Robert Salvatore: Passage to Dawn

Drizzt spun, gritted his teeth to prevent himself from biting off his own tongue. Around came Twinkle, a perfect parry, catching Errtu's second attack in mid-swing.

The fiend laughed all the louder as his devilish blade released another jolt, a burst of electrical energy that rushed through Drizzt's scimitar and into the drow, coursing down his body and popping his knees so painfully that he lost his balance and nearly lost consciousness.

He heard Bruenor's roar, and the sloshing as the dwarf pounded his way toward him. The dwarf couldn't get there in time, Drizzt realized. Errtu's sudden assault had beaten him.

But suddenly, the fiend was gone, simply gone. It took Drizzt only a moment to understand; Errtu was playing with them! The fiend had waited all these years to exact revenge on Drizzt, and now the wicked balor was truly enjoying himself.

Bruenor skidded by as Drizzt regained his footing. The pair heard the sound of Errtu's taunting laughter once more, from across the way.

"Beware, for the fiend can appear wherever he chooses," Drizzt warned, and even as he spoke the words, he heard the crack of a whip and the cry of the dwarf. Drizzt spun about as Bruenor was tugged from his feet.

"Ye don't say?" the dwarf asked, scrambling furiously to get himself in line for a strike as Errtu jerked him backward, away from Drizzt.

Bruenor realized the depth of his troubles then, for in looking back, he saw a wall of fire looming before him, sizzling and sputtering as it turned the ice to steam. Behind it stood Errtu reeling him in with the whip, grinning wickedly.

Drizzt felt the strength drain from his body; he knew how Errtu meant to torment him now. Bruenor was doomed.

*****

Regis didn't know it, but his presence alone in that small room at the top of Cryshal-Tirith saved Catti-brie. Stumpet was near to her, at the edge of the ice. To Catti-brie's horror, the dwarf did not try to help her get her numbed form over the edge of the floe, but rather began pushing and kicking at her, trying to dislodge her and drop her back into the water.

Catti-brie fought back as fiercely as she could, but without firm footing and with her legs completely numb, she was losing the struggle.

But then Regis went into the tower, and the crystal shard had to release Stumpet from its domineering hold and concentrate on this newest threat.

Stumpet stopped fighting, went perfectly still. As soon as she realized the truth of the immobile dwarf, Catti-brie grabbed a hold on Stumpet's sturdy leg, using the dwarf's bulk to pull herself clear of the water.

After a considerable struggle, the woman managed to get shakily to her feet. Drizzt and Bruenor were gone by then, into the cave, but there remained manes to shoot, including a group that had leaped into the water and were thrashing about, gradually closing the gap to Catti-brie and Stumpet, the last remaining visible enemies.

Up came Taulmaril.

*****

Bruenor struggled with all his might. He grabbed on to the remaining stump of one destroyed stalagmite, but the icy thing was too slick for him to get a firm hold. It wouldn't have helped anyway, not with Errtu-so huge and strong-pulling against him. The dwarf howled in pain as his feet went into the fiendish fire.

Drizzt scrambled so fast that his feet slipped out from under him. He kept moving, though, churning his knees, banging them hard. The drow hardly cared for his pain. Bruenor needed him, that was all that mattered. He rushed with all speed, found a proper foothold amidst the quagmire, and shoved off, diving straight out, his arm extended and holding straight the ice-forged scimitar, sliding its curving blade right beside his friend.

In that area, Errtu's fires were extinguished, put out by the magic of the scimitar.

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.