The Companions: The Sundering, Book I Page 11

  But now that the moment of truth closed, dark wings of doubt fluttered up all around him. He was too young and too frail for this, perhaps. For all his training, his incessant exercise and practice, his body remained that of a child, and a halfling one at that!

  He heard the approaching shouts; they had cornered him and there were no high rooftops in this poor district beside the great lake. Instinctively he looked around for an escape, and though he noted one distinct possibility, he shook the notion away.

  He had purposely baited Bregnan Prus and the others and had led them to this point.

  But he was merely a child, barely nine years old. Bregnan stood almost twice his height and easily carried twice his weight.

  “You can do this,” Regis whispered and he thought of Drizzt and Catti-brie, of Wulfgar and Bruenor, and of the role he had ever played in that band. True, he had found moments of usefulness, usually by accident, but mostly he had been the tag-along, hiding in the shadows while his heroic friends had protected him.

  It could not be like that again. He wouldn’t allow it.

  A shout from beside the very warehouse where the young halfling sat, told him that his pursuers were close, so he stood up, dusted himself off, and stepped out around the corner to meet them.

  Bregnan Prus, in the lead, skidded to a stop.

  Regis didn’t blink.

  “No walls to climb, Spider?” the boy asked, a bit of a lisp to his voice since he had torn his lips extracting the whistle.

  Regis glanced left, then right, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

  “You think I’m to be easy on you, then, because you’re just a child?”

  “Ah, but just punch him hard,” another of the group said. “Let’s all punch him hard!”

  That brought a few nods and cheers from the group of five.

  Regis held his nerve and wouldn’t let them see him shift nervously, or even let them hear him clear his throat.

  Behind him, the halfling heard the other group rushing in, this one led by the elf girl.

  Bregnan Prus stepped up to him, towering over him.

  “Beg me not to kill you,” he said.

  But Regis stared up at him, locking his gaze, unblinking, and the halfling even managed a bit of a wry smile.

  “Last chance!” Bregnan Prus said, and grabbed Regis by the collar—or tried to, for the halfling’s hand flashed across, slapping Bregnan’s fingers aside.

  “Little rat!” the boy cried, and he launched a wild left hook aimed for Regis’s head.

  But the halfling, surely not caught by surprise, ducked and backed up a step. He knew the counter move he should then execute, had practiced it a thousand times before, but he found that he could not.

  Bregnan Prus pursued, launching a barrage of punches, though clumsy hooks one and all, and Regis rolled away time and again.

  “He’s just a boy!” he heard behind him, the elf girl. Regis liked that one, and for some reason, the sound of her voice emboldened him.

  “One last warning,” Regis said loudly, suddenly, and all the chatter stopped, and Bregnan Prus stopped as well and stared at him incredulously. “It was all just a game until now,” Regis warned. “Walk away.”

  “What?”

  “You are a clumsy ogre,” Regis said. “I have embarrassed you once before your friends. Would you have me do so again?”

  Bregnan Prus let out a strange garbled sound and leaped at Regis, fists flailing. But Regis moved, too, the maneuver he had practiced repeatedly, day and night. He dived at the teenager’s feet, curled and rolled, and the older boy, coming forward, tried to straddle him so that he did not get tripped up.

  But that was the whole point, and as Bregnan Prus awkwardly slithered past the ball of halfling, one leg on either side, Regis rolled so that the back of his head and the back of his shoulders were planted squarely against the ground. With that brace, he kicked straight up with both feet, connecting solidly with the teenager’s groin.

  Bregnan Prus gave a cry and a grunt, and tried to press past, but Regis began a furious pumping of his feet, left and right alternately, smashing one heel after the other into the older boy’s tender loins.

  Bregnan Prus hopped weirdly and kept trying to sidle past. He brought his hands down for cover, yelping all the while. Too late, though, both he and his assailant realized, as Regis’s foot connected perfectly, driving the older boy to his tip-toes and even lifting him off the ground.

  Regis tucked and rolled through, spinning around as he did to catch Bregnan Prus’s trailing foot as the gasping young man tried to stagger away. The sneaky little halfling had all the leverage here, and he drove in hard, pushing up and over Bregnan Prus’s other leg.

  The teenager crashed to the ground.

  Regis untangled himself and ran right up the back of the fallen lad’s thighs, leaping onto his back with a stunning knee drop.

  He went for the lad’s hairy head and almost got there before being swept aside by a flying tackle. Now he rolled and punched, bit and scratched, but the boy atop him was too strong and too heavy for that. A balled fist came in at him and he got his hand up to block—but the power of the punch drove right through and crushed Regis’s nose and sent him sprawling.

  “He’s just a boy!” the elf girl yelled.

  But in reply, Bregnan Prus ordered in a gasping and pained voice, “Kill him!”

  Suddenly it wasn’t just a game, or a youthful play of dominance, for in that tone, Regis heard, unmistakably, a serious death sentence.

  He had underestimated this group; he hadn’t realized just how tough the streets of Delthuntle might be.

  He tried to get up and run, but got tackled again, and the next punch sent him spinning—or more accurately, the world around him spinning.

  He felt himself lifted to his feet, then into the air, and a heavy slug, a punch by Bregnan Prus, took his breath away.

  Pericolo Topolino tapped his ivory-tipped cane against the counter, drawing the fishmonger’s attention. She stood straight indeed when she recognized the halfling.

  “Grandfather,” she said, dipping into an awkward bow. “You have quite the assortment of deepwater oysters,” the cultured halfling remarked.

  “Y-yes, Grandfather,” she stammered. “Fresh, too. They were brought in just today.”

  “The boats are out at the Sandy Banks, chasing the bass,” Pericolo said. He wasn’t surprised by the oysters, of course, nor did he doubt that they were fresh as stated. His informants had led him here, after all, and for precisely this reason.

  The fishmonger stammered as if cornered.

  “An independent diver, then,” Pericolo reasoned. “A good one, it would seem.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “You were here the other day, when there was such a commotion across the street?” Pericolo graciously asked. “The toot-tooting of the whistle?”

  “Aye, yes,” she answered, and she nodded and managed a smile. “Was myself that extracted the instrument from Prus’s glued lips. Poor boy.”

  “And the one he pursued?” Pericolo asked. “The one called Spider?”

  The fishmonger looked at him curiously.

  “Ah, yes, of course,” the halfling clarified. “It was myself who gave him that name, so you would not know him by it.”

  “The halfling?”

  “Yes, the halfling. The one who went up to the roof. You know him, I believe.”

  The woman seemed very concerned suddenly, and she inadvertently glanced at the oysters, tipping her hand. Indeed, this little halfling, this Spider creature, was a valuable commodity to her, the astute Pericolo recognized.

  “Tell me his name.”

  “Spider, you said.”

  “His real name,” Pericolo said, shifting his tone just enough to carry an undercurrent of a threat.

  “I’m not for knowing,” she said with a gulp. “Don’t know that he’s even got one, for his Da’s not a man to be bothering with such things.”

  Peric
olo narrowed his eyes.

  “He’s Eiverbreen’s boy!” she blurted.

  “Eiverbreen?”

  “Eiverbreen Parrafin. His boy and Jolee’s, though she went and died when the little one was born.”

  “Spider?”

  “Aye.”

  “And he is a deep diver, this one?”

  “Aye, so it’d seem, and so was his mum.”

  Pericolo Topolino nodded at her and looked away, considering the information, and though he wasn’t paying the fishmonger any heed, he heard her profound sigh of relief. He liked that he could do that to people.

  Barely four feet tall and he could elicit such a response from almost everyone in Delthuntle, and in many other places in greater Aglarond, as well.

  “Fill a basket with some oysters, then,” the halfling said cheerily, reaching for his pouch of coins. He paid the fishmonger well for the shellfish. That was Pericolo Topolino’s way, of course, eliciting a mixture of fear and gratitude, for he was a person to be feared and to be loved.

  That was his way.

  This wasn’t working out as he had planned. His maneuver with Bregnan Prus had been executed perfectly, and the older boy was still reeling, walking tentatively, as much on his toes as on the balls of his feet, and wincing with every step, barely able to keep from cupping his bruised groin.

  But the boy hadn’t come alone, of course, and despite the protests of the elf girl, Regis found himself sorely overmatched. Worse, while he could accept the beating, this had progressed beyond that.

  They weren’t trying to humiliate him.

  They weren’t trying to hurt him.

  Nay, they were trying to kill him.

  Two boys held him up by the ankles, and despite his twisting and turning, they managed to get his legs apart just wide enough for Bregnan Prus to chop his hand down into Regis’s groin, taking the halfling’s breath away.

  “That hurt, did it, little Spider?” the older boy taunted, and he hit the halfling child again.

  Indeed, it had hurt, but not as badly as Regis had anticipated. He was still a child after all, and that particular area of vulnerability wasn’t yet as tender as it would become in future years.

  That seemed of small comfort, though, given that the beating had only just begun.

  Regis began to cry and just hung there limply, arms hanging low.

  There would be no pity forthcoming, however, and Bregnan Prus stepped back and wound up for a great kick into the halfling’s face.

  Regis waited and slyly watched, and as the older boy’s foot began to move, he threw his head backward, arching his back as far as he could.

  Bregnan Prus missed, and Regis snapped himself back the other way, curling up at his waist, bringing his head up to look alternately into the faces of the two boys holding him by the ankles. Out went Regis’s hands, to either side, where he flicked the middle finger of each hard under the nose of his respective captors. One cried out and let go, cupping his stung proboscis.

  Regis threw himself down the other way, and turned violently as he went, and the second boy, caught off guard, overbalanced and with a stung nose of his own, couldn’t hold on.

  The halfling executed a perfect flip, landing in a run and sprinting for all his life toward the nearby shoreline.

  Bregnan Prus yelled from behind, and Regis soon heard the footsteps as the older boy and his friends closed upon him. He splashed into the water and dived forward, and almost got out of reach, but alas, a strong hand closed on the back of his collar.

  He was pulled from the water, to stare into the hateful eyes of the teenager he had humiliated. With a little evil laugh, Bregnan Prus thrust him back under the water, and held him there.

  Regis struggled mightily. At one point, he broke from the water enough to hear the elf girl screaming, and prayed that she might prove to be his salvation. Even in that instance, though, he never quite managed to get his mouth or nose out of the water, to draw breath.

  Bregnan Prus wasn’t letting go.

  Regis struggled some more, for many, many heartbeats. He went into one last, great fit of scrabbling, in complete desperation, it seemed.

  Then he went limp, and let the older boy and the waves determine his movements fully. Still Bregnan Prus pressed down on him; there could be no doubt of the boy’s murderous intent.

  Regis didn’t fight it. He knew that he could remain there for a long, long while. He could dive fifty feet, a hundred feet, and remain on the bottom for long periods of time as he gathered up oysters for his father. He was a deep diver, indeed, though he knew not how or why. Surely in his past life, he could never have dived so deep, and indeed, in his past life, he would be dead right now, as he was feigning.

  Finally the older boy let him go, shoving him off toward deeper water. Regis turned his head as he went, just slightly, so that he could hear the screams of the elf girl, the protests against the apparent murder, and Bregnan Prus’s abrasive dismissal of the whole affair. He heard the teenagers splashing out of the surf and felt himself drifting, for the tide was going out.

  So he just floated, face down, relaxing in the gentle ebbs and flows of the inviting liquid around him.

  He smiled widely, though none on the shore could see it, of course, for he had exacted his revenge, and more than that, he had fought past his fears. He replayed the drumbeat of his heels into Bregnan Prus’s groin.

  He had stared into uncertainty and had stood tall against fear. True, he had almost died for his “courage,” and indeed, only luck—this uncanny ability to survive underwater—had saved him, but it didn’t matter to Regis at that time.

  He had faced his fears and had defeated them. He had willingly walked into battle, indeed had goaded that fight, against seemingly impossible odds. He hadn’t defeated his external enemies, perhaps, but he had surely beaten back his own fear, and that, of course, had been the entire point.

  He thought of Drizzt and the other Companions of the Hall. He remembered the role he had too often played among that group, that of tag-along, or of the helpless little halfling needing to be protected.

  “Not this time,” he mouthed, tickling bubbles bouncing up all around him. “Not this time!”

  CHAPTER 9

  ZIBRIJA

  The Year of the First Circle (1468 DR) Netheril

  SILENT AS SHADOWS, THE OWL DRIFTED ALONG, WATCHING THE TWO DESAI, Niraj and Kavita, shuffling across the dark plain through the desert night. The couple held each other close for support, clearly rattled by the startling revelations of the evening. They swayed and walked a swerving line.

  But they held each other, and that was good, Catti-brie knew. Their family had been torn asunder and they would need each other in the coming days. The shapeshifting child set down upon the ground and reformed yet again, now taking the host body of a wolf.

  The wolf loped along in the darkness, paralleling the couple, then moving ahead of them, making sure that the way was clear, that no animals or monsters would threaten these two, distracted as they were.

  She noted that they were soon walking straighter and leaning less upon each other; there seemed to be a determination growing within them.

  She broke off her shadowing when her parents, oblivious to her presence, came in sight of the Desai encampment, home again and safe—for now.

  But what might happen when the Netherese came calling once more, looking for Ruqiah?

  Catti-brie moved back out into the empty night, a child now, a girl, little Ruqiah. She, too, was reeling, she only then realized. For her home had been torn asunder. The security of her parents, even though they might be new parents and only through extraordinary circumstances, was gone now.

  And the love was distant.

  Yes, love, the girl realized. She had come to truly love Niraj and Kavita. Though she needed them far less than a true child of theirs might, she loved them both as dearly as any child could. She hadn’t planned on leaving them this early. Indeed, she had hoped to remain in their home until she set
out for Icewind Dale, some fifteen years hence.

  But now what could she do? She turned around and considered the imposing wasteland around her, this Empire of Netheril, formerly the great desert of Anauroch.

  “Fear not for me, my parents,” she said again, replaying her parting words to the couple, but this time to bolster her own confidence. “I go with the goddess, and my road is well-known to me. We will meet again.”

  Her voice sounded tiny in the empty plain, the whisper of a child. For Catti-brie understood that she was in trouble, out alone in the wilds of Netheril and with dangerous hunters of Shade Enclave eagerly pursuing her. She’d killed the two assassins at the tent. It was good fortune alone that had saved her at the tent. Before they’d arrived, she’d summoned the storm—a time-consuming spellcasting, indeed—to bring the washing rains. Had she not previously thought to bring the storm clouds, she would never have had the devastating magic of the lightning at her fingertips.

  Her other spells—the bat swarm and the magic missiles, even the pillar of fire—would not have defeated those two, and those spells represented the most powerful magic she had.

  The girl pulled up her sleeves and looked down at her arms. The symbol of Mielikki gave her the power to summon the storms and to assume the animal forms. Perhaps she could have become a bear and battled the assassins.

  It was not a comforting thought, for the animal forms were limited, Catti-brie had come to understand, both in duration and effectiveness. No, without the storm already in place above the encampment, the best she might have done was distract and wound the killers with her bats, sting them with her missiles and fiery tricks, then become an owl to soar away, leaving her mother to die and her father to the mercy of the murderers.

  The thought of her dying mother reminded her of her other powers, the healing warmth of Mielikki. Indeed, in this regard Catti-brie recognized that she was powerful, as much so as an acolyte of many years, perhaps, or even on par with a priestess. Her days of close communion with the goddess in Iruladoon had given her that much.