Starlight Enclave Read online

  Dedication

  I have to thank my agent, Paul Lucas,

  my editors David Pomerico and Laura Cherkas,

  and the rest of the team at Harper Voyager.

  And of course the folks at Wizards of the Coast

  for helping me and allowing me to continue this wonderful journey.

  A special shout-out to Evan Winter for answering my call

  and spending the time to offer perspective, and to explain, to teach,

  some things I needed to learn.

  And to my special six:

  Julian, Milo, Nico, Charlie, Owen, and Riley.

  May you find a place someday to match Callidae.

  And may you find someone to share it with you as wonderful as your Oma.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Part 1: Finding Purpose Chapter 1: Stirring the Pain

  Chapter 2: The Word of a Goddess

  Chapter 3: A Confluence of Interests

  Chapter 4: The Unacceptable Consequence of Trust

  Chapter 5: Shark Delight

  Chapter 6: The Unlikely Band of Merry Friends

  Part 2: Journeys Chapter 7: Mutual Benefit

  Chapter 8: Probing, Probing

  Chapter 9: Lands Unwelcoming and Unkind

  Chapter 10: All Out of Sorts

  Chapter 11: The Overlight

  Chapter 12: Ruminations of the Gods

  Chapter 13: Eleint the Fading

  Chapter 14: Where the Hot Springs Flow

  Part 3: Callidae Chapter 15: The Aevendrow

  Chapter 16: Making Wine

  Chapter 17: The Lie of Omission

  Chapter 18: Softness

  Chapter 19: Cazzcalci

  Chapter 20: Sunset for Zaknafein

  Part 4: Choices Chapter 21: Did You Not Feel It?

  Chapter 22: When It Matters More

  Chapter 23: Writhing Riddles

  Chapter 24: The Siglig

  Chapter 25: Through the Blizzard

  Chapter 26: The Breath of Qadeej

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by R. A. Salvatore

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Prologue

  The Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls

  Dalereckoning 1486

  Sleep seemed shorter and shorter. Why hadn’t twilight come? Where was the night? Had she missed it during her many naps?

  Had she lost track of time itself? It seemed to her as if most of the day had passed before the sun had reached its highest point in the sky—and why was that highest point so far to the side? Was the sun circling her? Why was it circling her?

  She knew that she used to know that answer, but now it just confused her.

  None of it made any sense because none of it mattered. A longer time awake just meant a longer time to be hungry, and more time to be ready to run away from whatever animal or monster saw her.

  That had happened a lot until she had gotten down from the mountainside and out onto this frozen plain—going south, so she had thought, but now was not so sure.

  The sun wasn’t helping, but if she could just stay awake until the nighttime, she knew that she could navigate using the stars. It seemed, though, that no matter how long she tried to stay awake and moving, she couldn’t quite make it to anything resembling twilight, and no matter how short her sleep seemed to her—even on one occasion when she thought she hadn’t actually slept at all—the dawn’s light had already become daylight before she emerged from her cave or snow shelter.

  Or maybe it was just daylight still, and not again, but that made no sense, except that it did, and she didn’t know where to go or how to go.

  And now she was growing hungrier. Desperately so.

  She had survived on the rich drow mushroom bread in her pack for a tenday, rationing it from the start as much as she could while still getting the nourishment she needed to trudge along barren terrain. She counted the meals to try to measure the passing days, and thus tried to estimate the distance she was covering, but those calculations, like everything else, had melted somewhere within the recesses of her thoughts, lost in the monotonous whistle of the chilly wind. More than chilly—it was cold. At first she had thought that was due to her elevation, but no, even with those mountain slopes far behind, it was still cold.

  Now the bread was long gone. She had a bit of mistletoe, and used it to create magical goodberries each day or two, little orbs that nourished and replenished her and even healed any minor cuts or bruises she had suffered while trying to cross the brutal, seemingly lifeless landscape. But the mistletoe was not infinite, and she understood that it would not last much longer.

  She was tired. She was confused. She was cold. She was lost.

  She looked down at the crude spear she had fashioned, one of so many she had made in the days—or tendays . . . or months or whatever it might be—that she had been wandering this rugged, forsaken land. No, the sun hadn’t set, so it had to be hours, but how could it be? How could she have come down from that now-distant mountain in mere hours?

  But where was the twilight? Where was the night?

  She remembered her sword, her friend, her protector, her mentor.

  Khazid’hea.

  “Cutter,” she whispered through her cracked lips, the nickname of the powerful weapon. “My Cutter.”

  But it wasn’t on her hip. She had only this spear, which was barely effective as a walking staff.

  Refusing to die, living with the single thought of exacting revenge on the wizard who had thrown her through a portal to the side of that snow-covered mountain, Doum’wielle Armgo put one foot stubbornly in front of the other. She had to keep moving, had to find some alternative to her primary food source.

  Then what?

  Why wasn’t there anything to kill? Where were the animals? Where were the plants? She hadn’t seen any plants in days and days, not since she had left the foothills. Every now and again she spotted a bird, but none had come close enough for her to take it from the sky with a magical spell or a spear throw.

  It didn’t matter. She had to keep moving, had to keep going the right way.

  If there even was a right way.

  She was almost certain she wasn’t walking in circles. In perhaps the only glimpse of insight remaining for the battered young half moon elf, half drow, she remembered the towering mountains were far away now, replaced by patches of rock in a sea of snow, lined with stony ridges like motionless eternal waves, a frozen painting.

  Was that it? She wondered with all seriousness. Was she stuck in a painting? A frozen scape of lifelessness? Or, more likely, had she been thrown through Archmage Gromph’s portal to an unknown plane of existence, a place of frost and snow, of endless day where sleep couldn’t latch on as that weirdly arcing ball of light in the sky ceaselessly watched over her, taunting her?

  Always taunting her! This was the world of her drow father turned upside down. The blessed darkness replaced by infernal white. She stumbled across the empty expanse, with one thought plaguing her.

  Would she ever again see the night sky?

  And then it happened. Hungry, her stomach growling, her berries growing less effective as the mistletoe waned, Doum’wielle at last watched the sun dip to start its journey below the horizon. She had to dig her nightly cave, she thought, and so she set to the task with the enthusiasm of knowing a full day was going to be rewarded with deserved sleep.

  But the sky didn’t darken much at all, and she watched in blank amazement as the sun continued on its way, not lowering, not darkening, but rather, moving along the horizon.

 
; And soon after, rising once more, the sun in the sky again! Or, not again.

  Still.

  She climbed into her hole. She tried to sleep, but knew she was doomed. This could not be her world.

  “No,” she decided. “This is eternal torment for Doum’wielle.” It mocked her for her father’s drow heritage, she decided. It was a taunt, a forever taunt, punishing her for the sins of her father.

  And Doum’wielle screamed and screamed into the wind, until she could scream no more and fell limp with exhaustion.

  And she lay there and shivered. And sometime later, she ate a berry and came forth into the daylight.

  She trudged on because she had no choice.

  But neither did she have any sense of direction. Or hope.

  She cursed the sun with every step, and praised any clouds that crossed the sky to dim it, and cheered aloud under the storm clouds on those few occasions they appeared, as if they were her champion in the battle with a fiery orb that would not relent to night.

  Yet she was losing the war. Her mistletoe died. She could not make berries. She had no bread. She could make flame, which she did to keep warm and to melt some of this endless sea of snow so that she could drink. But it was temporary. And soon that magic would fade, too.

  And then so would she. Fade into this windswept plain of snow and frozen waves of rock and ice.

  Everything was different from what she knew. Everything was the same.

  She drank more meltwater. She sheltered in caves she dug in the snow.

  At one point, at some time that was the same as any other time, Doum’wielle came upon a crack in the ice, a chasm wide enough for her to descend. Weak and shaky, she removed her pack and climbed down, and down some more. A piece of ice broke off in her hand and bounced and tumbled far below.

  She held her perch and held her breath, but began to wonder the point. Perhaps she should just let go and fall and die.

  But then she heard a splash.

  More curious than hopeful, Doum’wielle continued her descent and found some focus in her jumbled mind, enough to bring forth a magical light. With every movement down now, she cast another cantrip, a burst of shocking energy that cut the ice and made a solid handhold. She came at last to dark water, running as far as she could see along this narrow gorge.

  It heaved and swelled, and Doum’wielle sensed that it was a wider body than the gorge, surely. She cupped her hand and took a sip, then spat it out, for it tasted of salt. She had traveled to the Sword Coast and the ocean before—this was not as salty, but neither was it potable.

  But if this was indeed a sea . . .

  Doum’wielle put her hand into the cold water and cast a minor spell of light to create a glowing area beneath her. Then another light, this time on a small coin, which she tossed into the water, watching the brightened area as it descended.

  She waited.

  She saw movement, just a flitter of a small form darting through the unnatural brightness.

  Doum’wielle settled on a secure footing, digging holes with her lightning on either side of the narrow chasm where she could set her feet. She rolled up a sleeve, put light upon her hand, and bent low, then submerged her arm to the elbow, wincing at the sting of the cold water. She waited.

  A distortion.

  Lines of tiny lightning shot out from her fingers, a shocking grasp that became a small ball of stinging energy, and she yelped and retracted her hand. She was rubbing it and looking past it when she forgot all the pain, for a small stunned fish floated to the surface. She snatched it up and shoved it whole into her mouth, desperate for food, not caring about the bones or scales or that it wasn’t cooked.

  Only caring to find more!

  Time didn’t matter. Another fish, and a third, and she devoured both. Then another, and another, and she bashed them against the ice to stun them or kill them, stuffing them into her pockets.

  And she waited for more, and thought that she might just stay here forever.

  But no, how could she?

  It took her a long time to sort that puzzle out, for she did not want to leave this place—how could she leave this place that offered food?

  She lit and dropped another coin, then another after that. Then a large form moved through that lowering light. A much bigger fish. As long as her arm.

  Doum’wielle pulled a fish from her pocket and bit out its belly, tugging out its entrails with her teeth, then tossed the squirming, dying mess into the water.

  Up came the larger fish to feed, and down went Doum’wielle’s hand, grasping it, shocking it (and shocking herself in the water yet again!). She accepted the pain and cast the spell once more, then lifted the thrashing steelhead from the sea, viciously and repeatedly slamming it against the ice until it went still.

  She loosened the fine cord of her belt and tied the prize to her waist, and then Doum’wielle, beyond pain, beyond exhaustion, somehow climbed up the same side she’d come down. She knew not for how long, or how far, or how many times she had to cast a minor cantrip to secure her grip, but at last she crawled back up onto the sea of snow and ice beside her pack.

  The sun was still there to mock her.

  She dug a small hole in the snow and crawled in, as much to get out of the relentless light as for the shelter offered against the chill wind, and for the first time in days—months? Years? An eternity?—she slept.

  She ate the small fish when she awakened, stuffed the large one in her pack, and walked on, staying near to the chasm.

  She had to keep moving.

  She had to keep eating.

  She had to keep moving.

  She had to keep eating.

  Move.

  Eat.

  Sleep.

  Drink.

  Her thoughts reduced to only that. She forgot why.

  And why wouldn’t the night come? Where were the stars she had danced under in the . . . in the place before that now had no name in her memories?

  Many times in that seemingly endless wander, Doum’wielle tried to recall her more powerful spells, but to no avail. At some point, she finished the last of the large fish, but was too weary to go back into the chasm, or perhaps she just forgot, and so she moved along, step after step in the glaring, unrelenting sunlight and the incessant cold wind.

  She knew not how long after—she had slept four times, but that meant little—her belly began to growl again from hunger and her arms began to hang heavily at her sides. She ignored it for a long while, but then realized, to her horror, that she was no longer walking beside the large crack in the immensely thick ice pack.

  She spun all around, trying to get her bearings, the shock of her suddenly more dire situation bringing a moment of clarity. She tried to retrace her steps, but already they were disappearing behind her in the constant swirl of blowing snow. She rushed about for as long as she could manage, but could not find again that chasm, that conduit down to the sea so far below her feet, to the fish that had sustained her.

  She had no idea what she should do. She looked to the horizon, to the distant mountains, though she couldn’t tell if those were even the same mountains she had first landed upon. It didn’t matter, as any way was as good as another, so she locked the image of a distinctive peak in her thoughts.

  “A straight line,” she told herself, though she wasn’t really sure why that might be a good thing.

  And she walked on, and on, then slept and walked and slept some more.

  Doum’wielle had come to understand beyond any doubts that many of the pieces of time that she used to call a day had passed when she realized that she was out of time and out of strength. The water from the melted snow was not enough anymore.

  She fell to her knees and screamed at the sun, cursing it, demanding the night.

  She wanted to die at night.

  She didn’t even dig a hole to sleep in. She just fell down and the darkness of sleep came over her.

  Then a deeper darkness.

  Doum’wielle didn’t kno
w how much time had passed when she opened her eyes once more, only to find herself in darkness. Cold, cold darkness.

  She tried to get up, or roll over, but her cheek was stuck to the ice.

  For the first time since she had walked from that mountain where Archmage Gromph had thrown her, Doum’wielle Armgo cried. She cried for her misery, for this miserable end. She cried for her betrayed mother, who had been left for the orcs by her father when he had chosen to walk with Doum’wielle into the darkness.

  She cried for Teirflin, her murdered brother. What had she done? She pulled a hand up to her eyes, expecting to see his blood still upon it.

  She tried to tell herself that Khazid’hea had made her do it, that the sword had selected a champion, and so she had been given no choice. But no, she couldn’t quite bring herself to blame the sword, or hate the sword, no. Never that. In the end, she wept, too, for Khazid’hea.

  It should be in her arms, clutched to her as she left this world.

  This dark world.

  That last thought caught her by surprise. She tried again to lift her face, to turn her face, then, when that failed, she set her hand against the cold ice and pushed suddenly with all the strength she could muster, tearing herself free. The pain was excruciating, but the liberation was worth it. She stumbled and thrashed, winding up on her back and looking up at the sky, at the clouds and the stars.

  The stars! A million, million stars!

  The day had ended, at last.

  With great effort, she pulled herself up to a sitting position, and felt the bite of the freezing wind more distinctly.

  As a deeper cold crept in, she believed that she had awakened only to witness her own death, that her mind had somehow decided that she must be alert in these last moments.

  She would lie down now and once again let the cold take her, she decided, for what choice did she have? But as she started to roll back, Doum’wielle noted a curious light low in the sky far to her left, a diffused yellow glow. Her first thought was that the sky was swallowing the sun, and that the night was winning some celestial battle here.