R. Salvatore - The Companions

“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 join;}span.bigI stopped oned 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.

Straighter north, she saw the distant outline of Shade Enclave, with its dark towers and high walls, an entire city hovering above the plain on an inverted floating mountain of rock. Of all the sights Catti-brie had ever known, from the mysterious tapestry of Menzoberranzan to the spires of Silverymoon, none quite matched the one in the distance before her. The place didn’t appeal to her sensibilities, but certainly Shade Enclave intrigued her, evoking both curiosity and a sense of unnerving displacement. As magnificent and incredible as the sight might be, Catti-brie didn’t dwell on it.

The tents of the Desai shone white below her to the west-she could imagine the tribesmen going about their day. She thought of her parents, and reminded herself that she was due to meet with them again in just a tenday. She looked forward to it; Kavita was teaching her several potent spells to manipulate and create fire …

The thought couldn’t hold. Not up here, free on the updrafts, gliding around as a hawk. The world looked so different to her from this vantage, and with her new insights. She looked at the river again, then off to the west, where dark clouds had gathered. She could even see the lowering darkness of heavy rain falling. The perfection of nature’s design overwhelmed her, for the simple clockwork of the world was truly a beautiful thing. The rain would fall, the rivers would run, and the rising heat would lift again the moisture into the air, cleansing it that it might fall and nurture the plants and the creatures once more.

The whole of Mielikki’s cycle flowed through her thoughts as her feathered wings spread wide to lift her on the winds. Life, death, the continuum of time and space. The cycle, and within it, the great wheel of civilization, rolling forward so slowly.

She could appreciate more clearly the life she had lived, the roles she had played, the gains she and her powerful companions had made for those goodly folk around them.

The Year of the Third Circle (1472 DR) Citadel Felbarr

The overhead chop came as predicted, painfully predictable to the sensibilities of the seasoned warrior.

Bruenor found himself disgusted with how pedestrian his opponent proved to be. This was the top student of Bruenor’s training group.