A whisper of sound, a ball of flying blackness against the dark night sky, the fiend rushed north, past the three lakes, past Kelvin’s Cairn, across the open tundra and over the encampment of Berkthgar’s people. Errtu meant to go to the farthest reaches of the tundra to set up his fortresses, but when he got to that point, to the edge of the Sea of Moving Ice, the fiend discovered a better and more forlorn landscape. Errtu, a creature of the fiery Abyss, was no friend of snow and ice, but the texture of the great icebergs clogging the waters-a mountain range built among defensible, freezing moats-showed him potential he could not resist.
Out swooped the tanar’ri, across the first and widest expanse of open water, setting on the side of the visible cone of the closest tall iceberg. He peered out through the darkness, first using his normal vision, then letting his eyes slip into the spectrum of heat. Predictably, a cold blackness reflected back at him from both the normal and the infrared spectrums, cold and dead.
The fiend started to move on again, but felt the will of Crenshinibon, asking him to look more closely.
Errtu expecting to find nothing, didn’t understand the point to such scrutiny, but he continued his scan. He was surprised indeed when he did see a patch of warmer air rising from a hollow on the side of an iceberg perhaps a hundred yards away. That was too far for Errtu to make out any distinct forms so the great tanar’ri gave a short flap of his leathery wings and halved the gap.
Closer still the balor crept, until Errtu could discern that the heat was coming from a group of warm-blooded forms, huddled in a tight circle. A more knowledgeable traveler of Icewind Dale would have thought them to be seals, or some other marine animal, but Errtu was not familiar with the creatures of the north and so he approached cautiously.
They were humanoid, man-sized, with long arms and large heads. Errtu thought that they were dressed in furs, until he got close enough to recognize that they were not dressed at all, but had their own coat of thick, shaggy fur covered with a filmy, oily sheen.
The beginnings of your army, came an intrusion into the balor’s thoughts, as eager Crenshinibon renewed its quest for ever more power.
Errtu paused and considered that thought for some time. The fiend wasn’t planning to raise an army, not here in this forlorn wilderness. He would remain in Icewind Dale for a short time only, long enough to discover if Drizzt Do’Urden was about, and long enough to destroy the drow ranger if he was. When that business was finished, Errtu planned to be long gone from the emptiness of the dale and into more hospitable, more thickly inhabited regions.
Crenshinibon’s suggestions did not relent, and after awhile, the tanar’ri came to see a potential value of enslaving some of the area’s creatures. Perhaps it would be wise to fortify his position with some expendable soldiers.
The balor chuckled wickedly and muttered a few words, a spell that would allow him to converse with the creatures in their own guttural and grunting language-if that’s what their snorts and snarls could be called. Errtu called upon his magical abilities once again and disappeared, reappearing on the slope right behind and above the shaggy creatures’ impromptu encampment. Now the balor had a better look at the beasts, about twoscore of them, he figured. Their shaggy fur was white, their heads large, though virtually without any discernable forehead. They were strongly built and jostled each other roughly, each apparently trying to get closest to the center of the huddle, what Errtu figured to be the warmest spot.
They are yours! Crenshinibon declared.
Errtu agreed. He felt the power of the crystal shard, a dominating force indeed. The balor leaped up to his full twelve foot height atop the ridge and bellowed to the shaggy humanoids in their own tongue, Errtu declaring himself their god.
The camp disintegrated into pandemonium, creatures running all about, slamming into each other, falling over each other. Down swooped Errtu into their midst, and when they moved out from the towering fiend, encircling him cautiously, the balor brought up a ring of low, simmering fire, a personal perimeter.
Errtu held high his lightning bolt sword, commanding the creatures to kneel before him.
Instead, the shaggy beasts shoved one of their own, the largest of the group, forward.
Errtu understood the challenge. The large, shaggy creature bellowed a single threat, but the word was caught in its throat as the tanar’ri’s other weapon, that wicked many-thonged whip, snapped out and wrapped about the beast’s ankles. A halfhearted tug from the mighty fiend jerked the creature onto its back and Errtu casually pulled it in so that it lay, screaming in agony, in the fiend’s ring of fire.
Errtu didn’t kill the creature. He gave a rolling snap on his whip a moment later and the thing flew out of the flames and rolled about on the ice, whimpering.
“Errtu!” the tanar’ri proclaimed, his thunderous voice driving back the cowed creatures. Cowed, but not kneeling, Errtu realized, and so he took a different tactic. Errtu understood the basic, instinctual way of these tribal beasts. Scrutinizing them and their trinkets in the light of the fire, the balor realized that they were likely less civilized than the goblins he was more used to dealing with.
Cower them and reward them, Crenshinibon imparted, a strategy that Errtu already had well under way. The cowering was done. With a roar the fiend leaped away, soaring over the top of the berg and into the blackness of the night. Errtu heard the continuing grunts and whispers as he departed, and he smiled again, thinking himself clever, imagining the faces of the stupid brutes when he gave them their reward.
Errtu didn’t have to fly far to figure out what that reward might entail. He saw the fin of a creature, a huge creature, poking from the black surface of the water.
It was a killer whale, though to Errtu, it was merely a big fish, merely some meat he might provide. Down swooped the fiend, diving fast onto the back of the behemoth. In one hand Errtu held his lightning sword, in the other, the crystal shard. Hard struck the sword, a mighty blow, but harder still came the assault from Crenshinibon, its power loosed for the first time in many years, a line of blazing white fire that tore through whale flesh as easily as a beacon cut through the night sky.
Just a few minutes later, Errtu returned to the encampment of the shaggy humanoids, dragging the dead whale behind him. He flopped the creature into the midst of the stunned humanoids, and once again proclaimed himself as their god.
The brutes fell over the slain whale, chopping wildly with crude axes, tearing flesh and guzzling blood, a grisly ceremony.
Just the way Errtu liked it.
Within the span of a few hours, Errtu and his new minions located a suitable ice floe to serve as their stronghold. Then Errtu used the powers of Crenshinibon once more, and the creatures, already falling into worship for the fiend, leaped about in circles, crying Errtu’s name, falling to their faces and groveling.
For, Crenshinibon’s greatest power was to enact an exact replica of itself, huge in proportion, a crystalline tower-Cryshal-Tirith. At Errtu’s invitation, the creatures searched all about the base of the tower, but they saw no entrance-only extraplanar creatures could find the door to Cryshal-Tirith.
Errtu did just that, and entered. The fiend wasted no time in calling back to the Abyss, in opening a gate that Bizmatec could come through with the balor’s helpless and tormented prisoner in tow.
“Welcome to my new kingdom,” Errtu told the tortured soul. “You should like this place.” With that, Errtu snapped his whip repeatedly, beating the prisoner unconscious.
Bizmatec howled with glee, knowing that the fun had just begun.
They settled into their new stronghold over the next few days, Errtu bringing in other minor fiends, a horde of wretched manes, and even conversing with another powerful true tanar’ri, a six-armed marilith, coaxing her to join in the play.
But Errtu’s focus did not wander too far from his primary purpose; he did not let the intoxication of such absolute power distract him from the truth of his minor conquest. Upon one wall of the tower’s second level, there was set a mirror, a device for scrying, and Errtu perused it often, scouring the dale with his magical vision. Great indeed was Errtu’s pleasure when he found that
Drizzt Do’Urden was indeed in Icewind Dale.
The prisoner, always at Errtu’s side, saw the specter of the drow elf, the human woman, a red-bearded dwarf and a plump halfling as well, and his expression changed. His eyes brightened for the first time in many years.
“You will be valuable to me indeed,” Errtu remarked, deflating any hope, reminding the prisoner that he was but a tool for the fiend, a piece of barter. “With you in hand, I will bring the drow to me, and destroy Drizzt Do’Urden before your very eyes before I destroy you as well. That is your fate and your doom.” The fiend howled with ecstasy and whipped his prisoner again and again, driving him to the floor.
“And you will prove of value,” the balor said to the large, purple stone set on his ring, the prison of poor Stumpet Rakingclaw’s consciousness. “Your body, at least.”
Trapped Stumpet heard the distant words, but the spirit of the priestess was caught in a gray void, an empty place where not even her god could hear her pleas.
*****
Drizzt, Bruenor and the others looked on in helpless amazement as Stumpet walked back into the dwarven mines that night, her expression blank, devoid of any emotion at all. She moved to the main audience hall on the uppermost level, and just stood in place.
“Her soul’s gone,” was Catti-brie’s guess, and the others, in examining the dwarf, in trying to wake her from her stupor, even going so far as to slap her hard across the face, couldn’t rightly disagree.
Drizzt spent a long while in front of the zombielike dwarf, questioning her, trying to wake her. Bruenor dismissed most of the others, allowing only his closest friends-and ironically, not one of these was a dwarf-to remain.
On impulse, the drow begged Regis to give him the precious ruby pendant, and Regis readily complied, slipping the enchanted item from around his neck and tossing it to the drow. Drizzt spent a moment marveling at the large ruby, its incessant swirl of little lights that could draw an unsuspecting onlooker far into its hypnotic depths. Drizzt then put the item right in front of the zombie dwarf’s face and began talking to her softly, easily.
If she heard him at all, if she even saw the ruby pendant, she did not show it.
Drizzt looked back to his friends, as if to say something, as if to admit defeat, but then his expression brightened in recognition, just a flicker, before it went grave once more. “Has Stumpet been out on her own?” Drizzt asked Bruenor.
“Try to keep that one in one place,” the dwarf replied. “She’s always out-look at her pack. Seems to me that she was off again, heading for what’s needin’ climbing.”
A quick look at Stumpet’s huge pack confirmed the red-bearded dwarf’s words. The haversack was stuffed with food and with pitons and rope, and other gear for scaling mountains.
“Has she climbed Kelvin’s Cairn?” Drizzt asked suddenly, things finally falling into place.
Catti-brie gave a low groan, seeing where the drow was taking this.
“Had her eyes set on the place from the minute we walked into Ten-Towns,” Bruenor proclaimed. “I think she got it, said she did anyway, not so long ago.”
Drizzt looked to Catti-brie and the young woman nodded her agreement.
“What are you thinking?” Regis wanted to know.
“The crystal shard,” Catti-brie replied.
They searched Stumpet carefully then, and subsequently went to her private quarters, tearing the place apart. Bruenor called for another of his priests, one who could detect magical auras, but the enhanced scan was similarly unsuccessful.
Not long after, they left Stumpet with the priest, who was trying an assortment of spells to awaken or at least comfort the zombielike dwarf. Bruenor expanded the search for the crystal shard to include every dwarf in the mines, two hundred industrious fellows.
Then all they could do was wait, and hope.
Bruenor was awakened late that night by the priest, the dwarf frantic that Stumpet had just walked away from him, was walking right out of the mines.
“Did ye stop her?” Bruenor was quick to ask, shaking off his grogginess.
“Got five dwarves holding her,” the priest answered. “But she just keeps on walkin,’ trying to push past ‘em!”
Bruenor roused his three friends and together they rushed for the exit to the mines, where Stumpet was still plodding, bouncing off the fleshy barricade, but stubbornly walking right back into it.
“Can’t wear her out, can’t kill her,” one of the blocking dwarfs lamented when he saw his king.
“Just hold her then!” Bruenor growled back.
Drizzt wasn’t so sure of that course. He began to sense something here, and figured that it was more than coincidence. Somehow, the drow had the feeling that whatever had happened to Stumpet might be related to his return to Icewind Dale.
He looked to Catti-brie, seeing by her return gaze that she was sharing his feelings.
“Let us pack for the road,” Drizzt whispered to Bruenor. “Perhaps Stumpet has something she wishes to show us.”
Before the sun had begun to peek over the mountains in the east, Stumpet Rakingclaw walked out of the dwarven valley, heading north across the tundra, with Drizzt, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Regis in tow.
Just as Errtu, watching from the scrying room of Cryshal-Tirith, had planned.
The fiend waved a clawed hand and the image in the mirror grew gray and indistinct, then washed away altogether. Errtu then went up into the tower’s highest level, the small room in which the crystal shard hung, suspended in midair.
Errtu felt the curiosity of the item, for the fiend had developed quite an empathetic and telepathic bond with Crenshinibon. It sensed his delight, the fiend knew, and it wanted to know the source.
Errtu snickered at it and flooded the item with a barrage of incongruous images, defeating its mental intrusions.
Suddenly the fiend was hit with a shocking intrusion, a focused line of Crenshinibon’s will that nearly tore the story of Stumpet from his lips. It took every ounce of mental energy the mighty balor could manage to resist that call, and even with that, Errtu found that he had not the strength to leave the room, and knew that he could not resist for long.
“You dare ...” the fiend gasped, but the crystal shard’s attack was undiminished.
Errtu continued a blocking barrage of meaningless thoughts, knowing his doom if Crenshinibon read his mind at that time. He gingerly reached around his hip, taking a small sack that he kept hooked and hanging from the lowest claw of his leathery wings.
In one fierce movement, Errtu brought the sack around and tore it apart, grabbing up the coffer and pulling it open, the black sapphire tumbling into his hand.
Crenshinibon’s attack heightened; the fiend’s great legs buckled.
But Errtu had gotten close enough. “I am the master!” Errtu proclaimed, lifting the antimagic gemstone near to Crenshinibon.
The ensuing explosion hurled Errtu back against the wall, shook the tower and the iceberg to their very roots.
When the dust cleared, the antimagic gemstone was gone, simply gone, with barely a speck of useless powder to show that it had ever been there.
Never again do such a foolish thing! came a telepathic command from Crenshinibon, the artifact following up that order with promises of ultimate torture.
Errtu pulled himself up from the floor, simmering and delighted all at once. The bared power of Crenshinibon was great indeed for it to have so utterly destroyed the supremely unenchanted sapphire. And yet, that subsequent command Crenshinibon had hurled the balor’s way was not so strong. Errtu knew that he had hurt the crystal shard, temporarily, most likely, but still something he had never wanted to do. It couldn’t be avoided, the fiend decided. He had to be in command here, not in the blind service of a magical item!
Tell me! the stubborn shard’s intrusions came again, but, as with the outrage over the fiend’s game with the antimagic gemstone, the telepathic message carried little strength.
Errtu laughed openly at the suspended shard. “I am the master here, not you,” the great balor declared, pulling himself up to his full height. His horns brushed the very top of the crystallizing tower. Errtu hurled the empty, shielding coffer at the crystal, missing the mark. “I will tell when it pleases me, and will tell only as much as pleases me!”
The crystal shard, most of its energy sapped by the close encounter with the devilish sapphire, could not compel the fiend to do otherwise.
Errtu left the room laughing, knowing that he was again in control. He would have to pay close heed to Crenshinibon, would have to gain the ultimate respect of the item in the days ahead. Crenshinibon would likely regain its sapped strength, and Errtu had no more antimagic gems to throw at the artifact.
Errtu would be in command, or they would work together. The proud balor could accept nothing less.