The glabrezu was adamant, not backing down from his story despite the mounting threats of a nervous and desperate Errtu.
“Drizzt Do’Urden and his friends have passed the taers,” Bizmatec insisted once more, “leaving them dead and torn on the plain.”
“You have seen this?” Errtu asked for the fifth time, the great balor clenching and unclenching his fist repeatedly.
“I have seen this,” Bizmatec replied without hesitation, though the glabrezu did lean back warily from the balor. “The taers did not stop them, hardly slowed them. They are mighty indeed, these enemies you have chosen.”
“And the dwarf?” Errtu asked, his frustration turning fast to eagerness. As he spoke, the balor tapped his bejeweled ring to show that he was referring to the imprisoned female dwarf.
“Leads them still,” Bizmatec answered with a wicked smile, the glabrezu thrilled to see the eagerness, the sheer wickedness bringing the light back to Errtu’s glowing eyes.
The balor left with a great flourish, a victorious spin and flap of leathery wings that got it to the landing of the crystalline tower’s open first level. Up Errtu climbed, maddened by hunger, by desire to show Crenshinibon its failure.
“Errtu has put us in line with worthy enemies,” Bizmatec remarked again, watching the balor’s departure.
The other tanar’ri in the tower’s lowest level, a six-armed woman with the lower torso of a snake, smirked, seeming truly unimpressed. There were no worthy enemies to be found among the mortals of the Prime Material Plane.
High above his minions, Errtu clambered into the small room at the tower’s highest level. The fiend went to the narrow window first, peering out in the hopes that he might catch a glimpse of the approaching quarry. Errtu wanted to make a dramatic statement to Crenshinibon, but the fiend’s excitement betrayed his thoughts to the sentient, telepathic artifact.
Your path remains one of danger, the crystal shard warned.
Errtu spun away from the window and issued a hearty, croaking laugh.
You must not fail, the artifact’s telepathic message went on. If you and yours are defeated, then defeated am I, placed in the hands of those who know my nature and ...
Errtu’s continued laughter rebuked any more telepathic intrusions.
“I have met the likes of Drizzt Do’Urden before,” the great balor said with a feral snarl. “He will know true sorrow and true pain before I release him into death! He will see the deaths of his beloved, of those who were foolish enough to accompany him and of he who I hold as prisoner.” The great fiend turned back angrily toward the window. “What an enemy have you made, foolish drow rogue! Come to me now that I might exact my revenge and give to you the punishment you deserve!”
With that, Errtu kicked the small coffer still lying on the floor where the fiend had dropped it after the volatile reaction between the crystal shard and the antimagic sapphire. Errtu started to leave, but reconsidered for just a moment. He would be facing Drizzt and all of his companions soon, including the imprisoned priestess. If Stumpet came face to face with the fiend’s entrapping gemstone, her spirit might find its way aback to her body.
Errtu pulled off his ring and showed it to Crenshinibon. “The dwarven priestess,” the fiend explained. “This holds her spirit. Dominate her and lend what aid you may!”
Errtu dropped the ring to the floor and stormed from the chamber, back down to his minions to prepare for the arrival of Drizzt Do’Urden.
Crenshinibon felt keenly the tanar’ri’s rage and the sheer wickedness that was mighty Errtu. Drizzt and his friends had gotten past the taers, so it seemed, but what were they compared to the likes of Errtu?
And Errtu, the crystal shard knew, had powerful allies lying in wait.
Crenshinibon was satisfied, was quite secure. And to the evil artifact, the thought of using Stumpet against the companions was certainly a pleasant one.
*****
Stumpet continued her march across the treacherous and broken ice, leaping small gaps, sometimes splashing her feet into the icy water, but pulling them out with apparently no regard for the freezing wetness.
Drizzt understood the dangers of the water. He wanted to tackle Stumpet once more and pull off her boots, wrapping her feet in warm and dry blankets. The drow let it go. He figured that if frozen toes were the worst of their troubles, they would certainly be better off than he had hoped. Right now, the best thing he could do for Stumpet, for all of them, was to get to Errtu and get this grim business over with.
The drow kept one hand in his pocket as he marched, fingers feeling the intricate detailing of the onyx figurine. He had sent Guenhwyvar home shortly after the taer fight, giving the cat what little rest she might find before the next battle. Now, in looking around, the drow wondered about the wisdom of that decision, for he knew that he was out of place in this unfamiliar terrain.
The landscape seemed surreal, nothing but jagged white mounds, some as high as forty feet, and long sheets of flat whiteness, often cracked by zigzagging dark lines.
They were more than two hours off the beach, far out into the ice-clogged sea, when the weather turned. Dark and ominous clouds rose up, the wind bit harder, colder. Still they plodded on, crawling up the side of one conical iceberg, then sliding down the other side. They came into an area of more dark water and less ice, and there they caught their first sight of their goal, far away to the north and west. The crystalline tower gleamed above the berg cones, shining even in the dull gray daylight. There could be no doubt, for the tower was no natural structure, and though it appeared as if it was made of ice, it seemed unnatural and out of place among the hard and stark whiteness of the bergs.
Bruenor considered the sight and their present course, then shook his head. “Too much water,” he explained, pointing to the west. “Should be going straight out that way.”
By all appearances, it seemed as if the dwarf was right. They were traveling generally north, but the ice floes seemed more tightly packed to the west.
Their course was not for them to decide though, and Stumpet continued on her oblivious way to the north, where it seemed as if she would soon be stopped by a wide gap of open water.
Appearances could be deceiving in the surreal and unfamiliar landscape. A long finger of ice bridged that watery gap, turning them more directly toward the crystal tower. When they crossed over, they came into another region of clogged icebergs, and looming before them, barely a quarter of a mile away, was Cryshal-Tirith.
Drizzt brought in Guenhwyvar once more. Bruenor knocked Stumpet down and sat on her, while Catti-brie scrambled up the tallest nearby peak to get a better feeling for the area.
The tower was on a large iceberg, set right in back of the thirty foot high conical tip of the natural structure. Catti-brie guessed she and her companions would cross onto the berg from the southwest, on a narrow strip of ice about a dozen feet wide. One other iceberg directly west of the tower, was close enough, perhaps, to make a leap onto the main area, but other than that, the fiend’s fortress was surrounded by ocean.
Catti-brie marked one other point: a cave entrance on the southern face of the conical peak that was almost directly across from the tower on the other side of the berg. It was at least a man’s height up from the wider flat area on the southern side of the berg, the area they would cross, the area that seemed as if it would soon become a killing ground. With a resigned sigh, the woman slid back down and reported it all to her friends.
“Errtu’s minions will meet us soon after we cross the last stretch,” Drizzt reasoned, and Catti-brie nodded with every word.
“We will have to fight them all the way to the cave entrance, and even more so within.”
“Let’s get on with it, then,” Bruenor grumbled. “Me durned feet’re getting cold!”
Catti-brie looked to Drizzt, as though she wanted to hear some options. Few seemed apparent, though. Even if that leap was possible for Catti-brie, Drizzt, and Guenhwyvar, Bruenor, in his heavy armor, could not hope to make it, nor could Regis. And if they went that way, Stumpet-who could only walk-would be alone.
“I’ll not be much good in a fight,” Regis said quietly.
“That never stopped ye before!” Bruenor howled, misunderstanding. “Ye meanin’ to sit here-”
Drizzt stopped the dwarf with an upraised hand, guessing that the remarkably resourceful halfling had something important and valuable in mind.
“If Guenhwyvar could get me across that gap, I might make it quietly to the tower,” the halfling explained.
The faces of his companions brightened as they began to consider the possibilities.
“I have been in Cryshal-Tirith before,” Regis went on. “I know how to get through the tower, and how to defeat the crystal shard if I make it.” He looked to Drizzt as he said this and nodded. Regis had been with Drizzt on the plain north of Bryn Shander, when the drow had beaten Akar Kessel’s tower.
“A desperate chance,” Drizzt remarked.
“Yeah,” Bruenor agreed dryly. “Not like walking into the middle of a tanar’ri horde.”
That brought a chuckle-a strained one indeed-from the group.
“Let Stumpet up,” Drizzt bade Bruenor. “She will take us in to whatever Errtu has planned. And you,” he added, looking to the halfling, “may Gwaeron Windstrom, servant of Mielikki and patron of rangers, be with you on your journey. Guenhwyvar will get you across. Understand, my friend, that if you fail and Crenshinibon is not defeated, Errtu will be all the stronger!”
Regis nodded grimly, took a firm hold of the scruff on the back of Guenhwyvar’s neck, and split apart from the group, thinking that his one chance would be to get to the iceberg quickly and secretly. He and the cat were soon out of sight, moving up and down across the rough terrain. Guenhwyvar did most of the work, her claws cutting deep into the ice, grabbing holds where she could find them. Regis merely kept his hold on her and tried to keep his legs moving quickly enough so that he would not be too much of a burden.
They nearly met with disaster coming down the slippery backside of one steep cone. Guenhwyvar dug in, but Regis stumbled and went down. His momentum as he slipped past the cat cost Guenhwyvar her tenuous hold. Down they careened, heading for the black water. Regis stifled a cry, but closed his eyes and expected to splash into his freezing doom.
Guenhwyvar caught a new hold barely inches from the deadly cold sea.
Shaken and bruised, the pair pulled themselves up and started off once more. Regis bolstered his resolve, burying his fears by reminding himself repeatedly of the importance of his mission.
*****
The companions understood how very vulnerable they were as they crossed the last expanse of open ice to get to the huge iceberg that held Cryshal-Tirith. They sensed that they were being watched, sensed that something terrible was about to happen.
Drizzt tried to hurry Stumpet along. Bruenor and Catti-brie ran up ahead.
Errtu’s minions were waiting, crouched within the cave entrance and behind the icy bluffs. Indeed the fiend was watching the group, as was Crenshinibon.
The artifact thought the balor a fool, risking so much for so little real gain. It used the gemstone ring to connect with Stumpet, to see through the imprisoned dwarf’s eyes, to know exactly where the enemies were.
Suddenly, the very tip of Cryshal-Tirith glowed a fierce red, stealing the grayness of the approaching storm in a pinkish haze.
Catti-brie yelled to Drizzt; Bruenor grabbed the woman and tugged her forward and to the ground.
Drizzt barreled into Stumpet, but merely bounced off. He skittered past-he had to move-then skidded, trying desperately to slow, as a line of blazing fire shot out from the tower’s tip and sliced through the ice walk in front of the drow.
Thick steam engulfed the area and the stunned ranger. Drizzt could not fully stop and so he yelled out and charged ahead, leaping and rolling with all his strength.
Only good luck saved him. The line of fire halted abruptly from the tower, and then began again, this time over the standing dwarven priestess, cutting another line behind her. The force of the blow sent flecks of ice flying, thickened the steam. The now-severed floe, two hundred square feet of drifting ice, floated to the southeast, turning slowly as it drifted.
Stumpet had nowhere to go, so she merely stood perfectly still, her gaze impassive.
On the main iceberg, the three friends were up and running once more.
“Left!” Catti-brie called as a creature clambered over the ridge that was the side of the central cone. The woman nearly gagged on her word at the sight of the horrid thing, one of the least of the Abyss’s creatures that were called manes. It was the dead spirit of a wretch from the Prime Material Plane. Pale white skin, bloated and overloaded with oozing liquids, hung in loose flaps along the thing’s torso, and many-legged parasites clung to its hide. It was only three feet tall, Regis’s size, but it sported long and obviously sharp claws and nasty teeth.
Catti-brie blew it away with a single silver-streaking arrow, but a group of its friends, showing no regard whatsoever for their safety, scrambled over the ridge right behind it.
“Left!” the woman cried again, but Drizzt and Bruenor could not afford to heed those words.
For many more manes had come ambling out of the cave entrance, barely thirty feet away, and two flying fiends, giant bugs that seemed a horrid cross between a human and a giant fly, came out above the horde.
Bruenor met the closest fiends with a vicious chop of his axe. The single stroke did the trick, but the destroyed fiend, rather than lie down dead, exploded into a puff of noxious, acidic fumes that burned at the dwarf’s skin and lungs.
“Durned slime-orcs,” the red-bearded dwarf grumbled, and he was not deterred, blasting away a second fiend, and then a third in rapid succession, filling the air about him with fumes.
Drizzt was hitting at manes and moving so quickly that the ensuing cloud of evil vapors did not even touch him. He had a line of them down, but then had to fall flat to avoid the low pass of one of the flying tanar’ri, chasme they were called.
By the time the drow regained his footing, a gang of manes had closed around him, reaching eagerly with their long and nasty claws.
Catti-brie nearly wretched again at the mere sight of the flying fiends. She had downed half a dozen manes already, but now she had to turn her attention to the horrible bugs.
She whirled and fired at the closest, nearly point-blank, and sighed with sincere relief as her arrow threw the fiend backward and to the ground.
Its companion, though was gone, simply disappeared in a display of fiendish magic.
It stood quietly behind Catti-brie.
* * * * *
Regis and Guenhwyvar saw the commotion, saw the lines of blazing white fire and heard the ensuing battle. They picked up their pace as much as possible, but the terrain was not favorable, not at all.
Again the halfling was merely holding on, letting Guenhwyvar tow him in full flight. Regis bumped and bounced, but didn’t complain. Whatever his pains, he was certain that his friends were feeling worse.
*****
“Behind ye!” Bruenor yelled, bursting free of the horde of manes. One of the wretched creatures clung fast to the dwarf, its claws deep into the back of his neck, but he hardly cared.
All that mattered was Catti-brie, and she was in dire trouble. The dwarf couldn’t get to the fiend behind her, but the one she had hit was back up, walking this time, and was directly between Bruenor and his beloved daughter.
Not a good place to be.
Catti-brie spun on her heels as the chasme struck. She accepted the vicious hit on her shoulder and rolled with it, doing two complete somersaults across the ice before putting her feet back underneath her.
Bruenor’s twirling axe hit the other chasme full force in the back, blasting it to the ground for the second time. Still the stubborn thing tried to rise, but the running dwarf summarily buried it, diving upon it and grabbing up his weapon. He tore the axe free and pounded away repeatedly, driving the chasme into the ice, splattering the white surface with green and yellow gore.
Still the other fiend hung on the back of the furious dwarf, scratching and biting. It was starting to do some real damage, but that ended as abruptly as the cut of a drow’s scimitar.
The remaining chasme was airborne once more, and Catti-brie had her bow in line. She scored a brutal hit and the fiend had seen enough. It flew right past her and over the ridge, toward the back side of the glacier.
As she turned to follow its flight, Catti-brie had to lower her bow to a different target, one of the score of manes who, by this time, had come scrambling over the ridge.
The chasme under Bruenor seemed to deflate-there really was no other way to describe how the fiend’s body flattened, like a waterskin emptying its contents.
Drizzt pulled the dwarf up and roughly turned him about. The immediate threat to Catti-brie had been halted, but they had lost ground and the horde of oozing manes had regrouped.
No matter for the two seasoned friends. A quick glance told them that Catti-brie had the group to the side under control and so they charged, side by side, tearing into the closest ranks of least tanar’ri.
Drizzt, with his deadly, slashing scimitars and his quick feet, made the most progress, slicing through reaching arms and dodging manes with abandon, laying six of them low in a matter of seconds. The drow hardly registered that his opponent had changed a moment later, until his wild swing was met, not by one, but by three separate ringing parries.
The horde thinned in this area, the lesser fiends giving a respectful distance to the six-armed monstrosity that now faced off against Drizzt Do’Urden.
Catti-brie saw the fight and recognized the drow’s predicament. She rushed to her right, toward the shoreline, trying to get an angle for a shot, paying no heed to unblinking Stumpet on the drifting floe, now some forty feet out from the iceberg. Her wounded shoulder continued to pump out blood-nasty indeed was the strike of a chasme-but she couldn’t stop and bandage it.
Down the woman skidded to one knee. The angle was difficult, especially with the active drow between her and the six-armed tanar’ri. But Catti-brie knew that Drizzt would want her to try, that he needed her to try. Up came Taulmaril, Catti-brie’s fingers finding their hold on the string behind the arrow’s fletchings.
“The drow cannot fight his own battles?” came a question behind the woman, a deep, throaty voice. “We must talk about that.” It was the glabrezu, Bizmatec.
Catti-brie threw herself forward and ducked her shoulder, moving her arm out to full extension to protect the bow, and more particularly, to protect the integrity of the readied arrow. Agile Catti-brie fired off her shot before she even completed the spin, grimacing as her shoulder spouted a red stream. This newest opponent’s expression went from amazement to agony as the silver-streaking arrow skipped off the inside of the glabrezu’s huge thigh.
Catti-brie winced then, for the arrow continued out from the shore, skipping across the water and onto the drifting chunk of ice barely a few feet from oblivious Stumpet. The woman realized that she shouldn’t have wasted the time to follow the arrow, though, for the twelve-foot glabrezu, all muscle and horrible pincers, roared in outrage and closed the gap to Catti-brie with one long stride.
In came a monstrous claw that could easily snap the woman in half, setting into place about Catti-brie’s slender, vulnerable waist.
In one fluid motion, Catti-brie punched her hand between the bow and its string, reaching across her body and tearing Khazid’hea from its sheath. Catti-brie cried out and tried futilely to fall away, snapping off a weak backhand with the weapon, hop-ing to wedge the blade into the fiend’s pincers and turn aside his attack.
Khazid’hea, so very sharp, hit the inside edge of the pincer and kept on going, slicing right through.
I feared I was forgotten! the sentient sword relayed to Catti-brie.
“Never that,” the woman replied grimly.
Bizmatec howled again and brought his great arm snapping across, the remaining side of the pincers knocking Catti-brie flat to the ground. In stalked the glabrezu, lifting a huge foot to squash the woman.
Khazid’hea, coming up fast and sure, made the fiend reconsider the wisdom of that maneuver, and took one of the toes from Bizmatec’s huge foot in the process.
Again the glabrezu howled in rage. Bizmatec hopped back and Catti-brie climbed to her feet, readying herself for the next assault.
The ensuing attack was not what the woman expected. Bizmatec loved to toy with mortals, particularly humans, to torment them and finally, to tear them apart slowly, limb by limb. This one was too formidable for such tactics, the wounded tanar’ri decided, and so Bizmatec called upon magical powers.
Catti-brie felt her back foot slip out from under her, and when she tried to recover, she realized that she was no longer standing on the ice, was floating in the air.
“No, ye cheatin’ dog-faced smoke-sucker!” Catti-brie protested, to no avail.
Bizmatec waved his huge hand and Catti-brie drifted by, ten feet in the air now, and moving out over the open water. The woman growled defiantly. Understanding what the fiend had in mind, she took up Khazid’hea in one hand, holding it more like a spear than a sword, and hurled it to the side, to the ice floe holding Stumpet. The sword hit the ice near to the dwarf, and sunk in to the hilt.
Catti-brie wasn’t watching, was scrambling to regain her balance and to ready her bow. She did so, but Bizmatec merely laughed at her and released his magical energy.
Catti-brie splashed into the icy water, lost her breath immediately, and could feel her toes quickly going numb.
“Stumpet!” Catti-brie yelled to the dwarf, and Khazid’hea called out to the priestess as well, a mental plea for Stumpet to pull the sword from the ice. Stumpet stood impassively, perfectly oblivious to the threatening scene.
Bruenor knew what had happened to Catti-brie. The dwarf had seen her rise into the air, had heard the splash and her subsequent cries for Stumpet. Every paternal instinct within Bruenor told him to run from the fight and leap into the water after his dear daughter, and yet he knew that to be a foolhardy course. It would not only get him killed (for he cared little for personal safety where Catti-brie was concerned) but would doom his daughter as well. The only thing Bruenor could do for Catti-brie was win the fight quickly, and so the dwarf went at the manes with abandon, chopping enemies nearly in half with his mighty axe and screaming all the while. His progress was amazing and all the area near him was cloudy with puffs of yellowish gas.
Bruenor’s fortune reversed in the flare of a sudden burst of fire. The dwarf fell back and yelped, stunned for a moment, his face red from the flash. He shook his head fiercely and came back to his senses as Bizmatec entered the fray, the huge fiend clubbing Bruenor on the head with what remained of his right claw, his left pincers going for the fast kill at the dwarf’s throat.
Drizzt heard it all, the fate of both Catti-brie and Bruenor. The drow did not allow the intimations of guilt to creep into his senses. Long ago, Drizzt Do’Urden had learned that he was not responsible for all of the sorrow in the world, and that his friends would follow the course of their own choosing. What Drizzt felt was outrage, pure and simple, and adrenaline coursed through his veins, carrying him to greater heights of battle.
But how could someone parry six attacks?
Twinkle went left, left, left, then back to the right, each swing picking off a rushing blade. Drizzt’s other blade, verily pulsing with hunger, came in a vertical swipe, tip pointing to the ground, blocking two of the marilith’s swords at once. Twinkle flew back the other way, angling up to block, and then turning down to intercept. Then the drow hopped as high as he could, purely on instinct, as the marilith half-spun, her green and scaly tail whipping past in an attempt to take the drow’s feet out from under him.
Advantage gained, Drizzt hit the ground running, straight ahead, his scimitars flying out in front in a wild offensive flurry. But though he was inside the angles of the fiend’s six swords, his attack was defeated as the marilith simply disappeared-pop!- and reappeared right behind him.
Drizzt knew enough about fiends to react to the move. As soon as his target vanished, he dove into a headlong roll, twisting as he came back to his feet. His hungry scimitar shot out to the side as he rose, cutting down a fiend that had ventured too near, but Drizzt hardly followed the attack, his quick feet already turning on the ice to reverse his direction, to get him back at the marilith.
Again came the ringing of parry and counter, sounding almost as a single, long wail, as eight blades wove a blurring dance of death.
It seemed almost a miracle, a virtual impossibility, but Drizzt scored the first hit, Twinkle taking the marilith in one of her numerous shoulders, rendering that arm useless.
And then there were five swords charging hard at the drow’s face and he had to fall away.
*****
Regis and Guenhwyvar made it at last to the narrowest point in the channel between the icebergs, and it seemed a desperate leap to the frightened halfling. Even worse, a new problem presented itself, for the area across from them was not an empty, secret run to the crystal tower, but was filling fast with wretched manes.
Regis would have turned back then, preferring to try and find his friends, or, if they were already gone, to turn tail and run, all the way back to the tundra, all the way back to the dwarven mines. Images of coming back with an army of dwarves (of coming back behind an army of dwarves!) flitted through the halfling’s mind, but it soon proved to be a moot notion.
Regis was holding fast to Guenhwyvar, and he soon realized that the dedicated panther had no intention of even slowing. The halfling grabbed all the tighter. He yelped in fear as the great cat jumped, soaring out over the black water, across the gap to skid hard on the ice, scattering the nearest group of manes. Guenhwyvar could have made short work of those horrid creatures, but the panther knew her mission and went at it with single-minded abandon. With Regis holding on desperately and howling in terror, Guenhwyvar ran on, cutting left and right, dodging manes and leaving them far behind. In a matter of seconds, the pair went over a ridge and came down into an empty little vale, right at the base of Cryshal-Tirith. The manes, apparently too stupid to follow prey that had gone out of sight, did not come in fast pursuit.
“I have to be insane,” Regis whispered, looking again at the crystal tower that had served as a prison to him when Akar Kessel had invaded Icewind Dale. And Kessel, though a wizard, was but a man. This time a fiend, a great and powerful balor, controlled the crystal shard!
Regis could not see any door to the four-sided tower, as he knew he would not. An added defense of the tower was that Cryshal-Tirith’s entrance was not visible to creatures of the plane of existence on which the tower stood, with the single exception of the crystal shard’s wielder. Regis could not see the door, but Guenhwyvar, a creature of the Astral Plane, surely could.
Regis hesitated, managed to hold Guenhwyvar back for a moment. “There are guards,” the halfling explained. He remembered the giant and powerful trolls that had been in the last Cryshal-Tirith, and imagined what monsters Errtu might have put in place.
Even as he spoke, the pair heard a buzzing sound and looked up. Regis nearly fainted dead away as a chasme swooped over the ridge and bore down on them.
*****
Not bothered at all at being bonked on the head, Bruenor got his axe up to intercept the nipping pincer. The dwarf bolted ahead, or at least, he tried. When that attack didn’t work, he wisely reversed his course and went into a quick tactical retreat.
“Bigger beastie, bigger target,” Bruenor snarled, straightening the one-horned helmet on his head. He whipped his axe to the side, knocking back a pair of manes, then roared and charged straight in at Bizmatec, showing no fear whatsoever.
The four-armed glabrezu met the charge with a pounding half-claw and a pair of punching fists. Bruenor scored a hit, but got slugged twice in return. Dazed, the dwarf could only look on helplessly as the fiend’s good pincer came rushing in again.
A silver streak passed right by the dwarf, the arrow hitting the fiend in his massive chest and driving Bizmatec back a staggering step.
There was Catti-brie, in the water still, thrashing about, bobbing high so that she could bring Taulmaril, which she had turned sidelong, free of the water long enough to get off a shot. Firing the bow at all was amazing, but for her to actually hit the mark ...
Bruenor couldn’t understand how she came high again, impossibly high, until the dwarf realized that Catti-brie had her foot on a submerged piece of ice. Up she went, letting fly another deadly arrow.
Bizmatec howled and staggered back another step.
Catti-brie howled, too, in glee, but hers was not a sincere cry. She was glad that she was exacting some revenge on the fiend, and glad that she was aiding her father, but she could not deny that her legs were already numb, that her shoulder continued to bleed, and that her time for this fight was not long. All around her, the black and cold water waited impatiently, a prowling animal waiting to gobble up the doomed woman.
Her third shot missed the mark, but it came close enough so that Bizmatec had to duck suddenly. The fiend twisted and bent low, then his eyes widened considerably when he realized that he had just put his forehead in perfect alignment with Bruenor’s rushing axe.
The explosion dropped Bizmatec to his knees. The fiend felt the fierce yank as Bruenor tore his axe free. Then came another explosion and a silver streak to the side that blasted away the manes that were trying to come to the glabrezu’s aid. Where was Errtu now? Then came a third hit, and the world was swirling, darkening, as the spirit of Bizmatec careened along the corridor that would take him back to the Abyss for a hundred years of banishment.
Bruenor came out from the black smoke, all that remained of the glabrezu, with renewed abandon, hacking at the fast-thinning ranks of manes, working his way to Drizzt. He couldn’t actually see the drow, but he could hear the ring of steel, the impossibly fast repetition of blade striking blade.
He did manage to get a glimpse of Catti-brie, and his heart soared with hope, for his daughter had somehow splashed her way over to the same ice floe that bore Stumpet.
“Come on, dwarf,” Bruenor muttered intensely. “Find yer god and save me girl!”
Stumpet didn’t move as Catti-brie continued to flounder. The woman was too engaged, as was her father, to notice another large form making its way toward the battle, moving swiftly and gracefully across the ice.
*****
From a short distance back within the cave opening, Errtu watched it all with pure enjoyment. The fiend felt no loss as Bizmatec was pounded away into nothingness, cared little for the chasme, and nothing at all for the manes. Even the marilith, in such desperate combat with Drizzt, merely concerned the balor because Errtu feared that she might kill the drow. As for the generals and his soldiers, they were replaceable, easily replaceable. There was no shortage of willing fiends waiting eagerly in the Abyss.
So let the companions win out here on the open berg, Errtu figured. Already the woman was out of the fight, and the dwarf was battered. And Drizzt Do’Urden, though he was fighting so very well, was surely tiring. By the time Drizzt got into the cave, he would likely be alone, and no single mortal, not even a drow elf, could stand up to the mighty balor.
The fiend smiled wickedly and watched the continuing fight. If the marilith gained too much of an advantage, Errtu would have to intervene.
*****
Crenshinibon also viewed the battle with great interest. The crystal shard, intent on the main fight, was oblivious to the enemies who had come to Cryshal-Tirith’s doorstep. Unlike Errtu, the artifact wanted the fight done with, wanted Drizzt and his friends simply destroyed before they ever got near the cave. Crenshinibon would have liked to send out another line of fire-the drow was a more stationary target now, locked in combat as he was-but the first such attack had severely weakened the shard. The encounter with the antimagic sapphire had taken a toll. Crenshinibon could only hope the damage would eventually heal.
For now, though . . .
The wicked artifact found a way. It reached out telepathically to the ring Errtu had left on the floor, to the trapped dwarf held within that gem prison.
On the ice floe, Stumpet finally moved, and Catti-brie, not understanding, smiled hopefully when she noticed the priestess’s approach.
*****
In the never-ending wars of the Abyss, the fiends known as mariliths have a reputation as generals, as the finest tacticians. But Drizzt soon realized that the creature with seven appendages was not so coordinated in her movements. The marilith’s routines did not vary, simply because of the confusion any wielder would find in trying to coordinate the movements of six separate blades.
And so the drow was doing better, though his arms tingled with numbness from the sheer number of parries he had been through.
Left, left, then right went Twinkle, complimenting the up and down movements of the other scimitar, and Drizzt was quick to jump when the marilith’s tail, predictably, came slashing around.
The fiend disappeared once more, and Drizzt decided to spin about. The marilith expected him to do that, he realized, and so he came straight ahead instead, and scored a vicious hit as the creature reappeared, exactly where she had just been.
“Oh, my son,” the marilith said unexpectedly, falling back.
That gave Drizzt pause, but he was still in a ready crouch, still able to double-slash into gas the two manes that ventured near.
“Oh, my son,” the fiend said again, in a voice that was so familiar to the beleaguered drow. “Can you not see through the disguise?” his enemy went on.
Drizzt sucked in a deep breath, trying not to look at the deep and bleeding slash he had put across the marilith’s left breast, wondering suddenly if he had struck foolishly.
“It is Zaknafein,” the creature went on. “A trick of Errtu, forcing me to fight against you ... as Matron Malice did with Zin-carla!”
The words stunned Drizzt profoundly, locked his feet into place. His knees nearly buckled as the creature gradually shifted shape, went from a six-armed monstrosity to a handsome drow male, a male that Drizzt Do’Urden knew so very well.
Zaknafein!
“Errtu wants you to destroy me,” the creature said. The marilith did well to hide a snicker. She had scoured Drizzt’s thoughts to come up with this ploy, and had followed their ensuing course, letting Drizzt lead, every step. As soon as she had proclaimed this to be a trick of the balor, Drizzt had thought of
Matron Malice, whoever that was, and of Zin-carla, whatever that was. The marilith was more than prepared to play along.
And it was working! Drizzt’s scimitars sagged. “Fight him, my father!” Drizzt yelled. “Find your freedom, as you did from Malice!”
“He is strong,” the marilith replied. “He . . .” The creature smiled, her two remaining weapons dipping low. “My son!” came the soothing, familiar voice.
Drizzt nearly swooned. “We must aid the dwarf,” he started to say, willing to believe that this was indeed Zaknafein, and that his father could find his way out of Errtu’s mental clutches.
Drizzt was willing to believe that, but his scimitar, forged to destroy such creatures of fire, most certainly was not. The scimitar could not “see” the marilith’s illusion, could not hear the soothing voice.
Drizzt actually took a step to the side, toward Bruenor, when he recognized the continued throbbing, the unrelenting hunger, of that blade. He took another step, just to get his feet properly positioned, and then hurled himself at the illusion of his father, his rage doubling.
He was met by the five remaining blades as the marilith quickly resumed her more natural form, and the battle began anew.
Drizzt called upon his innate magic and limned the fiend with purplish faerie fire, but the marilith laughed and countered the magical energy, dousing the fire with a thought.
Drizzt heard the familiar shuffling behind him and immediately brought up a globe of impenetrable darkness, right over himself and the creature.
The marilith taunted him. “You think I cannot see?” the fiend roared gleefully. “I have lived longer in darkness than you, Drizzt Do’Urden!”
Her unabated attacks seemed to confirm her words. Sword rang out against scimitar, against scimitar, against scimitar against ... axe.
The creature didn’t understand for a split second, a fatal hesitation. Suddenly she realized that Drizzt was no longer in front of her, but the drow’s dwarven ally! And if Bruenor was in front ...
The marilith reached into her innate magic once more, thinking to teleport away to safety.
Drizzt’s strike came first, though, his hungry scimitar driving through the marilith’s backbone.
His darkness globe went away then, and Bruenor, in front of the fiend, howled insanely as the tip of Drizzt’s scimitar blasted out of the marilith’s chest.
Drizzt held on, even managed a twist or two, as the scimitar fed, energy coursing along its blade and hilt.
The marilith spat curse after curse. She tried to attack Bruenor, but could not lift her arms as that wicked, cursed blade gulped at her life force, draining it away. The marilith was less substantial suddenly, her flesh melting away to smoky nothingness.
She promised Drizzt Do’Urden a thousand tortured deaths, promised that she would one day return to exact horrific revenge.
Drizzt had heard it all before.
“There’s more and worse inside,” Drizzt said to Bruenor when the business was finished.
Bruenor gave a quick look over his shoulder and saw Stumpet closing on his struggling daughter-what the dwarf thought to be a good thing. There was nothing more that Bruenor could do for her. “Let’s go then!” he bellowed in reply.
Only a few manes remained-more were coming over the ridge from the back side of the iceberg-and the friends charged on, side by side. They blew away any of the meager resistance, went into the cave hard and fast, where the last group of manes waited, and were summarily destroyed.
The only light the companions had with them came from Drizzt’s blades. Twinkle glowed its usual blue, while the other blade flared brightly, a different hue of blue. This scimitar glowed only in extreme cold, and it was glowing more fiercely after its most recent feast.
The cave seemed larger from the inside. The floor inside the entrance sloped down steeply to add to its depth, though the whole of the place was thick with icy stalagmites and stalactites, most reaching from floor to ceiling, which was now more than thirty feet above the pair.
When the fight was ended, Drizzt pointed across the way, to a steep incline, a path up the opposite wall, which ended on a landing that seemed to turn around a blocking sheet of thick ice.
They started across the jagged floor, but stopped when they heard the maniacal laughter. Errtu appeared, and cold became hot as the mighty balor loosed his devastating fire.
*****
It was a simple case of underestimation. The chasme knew about the material world, had been here before, and understood what to expect from the creatures that lived here.
But Guenhwyvar was not of the material world, and was above what a normal cat could do.
The chasme rushed over the pair, thinking itself high enough to be safe. Great indeed was the fiend’s surprise when the mighty cat leaped straight up, crossing thirty feet in a mere instant, great claws hooking fast onto the buglike torso.
Down they went in a heap, Guenhwyvar raking wildly with her back legs, holding fast with her front and biting with all the considerable strength of her powerful jaws.
Regis looked to the rolling pair, quickly surmising that he could do little to help. He called repeatedly for Guenhwyvar, then looked about, seeing that some of the manes were fast returning, this time continuing over the ridge to close in.
“Hurry, Guenhwyvar!” the halfling cried, and the panther did just that, redoubling her devastating kicks.
Then it was Guenhwyvar alone on the ground, pulling herself from the fast-dissipating black smoke. The cat came right to Regis, and started for the door, but Regis, an idea popping into his head, tugged hard to stop her momentum.
“There’s a window on the top floor!” the halfling explained, for he had no desire to fight his way through the tower’s guardians, which might, he realized, include Errtu. He knew this was a desperate chance, for the window on Cryshal-Tirith’s top floor was as often a portal to another place as a normal entrance or exit for the tower.
Guenhwyvar scanned the indicated area quickly, then changed direction. Regis went right onto the panther’s back, fearing that he would slow the cat’s desperate run if his legs could not keep up.
Up the side of the conical mound went Guenhwyvar. Claws digging in, legs churning with all her strength, she came to a relatively flat area, gained a burst of speed, and leaped out for the tower, for the small window.
The pair hit the side of Crenshinibon hard, Regis somehow scrambling over the panther to get his body through the narrow portal. He landed hard and rolled backward, finally putting his back to the wall. He started to call out for Guenhwyvar to come in.
But he heard the cat’s roar, and then heard Guenhwyvar spring away from the tower’s side, the panther going fast to the aid of her master.
That left Regis alone in the small room to face the crystal shard.
“Great,” the terrified halfling said dryly.