Both friends tried to rise, and both were blasted back to the wet ground as the balor plunged his lightning sword into the watery ice, taunting them all the while.
"Yes, a reprieve!" the fiend bellowed. "Well done, Drizzt Do'Urden, foolish drow. You have extended my pleasure, and for that-"
The fiend's sentence ended with a grunt as Guenhwyvar soared in, slamming Errtu hard, knocking him off-balance on the slick floor.
Drizzt was up and charging. Bruenor worked fast to untangle himself from the binding thongs of the fiend's whip. And Guenhwyvar raked wildly, biting and clawing.
Errtu knew the cat, had faced Guenhwyvar on that same occasion when Drizzt had banished him, and the balor felt the fool for not anticipating that the animal would soon arrive.
No matter, though, Errtu reasoned, and with a huge shrug of powerful muscles, the fiend launched the cat away.
In came Drizzt, his hungry scimitar thrusting for the fiend's belly.
Errtu's lightning sword swiped down in a parry, and that, too, was an attack, as the energy coursed from weapon to weapon, and subsequently into Drizzt, hurling him backward.
Bruenor was in fast and the dwarf's axe chopped hard into Errtu's leg. The fiend roared and swatted the dwarf, and Bruenor flew backwards. Out came the fiend's leathery wings, up he rose, above the reach of the mighty friends. Guenhwyvar leaped again, but Errtu caught her in mid-flight, locked her with a telekinesis spell, as the glabrezu had done with Catti-brie.
Still, for Drizzt and Bruenor, shaking off their earlier wounds, Guenhwyvar was helping, was keeping the fiend's considerable magical energies engaged.
"Let my father go!" Drizzt cried out.
Errtu laughed at him, and the reprieve was at its end. Errtu's spell hurled the panther aside, and the fiend came on in all his wrath.
*****
It was a small room, perhaps a dozen feet in diameter and with a domed ceiling reaching up to the tower's pinnacle. In the middle of the room, hanging in the empty air, loomed Crenshinibon, the crystal shard, the heart of the tower, pulsing with a pinkish-red color as though it were a living thing.
Regis glanced around quickly. He spotted the coffer lying on the floor-he knew it from somewhere, though he couldn't immediately place it-and the gem-studded ring, but what significance
they held, the halfling could not be sure.
And he didn't have the time to figure it out. Regis had talked extensively with Drizzt after the fall of Kessel, and he knew well the technique the drow had used to defeat the tower on that occasion, simply by covering the pulsing shard with blocking flour. So it was with the halfling now as he pulled the small pack from his back and strode confidently in.
"Time to sleep," Regis taunted. He was almost right, but not in the manner he meant, for he was almost knocked unconscious. The halfling and Drizzt had erred. In the tower on the plain outside of Bryn Shander those years ago, Drizzt had covered not Crenshinibon, but one of the shard's countless images. On this occasion, it was the real crystal shard, the sentient and powerful artifact, serving as the tower's heart. Such a meager attack was defeated by a pulse of energy that disintegrated the flour as it descended, burned the sack in the halfling's hands, and hurled Regis hard against the far wall.
The dazed halfling groaned all the louder when the trap door in the room's floor flew open. The stench of trolls wafted in, followed closely by a huge and wide hand with sharpened claws and rubbery, putrid green skin.
* *** *
Catti-brie could hardly feel her extremities, her teeth chattered uncontrollably and she knew that her bowstring was cutting deeply into her fingers, though she felt no pain there. She had to continue, for the sake of her father and of Drizzt.
Using solid Stumpet as a support, the young woman steadied herself and let fly an arrow, taking down the fiend closest to the cave entrance. Again and again, Catti-brie let fly, her enchanted quiver providing her with endless ammunition. She decimated most of the manes remaining on the ice beach, and blew away those coming over the ridge. She nearly shot Guenhwyvar, too, before she recognized the speeding cat. Her heart was lifted with some hope as the mighty panther rushed into the cave.
Soon all that remained of the manes were the few in the water, swimming fast for Catti-brie. Catti-brie worked frantically— most of her shots hit the mark-but one did get up on the ice floe, and came rushing in.
Catti-brie looked to her sword, buried to the hilt in the ice, and knew that she could not get to it in time. Instead, she used her bow like a club, whacking the fiend hard across the face.
The wretched thing skidded in, off-balance, and even as the two connected, Catti-brie snapped her forehead right into the ugly fiend's nose. Up came the tip of her bow, driving hard under the thing's saggy chin, poking through the oozing skin. The creature exploded into noxious gas, but it had done its work. The momentum of its rush, combined with the sudden gaseous cloud, sent Catti-brie moving backward, past the dwarf and into the water.
Up she came, gasping for breath, flailing with arms that she could not feel. Her legs were useless to her now. She managed somehow to grab on to the very edge of the ice floe, locking her fingers into a small crevice, for she knew that her strength was already going away. She cried out for Stumpet, but even those muscles of her mouth would not respond to her mind's command.
Catti-brie had survived the fiends, it seemed, only to be destroyed by the natural elements of Icewind Dale, the place she had called home for most of her life. That irony was not lost on her as all the world grew cold.
*****
Regis's back skimmed the curving ceiling as the nine-foot troll, the larger of the two that had entered the room, lifted him high into the air to look into its ghastly face. "Now youses goes into me belly!" the horrid thing proclaimed, opening wide its considerable maw.
The mere fact that the troll could speak gave Regis an idea, a desperate glimmer of hope.
"Wait!" he bade the creature, reaching under his tunic. "I have treasure to offer." Out came the halfling's prized pendant, the magnificent, hypnotic ruby dancing on the end of the chain just inches from the startled, and suddenly intrigued, troll's eyes.
"This is only the beginning," Regis stammered, fighting hard to improvise for the consequences of failure were all too evident. "I have a mound of these-look at how wonderfully it spins, drawing your eyes. ."
"Ere now, be ye to eats the thing or not?" the second troll demanded, shoving the first one hard. But that troll was caught fast by the charm, and was already thinking that it didn't want to share the booty with its companion.
Thus, the horrid thing was more than open to Regis's ensuing suggestion as the halfling casually glanced at the second troll and said, "Kill him."
Regis dropped hard to the floor, and was nearly squashed as the two trolls fell into a wild wrestling match. The halfling had to move fast, but what was he to do? His rolling evasion took him to the gem-studded ring, which he promptly pocketed, and to the open and empty coffer, which he suddenly recognized.
It was the same coffer the glabrezu had been carrying when Regis and his companions had come upon evil Matron Baenre in the tunnels under Mithril Hall, the same coffer that had held the stone-the black sapphire that had stolen away all the magic.
Regis scooped up the thing and dashed past the rolling trolls, bearing down fast on the crystal shard. A flood of mental images assaulted him then, nearly buckling his legs. The sentient artifact, sensing the danger, entered the halfling's mind, dominating poor Regis. Regis wanted to move forward, he really did, but his feet would not obey.
And then he wasn't sure that he wanted to move forward at all. Suddenly Regis had to wonder why he had wanted to destroy the crystal tower, the beautiful and marvelous structure. And why would he desire the destruction of Crenshinibon, the creator, when he might use the artifact to his own benefit?
What did Drizzt know anyway?
Though he was a confused and nearly lost soul at that point, the halfling thought to lif
t his own ruby pendant up before his eyes.
Immediately Regis found himself swirling into the item's depths, following the red flickers deeper and deeper. Most people got lost in that charm, but it was there, deep within the hypnosis of his gemstone, that Regis found himself.
He dropped the pendant chain and leaped forward, snapping the shielding coffer over Crenshinibon just as it released another pulse of deadly energy.
The coffer swallowed the item and its attack, and Regis plucked the shard out of the air.
Immediately the tower, the gigantic image of the crystal shard, began to shudder, the initial rumbles of its death throes.
"Oh, not again," the halfling muttered, for he had been through this before, and had escaped only with aid of Guenhwyvar, while Drizzt had escaped by …
Regis turned to the window, leaped up to its sill. He glanced back at the trolls, hugging instead of wrestling as their tower home shivered beneath them. In unison, they turned to regard the smiling halfling.
"Another day perhaps," Regis said to them, and then, without looking down, he leaped out. Twenty feet down, he hit the side of the iceberg cone, bouncing and sliding wildly to come to a sudden, jolting stop in the icy snow. The crystal tower crumbled around him, huge blocks narrowly missing the stunned and bruised halfling.
*****
The earthquake on the iceberg brought a temporary halt to the fighting within the cave, a temporary reprieve for those being badly beaten by the powerful tanar'ri. But poor Bruenor, standing by the cave wall, fell down as a wide crack opened at his feet. Though the break wasn't very deep, barely to Bruenor's waist, when the shaking ended, the dwarf found himself wedged in tightly.
The loss of Crenshinibon did nothing to diminish Errtu's powers, and the obvious fall of the tower only heightened the balor's rage.
Guenhwyvar came flying back in at him, but the fiend skewered the cat in mid-flight with his mighty sword, holding Guenhwyvar aloft with one powerful hand.
Drizzt, on his knees in the slush, could only watch in horror as Errtu calmly stalked in, as the panther twitched and tried futilely to free herself, growling with agony.
It was over, Drizzt knew. All of it had come to a sudden, crashing end. He could not win out. He wished that Guenhwyvar could get off of that sword-if she did, Drizzt would send her over to Bruenor and then dismiss her. Hopefully she would take the dwarf with her to the relative safety of her astral home.
But that couldn't happen. Guenhwyvar twitched again and slumped, and then dissipated into gray smoke, her corporeal form defeated and sent away from the Prime Material Plane.
Drizzt pulled out the figurine. He knew that he could not recall the cat, not for some days. He heard the hiss as the fiend's fires neared him and were extinguished by his trusty blade, and he looked from the figurine to grinning Errtu, towering over him, barely five feet away.
"Are you ready to die, Drizzt Do'Urden?" the fiend asked. "Your father can see us, you know, and how pained he is that you will die slowly before me!"
Drizzt didn't doubt the words, and his rage came up in full. But it wouldn't help him, not this time. He was cold, weary, filled with sorrow, and defeated. He knew that.
*****
Errtu's words were half true. The prisoner, behind a partially opaque wall of ice at the side of the cave's upper landing, could indeed see the scene, highlighted by the blue glow of Drizzt's scimitars and the orange flames near Errtu.
He clawed at the wall futilely. He cried as he had not cried in so many years.
*****
"And what a fine pet your cat will make for me," Errtu teased.
"Never," the drow growled, and purely on impulse, Drizzt threw the figurine with all his might, back through the cave entrance. He didn't hear the splash, but he was confident that he had heaved it far enough to reach the sea.
"Well done, me friend," a grim Bruenor said from the side.
Errtu's grin became a grimace of outrage. Up came the deadly sword, hanging right over Drizzt's vulnerable head. The drow lifted Twinkle to block.
And then a hammer twirled in end over end to slam hard into the balor, accompanied by the hearty call of "Tempus!"
Without fear, Kierstaad rushed into the cave, skidding right through the breach in Errtu's flames caused by Drizzt's scimitar, skidding right into the face of the tanar'ri, and howling for Aegis-fang all the way. Kierstaad knew the hammer's legend, knew that it would return to his hands.
But it didn't. It was gone from the ground near the fiend, but
for some reason that Kierstaad did not understand, it had not materialized in his waiting hands.
"It should have come back!" he cried in protest, to Bruenor mostly, and then Kierstaad was flying, slapped away by the fiend. He smacked hard into an ice mound, rolled off the thing and fell heavily, groaning, to the slushy floor.
"It should have come back," he said once more, before his consciousness drifted away.
*****
Aegis-fang couldn't go back to Kierstaad, for it had returned to its rightful owner, to Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, watching the scene from behind an ice wall. Wulfgar had been Errtu's prisoner for six long years.
The feel of the weapon transformed Wulfgar, gave him back a measure of himself along with the familiarity of this warhammer, forged for him by the dwarf who loved him. He remembered so much at that moment, so much that he had, by necessity, forced himself to forget in the years of hopelessness.
Truly the strong barbarian was overwhelmed, but not so much so that he didn't think of the immediate need. He roared out to Tempus, his god-how good it felt to hear that name coming from his lips again! — and began taking down the wall with mighty chops of his powerful hammer.
* * * * *
Regis felt a call in his mind. At first he thought it to be the crystal shard, and then, when he convinced himself that the artifact was safely and completely locked away in the coffer, he guessed it to be the ruby pendant.
When that proved false, Regis finally discerned the source: the gemstone ring in his pocket. Regis took it out and stared hard at it. He feared that it was yet another manifestation of Crenshinibon and lifted his arm back to hurl it into the sea.
But then Regis recognized the little voice in his head.
"Stumpet?" he asked, curiously, peering hard into the stone. He moved as he spoke, coming to kneel right beside one of the broken tower blocks. Out came his little mace.
*****
The thunder of the barbarian's hits shook the whole of the cave, so much so that a suddenly nervous Errtu could not help but look back. And when the balor did, Drizzt Do'Urden struck hard.
Twinkle gashed against the fiend's calf, while Drizzt launched his other blade higher, aiming for Errtu's groin. The scimitar's pointy tip dug in, and how Errtu howled! Again came that welcomed throbbing along Drizzt's arm as the scimitar fed on the fiend's life force.
But the turn in the battle was temporary. Errtu quickly slapped Drizzt away, then disappeared, coming back into view high among the icy fingers that hung down from the ceiling.
"Up, Bruenor," Drizzt called. "We have been given a reprieve, for Zaknafein will soon be among us."
The drow looked to the red-bearded dwarf as he spoke, and Bruenor had nearly wriggled his way out of the hole.
Up Drizzt scrambled, up and ready, but something about the look that came over Bruenor's face as the dwarf gazed to the side, weakened Drizzt's knees. He followed the dwarf's stare across the chamber, to the ice wall, where he expected to see Zaknafein.
He saw Wulfgar instead, with unkempt, wild hair and beard, but Wulfgar no doubt, hoisting Aegis-fang high and roaring with pure hatred.
"Me boy," was all the dwarf could whisper, and Bruenor slumped back into the hole.
Errtu went at Wulfgar hard, swooping in, his whip cracking and his sword blazing.
A hurled Aegis-fang nearly knocked the fiend from the air. Still the balor swept by, entangling Wulfgar's ankles with his whip and tugging the man from the le
dge to send him bouncing among the ice mounds of the slushy floor.
"Wulfgar," Drizzt called out, and he winced as the man tumbled. It would take more than a fall to stop the tormented Wulfgar, now that he was among his friends, now that he held his mighty hammer. Up he sprang, roaring like some animal, and Aegis-fang, beautiful and solid Aegis-fang, was back in his hand.
Errtu went into a frenzy, determined to squash this minor uprising, to destroy all of Drizzt's friends, and then the drow
himself. Balls of darkness appeared in the air, obscuring Wulfgar's vision as he tried to line up another throw. The fiend cracked his whip and zipped all about the cave, sometimes in swift flight, other times calling upon magic to teleport himself from place to place.
The chaos was complete, and every time Drizzt tried to get to Bruenor, Wulfgar, or even to fallen Kierstaad, there was Errtu, smacking him away. Always the drow parried the lightning sword, but each hit jolted him and hurt him. And every time, before Drizzt could begin to counter, Errtu was gone, simply gone, to wreak havoc in another part of the cave with another of the drow's friends.
*****
She wasn't cold anymore, was far beyond that simple sensation. Catti-brie was walking in darkness, fleeing the realm of mortals.
A strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder, the physical shoulder, bringing her senses back in tune with her corporeal body, and then she felt herself being lifted from the water.
And then. . the woman felt warmth, magical warmth, seeping through her body, returning life where there was barely any.
Catti-brie's eyes fluttered open to see Stumpet Rakingclaw working furiously over her, calling upon the dwarven gods to breathe life back into this woman who had been as a daughter to Clan Battlehammer.
* * * * *
Lightning simmered every time Errtu used that mighty sword. The rumbling of thunder and the fiend's victorious roars were matched by the beating of great leathery wings, the roars of Wulfgar to his battle god, and the cries of "Me boy!" from a wild-eyed, and still trapped Bruenor. Drizzt shouted, trying to bring some semblance of order to his companions, some common strategy that might corner and at last defeat wicked Errtu.
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