The Companions s-1

by R. A. Salvatore

  He slammed against her, pressing her back into the wall, and they were so close, face-to-face, Donnola’s sword arm up over her head, pinned to the wall by Regis’s trapping blade.

  The tip asked, and Catti-brie nodded.we"›“Eh?”im of her dirk came against his ribs at the same moment his own found her ribs.

  He had taken her breath away, and lost his own in the process, for he could not draw any air so close to this beautiful creature.

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  Donnola kissed him suddenly, passionately, and pressed out from the wall.

  Regis felt his knees go weak and it was all he could do to hold his balance. But then Donnola broke the kiss and he nearly overbalanced forward once more, and might have fallen on his face.

  Except that the woman’s rapier prodded into his chest in what would have been a clean kill.

  She laughed at him. “You will learn,” she said, and she spun away as gracefully as any butterfly and skipped out of the room.

  Regis just stood there, his blades lowered, feeling positively naked, his thoughts spinning helplessly. He tried to focus on the fight, on the flow that had garnered him such an advantage. He tried to learn from this moment, but that was a useless exercise with the heat of Donnola’s kiss so warm in his mind and body.

  To think that she had kissed him so!

  She was only eight years his senior, in her mid-twenties, and so smart and beautiful and brilliant with the blade, and brilliant in her diplomacy …

  Brilliant in her diplomacy?

  Regis shook his head to clear the cobwebs and looked at the door where Donnola had departed-had departed after disarming him with an unexpected kiss and defeating him in the match!

  Brilliant diplomacy?

  Pericolo’s index finger jabbed down onto the map spread wide on a table and a wry smile came over his face.

  Donnola looked at the map, a nautical chart of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and perhaps the most complete one in existence. For this had been a project Pericolo had been pursuing for years now, as long as Donnola could remember and more. The Grandfather had spent a small fortune on the detailed nautical chart, at one point offering any boat that went out a small bounty on soundings around the various reefs and shoals. And years earlier, Pericolo had hired the best known cartographer of this sea, and had brought him to Delthuntle, giving him a fine set of rooms and all the charts they could purchase to compile this one grand work.

  When Wigglefingers took Spider out for his morning dives, the wizard knew well where they were going and how deep the water would be.

  Donnola looked up from the map to regard the mage then, as he stood to the side passively, having obviously already received Pericolo’s big announcement, and when Donnola shifted her gaze to consider her Grandfather, she found there the most contented and satisfied grin she had ever seen from the man.

  And then she understood. “You found it,” she said breathlessly. Pericolo just kept grinning.

  “The Lichwreck,” Donnola whispered, looking back to the pointing finger, settled just south of Aglarond.

  “Ebonsoul,” Pericolo added, referring to a powerful lich, reputedly sealed inside a silver coffin aboard his boat, Thepurl’s Diamond. According to legend, the ship had been sunk by pirates around the time of the Spellplague. It was rumored to hold crates stuffed with the great magical treasure hoard of Ebonsoul, taken from his lair led them at a great pace o profoundlyon in the Chondalwood.

  All around the southeastern stretches of the Sea of Fallen Stars, mariners whispered about the Lichwreck; it had been a topic of conversation at many of the parties Donnola had attended. She had always thought of it as rumor and legend, a source of intrigue and daydreams, and fantasies of great power and wealth. She had always considered the stories greatly exaggerated, a way for idle noblemen to puff up their peacock feathers with feigned adventure, but Donnola knew well that Pericolo truly believed in the stories of Thepurl’s Diamond’s treasure hoard. He hadn’t pursued his search for any gain of power or wealth even, but because he considered this to be his ultimate adventure.

  He would be the man who salvaged Ebonsoul’s treasures, and in doing so, Pericolo Topolino would forever etch his name among the legends of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

  “How do you know it’s …?” Donnola started to ask.

  “It is there,” Pericolo answered flatly. “Settled in a trench twelve leagues southwest of Aglarond’s southwestern-most point.”

  Donnola swallowed hard and stared back at the map. “How do you know?”

  “I have suspected it for a long time,” Pericolo answered.

  “I have summoned water elementals around the area to investigate for us,” Wigglefingers added. He stepped to the side of the room, to a hutch covered with astrolabes and rolled charts and a pair of spyglasses. From a drawer he produced an item covered in a black cloth and returned to the table.

  Donnola and Wigglefingers stared each other in the eye as the mage slowly removed the cloth, revealing a daggerlike shard of glass-no, not glass, Donnola realized, but a piece of a broken mirror. She tilted her head not sure what to make of the curious item.

  “Go ahead and look into it,” Pericolo said. “You are too large for the shard’s magic to activate in any substantive way.”

  Donnola took the glass from Wigglefingers and peered at her reflection, or what part of it she could see in the shard, which was not more than three fingers’ breadth at its thickest point.

  She saw half her smile and one brown eye … no, half her frown and a bloodshot brown eye. Perplexed, she drew back and looked at her companions.

  Wigglefingers, smiling, held out his hand for the shard and Donnola handed it over.

  “Were it the complete mirror and not just a sliver, I would never have allowed you to peer into it,” Pericolo said.

  Donnola shrugged, growing more curious still as she looked to the wizard, who produced from one of the many pockets in his grand robe a small rat. The creature climbed around his hand as he rolled it over for Donnola to see. Wigglefingers bent to the floor at the side of the table, rat in one hand, mirror shard in the other, and placed both down so that the rat could get a look at itself.

  Donnola gasped and nearly jumped out of her shoes as a second rat, identical to the first, ran out of the mirror, rushing wildly right for the first, who responded in kind. With sudden, seemingly insane ferocity, the rodents attacked each other, biting and rolling in a confused ball that quickly became bloody. Rat screeches filled the air.

  “Stop it!” Donnola pleaded, horrified by the sight. She looked to Wigglefingers, who was already living up to his nickname, his hand waving in the air. themselvesI ‘on

  He cast a spell, a dispel actually, and the air shimmered with magical energy and one of the rats simply disappeared.

  “What?” the young halfling woman asked with a gasp.

  “A Mirror of Opposition,” Pericolo explained. “Any who look into it will find a replica of themselves stepping forth, and to do battle.”

  “And it teems still with considerable magic, though it has obviously been shattered and has lain at the bottom of the sea for a hundred years,” Wigglefingers explained.

  “Ebonsoul had one, so say the tales,” Pericolo remarked.

  “And you found this …?” Donnola paused and poked her finger down on the spot on the nautical map.

  Pericolo nodded somberly. “It is the Lichwreck. I have suspected it for some time. And now I have the means to get to it.”

  Donnola nodded as she digested the words, then her eyes went wide as she came to understand them, as the end of that statement, “the means to get to it,” rang clear in her mind.

  “You have come to love him as a son,” she protested, barely able to find her voice.

  Pericolo looked at her, at first seeming surprised by her remark, but then with a clever smile. “And you more than that?” he retorted.

  Donnola laughed it off, but her grandfather didn’t stop
grinning.

  “Do you deny that you love Spider?” Donnola asked.

  “Why would I? I brought him into our family as truly as if he were my own chil-grandchild,” Pericolo replied. “His father resides in a house I purchased and survives on funds I deliver.”

  “Yet you mean to send him to do this,” Donnola said dryly. “You will send him to the depths in search of this shipwreck.”

  “Danger is a part of life, my girl, and an important part. Never forget that!”

  “You will send him to his death!”

  “I deny your description! For years, I have searched for Ebonsoul’s lost treasure, and now it is mine, within my grasp.”

  “Because of Spider.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you value this treasure more than you value-” Donnola started to accuse, but a flash of anger in Pericolo’s eyes stopped her short.

  “It is precisely my love of the boy that leads me to offer this to him,” the Grandfather argued. “Oh, but that I had his gift of the genasi! Of all the adventures I have known, of all the victories and the plunder, this would eclipse them as surely as a giant moon could block the sun!”

  “And eclipse them in danger?”

  Pericolo snorted at the thought. “I send you into the lair of sand jackals every tenday and I love you more dearly than any other.”

  “That is different,” Donnola replied. “I am older and more worldly.”

  “Not when you started,” Pericolo shot back. “Think back, my pretty granddaughter. How old were you when you attended your first ball in Delthuntle? It was before your sixteenth birthday, I believe, and Spider is nearly two years beyond that mark. Alpirs and UntarisI ‘onBy the time you had reached his age, you had attended scores of such festivities in the pits of intrigue, and more than one of those balls ended with a body found in a nearby alleyway, yes? And by your eighteenth birthday, you had, with my blessing and encouragement, robbed a dozen palaces, pickpocketed half the lords of Aglarond, and killed a trio of assassins, including two in one fight! Should I have hidden Donnola in a room as we do Spider?”

  She sputtered but had no real response.

  “Or do you now believe that I did not care for you, and was reckless?”

  “That was different,” she said softly and without much conviction. “He is ready to earn his way, to step up to a position of authority and responsibility.”

  “Different,” she whispered again, shaking her pretty head and swallowing hard.

  “How so, girl?”

  “I went to the homes of nobility, but you would send him to the depths in pursuit of the treasure vault of a lich.”

  Pericolo looked at the nautical map spread before him, at the spot where his poking finger had dented the parchment, the spot where he believed Thepurl’s Diamond lay. For a long while, he said nothing, but then he looked up at Donnola and nodded.

  “The greater the risk, the greater the reward.” He wore a determined smile.

  “The risk to Spider, the reward to Pericolo?” she replied sarcastically.

  The Grandfather narrowed his eyes. Donnola sucked in her breath, unused to seeing a threatening expression from him directed at her. “All glory to Spider if he succeeds,” he said evenly. “All glory and a pick of the treasures. What might I need with them, indeed? Nay, it is the adventure, the conquest, and I shall oversee it, and forevermore, when my name is spoken along the coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars, it will be mentioned that it was I, Pericolo Topolino, who salvaged the Lichwreck! And Spider will be mentioned, as well.

  “Do you not understand, my girl?” he asked with great exasperation. “I offer Spider a chance at immortality, a chance to make a name that will resound around Aglarond for centuries hence!”

  “And if he fails?”

  “We mourn him and find another who might be up to the task,” the Grandfather answered without a moment’s hesitation. He gave a little chuckle and shook his head, staring hard at Donnola. “I will not live in a walled fortress, nor will you. Look past your personal feelings for Spider. Is caution what you truly desire, my beloved granddaughter? Have I taught you nothing, then?”

  Donnola swallowed hard.

  “What do you feel when you enter the window of a rich fool’s house unbidden?” he asked. “What does Donnola feel when the shadows around her reveal the presence of an assassin, or a deadly blade comes forth against her?”

  The young halfling woman didn’t blink.

  “Alive,” Pericolo answered for her. “You feel alive. This is what I have taught you, this is how you have lived. Indeed, this is how I have lived! Is there any other way?”

  Donnola lowered her gaze in shame. The adventures she had known over the last decade came flooding back to her-how many times had she stood at the edge of her own grave? And Pericolo had known the razor-thin edge of disaster more than she in those laAlpirs and UntarisI ‘onst ten years, by far. From everything she had ever heard of her grandfather, of the Grandfather, the last ten years had been the quietest decade of his most adventurous life.

  “Do you doubt my love for you?” Pericolo asked.

  “Never,” Donnola answered without the slightest hesitation, her gaze shooting up so that she could look Pericolo in the eye as she answered him. “If I could offer you this dive, would you take it?”

  The woman licked her lips. She didn’t answer, but both she, the Grandfather, and Wigglefingers, who was quietly chuckling, knew the answer, of course.

  “Then do not doubt my love for Spider, either,” Pericolo begged. “I offer him the grandest adventure of all, Thepurl’s Diamond!”

  “A cursed ship of mighty undead.”

  “A sunken ship of grand treasures,” Pericolo corrected. “And I know where it is, and Spider, with the help of Wigglefingers, can get there. Ah, but how I envy the young one!”

  Donnola started to reply, but stopped short. Would she make the dive to Thepurl’s Diamond, if that were possible?

  Of course. Without hesitation.

  A smile, not of defeat, but of acceptance, began to spread over Donnola’s face, and she found herself envying Spider more than a little, as well.

  Regis entered the small but well-appointed cottage with a bit of trepidation, as he always did when he came here. He couldn’t shake the memory of those early days, when he had often found Eiverbreen passed out on the floor, smelling of whiskey.

  He came upon his father in the living room, fast asleep in a chair, but by the look of his clothing-only a bit disheveled-he seemed to be taking an honest nap. Regis, who had lived his previous life lying on the banks of Maer Dualdon in Ten-Towns with an un-baited fishing line tied to his toe, could certainly relate to that.

  He quietly stoked the fire in the hearth and took a seat opposite Eiverbreen, then patiently waited. His duties at Morada Topolino were done for the day, so he was in no hurry.

  He watched the halfling across from him, studying Eiverbreen’s expressions. The man was dreaming, though not contentedly.

  Had Eiverbreen Paraffin ever known contentment?

  Regis silently chastised himself-a typical sensation of late-as he watched the man. He recalled when Eiverbreen had dunked him in the sea-and truly he thought that he would drown! — to learn if Regis was possessed of the same blessing as his lost mother. And then had come the dangerous dives in any and every weather. Eiverbreen had thrown his son to the sea, and above all else, Regis had to get the oysters-that single obsession fueled by the man’s need for drink at any cost to himself or to his son. For a long while, Regis had resented Eiverbreen, as any child born of such a troubled father might.

  But Regis had been no child in Delthuntle. He had seen poverty before, and had felt the sting of hopelessness that so often accompanied it. In Calimport, in his first youth, Regis had known many Eiverbreens, indeed had quietly championed them even while he was rising within the guilds of the ruling pashas.

  He couldn’t help but smile when he recalled one particularly lucrative heist: He wasn’t a
bout to get away with it, he had soon enoughAlpirs and UntarisI ‘on realized, for the golden coins of the pasha he had robbed had all been cleverly marked. So Regis had taken that sack of coins to one of the most destitute reaches of Calimport in the dark of night and had strewn the treasure up and down the lane! The next day, every tavern and bakery in that region of the city became flooded with the dirty and the downtrodden.

  Regis had known, and shown, mercy and compassion to the unfortunates of Calimport, and yet it had taken him many years to acquire the same level of compassion for this halfling now sitting before him.

  The resentment had only worsened in the first years Eiverbreen had lived in this house, for Pericolo, on Regis’s demand, had indeed made it harder for Eiverbreen to purchase alcohol. No tavern would sell the liquor to him, on order from Pericolo, and Eiverbreen hadn’t taken well to that demand, and had blamed his son, Spider, most of all. Oh, he still found liquor, to this day, despite every attempt by Regis to tamp down the sources.

  Only gradually had the two settled into a truce. They didn’t discuss Eiverbreen’s drinking, for there was no common ground to be found there, but Eiverbreen had stopped blaming his son, openly at least, and had even occasionally expressed gratitude that Regis had cared enough to try. And Regis had stopped resenting the downtrodden halfling, instead coming to see Eiverbreen in the same manner he had viewed those poor souls on the dirty streets of Calimport. He couldn’t “fix” Eiverbreen, but so be it.

  The realization that Eiverbreen wasn’t actually his father had allowed the reborn halfling the emotional room he needed for objectivity.

  Eiverbreen snorted and licked his lips, moving his head side to side suddenly, then opened one lazy eye to look back at Regis.

  “Hey boy,” he said through sleep-sticky lips.

  “Father,” Regis lied.

  Eiverbreen rubbed a hand over his face, sitting up straighter in the process.

  “I’m seein’ you less,” Eiverbreen slurred.

  “I’ve much to do now.”

  “With them Topolinos.”