Robert Salvatore - The Ghost King

Her voice was gentle and quiet when she asked, “Where’s the dark elf, Guenhwyvar? Can ye take me to him?”

“By the gods,” Drizzt muttered.

“What is it, elf?” Bruenor demanded.

The young girl straightened, then slowly turned away from the pair. “Be ye a drow?” she asked. Then she paused, as though she heard a response. “I’ve heard that drow be evil, but ye don’t seem so to me.”

“Elf?” Bruenor begged.

“Her first words to me,” Drizzt whispered.

“Me name’s Catti-brie,” she said, still talking to the wall away from the pair. “Me dad is Bruenor, King o’ Clan Battlehammer.”

“She’s on Kelvin’s Cairn,” said Bruenor.

“The dwarves,” Catti-brie said. “He’s not me real dad. Bruenor took me in when I was just a babe, when me real parents were …” She paused and swallowed hard.

“The first time we met, on Kelvin’s Cairn,” Drizzt breathlessly explained, and indeed he was hearing the woman, then just a girl, exactly as he had that unseasonably warm winter’s day on the side of a faraway mountain.

Catti-brie looked over her shoulder at them—no, not at them, but above them. “She’s a beautiful ca—” she started to say, but she sucked in her breath suddenly and her eyes rolled up into her head and her arms went out to her sides. The unseen magical energy rushed back into her once more, shaking her with its intensity.

And before their astonished eyes, Catti-brie aged once again.

By the time she floated down to the floor, both Drizzt and Bruenor were hugging her, and they gently moved her to her bed and laid her down.

“Elf?” Bruenor asked, his voice thick with desperation.

“I don’t know,” replied the trembling Drizzt. He tried to fight back the tears. The moment Catti-brie had recaptured was so precious to him, so burned into his heart and soul….

They sat beside the woman’s bed for a long while, even after Regis came in to remind Bruenor that he was due in his audience chamber. Emissaries had arrived from Silverymoon and Nesmé, from Obould and from the wider world. It was time for Bruenor Battlehammer to be king of Mithral Hall again.

But leaving his daughter there on her bed was one of the toughest things Bruenor Battlehammer had ever done. To the dwarf’s great relief, after ensuring that the woman was sleeping soundly, Drizzt went out with him, leaving the reliable Regis to watch over her.

The black-bearded dwarf stood in line, third from the front, trying to remember his lines. He was an emissary, a formal representative to a king’s court. It was not a new situation to Athrogate, for he had once lived a life that included daily audiences with regional leaders. Once, long ago.

“Don’t rhyme,” he warned himself quietly, for as Jarlaxle had pointed out, any of his silly word games would likely tip off Drizzt Do’Urden to the truth about the disguised dwarf. He cleared his throat loudly, wishing he had his morningstars with him, or some other weapon that might get him out of there if his true identity were discovered.

The first representative had his audience with the dwarf king and moved out of the way.

Athrogate rehearsed his lines again, telling himself that it was really simple, assuring himself that Jarlaxle had prepared him well. He went through the routine over and over.

“Come forward, then, fellow dwarf,” King Bruenor said, startling Athrogate. “I’ve too much to do to be sittin’ here waitin’!”

Athrogate looked at the seated Bruenor, then at Drizzt Do’Urden, who stood behind the throne. As he locked gazes with Drizzt, he saw a hint of recognition, for they had matched weapons eight years before, during the fall of Deudermont’s Luskan.

If Drizzt saw through his disguise, the drow hid it well.

“Well met, King Bruenor, for all the tales I heared of ye,” Athrogate greeted enthusiastically, coming forward to stand before the throne. “I’m hopin’ that ye’re not put out by me coming to see yerself directly, but if I’m returning to me kinfolk without having had me say to yerself, then suren they’d be chasing me out!”

“And where might home be, good …?”

“Stuttgard,” Athrogate replied. “Stuttgard o’ the Stone Hills Stuttgard Clan.”

Bruenor looked at him curiously and shook his head.

“South o’ the Snowflakes, long south o’ here,” the dwarf bluffed.

“I am afraid that I know not of yer clan, or yer Stone Hills,” said Bruenor. He glanced at Drizzt, who shrugged and shook his head.

“Well, we heared o’ yerself,” Athrogate replied. “Many’re the songs o’ Mithral Hall sung in the Stone Hills!”

“Good to know,” Bruenor replied, then he prompted the emissary with a rolling motion of his hand, obviously in a rush to be done with the formalities. “And ye’re here to offer trade, perhaps? Or to set the grounds for an alliance?”

“Nah,” said Athrogate. “Just a dwarf walkin’ the world and wantin’ to meet King Bruenor Battlehammer.”

The dwarf king nodded. “Very well. And ye’re wishing to remain with us in Mithral Hall for some time?”

Athrogate shrugged. “Was heading east, to Adbar,” he said. “Got some family there. I was hopin’ to come to Mithral Hall on me return back to the west, and not plannin’ to stop through now. But on the road, I heared whispers about yer girl.”

That perked Bruenor up, and the drow behind him as well.

“What of me girl?” Bruenor asked, suspicion thick in his voice.

“Heared on the road that she got touched by the falling Weave o’ magic.”

“Ye heared that, did ye?”

“Aye, King Bruenor, so I thought I should come through as fast as me short legs’d be taking me.”

“Ye’re a priest, then?”

“Nah, just a scrapper.”

“Then why? What? Have ye anything to offer me, Stuttgard o’ the Stone Hills?” Bruenor said, clearly agitated.

“A name, and one I think ye’re knowin’,” said Athrogate. “Human name o’ Cadderly.”

Bruenor and Drizzt exchanged glances, then both stared hard at the visitor.

“His place’s not too far from me home,” Athrogate explained. “I went right through it on me way here, o’ hourse. Oh, but he’s got a hunnerd wizards and priests in there now, all trying to get what’s what, if ye get me meaning.”

“What about him?” Bruenor asked, obviously trying to remain calm but unable to keep the urgency out of his tone—or out of his posture, as he leaned forward in his throne.

“He and his been workin’ on the problems,” Athrogate explained. “I thinked ye should know that more’n a few that been brain-touched by the Weave’ve gone in there, and most’ve come out whole.”

Bruenor leaped up from his seat. “Cadderly is curing those rendered foolish by the troubles?”

Athrogate shrugged. “I thinked ye’d want to be knowin’.”

Bruenor turned fast to Drizzt.

“A month and more of hard travel,” the drow warned.

“Magical items’re working,” Bruenor replied. “We got the wagon me boys’re building for Silverymoon journeys. We got the zephyr shoes …”

Drizzt’s eyes lit up at the reference, for indeed the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer had been working on a solution to their isolation, even before the onset of magical afflictions. Without the magical teleportation of their neighboring cities, or creations of magic like Lady Alustriel’s flying chariots of fire, the dwarves had taken to a more mundane solution, constructing a wagon strong enough to handle the bumps and stones of treacherous terrain. They had sought out magical assistance for teams that might be pulling the vehicle.

The drow was already starting off the dais before Bruenor could finish his sentence. “On my way,” Drizzt said.