A DARK NOTE ON A SUNNY DAY

Danica sat on a ledge of an imposing mountain beside the field that housed the magnificent Spirit Soaring, a cathedral of towering spires and flying buttresses, of great and ornate windows of multicolored glass. Acres of grounds were striped by well-maintained hedgerows, many of them shaped into the likeness of animals, and one wrapping around and around itself in a huge maze.

The cathedral was the work of Danica's husband, Cadderly, a mighty priest of Deneir, the god of knowledge. This structure had been Cadderly's most obvious legacy, but his greatest one, to Danica's reasoning, were the twin children romping around the entrance to the maze and their younger sibling, sleeping within the cathedral. The twins had gone running into the hedgerow maze, much to the dismay of the dwarf Pikel Bouldershoulder. Pikel, a practitioner of the druidic ways-magic that his surly brother Ivan still denied-had created the maze and the other amazing gardens.

Pikel had gone running into the maze behind the children screaming, "Eeek!" and other such Pikelisms, and pulling at his green-dyed hair and beard. His maze wasn't quite ready for visitors yet, and the roots hadn't properly set.

Of course, as soon as Pikel had gone running in, the twins had sneaked right back out and were now playing quietly in front of the maze entrance. Danica didn't know how far along the confusing corridors the green-bearded dwarf had gone, but she had heard his voice fast receding and figured that he'd be lost in the maze, for the third time that day, soon enough.

A wind gust came whipping across the mountain wall, blowing Danica's thick mop of strawberry blond hair into her face. She blew some strands out of her mouth and tossed her head to the side, just in time to see Cadderly walking toward her.

What a fine figure he cut in his tan-white tunic and trousers, his light blue silken cape and his trademark blue, wide-brimmed, and plumed hat. Cadderly had aged greatly while constructing the Spirit Soaring, to the point where he and Danica honestly believed he would expire. Much to Danica's dismay Cadderly had expected to die and had accepted that as the sacrifice necessary for the construction of the monumental library. Soon after he had completed the construction of the main building-the details, like the ornate designs of the many doors and the golden leaf work around the beautiful archways, might never be completed-the aging process had reversed, and the man had grown younger almost as fast as he'd aged. Now he seemed a man in his late twenties with a spring in his step, and a twinkle in his eye every time he glanced Danica's way. Danica had even worried that this process would continue, and that soon she'd find herself raising four children instead of three.

He eventually grew no younger, though, stopping at the point where Cadderly seemed every bit the vivacious and healthy young man he had been before all the trouble had started within the Edificant Library, the structure that had stood on this ground before the advent of the chaos curse and the destruction of the old order of Deneir. The willingness to sacrifice everything for the new cathedral and the new order had sufficed in the eyes of Deneir, and thus, Cadderly Bonaduce had been given back his life, a life so enriched by the addition of his wife and their children.

"I had a visitor this morning," Cadderly said to her when he moved beside her. He cast a glance at the twins and smiled all the wider when he heard another frantic call from the lost Pikel.

Danica marveled at how her husband's gray eyes seemed to smile as well. "A man from Carradoon," she replied, nodding. "I saw him enter."

"Bearing word from Drizzt Do'Urden," Cadderly explained, and Danica turned to face him directly, suddenly very interested. She and Cadderly had met the unusual dark elf the previous year and had taken him back to the northland using one of Cadderly's wind-walking spells.

Danica spent a moment studying Cadderly, considering the intense expression upon his normally calm face. "He has retrieved the Crystal Shard," she reasoned, for when last she and Cadderly had been with Drizzt and his human companion, Catti-brie, they had spoken of just that. Drizzt promised that he would retrieve the ancient, evil artifact and bring it to Cadderly to be destroyed.

"He did," Cadderly said.

He handed a roll of parchment sheets to Danica. She took them and unrolled them. A smile crossed her face when she learned of the fate of Drizzt's lost friend, Wulfgar, freed from his prison at the clutches of the demon Errtu. By the time she got to the second page, though, Danica's mouth drooped open, for the note went on to describe the subsequent theft of the Crystal Shard by a rogue dark elf named Jarlaxle, who had sent one of his drow soldiers to Drizzt in the guise of Cadderly.

Danica paused and looked up, and Cadderly took back the parchments. "Drizzt believes the artifact has likely gone underground, back to the dark elf city of Menzoberranzan, where Jarlaxle makes his home," he explained.

"Well, good enough for Menzoberranzan, then," Danica said in all seriousness.

She and Cadderly had discussed the powers of the sentient shard at length, and she understood it to be a tool of destruction-destruction of the wielder's enemies, of the wielder's allies, and ultimately of the wielder himself.

There had never been, and to Cadderly's reasoning, could never be, a different outcome where Crenshinibon was concerned. To possess the Crystal Shard was, ultimately, a terminal disease, and woe to all those nearby.

Cadderly was shaking his head before Danica ever finished the sentiment. "The Crystal Shard is an artifact of sunlight, which is perhaps, in the measure of symbolism, its greatest perversion."

"But the drow are creatures of their dark holes," Danica reasoned. "Let them take it and be gone. Perhaps in the Underdark, the Crystal Shard's power will be lessened, even destroyed."

Again Cadderly was shaking his head. "Who is the stronger?" he asked. "The artifact or the wielder?"

"It sounds as if this particular dark elf was quite cunning," Danica replied. "To have fooled Drizzt Do'Urden is no easy feat, I would guess."

Cadderly shrugged and grinned. "I doubt that Crenshinibon, once it finds its way into the new wielder's heart-which it surely will unless this Jarlaxle is akin in heart to Drizzt Do'Urden-will allow him to retreat to the depths," he explained. "It is not necessarily a question of who is the stronger. The subtlety of the artifact is its ability to manipulate its wielder into agreement, not dominate him."

"And the heart of a dark elf would be easily manipulated," Danica reasoned.

"A typical dark elf, yes," Cadderly agreed. A few moments of quiet passed as each considered the words and the new information.

"What are we to do, then?" Danica asked at length. "If you believe that the Crystal Shard will not allow a retreat to the sunless Underdark, then are we to allow it to wreak havoc on the surface world? Do we even know where it might be?"

Still deep in thought, Cadderly did not answer right away. The question of what to do, of what their responsibilities might be in this situation, went to the very core of the philosophical trappings of power. Was it Cadderly's place, because of his clerical power, to hunt down the new wielder of the Crystal Shard, this dark elf thief, and take the item by force, bringing it to its destruction? If that was the case, then what of every other injustice in the world? What of the pirates on the Sea of Fallen Stars? Was Cadderly to charter a boat and go out hunting them? What of the Red Wizards of Thay, that notorious band? Was it Cadderly's duty to seek them out and do battle with each and every one? Then there were the Zhentarim, the Iron Throne, the Shadow Thieves....

"Do you remember when we met here with Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie?" Danica asked, and it seemed to Cadderly that the woman was reading his mind. "Drizzt was distressed when we realized that our summoning of the demon Errtu had released the great beast from its banishment-a banishment handed out to it by Drizzt years before. What did you tell Drizzt about that to calm him?"

"The releasing of Errtu was no major problem," Cadderly admitted again. "There would always be a demon available to a sorcerer with evil designs. If not Errtu, then another."

"Errtu was just one of a number of agents of chaos," Danica reasoned, "as the Crystal Shard is just another element of chaos. Any havoc it brings would merely replace the myriad other tools of chaos in wreaking exactly that, correct?"

Cadderly smiled at her, staring intently into the seemingly limitless depths of her almond-shaped brown eyes. How he loved this woman. She was so much his partner in every aspect of his life. Intelligent and possessed of the greatest discipline Cadderly had ever known, Danica always helped him through any difficult questions and choices, just by listening and offering suggestions.

"It is the heart that begets evil, not the instruments of destruction," he completed the thought for her.

"Is the Crystal Shard the tool or the heart?" Danica asked.

"That is the question, is it not?" Cadderly replied. "Is the artifact akin to a summoned monster, an instrument of destruction for one whose heart was already tainted?

Or is it a manipulator, a creator of evil where there would otherwise be none?" He held out his arms, having no real answer for that. "In either case, I believe I will contact some extra-planar sources and see if I can locate the artifact and this dark elf, Jarlaxle. I wish to know the use to which he has put the Crystal Shard, or perhaps even more troubling, the use to which the Crystal Shard plans to put him."

Danica started to ask what he might be talking about, but she figured it out before she could utter the words, and her lips grew very thin. Might the Crystal Shard, rather than let this Jarlaxle creature take it to the light-less Underdark, use him to spearhead an invasion by an army of drow? Might the Crystal Shard use the position and race of its new wielder to create havoc beyond anything it had ever known before? Even worse for them personally, if Jarlaxle had stolen the artifact by using an imitation of Cadderly, then Jarlaxle certainly knew of Cadderly. If Jarlaxle knew, the Crystal Shard knew-and knew, too, that Cadderly might have information about how to destroy it. A flash of worry crossed Danica's face, one that Cadderly could not miss, and she instinctively turned to regard her children.

"I will try to discover where he might be with the artifact, and what trouble they together might already be causing," Cadderly explained, not reading Danica's expression very well and wondering, perhaps, if she was doubting him.

"You do that," the more-than-convinced woman said in all seriousness. "Right away."

A squeal from inside the maze turned them both in that direction.

"Pikel," the woman explained.

Cadderly smiled. "Lost again?"

"Again?" Danica asked. "Or still?"

They heard some rumbling off to the side and saw Pikel's more traditional brother, Ivan Bouldershoulder, rolling toward the maze grumbling with every step. "Doodad," the yellow-bearded dwarf said sarcastically, referring to Pikel's pronunciation of his calling. "Yeah,

Doo-dad," Ivan grumbled. "Can't even find his way out of a hedgerow."

"And you will help him?" Cadderly called to the dwarf.

Ivan turned curiously, noting the pair, it seemed, for the first time. "Been helpin' him all me life," he snorted.

Both Cadderly and Danica nodded and allowed Ivan his fantasy. They knew well enough, if Ivan did not, that his helping Pikel more often caused problems for both of the dwarves. Sure enough, within the span of a few minutes, Ivan's calls about being lost echoed no less than Pikel's. Cadderly and Danica, and the twins sitting outside the devious maze, thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment.

A few hours later, after preparing the proper sequence of spells and after checking on the magical circle of protection the young-again priest always used when dealing with even the most minor of the creatures of the lower planes, Cadderly sat in a cross-legged position on the floor of his summoning chamber, chanting the incantation that would bring a minor demon, an imp, to him.

A short while later, the tiny, bat-winged, horned creature materialized in the protection circle. It hopped all about, confused and angry, finally focusing on Cadderly. It spent some time studying the man, no doubt trying to get some clues to his demeanor. Imps were often summoned to the material plane, sometimes for information, other times to serve as familiars for wizards of evil weal.

"Deneir?" the imp asked in a coughing, raspy voice that Cadderly thought seemed both typical and fitting to its smoky natural environment. "You wear the clothing of a priest of Deneir."

The creature was staring at the red band on his hat, Cadderly knew, on which was set a porcelain-and-gold pendant depicting a candle burning above an eye, the symbol of Deneir.

Cadderly nodded.

"Ahck!" the imp said and spat upon the ground.

"Hoping for a wizard in search of a familiar?" Cadderly asked slyly.

"Hoping for anything other than you, priest of Deneir," the imp replied.

"Accept that which has been given to you," Cadderly said. "A glimpse of the material plane is better than none, after all, and a reprieve from your hellish existence."

"What do you want, priest of Deneir?"

"Information," Cadderly replied, but even as he said it, he realized that his questions would be difficult indeed, perhaps too much so for so minor a demon. "All that I require of you is that you give to me the name of a greater demonic source, that I might bring it forth."

The imp looked at him curiously, tilting its head as a dog might, and licking its thin lips with a pointed tongue.

"Nothing greater than a nalfeshnie," Cadderly quickly clarified, seeing the impish smile growing and wanting to limit the power of whatever being he next summoned. A nalfeshnie was no minor demon, but was certainly within Cadderly's power to control, at least long enough for him to get what he needed.

"Oh, I has a name for you, priest of Deneir..." the imp started to say, but it jerked spasmodically as Cadderly began to chant a spell of torment. The imp fell to the floor, writhing and spitting curses.

"The name?" Cadderly asked. "And I warn you, if you deceive me and try to trick me into summoning a greater creature, I will dismiss it promptly and find you again. This torment is nothing compared to that which I will exact upon you!"

He said the words with conviction and with strength, though in truth, it pained the gentle man to be doing even this level of torture, even upon a wretched imp. He reminded himself of the importance of his quest and bolstered his resolve.

"Mizferac!" the imp screamed out. "A glabrezu, and a stupid one!"

Cadderly released the imp from his spell of torment, and the creature gave a beat of its wings and righted itself, staring at him coldly. "I did your bidding, evil priest of Deneir. Let me go!"

"Be gone, then," said Cadderly, and even as the little beast began fading from view, offering a few obscene gestures, Cadderly had to toss in, "I will tell Mizferac what you said concerning its intelligence."

He did indeed enjoy that last expression of panic on the face of the little imp.

Cadderly brought Mizferac in later that same day and found the towering pincer-armed glabrezu to be the embodiment of all that he hated about demons. It was a nasty, vicious, conniving, and wretchedly self-serving creature that tried to get as much gain as it could out of every word. Cadderly kept their meeting short and to the point. The demon was to inquire of other extra-planar creatures about the whereabouts of a dark elf named Jarlaxle, who was likely on the surface of Faerun. Furthermore, Cadderly put a powerful geas on the demon, preventing it from actually walking the material world, but retreating only back to the Abyss and using sources to discern the information.

"That will take longer," Mizferac said.

"I will call on you daily," Cadderly replied, putting as much anger without adding any passion whatsoever as he could into his timbre. "Each passing day I will grow more impatient, and your torment will increase."

"You make a terrible enemy in Mizferac, Cadderly Bonaduce, Priest of Deneir," the glabrezu replied, obviously trying to shake him with its knowledge of his name.

Cadderly, who heard the mighty song of Deneir as clearly as if it was a chord within his own heart, merely smiled at the threat. "If ever you find yourself free of your bonds and able to walk the surface of Toril, do come and find me, Mizferac the fool. It will please me greatly to reduce your physical form to ash and banish your spirit from this world for a hundred years."

The demon growled, and Cadderly dismissed it, simply and with just a wave of his hand and an utterance of a single word. He had heard every threat a demon could give and many times. After the trials the young priest had known in his life, from facing a red dragon to doing battle with his own father, to warring against the chaos curse, to, most of all, offering his very life up as sacrifice to his god, there was little any creature, demonic or not, could say to him that would frighten him.

He recalled the glabrezu every day for the next tenday, until finally the fiend brought him some news of the Crystal Shard and the drow, Jarlaxle, along with the surprising information that Jarlaxle no longer possessed the artifact, but traveled in the company of a human, Artemis Entreri, who did.

Cadderly knew that name well from the stories that Drizzt and Catti-brie had told him in their short stay at the Spirit Soaring. The man was an assassin, a brutal killer. According to the demon, Entreri, along with the Crystal Shard and the dark elf Jarlaxle, was on his way to the Snowflake Mountains.

Cadderly rubbed his chin as the glabrezu passed along the information-information that he knew to be true, for he had enacted a spell to make certain the demon had not lied to him.

"I have done as you demanded," the glabrezu growled, clicking its pincer-ended appendages anxiously. "I am released from your bonds, Cadderly Bonaduce."

"Then begone, that I do not have to look upon your ugly face any longer," the young priest replied.

The demon narrowed its huge eyes threateningly and clicked its pincers. "I will not forget this," it promised.

"I would be disappointed if you did," Cadderly replied casually.

"I was told that you have young children, fool," Mizferac remarked, fading from view.

"Mizferac, ehugu-winance!" Cadderly cried, catching the departing demon before it had dissipated back to the swirling smoke of the Abyss. Holding it in place by the sheer strength of his enchantment, Cadderly twisted the demon's physical form painfully by the might of his spell.

"Do I smell fear, human?" Mizferac asked defiantly.

Cadderly smiled wryly. "I doubt that, since a hundred years will pass before you are able to walk the material plane again." The threat, spoken openly, freed Mizferac of the summoning binding-and yet, the beast was not freed, for Cadderly had enacted another spell, one of exaction.

Mizferac created magical darkness to fill the room. Cadderly fell into his own chanting, his voice trembling with feigned terror.

"I can smell you, foolish mortal," Mizferac remarked, and Cadderly heard the voice from the side, though he guessed correctly that Mizferac was using ventriloquism to throw him off guard. The young priest was fully into the flow of Deneir's song now, hearing every beautiful note and accessing the magic quickly and completely. First he detected evil, easily locating the great negative force of the glabrezu- then another mighty negative force as the demon gated in a companion.

Cadderly held his nerve and continued casting.

"I will kill the children first, fool," Mizferac promised, and it began speaking to its new companion in the guttural tongue of the Abyss-one that Cadderly, through the use of another spell that he had enacted before he had ever brought Mizferac to him this day, understood perfectly. The glabrezu told its fellow demon to keep the foolish priest occupied while it went to hunt the children.

"I will bring them before you for sacrifice," Mizferac started to promise, but the end of the sentence came out as garbled screams as Cadderly's spell went off, creating a series of spinning, slicing blades all around the two demons. The priest then brought forth a globe of light to counter Mizferac's darkness. The spectacle of Mizferac and its companion, a lesser demon that looked like a giant gnat, getting sliced and chopped was revealed.

Mizferac roared and uttered a guttural word-one designed to teleport him away, Cadderly assumed. It failed. The young priest, so strong in the flow of Deneir's song, was the quicker. He brought forth a prayer that dispelled the demon's magic before Mizferac could get away.

A spell of binding followed immediately, locking Mizferac firmly in place, while the magical blades continued their spinning devastation.

"I will never forget this!" Mizferac roared, words edged with outrage and agony.

"Good, then you will know better than ever to return," Cadderly growled back.

He brought forth a second blade barrier. The two demons were torn apart, their material forms ripped into dozens of bloody pieces, thus banishing them from the material plane for a hundred years. Satisfied with that, Cadderly left his summoning chamber covered in demon blood. He'd have to find a suitable spell from Deneir to clean up his clothes.

As for the Crystal Shard, he had his answers-and it seemed to him a good thing that he had bothered to check, since a dangerous assassin, an equally dangerous dark elf, and the even more dangerous Crystal Shard were apparently on their way to see him.

He had to talk to Danica, to prepare all the Spirit Soaring and the order of Deneir, for the potential battle.