The Companions s-1

by R. A. Salvatore

  A few, she realized, for the Harpells had not fully abandoned their previous ways.

  There were other differences of note between herself and the other wizards around her, and Catti-brie could only attribute it to the special days she had spent in Iruladoon. When asked, and Catti-brie nodded. bpa"› expect she called upon her magic, her spellscars reacted, but that was not true for Penelope or the few others similarly scarred. Even for Catti-brie, the reaction seemed a cosmetic thing only, for her magic was not exceptionally potent-indeed, were she to engage in a spell battle against Penelope, Catti-brie was certain that she would be obliterated in short order.

  Still, Catti-brie had a lot to teach the Harpells, even as they invited her to stay on and train under their masters. She was more adept at converting the spells back to the old ways than any, and Kipper and the others truly appreciated her efforts in that regard, and shared some of their best dweomers with her in return.

  So for the fourth time since Catti-brie had moved from her warrior ways to that of a wizard, she had found a new school. First she had trained with the great Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, then with Niraj and Kavita, then at the Coven, and now here at the Ivy Mansion. What student of the arcane arts could ever ask for more? She had been fortunate indeed!

  “No, the fifth time,” she said aloud, correcting the thought as she recass="indent" ai

  CHAPTER 25

  FIDELITY

  The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Gauntlgrym

  With all the stubbornness of a dwarf, Bruenor ignored the reaching monsters and fought against the press of the boot, driving himself with every ounce of his strength toward the many-notched axe. If he could just get his hand around it …

  But he could not, and he let out a little grunt as the boot crushed down harder, pressing him with supernatural strength, grinding his arm into the stone. Clawed hands tore at his clothing and skin, and the otherworldly shrieks of hungry undead dark elves echoed off the cavern walls.

  “Get ye back!” Bruenor heard, and the gruff voice and accent gave him pause. The hands stopped clawing at him then, but the boot held him fast. He managed to turn enough to get a glimpse of his captor, and he gasped in shock and was too numb from that shock to resist as a thick hand{font-size: 0.75rem;Ieshis opponent no less reached down and grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him roughly, and so very easily, to his feet.

  “Ye’re breathin’ still only because ye’re a dwarf, thief, but know that ye’re not long to be breathin’!” the vampire, an undead dwarf in ridged armor, said. “I’m wantin’ ye to know the grave ye’re robbing afore I break yer neck.”

  “The cairn of King Bruenor,” Bruenor breathed, and he added, his voice thin from absolute shock, “Pwent.”

  The vampire gave him a quick shake, so roughly that it rattled his bones. “What’d ye call me?”

  “Pwent … oh, me Pwent, what’ve ye become then?”

  The vampire dwarf, Thibbledorf Pwent, stared hard at this young dwarf, looking him up and down, then settling on his eyes. They locked gazes and stared silently through many heartbeats-heartbeats from Bruenor, and not from the dead battlerager.

  “Me king?” Thibbledorf Pwent asked. He let go of Bruenor’s collar then, his hand visibly trembling as he retracted it. “Me king?”

  All around, the drow vampires hissed and shuffled uneasily, clearly wanting to leap back in at the living dwarf and tear him apart.

  “Bah! Get ye gone!” Pwent demanded, shouting at them and waving his arm menacingly. The group retreated into the darkness, falling back, hissing in protest, and soon falling on Bruenor’s three companions to feast on their still-warm blood.

  “What are ye doing?” Bruenor asked incredulously, looking around in obvious horror. “Pwent, what-?”

  “Ye died pulling the lever,” Pwent replied, and there seemed to Bruenor to be a bit of resentment in his tone. “Meself did’no. Aye, but that damned vampire friend o’ Dahlia’s got me on the neck and put his curse into me.”

  “A vampire,” Bruenor muttered, trying to piece it all together, trying to make some sense of this craziness. Pwent was a vampire haunting the halls of Gauntlgrym, and with a drow troupe in support? “Pwent,” he said with sympathy and concern and clear confusion, “what are ye doing?”

  “A pack of damned drow took home in this place,” the battlerager answered. His face turned into a fierce scowl and he issued a feral snarl, and Bruenor feared for a moment that Pwent would fall over him in murderous rage-and Bruenor knew in his heart that such fear was not unfounded. Thibbledorf Pwent was on the edge; the struggle showed clearly in his dead eyes.

  “I’m holdin’ ’em. I’m fightin’ ’em!” Pwent said. “Aye, but that’s all I got left, me king. All that’s left o’ Pwent. And suren that it’s a sweet taste when I get me fangs in their skinny necks, don’t ye doubt. Aye, but that’s the joy, me king!”

  As he said it, he advanced a step and flashed his elongated canines, and for a moment, Bruenor again expected him to leap for his king’s throat!

  But Pwent pulled back, obviously with great effort.

  “I’m yer king,” Bruenor stated. “I’m yer friend. E’er been yer friend, and yerself me own.”

  The vampire managed a nod. “If ye was me friend, ye’d kill me, looked at her curiously. o holding im” he said. “Ah, but ye cannot, and I’m not about to let ye.” He glanced down at the cairn and kicked at it, and with his great strength sent a pile of large stones bouncing away.

  Bruenor looked upon his own corpse, upon his many-notched axe, surviving the decades intact as if nary a day had passed. He noted his old armor, fit for a king, and a buckler set with the foaming mug of Clan Battlehammer, a shield that had turned the blows of a thousand enemies. He stared at the skull, at his skull, grayish white with flecks of discolored dried skin, and so shocking was the realization that he was looking at his own rotting head that it took Bruenor a long while to realize that his one-horned helm was missing. He tried to remember where he had lost it. Had it fallen into the primordial pit when he and Pwent had dragged themselves across the chasm, perhaps?

  It didn’t matter, he tried to tell himself.

  “Tried to kill meself,” Pwent went on, clearly oblivious to Bruenor’s inner turmoil. “Thought I could, ah, but when the sunlight came into that cave and burned at me … I runned off. Runned down here into the dark. Runned into the madness, I did, but meself’s not surrendering, me king. I be fightin’!”

  Bruenor eased his trusty old weapon from the skeletal grip.

  “But me king?” Pwent asked suddenly, and from the tone, Bruenor understood what was coming next.

  “H-how?” Pwent stuttered. “Ye can’t be!”

  Bruenor turned to regard his old friend. “Ah, but I be, and that’s the durned part of it. I got a tale to tell, me old friend, but it’s one that’s as dark as yer own, I’m fearin’.” As he finished, he looked at the throne of Gauntlgrym, the conduit to divine power that had so forcefully rejected him. He had come here all full of hope, and with renewed faith in Moradin, and admiration in the dwarf god’s clever ruse to use Mielikki.

  But now, after the rejection, Bruenor didn’t know what to think.

  “Help me get me armor and me shield,” Bruenor said.

  Thibbledorf Pwent looked at him skeptically.

  “It’s meself, ye dolt, and I don’t think I’ve seen such a look from ye since Nanfoodle poisoned me so’s I could get meself out o’ Mithral Hall.”

  Pwent blinked in shock, sorting out the words. “Me king,” he said, nodding, and he moved to help Bruenor with the corpse.

  As he donned his old outfit, Bruenor told Pwent the tale of Iruladoon, of the promise to Mielikki and the assigned rendezvous atop Kelvin’s Cairn. It occurred to him that the vampire wasn’t interjecting much, as he would have expected from Thibbledorf Pwent, who always had an opinion to share, but it wasn’t until he looked closely at his old friend that he understood the truth of it: Pwent wasn’t even really
listening. Indeed, the way in which Pwent regarded Bruenor at that moment warned Bruenor that the vampire was struggling even then against the urges of his affliction. Bruenor could see that Pwent was thirsty for blood, any blood, even Bruenor’s blood.

  “So now ye’re here killin’ drow, eh?” Bruenor said sharply to distract him.

  “Aye, but not much killin’ now that them below’re knowin’ o’ me,” Pwent replied. “Got me a fewline-height: Ilisteningon, as ye seen, and a few more killed to death, but most o’ me time’s in th’upper halls now and not near the Forge and them damned drow elfs.”

  “The Forge?”

  “Aye, they be usin’ it.”

  Bruenor winced at the thought of the Forge of Gauntlgrym, among the most hallowed workshops in his Delzoun heritage, in the hands of dark elves.

  “Ye should be going,” Pwent said, and he seemed to be struggling with every word. “I failed ye, me king, don’t ye make me fail ye more.”

  CHAPTER 26

  FANCY SPIDER

  The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Luskan

  The small figure in the gray traveling cloak leaned low against the rain as he slowly walked his dark bay pony toward the distant gates of the City of Sails. Spider hadn’t looked back over the miles of road since he had split with the Grinning Ponies, with Doregardo taking the band back to their usual haunts in the south. His road lay before him now, he continually reminded himself, resisting the urge to turn around and ride hard to catch up with his fellow riders.

  So much had he left behind him in the years of this young second life … friends, including a very special one in Delthuntle, friends along the Trade Way … He would see them all again, he vowed. But now his road lay before him, not behind.

  “Speak your name and your business!” a guard called down from a squat tower beside Luskan’s closed southern gate.

  The halfling looked up and pulled the hood of his cloak back, revealing his blue beret, which he wore slightly off kilter to the left and now fastened flat in the front with a golden button shaped like a running pony. His curly brown hair, wet with drizzle, hung to his shoulders and he had grown a thin mustache and a goathat playthings we be,”, I all the louderes10ee that was little more than a line of hair from his bottom lip to the middle of his chin, so similar to the one his mentor, Pericolo Topolino, had worn.

  “Spider Topolino,” he replied without hesitation, without even the urge to call himself Regis, a name he had long abandoned, “who rode with Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies.”

  The guard’s eyes widened at that, just for a moment, and he looked back and whispered to someone unseen behind him.

  “Never heard of them,” he said, turning back to Spider.

  The halfling vigilante shrugged, hardly believing the man and hardly caring.

  “And your business?” the guard demanded.

  “Passing through,” said Spider, “to the north. I’ve family in Lonelywood, in Ten-Towns. The last caravans of the season will be leaving soon, I expect.” From his past life, he knew the schedule here well enough to know that he was speaking the truth, for the eighth month, Eliasis, of 1483 had just begun, and the pass through the Spine of the World was often closed by snows before the end of the ninth month. He should have come to Luskan a couple of tendays earlier, perhaps, but leaving the Grinning Ponies had proven a difficult thing. He had left two full lives behind, both that he had come to love, and now approached a third existence, and one he could only hope would prove no less full of such love and friendship.

  “And you’ve the gold to get a caravan to carry you?” the guard asked, a bit too slyly for Spider’s liking.

  “Since I wish to travel north in any case, it is my expectation that the merchants will have the gold to afford my company,” Spider answered.

  The guard gave him a skeptical look.

  “Pray open your gate,” Spider said. “This rain has gone to the bone, I fear, and I would dearly love to find a warm hearth and a fine meal before retiring.”

  The guard hesitated and looked down on him from above. The halfling sat up straighter and loosened his cloak a bit, shifting his left arm so that the covering fell back behind his hip, thus revealing his rapier in all its bejeweled glory. Clever Spider made sure to turn his pony a bit to the right to afford the guard a good view.

  The man finally glanced back and said something Spider could not hear, and the gates began to creak open soon after.

  Spider Pericolo Topolino sat up very straight as he walked his pony through, his cloak off his left shoulder, his left arm hanging easily at his side while he guided his mount with his right hand alone. He tried to project an air of confidence-competence was the best deterrent against would-be robbers and murderers, after all.

  As far as he could tell at first blush, and from the information he had garnered over the last months riding in the south, the city had changed very much for the worse in the century since he’d last been here. Luskan was still ruled by five High Captains and their respective “Ships,” pirates and cutthroats all, and thoroughly unpleasant sorts. She was a city of scurvy vagabonds, where a body lying on the side of the road was not an uncommon sight.

  Spider could see the masts of the many boats in the harbor over to his left. Most would be sailing for the south soon enough, likely, and so their crews might be willing to take greater risks within Luskan, figuring that they would be out of port before the magistrates could catch up!” Bruenor warned.5N3 the kingon to them.

  With that thought in mind, Spider moved along the right-hand, eastern lanes, the inland sections, staying in sight of the eastern wall as he made his way toward the city’s northern gate. Much of Luskan lay in ruins now, and when he came in sight of the Upstream Span crossing the River Mirar to the city’s north gate, he saw that the bridges, too, were in heavy disrepair, so much so that he had to wonder if caravans even left from Luskan any longer, bound across the river to the north.

  One compound on the riverbank just south of the Upstream Span caught his eye, and he breathed a sigh of relief to learn that Baliver’s House of Horses was still, apparently, in operation. He walked his pony over to where a pair of young men and a woman loaded hay into the back of a wagon.

  “Well met,” he greeted, dismounting, and he was glad to see the three smiling-and was surprised at how much a little thing like a smile could brighten up this thoroughly miserable ruin posing as a city.

  “And to you, goodsir,” said the young woman, a handsome lass of less than twenty years. “Stabling or renting, or both, perhaps?”

  “Stabling,” Regis replied, and he handed the reins to one of the men who came forward. “Name’s Rumble, or Rumblebelly to his friends. Handle him well, I beg. He’s been a good and loyal pony.” He pulled his saddlebags from Rumble’s back and flipped them over his shoulder, then dug into his pouch. “Three silver a night?” he asked and offered.

  “Aye, that’ll do.”

  “Then here’s a tenday, though I doubt I’ll be in town that long, and a bit of extra for special care to my always hungry pony.” He handed the young man four pieces of gold. “And a bit more when I collect him,” he added as the happy man led Rumble away.

  “I’ll need to find an inn, and a caravan to Icewind Dale,” Regis added, turning back to the woman. He looked to the north, to the structures along the northern bank, and pointed. “Is the Red Dragon Trading Post still in operation?”

  It was clear that they had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Might mean One-Eyed Jax,” the remaining young man remarked.

  “There is a tavern over on the north bank,” the woman explained. “Comfortable enough, so I’ve heard.”

  “He’d be better sleeping in our hayloft,” said the man. “Well, which is it?” Regis demanded.

  “Comfortable,” the woman replied. “And the place you’d best find any news of caravans to the North, surely, but …” She looked to her doubting companion.

  “I see you wear a sword,” he sai
d. “Can you use it?”

  “Will I have to?”

  The young man just shrugged.

  “It’s the safest place and bed he’ll find,” the woman told her companion, and she turned to Spider. “Drow are not uncommon about One-Eyed Jax,” she explained. “But Ship Kurth claims ownership of the place, and none in the city are about to cross Ship Kurth. One-Eyed Jax is as safe a bed as you’ll find in Luskan.”

  “Not saying much,” said the man.

  “I was not expecting mu a long while to realize ees Regisonch,” Regis assured him. He looked to the bridge, the Upstream Span. “Will it fall out from under my feet?”

  “They are repairing it,” the man replied. “Have been since before I was born. Safe enough if you’re careful where you step, but if there’s a gang working it, they’ll ask you to reach into your purse for a toll.”

  Spider of the Grinning Ponies just smiled and shook his head. That grin hid a true sorrow, though, for what might have been in once-proud Luskan. For he, Regis, had been here in 1377, when Captain Deudermont had tried to wrest control of the city from the Arcane Brotherhood and the High Captains. If Deudermont had won, Luskan might now stand as a smaller version of mighty Waterdeep, a shining jewel on a coast full of thriving ports. But alas, Deudermont had failed, and had fallen.

  And so had begun the fall of Luskan.

  The halfling flipped a silver piece to the woman, thanked her for the information with a tip of his beautiful hat, and then started off toward the bridge.

  He picked his path carefully as he stepped out onto the Upstream Span, for the stones were crumbling all around it, and in places he could see down through it to the filthy waters of the River Mirar. More than filthy, he realized, for they shone inky black and their foul smell drifted up to assail him. So focused was Regis on carefully marking his steps that he was more than a third of the way across before he even noticed that there were indeed others on the bridge, a trio of dirty men sitting beside a pile of stones and wooden planks, wearing the colors of a Ship’s crew he did not know.