For, Crenshinibon's greatest power was to enact an exact replica of itself, huge in proportion, a crystalline tower-Cryshal-Tirith. At Errtu's invitation, the creatures searched all about the base of the tower, but they saw no entrance-only extraplanar creatures could find the door to Cryshal-Tirith.
Errtu did just that, and entered. The fiend wasted no time in calling back to the Abyss, in opening a gate that Bizmatec could come through with the balor's helpless and tormented prisoner in tow.
"Welcome to my new kingdom," Errtu told the tortured soul. "You should like this place." With that, Errtu snapped his whip repeatedly, beating the prisoner unconscious.
Bizmatec howled with glee, knowing that the fun had just begun.
They settled into their new stronghold over the next few days, Errtu bringing in other minor fiends, a horde of wretched manes, and even conversing with another powerful true tanar'ri, a six-armed marilith, coaxing her to join in the play.
But Errtu's focus did not wander too far from his primary purpose; he did not let the intoxication of such absolute power distract him from the truth of his minor conquest. Upon one wall of the tower's second level, there was set a mirror, a device for scrying, and Errtu perused it often, scouring the dale with his magical vision. Great indeed was Errtu's pleasure when he found that
Drizzt Do'Urden was indeed in Icewind Dale.
The prisoner, always at Errtu's side, saw the specter of the drow elf, the human woman, a red-bearded dwarf and a plump halfling as well, and his expression changed. His eyes brightened for the first time in many years.
"You will be valuable to me indeed," Errtu remarked, deflating any hope, reminding the prisoner that he was but a tool for the fiend, a piece of barter. "With you in hand, I will bring the drow to me, and destroy Drizzt Do'Urden before your very eyes before I destroy you as well. That is your fate and your doom." The fiend howled with ecstasy and whipped his prisoner again and again,
driving him to the floor.
"And you will prove of value," the balor said to the large, purple stone set on his ring, the prison of poor Stumpet Rakingclaw's consciousness. "Your body, at least."
Trapped Stumpet heard the distant words, but the spirit of the priestess was caught in a gray void, an empty place where not even her god could hear her pleas.
*****
Drizzt, Bruenor and the others looked on in helpless amazement as Stumpet walked back into the dwarven mines that night, her expression blank, devoid of any emotion at all. She moved to the main audience hall on the uppermost level, and just stood in place.
"Her soul's gone," was Catti-brie's guess, and the others, in examining the dwarf, in trying to wake her from her stupor, even going so far as to slap her hard across the face, couldn't rightly disagree.
Drizzt spent a long while in front of the zombielike dwarf, questioning her, trying to wake her. Bruenor dismissed most of the others, allowing only his closest friends-and ironically, not one of these was a dwarf-to remain.
On impulse, the drow begged Regis to give him the precious ruby pendant, and Regis readily complied, slipping the enchanted item from around his neck and tossing it to the drow. Drizzt spent a moment marveling at the large ruby, its incessant swirl of little lights that could draw an unsuspecting onlooker far into its hypnotic depths. Drizzt then put the item right in front of the zombie dwarf's face and began talking to her softly, easily.
If she heard him at all, if she even saw the ruby pendant, she did not show it.
Drizzt looked back to his friends, as if to say something, as if to admit defeat, but then his expression brightened in recognition, just a flicker, before it went grave once more. "Has Stumpet been out on her own?" Drizzt asked Bruenor.
"Try to keep that one in one place," the dwarf replied. "She's always out-look at her pack. Seems to me that she was off again, heading for what's needin' climbing."
A quick look at Stumpet's huge pack confirmed the red-bearded dwarf's words. The haversack was stuffed with food and with pitons and rope, and other gear for scaling mountains.
"Has she climbed Kelvin's Cairn?" Drizzt asked suddenly, things finally falling into place.
Catti-brie gave a low groan, seeing where the drow was taking this.
"Had her eyes set on the place from the minute we walked into Ten-Towns," Bruenor proclaimed. "I think she got it, said she did anyway, not so long ago."
Drizzt looked to Catti-brie and the young woman nodded her agreement.
"What are you thinking?" Regis wanted to know.
"The crystal shard," Catti-brie replied.
They searched Stumpet carefully then, and subsequently went to her private quarters, tearing the place apart. Bruenor called for another of his priests, one who could detect magical auras, but the enhanced scan was similarly unsuccessful.
Not long after, they left Stumpet with the priest, who was trying an assortment of spells to awaken or at least comfort the
zombielike dwarf. Bruenor expanded the search for the crystal shard to include every dwarf in the mines, two hundred industrious fellows.
Then all they could do was wait, and hope.
Bruenor was awakened late that night by the priest, the dwarf frantic that Stumpet had just walked away from him, was walking right out of the mines.
"Did ye stop her?" Bruenor was quick to ask, shaking off his grogginess.
"Got five dwarves holding her," the priest answered. "But she just keeps on walkin, trying to push past 'em!"
Bruenor roused his three friends and together they rushed for the exit to the mines, where Stumpet was still plodding, bouncing off the fleshy barricade, but stubbornly walking right back into it.
"Can't wear her out, can't kill her," one of the blocking dwarfs lamented when he saw his king.
"Just hold her then!" Bruenor growled back.
Drizzt wasn't so sure of that course. He began to sense something here, and figured that it was more than coincidence. Somehow, the drow had the feeling that whatever had happened to Stumpet might be related to his return to Icewind Dale.
He looked to Catti-brie, seeing by her return gaze that she was sharing his feelings.
"Let us pack for the road," Drizzt whispered to Bruenor. "Perhaps Stumpet has something she wishes to show us."
Before the sun had begun to peek over the mountains in the east, Stumpet Rakingclaw walked out of the dwarven valley, heading north across the tundra, with Drizzt, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Regis in tow.
Just as Errtu, watching from the scrying room of Cryshal-Tirith, had planned.
The fiend waved a clawed hand and the image in the mirror grew gray and indistinct, then washed away altogether. Errtu then went up into the tower's highest level, the small room in which the crystal shard hung, suspended in midair.
Errtu felt the curiosity of the item, for the fiend had developed quite an empathetic and telepathic bond with Crenshinibon. It sensed his delight, the fiend knew, and it wanted to know the source.
Errtu snickered at it and flooded the item with a barrage of incongruous images, defeating its mental intrusions.
Suddenly the fiend was hit with a shocking intrusion, a focused line of Crenshinibon's will that nearly tore the story of Stumpet from his lips. It took every ounce of mental energy the mighty balor could manage to resist that call, and even with that, Errtu found that he had not the strength to leave the room, and knew that he could not resist for long.
"You dare …" the fiend gasped, but the crystal shard's attack was undiminished.
Errtu continued a blocking barrage of meaningless thoughts, knowing his doom if Crenshinibon read his mind at that time. He gingerly reached around his hip, taking a small sack that he kept hooked and hanging from the lowest claw of his leathery wings.