The Companions s-1, Page 3

  But of course, that never happened, because while Innovindil advised me, as a long-lived elf, to break my life into the shorter life spans of those humans I would know, so too do humans live their lives in segments. Best friends today vow to be best friends when they meet again in five years, but alas, in five years, they are often strangers. In a few years, which seems not a long stretch of time, they have often made for themselves new lives with new friends, and perhaps even new families. This is the way of things, though few can accurately anticipate it and fewer still will admit it.

  The Companions of the Hall, the four dear friends I came to know in Icewind Dale, sometimes told me of their lives before we’d met. Wulfgar and Catti-brie were barely adults when I came into their lives, but Bruenor was an old dwarf even then, with adventures that had spanned centuries and half the world, and Regis had lived for decades in exotic southern cities, with as many wild adventures behind him as those yet to come.

  Bruenor spoke to me often about his clan and Mithral Hall, as dwarves are wont to do, while Regis, with more to hide, likely, remained cryptic about his earlier days (days that had set Artemis Entreri on his trail, after all). But even with the exhaustive stories Bruenor told me, of his father and grandfather, of the adventures he had known in the tunnels around Mithral Hall, of the founding of Clan Battlehammer in Icewind Dale, it rarely occurred to me that he had once known friends as important to him as I had become.

  Or had he? Isn’t that the mystery and the crux of Innovindil’s claims, when all is stripped bare? Can I know another friend to match the bond I shared with Bruenor? Can I know another love to match that which I found in Catti-brie’s arms?

  What of Catti-brie’s life before I met her on the windswept slope on Kelvin’s Cairn, or before she had come to be adopted by Bruenor? How well had she known her parents, truly? How deeply had she loved them? She spoke of them only rarely, but that was because she simply could not remember. She had been but a child, after all …

  And so I find myself in another of the side valleys running alongside Innovindil’s proposed road: that of memory. A child’s feelings for her mother or father cannot be questioned. To look at the child’s eyes as she stares at one of her parents is to see true and deep love. Catti-brie’s eyes shone like that for her parents, no doubt.

  Yet she could not tell me of her birth parents, for she could not remember!

  She and I spoke of having children of our own, and oh, how I wish that had come to pass! For Catti-brie, though, there hovered around her the black wings of a great fear, that she would die before her child, our child, was old enough to remember her, that her child’s life would parallel her own in that one, terrible way. For though she rarely spoke of it, and though she had known a good life under the watchful gaze of benevolent and beneficent Bruenor, the loss of her parents-even parents she could not remember-forever weighed heavily upon Catti-brie. She felt as if a part a disciple of Mielikki, aIesno of her life had been stolen from her, and cursed her inability to remember in greater detail more profoundly than the joy she found in recalling the smallest bits of that life lost.

  Deep are those valleys beside Innovindil’s road.

  Given these truths, given that Catti-brie could not even remember two she had loved so instinctively and wholly, given the satisfied face of Wulfgar when Regis and I found him upon the tundra of Icewind Dale, given the broken promises of finding old friends once more or the awkward conversations that typically rule such reunions, why, then, am I so resistant to the advice of my lost elf friend?

  I do not know.

  Perhaps it is because I found something so far beyond the normal joining one might know, a true love, a partner in heart and soul, in thought and desire.

  Perhaps I have not yet found another to meet that standard, and so I fear it cannot ever be so again.

  Perhaps I am simply fooling myself-whether wrought of guilt or sadness or frustrated rage, I amplify and elevate in my memory that which I had to a pedestal that no other can begin to scale.

  It is the last of these possibilities that terrifies me, for such a deception would unravel the very truths upon which I stand. I have felt this sensation of love so keenly-to lea waves of healing an soul.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

  The Year of the Elves’ Weeping (1462 DR) Iruladoon

  "Eh?” The red-bearded dwarf asked. What wizard, what magic, what force, had done this to him, he wondered? He had been in a cavern, deep in the ancient homeland of Gauntlgrym, struggling to pull a lever and enact an ancient magic that would harness once more the volcanic primordial that had so ravaged the region.

  Had his effort caused the volcano to erupt? Had that surge of power thrown him far from the mountain? Surely it seemed so, for here he was, out of the cavern, out of the Underdark, and lying in a forest of flowers and buzzing bees, with a still pond nearby …

  It could not be.

  He hopped to his feet, surprisingly easily, surprisingly smoothly for a dwarf of his advanced age.

  “Pwent?” he called, and his tone reflected more confusion than anything else. For how could he have been so thrown she must do.

  And 94 across the lands? The last voice he remembered was that of Thibbledorf Pwent, imploring him to pull that lever to close the magical cage around the primordial.

  A wizard had intervened, then? Bruenor’s mind swirled in confused circles, overlapping, finding no logic. Had some mage teleported him from the cavern? Or concocted a magical gate, through which he had inadvertently fallen? Yes, surely that must be it!

  Or had it been a dream? Or was this a dream now before him?

  “Drizzt?”

  “Well met,” said a voice behind him, and Bruenor nearly jumped out of his boots. He spun around, to see a plump halfling with a cherubic face and a smile that promised trouble stretching from ear to ear.

  “Rumblebelly …,” Bruenor managed to gasp, using his nickname for his old friend. No, not old, he realized. Regis stood before him, but he was younger by decades than he had been when first he had met Bruenor in Lonelywood in Icewind Dale.

  For an instant, Bruenor wondered if the volcano had somehow thrown him back in time.

  He stuttered as he tried to continue. He couldn’t find any sensible words to unravel his incoherent, spinning thoughts.

  And then he nearly fell over, as out of the front door of the small house behind Regis stepped a man, a giant in comparison to the diminutive halfling.

  Bruenor’s jaw fell limp and he didn’t even try to speak, his eyes welling with tears, for there stood his boy, Wulfgar, a young man once more, tall and strong.

  “You mentioned Pwent,” Regis said to Bruenor. “Were you with him when you fell?”

  Bruenor reeled. The great battle on the ledge of the primordial pit in Gauntlgrym replayed in his thoughts. He felt the strength of Clangeddin, the wisdom of Moradin, the cleverness of Dumathoin … They had come to him on that ledge, in his final effort, in his victory in the ancient land of Gauntlgrym.

  That victory had come with a grave cost, however, Bruenor now knew without doubt. He had been with Pwent-

  Regis’s words hit him right in the gut and took the wind out of his lungs. Were you with him when you fell?

  Rumblebelly was right, Bruenor knew. When he fell. He was dead. He swallowed hard and looked around at this place that was surely not Dwarfhome, the Halls of Moradin!

  But he was dead, and so were these two. He had buried Regis a century before in a rocky cairn in Mithral Hall. And Wulfgar, his boy-age had taken Wulfgar, no doubt. He appeared to be barely past his twentieth birthday, but he would be halfway through his second century of life by now, if humans could live so long.

  They were dead, all three, and surely Pwent, too, had fallen in Gauntlgrym. “He’s with Moradin,” Bruenor said, more to himself than to the others. “In Dwarfhome. Got to be.”

  He looked up at the two. “Why ain’t meself?”

  Regis smiled, comfortingly, alm
ost sympathetically, confirming Bruenor’s fears. Wulfgar, though, wasn’t looking back at him, but rather past him. The expression on Wulfgar’s face caught Bruenor’s eye anyway, for it was filled with warmth and enchantment, and when Bruenor glanced back at Regis, he saw that the halfling’s smile had shifted from sympathy to joy, as Regis, too, looked past Bruenor, and nodded with his chin. and not to Icewind Dale.. thinkim

  Only then did the dwarf even hear the music, so quietly, so seamlessly, so fittingly had it grown around them.

  Slowly, Bruenor turned, his gaze drifting out over the still pond and across the small lea to the tree line opposite.

  There she danced, his beloved daughter, dressed in a layered white gown of many folds and pretty lace, and with a black cape trailing her every twist and turn like some living shadow, a dark extension of her lighter steps.

  “By the gods,” the dwarf muttered, overwhelmed for the first time in his long life. Now that his long life was no more, Bruenor Battlehammer fell to his knees, put his face in his hands, and began to sob.

  And they were tears of joy, of just rewards.

  Catti-brie wasn’t singing.

  Not consciously.

  The words were not of her own making. The melody of the song flowed through her, but was not controlled by her, and the harmony of the forest music, which permeated the air and added to the song, was not her doing.

  Because Catti-brie wasn’t singing.

  She was learning.

  For the words were Mielikki’s song, giving voice to the harmony of this place, Iruladoon, this gift of Mielikki. Though Catti-brie, Regis, Wulfgar, and now Bruenor had come into this strange paradise, the gift of Iruladoon was a gift, most of all, to Drizzt Do’Urden.

  Catti-brie understood that now. Like the Weave of magic she had studied as a budding mage, the patterns of Mielikki’s domain were becoming ever clearer to her. Mielikki was of the cycle, of life and death, of the autumn withering and the spring renewal.

  Iruladoon was the spring.

  Through the words of the song, Catti-brie cast a spell without realizing it. She walked toward her three friends, stepping upon the waters of the pond. As she gracefully drifted over the water to stand before the others, her song became clear to them, not just in the music of the forest, but in specific words, spoken in many languages, new and old:

  What is old is new again,

  When Magic is re-woven,

  And the Shadows diminish,

  And the heroes of the gods awaken

  To walk Faerun again.

  What is built can be destroyed,

  But what is destroyed can be built anew.

  That is the secret,

  That is the hope,

  That is the promise.

  The woman closed her eyes and took a deep breath, steadying herself, silent for the first time since she and Regis had come into this place-a span of many tendays for them, but of nearly a century in the world of Toril outside of Iruladoon, where the magical forest occasionally anchored.

  “Me girl,” Bruenor breathed when she opened her eyes once more, to look upon the forest’s newest visitor.

  Catti-brie smiled at him, then fell over him in a great hug. Regis leaped over and joined in, for many of his days here had been spent in chasing the singing woman, always unsuccessfully. The three broke and looked back at Wulfgar, whose expression reflected the turmoil within. and not to Icewind Dale.. thinkim

  The barbarian had only been here for three days in Iruladoon’s time, and had no more understanding of the place than Bruenor-or than Regis, even, who had wiled away his many hours here sitting by the pond, tending his small garden, and fashioning pieces of scrimshaw out of the knucklehead trout bone that always seemed to be readily available.

  “You finally stopped that singing …,” the halfling started to say, but Bruenor cut him short.

  “Ah, me girl,” he said, running his strong hand-his strong young hand, he noted-across Catti-brie’s pretty face. “So many’s the years gone by. Ye’ve ne’er left me heart, and every road I been walking’s been an emptier way without ye.”

  Catti-brie put her hand atop his. “I am sorry for the pain,” she whispered.

  “Surely I have gone mad!’ Wulfgar roared suddenly, and all turned back to consider him once more.

  “I was on the hunt,” he whispered, speaking more to himself than to the others, and he began to pace, his long strides propelling him back and forth before the others. “An old man …” He paused and turned to the other three, holding his arms out wide.

  “An old man!” he insisted. “A man with children older than I now appear, with grandchildren older than I now appear! What healing I have been given, I do not know. Am I cursed or am I blessed?”

  “Blessed,” Catti-brie answered.

  “By your god?”

  “Goddess,” the woman corrected.

  “Goddess, then,” said Wulfgar. “I am blessed by your goddess? Then I am damned by Tempus!”

  “No,” Catti-brie started to answer, and she broke free of Bruenor and stepped toward Wulfgar, who visibly winced and backed from her, step for step.

  “This is madness!” Wulfgar cried. “I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who serves Tempus! I am slain. I accept my defeat and my mortality, but this is no hall of my warrior god! Nay, this is no blessing!” He spat the last sentence at Catti-brie as if casting his own curse.

  “Youth?” he asked with a derisive snort. “Healing? Are those the blessings? At what cost?”

  “It is not like that,” Catti-brie assured him.

  Bruenor touched her on the cheek and she turned around.

  “You died in Gauntlgrym,” Catti-brie told him. “Beside Thibbledorf Pwent, yes, but know that you won the day and were buried with honor beside your shield dwarf and beside the gods’ throne in the entry chamber.”

  Bruenor started to reply, but the words caught in his throat. “How could ye know?” he asked instead.

  Catti-brie merely smiled contentedly, erasing all doubt anyone might have had of her claims.

  “I’d be a lyin’ old dwarf if I said that me heart’s not full in seein’ ye, all three of ye!” Bruenor whispered. “But I’d be a liar, too, if I telled ye that any halls but Moradin’s are me place and reward for the life I knowed.”

  Catti-brie nodded and started to reply, but a rustle turned her back again, just in time to see Wulfgar disappearing in she must do.

  “Me boy!” Bruenor yelled after him, but Catti-brie put her hand on the dwarf’s pointing arm to quiet him, then took him by the hand, bade Regis to take her other hand, and led them off in pursuit.

  “Wulfgar, do not!” she called after the man. “You cannot leave. You are not prepared!”

  They caught sight of Wulfgar again a few moments later, crossing a small clearing and running toward a lighter area that seemed to mark the forest’s edge. Bruenor and Regis tried to speed up and heighten their pursuit, but now Catti-brie held them back, and the very grass around their feet seemed to agree with the woman, or answered the woman’s call, the blades rolling up over Bruenor’s boots and Regis’s furry toes to hold them fast in place.

  “Do not!” she warned Wulfgar one last time, but the stubborn barbarian didn’t slow at all and charged to the forest’s edge.

  “Ye stopped us, so stop him!” Bruenor told her, tugging at the unyielding roots, but Catti-brie continued to stare after Wulfgar and shook her head.

  The trees hung thick and dark around him, but Wulfgar saw the light and made for it, hardly aware of his movements. He felt more like he was swimming than running, felt moist and warm, though it was not raining and the forest had seemed dry enough.

  But he was not in the forest, he realized, and the light became a pinpoint and nothing more, and his movements were jumbled and uncoordinated. He felt as if he had been wrapped in thick cloth and thrown into a pond.

  He felt … he didn’t know what he felt as his thoughts jumbled incoherently. He saw the light, though just a speck
now, and he made for it, his body twisted and turning, arms trapped, legs moving weirdly, uncontrollably.

  The light grew and he couldn’t breathe. Frantic, Wulfgar pushed on more forcefully, and the wrappings around him seemed to flex and writhe-he could only think of a giant constrictor snake or a purple worm! Yes, it was as if he had leaped into the maw of a purple worm, but its convulsions, whether inadvertent or not, served him in his current course, as the light grew before him.

  He pushed his head through and tried to reach his arm above him, when he was grabbed, suddenly, rudely, powerfully! Oh, so powerfully!

  Yanked forth, he felt as if he was flying, rising up high into the air, one titanic hand wrapping around his head fully, the other grabbing at his body and hoisting him with such ease. For a moment, he feared that he had been thrown among a horde of giants, for they were all around him, but then he realized that they were too large even for giants! He could feel them, he could hear the reverberations of their thunderous voices.

  Not giants! Too large! Titans, the forest had thrown him into a lair of titans!

  Or gods, even, for these creatures were so far beyond him, so much more powerful than he. His hand hooked on one giant finger and he pushed with all his strength, but he might as well have tried to move a boulder the size of a mountain!

  Gurgling through gobs of spittle and some slime he did not understand, he fought and he coughed and finally, finally, Wulfgar cried out for his god, “Tempus!” His voice sounded so thin and indistinct. He struggled, and the titan-beast holding him cried out. Wulfgar cursed it, evoking Tempus’s wrath. and not to Icewind Dale.. thinkim