The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  She looked around at the empty plain once more and sighed deeply. In her past life, she had been a formidable warrior, but even if she could recall those fighting skills and train her body to move as she had before, what strength and speed might a child know? Surely not enough to match blades with a skilled assassin, or even a novice warrior!

  Catti-brie nodded, understanding the message Mielikki imparted to her through the coalescing lines of her own reasoning. She needed to hide. The goddess would protect her from the animals of Netheril’s dark night, but she could do little against the determined killers of Shade Enclave.

  The thought had Catti-brie sitting upon the ground, staring up at the stars, her little mouth moving through various curses. She had left Iruladoon full of hope and determination, certain that she would find her friends and Drizzt, and that they together would triumph. Not a doubt had tugged at her as she had jumped into the light of reincarnation.

  But now she understood the truth of it all. Would she even get back to Icewind Dale? Would she survive another fifteen years, and even if she did, would she find her way though this confusing and dangerous world?

  And would Bruenor and Regis?

  Suddenly the plan on which the three had embarked seemed a desperate ploy, a dive from a high cliff into shallow water.

  “Mielikki guide me,” she whispered into the empty night.

  Somewhere far off, a wolf howled.

  But not for her, she understood. The world was wide, too wide, and she was but a tiny child in the midst of a vast and dangerous plain.

  A tenday later, Catti-brie flew through the night in the form of an owl once more. She drifted on unseen currents, soaring around the Desai encampment. Many milled around among the tents; there was a palpable tension in the air and an occasional shout of protest lifted above the din.

  She flew up high, above the torchlight, and listened carefully, finally picking out the accents that were not Desai. Along with them, she heard Niraj.

  Catti-brie swooped down toward the group in question, alighting on the peak of a nearby tent in full view of the gathered Desai leaders, her parents, and a small group of shades.

  Shades!

  In short order, she realized that they were speaking about her, about the incident that had left two of the Netherese agents dead at the entryway of a blasted tent.

  “Ruqiah!” one of the Netherese agents demanded.

  If any had been close enough, they might have been startled to hear an owl gasp.

  Catti-brie scolded herself, reminding herself that if she was discovered, she would be doing no good for any of those Desai before her.

  Kavita began to cry.

  “She is dead,” Niraj wailed. “My beautiful little girl is dead! Struck by the rage of N’asr!” He spun away and grabbed his wife, hugging her close.

  “You will come!” one of the shades said, and the burly tiefling took a step toward Niraj. Perched on the tent, Catti-brie had to fight the urge to revert to her human form and throw some magic—anything!—at the tiefling to back him away, but before she even had begun to wage that internal battle, a trio of Desai leaders, three proud warriors including the tribe’s sultan, intercepted the tiefling.

  “His child is dead, Master Tremaine,” the sultan said. “Killed by the same stroke of lightning that slew your agents. What more would you ask of this man?”

  “So you say,” the tiefling shade replied.

  The sultan stepped back and swept his hand out to the side. “I will show you.”

  The group of several Desai and the Netherese contingent moved away. Catti-brie waited a few moments to watch her parents, who remained behind and stood hugging and sobbing.

  Or were they?

  Catti-brie’s keen ears caught a whisper from Niraj to Kavita, telling her that she had played the ruse well.

  The girl didn’t know what to make of this, of any of it. She set off into the night, fast catching up to the Netherese and the sultan, who were now out of the camp and moving to a small cemetery just off to the side.

  The owl landed in a tree overlooking the group. Weariness seeped into Catti-brie’s frame. She could feel the magic of the spellscar growing thin, warning her to fly away. But she could not. Not then, for the Desai had begun exhuming one of the graves. In short order, they pulled out a small body, wrapped in swaddling clothes, tightly bound.

  “Ruqiah,” the ruler explained, and he gently unwrapped the head scarf of the burial shroud, revealing a small girl, recently deceased.

  Again the owl gasped; Catti-brie knew this girl, older than her by a couple of years. She had died several tendays before her battle with the Netherese.

  “The grave was newly dug,” one of the Netherese shades confirmed for the others.

  “Why did you seek this one?” the sultan of the Desai asked. “What purpose might a little girl—”

  “Silence!” Tremaine, the burly tiefling shade, demanded. He turned to his associates and they moved off and began whispering secretly—but not so, since Catti-brie’s owl hearing penetrated their circle.

  She heard the name “Ulfbinder” and an agreement among them that whatever importance Ruqiah might have held was lost now, and the girl irrelevant.

  Only then did Catti-brie come to fully appreciate what her people had just done for her. They had colluded to deceive the Netherese overlords, at great risk. They had come together as a tribe to protect her, and to protect Niraj and Kavita.

  Overwhelmed by gratitude, by the love this act had shown to her and her family, Catti-brie could hardly find the strength to fly away. But she had to, she knew, for the magic of her shapeshifting dweomer was fast diminishing.

  As she flew out of the camp, she entertained the thought of resuming her life with her parents—the Netherese thought that Ruqiah was dead, after all—but she knew that she would be putting all of the Desai into grave danger by doing so. If they came for Catti-brie and found her, they would destroy her—and everyone she loved.

  Some distance away, she became a little girl once more. And she cried.

  “They buried her,” Tremaine told Parise Ulfbinder when his scouting party returned to Shade Enclave.

  “Along with Alpirs De’Noutess and Untaris?”

  “They did not bury our dead. They wrapped them in cloth and put them out in the desert sun. They said they knew we would come for them.” The tiefling’s anger mounted with each word. “They should have brought them to us! Nay, they should not have dared to strike at them!”

  “You said Alpirs and Untaris were killed by a lightning strike,” Lord Ulfbinder said calmly. “A burst of lightning from a storm that raged in the area.”

  “We should punish them. We must punish them,” said Tremaine, running on as if his master had not spoken a word. “Grant me a force and I will lay waste to the tribe of Desai. Speak the word and I will kill them all!”

  Parise Ulfbinder looked at the burly warrior incredulously, and shook his head slowly and deliberately.

  “Get out of here,” he said quietly.

  The tiefling smiled broadly.

  “Not like that!” Lord Ulfbinder insisted. “Not to your coveted revenge! Remain in the city. Trouble yourself no more with the Desai. They are not your concern.”

  “But lord—”

  “Not your concern!” Ulfbinder said with a low growl. He shook his head in disgust and waved the feebleminded warrior away. The Desai were no minor tribe and it would take a sizable force to attack them. And to what end? Such an act would likely inspire a larger uprising, and that, in turn, would force Parise before the Netherese rulers to explain himself.

  He could well imagine that meeting, and a shudder coursed down his spine. Simply having to mention “Cherlrigo’s Darkness” and his various theories regarding Abeir-Toril would bring him great humiliation.

  Still, the story his scouts had returned to tell seemed far too convenient to him. By coincidence a bolt of lightning from a natural storm had slain Alpirs De’Noutess and Untaris just
as they closed in on this Ruqiah child? And it had killed her, as well? That was the tale the Desai were telling.

  Too convenient.

  “Tremaine!” he called to the tiefling, who was just exiting the room. The warrior looked back over his shoulder and Lord Ulfbinder instructed, “Fetch the Lady Avelyere at once.”

  The tiefling stared at him for a moment, as if confused, then hustled away.

  Parise nodded to himself as he considered his impulsive decision. Avelyere was the proper choice now. She was a skilled diviner and could speak with the dead. And she could detect magic as well as any in Shade Enclave. If, as Parise suspected, the curious little girl was still out there, Avelyere would find her.

  “Ruqiah!” Kavita gasped, the word blurting out as if she had been kicked in the gut. She scrambled from her chair, nearly tumbling over, and started for the tent flap, where her daughter stood staring back at her.

  Catti-brie eagerly leaped up into her mother’s arms, accepting the crushing hug.

  “We thought we would never see you again!”

  “I thought so too,” the girl admitted. “But I missed you terribly.”

  Kavita kissed her and crushed her close and swung her around in a great dance that went on and on until they both grew dizzy.

  “I saw what you did, what the whole tribe did, when the Netherese came looking for me.”

  Kavita looked at her curiously.

  “I have been around—as the owl who left you in the secret garden,” Catti-brie explained.

  “My Zibrija,” Kavita said, tears streaming down her face, and she wrapped Catti-brie in another crushing hug, and Catti-brie did not begin to protest.

  “Zibrija!” sounded the nickname again, spoken in a plaintive gasp, as Niraj entered the tent. The man jumped over to his wife and child and propelled them both onto the bed with a great flying tackle. “Zibrija, you have come home!”

  Catti-brie’s weak smile showed the limitations of that happy event, something neither of her parents missed.

  “Not for long,” she said. “It is not safe for you … or for me,” she added quickly as stubborn Niraj began to protest.

  “But you will return?” Kavita asked.

  The question burned at Catti-brie. She knew that she shouldn’t be doing this, that she shouldn’t be here. Not now. She had returned to Faerûn for one purpose, and it had nothing to do with the Desai tribe, or with these parents who were not really her parents. She could not afford such distractions and risks. But she loved these two, dearly so, as much as she had loved …

  Catti-brie swallowed hard and blew a determined sigh, reminding herself of who she was and how and why she had returned.

  “I am well,” she assured her parents. “And I’m grateful for what you and the Desai have done for me in deceiving the Netherese.”

  “Zibrija!” Niraj cried. Catti-brie understood the sad look on his face. She was his child, and what parent would not take such action in defense of his child?

  “My name is Catti-brie,” she corrected, because she had to, because if she did not keep these emotions at arms’ length, she would never find the courage to leave this camp again, which she knew she must do.

  Kavita threw her hands up over her mouth.

  “Ruqiah,” Niraj insisted.

  The little girl squared her shoulders, but in looking at Kavita, she had to relent. What harm, after all?

  “Ruqiah,” she said. “But I still like Zibrija.”

  That brought back Niraj’s smile, and again he tackled her in a great fatherly hug. Catti-brie didn’t fight it, and indeed, she felt warm and safe in his strong embrace.

  She did not want to leave, but she had to. She wanted to return, but how could she justify it?

  “You’re wizards,” she said suddenly.

  Niraj pulled her back to arms’ length and looked to his wife.

  “Both of you,” Catti-brie continued. “I have seen it. I have seen you,” she said to Kavita, “using spells to aid in your daily chores.”

  “Kavita!” Niraj scolded, but his anger was surely feigned.

  “You inherited our skill, perhaps, and that skill led to your curious scars,” Kavita replied, and Catti-brie nodded, though she didn’t agree. Her scars, she knew, had come from a different place and a different time, scars rightly earned, scars paid for dearly.

  “So you admit that you’re wizards,” she stated more than asked. “You practice the Art?”

  The two looked at each other, then Niraj stared hard at her. “You must never tell anyone,” he said quietly. “The Netherese do not allow the Bedine such powers.”

  Catti-brie nodded and smiled. “I’m a wizard,” she said.

  “A priestess, you mean,” said Niraj.

  “A druid, more like it,” Kavita said.

  “A bit of both,” she replied. “And a wizard. I was studying the ways of magic in the time of the Spellplague, when the Weave fell.” Both of them swallowed hard.

  “I had only just begun my studies,” she explained, “and my repertoire was, and is, meager indeed—a few minor spells, a few cantrips. Less now than when I was afflicted, even, for I cannot remember all that I knew of my studies.”

  “A lightning bolt to burn an assassin out of his boots,” Niraj dryly remarked.

  “A gift of the spellscar, and no wizard’s bolt,” she assured him. “I had lived most of my life with the sword and the bow, until I was injured in a battle. And so I turned to magic.”

  She paused, realizing that she was overwhelming both of them. First she had demonstrated magical powers beyond her years. Then she had flown off from them in the form of an owl. And now she had just strongly implied to them that not only was she not their child, not only was she not a child at all, but that she was a century older than either of them! She questioned the wisdom of telling them any of the truth of herself then, for what unwanted curiosity might that long tale bring?

  But then she looked into the dark eyes of Kavita and her doubts melted away. This was her mother, whatever bizarre circumstances surrounded the event of her rebirth. There was nothing but love for her in those dark eyes.

  Nothing other than tears, of course, and Catti-brie did not wish to see those tears. Not ever.

  “I had only just begun my formal training when the Spellplague struck me, and alas …” Her voice drifted off. “But I was under fine tutelage,” she said almost immediately, pushing forward with her impulsive decision to help these two, her beloved parents, sort through the pain of confusion and the grief of losing their only child. “Perhaps you have heard of Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon?”

  Niraj and Kavita again exchanged looks, their expressions revealing a great confusion.

  “I’m a wizard, but merely a novice. You’re both skilled at magic. Will you train me further in the Art?” Catti-brie asked, bringing them back to the moment at hand.

  “Then you will not leave us?” Niraj asked.

  “I will return as often as I can,” Catti-brie heard herself saying, and she could hardly believe the words as they came out of her mouth. But she meant them.

  “The child is a clever one,” the young sorceress, Eerika, said to Lady Avelyere, her more accomplished mentor.

  Avelyere was in her early forties but still strikingly youthful and beautiful in appearance, with light gray eyes and rich brown hair bouncing below her shoulders. She and her companions had little trouble in locating this mysterious Desai child named Ruqiah. First they had gone to the grave, supposedly of Ruqiah, and a simple spell to speak with the dead had told them the truth: that the corpse within was not the body of the girl they sought.

  The spirits of dead Untaris and Alpirs had filled them in on the general details of the fight at the Desai encampment—and it had indeed been a fight, one that this child, this little girl named Ruqiah, had clearly dominated.

  Soon after, Lady Avelyere and her charges had witnessed a taste of that same magic that had destroyed the two Netherese agents, when first they had managed
to actually locate Ruqiah in a scrying pool. That image, and the sky to the east of their position, had flashed brilliantly in the discharge of a summoned burst of lightning.

  “She does not fear the lightning,” Eerika had noted, “because she summons it to her bidding!”

  “Druidic magic,” agreed a third woman, Rhyalle, like Eerika barely more than a teenager. “Like her shapechanging.”

  Lady Avelyere, meticulous as ever, had absorbed it all, trying to make some sense of this unusual child. Lord Ulfbinder, her dear friend Parise, had not exaggerated, she knew in that moment, and she could certainly understand his interest! She was a teacher most of all, and her students exclusively female, like Eerika and Rhyalle and the other three she had brought to the plains of Netheril. She wondered what Lord Parise’s intentions for this one might be; wouldn’t it be grand for her to add this marvelous little Ruqiah to her house of magic?

  Another lightning bolt flashed, and a growling rumble of thunder shook the ground beneath their feet.

  “When this child waters her garden, beware!” the lighthearted Rhyalle remarked with a laugh, and the others joined in—all except for Lady Avelyere, who intently watched the girl and her dance through the magic of the scrying pool, wondering what she could teach her, and wondering even more so what she might learn from the child.

  But first, of course, she would have to catch her.

  The Year of Splendors Burning (1469 DR) Netheril

  Some months later, Catti-brie drifted on the hot updrafts in the guise of a great hawk, far above the dark brown sands of Netheril. The day was bright and clear and the world spread wide below her. She saw the snake of a river, glistening silvery in the sunlight as it wound its way to a small lake far in the northwest.