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.

They found him crouched beside a pile of stone, peering into a gap in the blocks.

He held up a silver-shafted arrow. “I found it in there,” he explained. “And there’s something more—a bow, I think.”

Wulfgar moved the torch closer to the gap and they all saw clearly the curving arc that could only be the wood of a longbow, and the silvery shine of a bowstring. Wulfgar grasped the wood and tugged lightly, expecting it to break apart in his hands under the enormous weight of the stone.

But it held firmly, even against a pull of all his strength. He looked around at the stones, seeking the best course to free the weapon.

Regis, meanwhile, had found something more, a golden plaque wedged in another crack in the pile. He managed to slip it free and brought it into the torchlight to read its carved runes.

“ ‘Taulmaril the Heartseeker,’ “ he read. “ ‘Gift of—’ “

“Anariel, Sister of Faerun,” Bruenor finished without even looking at the plaque. He nodded in recognition to Catti-brie’s questioning glance.

“Free the bow, boy,” he told Wulfgar. “Suren it might be put to a better use than this.”

Wulfgar had already discerned the structure of the pile and started lifting away specific blocks at once. Soon Catti-brie was able to wiggle the longbow free, but she saw something else beyond its nook in the pile and asked Wulfgar to keep digging.

While the muscled barbarian pushed aside more stones, the others marveled at the beauty of the bow. Its wood hadn’t even been scratched by the stones and the deep finish of its polish returned with a single brush of the hand. Catti-brie strung it easily and held it up, feeling its solid and even draw.

“Test it,” Regis offered, handing her the silver arrow.

Catti-brie couldn’t resist. She fitted the arrow to the silvery string and drew it back, meaning only to try its fit and not intending to fire.

“A quiver!” Wulfgar called, lifting the last of the stones. “And more of the silver arrows.”

Bruenor pointed into the blackness and nodded. Catti-brie didn’t hesitate.

A streaking tail of silver followed the whistling missile as it soared into the darkness, ending its flight abruptly with a crack. They all rushed after it, sensing something beyond the ordinary. They found the arrow easily, for it was buried halfway to its fletches in the wall!

All about its point of entry, the stone had been scorched, and even tugging with all of his might, Wulfgar couldn’t budge the arrow an inch.

“Not to fret,” said Regis, counting the arrows in the quiver that Wulfgar held. “There are nineteen…twenty more!” He backed away, stunned. The others looked at him in confusion.

“Nineteen, there were,” Regis explained. “My count was true.”

Wulfgar, not understanding, quickly counted the arrows. “Twenty,” he said.

“Twenty now,” Regis answered. “But nineteen when I first counted.”

“So the quiver holds some magic, too,” Catti-brie surmised. “A mighty gift, indeed, the Lady Anariel gave to the clan!”

“What more might we find in the ruins of this place?” Regis asked, rubbing his hands together.

“No more,” Bruenor answered gruffly. “We’re for leaving, and not a word of arguin’ from ye!”

Regis knew with a look at the other two that he had no support against the dwarf, so he shrugged helplessly and followed them back through the curtain and into the corridor.

“The gorge!” Bruenor declared, starting them off again.

“Hold, Bok,” Sydney whispered when the companions’ torchlight re-entered the corridor a short distance ahead of them.

“Not yet,” she said, an anticipating smile widening across her dust-streaked face. “We shall find a better time!”

21. Silver in the Shadows

Suddenly, he found a focus in the blur of gray haze, something tangible amid the swirl of nothingness. It hovered before him and turned over slowly.

Its edges doubled and rolled apart, then rushed together again. He fought the dull ache in his head, the inner blackness that had consumed him and now fought to keep him in its hold. Gradually, he became aware of his arms and legs, who he was, and how he had come to be here.

In his startled awareness, the image sharpened to a crystalline focus. The tip of a jeweled dagger.

Entreri loomed above him, a dark silhouette against the backdrop of a single torch set into the wall a few yards beyond, his blade poised to strike at the first sign of resistance. Drizzt could see that the assassin, too, had been hurt in the fall, though he had obviously been the quicker to recover.

“Can you walk?” Entreri asked, and Drizzt was smart enough to know what would happen if he could not.

He nodded and moved to rise, but the dagger shot in closer.

“Not yet,” Entreri snarled. “We must first determine where we are, and where we are to go!”

Drizzt turned his concentration away from the assassin then and studied their surroundings, confident that Entreri would have already killed him if that was the assassin’s intent. They were in the mines, that much was apparent, for the walls were roughly carved stone supported by wooden columns every twenty feet or so.

“How far did we fall?” he asked the assassin, his senses telling him that they were much deeper than the room they had fought in.

Entreri shrugged. “I remember landing on hard stone after a short drop, and then sliding down a steep and twisting chute. It seemed like many moments before we finally dropped in here.” He pointed to an opening at the corner of the ceiling, where they had fallen through. “But the flow of time is different for a man thinking he is about to die, and the whole thing may have been over much more quickly than I remember.”

“Trust in your first reaction,” Drizzt suggested, “for my own perceptions tell me that we have descended a long way indeed.”

“How can we get out?”

Drizzt studied the slight grade in the floor and pointed to his right. “The slope is up to that direction,” he said.

“Then on your feet,” Entreri said, extending a hand to help the drow.

Drizzt accepted the assistance and rose cautiously and without giving any sign of a threat. He knew that Entreri’s dagger would cut him open long before he could strike a blow of his own.

Entreri knew it, too, but didn’t expect any trouble from Drizzt in their present predicament. They had shared more than an exchange of swordplay up in the alcove, and both looked upon the other with grudging respect.

“I need your eyes,” Entreri explained, though Drizzt had already figured as much. “I have found but one torch, and that will not last long enough to get me out of here. Your eyes, black elf, can find their way in the darkness. I will be close enough to feel your every move, close enough to kill you with a single thrust!” He turned the dagger over again to emphasize his point, but Drizzt understood him well enough without the visual aid.