R. Salvatore: The Companions

Wulfgar had been here, and indeed had found quite the adventure here, one that had left him with an adopted child, though for a short time only before he returned the girl to her mother, Meralda, who was back then the Lady of Auckney.

“Don’t you be touching what you aren’t buying,” one woman merchant snapped at her as she reached for an apple.

“How am I to judge the freshness?” Catti-brie asked.

“You’ll know when you bite it, and you’ll bite it after you pay for it.”

Catti-brie shrugged and retracted her hand.

“Pray, tell me, who is the oldest person in Auckney?” she asked.

“Eh?”

“Who has been here the longest? Who would know of days gone by?”

“Well, I’m older than you, so what’s your question?” the merchant asked.

“The line of Auck, back to Meralda …”

The woman began to laugh.

“Her daughter, Colson?”

“Lady Colson,” the woman replied. “Died when I was a child.”

“And her child sits on the throne now?”

The merchant shook her head. “Her children both died before her, and took the line with them.”

Catti-brie chewed her lip, wondering where to take the conversation next. “Do you remember Lady Colson?”

The woman shrugged. “Bits. Poor girl, born of rape and kidnapped by the rapist to add to the pain.”

Catti-brie wanted to reply to that misinformation, for surely Wulfgar had not raped Meralda. Far from it. He had intervened and stolen away the baby Colson to save her from the vengeance of the Lord of Auckney, for though Meralda was the lord’s wife, the foolish lord was not the child’s father. Nor was Wulfgar. Meralda had been in love with another man-Catti-brie did not know his name-when the Lord of Auckney had forced her to become his bride, not knowing that she was already with child.

“The Bastard Lady,” the merchant woman went on, and shook her head and sighed.

“And her father?” Catti-brie was afraid of the answer, but she had to know.

“Barbarian beast, curse his name, whatever his name might be. Not one spoken in Auckney, I warn you.”

Catti-brie closed her eyes and forced herself to settle down and suppress her need to set things straight here. She looked back at the woman and nodded, managing a smile before turning away.

“You buying that apple?” the woman said sharply.

Catti-brie turned back to regard the fruit, which was!” Bruenor warned.5N3 certainlyon certainly past its prime. But she looked at the scowling merchant and reluctantly scooped it up.

“Four pieces of silver,” the merchant demanded, several times the value.

But Catti-brie wasn’t about to argue any longer, so she handed over the coins, then walked somberly down the street, right out of the town of Auckney. She meandered down the stony mountain passes to the sea, settling on a dark stone and staring into the cold surf.

The scene befit her mood, for this day had fast turned into a sobering reminder of the fickle nature of memory and of time iself. Wulfgar had lived his life admirably with regards to the events in Auckney. He had helped Lady Meralda to do the right thing, and had raised Colson with love and decency, and then had, at great personal and emotional expense, returned the child to her rightful mother.

And for all that, he was not remembered fondly up here in Auckney. Quite the opposite, so it would seem.

Catti-brie glanced back up the rock cliffs to see the distant rooftops and snaking streams of fireplace smoke drifting up into the cold autumn air. It seemed a cold smoke to her, wrought of a cold fire in a cold place, and she realized at once that she had no desire to go back there, to ever return to Auckney.

She looked back out at the dark waters and a wry smile came over her.

She cast a spell to protect herself from the brutal elements, her right arm glowing softly, bluish tendrils curling out of her sleeve. She hiked up her white and black cape, then moved into the surf and cast another spell, this time with her left arm showing the mist of arcane energy, summoning a mount.

Her waterborne steed arrived, and she packed her leather shoes away into her backpack and settled onto the dolphin’s back. This was no ordinary animal, but a magical creation, fully under her control. She grasped its dorsal fin, and with a thought, sped away.

She stayed near to the shore, her magical mount weaving around the many stones, and she tired quickly, surprised by how taxing the ride proved to be. She was in no hurry, though, other than her desire to be far from Auckney, and so she camped under the shelter of a rocky overhang, nestled beside a magical fire, eating conjured food, and drying her white gown and black shawl over a nearby tree branch.

She was out the next morning, and then again the next afternoon after a long break for lunch and rest, and then called back an enchanted mount for a third run that day, albeit a short one.

Catti-brie found herself at peace, alone with her thoughts and near to nature, near to Mielikki. By the third day, she noted the turn to the north, around the westernmost spur of the mountains, and at midday on the sixth day out of Auckney, Catti-brie stepped out of the water to feel cold dirt under her bare feet instead of wet, hard stone.

The wind thrummed in her ears, and she knew she was home.

She summoned a new mount, a spectral unicorn, and rode east along the north bank of the Shaengarne River, rushing across the leagues. Just beating the snows in the onset of the winter of 1482, Catti-brie came to the town of Bremen, on the southern banks of Maer Dualdon. The wind blew much colder now, and in a colder land than Auckney, but when Catti-brie mingled around the townsfolk of this western village in Ten-Towns, she didn’t feel that way.

Quite the opposite.

She had come home, to a place she knew, and though the faces had changed with the passage of so many decades,hat playthings we be,” an knew wellim Icewind Dale had not, and Ten-Towns had not. She took great comfort in that familiarity, going from town to town as the tendays and months drifted past. With her magical abilities, she came to be seen by the community as an asset, and she soon had friends in every tavern in every town.

She needed to build trust and a network to garner information, and none were better at knowing the comings and goings than those selling food and drink.

The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Icewind Dale

“A most unusual halfling,” Catti-brie whispered, glancing down from the grass atop a ridge to the lakeshore, her eyes filling with tears.

That was how he had been described to her, by one of the many friends she had made since arriving in Icewind Dale. She wasn’t a resident of any of the towns, though she had split most of her time between Bryn Shander, the dwarven complex beneath Kelvin’s Cairn, and this place, Lonelywood.

In Bryn Shander, a tenday earlier, she had heard of this strange character who had come in on a caravan from Luskan, all full of dandy and decoration. A little investigating had led her here, to the outskirts of Lonelywood, looking down on the lake, looking down upon Regis.

And surely she recognized her dear old friend. He wore facial hair now, and his curly brown hair was much longer than she had known, but it was unmistakably Regis, both in appearance and demeanor.

He had survived the decades and had made it home to Icewind Dale.

What a great relief flooded over Catti-brie at that moment. For the months she had been around Ten-Towns, she had waited anxiously for this moment. In truth, she had been surprised to find out that Regis and Bruenor had not arrived in the dale before her, and that reality had only reminded her of the many dangers involved in getting here, in even surviving for twenty-one years in the dangerous Realms. The world was wild and dark; her own trials had only confirmed that.