That leg buckled. Arms flailing, the giant fell over backward down the stairs, landing with a tremendous, stone-crunching crash, and just missing crushing poor unconscious Torgar.

Drizzt sprinted and leaped atop it, running down its length to reach its neck before it could bring its arms in to fend him off. Drizzt found less resistance than he expected, for the giant’s fall had driven Bruenor’s axe in all the deeper, severing its spine.

The behemoth was helpless, and Drizzt showed it no mercy. He crossed its massive chest. Its head was back due to the angle of the stairs, leaving its neck fully exposed.

He leaped from the gurgling, dying behemoth a moment later, landing gracefully on the stairs in full run, angling toward where the batlike creature and Pwent had tumbled. It was quiet there, the fight apparently ended, and Drizzt winced when he saw a leathery wing flop, thinking the monster still alive.

But it was just Pwent, he saw, grumbling as he extracted himself from the broken body.

Drizzt veered back the way they’d come, thinking to go after Regis, but before he could even begin, Regis appeared between the buildings, walking back swiftly toward the group, his mace in hand, his chubby cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“It took me strength, me king,” Torgar Hammerstriker was saying when Drizzt, Guenhwyvar in tow, moved back to the three dwarves. “Like it pulled me spine right out.”

“A wraith,” explained Cordio, who was still working on the battered Bruenor, bandaging a cut along the dwarf king’s scalp. “Their chilling touch steals yer inner strength—and it can suren kill ye to death if it gets enough o’ the stuff from ye! Take heart, for ye’ll be fine in a short bit.”

“As will me king?” Torgar asked.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted. “Got me a bigger bounce fallin’ off me throne after a proper blessing to Moradin. A night o’ the holy mead’s hurtin’ me more than that thing e’er could!”

Torgar moved over to the dead giant and tried to lift its shoulder. He looked back at the others, shaking his head. “Gonna be a chore for ten in gettin’ back yer axe,” he said.

“Then take yer own and cut yer way through the durned thing,” Bruenor ordered.

Torgar considered the giant, then looked to his great-axe. He gave a “hmm” and a shrug, spat in both his hands, and hoisted the weapon. “Won’t take long,” he promised. “But take care with yer axe when I get it for ye, for the handle’s sure to be slick.”

“Nah, it crusts when it dries,” came a voice from the side, and the group turned to regard Thibble dorf Pwent, who certainly knew of what he spoke. For Pwent was covered in blood and gore from the thrashing he had given the batlike monster, and a piece of the creature’s skull was still stuck to his great head spike, with gobs of bloody brain sliding slowly down the spike’s stem. To emphasize his point, Pwent held up his hand and clenched and unclenched his fist, making sounds both sloppy wet and crunchy.

“And what happened to yerself?” Pwent demanded of Regis as the halfling approached. “Ye find something to hit back there, did ye?”

“I don’t know,” the halfling honestly answered.

“Bah, let off the little one,” Bruenor told Pwent, and he included all the others as he swept his gaze around. “Ain’t nothing chasing Rumblebelly off.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Regis said to Bruenor, and he looked at the dead giant and shrugged. “For any of it.”

“Magic,” said Drizzt. “The creatures were possessed of more than physical prowess, as is typical of extraplanar beings. One of those spells attacked the mind. A disorienting dweomer.”

“True enough, elf,” Cordio agreed. “It delayed me spellcasting.”

“Bah, but I didn’t feel nothing,” said Pwent.

“Attacked the mind,” Bruenor remarked. “Yerself was well defended.”

Pwent paused and pondered that for a few moments before bursting into laughter.

“What is this place?” Torgar asked at length, finding the strength to rise and walk, taking in the sights, the sculpture, the strange designs.

“Gauntlgrym,” Bruenor declared, his dark eyes gleaming with intensity.

“Then yer Gauntlgrym was a town above the ground,” said Torgar, and Bruenor glared at him.

“This place was above ground, me king,” Torgar answered that look. “All of it. This building and those, too. This plaza, set with stones to protect from the mud o’ the spring melt….” He looked at Cordio, then Drizzt, who nodded his agreement. “Something must’ve melted the tundra beneath the whole of it. Turned it all to mud and sank this place from sight.”

“And the melts bring water, every year,” Cordio added, pointing to the north. “Washing away the mud, bucket by bucket, but leaving the stones behind.”

“Yer answer’s in the ceiling,” Torgar explained, pointing up. “Can ye get a light up there, priest?”

Cordio nodded and moved away from Bruenor. He began casting again, gently waving his arms, creating a globe of light up at the cavern’s ceiling, right at the point where it joined in with the top of the great building before them. Some tell-tale signs were revealed with that light, confirming Torgar’s suspicions.

“Roots,” the Mirabarran dwarf explained. “Can’t be more than a few feet o’ ground between that roof and the surface. And these taller buildings’re acting like supports to keep that ceiling up. The tangle o’ roots and the frozen ground’re doin’ the rest. Whole place sank, I tell ye, for these buildings weren’t built for the Underdark.”

Bruenor looked at the ceiling, then at Drizzt, but the drow could only nod his agreement.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted. “Gauntlgrym was akin to Mirabar, then, and ye’re for knowin’ that. So this must be the top o’ the place, with more below. All we need be looking for is a shaft to take us to the lower levels, akin to that rope and come-along dumbwaiter ye got in Mirabar. Now let’s see what this big place is all about—important building, I’m thinking. Might be a throne room.”

Torgar nodded and Pwent ran up in front of Bruenor to lead the way up the stairs, with Cordio close on his heels. Torgar, though, lagged behind, something Drizzt didn’t miss.

“Not akin to Mirabar,” the dwarf whispered to Drizzt and Regis.

“A dwarf city above ground?” Regis asked.

Torgar shrugged. “I’m not for knowing.” He reached to his side and pulled an item from his belt, one he had taken from the smithy he had found back across the plaza. “Lots of these and little of anything else,” he said.

Regis sucked in his breath, and Drizzt nodded his agreement with the dwarf’s assessment of the muddy catastrophe that had hit the place. For in his hand, Torgar held an item all too common on the surface and all too rare in the Underdark: a horseshoe.

At Drizzt’s insistence, he, and not the noisy Thibble dorf, led the way into the building with Guenhwyvar beside him. The drow and panther filtered out to either side of the massive, decorated doors—doors filled with color and gleaming metal much more indicative of a construction built under the sun. The drow and his cat melted into the shadows of the great hall that awaited them, moving with practiced coordination. They sensed no danger. The place seemed still and long dead.

It was no audience chamber, though, no palace for a dwarf king. When the others came in and they filled the room with torchlight, it became apparent that the place had been a library and gallery, a place of art and learning.

Rotted scrolls filled ancient wooden shelves all around the room and along the walls, interspersed with tapestries whose images had long ago faded, and with sculptures grand and small alike.

Those sculptures set off the first waves of alarm in the companions, particularly in Bruenor, for while some depicted dwarves in their typically heroic battle poses and regalia, others showed orc warriors standing proud. And more than one depicted orcs in other dress, in flowing robes or with pen in hand.