The Crystal Shard

by The Crystal Shard [lit]

  Their sails were checked and tightened in preparation for the wild run that would carry their brave crews to war.

  Or, by Jensin Brent's furious decree, "The run that would carry their brave crews to victory!"

  * * * * *

  Regis had rejoined Cassius on the wall when the newsbearer's signal had been spotted on the southwestern banks of Lac Dinneshere. The halfling had slept for most of the night and day, figuring that he might as well die doing the thing he loved to do best. He was surprised when he awakened, expecting his slumber to last into eternity.

  Cassius was beginning to view things a bit differently, though. He had compiled a long list of potential breakdowns in Akar Kessell's unruly army; orcs bullying goblins and giants in turn bullying both. If he could only find a way for them to hold out long enough for the obvious hatred between the goblin races to take its toll on Kessell's force ....

  And then, the signal from Lac Dinneshere and subsequent reports of similar flashes on the far side of Redwaters had given the spokesman sincere hope that the siege might well disintegrate and Ten-Towns survive.

  But then the wizard made his dramatic appearance and Cassius's hopes were dashed.

  It began as a pulse of red light circling within the glassy wall at the base of Cryshal-Tirith. Then a second pulse, this one blue, started up the tower, rotating in the opposite direction. Slowly they circled the diameter of the tower, blending into green as they converged, then separating and continuing on their way. All who could see the tantalizing show stared apprehensively, unsure of what would happen next, but convinced that a display of tremendous power was forthcoming.

  The circling lights speeded up, their intensity increasing with their velocity. Soon the entire base of the tower was ringed in a green blur, so bright that the onlookers had to avert their eyes. And out of the blur stepped two hideous trolls, each bearing an ornate mirror.

  The lights slowed and stopped altogether.

  The mere sight of the disgusting trolls filled the people of Bryn Shander with revulsion, but intrigued, none would turn away. The monsters walked right to the base of the city's sloping hill and stood facing each other, aiming their mirrors diagonally toward each other, but still catching the reflection of Cryshal-Tirith.

  Twin beams of light shot down from the tower, each striking one of the mirrors and converging with the other halfway between the trolls. A sudden pulse from the tower, like the flash of a lightning stroke, left the area between the monsters veiled in smoke, and when it cleared, instead of the converging beams of light, stood a thin, crooked shell of a man in a red, satiny robe.

  Goblins fell to their knees again and hid their faces in the ground. Akar Kessell had come.

  He looked up in the direction of Cassius on the wall, a cocky smile stretched across his thin lips. "Greetings spokesman of Bryn Shander!" he cackled. "Welcome to my fair city!" He laughed wryly.

  Cassius had no doubt that the wizard had picked him out, though he had no recollection of ever seeing the man and didn't understand how he had been recognized. He looked to Regis and Glensather for an explanation, but they both shrugged their shoulders.

  "Yes, I know you, Cassius," Kessell said. "And to you, good Spokesman Glensather, my greetings. I should have guessed that you would be here; ever were the people of Easthaven willing to join in a cause, no matter how hopeless!"

  Now it was Glensather's turn to stare dumbfounded at his companions. But again, there were no explanations forthcoming.

  "You know of us," Cassius replied to the apparition, "yet you are unknown to us. It seems that you hold an unfair advantage."

  "Unfair?" protested the wizard. "I hold every advantage, foolish man!" Again the laugh. "You know of me - at least Glensather does."

  The spokesman from Easthaven shrugged his shoulders again in reply to Cassius's inquiring glance. The gesture seemed to anger Kessell.

  "I spent several months living in Easthaven," the wizard snapped. "In the guise of a wizard's apprentice from Luskan! Clever, don't you agree?"

  "Do you remember him?" Cassius asked Glensather softly. "It could be of great import."

  "It is possible that he stayed in Easthaven," Glensather replied in the same whispered tones, "though no group from the Hosttower has come into my city for several years. Yet we are an open city, and many foreigners arrive with every passing trading caravan. I tell you the truth, Cassius, I have no recollection of the man."

  Kessell was outraged. He stamped his foot impatiently, and the smile on his face was replaced by a pouting pucker. "Perhaps my return to Ten-Towns will prove more memorable, fools!" he snapped. He held his arms outstretched in self-important proclamation. "Behold Akar Kessell, the Tyrant of Icewind Dale!" he cried. "People of Ten-Towns, your master has come!"

  "Your words are a bit premature -" Cassius began, but Kessell cut him short with a frenzied scream.

  "Never interrupt me!" the wizard shouted, the veins in his neck taut and bulging and his face turning as red as blood.

  Then, as Cassius quieted in disbelief, Kessell seemed to regain a measure of his composure. "You shall learn better, proud Cassius," he threatened. "You shall learn!"

  He turned back to Cryshal-Tirith and uttered a simple word of command. The tower went black for a moment, as though it refused to release the reflections of the sun's light. Then it began to glow, far within its depths, with a light that seemed more its own than a reflection of the day. With each passing second, the hue shifted and the light began to climb and circle the strange walls.

  "Behold Akar Kessell!" the wizard proclaimed, still frowning. "Look upon the splendor of Crenshinibon and surrender all hope!"

  More lights began flashing within the tower's walls, climbing and dropping randomly and spinning about the structure in a frenzied dance that cried out for release. Gradually they were working their way up to the pointed pinnacle, and it began to flare as if on fire, shifting through the colors of the spectrum until its white flame rivaled the brightness of the sun itself.

  Kessell cried out as a man in ecstacy.

  The fire was released.

  It shot out in a thin, searing line northward toward the unfortunate city of Targos. Many spectators lined Targos's high wall, though the tower was much farther away from them than it was from Bryn Shander, and it appeared as no more than a flashing speck on the distant plain. They had little idea of what was happening beneath the principle city, though they did see the ray of fire coming toward them.

  But by then it was too late.

  The wrath of Akar Kessell roared into the proud city, cutting a swath of instant devastation. Fires sprouted all along its killing line. People caught in the direct path never even had a chance to cry out before they were simply vaporized. But those who survived the initial assault, women and children and tundra-toughened men alike, who had faced death a thousand times and more, did scream. And their wails carried out across the still lake to Lonelywood and Bremen, to the cheering goblins in Termalaine, and down the plain to the horrified witnesses in Bryn Shander.

  Kessell waved his hand and slightly altered the angle of the release, thus arcing the destruction throughout Targos. Every major structure within the city was soon burning, and hundreds of people lay dead or dying, pitifully rolling about on the ground to extinguish the flames that engulfed their bodies or gasping helplessly in a desperate search for air in the heavy smoke.

  Kessell reveled in the moment.

  But then he felt an involuntary shudder wrack his spine. And the tower, too, seemed to quiver. The wizard clutched at the relic, still tucked under the folds of his robe. He understood that he had pushed the limits of Crenshinibon's strength too far.

  Back in the Spine of the World, the first tower that Kessell had raised crumbled into rubble. And far out on the open tundra, the second did likewise. The shard pulled in its borders, destroying the tower images that sapped away its strength.

  Kessell, too, had been wearied by the effort, and the lights of the remaining Cr
yshal-Tirith began to calm and then to wane. The ray fluttered and died.

  But it had finished its business.

  When the invasion had first come, Kemp and the other proud leaders of Targos had promised their people that they would hold the city until the last man had fallen, but even the stubborn spokesman realized that they had no choice but to flee. Luckily, the city proper, which had taken the brunt of Kessell's attack, was on high ground overlooking the sheltered bay area. The fleets remained unharmed. And the homeless fishermen of Termalaine were already on the docks, having stayed with their boats after they had docked in Targos. As soon as they had realized the unbelievable extent of the destruction that was occurring in the city proper, they began preparing for the imminent influx of the war's latest refugees. Most of the boats of both cities sailed out within minutes of the attack, desperate to get their vulnerable sails safely away from the windblown sparks and debris. A few vessels remained behind, braving the growing hazards to rescue any later arrivals on the docks.

  The people on Bryn Shander's dock wept at the continued screams of the dying. Cassius, though, consumed by his quest to seek out and understand the apparent weakness that Kessell had just revealed, had no time for tears. In truth, the cries affected him as deeply as anyone, but, unwilling to let the lunatic Kessell view any hints of weakness from him, he transformed his visage from sorrow to an iron grimace of rage.

  Kessell laughed at him. "Do not pout, poor Cassius," the wizard taunted, "it is unbecoming."

  "You are a dog," Glensather retorted. "And unruly dogs should be beaten!"

  Cassius stayed his fellow spokesman with an outstretched hand. "Be calm, my friend," he whispered. "Kessell will feed off of our panic. Let him talk-he reveals more to us than he believes."

  "Poor Cassius," Kessell repeated sarcastically. Then suddenly, the wizard's face twisted in outrage. Cassius noted the abrupt swing keenly, filing it away with the other information he had collected.

  "Mark well what you have witnessed here, people of Bryn Shander!" Kessell sneered. "Bow to your master, or the same fate shall befall you! And there is no water behind you! You have nowhere to run!"

  He laughed wildly again and looked all about the city's hill, as though he was searching for something. "What are you to do?" he cackled. "You have no lake!"

  "I have spoken, Cassius. Hear me well. You will deliver an emissary unto me tomorrow, an emissary to bear the news of your unconditional surrender! And if your pride prevents such an act, remember the cries of dying Targos! Look to the city on the banks of Maer Dualdon for guidance, pitiful Cassius. The fires shall not have died when the morrow dawns!"

  Just then a courier raced up to the spokesman. "Many ships have been spotted moving out from under the blanket of smoke in Targos. Newsbearer signals have already begun coming in from the refugees."

  "And what of Kemp?" Cassius asked anxiously.

  "He lives," the courier answered. "And he has vowed revenge."

  Cassius breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't overly fond of his peer from Targos, but he knew that the battle-seasoned spokesman would prove a valuable asset to Ten-Towns' cause before all was through.

  Kessell heard the conversation and growled in disdain. "And where shall they run?" he asked Cassius.

  The spokesman, intent on studying this unpredictable and unbalanced adversary, did not reply, but Kessell answered the question for him.

  "To Bremen? But they cannot!" He snapped his fingers, beginning the chain of a prearranged message to his westernmost forces. At once, a large group of goblins broke rank and started out to the west.

  Toward Bremen.

  "You see? Bremen falls before the night is through, and yet another fleet will scurry out onto their precious lake. The scene shall be repeated in the town in the wood with predictable results. But what protection will the lakes offer these people when the merciless winter begins to fall?" he shouted. "How fast shall their ships sail away from me when the waters are frozen around them?"

  He laughed again, but this time more seriously, more dangerously. "What protection do any of you have against Akar Kessell?"

  Cassius and the wizard held each other in unyielding glares. The wizard barely mouthed the words, but Cassius heard him clearly.

  "What protection?"

  * * * * *

  Out on Maer Dualdon, Kemp bit back his frustrated rage as he watched his city tumble in flames. Soot-blackened faces stared back to the burning ruins in horrified disbelief, shouting impossible denials and openly crying for their lost friends and kin.

  But, like Cassius, Kemp converted his despair into constructive anger. As soon as he learned of the goblin force departing for Bremen, he dispatched his fastest ship to warn the people of that distant city and to inform them of the happenings across the lake. Then he sent a second ship toward Lonelywood to beg for food and bandages, and perhaps an invitation to dock.

  Despite their obvious differences, the spokesmen of the ten towns were in many ways alike. Like Agorwal, who had been happy to sacrifice everything for the good of the people, and Jensin Brent, who refused to yield to despair, Kemp of Targos set about rallying his people for a retaliatory strike. He didn't yet know how he would accomplish the feat, but he knew that he had not had his final say in the wizard's war.

  And poised upon the wall of Br yn Shander, Cassius knew it, too.

  25

  Errtu

  Drizzt crawled out of his hidden chamber as the last lights of the setting sun began fading away. He scanned the southern horizon and was again dismayed. He had needed to rest, but he couldn't help feeling pangs of guilt when he saw the city of Targos burning, as though he had neglected his duty to bear witness to the suffering of Kessell's helpless victims.

  Yet the drow had not been idle even during the hours of the meditative trance the elves called sleep. He had journeyed back into the underworld of his distant memories in search of a particular sensation, the aura of a powerful presence he had once known. Though he had not gotten close enough for a good look at the demon he had followed the previous night, something about the creature had struck a familiar chord in his oldest recollections. A pervading, unnatural emanation surrounded creatures from the lower planes when they walked on the material world, an aura that the dark elves, moreso than any other race, had come to understand and recognize. Not only this type of demon, but this particular creature itself, was known to Drizzt. It had served his people in Menzoberranzan for many years.

  "Errtu," he whispered as he sorted through his dreams.

  Drizzt knew the demon's true name. It would come to his call.

  * * * * *

  The search to find an appropriate spot from which he could call the demon took Drizzt over an hour, and he spent several more preparing the area. His goal was to take away as many of Errtu's advantages - size and flight in particular - as he could, though he sincerely hoped that their meeting would not involve combat. People who knew the drow considered him daring, sometimes even reckless, but that was against mortal enemies who would recoil from the stinging pain of his whirring blades. Demons, especially one of Errtu's size and strength, were a different story altogether. Many times during his youth Drizzt had witnessed the wrath of such a monster. He had seen buildings thrown down, solid stone torn by the great clawed hands. He had seen mighty human warriors strike the monster with blows that would fell an ogre, only to find, in their dying horror, that their weapons were useless against such a powerful being from the lower planes.

  His own people usually fared better against demons, actually receiving a measure of respect from them. Demons often allied with drow on even terms, or even served the dark elves outright, for they were wary of the powerful weapons and magic the drow possessed. But that was back in the underworld, where the strange emanations from the unique stone formations blessed the metals used by the drow craftsmen with mysterious and magical properties. Drizzt had none of the weapons from his homeland, for their strange magic could not withstand the light
of day, though he had been careful to keep them protected from the sun, they became useless shortly after he moved to the surface. He doubted that the weapons he now carried would be able to harm Errtu at all. And even if they did, demons of Errtu's stature could not be truly destroyed away from their native planes. If it came to blows, the most that Drizzt could hope to do was banish the creature from the Material Plane for one hundred years.

  He had no intentions of fighting.

  Yet he had to try something against the wizard who threatened the towns. His goal now was to gain some knowledge that might reveal a weakness in the wizard, and his method was deception and disguise, hoping that Errtu remembered enough about the dark elves to make his story credible, yet not too much to strip away the flimsy lies that would hold it together.

  The place he had chosen for the meeting was a sheltered dell a few yards from the mountain's cliff face. A pinnacled roof formed by converging walls covered half of the area, the other half was open to the sky, but the entire place was set back into the mountainside behind high walls, safely out of view of Cryshal-Tirith. Now Drizzt worked with a dagger, scraping runes of warding on the walls and floor in front of where he would sit. His mental image of these magical symbols had fuzzied over the many years, and he knew that their design was far from perfect. Yet he realized that he would need any possible protection that they might offer if Errtu turned on him.

  When he was finished, he sat crosslegged under the roofed section, behind the protected area, and tossed out the small statuette that he carried in his pack. Guenhwyvar would be a good test for his warding inscriptions.

  The great cat answered the summons. It appeared in the other side of the cubby, its keen eyes scanning the area for any potential danger that threatened its master. Then, sensing nothing, it turned a curious glance on Drizzt.

  "Come to me," Drizzt called, beckoning with his hand. The cat strode toward him, then stopped abruptly, as though it had walked into a wall. Drizzt sighed in relief when he saw that his runes held some measure of strength. His confidence was bolstered considerably, though he realized that Errtu would push the power of the runes to their absolute limits - and probably beyond.