"I have no answers to your questions," Bizmatec quickly explained. "But I know of one who does, a balor."
Dosemen paled at the mention of the great beast. He was no minor wizard, practiced at summoning and confident of his magic circle. But a balor! Never had Dosemen tried to bring in such a beast. Balors, and by all accounts there were only a score or so, were the highest level of tanar'ri, the greatest of the terrors of the Abyss.
"You fear the balor?" Bizmatec teased.
Dosemen pulled himself up straight, remembering that he had to show confidence in the face of a fiend. Weakness of attitude bred weakness of binding, that was the sorcerer's creed. "I fear nothing!" the wizard declared.
"Then get your answers from the balor!" Bizmatec roared. "Errtu, by name."
Dosemen fell back another step at the sheer power of the glabrezu's roar. Then the wizard calmed considerably and stood staring. The glabrezu had just given him the name of a balor, openly and without a price. A tanar'ri's name was among its most precious commodities, for with that name, a wizard such as Dosemen could strengthen the binding of his call.
"How much do you desire defeating your rivals?" Bizmatec teased, snickering with each word. "Surely Errtu will show you the truth of your questions."
Dosemen thought on it for just a moment, then turned sharply upon Bizmatec. He was still leery about the prospects of bringing in a balor, but the carrot, his first victory in one of the guild's biannual contests, was too juicy to ignore. "Be gone!" he commanded. "I'll waste no more energy upon the likes of you."
The glabrezu liked hearing that promise. He knew that Dosemen was speaking only of wasting his energy upon Bizmatec for the time being. The wizard had become quite a thorn to the glabrezu. But if the whispers filtering around the smoky layers of the Abyss concerning mighty Errtu were true, then Dosemen would soon enough be surprised and terrified by the ironic truth of his own words.
*****
Back in the Abyss, the interplanar gate fast closing behind him, Bizmatec rushed to an area of gigantic mushrooms, the lair of mighty Errtu. The balor at first moved to destroy the fiend, thinking the glabrezu an invader, but when Bizmatec spouted his news, Errtu fell back on his mushroom throne, grinning from horn to horn.
"You gave the fool my name?" Errtu asked.
Bizmatec hesitated, but there seemed no anger in Errtu's voice, only eager anticipation. "By the instructions I heard. ." the glabrezu began tentatively, but Errtu's cackling laughter stopped him.
"That is good," the balor said. Bizmatec relaxed considerably.
"But Dosemen is no minor wizard," Bizmatec warned. "His circle is perfect."
Errtu chuckled again as if that hardly mattered. Bizmatec was about to reiterate that point, figuring that the balor simply believed that he would find a flaw where the glabrezu had not, but Errtu moved first, holding forth a small black coffer.
"No circle is perfect," the balor remarked cryptically and with all confidence. "Now, come quickly. I have another task for you, a service of guarding my most valuable prisoner." Errtu slid from his throne and started away, but stopped, seeing that the glabrezu was hesitating.
"The rewards will be great, my general," Errtu promised. "Many days running free on the Prime Material Plane; many souls to devour."
No tanar'ri could resist that.
Dosemen's call came a short while later, and though it was weak, the wizard having already expended much of his magical energy in summoning Bizmatec, Errtu scooped up his precious coffer and was quick to respond. He followed the interplanar gate to Dosemen's room in Sundabar, and found himself, as Bizmatec had warned, standing in the middle of a perfectly ingrained circle of power.
"Close fast the gate!" the balor cried, his thunderous, grating voice reverberating off the stone walls of the room. "The baatezu might follow me through! Oh, fool! You have separated me from my minions, and now the beasts of doom will follow me through the gate! What will you do, foolish mortal, when the pit fiends enter your domain?"
As any wise wizard would, Dosemen was already frantically at work in closing the gate. Pit fiends! More than one? No circle, no wizard, could hold a balor and a pair or more of pit fiends. Dosemen chanted and worked his arms in concentric circles, throwing various material components into the air.
Errtu continued to feign rage and terror, watching the wizard and then looking back as if he was viewing the very gate he had come through. Errtu needed that gate closed, for any working magic would soon be dispelled, and if the gate was still empowered at the time, the balor would likely be sent back to the Abyss.
Finally, it was done, and Dosemen stood calm-as calm as a wizard could while looking into the half-ape, half-dog face of a balor!
"I have summoned you for a simple-" Dosemen began.
"Silence!" roared mighty Errtu. "You have summoned me because you were instructed to summon me!"
Dosemen eyed the beast curiously, then looked to his circle, his perfect circle. He had to hold faith, had to consider the balor's words as a bluff.
"Silence!" Dosemen yelled back, and because his circle was indeed perfect, and because he had summoned the tanar'ri correctly, using its true name, Errtu had to comply.
So the balor was silent as he produced the black coffer, holding it up for Dosemen to see.
"What is that?" the wizard demanded.
"Your doom," Errtu answered, and he was not lying. Grinning wickedly, the balor opened the coffer, revealing a shining black sapphire the size of a large man's fist, a remnant of the Time of Troubles. Contained within that sapphire was an energy of antimagic, for it was a piece of dead magic zone, one of the most important remnants of the days when the avatars of the gods walked the Realms. When the shielding coffer was opened, Dosemen's mental binding over Errtu was gone, and the wizard's circle, though its tracings remained perfect, was no longer a prison for the summoned fiend, no longer a deterrence, nor were any of the protection spells that the wizard had placed upon his person.
Errtu, too, had no magic that he could hurl in the face of that dead magic stone, but the powerful tanar'ri, a thousand pounds of muscle and catastrophe, hardly needed any.
* * * * *
Dosemen's fellow wizards entered his private room later that night, fearful for their guild-brother. They found a shoe, just one, and a splotch of dried blood.
Errtu, having replaced the sapphire in the coffer, which could shield even against such wicked antimagic, was far, far away by then, flying fast to the north and the west-to Icewind Dale, where Crenshinibon, an artifact that the balor had coveted through centuries, waited.
Chapter 22 LIKE OLD TIMES
The ranger ran with the wind in his ears, that constant humming. It had shifted more from the north now, off the glaciers and the great bergs of the Sea of Moving Ice, as the season drifted away from summer, through the short fall and into the long and dark winter.
Drizzt knew this change on the tundra as well as any. He had lived in Icewind Dale for just a decade, but in that time he had come to know well the land and its ways. He could tell by the texture of the ground exactly what time of year it was to within a ten-day. Now the ground was hardening once more, though there remained a bit of sliding under his moving feet, a subtle hint of mud below the dry surface, the last remnant of the short summer.
The ranger kept his cloak tight about his neck, warding off the chilly breeze. Though he was bundled, and though he could not hear much above the incessant moan of the wind, the drow was alert, always alert. Creatures venturing out onto the open plain of Icewind Dale who were not careful did not survive for long. Drizzt noted tracks of tundra yeti in several places. He also found