Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  “There are fish in the lake,” Entreri remarked.

  “Let’s be away from here as soon as we may,” Catti-brie said.

  “The villagers are long dead,” Zak said—to reassure her, she understood, and the reminder brought some small comfort to all of them. “Very old. No one’s been here for many years.”

  “It’s still unsettling,” Entreri answered before Catti-brie could. He turned to Jarlaxle. “Do you even know where we are? Or where we’re going?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “I thought Catti-brie could lead us by communicating with the sword,” Entreri pressed. “Has she even held it?”

  “Good question,” Catti-brie said, turning a wary eye on the cagey mercenary.

  Jarlaxle just leaned back against the wall.

  “You didn’t give it to me yet because you’re afraid that Doum’wielle is long gone from this place,” Catti-brie bluntly accused. “Perhaps you really do want to find her, but you brought us up here for another reason.”

  “Do tell,” said Zaknafein.

  “To stay out of the fight in Menzoberranzan, is my guess,” Entreri said, and that didn’t seem to sit well with Zak, from the way the weapon master arched his bushy white eyebrows.

  “I wish to find Doum’wielle,” Jarlaxle replied. “Our path to this point seemed self-evident. What I fear is that Khazid’hea will not show us what we believe it might. Nor am I keen on handing it to Drizzt’s beautiful wife, given her sad history with the blade. It’s all just a guess, after all, and perhaps I have simply harbored second thoughts.”

  “You brought us up here on a guess?” Entreri demanded. “And had us walking blind through this forsaken land for tendays, perhaps a month?”

  “An adventure, and one with a purpose!” Jarlaxle countered. “We all needed some time on the road. That much you cannot deny.”

  “What road? A road implies an actual path. We’ve been stumbling about a mountain and deserted plain of snow!”

  “A figure of speech.”

  “You wish to hear a few other figures of speech?”

  “Don’t,” Catti-brie said to the assassin. “We’re here now. What’s done is done.”

  “We’re definitely here—wherever ‘here’ is. He might have picked a more enjoyable place,” Entreri grumbled.

  “I didn’t think it would be this cold, and this . . . empty,” Jarlaxle admitted.

  “At least we found some living things here that didn’t try to kill us,” Zak reminded them.

  “And hopefully there won’t be some walking dead things here that do,” Entreri countered.

  “This very night,” Catti-brie stated in a tone that brooked no debate. “After this meal, I will hold the sword and we will see what it tells us.” She wasn’t asking. She left it at that, but she was done with Jarlaxle’s evasions, and she wasn’t buying his feigned fears for her safety with Cutter. Yes, the sword had once dominated her when she was very young, but now? Now, Catti-brie faced down primordials and battled a Lolthian avatar as she championed Mielikki. She had easily handled Entreri’s sword, whose malignancy was many times more powerful than the telepathic suggestions of Cutter.

  And Jarlaxle knew all that.

  “After this meal,” she said again, looking to Zak this time, and the drow who wore the sword nodded, clearly in full agreement.

  She looked the other way to note that Jarlaxle, however, didn’t seem so pleased.

  She felt the rejection, angry and insistent.

  But the voice was faint.

  “You know me,” she whispered to Cutter as she tightened her fingers about the black grip.

  Zaknafein! the sword screamed in her thoughts. Catti-brie was amused, but not surprised. Khazid’hea wanted one thing alone: to be wielded by the greatest fighter it could find. The sword would rather lose an epic battle with a great champion than win one in the hands of an untrained peasant.

  Memories flashed for Catti-brie, of a time when she had shamelessly thrown herself at Drizzt, long before they had even begun any romantic relationship.

  Khazid’hea had done that to her.

  The recollections continued for only a moment before the woman realized that these were not memories of hers, but rather of the sword. The blade nicknamed Cutter was trying to remind her that it had once dominated her and could do so again.

  “Hmm,” she said aloud, and she heard the others shift about her curiously, but kept her eyes closed, her thoughts inward.

  You cannot dominate me, she imparted to the blade. I am beyond you.

  Zaknafein! the sword pleaded. She ignored it.

  There is another who once wielded you.

  An image of Artemis Entreri came into her thoughts, and Catti-brie got the distinct impression that the sword would not be upset with that choice, either.

  Who else? she telepathically prompted. Who have you known? Who has bent to your will?

  The sword offered her Jarlaxle.

  She prompted again and was answered with a view of an old man sitting cross-legged on the roof deck of a great structure nestled on a plateau in a range of high mountains. It took her a moment to decipher this unexpected vision, until she remembered that Jarlaxle had gone to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose—and so had likely allowed Grandmaster Kane to handle the sword.

  Who else?

  An image of a young elf—or half drow, given the gray undertones of her skin—came to Catti-brie. She felt a connection distantly. On instinct, the woman held the sword out before her and loosened her grip enough for the blade to shift its angle from side to side.

  Maybe it was the shape of her hand, maybe that she wasn’t holding her palm level, but the sword did sway over to the left, pointing more toward the beginning of the glacier than at the lake, where Catti-brie was facing.

  Show me Doum’wielle, she commanded. Show me the other one who bent to your will.

  Zaknafein, Cutter responded defiantly, a demand and certainly no answer to her request. She felt an urge to hand the sword back to the weapon master.

  But that was what Khazid’hea wanted, and she was no longer in its thrall. Catti-brie opened her eyes, waved her three companions to the side, then stepped over and smashed the flat of the blade hard against a large stone. She struck again and again, doing no damage to the magnificent weapon, but letting it know in no uncertain terms that she, not it, was dominating here.

  And it was so easy for her! A stark reminder of how far she had come in her life. The young Catti-brie had fallen prey to Cutter. Now, she could not imagine that the sword could compel her to do anything, even if she were mortally ill or wounded and lying on her deathbed.

  When she had finished the display of dominance, she offered a smile and a wink to her companions and went right back at the sword, demanding that it show her the way to Doum’wielle.

  Again the sword shifted in her loose grip, again pointing toward the glacier—no, she realized, not toward the glacial wall, but far beyond. Beyond the glacier, or far to the back of it, at least.

  Jarlaxle had told her that she could connect to Doum’wielle through the sword, but she felt none of that to this point, or very little, at least. Yet there was certainly a bit of Doum’wielle’s consciousness within the magical mind of Khazid’hea. Catti-brie saw another half elf, half drow, his expression shocked. She watched in horror as the memory unfolded for her, the deadly blade choosing not this unknown young man, but the one who then held it, who was then sliding the blade into his chest.

  She remembered the story of Doum’wielle and knew the victim to be Teirflin, her brother. She prodded and prodded, but found no memories from his perspective at all, though he, too, had wielded the sword.

  No, because he was dead.

  Catti-brie went back to her thoughts of Doum’wielle and asked the sword again to show her the way, demanding more insistently. This time, a most confusing and alarming sensation came over her.

  Soldiers . . . serving . . . cold . . . we are not we . . . we are it in
glory . . . soldiers . . . serving . . . cold.

  She didn’t know what to make of it. She felt like something more than herself—or Doum’wielle did, but also like she was no longer herself at all, as if she had been psychically consumed.

  Catti-brie tried to press further, but then felt a deep chill within. She opened her eyes and thought she was looking through the blur of ice—no, looking out from within ice!

  What was she really being told? With a vague direction and no indication of distance, the sword’s answer seemed thin, very thin.

  One last time, Khazid’hea tried to make her give the sword back to Zaknafein. She growled at it, opened her eyes, and tossed the blade to the ground.

  “What do you know?” Jarlaxle demanded. “She is alive?”

  “I think maybe she is, against all odds. But I cannot be sure.”

  “Where?” Jarlaxle and Zaknafein asked together.

  “Somewhere out there,” the woman replied, waving her arm toward the glacier, a direction she figured to be northeast, perhaps. She looked directly at Jarlaxle and admitted, “I don’t know how far, though. She might be halfway around the world.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Catti-brie considered that last feeling, the coldness in her bones, in her heart and soul. She walked to the door of the house and peered out at the glacial wall.

  “But you think her alive?”

  Catti-brie just shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t need her to cleanse the sword, if that is truly one of your reasons for bringing us here,” she replied. “I see its pride clearly and I am confident that I can break it.”

  “Then do it,” said Zak.

  “No,” Jarlaxle snapped immediately, more insistently than was typical from the cool-tempered rogue.

  Catti-brie, Zak, and Entreri all stared at him.

  “No,” Jarlaxle said more calmly. “Menzoberranzan is on the edge of war and Doum’wielle alone might help us prevent it. Perhaps she is long gone from this place, but we must try to find her, and that sword, with its memories and sentience and pride and all, is our only chance of doing that.”

  “You think too much of her worth in Menzoberranzan,” Zak bluntly replied. “She is only half drow, and though she’s of House Barrison Del’Armgo, do you really believe they’ll put much credence in anything she advises?”

  “She’ll be our spy,” Jarlaxle retorted.

  “Which will probably get her killed anyway,” Entreri put in.

  Jarlaxle huffed and seemed quite out of sorts. “Then why did you all agree to come along, in any case?” he asked. “We knew it wouldn’t be easy to find her, and were fairly certain that this land wouldn’t be hospitable. No, we should use this and find the poor girl. If we can locate her and help her to heal from the terrible things she has done because of this sword, then would not that alone be a good thing? Surely you,” he added, looking to Entreri directly, “understand and sympathize with such oppression from a magical weapon.”

  “I understand just as easily as Artemis. And yet you don’t seem to want Catti-brie to cleanse the blade,” Zak remarked.

  “If she does, Doum’wielle is forever lost to us.”

  “Why does Jarlaxle care?” Zak pressed.

  “Why does Zaknafein not?”

  “I did not say that I do not care, nor have I pressed for our return to the more hospitable lands.”

  “Good, then pick up your sword and let us go onward. This empty village unnerves me.”

  “You didn’t answer his question,” Catti-brie said.

  “I met her mother,” Jarlaxle replied. “I looked into her sad eyes.” He pointed to Khazid’hea, still lying where the woman had dropped it. “That sword broke her family, brought betrayal from her daughter and her husband and a terrible death to her son.”

  “So, let me relieve it of the malignant magic as I believe I can.”

  “She cares not for the sword, though. I want to bring her back her daughter, freed of the influence and terrible memories wrought by Khazid’hea,” Jarlaxle said, and Catti-brie found that she believed him.

  But he was still evading them. Every time they came close to the truth of their mission, Jarlaxle danced sideways. The girl, the need for adventure, the hopes for Menzoberranzan—they were all parts of the reason, she was sure, and they were worthy enough goals in her mind. There was more, though. Of that she was certain.

  And she wasn’t going to keep dancing much longer.

  Chapter 12

  Ruminations of the Gods

  Drizzt sat on the railing of the large deck about the main back door of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, his cloak flapping behind him in the brisk wind whistling down through the narrow passes of the Galena Mountains. The season was quickly changing, the leaves turning and falling away, and the air had that crisp feeling of forthcoming snow, with gray clouds rushing overhead.

  Drizzt loved this time of the year everywhere he had lived, with the exceptions of Menzoberranzan, which had no seasons, and Icewind Dale, where autumn was just winter with a bit more light, after all. The smell in the air, the dance of falling leaves—all of it—just brought to him a sense of peace and calm.

  Maybe that was because many of the conflicts he had known had ended in the fall, pressed to completion by the promise of a war-stifling winter.

  He smiled widely as he watched Brie rushing about the leaf-speckled grass, hopping into a pile of leaves that Savahn kept putting back together for her. The sheer joy of the child’s play was so obvious and infectious.

  Or maybe it wasn’t just play, Drizzt speculated, at least not for the monk. Savahn was Mistress of Winter, the third-ranking monk at the monastery, with only Grandmaster Kane and Master Perrywinkle Shin, an old man well past his fighting prime, ahead of her. Earlier that tenday, Kane had mentioned to Drizzt that he expected Savahn to become the first female Grandmaster of Flowers of the Order of Saint Sollars in many years.

  Her only rival in her ascent had been Brother Afafrenfere, and alas, he was gone.

  Drizzt’s smile mellowed when he thought of the man. Afafrenfere had transcended his physical form and used every bit of his spiritual strength to pull Drizzt back from eternity, at the cost of any chance he, Afafrenfere, had of returning. Because of their soulful joining in that spiritual state, Drizzt understood the man’s reasoning, but still, he couldn’t escape the pangs of guilt. Afafrenfere believed that Drizzt had more reason to return than he. With a child on the way, a family strong and growing, Drizzt wasn’t done in his journey through this life, Afafrenfere’s every call had claimed.

  But Brother Afafrenfere was ready and willing to transcend the physical world. He believed that his partner in life, his lover and best friend—the monk brother named Parbid who had given him true meaning and direction—was waiting for him in a shared existence on that higher plane.

  Drizzt hoped that was true, both for Afafrenfere and for himself, and for all those others he loved. He wanted there to be more.

  For some reason only a two-year-old could know, Brie gave a tremendous roar then and proclaimed herself a tarrasque. She lifted her hands like monstrous claws and stomp-walked toward Savahn, who feigned terror and began to run away, the little girl in close pursuit.

  Drizzt’s smile returned.

  But was this just play? he wondered again. He had the feeling that Savahn was evaluating his daughter, as if trying to get an idea of when the child might become an appropriate candidate for the ways of the monastery. Drizzt had already told Kane that he would like such training for Brie, but also that she would not be a sworn member of Saint Sollars—at least not until she was old enough to truly make up her own mind regarding such an important life decision.

  That hadn’t bothered Kane at all. Drizzt had never converted to the faith—he still wasn’t sure if what the monks had here was a “faith” in the traditional sense at all, and from the teachings at the monastery, the “saint” in question seemed more an example of true devotion to personal discipline an
d purpose than to any godly handmaiden. And, perhaps more than anything, that was what appealed to Drizzt about the monastery.

  Yes, he would very much like the idea of Brie spending a lot of time here with the goodly monks.

  “She moves as I would expect of the daughter of Drizzt Do’Urden,” came Kimmuriel’s voice behind him.

  “She’s not yet two,” Drizzt replied with a laugh. He turned his head to look over his shoulder as the psionicist approached. “When did Kimmuriel become the purveyor of empty praise?”

  “Is that your way of asking what it is I want from you?”

  Drizzt laughed again. “It could be.” He grew more serious immediately, though. “I am grateful that you came out on the road to protect my daughter in our journey here.”

  “It was my half of the bargain I hoped to make with you.”

  “And for the company, on those few occasions we spent together,” Drizzt added. “I cannot say that those nights we spoke weren’t . . . interesting. Certainly you’ve surprised me of late.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “You had your desired meeting with Grandmaster Kane?”

  “I did.”

  “And he did not disappoint, I’m sure.”

  “He is beyond what I would expect of any human,” Kimmuriel admitted. “His wisdom was much appreciated.”

  “For what? What is it you seek?”

  “Answers.”

  “To that most elusive question of all,” Drizzt said with a nod. “I doubt Grandmaster Kane did much to help in that regard.”

  “He let me into his mind,” Kimmuriel said. “And so, intimate with his memories, I now better understand the feeling of transcendence.”

  Drizzt hardly heard the second sentence, for he was still stuck on the shock of the first part. “He let you into his thoughts? He invited you into his mind?”

  “Yes,” the psionicist said matter-of-factly.

  “But . . .” Drizzt couldn’t even find the words to respond to that.

  “Because he was confident that he could expel me with ease,” Kimmuriel explained.