Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  The party moved through the ways of Ardin, noting that there seemed to be proportionally more orcs and dwarves living in Ardin than they had seen in the other boroughs.

  “They are wonderful with the oxen,” Emilian told her when she asked about it. “Here and in B’shett, the kurit and the oroks have found lives more akin to that which they once knew and treasured. Now they have the best of their old traditions and customs with far fewer challenges and hardships. More of both peoples live in Scellobel than in Ardin, but that is mostly because Scellobel is where their ancestors, or even they, first came into Callidae, and it is easy to settle there.”

  “How many come in each year?” Catti-brie asked.

  Emilian shrugged. “Sometimes none. Sometimes one or two are found out on the ice and brought here for aid. Sometimes, as with the Ulutiun village, a large group will come in all at once. Whatever the number, we have the room and welcome them as we welcomed you. This is the strength of Callidae.” He flashed her a smile and a wink. “Long ago, the oroks showed us how to better ice the wine, freezing the grapes on the vine and stomping them while frozen to make it so much sweeter. And the kurit taught us all how to make the cheese.” He pinched his cheek, which, like so many here, was a bit plumper and less angular than that of the average drow Catti-brie had known before this place. “I thank the kurit for this and the oroks for my better dancing.”

  Cattie-brie laughed.

  “The oroks brought us the hagfish, too,” he went on, “and the phlegm that has made our clothing and armor and many other items so much better. The kurit added to that orok work on our garments and fabrics, mixing the cured phlegm with the silk of the white spiders. You slept on a bed covered with that silk. Have you ever known a more comfortable sleep?”

  She couldn’t say she had. She wondered, though, given the additions these other cultures had brought to Callidae, why they were so determined to deny any thought of commerce with the south, as Jarlaxle had offered.

  She dismissed that almost as soon as she thought of it, reminding herself of the many wars she had known in those southern lands. Up here, there was but one enemy, and from what she could tell, the skirmishes were few and far between. She thought of the hatchery they had found, though, and she hoped that the relative peace would continue for these friends she had discovered in Callidae.

  A couple of hours of walking brought the group to the northeastern corner of Ardin and a great wooden door set between barracks of town guards. When it was unlocked and opened, they found a second portal only a short way in, similarly sealed, and then a third and then a fourth, finally opening into a tunnel set with a marker post that read teramare.

  “Land and sea?” Jarlaxle said aloud, not quite catching on.

  “This marks the spot where there is no more land beneath your feet,” Emilian explained. “Now we walk out upon the ice pack, and below that is the sea.”

  “That’s not terrifying at all,” Entreri remarked.

  Emilian laughed at the sarcasm. “The ice pack is very thick here near the glacier, deeper than it is high. There is nothing to fear. You would have to bore down hundreds of feet to strike the water.”

  The magical illumination in here was not colorful, just simple lines of plain light cast under the ice at the base of the side walls. The corridor ran long and tight and fairly straight, dotted with side channels every so often. At one such intersection, they came upon a group of kurit and aevendrow loading a cart with blue ice.

  “The mines,” Emilian explained. “They are very deep, and the best of the blue ice comes from that flattened and most pressed ice over the water. Of course, you must know the exact places. Too near the sea, and it is just ice, and besides, a deep miner might break through, fall under, and be lost to the living world. The kurit know the secrets well. Most of their mines are in B’shett for the white ice and the lighter blues, but out here, there are rich blue sheets—you see?—which we all prize for their beauty and their strength.”

  Catti-brie and the others could only shake their heads in wonder.

  “The blue ice can hold more powerful enchantments, too,” he continued. “You have seen Galathae’s sword, which might be the finest weapon in Callidae.”

  The tunnel continued a long way past the mines, with far fewer lights showing the way as it gradually climbed. The group camped right there in the tunnel on one relatively flat expanse, then started early after breakfast the next day.

  Ilina spent some time with Catti-brie, telling her that they would be outside very soon and offering some tips on spells she might prepare. She explained that it would take them five days outside the tunnels to get to the caverns below the fortress, maybe more if the storm continued to rage.

  “We’ll be outside the glacier?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, we would never allow tunnels to connect us anywhere near the slaadi, and never build tunnels large enough for frost giants.”

  “How will we shelter if not in the tunnels? We don’t have mountain walls to protect us from the wind out here and it seems as if it’s getting even colder.”

  “There are more rifts along the journey, but that is why so many Ulutiuns came along with us,” Ilina said. “You will be amazed at their constructions.”

  Off they went, and less than two hours later, they came to a small chamber open to the sky, where the wind whistled a curious song and they were hemmed in on all sides by a wall of ice some fifty feet or more high on one side, and towering hundreds of feet above that all the rest of the way around.

  Aevendrow immediately began fishing in a couple of the many bags and bundles they had brought along, taking out silken ropes and large grapnels, pitons, and spiked boots.

  Catti-brie and the others went over to get a closer look.

  “You will climb?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “Yes, of course,” said Emilian, “and set ropes up top so that the others may follow.”

  “Why not just use magic?”

  “We prefer to keep all that we have in case of a desperate situation,” Ilina answered.

  “But this,” Jarlaxle explained. He flicked his hands, bringing a dagger into each, then brought forth his innate drow magic and began floating, hand-climbing easily with the daggers.

  “You are a wizard?” Emilian asked, seeming quite taken aback.

  “He is drow,” Zak answered before Jarlaxle, who was now floating back down. “As are you—you cannot levitate?”

  The surrounding aevendrow stared at him as if they had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Now, this is an interesting turn,” Jarlaxle said, setting down beside them. “So it was the Faerzress all along, the barrier to the lower planes, which gave us this inner magic.”

  “Interesting indeed,” Ilina remarked.

  “Can you summon darkness? Or faerie fire?” Zak asked her.

  “Of course! I am a priestess of—”

  “I mean, without your divine magic,” Zak clarified. “Simply because you are drow?”

  She shook her head.

  “And what else?” Emilian asked, rather sharply.

  “Just those,” Zak answered. “This is unexpected.”

  “And convenient, it would seem,” Emilian said. “Do you think you might use these abilities to bring me up to the top of the wall?”

  “The two of us could, certainly,” Jarlaxle told him, and when Emilian had gathered the needed gear, they did just that, Jarlaxle and Zak levitating and dagger-walking up the wall. They repeated the trip several times, bringing others up with more ropes, while the kurit began pulling long planks from what were obviously bags of holding and assembling a large platform to secure the journey for all others.

  At the top of that wall was a ledge that opened perhaps twice the height of the room on the other side, within a glacial rift. The wind was louder here, deafening almost, but it remained far above, and only occasional gusts whipped down. Still, it was no perch to be standing upon in a northern wind at all, for it was, of course, made of ice
. So the aevendrow pulled a long, rolled carpet of hagfish mucus from another bag of holding and spread it about, providing a sticky and secure footing.

  Clearly, it had been cut to specifically fit this spot.

  “Take great care in your descent,” Ilina told Catti-brie and Entreri as other aevendrow helped them into harnesses that would latch onto the ropes. “You won’t fall even if you slip, but with the wind, you might bounce about the ice wall.”

  Rappelling down the other side of the ice wall was among the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences Catti-brie had ever known, akin to the first time she had used a spell of flying. Entreri, too, came down with an ear-to-ear smile, but the way he had so easily managed the rappel made Catti-brie realize that he was no neophyte at this activity.

  “When have you ever climbed mountains?” Catti-brie asked him at the bottom.

  “I made my way in Calimport by getting into the palaces in snea— let’s say ‘unconventional’ ways,” he answered with a wry grin.

  “What do you think of all of this?” she asked him, looking around, and realizing that they had a couple of rare moments just to themselves. Jarlaxle and Zaknafein were helping the aevendrow shuttle supplies and no Callidaeans were near.

  “All of what? They’re prepared. They know the land and know how to survive well in it. It’s impressive.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. What do you think of . . . them, the aevendrow? Of Callidae? Of their strange ways?”

  He shook his head. “The aevendrow are what they seem.”

  “You knew that when you told them your tale, I expect.”

  “I knew it beyond a doubt when they saved Zak at cazzcalci,” he answered. “That is why I dared to tell my tale. I think I knew it all along but was simply afraid to believe it.”

  Catti-brie could certainly understand that sentiment.

  This chasm in the glacier went right and left out of sight in the dark night. The cloud cover hung very low in the sky, stealing the starlight, the moonlight, the curtains of green and purple. Too low, Catti-brie thought, for the storm clouds seemed to reach down right to the top of the glacier, and it took her a few moments to sort out that it wasn’t just the clouds above, but a steady and unrelenting blizzard of snow up there. Through the gloom and blowing snow to the right came a high-pitched sound, like something in between a bark and a shriek. Soon after, many figures appeared, approaching fast. Orcs, the companions realized, a dozen, and each behind a sled pulled by what they presumed to be mukteff—but no, they realized as the teams drew close, these were larger, longer, and with four legs on each side. And snarling, yipping, and nipping at each other, fierce and barely tamed.

  “What in the Nine Hells?” Jarlaxle said, rushing with Zak to join the two, Azzudonna close behind.

  Entreri tensed at Catti-brie’s side, so she grabbed his hand.

  “We are not deceived,” she insisted.

  He relaxed a bit at least.

  “The Burnooks,” said Azzudonna.

  “What is a Burnook?” Catti-brie asked.

  “An arktos orok clan,” she explained. “They are Callidaeans, but many of them spend most of their time outside the glacier. They are our eyes and ears out here, on this side of Qadeej. Fine friends.”

  She started forward, but paused and seemed to be considering something.

  “The Burnooks were the ones who found Doum’wielle and brought her to us,” Azzudonna added with a smile.

  “Fine friends,” Catti-brie agreed.

  Galathae and a couple of other aevendrow, along with a pair of kurit, went out to speak to the orcs.

  They returned, the orcs beside them, though they left the sleds and teams safely back from the group, snarling and yipping and showing nasty fangs.

  “Not mukteff,” a dwarf remarked as she walked by the four friends. “Ho hey, but ye might want to take care not to pet the little beasties.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Might’ve been mukteff once, lots of grandparents ago, at least on one side,” said the diminutive fellow, a smiling chap with blue skin and tremendous white eyebrows, whose mouth seemed too wide for his face.

  “What are they, then?”

  “Arktos vorax,” said the dwarf. “Vicious beasts that ye’re not wantin’ to meet absent their orok masters, I tell ye, hoi hoi. They eat what they can find, they do, ’cludin’ each other.”

  Catti-brie hardly registered the words, caught by the accent of this kurit. She hadn’t noticed it so strongly with Kanaq in Cascatte, but this dwarf rolled his words like a proper Battlehammer, though in the tongue of the aevendrow.

  “Hoi hoi?” Jarlaxle echoed.

  “What about it?”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Means hoi hoi, o’ course.”

  The rogue started to reply, but just shook his head and let it go at that.

  “The storm is blowing, but we should go anyway,” Galathae told them all when she returned. “There’s a sheltered nook a couple of miles on. We can get there, at least. If we wait for the storm to end, we might be here for a tenday.”

  “I’ll get the runners,” the dwarf said, and rushed off.

  “You can ride on one of the sleds if you desire,” Galathae explained. “Or you can try a pair of runners.”

  Before they could ask what a runner might be, the dwarf came hustling back, carrying a bundle of long, narrow planks turned up on one end and with straps near the middle.

  “Skis,” Catti-brie said.

  The three others stared at her blankly.

  “One of the Icewind Dale tribes uses them. You wear them as shoes and slide them along, using small spears to propel you.”

  “We are fortunate, for the wind will be at our backs,” Galathae said. “You might need the poles to slow you more than to propel you. Come, then, if this is your choice. Alviss will fit you properly and help you learn to use them.”

  “We could just ride,” Entreri said.

  “On those?” Zak replied incredulously, pointing to a vorax team that was close to open warfare on one another, so it seemed.

  “We have steeds,” Entreri reminded him.

  “Save them,” Jarlaxle counseled. “Let us . . . slide.”

  “Ski,” Alviss the inugaakalikurit corrected. “Ye got long legs. Ye’ll do well, hoi hoi.”

  “Hoi hoi,” Jarlaxle replied.

  Going out from the rift to the open ice pack seemed to Catti-brie like leaping into a fast-flowing, roaring river.

  All sound was buried almost immediately under the howl of the wind, and the whipping snow, or ice crystals more likely, drummed against her back with such determination and frequency that she felt as if a swarm of large wasps was blindly flying into her.

  “Stay close!” Galathae yelled, a most unnecessary order, for it was fairly obvious that if any got separated in this blinding tempest, they’d never find their way back. Catti-brie thought of using a light spell, but quickly realized that the aevendrow weren’t doing that—Ilina, too, was a priestess of the domain of light, after all—for a reason.

  Off they went at an easy pace at first, but as Galathae measured the steadiness of the foreigners, she urged the orok lead teams to go faster and faster still. It wasn’t a long time—not more than a couple of hours, but enough that it left the friends thoroughly exhausted—before they pulled up into the sheltered area.

  The Ulutiuns, all of whom had chosen to ride on the sleds, rushed into action, collecting their tools from the magical packs. The others began cutting blocks from the side of the glacier and sliding them into the intended campground.

  The friends watched in amazement as the Ulutiuns and the oroks who had come with the sleds efficiently and expertly began constructing domed structures, and with all of the others supplying the building blocks, they soon had more than a dozen ready to go.

  “Come on, then,” Azzudonna told the friends, and she grabbed Zak by the hand and began dragging him toward one of the igloos. “This one’s for y
ou four, and I’ll join if you’ll have me. At least five to a shelter, Galathae commands!”

  The wind went away when they crawled in, and Ilina and Emilian came in soon after, bearing large furs for bedding, along with some wood and stones. They placed the wood in a depression that had been dug in the middle of the chamber and Ilina lit it. Then, as the flames took hold, the aevendrow began stripping off their outer clothing.

  Emilian prepared a fine supper of conjured blubber steak, and the seven sat around the circumference of the round room, enjoying each other’s company.

  A short while later, a shout alerted them to a visitor, and Alviss crawled into the igloo. He moved over to Catti-brie.

  “Might I be troublin’ yerself for a tale?” he asked.

  “A tale?”

  “Ye might’ve seen me at Temporal Convocation,” he said.

  “Alviss is a representative of B’shett,” Ilina explained.

  “Aye, and Boscaille’d’ve tied the war if that one hadn’t started the magic!” the dwarf declared. “Though the magic was the better thing, I’ve to admit. Ne’er seen that before.”

  “What tale can I offer?” Catti-brie said to the cheery fellow.

  “Any about yer da and that place—what’d ye call it??”

  “Gauntlgrym?”

  “Aye, and the other, the first one.”

  “Mithral Hall,” she answered.

  “Tell me, please,” begged the dwarf. “Canno’ hear too much about our kin to the south. Ne’er seen ’em, doubt I e’er will, but good to know they be there, ye see?”

  “Hoi hoi,” Catti-brie answered, and the dwarf roared with delight.

  So she told him all about when she and her friends, well more than a century before, had found the long-lost Mithral Hall, and the shadow dragon Shimmergloom. She noticed Alviss’s expression change rather dramatically when she started talking about the battles with the duergar, and she took care to minimize those parts of the story, realizing that she was making the friendly fellow rather uncomfortable.