R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Ah, but Penelope was, apparently.”

The woman laughed. “He didn’t need them against my resolve!”

“His powers of persuasion must be great indeed to convince you to join this family,” Wulfgar remarked, and Penelope looked at him with a puzzled expression, as if she did not understand.

“I convinced him,” she corrected when she had sorted it out. “I am Penelope Harpell by birth, not marriage.”

It was Wulfgar’s turn to wear the puzzled expression.

“Dowell joined my clan and took my name,” she explained. “It was the least he could do after I pulled him from the grasp of the hill giant king-a hungry hill giant king, no less!”

Wulfgar laughed.

“I find your return to Toril the most curious tale among those of your group,” Penelope went on. “Catti-brie was bound by her goddess, Bruenor by his sense of friendship, the halfling by a need to prove his worth-be wary for him, for I suspect that his demands of his own courage will land him in dire straits in short order. But what of Wulfgar? You admitted that you did not immediately choose this path, yet here you are.”

“Bound by friendship, as with Bruenor, and including my friendship and debt to Bruenor as much as to Drizzt,” Wulfgar answered.

“You owed nothing, and that friendship was long past, by your own admission.” She stopped and looked up at Wulfgar intently, forcing him to look her in the eye.

After a long pause, he admitted, “Perhaps I fear death, after all.”

“A strange admission from one who has existed on the other side of life.”

“What is to be found in Warrior’s Rest?” he asked.

“Family, friends, comfort? Is that not what you expect?”

“Eternally.”

The way he said it tipped her off. “Eternal boredom, you mean.”

“I cannot say, but it matters not. If it is eternal, then it will wait, yes? And now I was presented with a grand adventure, another life of memories to make and a worthy band of friends to make them beside. Why would I not return?”

“You seem quite the opposite of Drizzt,” Penelope replied. “He could not let go of Catti-brie and his former life, and you seem eager to do so.”

Wulfgar pondered her words for a few moments, then slowly began shaking his head. “Nay, not that, but merely to expand that experience,” he explained. “More battles to fight, more women to love, more food to eat, and more spirits to drink.”

“So it is a grand game to you, then? Is there nothing more?”

“I know not,” Wulfgar admitted.

“So the aim of living is pleasure?”

“A fine goal!” Wulfgar said lightheartedly, but Penelope would not let it go so easily.

“There is a religion to support your theory,” she said, and Wulfgar’s expression immediately soured. “More a philosophy,” she quickly corrected. “But it presupposes the absence of just reward. It calls the gods false, relegating them to superior mortal beings posing as deities for the sake of their own enjoyment, and at the expense of the lesser rational beings who inhabit the world, and also, that they might control us.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

It was Penelope’s turn to laugh, “I have been called unconventional. I think it a badge of honor.”

Wulfgar stared at her intently. “You miss the open road and the thrill of adventure,” he stated.

“I am too old …” she started to reply, but his laughter cut her short.

“I have lived a century and a quarter!”

“You have the body of a young man.”

“I have the lust of a young man, but only because I have lived through the dullness of being an old man,” Wulfgar corrected. “I have passed through pain and grief-”

“And love?”

He didn’t deny it. He lifted Aegis-fang from over his shoulder and swung it easily at the end of one huge arm. “Every day, every experience,” he said with a nod. “Every thrill.”

“Like talking to an old lady in a sunlit garden?”

Wulfgar’s smile was wide and genuine, and his crystal blue eyes sparkled. “Not so old,” he said mischievously. “Perhaps one day, you and I will go kill some giants.”

Now Penelope was smiling, too, and that was her answer, and it was a sincere hope that such an event might come to pass.

“Truly, you remind me of a caged animal,” Regis said to Bruenor on the front deck of the Ivy Mansion one bright morning a few days later. Spring was in full bloom, the air light, the wind warm, and the road beckoned-and beckoned none more than the grumbling dwarf.

He paced back and forth, back and forth, thumping his heavy boots against the wooden porch. He paused for just a moment, to snort at the halfling, then went along again.

Just down the path from the pair stood Drizzt and Wulfgar, working their weapons slowly and methodically in mock battle, with Wulfgar asking questions of his old mentor every few twists. Regis thought he should go down there and further his own training-who better for him to learn from than Drizzt, after all?

“Long road ahead,” Bruenor remarked, passing the halfling by on one of his pacing lanes.

Regis nodded.

“Gauntlgrym-ah, wait till ye see it,” Bruenor went on. “We’ll catch us a Pwent and be on our way. Silverymoon, I say! Aye, we’ll find us a priest there to do the deed, and then we’ll set to chasing Obould and his dogs back into their holes!”

He continued on, muttering to himself as much as anything, for the notion of a “long road ahead” had sent Regis into some of his own ruminating. Yes, he’d travel to Gauntlgrym, but might that be the end of the journey for him? Should he choose to go south from there instead of east to the Silver Marches, he was fairly confident that he could find Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies early in the summer-with enough time to go back to Delthuntle and the waiting arms of his lovely Donnola.

The door to the mansion opened then, and Catti-brie came out, Penelope and Kipper beside her.

“If he fights off the first try, you might consider just killing him then and there,” Kipper was saying.

Drizzt and Wulfgar moved back to join them.

“ ’Ere now, what’s that?” Bruenor asked.

Catti-brie showed him a ring on her hand, golden and set with a black gemstone. “Stored within this ring is the spell we need to trap Pwent’s soul.” She rolled her hand, revealing a huge gemstone, red as blood.

“Ruby?” Drizzt asked.

“Sapphire,” Regis corrected, staring at the gem and licking his lips. “Phylactery,” Catti-brie corrected, and she tucked it away. “Ye said if it don’t work,” Bruenor said to Kipper. “Ye thinkin’ it might not, then?”

Old Kipper sucked in his breath. “It is a difficult spell-”

“Me girl can cast it!”

“Oh, indeed,” said Penelope. “The ring Kipper has loaned her holds the spell intact. But still, it is a difficult conjuration, and one an unwilling target can fight, sometimes successfully.”

“An unwilling dwarf,” Kipper added, “is never an easy target of any magical spell!”

“Nor an easy friend,” Regis quipped, drawing a glare from Bruenor.

“Kipper has shown me the spell-I have practiced,” Catti-brie said. “If the ring fails, I have this.” She reached under the fold of her white gown and produced a silver scroll tube.

But Kipper couldn’t help but shake his head. “Better to just destroy the vampire if he resists the magic,” he said. “Trap the Soul is difficult to enact-only a mage of great experience can do so without the scroll, and even with it … I fear that you are not ready.”

“Do not underestimate her,” Penelope put in, and put her hand on Catti-brie’s shoulder. “She has the favor of a goddess shining upon her, and is wiser in the ways of the world than her youthful appearance suggests.”