Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

“Abbil,” Jarlaxle answered, the Drow word for “friend.”

  More of the diminutive folk, the inugaakalikurit dwarfs, appeared then, a group of about a dozen, and with them a pack of large, broad-chested, golden-furred dogs, who barked and leaped, charging the group of intruders. Catti-brie went into a defensive crouch, thinking they were about to be attacked, but the dogs had no such intent. Their barks became yips of playfulness, and with their tails wagging they assaulted the drow hosts not with bites and scratches but by leaping up at them and licking.

  Catti-brie watched Ilina reach into a pouch and pull her hand out carrying a pile of small treats, which she tossed into the air, sending the dogs into a scramble to catch, then snuff about happily on the ground for any they had missed.

  “We need the chamber,” Emilian said to Kanaq. The dwarf nodded and sent one of the littler ones—one of his children, it appeared—running into the small house, to return a moment later holding a giant key ring that held only a single large key.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Entreri whispered to Jarlaxle, but Catti-brie heard.

  “Just trust,” Jarlaxle whispered back.

  “As if we have a choice,” Zaknafein sourly added.

  Another handful of dog treats went flying, the dogs bounding away after the falling kibble, and the aevendrow and inugaakalikurit exchanged some parting words as the dwarf child bounded up and handed the key ring to Emilian.

  The companions were led across the chamber to where several tunnel openings presented themselves in the high stone-and-ice wall. Also in the wall was a small carved structure made mostly of stone with a heavy wooden door. Emilian unlocked and opened it, revealing a darkened chamber within.

  “You first,” Ilina said to Catti-brie, and she took the woman by the arm and led her through the door. Emilian left the door open, letting in enough light for Catti-brie to see a small side room and beside it a large wardrobe of soft white clothing and thicker white robes with furred cuffs and collars. On a rack below sat pairs of simple, soft shoes.

  “Take one set of clothes and find some shoes,” Ilina instructed. “Then remove all of your clothing—all of it. And all of your jewelry.”

  “Not this, I beg,” Catti-brie replied, tapping the unicorn scrimshaw she wore on a chain about her neck. “And this,” she added, revealing a circlet that was mostly hidden by her thick hair, a green-gray band of leather set with two gems that looked very much like the feline eyes that gave the magical item its name. “The first is the symbol of my goddess and the second grants me vision in the darkness.”

  Even as she finished, the door closed, leaving them in near-complete blackness, reminding Catti-brie that her cat’s eye circlet really wasn’t functioning anyway.

  She heard a scrape and Ilina lifted a lit candle.

  “All of it,” she repeated. “I am sorry, fellow priestess, but we know enough of the world beyond our homeland to understand that even the simplest and seemingly most innocuous of things can bring disaster if the magic within them is powerful enough. A small emblem can become a weapon, a circlet an alchemist’s grenade. I cannot inspect them for magic in the time of Twilight Autunn. Remove them, everything.”

  “Will they be returned?”

  Ilina didn’t answer.

  Catti-brie sighed and nodded. She stripped down to nothing, then found a suitable pair of pants and shirt from the wardrobe, pulling them on. The clothes were comfortable, at least, amazingly so, with the soft interior fur caressing her road-weary skin. She folded her own clothes and put all of her items together, her jewelry in a small pouch, then stepped aside. Ilina handed her a robe, then gathered up the discarded items and put them in a bag, tying it tightly before leading her out of the room and back outside the chamber.

  A couple of the aevendrow had gathered near a large cart that had been brought out of a nearby tunnel by a group of dwarves and orcs.

  Orcs! Catti-brie watched curiously as one orc helped Emilian lift a large white slab.

  “The ice from the bottom of the glacier,” Ilina explained to her.

  Catti-brie looked to the priestess’s sword, with its beautifully decorated white blade.

  “It has been pressed by the weight of the glacier walls for centuries, millennia,” Ilina explained. “It is very hard, as hard as metal.”

  “But brittle, and able to melt.”

  “No. We know how to treat it to prevent such problems. I assure you, you do not want to feel the bite of an aevendrow weapon.”

  That last sentence rocked Catti-brie back on her heels. She wasn’t sure that Ilina had meant it as a threat, but she also wasn’t sure that Ilina hadn’t, and so it came as a pointed reminder of her predicament here, in her prisoner’s garb, perhaps, and without weapons or magic to protect her.

  Her gaze reflexively went back to the orcs, mostly the one with the white slab of ice, talking and laughing with Emilian.

  One by one, the outsiders were brought into the chamber and relieved of all their items, including their clothing. Soon the party was on its way once more, the four companions dressed identically in white clothes and robes and soft skin shoes.

  They felt comfortable, true.

  But most of all, they felt vulnerable.

  And felt, too, marked for easy identification, as if they were prisoners.

  From the time they had left Cascatte, they walked through channels open to the sky, which was darker than they had seen it since arriving in the north, though more of a predawn light than a true nighttime sky. Only occasionally did they have any ice over their heads, and only for very short distances. Beside them, the stream continued to flow, with plants on either side, occasional insects buzzing or crawling about, and once, the walls falling away enough to present a wide meadow chamber inundated with white rabbits, dozens of them. Like the foxes, they showed no fear of the drow or the newcomers, and just went about their way, eating the thick clover that filled the chamber.

  Catti-brie bent low near one large rabbit. She plucked a clover and held it out with an extended hand. She was testing the animal, which did indeed hop up and take the offering, but she was also testing their drow hosts here, watching Ilina mostly out of the corner of her eye.

  The drow priestess smiled, and neither she nor the others hurried Catti-brie along.

  By the time they came to a fork in the channel—the stream coming from straight ahead, another tunnel, enclosed, moving off to the right—Catti-brie had come to feel a bit better about this place and their hosts. So when the aevendrow indicated the smaller tunnel, she followed without question and led the way among her companions.

  Except for Jarlaxle, who passed her just inside the tunnel, moving swiftly, eagerly.

  Oh yes, she thought, she would later have a word with that one.

  The tunnel wound and climbed. The floor was of ice, but not slippery, as it clearly had been roughed over. They went up carved stairs, then into a long straight corridor, the other end of which seemed to open into a wide chamber. It wasn’t until they came to the end of the tunnel that Catti-brie and her friends began to understand just how wide.

  It wasn’t until they came to the end of the tunnel that Catti-brie and her friends had to remember how to breathe.

  “Behold Callidae, the borough of Scellobel,” Emilian announced, leading them out onto a wide ledge.

  It was a long while before Catti-brie and the others were able to close their slack jaws. Below and before them lay a valley within the glacier. Callidae, the city of these northern people who called themselves aevendrow, spread wide and sprawling, with gardens and houses and trees, even. A wide stone ridge climbed almost to the top of the glacial ice, its side lined with houses of stone and wood, and carved avenues climbing like a giant snake, back and forth.

  “It’s bigger than Menzoberranzan,” she heard Zak whisper to Jarlaxle, and so it was, undeniably.

  Catti-brie studied her drow companions. She saw the awe on Zak’s face, his jaw still hanging open. He shook his head several times,
as if not knowing how he should act.

  As expected, she found that this moment was different for Jarlaxle, less surprise, less awe, but more emotion. She saw the tears welling in his eyes, a sight she had never imagined, and one that filled her with sudden hope.

  And why not, she realized, looking again at the grand vista before her, the drow city of Callidae spreading wide.

  Several large buildings stood out from the normal structures, but none dominated. One, at least, and perhaps two or three others seemed to be chapels. Another large rectangular structure looked like something one might find along Waterdeep’s docks. A warehouse, perhaps. But Callidae, or at least this section which they had called Scellobel, was not defined by the buildings, far from it. Wide fields lined by walls of piled stones covered much of the ground, including one right below the ledge, full of neat rows of leafy plants, among which many people moved, carrying large baskets.

  A shift in the breeze brought the aroma from that field up to the ledge.

  “A vineyard,” Entreri said, his surprise clear in his voice.

  “How many?” Jarlaxle asked Emilian.

  “How many?” Emilian echoed in response.

  “People,” Jarlaxle clarified. “How many live here in Callidae?”

  “This is Scellobel, one of four boroughs that make up Callidae,” the drow explained. “And the largest because of the number of people here who are not aevendrow. Perhaps fifteen thousand of the aevendrow live within your sight from this ledge, but almost half that number of others as well, like the kurit you met in Cascatte, the Ulutiuns—humans, somewhat like your two companions—and the arktos oroks.”

  “Oroks?” Zaknafein said with some alarm.

  “Orcs,” Catti-brie said. “Like the ones in Cascatte.”

  Emilian nodded.

  “Slaves?” Catti-brie dared to ask, and the shock on the faces of those aevendrow who heard her was all the answer she needed.

  “There are no slaves in Callidae,” Ilina answered sharply. “Never before, not now, never.”

  “We are truly glad to hear that,” Jarlaxle intervened.

  “Orcs and dwarves and . . . what did you call them?” Catti-brie asked.

  “Ulutiuns,” Emilian replied, his voice strained, as it seemed clear that Catti-brie’s previous question had truly unnerved him. “Humans, like you, but a bit different.”

  “But no elves?” Catti-brie asked.

  “Oh yes, but not in Scellobel,” said Emilian. “There are just a few who happened upon us many years ago. They call themselves eladrin.”

  “High elves.”

  “Yes. They have found great joy here and have made their own families.”

  “Families of eladrin?” Catti-brie pressed, suddenly very interested.

  “One, I think,” Emilian answered.

  “Yes, one couple,” Ilina added. “They have two children. Two of the other three who stayed with us have sired or birthed children, too, but they are only half-eladrin, of course.”

  Catti-brie bit her lower lip.

  “Fifteen thousand aevendrow here, or in the four boroughs combined?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “Here in Scellobel. Almost twice that number in the other three boroughs. Come, welcome to my home.”

  “Forty thousand drow,” Jarlaxle whispered to Zak.

  “Twice Menzoberranzan,” the weapon master answered.

  To the left of them was a long stairway carved in the stone, but Emilian didn’t go that way. He went right, to the lip of the wide ledge, where he sat down, looked back and smiled, and disappeared over the edge. When the companions went up to that spot, they found an icy slide with high walls running down the side of the glacier.

  Emilian was already far below, lying back and speeding along. He went left suddenly, onto a high bank, then turned back fast to the right, disappearing feet first into the glacier.

  Catti-brie gasped, and she was not the only one.

  “It is fun,” she heard Ilina say behind her. “Exciting. You will see.”

  The last time she’d gone down an ice slide, an avalanche had been chasing her. Not exactly what she considered fun.

  Yet when Catti-brie glanced back at her, Ilina nodded for the woman to go with a gentle smile.

  She had no magic, she had no weapons, she didn’t even have her proper clothing, and she found herself in a strange land at the mercy of her hosts or captors or whatever these aevendrow were.

  Completely at their mercy.

  So Catti-brie shrugged, sat down, and shoved off.

  “Lie back!” she heard Ilina call behind her as she slid faster. She did so and her speed increased immediately. She tried to keep steady, feet out before her, but every slight turn sent her up on one bank or the other.

  She screamed when she went out to the left suddenly, and the fright became childlike glee when she abruptly went into the tunnel, speeding along in what soon became near-complete darkness! More sudden turns, breath-stealing drops, even what she thought might be a complete loop kept her screaming, half in terror, half in joy, before the tunnel finally straightened out in a long run, only slightly descending.

  She came out of the glacier wall just to the right of the vineyard she had seen from up above, shooting fast, deeper into the town. The slide ascended then, gradually slowing her so that when she came to the end of the ride, she was on a raised platform nearly a hundred long strides out from the wall.

  Emilian stood above her, holding down a hand for her to take. “Better than two hundred stairs?” he asked.

  Catti-brie brushed down her robes, which had climbed halfway up her belly, taking her shirt with them. She sat up and took the offered hand.

  “Can I do it again?” she asked, grinning from ear to ear.

  Emilian laughed. “I have done it a thousand times and it still steals my breath,” he told her. “I often forget things when we leave on patrol and have to come back to Scellobel, but don’t tell Ilina that I do it on purpose.”

  Zaknafein came in next, then the other companions in quick succession, with Ilina coming last. The other three Callidaeans remained on the high ledge and waved their goodbyes.

  “Ilina will take you to a place where you may eat and rest,” Emilian explained. “I will arrive later to take you to the inquisitors.”

  “Inquisitors?” Jarlaxle echoed.

  “They will hear your story,” Emilian explained. “They will pass judgment.”

  “It would be easier if it were not the Twilight Autunn,” Ilina added. “Then they could use magic, of course, to arrive at their answers. But fear not. Just tell them the truth of your journey and your arrival and your intent.”

  “You are not among enemies unless you make it so,” Emilian explained. He singled out Jarlaxle and Zaknafein. “You two, in particular, will draw great curiosity. You are not of the aevendrow, yet you are obviously drow. This is most remarkable.”

  “The aevendrow,” Jarlaxle echoed, simply because he liked the sound of it.

  “Aevensussin yndadrow,” Emilian explained. “The starlight drow, the aevendrow.”

  “Come,” Ilina bade them despite the numerous questions hovering on their lips, and she led them across the city, past a sea of curious eyes, aevendrow, kurit, and arktos orok alike, and one group of a dozen or so that seemed to be humans, or perhaps halflings, or some combination thereof. They were short, the tallest still several inches shorter than Catti-brie, with dark hair and eyes, bronzed skin, flat round faces, and curious smiles showing broad white teeth.

  “Ulutiuns?” Catti-brie whispered to Ilina.

  “Yes, the Geelah family. Their people came from a nearby village in the mountains.”

  That perked up Catti-brie’s ears. Family, yes, she realized when she looked back at the group as they passed, and realized that she was staring at three, perhaps even four, generations.

  “Evil befell their home and the glacier encroached upon it,” Ilina explained as they continued their walk. “Many were killed, but the Geelahs an
d some others escaped. The two oldest there, Jissi and Anji, were just children when they came to us for shelter. They became our most accomplished handlers.”

  “Handlers?”

  “Of the teff, the sled dogs you saw back in Cascatte.”

  “Sled dogs?”

  “Mukteff,” Ilina told her. “The golden coats. The heteff are white, the okteff black coated, and of course there are combinations of all, as one can expect from dogs.”

  “As one can expect from eladrin and aevendrow?” Jarlaxle slyly asked, and Ilina laughed.

  Catti-brie just shook her head. It was all too much. Too much information, too much . . . difference. She felt as if she were in a delusion, in some strange land she could never have imagined and surrounded by people familiar and yet not. Like friends one might meet only in a dream.

  But thus far, at least, it was just a dream and not a nightmare.

  Her eyes went to Ilina’s sword, and her thoughts went to Ilina’s warning.

  “I trust you are comfortable,” the inquisitor said to Catti-brie.

  She sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, a plain table before her set with a glass of cold water. A trio of aevendrow, who had identified themselves only as inquisitors, sat in the shadows on the other side of the room, on a raised dais and in taller chairs, so as to tower above her in an obvious attempt at intimidation. The only light in that area came from a candelabrum on the floor, uplighting the inquisitors, which made them even more imposing.

  They hadn’t threatened her with their words, but their posture and positioning were hardly neutral.

  “You understand that we must ensure most of all the safety of our home,” the woman on the left end explained.

  “We are no threat to you.”

  “You came here, you found us,” said the man in the middle. “That alone is a threat.”

  “An accident, a fortunate one for us, and no threat,” said Catti-brie.

  “So you say,” declared the first.

  “Ask your questions,” Catti-brie invited them.

  “You are a priestess, we are told,” the woman went on, “and so you know that there are ways in which we could magically determine the veracity of your claims, and perhaps even search that which is in your heart unsaid. But you also know that we are in the time of Twilight Autunn, the fading, and in this time, magic is unpredictable and greatly weakened, if accessible at all.