Waterdeep

12 Black Ice

While Kelemvor and Midnight struggled to keep from drowning, Midnight’s misfired magic skipped along the High Moor. Wherever the ebony globe touched, the earth turned to black ice. It glanced off a maple tree and the sap congealed in the trunk. It bounced into a stag and froze the blood in the animal’s veins.

Nearly an hour later, the black ball tumbled into a creekbed and could not escape. It rolled downhill, dashing from one side of the gully to the other, leaving a ribbon of black ice in its wake. The gully emptied into a small, rocky canyon. The globe ricocheted from one wall to another, changing dripping springs into sable icicles.

As the ball bounced down the canyon, the underground stream carried Kelemvor farther away from the whirlpool. Finally, the current grew swifter and water filled the cave completely. At first, the fighter was not concerned, for his lungs were full of air and the stream had dragged him through a dozen similar passages. But two minutes passed and the warrior’s lungs ached to draw another breath. He swam to the top of the stream, scraping at the ceiling in a vain search for air pockets. His head grew light and, to keep from inhaling, he clamped a hand over his nose and mouth. For a minute or so more, the cavern did not open up and Kelemvor remained submerged.

Then, as unconsciousness threatened to take him, the current died away. The warrior floated upward and a dim, greenish radiance lit the water. Kelemvor realized he had escaped the cavern. But his lungs still screamed for air and an unreasoning voice told him to breathe.

Kelemvor kept his hand pressed over his face. With what remained of his strength, he swam. Ten seconds later, he broke the surface and gulped down a dozen breaths.

He was in a small mountain lake—no more than a large pond, really. There was a small beach a hundred feet ahead. To the fighter’s right, a waterfall plunged into the lake from a ninety-foot cliff. The small creek feeding the waterfall ran down the center of a narrow, rocky canyon.

Something black and spherical was bouncing down that canyon, rebounding from wall to wall. Though he had not seen the destruction the ball left in its wake, a terrible feeling of apprehension washed over Kelemvor. He began swimming for the shore, fighting his own weariness and the cumbersome weight of his wet clothes. He thought about stopping to shed his pants and boots, but that would have taken too much time.

Kelemvor was halfway to shore when the sphere reached the cliff. The waterfall turned into a cascade of black ice. The ball skipped into the air, then fell toward the lake.

Seeing what had become of the waterfall, Kelemvor swam harder, kicking and stroking madly despite the agony in his limbs. The ball fell steadily, inexorably, toward the lake. Kelemvor was only twenty-five feet from the shoreline when the globe touched the water.

Beneath the sphere, a black circle of ice appeared. The ball skipped away, touching down twice and leaving two more icy patches in its wake. As the globe bounced out of the lake, the black circles began to expand.

Kelemvor continued to swim. Ten feet from shore, an icy vise grabbed at his ankle. The warrior kicked free and swam two more strokes, then his hands touched bottom. The water suddenly grew frigid, especially around his legs. He tried to stand, but found his thighs and waist locked in merciless jaws of ice. Trying to break free, he threw himself forward—only to come crashing down in shallow water, his chin barely past the shoreline.

The ice continued to form, advancing toward the fighter’s shoulders and threatening to trap his arms and chest. Kelemvor could not let that happen. He pushed his torso out of the lake and waited while the water froze beneath him. When the ice reached his hands, he moved them to the shore and continued to hold his body out of the water.

The ice stopped forming when it reached his chin. After a moment of silence, the lake began popping and creaking, adjusting itself to the increased volume of frozen water. The ice sheet rose a few inches, then surged three feet forward, leaving Kelemvor and his icy prison well ashore.

As the fighter waited for further adjustments, he examined his situation. He was trapped from his waist to his knees in a sheet of black ice. Below his knees, he could kick freely, whirling cold water around his calves and feet. Judging by what he could feel, the ice was about six inches thick.

In front of him, two inches of snow blanketed tufts of beach grass and capped several dozen pieces of driftwood littering the shore. Beyond that, a steep bank of sand rose ten feet. Six inches of soil topped the embankment, providing meager purchase for a few twisted dwarf pines that perfumed the air with a sweet citruslike odor.

The lake itself was nestled in a hollow at the base of the High Moor. To Kelemvor’s left, a single brook—now frozen and black—drained the tiny lake. The only visible inlet was the frozen waterfall, though Kelemvor knew that at least one underground stream also fed the lake.

After his brief examination of his surroundings yielded no easy method of escape, Kelemvor jerked and tried to pull free of the ice. When he failed, he screamed in rage.

His bellow came echoing back to him, as clear and as crisp as when he voiced it. The echo only made the fighter feel more desperate. Kelemvor shrieked again and dug his hands into the sand, then pulled with all his might. A keen ache shot through his shoulders and down his spine. His arms, still fatigued from the long swim, felt as heavy as clubs. Still, he did not stop pulling.

Finally, Kelemvor’s muscles began to quiver, then he started shivering and realized how cold he was. The air stung his fingers and his face, while his torso prickled with icy needles. Below his waist, the cold gnawed at his bones, burning his buttocks and thighs with frosty agony.

He worried most about his feet. Despite his tightly laced leggings and well-oiled boots, his feet were soaked. Kelemvor suspected that the stinging in his toes was the first stage of frostbite. If he did not escape soon, the warrior knew he would lose his toes, perhaps even freeze to death.

A crow landed in the low branches of the closest pine, then stared at the trapped fighter with a hungry gleam in its eye. Kelemvor hissed at it. The bird remained perched in the tree, politely waiting for the green-eyed man to die. It could afford to be patient. Judging from its lustrous feathers and plump body, the crow fed itself quite well.

Kelemvor did not enjoy being sized up as if he were a leg of mutton. “C-Come back tomorrow!” he called, the cold causing him to stutter. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The crow blinked, but did not leave. Although it was in no hurry to start its feast, the bird did not intend to let some other scavenger claim its prize.

Kelemvor grabbed a piece of driftwood and hurtled it at the black bird. The stick missed and hit the tree next to the crow’s. The bird turned its black eyes on the trembling boughs, then looked back at the warrior.

“Just leave me alone,” Kelemvor growled, waving his hand at the bird. “Let me die with some dignity.”

The hopelessness he felt surprised the fighter. Kelemvor had never been one to give up before the battle ended. But he had never felt this frightened before.

Kelemvor avoided examining that fear too closely. He had faced death many times before, and had never felt as despondent as now. The fighter was afraid of something more than dying. He told himself that leaving the tablet to the zombies was what had upset him.

But he knew that was a lie. Though Kelemvor understood the importance of returning the tablet to Helm, losing it would not produce such anguish. The true reason for his distress was Adon’s death, and the uncertainty of Midnight’s fate. Though he had no way of knowing what had happened to her, the warrior felt certain she could not have avoided the whirlpool.

Stop thinking, he told himself. Stop thinking before it’s too late. Kelemvor suddenly wanted to go to sleep so he could wake up and discover that the zombies and underground stream had been bad dreams.

But the fighter did not dare to close his eyes. Even through his growing disorientation, Kelemvor knew that sleep could be deadly in freezing conditions.

The shivering went away and his muscles began to stiffen. Kelemvor knew he was slipping closer to death. He kicked his legs, then beat the black sheet beneath his chest.

The ice did not crack, did not pop, did not give at all. He was as good as dead, yet was still alive. That makes me undead, Kelemvor thought, like the caravan zombies. He chuckled grimly at this half-formed thought.

But undeath was better than what had happened to Adon and Midnight.

Forget it, he told himself. Thinking about the past will bring nothing but more sorrow. Survive first, then think.

Not thinking was easier said than done. If Kelemvor had not insisted upon rescuing the caravan, had not been so stubborn, his friends would be alive. But the fighter had been stubborn, as he always was. He thought that perhaps he deserved to die.

“Stop it!” He spoke the words aloud, hoping to snap himself into a more alert state of mind.

The crow squawked once, as if suggesting Kelemvor get on with his death.

“Fetch a dagger, then, or a sharp rock,” Kelemvor muttered to the bird. “I can’t kill myself with my bare hands.”

The bird cocked its head, then ruffled its feathers and stared at Kelemvor with a disapproving glare.

Kelemvor stretched forward and grabbed a thick piece of driftwood. The crow prepared to take flight, but Kelemvor had no interest in attacking the bird again. Hefting the branch like a club, the fighter turned to his right as far as he could, then smashed the branch down on the ice.

A loud crack pealed across the lake, echoing off the cliff on the far side. Kelemvor tried to move his leg and found it would not budge. He raised the log and struck again. Another loud crack rolled across the ice-covered lake. The wooden club snapped in two, and one end went skittering across the ice, leaving the fighter holding a two-foot long wooden stake.

The crow squawked several times, then hopped out of the tree. It landed on the shore, just out of Kelemvor’s reach, and squawked once more.

Kelemvor considered throwing his stick at the bird, then thought better of the idea. The broken branch was not much of a tool, but it was all he had. Instead of attacking the crow, he grasped the stick as he might a dagger, then hit the ice with its sharp end.

Something gave, so he struck again and again, his movements growing increasingly jerky and erratic. Finally, Kelemvor stopped to see what he had accomplished. The fighter had smashed the end of the branch into a rounded pulp. His hand throbbed with the force of his blows, but the exertion had warmed his body a little.

The black ice showed only the tiniest depression. It was much harder than the driftwood, and the fighter’s efforts had done nothing to break it. If he wanted to smash his way free, Kelemvor knew he would have to find something harder than the driftwood, harder than the ice.

Kelemvor thought of the flint and steel in the purse he kept around his neck, but quickly discarded the idea; they were just chips he used to start campfires. They might serve well enough as hard points if fastened onto the end of the stick, but he had no way to do that. Besides, they would certainly be lost if they flew off the end of the stick, and that was a risk the fighter could not take. When he freed himself, he would need the flint and steel to start a fire. If it came down to death, he would use the flint to scratch at the ice, but it would be futile effort and he knew it.

Kelemvor turned his attention back to the shoreline. With the dulled stick he still held, the warrior could reach other objects. Unfortunately, the only things on the shore were more sticks and the bird. A wave of despair passed over Kelemvor as he decided that he could do nothing to save himself, for the ice was too thick and too hard. He was going to die, like the others …

Don’t think about them, he told himself. Thinking about them will demoralize you, make you want to die.

And Kelemvor wanted to live. It surprised him, somehow, but he definitely wanted to live.

The crow hopped to within the fighter’s reach. The bird pretended to take no notice of Kelemvor, though it was difficult to tell exactly what its black eyes were focused upon. Perhaps the crow was testing the warrior, trying to decide how much longer it would take for him to die.

“I won’t hurry on your account,” Kelemvor grumbled.

The crow cocked its head, then opened its beak and hissed. Kelemvor thought of the beak pecking at his eyes, of the spiked claws digging at his ears and nose. He winced.

Then an idea occurred to him, though it was born not of wisdom, but of the irrationality that comes with freezing to death. He scratched at the ice with his fingernails and noticed that he had scraped away the slightest bit. Of course, even muddled as he was, Kelemvor knew he would be long dead before working free of the ice with his own nails.

But the crow’s claws were sharper than fingernails. And the fighter could see many possibilities for the beak.

As if sensing his thoughts, the crow watched Kelemvor warily.

“I think I’ll go to sleep,” Kelemvor said, concerned by how thick his speech had become. In his confusion, he feared the crow might not understand him if he slurred his words.

The bird, of course, showed no sign of understanding him at all.

Kelemvor laid his head in his arms, keeping one eye open just enough to watch the bird. It felt good to rest his head, and he noticed that he was finally warm. The warrior was extremely drowsy, and thought the effort of his long swim had finally caught up to him. He closed both his eyes.

Ten minutes later, the crow decided to investigate the immobile man. Taking to its wings, the bird approached twice and fluttered overhead without landing. Finally, it settled a foot from Kelemvor’s head and stared directly into the warrior’s face. The man’s eyes remained firmly closed, and his breath was so shallow it could not be detected.

The crow hopped forward, then pecked at the fighter’s nose. When Kelemvor did not stir, the crow pecked again, this time taking a pinch of flesh away in its beak.

Kelemvor woke with a start and saw the black form in front of his eyes. Even as addled as he was, the fighter realized the crow was causing his pain. He lunged and his right hand closed on oily feathers. His left hand caught the bird by the leg, and the warrior felt a bone snap.

The crow squawked and slashed with its free foot. Kelemvor closed his eyes. Sharp claws ripped into his brow. The fighter screamed and the bird pressed harder, trying to rip through the man’s eyelids and jerk an eyeball loose.

Kelemvor released the bird and covered his face. An instant later, the crow’s wings beat the air and the bird was airborne. The fighter wiped the blood from his brow and looked after the bird. The fight had charged Kelemvor’s body with adrenaline, and the warrior was thinking clearly enough to wonder why he had ever believed it possible to scratch through six inches of ice with a crow’s claw.

“Filthy squab!” Kelemvor called, touching his fingers to the cuts in his forehead.

The crow circled several times, then flew away toward the west. With some alarm, the warrior noted that the sun was sinking and there were only about two hours of daylight remaining.

He began to feel lonely and frightened, and wished he had not chased the bird away. Though it had been waiting to pick his bones, at least the crow had been company.

Kelemvor noted that his legs had gone numb from the thighs down, and that his hands had taken on a blue tint. He was in danger of becoming a lump of ice. The fighter began waving his hands and trying to kick his feet, hoping to get the blood circulating and warm them.

This was only a temporary solution. If he was going to survive, he needed to warm himself. Fortunately, it looked as though the tools to do that were within arm’s reach.

Hoping that this was not another confused idea brought about by the cold, Kelemvor started gathering materials to start a fire. Stretching as far as he could, the fighter swept the snow off tufts of beach grass and pulled them out by their roots. He stored the grass inside his shirt, and did not stop gathering it until his shirt was bulging. The warrior was working more by instinct than by thought, for he had started a thousand fires and trusted his intuition more than his muddled intelligence.

Next, he gathered all the driftwood within reach, separating the smaller pieces from the larger. Within minutes, he had three small piles of wood. Finally, he selected his six largest sticks and laid them to his left, side by side so they made a small platform. From experience, he knew that once the fire was burning well, the flames would convert the ice directly to steam. But in the initial stages, the fire had to be kept off the ice.

Kelemvor removed a handful of grass and rubbed it vigorously between his hands to dry it. He laid it atop the platform of sticks and repeated the process until he had a small pile of fairly dry tinder. Then he took the flint and steel from his purse and started striking them together. Five anxious and painful minutes later, a spark caught. One blade of grass began to burn, then two, then several. The fighter put on more grass and, after it started burning, held several twigs over the fire to dry.

Thirty seconds later, Kelemvor began to shiver and could no longer hold the twigs. He laid them on the fire. The wood began to smoke, then one caught. The fighter blew gently on the flame. The other two twigs began to burn.

Kelemvor put his flint and steel away. Minutes later, a small circle of orange flames danced in front of him. The breeze eddied around his body, blowing ash and smoke into his face. His eyes teared and he coughed, but the warrior didn’t care. To him, the smoke was perfume and the coughing a small price to pay for heat. Soon, he stopped shivering and his whole torso was warm.

Ten minutes later, Kelemvor no longer felt confused. He was fatigued and numb below the waist, but he was no longer drowsy. His motor coordination had returned to normal. The fire had made a small bowl in the black ice, and the fighter took comfort in seeing that it melted like normal ice. Now, all he had to do was find a way to break it.

Kelemvor considered starting a fire where his hips disappeared into the frozen lake, but rejected the idea. He could not reach enough driftwood to melt away that much ice. What he needed was a way to chip the ice, and that meant he needed something hard.

The lake was surrounded by all sorts of cliffs, boulders, and rocks, but there wasn’t even a pebble within reach. They were all buried beneath the sandy beach.

Had Kelemvor still been half-frozen and muddled, he would have missed the significance of his last thought. However, now that he was warm, his thoughts were focused and he was mentally alert. With renewed determination, he grabbed the strongest piece of driftwood within reach and began digging in the sand in front of him.

Not six inches below the surface, he found the first rock. It was a round, hand-sized stone useful for throwing, but not for smashing through ice. He kept digging.

The second stone was a little better, being about the same size, but with jagged features more suited to chipping. He set aside this rock, too, and kept digging.

A foot beneath the surface, Kelemvor found the ideal stone. It was a dark gray thing, featureless and drab. But to the fighter, the stone was more beautiful than any diamond. It was as large as he could handle with a single hand. On one end it had a small, sharp point, and the other end was large and ideal for gripping.

Kelemvor took the stone, then smashed it into the ice near his hip. A small spray of black chips shot up. He brought the rock down a dozen more times, trying to create a crack in the ice. The result was simply a dozen more small chips.

At the top of the slope, wings fluttered. The crow settled beneath its tree, holding its left claw off the ground.

Looking at the injured leg, Kelemvor said, “I’m sorry about the foot.”

The crow tilted its head and, unable to stand for long on one foot, settled on the ground as though sitting in a nest.

The fighter smiled and held up the rock. “It looks like dinner will be late,” Kelemvor added.

The crow’s head bobbed twice. Had Kelemvor’s mind been more addled, he might have interpreted the awkward gesture for agreement, as if the crow were saying, “Delayed, but not cancelled.”

The fighter decided to ignore the crow and began chipping beneath his chest, where the ice was thinner. To his delight, a large, jagged section broke away. Working toward his waist from this break, Kelemvor managed to start a crack that pointed more or less toward his right hip.

He worked for twenty minutes, pausing every now and then to throw some more driftwood on the fire. In that time, he managed to extend the crack clear to the middle of his hip. Then, as the sun sank toward the moor hills and the sky turned pink, his fire melted through the ice. It dropped into the water, leaving a sizzling and smoking hole two feet to his left.

“No!” Kelemvor screamed.

His only answer was the chill moan of the wind.

The fighter began to grow cold immediately. He tried to pull out of the ice, hoping the crack he had opened was enough to free him. His hips did not budge.

Kelemvor reached for more grass to start another fire, then found he had already used most of it. Worse, only a few sticks of driftwood remained within reach. Even if he did start a second fire, it would never last through the night.

He beat his forehead against the ice and cursed. Already, numbness was creeping back into his hands and fingers, and he knew that there was not much warmth left in his body. At last, Kelemvor allowed himself to think the unthinkable: he had been wrong to insist upon rescuing the caravan. His stubbornness had gotten Adon, and probably Midnight, killed.

“Friends!” he screamed. “Forgive me! Please, Midnight! Oh, Midnight!” He screamed her name again and again and again, until he could no longer bear hearing the hills throw the name back at him.

When he stopped yelling, the crow flapped down to the shore, taking care to land out of arm’s reach. It squawked three times, as if suggesting Kelemvor give up and die.

The bird’s eagerness enraged the fighter. “Not yet, squab!” he snarled. He grabbed the first stone he had uncovered, the small round one, and flung it at the crow. Though his aim was wide, the crow took the hint and flapped away into twilight. After the bird had gone, Kelemvor picked up his large stone and angrily pounded at the ice on his left. If he was going to die, he was determined to fight until the end.

Kelemvor was so angry that he did not notice the tiny fractures his blows were causing. Five minutes later, a long crack opened in the black ice from his shoulders to the hole the fire had caused. It took only ten minutes more to open a seam all the way to his left hip.

Then, as the warm hues of dusk gave way to the violet tones of night, the section of ice under Kelemvor’s chest broke free. The fighter pulled his body forward, no longer clamped into place by the ice at his hips. Without pausing to celebrate, he hauled himself onto the shore and began gathering grass and wood.

After starting his fire, Kelemvor removed his frozen pants and boots to examine his feet and legs. The legs were blotchy and pale, but he thought they would recover given time and warmth. His feet were in worse condition. They were white, numb, and cold to the touch.

Kelemvor had served in enough cold weather campaigns to know severe frostbite when he saw it.