'Stumpet Rakingclaw,' Drizzt replied.
'Ye hardly know her.'
'But I will get to know her. I know enough of her, of her exploits in Keeper's Dale and in Menzoberranzan against the invading dark elves, to trust in her power and her sense.'
Catti-brie nodded-from everything she had heard of Stumpet Rakingclaw, the cleric was an excellent choice. Something else bothered Catti-brie, though, something that the drow had hinted at. She sighed deeply, and that told Drizzt what was on her mind.
'We have no way of knowing how long it will be,' the drow ranger admitted.
'Then are we to become guardians for a year?' Catti-brie asked, rather sharply. 'Or a hundred years?' She saw the drow's pained look and regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. Surely it would be difficult for Catti-brie, lying in wait as the months rolled by for a fiend that might not even show up. But how much worse it must be for Drizzt! For Drizzt was not just waiting for Errtu, but for his father, his tortured father, and every day that passed meant another day that Zaknafein was in Errtu's evil clutches.
The woman bowed her head. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I should've been thinkin' of yer father.'
Drizzt put a hand on her shoulder. 'Fear not,' he replied, 'I think of him constantly.'
Catti-brie lifted her deep blue eyes to look deeply into the drow's lavender orbs. 'We'll get him back,' she promised grimly, 'and pay Errtu for all the pain he's given yer father.'
'I know,' Drizzt said with a nod. 'But there is no need to raise the alarm just yet. Bruenor and Regis have enough to concern them with winter fast approaching.'
Catti-brie agreed and sat back on the warm stone. They would wait as long as they had to, and then let Errtu beware!
And so the friends fell into the routine of everyday life in Icewind Dale, working with the dwarves over the next couple of weeks. Drizzt secured a cave to serve as an outer camp for his many forays onto the open tundra, and Catti-brie spent quite a bit of time there as well, beside her friend, silently comforting him.
They spoke little of Errtu and the crystal shard, and Drizzt hadn't yet approached Stumpet, but the drow thought of the fiend, and more particularly, of the fiend's prisoner, almost constantly.
Simmering.
*****
'You must come quicker when I call to you!' the wizard growled, pacing anxiously about the room. He hardly seemed imposing to the twelve-foot glabrezu. The fiend had four arms, two ending with mighty hands and two with pincers that could snap a man in half.
'My fellows, they do not tolerate delays,' the wizard went on. The glabrezu, Bizmatec, curled up his canine lips in a sly smile. This wizard, Dosemen of Sundabar, was all in disarray, battling hard to win a foolish contest against his fellow guild members. Perhaps he had erred in preparing the circle …
'Do I ask much of you?' Dosemen wailed. 'Of course I do not! Just a few answers to minor questions, and I have given much in return.'
'I do not complain,' Bizmatec replied. While the fiend spoke, he scrutinized the circle of power, the only thing holding back the glabrezu's wrath. If Dosemen had not properly prepared the circle, Bizmatec meant to devour him.
'But neither do you give to me the answers!' Dosemen howled. 'Now, I will ask once more, and you will have three hours, just three hours, to return with my answers.'
Bizmatec heard the words distinctly, and considered their implications in a new and respectful light, for by that time, the fiend had come to know that the circle was complete and perfect. There could be no escape.
Dosemen began rattling off his seven questions, seven unimportant and obscure questions, worthless except that finding their answers was the contest the wizard's guild had begun. Dosemen's voice showed his urgency; he knew that at least three of his fellows had garnered several of the answers already.
Bizmatec was not listening, though, was trying to recall something he had heard in the Abyss, a proposition put forth by a tanar'ri much greater than he. The glabrezu looked at the perfect circle again and scowled doubtfully, and yet, Errtu had said that the power of the summoner or the perfection of the magical binding circle was not an issue.
'Wait!' Bizmatec roared, and Dosemen, despite his confidence and his anger, fell back and fell silent.
'The answers you require will take many hours to discover,' the fiend explained.
'I do not have many hours!' Dosemen retorted, gaining back a bit of his composure with his rising ire.
'Then I have for you an answer,' the glabrezu replied with a sly and wicked grin.
'You just said …'
'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
