Silverymoon and Mirabar.

“The only dwarven settlement in the time of Mithril Hall above ground, and close enough to a mountain range to give a reference to a numbered peak, would be here,” he said, marking the southernmost peak on the southernmost spur of the Spine of the World, just north of Nesme and the Evermoors. “The deserted city of stone is simply called “the Ruins” now, and it was commonly known as Dwarvendarrows when the bearded race lived there. But the ramblings of your companion have convinced me that this is indeed the Settlestone that the book speaks of.”

“Why, then, would the book not refer to it as Dwarvendarrow?” asked Wulfgar.

“Dwarves are a secretive race,” Old Night explained with a knowing chuckle, “especially where treasure is concerned. Garumn of Mithril Hall was determined to keep the location of his trove hidden from the greed of the outside world. He and Elmor of Settlestone no doubt worked out an arrangement that included intricate codes and constructed names to reference their surroundings. Anything to throw prying mercenaries off the trail. Names that now appear in disjointed places throughout the tomes of dwarven history. Many scholars have probably even read of Mithril Hall, called by some other name that the readers assumed referred to another of the many ancient dwarven homelands now lost to the world.”

The herald paused for a moment to digest everything that had occurred. “You should be away at once,” he advised. “Carry the dwarf if you must, but get him to Settlestone before the effects of the potion wear away. Walking in his memories, Bruenor might be able to retrace his steps of two hundred years ago back up the mountains to Keeper’s Dale, and to the gate of Mithril Hall.”

Drizzt studied the map and the spot that Old Night had marked as the location of Settlestone. “Back to the west.” he muttered, echoing Alustriel’s suspicions. “Barely two days march from here.”

Wulfgar moved in close to view the parchment and added, in a voice that held both anticipation and a measure of sadness, “Our road nears its end.”