Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Then why now?”

  “Exactly because of that!” Galathae said. “They risk great injury, even death, though that would be a rare thing, for their belief in Callidae, for their loyalty to their neighbors, their willingness to serve with all. Because it is in this time that their wounds have meaning, their scars last, their risks are real. Don’t you see? To fight when there is a priest standing ready shows little real courage.”

  Catti-brie nodded. It made sense, brutal though it seemed.

  “We live in a dangerous place,” Galathae told her. “We have enemies—giants, slaadi, vicious beasts, dragons, white worms, the land itself. There were five boroughs when I was younger, but now there are four, for the glacier took one. The heat of the River Callidae disappeared in the west and Cattisola was overwhelmed by Qadeej, eaten house by house, her citizens scattered to the remaining boroughs. Qadeej’s advance continues, and it is fostered, we are certain, by the slaadi.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Galathae shrugged and shook her head. “They prod Qadeej, perhaps. They irritate him so he growls and his breath freezes and tilts the balance.”

  Catti-brie remembered her encounter with the glacier when she had called into the Plane of Fire, and she knew that there was within this vast river of ice some sentient, elemental power. Perhaps not malignant, but nor was it moral in any way a mere human would understand.

  And because of these memories, Catti-brie understood the gravity of Galathae’s words. Of the desire, the need, for balance. This society, ancient and stable as it was, survived on the very edge of destruction solely because of where it existed. And if that went away, so did the society and home of the aevendrow.

  Catti-brie had to put those notions aside, though, as Zaknafein regained her attention and forced a heavy sigh from her.

  “Zaknafein is strong,” Galathae said to comfort her one last time. “The sunset is tomorrow.”

  The three companions were awakened the next morning by roaring chants. They climbed from bed, wiped their eyes, grabbed their clothes, and went out into the abandoned common room. When she got outside, Catti-brie came to believe that she and her two companions were the last people to wake in Scellobel, and the last to come out onto the street.

  Drow, kurit, Ulutiuns, and oroks came down every side street onto the main lane, cheering “Biancorso, victory! Biancorso, victory! Champion, champion, champion!”

  The throng south of them parted, moving to the sides of the street, and down the lane came the cazzcalci fighters dressed in the same shift outfits with leg and arm ribbon wrappings that had been worn in the wine barrel fights, only blue-white in color. Their skin glistened, and Catti-brie suspected that they were smeared with the mucus of the hagfish.

  The fighters walked past silently, some with fists raised, and the crowd filled in behind them, following them, cheering every step.

  “I want to go see Zak,” Jarlaxle remarked, speaking loudly so that his two friends, who were right beside him, might hear.

  “But I don’t want to miss this . . . whatever it is,” Catti-brie replied.

  Entreri pointed to the south, and the others noted Emilian and Ilina coming their way.

  “Cazzcalci!” the two said, rushing up to them.

  “This is the most important day of the year. Quista Canzay!”

  Great Holiday, Catti-brie translated in her thoughts.

  She didn’t have time to think any more than that as their two escorts pulled them out into the lane and they were swept along with the crowd. The cheering became singing, somber and prideful:

  Pey’pey Biancorso thalack nadoon

  A’braze jivvin questa’tel

  Quista Canzay o R’pusk Autunn

  Pey’pey Biancorso ultrin akh’nadoon

  Qu’ellarianfere z’ress a’Scellobel!

  Catti-brie wished that she had her spells available, particularly one to comprehend the language better as the songs wound on. She understood enough of the main refrain to translate it on the third singing, though:

  Hear, hear, Whitebear, who march to war

  Burn to victory before all eyes

  This holiest day of Twilight Autunn

  Hear, hear, Whitebear, supreme army

  For our home, our strength, O Scellobel!

  She couldn’t keep up with the rest, but the words really didn’t matter. The power of their rhythm, the joy and strength and determination of the singers, ten thousand, perhaps fifteen thousand, voices lifting as one, was all she needed to know, and all she needed to be swept away in the moment. Even Jarlaxle seemed to have forgotten Zaknafein for now.

  The parade wound through the streets of Scellobel, ending at a stair of stones that reached to the top of the glacier, and beside them a wooden counterweight lift.

  The members of Biancorso trotted along the stairway, the cheers growing as they came into view of all the gathering crowd. Only after they crested the top and disappeared from sight did the borough folk begin following, all those who could climb the stairs doing so, the very young or very old or infirm being hoisted on the lift.

  Emilian and Ilina led the companions up the stairs.

  “We were hoping to see Zak before the battles begin,” Catti-brie said to the drow priestess, snapped momentarily from the pageantry.

  “I was with him earlier,” Ilina said. “He fights valiantly.”

  “But he’s losing,” Catti-brie said, clearly interpreting her tone. “He won’t fend off the phage long enough for the return of the magic to heal him.”

  Ilina didn’t respond.

  She didn’t have to.

  Catti-brie looked to her two companions and realized that neither Jarlaxle nor Entreri had heard the exchange. She decided not to tell them, not then, and so as they ascended the stairs and came out atop the huge glacier, Catti-brie bore a great weight upon her shoulders, one that she was determined to suppress in this most important of holidays among the aevendrow.

  Daylight was meager, the sun below the line of mountains to her right, across the glacier, and the wind blew cold. She tucked the heavy robe tighter about her and pulled her fur hood lower.

  Emilian rushed to her side. “Here,” he offered, holding a pair of gloves much like those Jarlaxle had gained from the clothier, only much less fancy in design. “These will help. It will be warmer in the Grande Coliseum, with all the people huddled about, but if you’re still too cold with your thin southern blood, do speak up. We have other ways to help!”

  Catti-brie nodded her thanks, and indeed, the gloves proved quite helpful and warm, surprisingly so since they were so thin. Even with that grim news regarding Zak pressing on her, it was hard for her not to be astounded when they followed the line across the ice sheet to the place Emilian had named the Grande Coliseum. It was carved into the ice, a depression whose nadir was a level field of ice perhaps fifty or sixty yards across and nearly twice that from end to end. Even more remarkable were the rows of elevated benches, vast seating stepped up from a few feet above the frozen field to many, many rows above.

  The scale of the place was beyond anything the companions had ever seen, something that became more evident as the viewing benches began filling, thousands and thousands of people from the four boroughs collecting in their allotted grandstands.

  Scellobel was on one of the longer sides, with Mona Chess across from them. The people of B’shett were seated to the right of Scellobel’s stands, with the folk of Ardin far across from them at the other end of the playing field. Catti-brie noted that a wall separated the B’shett grandstand from another, smaller one. No people were going there, clueing her in that this had been the seating for the folk of the borough that had been reclaimed by the expanding glacier.

  As a few people came out through tunnels onto the playing surface itself, the dimensions became clearer, including a wall of almost twice a drow’s height encasing the rink. Tenders pulled sharp rakes, scratching the sheet of ice, while at the far ends, others were measuring and smoot
hing the edges of long, narrow windows centered on shorter walls, one on each end perhaps twenty feet wide and five high. Catti-brie couldn’t make out much behind those openings, but at the base of the wall below each was a hole.

  “What comes out of that?” she asked Ilina, who sat beside her. “Or goes in?”

  “The gah,” she replied. “The ball. If you put the gah in the window, the rectangle, of the enemy side and it remains, you gain a point. If it goes in deep enough to reach the slide that brings it down so that it comes out the hole at the bottom, it is two points. If you put it in the hole at the bottom, it is two points, and if you do that with enough force to bring it up to the window, it is three points.”

  “You throw it in?”

  “It doesn’t matter how you get it in there. Kick it, throw it, place it, throw in an enemy who is holding it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “That doesn’t seem very difficult,” Entreri remarked.

  Ilina’s smile widened. “The closer you get to your enemy’s window, the fewer allies you will have defending you.”

  “The enemies try to block you?”

  “They try to hurt you,” Ilina corrected. “To block an enemy would stop her from gaining points for her army. To hurt her gets her off the rink, and she cannot be replaced. The armies start with twenty-five soldiers each. Few cazzcalci battles end with fifty still fighting.”

  After some chuckles, Jarlaxle asked, “What are the other rules?”

  “You cannot bite, you cannot kick the head of a fallen player, and you cannot gouge the eyes with a finger. A knuckle, yes, but not an extended finger. Oh, and you cannot grasp and twist the genitals of a man.” Ilina laughed. “I think the war was more fun before that rule was added, but I have heard that the damage was not always repairable.”

  That had the three companions exchanging dumbfounded looks, head shakes, and nervous laughter. What truly amazed them, however, was the continuing line of spectators coming to cheer on their respective boroughs, and the sheer scope of this gathering.

  “How many?” Jarlaxle breathlessly asked when the place finally settled, most in their seats.

  “Forty-seven thousand, perhaps fifty,” Emilian answered. “Almost all of Callidae.”

  To the three companions, it was overwhelming, and more so when the four armies marched out from separate tunnels to stand for review before their fellow borough-dwellers, Biancorso shining in their blue-white uniforms, across from Guardreale of Mona Chess in their regal purple, with the Boscaille of B’shett in the woodland greens to one side, and the colorful yellow, red, and green patterns on the uniforms of the Ardin Tivatrice, the garden borough. Most of the soldiers were drow, but several orcs and at least a dozen dwarves were also in the fight. No Ulutiuns, though, and Catti-brie made a mental note to later on ask Ilina why the humans weren’t involved.

  The cheering echoed across the glacier, to the mountains and back, it seemed, and once again Catti-brie couldn’t help but be caught up in the excitement of the moment.

  “I wish Zak could see this,” she heard Jarlaxle say to Entreri, and she felt herself deflate. Should she tell them?

  She decided against it. She would tell them later, after the battles, when they returned to Callidae and might go and see their dying friend. Telling them now would do nothing but ruin this magnificent display before them, as it was being ruined for her.

  As one, the crowd quieted, and the four armies turned toward the center of the rink and stood at attention, hands behind their backs. A tall woman in a huge flowing purple robe walked out to the very middle, climbed on a small wooden dais that had been dragged out before her, and raised her arms to the crowd.

  “She is Mona Valrissa Zhamboule,” Emilian quickly explained to the visitors. “The current Mona of the Temporal Convocation.”

  “The queen,” Jarlaxle replied.

  “No, not that,” Emilian quickly and vehemently corrected. “Such an idea . . . it doesn’t exist here. She is the governor, the maire, of the Temporal Convocation of representatives, serving until the next referendum. It is rumored that Galathae may aspire to the office. Perhaps if you choose to settle in Callidae, you will be asked for support from her. For all her annoyances, she would be a wonderful choice.”

  From the looks upon their faces, the concept he presented was obviously foreign to Jarlaxle and Entreri, but Catti-brie had some experience with elections from her time in Icewind Dale, where several of the Ten Towns chose their leaders in such a manner. Certainly this was a matter the newcomers wanted to explore further, but this was not the time, as was clear when Mona Valrissa Zhamboule lifted her voice in song.

  The acoustics of this Grande Coliseum were truly amazing, for they heard her intonations clearly, and then it didn’t matter, as fifty thousand joined in. It was more a chant than a song, Catti-brie soon realized, and more a matter of music than actual words, extended syllables and sounds. It was more feel than information, a beautiful chorus and harmony tugging at the spirit, not the mind, at the heart and soul.

  And yet for all its beauty, Catti-brie thought it a dirge, a funeral song for the long day, a greeting to the fast-approaching night. It comforted her a bit, but soon she burst out in tears, fighting sobs, as she thought of Zaknafein, as this dirge became to her a tribute to his life well lived. A final tribute. She looked around, hoping not to draw attention to herself, but found that she was hardly alone here, that almost all the cheeks around her, even Jarlaxle’s, were wet with tears.

  When it was done, there came one great roar, then a hushed and anticipatory silence.

  The mona turned about dramatically and slowly on her dais, raising the tension, then lifted her arms suddenly above her head, right arm straight, left arm curving to meet it fingertip to fingertip.

  The tens of thousands went wild. Down on the rink, the soldiers of the four armies all pumped their fists and patted each other on the shoulder or the back.

  Catti-brie, Jarlaxle, and Entreri turned to their guides for some answer.

  “She signaled that the nightfall will be without clouds,” Emilian explained.

  “The half-moon waning,” said an excited Ilina. “We will need no torches for the champion battle!”

  “Biancorso and Tivatrice!” Mona Valrissa Zhamboule declared.

  The two armies named walked out in formation to the center to confer with the mona, while the armies of B’shett and Mona Chess went back into their tunnels.

  “Azzudonna,” Entreri noted, pointing down at the woman.

  “Vessi beside her,” Jarlaxle said.

  While the teams conferred, more attendants rushed into view, some bearing one-wheeled contraptions, others with buckets and brushes. In short order, lines were drawn across the rink, dividing it into sections, and the rim of the window to Catti-brie’s right was painted blue, the one to the left painted in a red and yellow swirl. About a third of the way toward the center from each window were lines of the same color as the respective window, and near the center of the rink, two parallel black lines were painted about ten yards apart.

  The armies aligned, leaving the mona alone in the center, twelve each on the black line nearest the window painted in the other army’s color, eight more on the colored line, the remaining five behind them. The companions spotted Azzudonna on the red-yellow line shouting instructions to her fellows, which included an orc, then found Vessi moving about with four others behind her, conferring near the window.

  “The center guards are restricted within the middle third of the rink, between the lines showing the team colors,” Emilian explained. “Those in the second rank, the warriors, can go all the way back to our goal, but cannot cross the line of their own color.”

  “Like Azzudonna,” Catti-brie said.

  “Yes, she cannot cross the Biancorso attack line.” He pointed to the blue line drawn down to the right.

  “Those in the back, the dashers like Vessi, can go wherever they wish,” Ilina added.

  “About!” the mona ordered, a
nd all fifty soldiers turned their backs to her. She nodded to a man sitting on the wall across from the Scellobel grandstand. He reached behind it and produced a sphere about as large as a head, a ball that appeared leathery. He hopped down and rushed forward, then rolled it the rest of the way to the mona, who deftly scooped it up in her arms.

  Mona Valrissa Zhamboule then knelt upon the wooden dais and lifted what seemed to be a small disk off the center, leaving a hole upon which she placed the ball.

  She stood and bowed to each stand of fans, then turned to the ball again, kneeled and whispered something none could hear, and kissed the ball.

  She left the rink, climbing onto the wall beside the man who had sent her the sphere.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh,” the entire gathering began to chant, lifting their voices, stomping their feet, as Mona Valrissa Zhamboule slowly raised her hand to the sky. She dropped it as they dropped their chant, and there came a great thump, then a whoosh of air from below, a geyser of pressure that sent the ball flying high into the air.

  The armies spun about to face each other, all eyes lifting to locate the high-flying orb, which began its descent from a hundred feet or more above the rink. The winds caught it in its fall, moving it toward the second rank of Tivatrice soldiers.

  “Aggress! Aggress!” Emilian, Ilina, and most of the Scellobel fans chanted, and the army did indeed. At the center of the rink, the two guard forces came together in a sudden and furious melee, punching, kicking, grappling. Azzudonna led the second rank of Biancorso warriors through that melee, running hard on the somewhat slippery surface toward the blue line.

  A Tivatrice warrior caught the falling ball at about the same moment that Azzudonna caught him with a flying body block, hurling him to the ice. She, too, went down, sliding hard and crossing the blue line, and so she had to come up fast, raise her hands in temporary surrender, and retreat with all speed back behind that line.

  The ball, meanwhile, went bouncing and sliding to the dashers of Tivatrice. They passed it all the way to the right side of the rink, then ran back to the left as Biancorso’s defense set up to stop them.