The Companions s-1

by R. A. Salvatore

  If it fell free, he would have no way to collect it … likely a rat would pick it up and scurry off with it.

  So he squeezed it instead, repeatedly, training his fingers, training his muscles, and slowly maneuvering one finger or another around it a bit, gaining strength, gaining dexterity. He held it tightly when the wet nurse came to feed him, then he brought his arm down to his side and leaned upon it to secure the button as he slept.

  Days later, he managed to shift it to his other hand, his left hand. Again, he brought it up before his eyes, and then he paused and stared.

  He noted his thumb and the three fingers beside it, and the stump where his pinky should be.

  The image jolted the halfling back in time, to the captivity he had endured under Artemis Entreri, where Entreri had cut off his finger as a warning to Drizzt …

  Had that physical wound carried over to this new body? How could that be?

  He stared at the stump, and noted then the jagged line of skin and the scab, not yet fully healed. No, this was not a carryover of Entreri’s cruelty, he realized, but an ironic twist of fate. He recalled the moment of his rebirth, when his mother had died, he now understood, and so the midwife had used a knife to slice her open and get him out. He remembered the sharp and burning pain, and now he understood the source.

  For a long, long while, the halfling baby lay there, staring at the wound, lost in memories more than in his current hopes and aspirations.

  He pressed beyond the shock, though, and repeated the exercises, exactly as he had done with the other hand, squeezing and holding, building his strength and his muscle memory.

  Tendays later, he began to roll the button around his fingers, one hand and then the other, feeling the play as it rolled over one knuckle to be caught between that finger and the next and roson of a son o

  CHAPTER 6

  THE CHOSEN

  The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Netheril

  No moment of fear, not an instant of doubt, followed Catti-brie out of Iruladoon. In the days she had spent there-the century on Toril-she had danced the movements of Mielikki and sung the song of Mielikki, and so it was with great understanding of the goddess and great confidence in the eternal circle of life itself, that Catti-brie had stepped from the forest to begin her floating journey, to find the womb, to gasp her first breath in her new body, reincarnated, reborn. It happened on the night of the spring equinox.

  The holy night of Mielikki, the night of the birth of the goddess’s Chosen.

  Wrapped in swaddling clothes, the infant seemed fully helpless before the adult humans milling around in the tent. But even though she could not move her arms under the tight wrappings, Catti-brie instinctively understood that there remained at her disposal several potent spells she could utilize to defend herself, dweomers that needed no movements to enact.

  Unlike her friends who had similarly journeyed from Iruladoon, Catti-brie had taken no infantile confusion with her. The instincts of childhood gnawed at her, of course, but because of her communing with the goddess, she was better prepared for this journey by far, and more knowledgeable and thus able to keep those penetrating pangs and desires in their proper place.

  Good fortune had followed her, as well, for her mother-she heard the name Kavita spoken tenderly by her father and others-doted on her, lifting her often and holding her close. That is, when Kavita wasn’t passing the baby around to the other women who flocked to the Bedine tent, all wanting to cuddle with the newborn. To the Bedine tribe of the Desai, the birth of a child was a grand celebration indeed, and Catti-brie-Ruqiah, they called her-was the center of that play.

  She wisely held silent throughout the pawing and the cooing and the continual conversations directed at her, just inches from her face, for she understood well what had happened to Wulfgar when he had been reborn, and feared that she, too, could forget herself and spout some actual words.

  And so, like her journey in the first in the tunnels around Mithral Hallar5N3?” she asked;src: url(kindle: embed:000phases of her departure from Iruladoon, the baby who was really a woman lay back and observed, and let the beauty of the experience grant her insight and more knowledge. Many times in those first days, did Catti-brie silently give extra thanks to Mielikki.

  Only a few days later, the tribe was on the move again, Catti-brie, swaddled tightly as always, strapped to her walking mother’s back. She strained her eyes, focusing on the land as the miles rolled by, trying to get a feel for where she might be.

  Patient and observant, the baby learned and watched, and when she was alone in the dark of night, she prayed and she practiced, perfecting her little voice so that she could again sing the notes of Mielikki. She regretted the tight binding of the cloth wrapped around her, though, and feared that it would take her some time to properly perfect control of her arms and legs.

  But she had time, she reminded herself.

  “She’s beautiful,” Kavita said to Niraj as she stood by Ruqiah’s cradle. The night outside was dark and quiet-even the wind seemed to have drifted off to sleep. “But her eyes are so blue! How can that be?”

  “They will darken with age,” Niraj assured her. “As did mine.”

  “And so her hair will fall out?” Kavita asked, teasing her bald-headed husband.

  “No,” he said, moving near and placing his hand gently on Kavita’s bare shoulder, and feeling, as he did, the raised skin of her long scar. He bent in and kissed her there, on the shoulder blade, where she had been marked so dramatically by the whip of a Netherese enforcer who had heard a whispered rumor that Kavita was practicing magic.

  That one had learned the hard way that Kavita was indeed a wizard, and so was her husband, Niraj, who had laid the man low with a bolt of lightning. How pathetic the brutal enforcer had seemed then, trying to work his arm and snap his whip from his back in the sand-Sand Kavita’s spell had then dug out from under him, and which had been abruptly put back, only now atop him, burying him alive, by the subsequent enchantment of Niraj and Kavita.

  “She will have the thick tresses of her mother, I am sure,” Niraj added, running his hand through Kavita’s hair. He could feel the tension within his wife. “What troubles you, my love?”

  “The Netherese are everywhere,” Kavita said. “With every pilgrimage, there are more to be seen, shadowing us from the hills, stopping and inspecting and questioning, always questioning.”

  “They are sand crabs,” Niraj agreed, “who came uninvited to our land. Our land I say, and we will be here long after they are gone, when the winds of Anauroch return and the land of Netheril is long forgotten!”

  “By then, we’ll be long forgotten,” Kavita replied.

  “But our descendants …,” Niraj replied, nodding his chin toward their baby girl.

  “We must take care, special care,” Kavita said. “For Ruqiah, more than for ourselves.”

  Niraj didn’t disagree. They were wizards, but secretly so, for the Netherese rulers of this land had forbidden the Bedine to practice the Art.

  Kavita looked around, left and right, then focused her gaze on the tent flap for a few moments, holding silent and cranOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  Niraj sucked in his breath. He had seen the birthmark before-or at least, had seen what he hoped was a birthmark.

  But now there could be no doubt, for this was no ordinary birthmark. A distinct figure, resembling a seven-pointed star, was set in a circular field of red.

  “Spellscar?” Niraj asked, seeming confused, for he had not heard of one quite this distinct before.

  Kavita pulled out the baby’s other arm and turned it to reveal the inside of the forearm, where a second marking loomed.

  “A curved blade?” Niraj asked, and peered closer. “Nay, a horn, a unicorn’s head! She is twice-marked?”

  “And her scars will be harder to conceal.”

  “She should wear them with pride!” Niraj insisted.

  “The Netherese would not agree.”

>   “Damn them! We are Bedine, not chattel!”

  Kavita put her finger over her husband’s lips to silence him. “Be at ease, my husband,” she quietly coaxed. “We are free upon our land. Let us not be bound by our hatred for those who claim dominance. Claim, but do not truly hold us in chains.”

  Niraj nodded and kissed his wife, and pulled her across the room to their bed.

  Little Ruqiah opened her eyes, having heard every word. They had not rewound the cloth around her and so for one of the rare times in her young life, her arms were free. She took the opportunity to flex them and move them, and felt indeed as if a great weight had at last been lifted from her. She managed to get both of her little arms into view long enough to study that which her parents had discussed.

  The images, the scars, brought her back to a morning long ago, when she had awakened in her tent beside her husband Drizzt. They were on their way back to Mithral Hall, unaware of the great changes that were even then beginning to befall their world.

  On that fateful day, Catti-brie had been struck by a falling strand of Mystra’s magical Weave, the Weave of Magic itself, and the blinding power of magical energy bared had overwhelmed her and driven her mad.

  The Weave of Mystra, the Lady of Magic, who carried as her symbol the seven-pointed star.

  She had not recovered from that interaction, and indeed, had inadvertently afflicted Regis with the insanity as well. In that confused state, Catti-brie had passed away, and Mielikki had taken her spirit from Mithral Hall.

  She looked at her right forearm, at the horn, the unicorn horn symbol of Mielikki, and gave thanks and praise, her blue eyes filling with tears of joy.

  The Year of the Six-Armed Elf (1464 DR) Netheril

  Ruqiah sat in the corner, pretending to play with the polished stones Niraj had given to her. It had been a long first year of life anew, full of deception that had greatly wearied this imposter child. She had crawled early, the Bedine believed, at only five months, and had walked before her tenth month, and quite capably, it seemed. InOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  She hadn’t talked yet, though she had much to say, and she wasn’t even sure of when such conversation might be appropriate, for in her previous life, Catti-brie hadn’t had much contact with children.

  She knew it was important to seem somewhat appropriate to her age, both for her own sake and for that of her parents, whom she had already come to love as if they were actually her family.

  Catti-brie had learned much in the year she had spent as Ruqiah. The Bedine were prisoners in their own land, this land that had been Anauroch, but was now known as Netheril, the heart of Netherese power. These conquering Netherese would not suffer Bedine to be more than simple tribesmen and nomads, wandering the wasted ways of the still barren and windblown lands that had once been the great magical desert of northern Faerun.

  Her outward appearances aside, Catti-brie was not a simple one-year-old child, and could not be. She had been studying the ways of arcane magic when the falling strands of Mystra’s Weave had assailed her in her previous life, and her time in Iruladoon, dancing and singing to the song of Mielikki, had given her greater insights into the magic she had previously known, and had also, of course, taught her how to call for the divine magic of the goddess who had come to hold her so close. Such skills required practice and repetition, as surely as the movements a warrior might make to defend and thrust forth his weapon.

  The little girl watched her parents carefully. Niraj left the tent, and Kavita was busy repairing some weapons-how ironic it was for Catti-brie to see the woman glancing around nervously, then calling upon some magic of her own to help her in mending the blade of a curving sword.

  Ironic, because her child was doing the same thing in the corner of the same room. Catti-brie held each of the polished stones close to her breast and whispered into them, imbuing them with symbols that only she could see with an enchantment she had cast upon herself. These invisible markings turned the stones into a sort of oracle, and the child began casting them forth, silently asking questions.

  With the stones providing guidance.

  She studied one answer for a long while, not really trusting what her magically enhanced eyes were telling her. It seemed too dangerous.

  She collected the stones and asked again, then tossed them out before her. The same response was given.

  Catti-brie nodded. She would find a way.

  That very night, her parents asleep across the room, Catti-brie cast an enchantment around the room, one designed to compel sleep. A bluish mist curled around her left arm with the magical enactment, but while it startled Catti-brie, she did not fear it. She slippib and quietly padded out of the tent on little bare feet.

  The camp was asleep. Somewhere out on the dusty plain, a wolf howled and was answered.

  The little girl was not afraid-certainly she did not feel threatened by any of Mielikki’s animal children. She moved past the tents and out into the wastes, following the path the oracle stones had shown to her.

  That night, in a secret and sheltered clearing, she planted her first garden shrine to the goddess. She returned to the place often, always at night, and when the t and not to Icewind Dale.. Fed to onribe moved on, as was their way, the girl created another garden shrine, and another after that. In these sanctified places, hidden amongst the rocks, Catti-brie found Mielikki more keenly, and was taught about the land, this land.

  A land that had been, not so long ago, a great desert.

  A land that would be, not so long hence, a desert once more.

  The Year of the First Circle (1468 DR) Netheril

  Soaking wet from the downpour, her hair still muddy from being thrown by Tahnood into the mud pit, five-year-old Catti-brie stood defensively in front of her fallen mother, her eyes glowing fiercely, the blue strands of magic wafting out of the sleeves of her torn sarong like living serpents.

  She noted the boots of the Netherese assassin, smoke wafting from them. Her lightning bolt had jolted the man violently into the air, so abruptly and powerfully that he had left his shoes behind!

  She shivered, humbled and overwhelmed by the power she had created-nay, not created, she realized, but by the power she had been allowed to access through the magic of her spellscar.

  She wanted to turn back and enact more healing magic on Kavita, but she didn’t dare. Not yet. The immediate threat was no more, obviously, for the two Netherese assassins were surely dead, their smoking, lifeless husks lying motionless, the entire front section of the tent torn away behind them.

  She prepared another spell, reaching up once more to the thunderstorm she had earlier conjured, ready to pull more lightning from it to vanquish any new enemies that might appear. The view of the encampment lay open before her now, the flashes of lightning above showing the tents and baskets and piled supplies in stark detail.

  “Ruqiah!” Niraj cried, sliding into view and skidding to a stop in the mud just outside the opening. He danced around, turning circles, clearly overwhelmed as he surveyed the scene. “Kavita!”

  Catti-brie waved her arms, dissipating the streams of magical blue energy, as Niraj stumbled in, scrambling past the Netherese bodies, half-running, half-diving to get to his daughter and wife.

  Other Desai appeared outside, rushing around the corners of nearby tents.

  Catti-brie wasn’t sure what to do. How could she begin to explain this scene before her? What might the tribal elders think, and what danger would she be creating for them all, given her secret identity?

  All of those questions swirled around in her thoughts, slamming at her sensibilities, demanding immediate action. The woman kept her wits and used her decades of experience, forcing herself to remember the primary question: what would a five-year-old girl do?

  She began to wail.

  Niraj wrapped her in a hug, but pulled her down with him as he fell over Kavita. The woman stirred as he touched her. “Assassins,” she whispered. “What happened? My Kavi
ta!”

  Other members of the tribe milled around the destroyed entryway, shaking their heads and mumbling.

  “Girl, what is this?” one man called to Ruqiah. He picked up a smoking boot, staring incredulously.

  “They hurt Ma,” the child blurted. Between sniffles she continued, “They wanted gold. They said they would hurt me if I didn’t get it.”

  “What gold?” Niraj asked, and he helped Kavita turOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  groaning and dropping a hand over her bloody wound-bloody, Niraj noted, but not bleeding.

  Ruqiah shrugged and began to cry again. “The thunder hit them,” she said innocently, pointing to the sky and wearing an expression to show that she did not understand.

  “The blessing of the storm is twofold this night,” remarked one of the women outside.

  “Netherese,” a man inspecting the smaller body said. “Netherese thieves.”

  “N’asr take them, then,” declared another, referring to the merciless god of the dead.

  “He laughs with At’ar in their coupling,” a woman said. “Or perhaps he was sated enough for this one moment to take the time to kill these dogs!”

  Kavita sat up then, although Niraj tried to keep her still. The gentle Bedine woman stared at her daughter intently.

  “What is it?” Niraj whispered to her, but she hushed him and shook her head. She brought her hand down her back to the wound, and continued to simply stare at Ruqiah.

  And more particularly, at her little hands, Catti-brie realized, for they were covered in Kavita’s blood from when she had healed the wound. She brought them down to her sides sheepishly and cried all the louder.

  “Search the camp!” one large man ordered. “There may be other assassins about.”

  Catti-brie had to sort it all out quickly, she knew, for the questions would only grow about what had actually happened, particularly when Kavita’s wound was more carefully inspected. The little girl put her head against Niraj’s shoulder, and very close to Kavita’s face.