The Crystal Shard Read Free

already had enough ivory stocked up from other people's catches to keep him busy for all seven months of snow.
    He was truly a credit to his less-than-ambitious race, carving out a bit of civilization in a land where none existed, hundreds of miles from the most remote settlement that could rightly be called a city. Other halflings never came this far north, even during the summer months, preferring the comfort of the southern climes. Regis, too, would have gladly packed up his belongings and returned to the south, except for a little problem he had with a certain guildmaster of a prominent thieves' guild.
    A four-inch block of the "white gold" lay beside the reclining halfling, along with several delicate carving instruments. The beginnings of a horse's muzzle marred the squareness of the block. Regis had meant to work on the piece while he was fishing.
    Regis meant to do a lot of things.
    "Too fine a day," he had rationalized, an excuse that never seemed to grow stale for him.
    This time, though, unlike so many others, it truly bore credibility. It seemed as though the weather demons that bent this harsh land to their iron will had taken a holiday, or perhaps they were just gathering their strength for a brutal winter. The result was an autumn day fitting for the civilized lands to the south. A rare day indeed for the land that had come to be called Icewind Dale, a name well-earned by the eastern breezes that always seemed to blow in, bringing with them the chilled air of Reghed Glacier. Even on the few days that the wind shifted there was little relief, for Ten-Towns was bordered on-the north and west by miles of empty tundra and then more ice, the Sea of Moving Ice. Only southern breezes promised any relief, and any wind that tried to reach this desolate area from that direction was usually blocked by the high peaks of the Spine of the World.
    Regis managed to keep his eyes open for a while, peering up through the fuzzy limbs of the fur trees at the puffy white clouds as they sailed across the sky on the mild breezes. The sun rained down golden warmth, and the halfling was tempted now and then to take off his waistcoat. Whenever a cloud blocked out the warming rays, though, Regis was reminded that it was September on the tundra. In a month there would be snow. In two, the roads west and south to Luskan, the nearest city to Ten-Towns, would be impassable to any but the sturdy or the stupid.
    Regis looked across the long bay that rolled in around the side of his little fishing hole. The rest of Ten-Towns was taking advantage of the weather, too; the fishing boats were out in force, scrambling and weaving around each other to find their special "hitting spots." No matter how many times he witnessed it, the greed of humans always amazed Regis. Back in the southern land of Calimshan, the halfling had been climbing a fast ladder to Associate Guildmaster in one of the most prominent thieves' guilds in the port city of Calimport. But, as he saw it, human greed had cut short his career. His guildmaster, the Pasha Pook, possessed a wonderful collection of rubies – a dozen, at least – whose facets were so ingeniously cut that they seemed to cast an almost hypnotic spell on anyone who viewed them. Regis had marveled at the scintillating stones whenever Pook put them out on display, and, after all, he'd only taken one. To this day, the halfling couldn't figure out why the Pasha, who had no less than eleven others, was still so angry with him.
    "Alas for the greed of humans," Regis would say whenever the Pasha's men showed up in another town that the halfling had made his home, forcing him to extend his exile to an even more remote land. But he hadn't needed that phrase for a year-and-a-half now, not since he had arrived in Ten-Towns. Pook's arms were long, but this frontier settlement, in the middle of the most inhospitable and untamed land imaginable, was a longer way still, and Regis was quite content in the security of his new