Robert Salvatore - The Legacy

Regis shot a pleading look at Drizzt, but when the drow only shrugged in reply, the halfling picked up the parchments and shuffled away.

"I'd've thought that one'd be better at this wedding planning stuff," Bruenor remarked, loudly enough for the departing halfling to hear.

"And not so good at fighting goblins," Drizzt replied, remembering the halfling's remarkable efforts in the battle.

Bruenor stroked his thick red beard and looked to the empty doorway through which Regis had just passed. "Spent lots of time on the road beside the likes of us," the dwarf decided.

"Too much time," Drizzt added under his breath, too quietly for Bruenor to hear, for it was obvious to the drow that Bruenor, unlike Drizzt, thought the surprising revelations about their halfling friend a good thing.

A short while later, when Drizzt, on an errand for Bruenor, neared the entrance to Cobble's chapel, he found that Bruenor was not the only one flustered by the hectic preparations for the upcoming wedding.

"Not for all the mithril in Bruenor's realm!" he heard Catti-brie emphatically shout.

"Be reasonable," Cobble whined back at her. "Yer father's not asking too much."

Drizzt entered the chapel to see Catti-brie standing atop a pedestal, hands resolutely on her slender hips, and Cobble down low before her, holding out a gem-studded apron.

Catti-brie regarded Drizzt and gave a curt shake of her head. "They're wanting me to wear a smithy's apron!" she cried. "A damned smithy's apron on the day o' me wedding!"

Drizzt prudently realized that this was not the time to smile. He walked solemnly to Cobble and took the apron.

"Battlehammer tradition," the cleric huffed.

"Any dwarf would be proud to wear the raiment," Drizzt agreed. "Must I remind you, though, that Catti-brie is no dwarf?"

"A symbol of subservience is what it is," the auburn-haired woman spouted. "Dwarven females are expected to labor at the forge all the day. Not ever have I lifted a smithy's hammer, and…"

Drizzt calmed her with an outstretched hand and a plaintive look.

"She's Bruenor's daughter," Cobble pointed out. "She has a duty to please her father."

"Indeed," Drizzt, the consummate diplomat, agreed once more, "but remember that she is not marrying a dwarf. Catti-brie has never worked the forge-"

"It's symbolic," Cobble protested.

"— and Wulfgar lifted the hammer only during his years of servitude to Bruenor, when he was given no choice," Drizzt finished without missing a beat.

Cobble looked to Catti-brie, then back to the apron, and sighed. "We'll find a compromise," he conceded.

Drizzt threw a wink Catti-brie's way and was surprised to realize that his efforts apparently had not brightened the young woman's mood.

"I have come from Bruenor," the drow ranger said to Cobble. "He mentioned something about testing the holy water for the ceremony."

"Tasting," Cobble corrected, and he hopped all about, looking this way and that. "Yes, yes, the mead," he said, obviously flustered. "Bruenor's wanting to settle the mead issue this day." He looked up at Drizzt. "We're thinking that the dark stuff will be too much for the soft-bellied group from Silverymoon."

Cobble rushed about the large chapel, scooping buckets from the various fonts that lined the walls. Catti-brie offered Drizzt an incredulous shrug as he silently mouthed the words, "Holy water?"

Priests of most religions prepared their blessed water with exotic oils; it should have come as no surprise to Drizzt, after many years beside rowdy Bruenor, that the dwarven clerics used hops.

"Bruenor said you should bring a generous amount," Drizzt said to Cobble, instructions that were hardly necessary given that the excited cleric already had filled a small cart with flasks.

"We're done for the day," Cobble announced to Catti-brie. The dwarf ambled quickly to the door, his precious cargo bouncing along. "But don't ye be thinking that ye've had the last word in all of this!" Catti-brie snarled again, but Cobble, rambling along at top speed, was too far gone to notice.

Drizzt and Catti-brie sat side by side on the small pedestal in silence for some time. "Is the apron so bad?" the drow finally mustered the nerve to ask.

Catti-brie shook her head. "Tis not the garment, but the meaning of the thing I'm not liking," she explained. "Me wedding's in two weeks. I'm thinking that I've seen me last adventure, me last fight, except for those I'm doomed to face against me own husband."

The blunt admission struck Drizzt profoundly and alleviated much of the weight of keeping his fears private.

"Goblins across Faerun will be glad to hear that," he said facetiously, trying to bring some levity to the young woman's dark mood. Catti-brie did manage a slight smile, but there remained a profound sadness in her blue eyes.

"You fought as well as any," Drizzt added.

"Did ye not think I would?" Catti-brie snapped at him, suddenly defensive, her tone as sharp as the edges of Drizzt's magical scimitars.

"Are you always so filled with anger?" Drizzt retorted, and his accusing words calmed Catti-brie immediately.

"Just scared, I'm guessing," she replied quietly.

Drizzt nodded, understanding and appreciating his friend's growing dilemma. "I must go back to Bruenor," he explained, rising from the pedestal. He would have left it at that, but he could not ignore the pleading look Catti-brie then gave him. She turned away immediately, staring straight ahead under the cowl of her thick auburn locks, and that despondence struck Drizzt even more profoundly.

"It is not my place to tell you how you should feel," Drizzt said evenly. Still the young woman did not look back to him. "My burden as your friend is equal to the one you carried in the southern city of Calimport, when I had lost my way. I say to you now: The path before you turns soon in many directions, but that path is yours to choose. For all our sakes, and mostly yours, I pray that you consider your course carefully." He bent low, pushed back the side of Catti-brie's hair and kissed her gently on the cheek.

He did not look back as he left the chapel.

Half of Cobble's cart was already empty by the time the drow entered Bruenor's audience hall. Bruenor, Cobble, Dagna, Wulfgar, Regis, and several other dwarves argued loudly over which pail of the "holy water" held the finest, smoothest taste-arguments that inevitable produced further taste tests, which in turn created further arguments.

"This one!" Bruenor bellowed after draining a pail and coming back up with his red beard covered in foam.

"That one's good for goblins!" Wulfgar roared, his voice dull. His laughter ended abruptly, though, when Bruenor plopped the pail over his head and gave it a resounding backhand.

"I could be wrong," Wulfgar, suddenly sitting on the floor, admitted, his voice echoing under the metal bucket.

"Tell me what ye think, drow," Bruenor bellowed when he noticed Drizzt. He held out two sloshing buckets.

Drizzt put up a hand, declining the invitation. "Mountain springs are more to my liking than thick mead," he explained.

Bruenor threw the buckets at him, but the drow easily stepped aside, and the dark, golden liquid oozed slowly across the stone floor. The sheer volume of the ensuing protests from the other dwarves at the waste of good mead astounded Drizzt, but not as much as the fact that this probably was the first time he had ever seen Bruenor scolded without finding the courage to fight back.

"Me king," came a call from the door, ending the argument. A rather plump dwarf, fully arrayed in battle gear, entered the audience hall, the seriousness of his expression deflating the mirth in the tasting chamber.

"Seven kin have not returned from the newer sections," the dwarf explained.

"Taking their time, is all," Bruenor replied.