The Companions s-1 Page 4

  And then he was flying-nay, not flying.

  He was falling.

  Standing at the edge of the lea in the magical forest, Catti-brie began to sing once more.

  “Girl, go get me boy!” Bruenor cried, but his voice sounded distorted.

  “What are you doing?” Regis asked, his words slowing and speeding strangely as the magic of Catti-brie’s song warped time and space itself. Then they three, too, found themselves in a strange tunnel, winding their way quickly along. This wasn’t the same as Wulfgar’s experience, however, for no sooner had Bruenor or Regis even registered the strange effect than they came out of it, rushing out from the root of a willow tree to suddenly find themselves standing with Catti-brie beside the small forest pond once more.

  And there lay Wulfgar, gasping and trying to rise, propping himself up on his elbows and muttering, only to fall back to the grass.

  He managed to turn to face his friends at Bruenor’s call, his face ashen, his arms trembling.

  “Titans,” he rasped. “Gods. The altar of the gods!”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE REBORN HERO

  The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Netheril

  Lord Parise Ulfbinder of the Empire of Netheril shifted uncomfortably in his seat, poring over each of a hundred parchments again and again. He kept glancing to the side, to his crystal ball, almost expecting another magical intrusion from his peer and friend, Lord Draygo Quick, who resided outside the city of Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell, the dark sister of the Prime Material Plane.

  Everything Draygo Quick had just told him had only reinforced that which Parise feared. The gates between the Shadowfell and Toril were growing weaker, and the pockets of shadow on Toril seemed to be diminishing.

  Most of Netheril’s scholars, and there were many among the learned Netherese, had viewed the stronger bonds between the worlds as a great change in the multiverse, a new and permanent paradigm, in the lifespan of a shade, at least.

  Parise Ulfbinder was beginning to growOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  And waoo uncertain of that, and the pile of parchments, ancient writings of long dead scholars, Netherese and otherwise, whispered to him of things that seemed to be coming true all around him.

  The gates were … thinning.

  The vibrant young lord shifted the parchments before him, drawing forth his copy of the cornerstone of his theory, an ancient sonnet known as “Cherlrigo’s Darkness.”

  Enjoy the play when shadows steal the day …

  All the world is half the world for those who learn to walk.

  To feast on fungus soft and peel the sunlit stalk;

  Tarry not in place, for in their sleep the gods do stay.

  But care be known, be light of foot and soft of voice.

  Dare not stir divine to hasten Sunder’s day!

  A loss profound but a short ways away;

  The inevitable tear shall’t be of, or not of, choice.

  Oh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  With kingdoms lost and treasures past the finger’s tip,

  And enemies that stink of their god’s particular flavor.

  Sundered and whole, across the celestial spheres are hurled,

  Beyond the reach of dweomer and the wind-walker’s ship;

  With baubles left for the ones the gods do favor.

  Parise and Lord Draygo had discussed this sonnet extensively and repeatedly, particularly the poem’s volte, the ninth line: Oh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  “ ‘Of lonely world,’ ” Parise read aloud. “Of.”

  To him, this resolution seemed a clear enough statement, more than a hint, that the magical proximity of Abeir and Toril was not likely as permanent as many believed.

  “How long?” he wondered aloud and his eyes drifted up to the dual globe and calendar he had placed on the far edge of his desk.

  Parise read the header of the calendar. “ ‘Dalereckoning, 1463.’ ”

  He knew the current year as measured on Toril, of course. He was a mathematician, a scholar, and one quite interested in the movements of the heavenly spheres, which had played no small role in his current investigation regarding the fate of Abeir-Toril. So naming the year should not have come as a revelation to the learned Netherese Lord … and yet, it had.

  “1463?” he muttered, and suddenly, he sucked in his breath.

  He rushed from his chair so quickly that he sent it spinning and tumbling out behind him, and just as quickly, he flopped into the chair set before his crystal ball and frantically began reestablishing the connection to the Shadowfell, to Lord Draygo Quick.

  He was greatly relieved to find that his friend was still in his study, and so heard his call.

  “Well met again,” greeted Lord Draygo, a withered old warlock of great influence and magical power.

  “You know a favored hero,” Parise said, “a chosen of one of the old gods, so you believe.”

  “Yes,”Jelvus GrinchI, im Draygo Quick replied, for they had just been over this.

  “Perhaps you err.”

  Inside the crystal ball, the somewhat distorted image of Parise’s counterpart seemed taken aback. “I have never spoken with certainty-”

  “Perhaps we err,” Parise Ulfbinder corrected, “in believing that the heroes of the old gods are out there, preparing.”

  Now Draygo Quick looked simply perplexed.

  “What year is it?” Parise asked.

  “Year?”

  “Yes, what year, in Toril’s calendar? In Dalereckoning?”

  Draygo Quick’s face scrunched up as he considered the question, which Parise expected would take him a few moments to unravel, given that Lord Draygo lived in the Shadowfell, where time itself was measured differently.

  “Too long are you upon the land of light, that you even care,” Draygo Quick remarked, before properly answering, “1463, I believe.”

  “Not the date, the name.”

  “1463 …,” Parise Ulfbinder replied, “the Year of the Reborn Hero.”

  “What is the significance of this?” Draygo Quick asked.

  Parise could only shrug. “Perhaps none,” he admitted. “It is a lead, not a clue. Potentially a lead, I should say. We should not alter our respective courses or investigations.”

  “Regarding Drizzt Do’Urden?”

  “Him or any others who catch our attention,” said Parise. “We will build our network to find and scout these favored mortals, these heroes. But as we go forth, perhaps we should tell our spies to pay particular attention to any seeming as Chosen who happened to be born this very year.”

  “It is a remarkable coincidence,” Draygo Quick admitted, and he began poring through the listings of previous years. “But they may hold clues,” Draygo Quick pointed out.

  Now it was time for Parise to sigh, for he had feared that he would open this very box of troubles. Scholars had spent their entire careers trying to make sense or order of the Roll of Years, the prophecies of Auguthra the Mad.

  “It is work for acolytes,” Lord Parise suggested. “Take a cursory glance and nothing more, I pray you.”

  “The Year of the Singing Skull,” Draygo Quick said, seeming to ignore Parise.

  “What?”

  “1297,” the older lord answered. “The year of Drizzt’s birth, I believe. The Year of the Singing Skull.”

  “Do you see significance in that?”

  “No.”

  “Then why interrupt …?”

  “Why would there be significance?” Draygo Quick asked. “He was just a drow, among tens of thousands.”

  “Then why …?” Parise Ulfbinder let his voice trail off and let the thought dissipate. Indeed this had been his fear when first he had learned of the current year’s formal name. Perhaps it was coincidence-likely it was coincidence, and likely, too, that investigating the name would garner no information worthy of his time andOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

 
“Let our work continue as it was,” he suggested to Draygo Quick. “We have networks to build and spies to recruit.”

  “Like Bregan D’aerthe.”

  Parise nodded. “Like Bregan D’aerthe, practical and helpful in ways they will not even understand.”

  “So you reopened our discussion here for nothing more than a n of all three

  CHAPTER 3

  MIELIKKI’S IRULADOON

  The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Iruladoon

  Wulfgar kneeled by the pond, trying to absorb what Catti-brie had just told him, trying to get past the shock of his rebirth experience. It could not be-somewhere deep in his heart, he simply could not grasp the truth of the woman’s statement.

  “But I knew,” he whispered, and though he spoke quietly, his words abruptly silenced the conversation behind him, where Bruenor and Regis babbled about this same mystery, seeking some explanation.

  “You remembered everything,” Catti-brie said to Wulfgar, and he turned to regard the three.

  “I knew,” he replied. “I knew who I had been, who I was, and where I had come from. Not a newborn …,”

  “Not a newborn in heart, nor in mind,” she explained. “In body alone.”

  “Girl, what do ye know?” Bruenor asked.

  “Regis and I have been in this place, Iruladoon, for several tendays,” she started.

  “For a hunnerd years, ye mean,” Bruenor interrupted, but Catti-brie shook her head immediately, as if anticipating that exact response.

  “A century in the lands beyond Iruladoon, but only a matter of tendays within,” she replied. “This is the gift of Mielikki.”

  “Or the curse,” muttered Wulfgar.,” Catti-brie agreedIes"›;src: url(kindle: embed:000

  “Nay, the gift,” Catti-brie said. “And not a gift to us, but to Drizzt. The goddess has done this for our friend.”

  “Eh?” Bruenor and Regis asked together.

  “The old gods knew,” Catti-brie said. “With the advent of Shadow, the connection to the Shadowfell, this collision with this other world known as Abeir and our world of Toril … the old gods anticipated the chaos. Not all of it, to be sure, like the falling of the Weave and the Spellplague, but they understood indeed the greater truth of the worlds coming together.”

  “Might be why they’re gods,” Bruenor muttered.

  “And they know, too, that it is a temporary arrangement of the spheres,” said Catti-brie. “The advent will meet its sundering, and that time, the Sundering, is soon upon us.”

  “And here I be, thinking we were dead,” Bruenor muttered sarcastically, mostly to Regis, but Catti-brie wasn’t listening, and didn’t slow in her story. She took on the role of a skald then, even beginning a bit of a dance as she continued, much like the dancing she had done around the flowery boughs of Iruladoon through the hours of the previous tendays.

  “It will be a time of great despair and tumult, of chaos and realignment, both worldly and among the pantheon,” she proclaimed. “The gods will claim their realms and their followers-they will seek their champions among some, and make champions of others. They will find prizes among the mortal leaders of Faerun, among the Lords of Waterdeep and the Archwizards of Thay, among the chieftains of the great tribes and the heroes of the North, among the kings, dwarf and orc alike.

  “Most will be as it ever has been,” she explained. “Moradin and Gruumsh will hold their tribes fast, but around the edges, there will be chaos. Who will lead the thieves, and to whom will the wizards credit their arcane blasts? And who will mortals, grieving and lost, choose to serve as the roadways of their journey winding ever wider?”

  “What?” Regis asked in obvious exasperation.

  “More riddles?” Wulfgar grumbled.

  But Bruenor caught a bit of her meaning more clearly. “Drizzt,” he whispered. “Grieving and lost, ye say? Aye, but I left him with that Dahlia girl, and trouble’s sure to be brewin’ with that fiery child!”

  “Grieving, and so, perhaps, easy prey,” said Catti-brie.

  “He loves ye,” Bruenor was quick to answer, comfortingly. “He still loves ye, girl! Always has!”

  Catti-brie’s laugh almost mocked the notion of carnal jealousy. “I speak of his heart, of his soul, and not of his physical desires.”

  “In that, Drizzt is for Mielikki,” said Regis, but Catti-brie merely shrugged to dispel his certainty.

  “He will choose, in the end,” she said. “And I hold faith in him that he will choose wisely. But more likely, his choice will cost him-everything. That is the warning of Mielikki, and so this is her gift.”

  “Bah, but it’s not for her to be giving!” Bruenor said.

  “My place is in the Halls of Tempus,” Wulfgar insisted, catching on to the dwarf’s meaning and rising to his feet Oh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  “And so the choice is yours to make,” Catti-brie agreed, “for never would the goddess demand such service from the follower of another. Mielikki demands of you no fealty, but offers you, then, this choice.”

  “I am here!” Wulfgar argued. “There is no choice!”

  “Aye,” agreed Bruenor.

  “There is,” Catti-brie replied with a smile that surely disarmed both. “For this place is not permanent and everlasting-indeed, its time of end is nearly upon us. The enchantment of Mielikki, Iruladoon, will soon be no more. Forever gone, not to return. And so we must choose and we must leave.”

  “As I tried,” Wulfgar reminded.

  “Indeed,” Catti-brie replied with a nod. “But you did so blindly, without preparation, without bargain, and so you were doomed. Better for you that your experience ended as soon as it began. Better for you that the midwife dashed you down upon the stones!”

  “Without bargain?” Regis echoed under his breath, the halfling catching the curious phrase buried within Catti-brie’s explanation.

  The blood drained from Wulfgar at Catti-brie’s remark, as memories of his brief experience outside of Iruladoon came flooding back to him-magically, he knew, through the words of Catti-brie. He had come forth into the arms of a giantess, so he thought, but in truth, into the arms of a midwife. And when he had protested, when he had called out in the voice of a babe, but in the words of one much older, the horrified midwife had done her duty and had thrown him down, dashing him on the warm stones heating the hut.

  The memory of the weight of that terror, of the explosion as his soft head struck the unyielding rock, stunned him once more. He stumbled back into the pond a couple of steps and sat there in the shallow water for many heartbeats before dragging himself back to the bank.

  “Aye,” Catti-brie explained to Bruenor and Regis as Wulfgar floundered, “the goddess revealed it all to me. Indeed, she likely incited the midwife to destroy the haunted child.”

  “Not much of a merciful goddess!” Bruenor argued.

  “The cycle of life and death is neither merciful nor merciless,” Catti-brie explained. “It is. It has ever been and will ever be. Wulfgar could not leave Iruladoon as he attempted-none of us can. That is not the pact or the choice Mielikki offers to us four. We are afforded two paths from this forest before the magic fades. The first is as Wulfgar chose, but on condition.” She looked directly at Wulfgar. “One you had not met, and so you were doomed to fail.”

  Wulfgar stared back at her, his expression rife with suspicion.

  “The second route from here is through that very pond,” Catti-brie finished.

  “On condition?” Regis asked.

  “To leave the forest, to return to Faerun, requires an oath to Mielikki.”

  “You would proselytize?” Wulfgar protested.

  “By Moradin’s hairy arse!” Bruenor similarly protested. “I love ye girl, and love Drizzt as me brother, but I ain’t for chasing flowers in a glade of Mielikki’s choosing!”

  “An oath, a quest, not everlasting fealty,” Catti-brieextract{text-indent: 0anF8 explained. “To accept the blessing of Mielikki and depart Iruladoon to
be born again upon the lands of Faerun, you must accept one condition alone: that you will act on the side of Mielikki in the darkest hour.”

  “To be sure, I’m not knowin’ what that’s to mean, girl,” said Bruenor.

  “In Drizzt’s darkest hour she means,” said Regis. When the others all looked to him he added, “A gift to Drizzt most of all, you said.”

  “Are ye sayin’ that Drizzt will be needing our help?” asked Bruenor.

  Catti-brie shrugged, appearing sincerely at a loss. “It seems likely.”

  “So we can return to the aid of Drizzt, whatever that might mean, but we are free to honor and serve a god of our choosing?” Regis asked, and it was obvious from his tone that he was only asking the question to help clarify things for Bruenor and Wulfgar, whose faces continued to express grave doubts.

  “When the cycle turns once more, when you die again, as you surely will,” Catti-brie replied, “you will find your way to the altar of the god of your choosing, at that god’s suffrage.” She whirled around to face Wulfgar and the pond, and added, “Indeed, that choice is the second option before you now.” She pointed into the pond. “For beneath the waters of this pond is a cave, a tunnel winding through the multiverse to the promised rewards of devoted followers. That path is open to you now, should you so choose. For you, Wulfgar, the road to Warrior’s Rest, and the children and friends you knew among your tribe who had predeceased you, or have died in the years since you entered Iruladoon. A place of honor is there for you, I am sure. For you, my father, Dwarfhome and your seat beside Moradin, and a grand seat it will be, for you have sat upon the throne of Gauntlgrym and have been touched by his favor and power. For you, Regis, the Green Fields, and more to roam in the ways of Brandobaris, and know that I will find you there when I am no more of this world, and Drizzt will find us both, for the Deep Wilds of Mielikki touch the Green Fields.”

  “What’re ye sayin’, girl?” Bruenor asked. “Are we dead or ain’t we?”

  “We are,” Regis answered. “But we don’t have to be.”