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Torga the orc faced Grock the goblin with open conte for roup could remember They shared a valley in the Spine of the World and coround and food with the brutality indicative of their warlike races

And now they stood on coround with no weapons drawn, coreater than their hatred for each other In any other place, at any other time, the tribes could never have been this close without joining in fierce battle But now, they had to be content with idle threats and dangerous glares, for they had been coa and Grock turned and walked, side by side, to the structure that held the man ould be their master

They entered Cryshal-Tirith and stood before Akar Kessell

Tworanks All about the plateau that harbored his toere the standards of various bands of goblins; the Goblins of Twisting Spears, Slasher Orcs, the Orcs of the Severed Tongue, and many others, all coe clan of ogres, a handful of trolls, and two score rogue verbeeg, the least of the giants but giants nonetheless

But his crowning achieveiants that had si only to please the wielder of Crenshinibon

Kessell had been quite content with his life in Cryshal-Tirith, with all of his whioblins that he had encountered The goblins had even been able to raid a trading caravan and supply the wizard with a few human women for his pleasures Kessell’s life had been soft and easy, just the way that he liked it

But Crenshinibon was not contented The relic’s hunger for poas insatiable It would settle for sains for a short tireater conquests It wouldn’t openly oppose Kessell, for in their constant war of wills Kessell ultimately held the power of decision The small crystal shard bridled a reserve of incredible power, but without a wielder, it was akin to a sheathed sith no hand to draw it Thus Crenshinibon exerted its will throughillusions of conquest into the wizard’s drea Kessell to view the possibilities of power It dangled a carrot before the nose of the once-bu apprentice that he could not refuse - respect

Kessell, ever a spit bucket for the pretentious wizards in Luskan - and everyone else, it seemed - was easy prey for such ambitions He, who had been down in the dirt beside the boots of the important people, ached for the chance to reverse the roles

And now he had the opportunity to turn his fantasies into reality, Crenshinibon often assured him With the relic close to his heart, he could become the conqueror; he could make people, even the wizards in the Hosttower, tremble at the mere mention of his name

He had to re the subtleties of controlling one, and then a second, goblin tribe Yet the task of bringing together dozens of tribes and bending their natural enmity into a co He had to bring them in, one at a time at first, and ensure that he had enslaved theroup

But it orking, and now he had brought in two rival tribes sia and Grock had entered Cryshal-Tirith, each searching for a way to kill the other without bringing on the wrath of the wizard When they left, though, after a short discussion with Kessell, they were chatting like old friends about the glory of their coed back on his pillows and considered his good fortune His ariants for his field co as a deadly strike force, and trolls, wretched, fear-inspiring trolls, as his personal bodyguard And by his count thus far, ten thousand fanatically loyal goblin troops to carry out his swath of destruction

"Akar Kessell!" he shouted to the hareernails as he sat in conteo been destroyed by Crenshinibon "All glory to the Tyrant of Icewind Dale!"

Far to the south of the frozen steppes, in the civilized lands where men had more time for leisure activities and contemplation and every action wasn’t determined by sheer necessity, wizards and would-be wizards were less rare The truestudents of the arcane arts, practiced their trade with due respect for the ic, ever wary of the potential consequences of their spellcastings

Unless consu, the true es tempered their experiments with caution and rarely caused disasters

The would-be ical prowess, whether they had found a scroll or a master’s spellbook or some relic, were often the perpetrators of colossal calaht in a land a thousand miles from Akar Kessell and Crenshinibon A wizard’s apprentice, a young reat proraht and found a spell of sued to extract the true name of a demon from hisentities froical portal - closely supervised - hoping to deers of the practice and reinforce the lessons of caution Actually, the de ed his master to allow him to try for a true demon, but the wizard knew that he wasn’t nearly ready for such a test

The apprentice disagreed

He had co the circle that same day So confident was he in his work that he didn’t spend an extra day (so the runes and symbols or bother to test the circle on a lesser entity, such as a mane

And now he sat within it, his eyes focused on the fire of the brazier that would serve as the gate to the Abyss With a self-assured, overly proud smile, the would-be sorcerer called the demon

Errtu, a major de uttered on the faraway plane Nornored such a weak call; certainly the sumth to colad of the fateful call A few years before, the dee of power on the material plane that it believed would culo The deer for a wizard to open a path for it so that it could co apprentice felt hi drawn into the hypnotic dance of the brazier’s fire The blaze had unified into a single flaer, and it swayed tantalizingly, back and forth, back and forth

Theintensity of the fire The fla sped up, and its color h the spectrum toward the ultimate heat of whiteness

Back and forth Back and forth

Faster, noagging wildly and building its strength to support the hty entity that waited on the other side

Back and forth Back and forth

The apprentice eating He knew that the power of the spell was growing beyond his bounds, that thea life of its own That he was powerless to stop it

Back and forth Back and forth

Now he saw the dark shadoithin the flas And the size of the beast! A giant even by the standards of its kind

"Errtu!" the young man called, the words forced from him by the demands of the spell The name hadn’t been completely identified in his ed to ajust below the demon lords in the hierarchy of the Abyss

Back and forth Back and forth

Now the grotesque,and the oversized incisors of a boar, was visible, the huge, blood-red eyes squinting from within the brazier’s flame The acidic drool sizzled as it fell to the fire

Back and forth Back and forth