The Crystal Shard

by R. A. Salvatore

  The trolls were on the stairway.

  Drizzt tried to push his way through the glass, speaking all of the command words of opening he had ever learned, searching for an extra-dimensional portal similar to the ones that had held Kessell’s hideous guards. The wall remained a tangible barrier.

  The lead troll reached the halfway point on the stairs.

  “There must be a clue somewhere!” the drow groaned. “Wizards love a challenge, and there is no sport to this!” The only possible answer lay in the intricate designs and images of the tapestry. Drizzt stared at it, trying to sort through the thousands of interwoven images for some special hint that would show him the way to safety.

  The stench flowed up to him. He could hear the slobbering of the ever-hungry monsters.

  But he had to control his revulsion and concentrate on the myriad images.

  One thing in the tapestry caught his eye: the lines of a poem that wove through all of the other images along the top border. In contrast to the dulling colors of the rest of the ancient artwork, the calligraphed letters of the poem held the contrasting brightness of a newer addition. Something Kessell had added?

  Come if ye will

  To the orgy within,

  But first ye must find the latch!

  Seen and not seen,

  Been yet not been

  And a handle that flesh cannot catch.

  One line in particular stood out in the drow’s mind. He had heard the phrase “Been yet not been” in his childhood days in Menzoberranzan. They referred to Urgutha Forka, a vicious demon that had ravaged the planet with a particularly virulent plague in the ancient times when Drizzt’s ancestors had walked on the surface. The surface elves had always denied the existence of Urgutha Forka, blaming the plague on the drow, but the dark elves knew better. Something in their physical make-up had kept them immune to the demon, and after they realized how deadly it was to their enemies, they had worked to fulfill the suspicions of the light elves by enlisting Urgutha as an ally.

  Thus the reference “Been yet not been” was a derogatory line in a longer drow tale, a secret joke on their hated cousins who had lost thousands to a creature they denied even existed.

  The riddle would have been impossible to anyone unaware of the tale of Urgutha Forka. The drow had found a valuable advantage. He scanned the reflection of the tapestry for some image that had a connection to the demon. And he found it on the far edge of the mirror at belt height: a portrayal of Urgutha itself, revealed in all of its horrible splendor. The demon was depicted smashing the skull of an elf with a black rod, its symbol. Drizzt had seen this same portrayal before. Nothing seemed out of place or hinted at anything unusual.

  The trolls had turned the final corner of their ascent. Drizzt was nearly out of time.

  He turned and searched the source of the image for some discrepancy. It struck him at once. In the original tapestry Urgutha was striking the elf with its fist; there was no rod!

  “Seen and not seen.”

  Drizzt spun back on the mirror, grasping at the demon’s illusory weapon. But all he felt was smooth glass. He nearly cried out in frustration.

  His experience had taught him discipline, and he quickly regained his composure. He moved his hand back away from the mirror, attempting to position his own reflection at the same depth he judged the rod to be at. He slowly closed his fingers, watching his hand’s image close around the rod with the excitement of anticipated success.

  He shifted his hand slightly.

  A thin crack appeared in the mirror.

  The leading troll reached the top of the stairs, but Drizzt and Guenhwyvar were gone.

  The drow slid the strange door back into its closed position, leaned back, and sighed with relief. A dimly lit stairway led up before him, ending with a platform that opened into the tower’s second level. No door blocked the way, just hanging strands of beads, sparkling orange in the torchlight of the room beyond. Drizzt heard giggling,

  Silently, he and the cat crept up the stairs and peeked over the rim of the landing. They had come to Kessell’s harem room.

  It was softly lit with torches glowing under screening shades. Most of the floor was covered with overstuffed pillows, and sections of the room were curtained off. The harem girls, Kessell’s mindless playthings, sat in a circle in the center of the floor, giggling with the uninhibited enthusiasm of children at play. Drizzt doubted that they would notice him, but even if they did, he wasn’t overly concerned. He understood right away that these pitiful, broken creatures were incapable of initiating any action against him.

  He kept alert, though, especially of the curtained boudoirs. He doubted that Kessell would have put guards here, certainly none as unpredictably vicious as trolls, but he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

  With Guenhwyvar close at his side, he slipped silently from shadow to shadow, and when the two companions had ascended the stairs and were on the landing before the door to the third level, Drizzt was more relaxed.

  But then the buzzing sound that Drizzt had heard when he first entered the tower returned. It gathered strength as it continued, as though its song came from the vibrations of the very walls of the tower. Drizzt looked all around for a possible source.

  Chimes hanging from the room’s ceiling began to tinkle eerily. The fires of the torches on the walls danced wildly.

  Then Drizzt understood.

  The structure was awakening with a life of its own. The field outside remained under the shadow of night, but the first fingers of dawn brightened the tower’s high pinnacle.

  The door suddenly swung open into the third level, Kessell’s throne room.

  “Well done!” cried the wizard. He was standing beyond the crystal throne across the room from Drizzt, holding an unlit candle and facing the open door. Regis stood obediently at his side, wearing a blank expression on his face.

  “Please enter,” Kessell said with false courtesy. “Fear not for my trolls that you injured, they will surely heal!” He threw his head back and laughed.

  Drizzt felt a fool; to think that all of his caution and stealth had served no better purpose than to amuse the wizard! He rested his hands on the hilts of his sheathed scimitars and stepped through the doorway.

  Guenhwyvar remained crouched in the shadows of the stairway, partly because the wizard had said nothing to indicate that he knew of the cat, and partly because the weakened cat didn’t want to expend the energy of walking.

  Drizzt halted before the throne and bowed low. The sight of Regis standing beside the wizard disturbed him more than a little, but he managed to hide that he recognized the halfling. Regis likewise had shown no familiarity when he had first seen the drow, though Drizzt couldn’t be sure if that was a conscious effort or if the halfling was under the influence of some type of enchantment.

  “Greetings, Akar Kessell,” Drizzt stammered in the broken accent of denizens of the underworld, as though the common tongue of the surface was foreign to him. He figured that he might as well try the same tactics he had used against the demon. “I am sent from my people in good faith to parley with you on matters concerning our common interests.”

  Kessell laughed aloud. “Are you indeed!” A wide smile spread across his face, replaced abruptly with a scowl. His eyes narrowed evilly. “I know you, dark elf. Any man who has ever lived in Ten-Towns has heard the name of Drizzt Do’Urden in tale or in jest! So keep your lies unspoken!”

  “Your pardon, mighty wizard,” Drizzt said calmly, changing tactics. “In many ways, it seems, you are wiser than your demon.”

  The self-assured look disappeared from Kessell’s face. He had been wondering what had prevented Errtu from answering his summons. He looked at the drow with more respect. Had this solitary warrior slain a major demon?

  “Allow me to begin again,” Drizzt said. “Greetings, Akar Kessell.” He bowed low. “I am Drizzt Do’Urden, ranger of Gwaeron Windstrom, guardian of Icewind Dale. I have come to kill you.”

  Th
e scimitars leaped out of their sheaths.

  But Kessell moved, too. The candle he held suddenly flickered to life. Its flame was caught in the maze of prisms and mirrors that cluttered the entire chamber, focused and sharpened at each reflecting spot. Instantaneously with the lighting of the candle, three concentrated beams of light enclosed the drow in a triangular prison. None of the beams had touched him, but he sensed their power and dared not cross their path.

  Drizzt clearly heard the tower humming as daylight filtered down its length. The room brightened considerably as several of the wall panels which had appeared mirrorlike in the torchlight showed themselves to be windows.

  “Did you believe that you could walk right in here and simply dispose of me?” Kessell asked incredulously. “I am Akar Kessell, you fool! The Tyrant of Icewind Dale! I command the greatest army that has ever marched on the frozen steppes of this forsaken land!

  “Behold my army!” He waved his hand and one of the scrying mirrors came to life, revealing part of the vast encampment that surrounded the tower, complete with the shouts of the awakening camp.

  Then a death cry sounded from somewhere in the unseen reaches of the field. Instinctively, both the drow and the wizard tuned their ears on the distant clamor and heard the continuing ring of battle. Drizzt looked curiously at Kessell, wondering if the wizard knew what was happening in the northern section of his camp.

  Kessell answered the drow’s unspoken question with a wave of his hand. The image in the mirror clouded over with an inner fog for a moment, then shifted to the other side of the field. The shouts and clanging of the battle rang out loudly from within the depths of the scrying instrument. Then, as the mist cleared, the image of Bruenor’s clansmen, fighting back to back in the midst of a sea of goblins, came clear. The field all around the dwarves was littered with the corpses of goblins and ogres.

  “You see how foolish it is to oppose me?” Kessell squealed.

  “It appears to me that the dwarves have done well.”

  “Nonsense!” Kessell screamed. He waved his hand again, and the fog returned to the mirror. Abruptly, the Song of Tempos resounded from within its depths. Drizzt leaned forward and strained to catch a glimpse of an image through the veil, anxious to see the leader of the song.

  “Even as the stupid dwarves cut down a few of my lesser fighters, more warriors swarm to join the ranks of my army! Doom is upon you all, Drizzt Do’Urden! Akar Kessell is come!”

  The fog cleared.

  With a thousand fervent warriors behind him, Wulfgar approached the unsuspecting monsters. The goblins and orcs who were closest to the charging barbarians, holding unbending faith in the words of their master, cheered at the coming of their promised allies.

  Then they died.

  The barbarian horde drove through their ranks, singing and killing with wild abandonment. Even through the clatter of weapons, the sound of the dwarves joining in the Song of Tempos could be heard.

  Wide-eyed, jaw hanging open, trembling with rage, Kessell waved the shocking image away and swung back on Drizzt. “It does not matter!” he said, fighting to keep his tone steady. “I shall deal with them mercilessly! And then Bryn Shander shall topple in flames!

  “But first, you, traitorous drow,” the wizard hissed. “Killer of your own kin, what gods have you left to pray to?” He puffed on the candle, causing its flame to dance on its side.

  The angle of reflection shifted and one of the beams landed on Drizzt, boring a hole completely through the hilt of his old scimitar and then drove deeper, cutting through the black skin of his hand. Drizzt grimaced in agony and clutched at his wound as the scimitar fell to the floor and the beam returned to its original path.

  “You see how easy it is?” Kessell taunted. “Your feeble mind cannot begin to imagine the power of Crenshinibon! Feel blessed that I allowed you to feel a sample of that power before you died!”

  Drizzt held his jaw firm, and there was no sign of pleading in his eyes as he glared at the wizard. He had long ago accepted the possibility of death as an acceptable risk of his trade, and he was determined to die with dignity.

  Kessell tried to goad the sweat out of him. The wizard swayed the deadly candle tantalizingly about, causing the rays to shift back and forth. When he finally realized that he would not hear any whimpering or begging out of the proud ranger, Kessell grew tired of the game. “Farewell, fool,” he growled and puckered his lips to puff on the flame.

  Regis blew out the candle.

  Everything seemed to come to a complete halt for several seconds. The wizard looked down at the halfling, whom he thought to be his slave, in horrified amazement. Regis merely shrugged his shoulders, as if he was as surprised by his uncharacteristically brave act as Kessell.

  Relying on instinct, the wizard threw the silver plate that held the candle through the glass of the mirror and ran screaming toward the back corner of the room to a small ladder hidden in the shadows. Drizzt had just taken his first steps when the fires within the mirror roared. Four evil red eyes stared out, catching the drow’s attention, and two hellhounds bounded through the broken glass.

  Guenhwyvar intercepted one, leaping past its master and crashing headlong into the demon hound. The two beasts tumbled back toward the rear of the room, a black and tawny-red blur of fangs and claws, knocking Regis aside.

  The second dog unleashed its fire breath at Drizzt, but again, as with the demon, the fire didn’t bother the drow. Then it was his turn to strike. The fire-hating scimitar rang in ecstasy, cleaving the charging beast in half as Drizzt brought it down. Amazed at the power of the blade but not having time even to gawk at his mutilated victim, Drizzt resumed his chase.

  He reached the bottom of the ladder. Up above, through the open trap door to the tower’s highest floor, came the rhythmic flashing of a throbbing light. Drizzt felt the intensity of the vibrations increasing with each pulse. The heart of Cryshal-Tirith was beating stronger with the rising sun. Drizzt understood the danger that he was heading into, but he didn’t have the time to stop and ponder the odds.

  And then he was once again facing Kessell, this time in the smallest room of the structure. Between them, hanging eerily in midair, was the pulsating hunk of crystal—Cryshal-Tirith’s heart. It was four-sided and tapered like an icicle. Drizzt recognized it as a miniature replica of the tower he stood in, though it was barely a foot long.

  An exact image of Crenshinibon.

  A wall of light emanated from it, cutting the chamber in half, with the drow on one side and the wizard on the other. Drizzt knew from the wizard’s snicker that it was a barrier as tangible as one of stone. Unlike the cluttered scrying room below, only one mirror, appearing more like a window in the tower’s wall, adorned this room, just to the side of the wizard.

  “Strike the heart, drow,” Kessell laughed. “Fool! The heart of Cryshal-Tirith is mightier than any weapon in the world! Nothing that you could ever do, magical or otherwise, could even put the slightest scratch upon its pure surface! Strike it; let your foolish impertinence be revealed!”

  Drizzt had other plans, though. He was flexible and cunning enough to realize that some foes could not be defeated with force alone. There were always other options.

  He sheathed his remaining weapon, the magical scimitar, and began untying the rope that secured the sack to his belt. Kessell looked on curiously, disturbed by the drow’s calm, even when his death seemed inevitable. “What are you doing?” the wizard demanded.

  Drizzt didn’t reply. His actions were methodical and unshaken. He loosened the drawstring on the sack and pulled it open.

  “I asked you what you were doing!” Kessell scowled as Drizzt began walking toward the heart. Suddenly the replica seemed vulnerable to the wizard. He had the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps this dark elf was more dangerous than he had originally estimated.

  Crenshinibon sensed it, too. The Crystal Shard telepathically instructed Kessell to unleash a killing bolt and be done with the drow.

&
nbsp; But Kessell was afraid.

  Drizzt neared the crystal. He tried to put his hand over it, but the light wall repulsed him. He nodded, expecting as much, and pulled back the sack’s opening as wide as it would go. His concentration was solely on the tower itself; he never looked at the wizard or acknowledged his ranting.

  Then he emptied the bag of flour over the gemstone.

  The tower seemed to groan in protest. It darkened.

  The wall of light that separated the drow from the wizard disappeared.

  But still Drizzt concentrated on the tower. He knew that the layer of suffocating flour could only block the gemstone’s powerful radiations for a short time.

  Long enough, though, for him to slip the now-empty bag over it and pull the drawstring tight. Kessell wailed and lurched forward, but halted before the drawn scimitar.

  “No!” the wizard cried in helpless protest. “Do you realize the consequences of what you have done?” As if in answer, the tower trembled. It calmed quickly, but both the drow and the wizard sensed the approaching danger. Somewhere in the bowels of Cryshal-Tirith, the decay had already begun.

  “I understand completely,” replied Drizzt. “I have defeated you, Akar Kessell. Your short reign as self-proclaimed ruler of Ten-Towns is ended.”

  “You have killed yourself, drow!” Kessell retorted as Cryshal-Tirith shuddered again, this time even more violently. “You cannot hope to escape before the tower crumbles upon you!”

  The quake came again. And again.

  Drizzt shrugged, unconcerned. “So be it,” he said. “My purpose is fulfilled, for you, too, shall perish.”

  A sudden, crazy cackle exploded from the wizard’s lips. He spun away from Drizzt and dived at the mirror embedded in the tower wall. Instead of crashing through the glass and falling to the field below, as Drizzt expected, Kessell slipped into the mirror and was gone.