Robert Salvatore: The Crystal Shard

Blowing snow added to the heavy veil atop the mountain. Drizzt kept his eyes down, but he could hardly see his own feet as he determinedly placed one in front of the other. He still held the magical scimitar, and it glowed a pale light, as though it approved of the frigid temperatures.

The drow’s numbing body begged him to start down the mountain, and yet he was moving farther along the high face, to one of the adjacent peaks. The wind carried a disturbing sound to his ears—the cackle of insane laughter.

And then he saw the blurred form of the wizard, leaning out over the southern precipice, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening on the battlefield below.

“Kessell!” Drizzt shouted. He saw the form shift abruptly and knew that the wizard had heard him, even through the howl of the wind. “In the name of the people of Ten-Towns, I demand that you surrender to me! Quickly, now, lest this unrelenting breath of winter freeze us where we stand!”

Kessell sneered. “You still do not understand what it is you face, do you?” he asked in amazement. “Do you truly believe that you have won this battle?”

“How the people below fare I do not yet know,” Drizzt answered. “But you are defeated! Your tower is destroyed, Kessell, and without it you are but a minor trickster!” He continued moving while they talked and was now only a few feet from the wizard, though his opponent was still a mere black blur in a gray field.

“Do you wish to know how they fare, Drow?” Kessell asked. “Then look! Witness the fall of Ten-Towns!” He reached under his cloak and pulled out a shining object—a crystal shard. The clouds seemed to recoil from it. The wind halted within the wide radius of its influence. Drizzt could see its incredible power. The drow felt the blood returning to his numbed hands in the light of the crystal. Then the gray veil was burned away, and the sky before them was clear.

“The tower destroyed?” Kessell mocked. “You have broken just one of Crenshinibon’s countless images! A sack of flour? To defeat the most powerful relic in the world? Look down upon the foolish men who dare to oppose me!”

The battlefield was spread wide before the drow. He could see the white, wind-filled sails of the boats of Caer-Dineval and Caer-Konig as they neared the western banks of Lac Dinneshere.

In the south, the fleets of Good Mead and Dougan’s Hole had already docked. The sailors met no initial resistance, and even now were forming up for an inland strike. The goblins and orcs that had formed the southern half of Kessell’s ring had not witnessed the fall of Cryshal-Tirith. Though they sensed the loss of power and guidance, and as many of them remained where they were or deserted their comrades and fled as rushed around Bryn Shander’s hill to join in the battle.

Kemp’s troops were also ashore, shoving off cautiously from the beaches with a wary eye to the north. This group had landed into the thickest concentration of Kessell’s forces, but also into the area that was under the shadow of the tower, where the fall of Cryshal-Tirith had been the most disheartening. The fishermen found more goblins interested in running away than ones intent on a fight.

In the center of the field, where the heaviest fighting was taking place, the men of Ten-Towns and their allies also seemed to be faring well. The barbarians had nearly joined with the dwarves. Spurred by the might of Wulfgar’s hammer and the unrivaled courage of Bruenor, the two forces were tearing apart all that stood between them. And they would soon become even more formidable, for Cassius and Glensather were close by and moving in at a steady pace.

“By the tale my eyes tell me, your army does not fare well,” Drizzt retorted. “The ‘foolish’ men of Ten-Towns are not defeated yet!”

Kessell raised the crystal shard high above him, its light flaring to an even greater level of power. Down on the battlefield, even at the great distance, the combatants understood at once the resurgence of the powerful presence they had known as Cryshal-Tirith. Human, dwarf, and goblinalike, even those locked in mortal combat, paused for a second to look at the beacon on the mountain. The monsters, sensing the return of their god, cheered wildly and abandoned their heretofore defensive posture. Encouraged by the glorious reappearance of Kessell, they pressed the attack with savage fury.

“You see how my mere presence incites them!” Kessell boasted proudly.

But Drizzt wasn’t paying attention—to the wizard or the battle below. He was standing in puddles of water now from snow melting under the warmth of the shining relic. He was intent on a noise that his keen ears had caught among the clatter of the distant fighting. A rumble of protest from the frozen peaks of Kelvin’s Cairn.

“Behold the glory of Akar Kessell!” the wizard cried, his voice magnified to deafening proportions by the power of the relic he held. “How easy it shall be for me to destroy the boats on the lake below!”

Drizzt realized that Kessell, in his arrogant disregard for the dangers growing around him, was making a flagrant mistake. All that he had to do was delay the wizard from taking any decisive actions for the next few moments. Reflexively, he grabbed the dagger at the back of his belt and flung it at Kessell, though he knew that Kessell was joined in some perverted symbiosis with Crenshinibon and that the small weapon had no chance of hitting its mark. The drow was hoping to distract and anger the wizard to divert his fury away from the battlefield.

The dagger sped through the air. Drizzt turned and ran.

A thin beam shot out from Crenshinibon and melted the weapon before it found its mark, but Kessell was outraged. “You should bow down before me!” he screamed at Drizzt. “Blasphemous dog, you have earned the distinction of being my first victim of the day!” He swung the shard away from the ledge to point it at the fleeing drow. But as he spun he sank, suddenly up to his knees in the melting snow.

Then he, too, heard the angry rumbles of the mountain.

Drizzt broke free of the relic’s sphere of influence and without hesitating to look back, he ran, putting as much distance between himself and the southern face of Kelvin’s Cairn as he could.

Immersed up to his chest now, Kessell struggled to get free of the watery snow. He called upon the power of Crenshinibon again, but his concentration wavered under the intense stress of impending doom.

Akar Kessell felt weak again for the first time in years. Not the Tyrant of Icewind Dale, but the bumbling apprentice who had murdered his teacher.

As if the crystal shard had rejected him.

Then the entire side of the mountain’s snow cap fell. The rumble shook the land for many miles around. Men and orcs, goblins and even ogres, were thrown to the ground.

Kessell clutched the shard close to him when he began to fall. But Crenshinibon burned his hands, pushed him away. Kessell had failed too many times. The relic would no longer accept him as its wielder.

Kessell screamed when he felt the shard slipping through his fingers. His shriek, though, was drowned out by the thunder of the avalanche. The cold darkness of snow closed around him, falling, tumbling with him on the descent. Kessell desperately believed that if he still held the crystal shard, he could survive even this. Small comfort when he settled onto a lower peak of Kelvin’s Cairn.

And half of the mountain’s cap landed on top of him.

The monster army had seen their god fall again. The thread that had incited their momentum quickly began to unravel. But in the time that Kessell had reappeared, some measure of coordinating activity had taken place. Two frost giants, the only remaining true giants in the wizard’s entire army, had taken command. They called the elite ogre guard to their side and then called for the orc and goblin tribes to gather around them and follow their lead.