Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Thus, our task is doubly difficult, for without those dweomers, we are reduced to evaluating the impression that you and your companions make upon us, and we must trust in that, and only that, for another several days.”

  “So we will be imprisoned for that time,” Catti-brie reasoned.

  “Hopefully not,” said the woman. “We do not wish to keep you in a dungeon.”

  “But will if needed,” the stern man in the middle said.

  “We would like you to enjoy Scellobel, perhaps all of Callidae,” the woman pressed past him, and Catti-brie knew the technique, where one tried to be soft and friendly, the other playing the threat. “It is ironic, but in this time of the great reduction of our magic, Callidae itself approaches its most magical day, Quista Canzay. Magic swims in the dark sky, waves of beauty and song. I hope that you will partake in the celebration, but to do so, you need to tell us how and why you came here, to this land that is rarely visited by those who live in the southlands.”

  Catti-brie complied. She told them of the sword and the hunt for Doum’wielle—even why she had been asked to come along, as another who had once, long ago, fallen under the domination of Khazid’hea. She offered a warning with her tale to her captors regarding handling that malevolent blade, for if its magic returned and it caught a wielder unaware, that person would likely be overtaken and perhaps driven to dangerous deeds.

  A chuckle from the man in the center stopped her there.

  “Many years ago?” he asked skeptically. “We are to believe that? We know humans. You expect us to believe that many years ago you wielded such a weapon though you were but a child? Are you nobility, then, in this land you left behind?”

  “No,” Catti-brie replied with a nervous chuckle. “No . . . although, yes, I am now considered such by some, since my father is a dwarven king.” She laughed helplessly. How could she begin to explain her life and all the twists and turns and adventures? How could she explain her death, if the time in Iruladoon even was death, or her return as a chosen of Mielikki sent to do battle with the woman who had inadvertently become the chosen of Lolth?

  How could she begin to explain it all?

  “I am much older than I appear, but thank you for the compliment,” she answered. Before the man could reply, she went on with her story, of the magical portal that had put the four of them in this place they did not know, of their journey across the northland before they happened upon this glacial rift—pointedly, she did not tell them of the cave and the fight with the giant and the frog-like monster, as the four companions had agreed back in the original glacial chamber. But she did tell them of the abandoned town and the reaction of the glacier itself when they had torn a small rift to the Plane of Fire with Zak’s whip and Catti-brie had tried to reach into that plane with her ring.

  That brought some nods, for all of those possessions, although mostly inert at this time, it seemed, were in the hands of the aevendrow. Still, sages among these drow should have been able to identify, or at least guess, the general powers of the distinctive items.

  “Doum’wielle Armgo is dead,” the drow in the middle told her.

  “No, she isn’t,” Catti-brie replied. “Or at least, if she is, it happened only recently, within the past day or two.”

  Even in the shadows, she could see the man shaking his head.

  “Forget her,” he said. “She fell victim to the uninhabited, and so Doum’wielle as you knew her is forever dead.”

  “The unin—” Catti-brie started to ask, but the woman cut her off.

  “Now that you know the futility of your search, perhaps you would like to leave. But you cannot, not now. You would die in the cold wind without your magic, of course.”

  Catti-brie shrugged. What was to be said?

  They led her out of the room then, bringing her through the door on the right-hand wall, opposite from the door through which she had entered, and where her friends waited, each in their own small cell in a large room of many such tiny chambers—a place that reminded her of the meditation hallways of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose.

  Ilina and Emilian were waiting for her beyond that door.

  “A remarkable story,” the lead inquisitor told his two companions when the door closed once more. “One of many, I suspect, that we might hear from this human.”

  Both he and the woman who had questioned Catti-brie looked to the end of the table at the third of the group, a strong woman sitting with perfect posture, a reflection of the discipline she carried through her every day. Her white clothing was pressed and sharp, her blue hair cut neatly. She held a small coffer, mostly glass, a reliquary showing the skull of a white fox inside.

  “Mielikki,” the other woman said. “She is another name for your own god, yes, Galathae?”

  “A sister goddess, at least,” the drow paladin answered.

  “What did you sense?” asked the drow man. “And can you trust it in this time of Twilight Autunn?”

  “I sensed no evil in her,” Galathae replied. “Not in intent or in memory. I believe I would trust the safety of Callidae on that feeling, even in this time, and particularly since the lightness and warmth of this one resonated so strongly. Let us bring the others through to see if they are of similar weal.”

  Jarlaxle was the last of the group to sit before the inquisitors, and he wasn’t the least bit intimidated. He worried that perhaps he was letting his elation at simply seeing Callidae and learning of this place and these people put him off his guard, but it was really of minor concern to him.

  If the aevendrow had wanted him and his friends dead, they’d already be dead.

  He told the same story to the panel of three that Catti-brie, Entreri, and Zaknafein had related. He, too, resisted telling them about the fight in the cave, although he wasn’t sure that they should bother to keep that secret, and expected that it wouldn’t hold for much longer anyway. Why had the green slaad impersonated a drow? Was it because it had seen Zak in the deeper chamber battling a frost giant, or because it knew of these drow?

  Both, likely, but that hinted to Jarlaxle that the slaad and the frost giants, that clan at least, were not in league with the folk of Callidae.

  “You are the leader of this expedition?” asked the man centering the three on the dais.

  “I organized it, yes.”

  “But you don’t even know where you are?” asked the woman to his right. “You ask us to believe this?”

  “Have the others told you of Archmage Gromph?” Jarlaxle answered with a question of his own.

  “The one who created the portal,” the woman confirmed.

  “A great wizard, one of the most powerful in the south, and perhaps the most powerful of all in the Underdark when he lived there, serving as the archmage of Menzoberranzan, the city of your relatives.”

  “The City of Spiders, so said your fellow drow companion.”

  “Yes. I will tell you more of it.”

  “You presume our interest,” said the man in the center. “And our ignorance.”

  “Our concern is Callidae, and Callidae alone,” the woman who had been speaking added. “You do not give us confidence in our ability to trust you by speaking to us of great wizards and Underdark cities. We know well that some of our kin traveled there in the great separation of the peoples.”

  “They are very unlike you,” Jarlaxle remarked.

  “Are you?”

  The drow shrugged. “We did not come here just to find Doum’wielle and to try to break the demonic influence within a sword,” he admitted, and that raised the eyebrows of the two, though the woman on the other end of the stage remained wholly impassive, outwardly at least. “My friends likely believed so, but I had other intent.

  “Do you know of Silverymoon?” he asked.

  “Yes,” came a surprising answer.

  “I was there recently, following a rumor of an elf, another eladrin, who once found a most unusual civilization in the frozen northland, beyond the reach of the known king
doms of Faerun.”

  They didn’t react.

  “A drow civilization,” Jarlaxle added. “Or aevendrow, perhaps.”

  Still no reaction.

  “Or maybe it was just a dream. That is what those around this very ancient eladrin believed, or that his old mind had become incapable of distinguishing fantasy from truth. Fear not, for he is not taken seriously.”

  “Yet you are here,” the woman answered.

  “Because above all, I wanted his dream to be true. Because I needed it to be true . . . and also, because the hunt for Doum’wielle is true and good and holds great importance for a coming conflict among my people. Thus I had another reason to come here, and to convince my companions to follow.”

  “That reason is gone now, as is Doum’wielle.”

  “So you said. Would you have us be on our way?”

  “You have no magical protection. You would die.”

  “Lend us your clothes.”

  “No. You cannot leave before the fall of night and the end of Twilight Autunn,” said the man.

  “When magic returns. When our magic will protect us.”

  “Of course.”

  “And when your magic will protect you.” Jarlaxle understood. He thought of the old elf in Silverymoon, who hadn’t told his tale of drow in the north for many years, and now whispered it as gibberish more than reality, like the waking dreams of one caught more in memory and fantasy than in the world as it was around him.

  Perhaps that old elf was confused, his mind diminished. Perhaps his tale held no truth at all and the presence of the aevendrow here was mere coincidence.

  Or perhaps the magic that had erased his memories of Callidae for all these decades, centuries even, had worn away enough for that old elf to now dream of a place he once knew.

  “We have no desire to meet the people of the south,” the woman inquisitor explained to him. “Nor anyone of the Underdark, surely.”

  “Yet your people came out to find us. You could have let us die.”

  “It was by chance—and of course we could not leave you to die. Like the Ulutiuns who lost their town to the glacier, or the inugaakalikurit wanderers who were found out on the ice, or the ones you call orcs, who roamed the region. We have made their lives better as they have made our lives better. They have become a part of Callidae, a part we treasure. They fight in calci, tend our fields with us, create artwork, share their songs and dances. That could be your future, too, if your tales are true and your heart is good. Perhaps a future you might consider.”

  For all the complexities and thrills of his life in the south, such a notion was not one Jarlaxle found he could easily dismiss. But neither did he miss the first mentioned contribution.

  “Calci?” he asked. “Is this an enemy?” He thought of the slaad and the frost giants, hoping to find an opening here to further solidify any alliance he might forge.

  “Cazzcalci,” the man answered. “The battle of Twilight Autunn. Take heart, my friend, for you have come to us in a time of feast and play.”

  “And battle?”

  The two inquisitors who had been questioning him looked at each other and grinned.

  Then they looked to the third, who nodded.

  “Go to your friends, Jarlaxle,” the man told him. “You are free to wander the borough, indeed, the whole of the city. Emilian and Ilina will guide you if you choose, or you can make your own way. You will find food and drink plentiful.”

  “And dance and song,” the woman added. “Add to that if you can, or tell great tales of old, and you will find many smiles of gratitude.”

  When they quieted, Jarlaxle rose and bowed, starting for the other door.

  “One more thing,” the woman called after him. “On my advice, do not miss the persimmons.”

  “Persimmons?”

  “A small orange—”

  “I know what it is,” Jarlaxle interrupted, too surprised to maintain his polite decorum. “Fruit . . . tangy.”

  “Ah, but you have not tasted it paired with aged kurit muskox cheese and chased down with Hollico, the Scellobelee ice wine!” She pursed her lips, pressed her fingers against them, and smacked her lips, extending her hand wide as she threw it forward, toward a very confused Jarlaxle.

  He didn’t know the details, of course, or what a muskox might be, or Hollico for that matter, but that wasn’t the real source of his confusion. No, it was the pride, the welcoming pride, this inquisitor whose name he did not know had just relayed to him.

  “Fine advice, Jarlaxle,” the man agreed. “That delicacy alone may make you think your journey to this difficult land worth the trouble.”

  Shaking his head, trying not to chuckle, Jarlaxle went through the door and soon rejoined his friends.

  Chapter 16

  Making Wine

  “I have been tasked with showing you your way around Callidae,” Ilina told the four companions when they left the inquisitors. “It is not a difficult place to navigate, and I can give you some advice on sights that might prove of interest to you.”

  “And we’re completely free to go where we will?” a skeptical Artemis Entreri asked.

  “Well, you cannot barge into private homes, of course. I expect your customs are similar. And you cannot leave, not even to Cascatte.”

  When eyebrows arched at that, Ilina quickly added, “The elements would kill you. It is cold out there, and will grow much colder quite soon. You wouldn’t survive it.”

  “Even if we had the clothing you and your companions were wearing when we first met?” Entreri quipped, staring at the drow priestess hard.

  “But you do not,” Ilina sharply replied.

  “And even if we did, could we carry enough food, and would we even be able to find our way?” Jarlaxle said, and Catti-brie nodded her approval at his attempt to ratchet the tension down.

  “The storms will begin soon,” Ilina added. “The wind can blow you from your feet, and fill the air with tiny crystals of ice so thickly that you cannot see five strides ahead. However you might decide to leave this region, you would have to cross mountains that will soon be impassible, and will remain so until the Conception Verdant.”

  “The what?” Entreri echoed.

  “Mid-Ches, the vernal equinox,” said Catti-brie, who understood it now, and realized that the coming night would be very different from the nights they knew back home. “Six months. We live a year of days back home, but up here, they have only one true daytime and one true nighttime.”

  “But why not Cascatte?” Jarlaxle asked Ilina. “It was not too frigid in that place of beauty.”

  “The dwarves and orcs of Cascatte haven’t the resources on hand to accommodate visitors. They have their work and are somewhat independent of Callidae, by mutual agreement. In that spirit, we do not like to intrude upon them unless there is no avoiding it, as with our patrols. If you truly desire to return there, you would have to do so with a full Callidaean guard. It can be arranged, but there is enough here to hold your attention, I expect.”

  “Show us around Callidae,” Jarlaxle relented.

  “And watch over us, of course,” Zaknafein added.

  Ilina laughed at that. “I will show you to a place where you can then show yourselves about the boroughs of Callidae. There is no one watching over you in any intrusive manner. The inquisitors have determined that you are not prisoners here, but guests.”

  “Who cannot leave,” Entreri replied, refusing to surrender the point.

  “You will be able to leave, but first we must have our magic,” Ilina answered.

  So they can erase our vivid memories of this place, Jarlaxle realized, but did not say aloud.

  “A tenday, then,” Catti-brie said.

  “Callidae is easy to navigate,” Ilina said, leading them away from the inquisitor house and toward the nadir of the rocky prow that cut this borough nearly in two. At the base of that prow, with land rolling out before them and climbing both left and right, they found an intersection of fiv
e wide avenues. At the center of the resulting plaza stood a tall pole, and as they neared, the companions noticed four directional signs upon it, and a large plaque on a shining metal ball atop it.

  “Callidae Scellobel,” Ilina said, pointing to that plaque up top. “You are in the heart of Scellobel, the most populous of the four remaining boroughs of Callidae. This is the guidepost of Callidae. You can only reach the world beyond through here, unless you were to climb or fly to the top of the glacial walls. You see the water stream you followed into the glacier? That is the River Callidae, the only way out without climbing.”

  Catti-brie surveyed the distant glacial wall in a straight line from the narrowest point of the prow.

  “Due south,” Ilina explained, and then expounded, “If you are ever lost in the side avenues of Scellobel, always look to the prow. From its highest point to this place where we stand is due south. Shift your gaze just a bit to the right, and you can see the stairs and the slide where you entered from the tunnels back to Cascatte.”

  “It’s not on the signpost,” Zak remarked.

  “Cascatte isn’t a borough. There are just a few families of dwarves and a dozen or so arktos oroks, which you call orcs, living there. These are the boroughs.” She pointed to the signpost and lowered her hand past each sign as she explained. “Scellobel, here, then to Mona Chess, the seat of the Siglig, which is a larger canyon than this, and almost as populous, but with many more aevendrow and fewer of the other cultures.”

  “Siglig,” Jarlaxle whispered as if trying to decipher the word.

  “Council,” Catti-brie replied.

  “Yes, the Siglig is the building of our council, which we call the Temporal Convocation,” Ilina confirmed. “Emilian served on it just last year, and Kanaq, whom you met in Cascatte, spent many years there until a dozen sunsets ago.”

  That these drow had allowed a dwarf to serve on their council was a point that did not pass by the four companions without notice.