Silence fell over the four after Drizzt finished. All gazes fell over Bruenor, waiting for his response as though it was a judgment of them all.
"Ye durned elf!" he bellowed at last. "Ye're always bringing trouble! Know that ye make life interesting!"
After a short, strained laugh, Drizzt, Catti-brie and Bruenor turned to hear what Regis had to say on the matter.
"I do have to widen my circle of friends," the halfling remarked, but like Bruenor's outrage, Regis's despair was a feigned thing.
Guenhwyvar roared in the night.
They were together again, the five friends, more than ready to face whatever odds, more than ready for battle.
They didn't know the depth of Errtu's terror, and didn't know that the fiend already had Crenshinibon in his evil clutches.
Chapter 23 CRYSHAL-TIRITH
A whisper of sound, a ball of flying blackness against the dark night sky, the fiend rushed north, past the three lakes, past Kelvin's Cairn, across the open tundra and over the encampment of Berkthgar's people. Errtu meant to go to the farthest reaches of the tundra to set up his fortresses, but when he got to that point, to the edge of the Sea of Moving Ice, the fiend discovered a better and more forlorn landscape. Errtu, a creature of the fiery Abyss, was no friend of snow and ice, but the texture of the great icebergs clogging the waters-a mountain range built among defensible, freezing moats-showed him potential he could not resist.
Out swooped the tanar'ri, across the first and widest expanse of open water, setting on the side of the visible cone of the closest tall iceberg. He peered out through the darkness, first using his normal vision, then letting his eyes slip into the spectrum of heat. Predictably, a cold blackness reflected back at him from both the normal and the infrared spectrums, cold and dead.
The fiend started to move on again, but felt the will of Crenshinibon, asking him to look more closely.
Errtu expecting to find nothing, didn't understand the point to such scrutiny, but he continued his scan. He was surprised indeed when he did see a patch of warmer air rising from a hollow on the side of an iceberg perhaps a hundred yards away. That was too far for Errtu to make out any distinct forms so the great tanar'ri gave a short flap of his leathery wings and halved the gap.
Closer still the balor crept, until Errtu could discern that the heat was coming from a group of warm-blooded forms, huddled in a tight circle. A more knowledgeable traveler of Icewind Dale would have thought them to be seals, or some other marine animal, but Errtu was not familiar with the creatures of the north and so he approached cautiously.
They were humanoid, man-sized, with long arms and large heads. Errtu thought that they were dressed in furs, until he got close enough to recognize that they were not dressed at all, but had their own coat of thick, shaggy fur covered with a filmy, oily sheen.
The beginnings of your army, came an intrusion into the balor's thoughts, as eager Crenshinibon renewed its quest for ever more power.
Errtu paused and considered that thought for some time. The fiend wasn't planning to raise an army, not here in this forlorn wilderness. He would remain in Icewind Dale for a short time only, long enough to discover if Drizzt Do'Urden was about, and long enough to destroy the drow ranger if he was. When that business was finished, Errtu planned to be long gone from the emptiness of the dale and into more hospitable, more thickly inhabited regions.
Crenshinibon's suggestions did not relent, and after awhile, the tanar'ri came to see a potential value of enslaving some of the area's creatures. Perhaps it would be wise to fortify his position with some expendable soldiers.
The balor chuckled wickedly and muttered a few words, a spell that would allow him to converse with the creatures in their own guttural and grunting language-if that's what their snorts and snarls could be called. Errtu called upon his magical abilities once again and disappeared, reappearing on the slope right behind and above the shaggy creatures' impromptu encampment. Now the balor had a better look at the beasts, about two-
score of them, he figured. Their shaggy fur was white, their heads large, though virtually without any discernable forehead. They were strongly built and jostled each other roughly, each apparently trying to get closest to the center of the huddle, what Errtu figured to be the warmest spot.
They are yours! Crenshinibon declared.
Errtu agreed. He felt the power of the crystal shard, a dominating force indeed. The balor leaped up to his full twelve foot height atop the ridge and bellowed to the shaggy humanoids in their own tongue, Errtu declaring himself their god.
The camp disintegrated into pandemonium, creatures running all about, slamming into each other, falling over each other. Down swooped Errtu into their midst, and when they moved out from the towering fiend, encircling him cautiously, the balor brought up a ring of low, simmering fire, a personal perimeter.
Errtu held high his lightning bolt sword, commanding the creatures to kneel before him.
Instead, the shaggy beasts shoved one of their own, the largest of the group, forward.
Errtu understood the challenge. The large, shaggy creature bellowed a single threat, but the word was caught in its throat as the tanar'ri's other weapon, that wicked many-thonged whip, snapped out and wrapped about the beast's ankles. A halfhearted tug from the mighty fiend jerked the creature onto its back and Errtu casually pulled it in so that it lay, screaming in agony, in the fiend's ring of fire.
Errtu didn't kill the creature. He gave a rolling snap on his whip a moment later and the thing flew out of the flames and rolled about on the ice, whimpering.
"Errtu!" the tanar'ri proclaimed, his thunderous voice driving back the cowed creatures. Cowed, but not kneeling, Errtu realized, and so he took a different tactic. Errtu understood the basic, instinctual way of these tribal beasts. Scrutinizing them and their trinkets in the light of the fire, the balor realized that they were likely less civilized than the goblins he was more used to dealing with.
Cower them and reward them, Crenshinibon imparted, a strategy that Errtu already had well under way. The cowering was done. With a roar the fiend leaped away, soaring over the top of the berg and into the blackness of the night. Errtu heard the con-
tinuing grunts and whispers as he departed, and he smiled again, thinking himself clever, imagining the faces of the stupid brutes when he gave them their reward.
Errtu didn't have to fly far to figure out what that reward might entail. He saw the fin of a creature, a huge creature, poking from the black surface of the water.
It was a killer whale, though to Errtu, it was merely a big fish, merely some meat he might provide. Down swooped the fiend, diving fast onto the back of the behemoth. In one hand Errtu held his lightning sword, in the other, the crystal shard. Hard struck the sword, a mighty blow, but harder still came the assault from Crenshinibon, its power loosed for the first time in many years, a line of blazing white fire that tore through whale flesh as easily as a beacon cut through the night sky.
Just a few minutes later, Errtu returned to the encampment of the shaggy humanoids, dragging the dead whale behind him. He flopped the creature into the midst of the stunned humanoids, and once again proclaimed himself as their god.
The brutes fell over the slain whale, chopping wildly with crude axes, tearing flesh and guzzling blood, a grisly ceremony.
Just the way Errtu liked it.
Within the span of a few hours, Errtu and his new minions located a suitable ice floe to serve as their stronghold. Then Errtu used the powers of Crenshinibon once more, and the creatures, already falling into worship for the fiend, leaped about in circles, crying Errtu's name, falling to their faces and groveling.