The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  But no, it was an illusion, Catti-brie realized, and one facilitated by the change in her vision, back to mere human eyes. Her shapeshift was failing!

  She focused then on her arcane magic, putting her memorized levitation spell into her thoughts—but they were jumbled thoughts, and she couldn’t sort through the haze. The spell wasn’t making sense to her, the words weren’t coming clear. Something was wrong, very wrong! The flight became strained—she could feel her wings crackling with reversion.

  Normally, Catti-brie would have climbed before the reversion, giving her farther to fall, and thus more time to enact her levitation. But the words to that spell simply wouldn’t come to her.

  It was Lady Avelyere. The diviner had found her and was attacking her magically, dispelling her dweomers, jumbling her thoughts.

  Down she sped, angling steeply, even tucking her wings in a full stoop, knowing that she had to get to the ground as quickly as possible. She noted a stand of pine trees and soared out that way while maintaining the dive.

  She felt the magic evaporating and pulled up with all her strength to break her dive. It worked, but a moment later, she felt her arms, not wings, at her sides. Still some fifty feet from the ground, she began to tumble, a human again, and in a place where no human should be. She fought to recite the levitation, but couldn’t remember the words in any sensible order, and hadn’t the time anyway.

  She crashed into a thick pine, breaking branches and limbs, bouncing down through the tangle to the lowest branch, where she caught a handhold, but only for a moment before falling free the last dozen feet, to land flat on her back on the ground, where she knew no more.

  “The city is in disarray!” Rhyalle reported, bursting into the room alongside Eerika.

  Lady Avelyere regarded them briefly before turning back to the window, and offered no immediate response. She could see the tumult in the streets below the Coven, with couriers running all around, no doubt delivering messages from one lord to another.

  Something had happened. Something powerful and dramatic, and not just within the Coven, where they had felt the shift keenly. “What does it mean, Lady?” Eerika dared to ask.

  “We don’t know what it is, so how could she answer that question?” Rhyalle scolded.

  “Have you done as I asked?” Lady Avelyere asked, turning around to aim her question at Eerika. The younger woman nodded. “Then proceed.”

  Eerika looked to Rhyalle for support. They hadn’t started their run to Avelyere’s chambers together, but had met up in the wide foyer of the main building, Rhyalle returning from the streets, Eerika from the old library.

  “Lady, the words do not easily form—” Eerika started.

  “Try,” Lady Avelyere ordered. “It is a minor dweomer.”

  Eerika took a deep breath, then lifted her hand up, palm upward, and began to quietly recite a spell. A few heartbeats later, a burst of light formed in her hand, glowing brightly for just a moment, then growing dimmer. Eerika lowered her hand, but the globe of light remained, hovering in the air before her.

  “By the gods,” Lady Avelyere breathed, and she turned back to the window, but looking up to the sky and not to the streets below. Earlier that day, the sisters had found confusion, where spells they had prepared had become jumbled and useless. If that wasn’t curious enough, now Eerika, a young magic-user unskilled in the old ways, had just enacted a spell of light creation, and from an incantation a century and more thought lost to the world.

  “What does it mean, Lady?” Eerika asked.

  “We are a magocracy,” Lady Avelyere quietly replied. “It means that we will know confusion, then we will find transition, then we will know renewed power.”

  The two younger women looked to each other with great concern.

  “Mental agility,” Lady Avelyere said to them, turning around to offer them a comforting look. “The Empire of Netheril stands above because we are wiser and more clever. We have felt such cosmic … curiosities, before.” She nodded and motioned to the door. “Go and rest, and when you are renewed, prepare your spells anew. Let us see what tomorrow brings.”

  The two women bowed and departed, and Lady Avelyere turned back to her window. Something was going on here beyond her comprehension, beyond anything she had known in her life, she sensed, and feared, and hoped. The world was always in flux—her dear Parise had shared some concerns of “Cherlrigo’s Darkness,” had even hinted that the fabric of magic might yet grow unsteady. Yes, something was in flux, and had not Lady Avelyere herself discovered the rebirth of this favored mortal of the goddess Mielikki?

  And now this confusing day, and what it would ultimately mean, Lady Avelyere could not be sure.

  But whatever might come from this magical hiccup—for that was the only word she could think of to describe this day’s events—Lady Avelyere meant to benefit from it.

  The clever ones always did.

  Painful spasms drew Catti-brie back to consciousness. She lay on the ground, blood all around, one leg bent weirdly, surely broken, and one arm throbbing, likely also broken. The sun was very low in the western sky, so she understood that she had lain there for many hours. She was lucky to be alive, she realized.

  Her levitation had failed her—why hadn’t she been able to recall the words and cadence of the spell? And why had her spellscar power of shapeshifting worn away so quickly?

  The spinning questions brought her back to her fear that Lady Avelyere had found her, and had brought her down. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked all around, desperate, though turning her head caused her more discomfort.

  Catti-brie used all of the discipline she could muster, training earned in two lifetimes, forcing aside her fears, forcing herself to focus. She thought of other incantations she had prepared, but none seemed helpful at that moment, and worse, none came clear in her thoughts. If Avelyere arrived before her, would she even be able to muster the slightest of cantrips to defend herself?

  She fell back to her greatest safeguard, her most favored dweomer, and concentrated on the weather. She would bring in a storm, yes, and if any enemies appeared, she would strike them dead with powerful bolts of lightning.

  She enacted the magic, so she believed, but she needed time for the clouds to gather and the storm to coalesce.

  And more than that, she realized, as she began to swoon, she needed to stop her bleeding.

  She began to pray, calling to the goddess for spells of healing, and to her great relief, unlike the arcane magical spells, these words, these prayers, did flow through her. She saw the light blue mist gathering at her wounded right arm, flowing from under the wide sleeve of her robe.

  The spell came forth and Catti-brie felt a rush of gentle warmth, smooth as satin and decidedly comforting, flowing through her body, sweeping through her like a cresting wave and then breaking with a burst of hot energy upon her broken right arm, upon the very spellscar of the goddess whose favor had granted her this power.

  With a trembling left hand, Catti-brie pulled back the sleeve of her robe. She looked upon the spellscar, the head of Mielikki’s unicorn, as the mist dissipated, and she blinked repeatedly, wondering if it was a trick of the light, perhaps, or of her own light-headedness with her loss of blood. For while the scar remained, it seemed even more distinct than before, more like a tattoo now than a birthmark, a unicorn’s golden horn and with the creature’s head similarly outlined in gold.

  Another wave of pain brought a grimace and a reminder, and Catti-brie began again her chant, asking the goddess for more. The mist came forth from the unicorn, her divine powers intact and, she thought, even more powerful than before.

  She cast a third minor healing spell, and then, her thoughts clearing, brought forth a spell to heal more serious wounds, focusing her energy on her leg. She felt better immediately within the warm cocoon of the blue-bathing light, like the softest of ocean waters sweeping away the weeds. She sat up straighter, and even flexed her knee as the leg straightened out before h
er.

  She would survive her fall. And she would likely walk again the very next day, once her divine powers had renewed, and she could enact further healing upon her battered form.

  Catti-brie took a deep breath and held it, then peeled back the sleeve of her left arm.

  The seven-pointed star remained, and like the unicorn head, it seemed more distinct now, like the work of an ink artist, except that its sketching was not golden, but blood red, like a web of angry veins pulsing out the marker of Mystra.

  What did it mean?

  Catti-brie tried to recall an arcane spell from her repertoire, but alas, like the levitation earlier, those memorized dweomers were lost to her, a jumble of nonsensical words.

  On a hunch, she considered one, her favored fireball. She closed her eyes and thought back to the very first time she had cast that spell, in another body a century before, and she tried to fight her way through the incantation jumble.

  Now the words sorted, and she heard her own chant, part ancient, part new, and a fiery pea appeared in her hand. She threw it out and willed it out from her, into the air and away from the trees, and there it exploded appropriately, a burgeoning fireball, and the blue tendrils of magical energies glowed around her left arm, around the symbol of the seven-pointed star.

  Catti-brie stared at it and shook her head.

  What could it mean?

  As she continued to stare upon the spot, the flames dissipating to nothingness, something else caught her eye, and brought her more questions. She saw the first twinkles of starlight as twilight descended upon the land.

  But where was her conjured storm?

  She looked all around. The sky was perfectly clear. Her spell had failed, utterly.

  What could it mean?

  “What does it mean?” Lady Avelyere asked Lord Parise Ulfbinder the very next day. She and her minions were managing to enact some magical spells, but only barely and only selectively.

  “Instability,” Parise replied, and he seemed, and sounded, quite shaken, Lady Avelyere noted. “I spoke with Lord Draygo Quick this morning. It is, perhaps, as we feared.”

  “Explain.”

  The Netherese lord shook his head. “Something is upon the world—both worlds!—but there is nothing I can yet explain. The Twelve Princes have sought out the wisdom of the priests.”

  “The old ways? The old gods?”

  “Where is your former student?” Parise asked. “You have located her?”

  “Ruqiah?” Lady Avelyere held up her hands helplessly.

  “You said that you did not believe her to have perished in the fire.”

  “No, certainly it was not her withered body that we found among the rubble.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “Nowhere near to us, I am sure,” Lady Avelyere replied. “I have magically surveyed all of Netheril—”

  “West,” Parise interrupted. “Search in the west. The Sword Coast. Luskan. Icewind Dale.”

  Lady Avelyere looked at him curiously. “What do you know?”

  “Of course I did my own research and inquiries after you came to me with that most interesting tale,” he answered. “A lone mountain, you described.”

  “It could be anywhere.”

  “It could be Icewind Dale.”

  Lady Avelyere shrugged, for the name meant nothing to her.

  “A stretch of barren tundra through the Spine of the World Mountains north of the city of Luskan,” Parise explained. “Few live there, fewer still travel there, but it was once the home of Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor Battlehammer, and his adopted daughter, Catti-brie.”

  “As was Mithral Hall …”

  “And the towns of Icewind Dale are built in the shadow of a singular mountain, rising from the tundra.”

  Lady Avelyere licked her lips and digested the news. It could be.

  “Direct your search between Shade Enclave and Icewind Dale,” Parise commanded. “You will likely find this missing girl.”

  “And then?”

  “Watch her. Do not return her to Shade Enclave. Let us learn what we may, but safely from afar.”

  “We remain five years from her appointed meeting,” Lady Avelyere reminded him.

  “A speck of time in the cosmic calendar. But more than enough time for clever Lady Avelyere and her Coven to find this wayward child, yes?” The woman nodded.

  “The libraries of Shade Enclave are being opened to all practitioners,” Parise added as Lady Avelyere turned to go. “We must once again adapt our magic, it would seem.”

  “The old ways?”

  The lord shrugged. “Who can know?”

  “Ruqiah, perhaps,” Lady Avelyere quipped, and she shook her head and smiled resignedly, helplessly, and Parise responded in kind.

  Catti-brie felt much better the next day, even before she bathed herself once more in the healing magic of Mielikki. Her arcane spells remained a jumble and she discovered that she could barely understand the delicate inflections of the incantations outlined in her spellbook. She felt as if everything magical had shifted several degrees, with different pieces going in different directions. She couldn’t make any sense of it.

  “So be it,” she said, and she walked out from under the pine tree boughs that had served as her bedroom. She looked at the rising sun, then all around, to the distant Crags and north, where sat the high peaks of the towering Spine of the World, though she could not see them from this vantage.

  She considered her approximate location and the year and season. She had plenty of time to get to Icewind Dale—years even—so perhaps a change of course would be in order here.

  “Waterdeep?” she whispered. The lords of that greatest of cities would certainly be investigating the strange happenings—but how might she, a dirty girl from another part of the world, garner any information from those haughty ones? For she was not Princess Catti-brie of Mithral Hall any longer, but merely little Ruqiah of the Desai, and no one of note.

  She thought of Candlekeep, the famed library along the coast south of Waterdeep. If any in all the Realms were going to figure out what was going on here, it would be the sages of that most learned of places. But again, how might she gain entrance to such a place?

  She lifted her arms and shook them, her sleeves falling back. Her spellscars? Would they get her in?

  But they didn’t even look like scars any longer. Any skilled tattooist along the Sword Coast could create the markings inside Catti-brie’s forearms.

  The woman blew out a deep breath and called upon the spellscars then, thinking to shapeshift and be on her way, whichever way she might decide. Catti-brie closed her eyes and focused on the markings, willing herself to again become a great eagle.

  Nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes and looked down at her arms. No mist began to form, no hint of magic to be found.

  She couldn’t shapeshift. She couldn’t become an eagle, a mouse, or a wolf. The notion struck her profoundly. She remained hundreds of miles from Icewind Dale, and now, so suddenly, the road appeared much more perilous and uncertain.

  Catti-brie forced herself to calm down, and rationally played through her options. Even without the shapeshift, and without the storm calling and lightning bolts, she was a disciple of Mielikki, with powers divine. And she was a mage, trained in Silverymoon, trained in Shade Enclave. She was not a lost little child on the open road. She was Catti-brie, who had passed this way before, in another life. She could fight and she could enact magic both divine and arcane. She glanced around, then began to climb one of the pines for a better view. Her injured leg ached for the effort and the deep bending, despite the magic she had enacted upon it.

  She thought back to the previous day, when she had been flying on high. Just to the west of her lay a road, she recalled, and she nodded, for she knew that road, the Long Road, it had once been named.

  And she smiled as she considered where that road might take her, and what she might learn when she got to that particular destination.
>
  She found an appropriate length of wood to use as a walking stick and set out determinedly. She was Catti-brie. She had returned by the will of Mielikki and for a great purpose, and she would not falter.

  She made the road, or what was left of it—for now it was an old and little-used trail—that afternoon and turned to the north. Her leg ached, but she did not stop and did not slow.

  The sunlight began to fade, the night descending upon the land, and Catti-brie began to search for an appropriate campsite. She moved off the road, up the side of a small hillock. She had just begun to construct a fire pit, complete with rocks around its edges to shield flames from distant eyes, when the sky to the north lit up suddenly with a great burst of orange flames.

  Catti-brie rushed to the northern edge of the hillock and peered off into the distance.

  A lightning bolt split the night sky. A fireball followed, and then a star-burst of multicolored sparks and flares of such magnificence that it made the woman giggle in appreciation.

  She heard the distant sound of the explosions a few moments later, along with what sounded like a cacophony of cheers.

  Another fireball ignited, this one lower to the ground, illuminating the land below to reveal a large mansion set upon a hill.

  “Longsaddle!” Catti-brie cried, and it wasn’t so far. All thoughts of camping flew from her then, and she started off with renewed determination.

  The night darkened around her, the Long Road seemed in places little more than a wagon rut, but the explosions continued in the north, guiding her way, and soon after she entered the village of Longsaddle, home of the Harpells, a place she had visited in her previous life on several occasions.

  All of the townsfolk were outside, it seemed, hundreds of people cheering and dancing at the spectacle on the hill, the spectacle on the grounds of the Ivy Mansion, home of the Harpells, where the wizards plied their trade in a grand celebration, it seemed, throwing fire and lightning and all sorts of spectacular dweomers up into the air in a great and splendid display.