The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  “But she has not crossed you.”

  “True enough,” said Lady Avelyere. “And thus I am content to do as you say, and not to punish her for her duplicity and secret devotion to this foreign goddess.”

  Parise Ulfbinder wore a sly grin, which elicited an exasperated sigh from Lady Avelyere. He was seeing right through her, of course. He recognized that she was wounded to think that this girl she had brought in and all but raised as her own might have a higher loyalty than to her and the Coven. To think that Ruqiah would walk away after all that she had done for her! And to think that Ruqiah would accept so much training, diverting the precious resources of the Coven toward one who knew that she would not remain!

  So indeed there was a measure of anger within Lady Avelyere, a sense of being wronged by this girl. But more than that, she had to admit, there was sadness and disappointment. Ruqiah had been quite the project for her, and yes, quite the protégé! Lady Avelyere had great affection for all of the sisters of her Coven, but none more than the curious little Bedine girl she had captured in a web years before.

  It would not be easy to let her go.

  Catti-brie rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and moved to the window, surprised that sunlight was streaming in. It was a west-facing window, after all, and usually remained quite dark until late in the day.

  She pulled aside the sash and stared at the sun lowering in the western sky.

  The woman backed up a step and turned to regard her unkempt bed. How could it be late in the afternoon? How could she have slept throughout the whole of the day?

  She thought back to the previous night and tried to recall going to bed.

  But she could not.

  She tried to recall what day it was, and when she was supposed to meet again with her parents in the Desai encampment. She had a vague recollection of speaking with them recently, but that didn’t make any sense to her.

  She dressed quickly, brushed her hair, and headed out, ready to apologize profusely for abandoning her duties that day.

  Just a short way down the hallway, she ran into Rhyalle, who greeted her with a big smile and a gentle touch.

  “Oh, but you are up!” Rhyalle said before Catti-brie could begin her apology. “We have been so worried about you.”

  “I was only in my room,” Catti-brie replied hesitantly. She half turned to point back the way she had come.

  “For a tenday,” Rhyalle replied. “We feared that you would never awaken, though Lady Avelyere assured us that your affliction would pass.”

  “Avelyere? Affliction?” Catti-brie stammered.

  “Yes, of course—oh, but you probably remember little of your fevered dreams. It was the spellscar, Lady Avelyere believes.” She grabbed Catti-brie’s arm and pulled back the sleeve, revealing the spellscar that resembled the seven stars of Mystra. “Others with such marks have suffered similar afflictions recently, from what we’ve been told. But it will pass—indeed, it has passed. You look so well!”

  Catti-brie couldn’t begin to sort through all of that confusing information. One thing did leap out at her, however: The last memory that would come to her was that of her parents, in their tent. Was it there that she had fallen? And if that was the case, how had she come back to her bed in the Coven?

  Catti-brie half-turned back the way she had come, then changed her mind and pushed past Rhyalle. “I must speak with Lady Avelyere,” she explained.

  But Rhyalle tightened her grip on Catti-brie’s arm and held her back, then shifted to block her way.

  “You need to remain in your room,” she said. “Lady Avelyere will come to you presently.”

  “No, I—”

  “Yes!” Rhyalle forcefully corrected. “I was coming this very moment to check in on you. Lady Avelyere has made these instructions quite clear. Come, back to your room.”

  Catti-brie hesitated.

  Rhyalle pushed her more forcefully. “No argument,” she insisted. “You are to await the lady in your room. You are not to leave your room until she has granted you permission.”

  She pushed again and Catti-brie relented.

  A few moments later, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, alone in her room, her thoughts spinning, her memories drifting in and around.

  “A tenday?” she asked aloud, and she couldn’t begin to sort that out. Even her memory was playing tricks on her now—first she had thought her last memories to be of the Desai encampment, but now she wondered if those were older recollections. For it seemed now that her most recent memories were of doing her chores around the Coven and anticipating her next visit to the Desai encampment. Yet even these seemed strangely removed, or had greatly receded at least.

  None of it made any sense to her. Something was wrong, very wrong. She pulled back both her sleeves and looked at her scars, even running her fingers over each. Nothing seemed amiss with them.

  Lady Avelyere came to her some time later, rushing to embrace her. She reiterated everything Rhyalle had told her, pausing every so often to gently kiss the young woman on the cheek and stroke her hair.

  “I don’t …,” Catti-brie started to say, and she paused and shook her head. “Nothing of the last days … of the last …” She shook her head again. “Nothing makes any sense.”

  “I know, dear,” Lady Avelyere replied. “Fevered dreams. You were quite ill, though I am not sure of your affliction. I sense it was tied to the spellscars you carry. We have heard of others—”

  “Yes, I have been told,” Catti-brie interrupted.

  “In all of those cases, the affliction passed quickly and showed no sign of returning,” Lady Avelyere added. “So it will be with you, I expect.” She kissed Catti-brie on the forehead again. “Now back to your rest, I demand.”

  Catti-brie didn’t resist as Lady Avelyere eased her back onto the bed.

  “I am expected soon in the home of my parents,” Catti-brie said.

  “Oh, no, no, no, girl,” Lady Avelyere replied. “You will not be going out of the Coven for many days. No, no. Not until I am certain that your affliction has truly passed. You were fortunate that you were struck down here, among friends with great means to help you to heal. Had you been outside of here, you likely would have died.”

  “They will worry—”

  “I will find a way to get word to them that you are well and will visit when you are able,” Lady Avelyere promised. She gave Catti-brie one last hug and quietly left the room, leaving Catti-brie alone with her jumbled thoughts.

  She chewed her lips and kept looking at her window, wanting nothing more than to be out of there and off to one of her secret gardens, where she might commune with Mielikki to garner some answers. Beyond the confusion of her apparent loss of memory, and of a tenday, something seemed wrong; somewhere, just below her consciousness, contradictions nagged at Catti-brie’s sensibilities.

  Catti-brie searched through the conversations with Rhyalle and Lady Avelyere over and over again, seeking some clues. One thing stood out: Why would Catti-brie have likely died had she been struck with her affliction outside of the Coven? Hadn’t both Rhyalle and Avelyere just told her that others had been similarly afflicted, and that in those instances, the affliction had passed with no serious ramifications?

  Catti-brie winced. Had Avelyere just lied to her?

  She focused her mind, determined to remember more, or to at least put some of the flitting memories floating through her thoughts into some sort of context and order.

  She looked to the door again, then to a small, decorative plant set in the corner of the room.

  Her gaze went back to the door as she chewed anew on her lip. Dare she?

  Caution bade her not to do it. The projection of Ruqiah bade her not to do it.

  But the wisdom of Catti-brie nagged at her, told her that something was truly amiss.

  She went to the plant and dragged it across to the opposite wall, out of sight of the door, which opened into the room and would shield anyone entering from that particular corner fo
r a moment at least.

  She glanced around again. In all of her years here, she had never attempted anything this dangerous.

  But she needed to know.

  She began to whisper a long and solemn spell. From inside the Coven, in the floating city of Shade Enclave, she called to Mielikki.

  She asked for guidance, asked for some divine intervention to clear the confusion in her mind. The unicorn-shaped spellscar began to glow, a bluish light wafted over her forearm like the mist enveloping a mountain stream on a cold autumn morning.

  She found no answer immediately, but the notion of a simpler spell came to her.

  She cast a spell to dispel magic, first as a divine spell, then again in the arcane school of magic. She cast it upon herself, repeatedly, and more assuredly each time as she came to recognize that yes, indeed, the fog in her mind was magically inspired.

  That twisting fog began to clear, just a bit, but that one piece of the puzzle, a memory of Lady Avelyere out in the desert, at her secret garden, was all that Catti-brie needed in order to piece the rest of the damaging story together.

  Avelyere knew!

  She knew!

  All of it!

  Catti-brie’s breath came in short gasps as she tried to sort out her last conversation with the woman in light of this new realization. She had told Avelyere of her previous life!

  What did that mean for her plans? What did that mean for Drizzt and the others?

  She couldn’t focus on that, however, as other issues pressed in on her. Lady Avelyere’s parting words spun over and over in her thoughts.

  Then she unwound it, and looked at the door with her mouth hanging open, as Lady Avelyere’s last promise echoed in her thoughts. Her heart beat faster as she replayed those words.

  Catti-brie had been with Niraj and Kavita immediately preceding her encounter with Lady Avelyere in her secret garden. The timeline of Avelyere’s explanation of Catti-brie’s affliction didn’t work. If Catti-brie ever again spoke with her parents, she would discern that lie.

  “Oh no,” Catti-brie mouthed. Lady Avelyere would surely go to Niraj and Kavita, not to comfort them, but to make sure that Catti-brie never again had the opportunity to speak with her parents.

  “Oh, no,” the woman whispered, breathing hard. She felt moisture gathering in her eyes.

  She thought of Drizzt and the clear risk to her mission. She thought of her duty.

  But she thought of her duty to her parents, too, to Niraj and Kavita who had shown her nothing but love and kindness.

  She had to leave, she knew, then and there.

  “Forgive me, Mielikki,” she whispered, crying openly now.

  For she knew what she must do.

  “What is she doing?” Lady Avelyere asked Rhyalle, who stood beside her on the high balcony, huddled under a blanket against the driving rain. Down below and in the distance, they noted Ruqiah’s movements, the young woman darting from corner-to-corner, glancing back over her shoulder again and again as if in fear that she was being followed.

  “Fleeing Shade Enclave?” Lady Avelyere asked.

  “The wall is the other way,” Rhyalle replied.

  A peal of thunder shook the ground and the rain intensified.

  Lady Avelyere had hit Ruqiah with a barrage of spells to confuse her, to block her memory, to suggest things were other than what they were. Still, she couldn’t deny her surprise that Ruqiah—Catti-brie—had found the wherewithal to leave her room, let alone the Coven’s compound.

  “If she leaves Shade Enclave, bring her back in chains,” Lady Avelyere instructed.

  “And if she goes to the encampment of the Desai?”

  “Do not let her.”

  “She is … difficult to contain,” Rhyalle admitted.

  Lady Avelyere started to respond, but paused and nodded for Rhyalle to look back at Ruqiah. The young woman rushed across a clearing and into a small storehouse, glancing around one last time before closing the door behind her.

  “A curious choice,” said Rhyalle.

  “You know that building?”

  “Storage,” Rhyalle answered. “Oils and lanterns and torches mostly. Is it possible that Ruqiah plans to search the sewers of Shade—”

  A tremendous bolt of blinding lightning interrupted her, and had both Rhyalle and Lady Avelyere falling back in surprise. The thunderous, stone-shaking retort following immediately, indeed almost instantly, because the bolt had struck only a short distance from the balcony on which they stood, and with such power that it jolted them into the air and both nearly tumbled down.

  They clutched at each other for balance, and both stared out from the balcony to the small storage building, which had been hit directly by the blast.

  Smaller explosions rocked the area, no doubt as casks of oil ignited, and flames leaped up against the driving rain. “Ruqiah,” Rhyalle breathed.

  A final, massive explosion shook the square, shook the entire section of Shade Enclave, and a huge fireball curled up from the storehouse like some fiery mushroom, lifting skyward, to dissipate into steam and smoke. Below it lay the utterly destroyed building, a pile of smoldering debris sputtering in the driving rain.

  And Ruqiah did not come forth.

  CHAPTER 19

  GODLY INSIGHT

  The Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR) Mithral Hall

  THE TORCHLIGHT FLICKERED, CASTING WILD SHADOWS IN THE VAST EMPTY chamber as the solitary figure made his way along the narrow bridge. A massive drop to his left and right only accentuated the loneliness of the scene: a single dwarf, walking hesitantly, his torch only barely chasing away the darkness.

  His step slowed even more as he approached the central platform on this great bridge that spanned the chasm known as Garumn’s Gorge. His footsteps echoed, hard boots on stone. The shuddering torchlight showed that he was trembling.

  He paused at the front rim of the circular platform. Across from him, in the darkness, he heard the sound of water—Bruenor’s Falls—which marked the final run to the eastern gate of Mithral Hall.

  For Bruenor, the return proved only bitter, not bittersweet.

  He had come this way with the caravan only a tenday before, but hadn’t slowed and hadn’t even dared look at the podium on the northern side of this ceremonial platform. In his short time in Mithral Hall, he had not come back this way to the east, spending his days in the great Undercity, and even venturing to the western gate and to Keeper’s Dale beyond, arguably the place of his greatest triumph.

  Keeper’s Dale was heavily guarded now, with fortified positions and war machines all around the higher peaks. Guarded against orcs, Bruenor … Reginald Roundshield of Citadel Felbarr … had been told, for the troublesome creatures had become very active of late.

  Yet again.

  How strange it had been for Bruenor to hear the discussions about him, questioning his own judgment as king that century before, when he had made peace with King Obould Many-Arrows. Back and forth went the arguments, and they sounded to Bruenor much like the same debates he had heard, and had been party to, in the days of the treaty!

  Nothing had been resolved. The land had known relative peace, but to many of the current dwarves of Mithral Hall, it clearly seemed more the crouch of the tiger before the killing spring than any true and lasting alliance, partnership, or even tolerance between Mithral Hall and the orcs. And worse, they whispered, now the orcs had made inroads into the kingdoms all around their own land, and knew the defenses and, perhaps, how to exploit those defenses.

  Bruenor’s gaze locked on the podium, on the parchment spread atop it, secured by a heavy piece of clear crystal. He swallowed hard and inched up.

  He saw the signature, his signature, and the crude mark of King Obould.

  “Did ye lead me wrong, elf?” he asked quietly, as if speaking to Drizzt, who had counseled him on this very important decision, who indeed had lobbied him strongly to sign the treaty.

  “Ah, but I can’no know,” Bruenor whispered.

&
nbsp; “What’s to know then, eh?” came a voice behind him, startling him—and all the more surprising because it was not accompanied by the light of a second torch. He turned around to see Ragged Dain, who had obviously followed him out here, secretly and stealthily.

  “If this paper’ll hold in these times,” Bruenor replied.

  “Bah, that treaty,” said the old warrior. “I remember when it was signed. Never did much like it.”

  “King Bruenor was wrong, then?”

  “Hush yer mouth, boy!” Ragged Dain scolded. “Ye don’t be talking ill o’ the king o’ them whose hall ye’re walking about!”

  “It was a long time ago,” Bruenor replied.

  Ragged Dain came up beside him and put his hand on the crystal mount, sliding his fingers slowly over the signatures of Bruenor and Obould. “Aye, it was, but be sure that I’m rememberin’, and so’s King Emerus Warcrown, don’t ye doubt, particularly now when these new orcs are in a fightin’ mood all across the Silver Marches.”

  “Are ye thinking it was wrong for King Bruenor to sign the treaty?”

  Ragged Dain didn’t answer for a bit, but just stared at the parchment. Then he shrugged. “Who can know? Meself was arguin’ against it, to be sure. Telled King Emerus that personally, though I was but a young fighter of little renown at the time.”

  “King Emerus stood here for the signing,” Bruenor said, and he remembered well the look Emerus had given him before he had moved up to add his signature, an expression more of resignation than of antipathy.

  “Aye, he did,” said Ragged Dain. “Weren’t his choice, mind ye.”

  “He would have preferred war.”

  “Most dwarves would’ve!”

  “But not King Bruenor.” Bruenor purposely said it in a way that could be construed as accusatory, to gauge Ragged Dain’s expression.

  The old veteran merely shrugged and wore no such agreeing scowl. “Alas for King Bruenor, then. He weren’t for findin’ any support for a war. Not from Silverymoon, not from Sundabar.” He paused and took a deep breath, and Bruenor knew well what was coming next. “Not even from Felbarr.”