R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

“A mother wishes to pass on wisdom to her child,” she said. “A mother hopes to give to her child all she will need to be happy in life. How can I call you my Ruqiah? You needed nothing from me other than nourishment in your earliest years. You needed none of my wisdom or experience. It seems that your life- both your lives-were more filled with experience than my own.”

Catti-brie shook her head through every word.

“I wish you were my Ruqiah,” Kavita finished. She lowered her head and Niraj grabbed her close.

“You are wrong,” Catti-brie flatly declared. “I thought the same thing, even when I was leaving you. I was grateful-how could I not be?-but I, too, saw this life here with you as a stopover, and feared in my own heart that you, that you both, were no more than innkeepers along the road of my journey.”

She could see from Niraj’s shocked expression and from Kavita’s bobbing shoulders that her honesty stung them, but she pressed on.

“But now I know I was wrong,” she said. “I knew it from the moment I returned to this land on a separate matter, not so long ago, and now again that I have come back. I knew it without doubt when I looked upon Niraj, my father, and upon you, my mother, and upon my baby brother.”

Kavita looked up and stared into her eyes.

“There was little you could teach me about being an adult, true,” Catti-brie went on, and she gave a little laugh. “Even then as your infant, I was older than you by two decades! But being a parent, being a family, is much more than simple education. What you gave to me was your love. Even when I put you in danger, were your thoughts anywhere but upon my safety?”

The two Desai looked at each other, then back to Catti-brie.

“I carried that with me, that knowledge that somewhere out there were two people who would forgive me, no matter my actions, who would love me, who would do anything for me. That was my crutch and my armor. Those feelings, so deep and so true, helped me more than you can imagine on those dark and difficult stretches of my journey.

“And now my joy at the victories my friends and I have achieved is tenfold because I have shared it with you. And now my quest, as difficult as anything I have ever tried to do in my life-in both of my lives!-is easier. Because I know that even if I fail, you will be here for me, loving me. Not judging, but helping. I cannot tell you how important that is to me. My steps are so much lighter … I go to Shade Enclave unafraid. I return to the Hosttower’s ruins confident. I am not afraid of failure because I know you are here.”

The tears flowed freely, from all three, and the hugs lasted a long, long while.

Then it was Kavita and Niraj’s turn to tell Catti-brie about the war on the plains of Netheril, of how they fought side by side, adding their sorcery to the sheer grit and muscle of the proud and fierce Desai.

Catti-brie was horrified to learn that the two had battled the same Lady Avelyere in a contest of fireballs and lightning bolts. Avelyere was much more accomplished in the ways of the Weave, Catti-brie was certain, but Avelyere’s principal studies were on the arts of deception and clever diplomacy.

The auburn-haired woman found herself breathing an audible sigh of relief to learn that Avelyere, too, had left that field very much alive-and Catti-brie hoped that was still true.

Her reaction caught her parents off guard.

“She was kind to me,” Catti-brie explained. “And she did not kill you when I fled her coven, though under Netherese law, she could have. Perhaps there is some good in our enemies-in some at least.”

“I don’t know if she lives or if she perished in the war,” Niraj said.

“That battle was early on, in the first attack by the Netherese,” said Kavita. “Long before Shade Enclave fell from the sky.”

“I hope she is alive and well,” Catti-brie admitted. “And I hope that my hope is not troubling to you.”

“The war is over,” said Kavita. “Neither side is unburned in a simmering pot.”

The sheer generosity of that remark had Catti-brie smiling yet again.

“So be it, but I fear you going there,” said Niraj.

Catti-brie nodded, understanding his sincere concern. “I am a capable priestess and sorcerer,” she said with a wry grin. “And I’ve been trained to fight by the most capable warriors in the land. You should witness the spectacle of my drow husband wielding his twin scimitars!

“But I’ll need none of that. I come with a message from-”

“Yes, yes,” Niraj interrupted.

“A drow husband …” Kavita whispered, and shook her head.

“He is as fine a man as I have ever …” Catti-brie started, but Kavita stopped her with an upraised hand.

“If he makes you happy, then he makes me happy,” she said. “But it is beyond my understanding!”

“You will meet him and your understanding will change,” Catti-brie assured her. “And your expectations, too, I expect.”

“This does not change the fears I hold for you going back to the Netherese,” Niraj said.

“Find the finest warrior in the tribe and send him to me, and I will leave him sprawling in the mud,” Catti-brie replied.

Kavita laughed and said, “I have seen that before, my Ruqiah!”

“Yes, yes, you already explained. We could not stop you from going on your journey when you were but a child, so we know that we cannot stop you from your chosen course now. Please come back to us when you are done with the Netherese, and before you travel to the west, that we know you are safe.”

“I promise.”

Giant broken stones and crumbled castle walls formed a natural maze in the foothills of a small mountain cluster on the Netheril Plain, the detritus of the fallen city. Shade Enclave had towered over the plain from on high, a testament to magical power and architectural grandiosity.

And now it was a ruin, fallen from the sky, shattered, its broken bones scattered all around the foothills.

Catti-brie rode into the pile of mountains, stone, and masonry on Andahar. She had thought to summon a simple and more typical spectral horse, that she would not broadcast her allegiance to a goddess the Netherese would not favor, after all, but in the end, she had settled again on Andahar. She came as a representative of Jarlaxle and Bregan D’aerthe. She need not fear.

What seemed chaos showed more order than she had anticipated as she approached the piles of rubble. Among those broken stones, the Netherese had fashioned walkways, chambers, and parapets, and, finally, a very heavy iron door.

Faced by a line of grim-faced guards glaring down at her, all armed with long spears and crossbows, Catti-brie dismounted and dismissed her summoned unicorn.

“Your name?” one of the guards demanded.

“I am Catti-brie of Icewind Dale,” she said, and she wished that she had considered her identity more carefully before saying that. Would that name mean anything to the people of this new Shade Enclave? Would Parise Ulfbinder know it? Jarlaxle had hinted to her that the Netherese lord wasn’t completely ignorant of the goings-on that had brought her here, or even of the godly intervention that had brought her back to Faerun from the afterlife.

“I beg entrance,” she said.

“On what grounds?”

“I once lived here,” she replied, and she turned her face skyward. “Up there. I had friends-”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Not so long.”

“I was there,” said the guard.

“We all were,” said another. “I know not your face or your name.”

Catti-brie held up her hands. She wasn’t sure how far she could go. When she had run out on the Coven, Lady Avelyere’s school of magic, she had faked her own death. She had no way of knowing how far that news had spread, and no way of knowing if others of Avelyere’s students had left Shade Enclave.