R. Salvatore: The Companions

“The libraries of Shade Enclave are being opened to all practitioners,” Parise added as Lady Avelyere turned to go. “We must once again adapt our magic, it would seem.”

“The old ways?”

The lord shrugged. “Who can know?”

“Ruqiah, perhaps,” Lady Avelyere quipped, and she shook her head and smiled resignedly, helplessly, and Parise responded in kind.

Catti-brie felt much better the next day, even before she bathed herself once more in the healing magic of Mielikki. Her arcane spells remained a jumble and she discovered that she could barely understand the delicate inflections of the incantations outlined in her spellbook. She felt as if everything magical had shifted several degrees, with different pieces going in different directions. She couldn’t make any sense of it.

“So be it,” she said, and she walked out from under the pine tree boughs that had served as her bedroom. She looked at the rising sun, then all around, to the distant Crags and north, where sat the high peaks of the towering Spine of the World, though she could not see them from this vantage.

She considered her approximate location and the year and season. She had plenty of time to get to Icewind Dale-years even-so perhaps a change of course would be in order here.

“Waterdeep?” she whispered. The lords of that greatest of cities would certainly be investigating the strange happenings-but how might she, a dirty girl from another part of the world, garner any information from those haughty ones? For she was not Princess Catti-brie of Mithral Hall any longer, but merely little Ruqiah of the Desai, and no one of note.

She thought of Candlekeep, the famed library along the coast south of Waterdeep. If any in all the Realms were going to figure out what was going on here, it would be the sages of that most learned of places. But again, how might she gain entrance to such a place?

She lifted her arms and shook them, her sleeves falling back. Her spellscars? Would they get her in?

But they didn’t even look like scars any longer. Any skilled tattooist along the Sword Coast could create the markings inside Catti-brie’s forearms.

The wom a long while to realize ees …onan blew out a deep breath and called upon the spellscars then, thinking to shapeshift and be on her way, whichever way she might decide. Catti-brie closed her eyes and focused on the markings, willing herself to again become a great eagle.

Nothing happened.

She opened her eyes and looked down at her arms. No mist began to form, no hint of magic to be found.

She couldn’t shapeshift. She couldn’t become an eagle, a mouse, or a wolf. The notion struck her profoundly. She remained hundreds of miles from Icewind Dale, and now, so suddenly, the road appeared much more perilous and uncertain.

Catti-brie forced herself to calm down, and rationally played through her options. Even without the shapeshift, and without the storm calling and lightning bolts, she was a disciple of Mielikki, with powers divine. And she was a mage, trained in Silverymoon, trained in Shade Enclave. She was not a lost little child on the open road. She was Catti-brie, who had passed this way before, in another life. She could fight and she could enact magic both divine and arcane. She glanced around, then began to climb one of the pines for a better view. Her injured leg ached for the effort and the deep bending, despite the magic she had enacted upon it.

She thought back to the previous day, when she had been flying on high. Just to the west of her lay a road, she recalled, and she nodded, for she knew that road, the Long Road, it had once been named.

And she smiled as she considered where that road might take her, and what she might learn when she got to that particular destination.

She found an appropriate length of wood to use as a walking stick and set out determinedly. She was Catti-brie. She had returned by the will of Mielikki and for a great purpose, and she would not falter.

She made the road, or what was left of it-for now it was an old and little-used trail-that afternoon and turned to the north. Her leg ached, but she did not stop and did not slow.

The sunlight began to fade, the night descending upon the land, and Catti-brie began to search for an appropriate campsite. She moved off the road, up the side of a small hillock. She had just begun to construct a fire pit, complete with rocks around its edges to shield flames from distant eyes, when the sky to the north lit up suddenly with a great burst of orange flames.

Catti-brie rushed to the northern edge of the hillock and peered off into the distance.

A lightning bolt split the night sky. A fireball followed, and then a star-burst of multicolored sparks and flares of such magnificence that it made the woman giggle in appreciation.

She heard the distant sound of the explosions a few moments later, along with what sounded like a cacophony of cheers.

Another fireball ignited, this one lower to the ground, illuminating the land below to reveal a large mansion set upon a hill.

“Longsaddle!” Catti-brie cried, and it wasn’t so far. All thoughts of camping flew from her then, and she started off with renewed determination.

The night darkened around her, the Long Road seemed in places little more than a wagon rut, but the explosions continued in the north, guiding her way, and soon after she entered the village of Longsaddle, home of the Harpells, a place she had visited in her previous life on several occasions.

All of the townsfolk were outside, it seemed, hundreds of people cheering and dancing at the spectacle on the hill, the spectline-height: Isummonacle on the grounds of the Ivy Mansion, home of the Harpells, where the wizards plied their trade in a grand celebration, it seemed, throwing fire and lightning and all sorts of spectacular dweomers up into the air in a great and splendid display.

“What is it?” Catti-brie asked a young couple she encountered at the base of the hill.

“None seem to know,” the man answered. “But our Harpell wizards appear to be in a festive and fine mood this evening!”

Catti-brie moved around the gathering, gaining the road that led up to the gate of the house on the hill. It appeared as no more than a ten-stride reach of fence, unattached on either end, but Catti-brie knew better. For stretching out from either side was an invisible wall encircling the whole of the hill and mansion.

She arrived at the gate and called out, but none heard or reacted. She could see them, then, wizards atop the hill, many on the mansion’s roof, cheering and throwing their spells, one after another.

Catti-brie called out again, and when that didn’t work, the woman began to whisper a spell of her own. Up in the air above flew the fiery pea, erupting into a fireball of her own making.

The people below her cried out and fell back in surprise-and fear, no doubt. And from above her came shouts and warnings, and the wizards scrambled. In short order, she was confronted by the town guard from below, and soon after that, by a group of Harpells from the other side of the gate.

“Who are you, who throws magic unbidden in Longsaddle?” one wiry old mage in rumpled robes asked.

In response, Catti-brie lifted her arms and shook them, her sleeves falling clear of the markings. “A friend,” she said. “Though I’ve not been here in many years.”

The wiry old mage came closer and looked her over. “I don’t know you.”

“No,” she agreed, shaking her head. “But I know of you, of the Harpells, at least, and some once knew me as a friend. When I tell you my tale, you will understand.”

“Go on, then!” he demanded.

Catti-brie glanced over her shoulder at the town guard, then back at the mage doubtfully.

“Come along then!” demanded a man behind her, but as he approached, the wiry wizard held up his hand.