R. Salvatore: The Companions

Deep are those valleys beside Innovindil’s road.

Given these truths, given that Catti-brie could not even remember two she had loved so instinctively and wholly, given the satisfied face of Wulfgar when Regis and I found him upon the tundra of Icewind Dale, given the broken promises of finding old friends once more or the awkward conversations that typically rule such reunions, why, then, am I so resistant to the advice of my lost elf friend?

I do not know.

Perhaps it is because I found something so far beyond the normal joining one might know, a true love, a partner in heart and soul, in thought and desire.

Perhaps I have not yet found another to meet that standard, and so I fear it cannot ever be so again.

Perhaps I am simply fooling myself-whether wrought of guilt or sadness or frustrated rage, I amplify and elevate in my memory that which I had to a pedestal that no other can begin to scale.

It is the last of these possibilities that terrifies me, for such a deception would unravel the very truths upon which I stand. I have felt this sensation of love so keenly-to lea waves of healing an soul.

The Year of the Elves’ Weeping (1462 DR) Iruladoon

"Eh?” The red-bearded dwarf asked. What wizard, what magic, what force, had done this to him, he wondered? He had been in a cavern, deep in the ancient homeland of Gauntlgrym, struggling to pull a lever and enact an ancient magic that would harness once more the volcanic primordial that had so ravaged the region.

Had his effort caused the volcano to erupt? Had that surge of power thrown him far from the mountain? Surely it seemed so, for here he was, out of the cavern, out of the Underdark, and lying in a forest of flowers and buzzing bees, with a still pond nearby …

It could not be.

He hopped to his feet, surprisingly easily, surprisingly smoothly for a dwarf of his advanced age.

“Pwent?” he called, and his tone reflected more confusion than anything else. For how could he have been so thrown she must do.

And 94 across the lands? The last voice he remembered was that of Thibbledorf Pwent, imploring him to pull that lever to close the magical cage around the primordial.

A wizard had intervened, then? Bruenor’s mind swirled in confused circles, overlapping, finding no logic. Had some mage teleported him from the cavern? Or concocted a magical gate, through which he had inadvertently fallen? Yes, surely that must be it!

Or had it been a dream? Or was this a dream now before him?

“Drizzt?”

“Well met,” said a voice behind him, and Bruenor nearly jumped out of his boots. He spun around, to see a plump halfling with a cherubic face and a smile that promised trouble stretching from ear to ear.

“Rumblebelly …,” Bruenor managed to gasp, using his nickname for his old friend. No, not old, he realized. Regis stood before him, but he was younger by decades than he had been when first he had met Bruenor in Lonelywood in Icewind Dale.

For an instant, Bruenor wondered if the volcano had somehow thrown him back in time.

He stuttered as he tried to continue. He couldn’t find any sensible words to unravel his incoherent, spinning thoughts.

And then he nearly fell over, as out of the front door of the small house behind Regis stepped a man, a giant in comparison to the diminutive halfling.

Bruenor’s jaw fell limp and he didn’t even try to speak, his eyes welling with tears, for there stood his boy, Wulfgar, a young man once more, tall and strong.

“You mentioned Pwent,” Regis said to Bruenor. “Were you with him when you fell?”

Bruenor reeled. The great battle on the ledge of the primordial pit in Gauntlgrym replayed in his thoughts. He felt the strength of Clangeddin, the wisdom of Moradin, the cleverness of Dumathoin … They had come to him on that ledge, in his final effort, in his victory in the ancient land of Gauntlgrym.

That victory had come with a grave cost, however, Bruenor now knew without doubt. He had been with Pwent-

Regis’s words hit him right in the gut and took the wind out of his lungs. Were you with him when you fell?

Rumblebelly was right, Bruenor knew. When he fell. He was dead. He swallowed hard and looked around at this place that was surely not Dwarfhome, the Halls of Moradin!

But he was dead, and so were these two. He had buried Regis a century before in a rocky cairn in Mithral Hall. And Wulfgar, his boy-age had taken Wulfgar, no doubt. He appeared to be barely past his twentieth birthday, but he would be halfway through his second century of life by now, if humans could live so long.

They were dead, all three, and surely Pwent, too, had fallen in Gauntlgrym. “He’s with Moradin,” Bruenor said, more to himself than to the others. “In Dwarfhome. Got to be.”

He looked up at the two. “Why ain’t meself?”

Regis smiled, comfortingly, almost sympathetically, confirming Bruenor’s fears. Wulfgar, though, wasn’t looking back at him, but rather past him. The expression on Wulfgar’s face caught Bruenor’s eye anyway, for it was filled with warmth and enchantment, and when Bruenor glanced back at Regis, he saw that the halfling’s smile had shifted from sympathy to joy, as Regis, too, looked past Bruenor, and nodded with his chin. and not to Icewind Dale.. thinkim

Only then did the dwarf even hear the music, so quietly, so seamlessly, so fittingly had it grown around them.

Slowly, Bruenor turned, his gaze drifting out over the still pond and across the small lea to the tree line opposite.

There she danced, his beloved daughter, dressed in a layered white gown of many folds and pretty lace, and with a black cape trailing her every twist and turn like some living shadow, a dark extension of her lighter steps.

“By the gods,” the dwarf muttered, overwhelmed for the first time in his long life. Now that his long life was no more, Bruenor Battlehammer fell to his knees, put his face in his hands, and began to sob.

And they were tears of joy, of just rewards.

Catti-brie wasn’t singing.

Not consciously.

The words were not of her own making. The melody of the song flowed through her, but was not controlled by her, and the harmony of the forest music, which permeated the air and added to the song, was not her doing.

Because Catti-brie wasn’t singing.

She was learning.

For the words were Mielikki’s song, giving voice to the harmony of this place, Iruladoon, this gift of Mielikki. Though Catti-brie, Regis, Wulfgar, and now Bruenor had come into this strange paradise, the gift of Iruladoon was a gift, most of all, to Drizzt Do’Urden.

Catti-brie understood that now. Like the Weave of magic she had studied as a budding mage, the patterns of Mielikki’s domain were becoming ever clearer to her. Mielikki was of the cycle, of life and death, of the autumn withering and the spring renewal.

Iruladoon was the spring.

Through the words of the song, Catti-brie cast a spell without realizing it. She walked toward her three friends, stepping upon the waters of the pond. As she gracefully drifted over the water to stand before the others, her song became clear to them, not just in the music of the forest, but in specific words, spoken in many languages, new and old:

What is old is new again,

When Magic is re-woven,

And the Shadows diminish,

And the heroes of the gods awaken

To walk Faerun again.

What is built can be destroyed,

But what is destroyed can be built anew.

That is the secret,

That is the hope,

That is the promise.

The woman closed her eyes and took a deep breath, steadying herself, silent for the first time since she and Regis had come into this place-a span of many tendays for them, but of nearly a century in the world of Toril outside of Iruladoon, where the magical forest occasionally anchored.