Maestro

CHAPTER 9

He was a little older, a little thicker, his head a bit shinier, but Catti-brie recognized Niraj’s brilliant and inviting smile. She flew above the Desai encampment, just a short distance south of the mountainous area where the floating city of Shade Enclave had tumbled from the sky to crash and break apart in the foothills. He tended some sheep, filling a water trough and taking the time to speak to and pat each and every one.

The giant crow remained up high and circling. Catti-brie allowed herself a few moments to remember the earliest days of her second life. She had slept so peacefully in the arms of Kavita, and had enjoyed, with the perspective of an adult, the unconditional love and fatherly protection of Niraj as he fawned over her.

She would have her own children this time around, she told herself, and her crow head nodded. In that first life, there had been so many pressing needs-one adventure after another. Catti-brie didn’t regret any bit of that existence, didn’t lament her lack of progeny, but this time, it felt right to her. She was determined that she would share with Drizzt the warmth of familial love she had shared with these two.

But she had a terrible feeling that it wouldn’t come to pass, that Drizzt wouldn’t return to her this time. Had she waited too long already?

She shook aside her doubts and circled lower. When she was halfway to the ground, Niraj looked up at her. His eyes went wide and he stumbled back a step-this crow descending upon him and the tribe’s sheep was as large as he!

“Ah, back!” he stammered, and he backstepped and tried to shoo the sheep behind him.

Catti-brie swerved to the far end of the field and set down, transforming back into her human form. She approached an apprehensive Niraj, her face brightly smiling, her arms out to her sides.

For a moment, he seemed confused, but the word “Zibrija” slipped from his mouth.

Zibrija, the desert flower, the nickname Niraj had placed on his beloved daughter two decades ago.

Catti-brie held her arms out wider and shrugged, the sleeves of her magical garment dropping loosely above her elbow, revealing her spellscars. He sprinted at Catti-brie and crushed her in such a hug it lifted her from the ground and sent them both a few steps back the way Catti-brie had come.

“Zibrija, my child!” he said, his voice thick with emotion, his cherubic brown cheeks already wet with tears. “Zibrija!”

“Father,” she replied, and she hugged him back just as tightly. She loved this man, her father, with all her heart.

“Oh, the tales I have to tell you,” she whispered in his ear. She could tell he wanted to respond, but didn’t dare try to talk for fear that his voice would issue only a happy wail. He hugged her all the closer.

“Tell me that my mother is well,” Catti-brie whispered, and Niraj squeezed tighter and nodded emphatically.

Finally the brown-skinned man took a deep breath and steadied himself, and managed to push Catti-brie back to arms’ length.

“My Ruqiah,” he whispered, using the name she had been given at her second birth. “We never surrendered hope that we would see you again, but still … I cannot tell you how my heart wants to push right out of my chest!”

“You need not tell me,” Catti-brie replied. “I know.”

Niraj pulled her in close for another lengthy, tight hug.

“My mother,” Catti-brie whispered after a few moments, and the man nodded again and moved back, turning to the side and never letting go of her hand as he led her away.

Many eyes turned upon them as they entered the tent encampment of the Desai tribe, and many whispers erupted in their wake. Catti-brie resisted the temptation to cast a spell to heighten her hearing. She heard her name, Ruqiah, several times. The tribe remembered her.

“Whatever happened to that boy?” she asked Niraj. “The one who threw me into the mud?”

“Tahnood,” Niraj said solemnly, his tone alerting her. He turned to meet her concerned stare as he finished, “He did not survive the war.”

Catti-brie’s regret washed away almost immediately on deeper concerns as she registered the last word.

“The war?” she echoed.

“The Netherese,” Niraj explained. “The plains were afire with battle for many months. The crows of our lands are fatter now.”

He turned to her and gave a sly wink. “Not as thick as the crow who spied upon me at the sheep pen, though.”

Catti-brie managed a smile, but her heart was heavy. “Did you fight?”

“We all fought.”

The woman didn’t know what to say, and settled on, “I am sorry, Father. I should have returned to you.”

“My greatest joy in that dark time is that you were not here. Would that Kavi, too, had found another home for those dark years.”

“Not with me,” Catti-brie remarked. “I assure you my own road was no brighter.” She stopped the march and tugged Niraj’s hand to force him to stop, too, and to look at her. “I have so much to tell you. I don’t know if you’ll enjoy my tale or not, but it is one I must share honestly.”

“You are alive and seem well.”

She smiled and nodded.

“Then no tale you tell me can wound me, my little Zubrija.”

When they entered the family tent, Catti-brie had to leap across the floor to catch Kavita, who gasped and collapsed in joy at the sight of her.

Catti-brie gladly buried her face in Kavita’s thick black hair, and she drank in the smell of the woman, the smell of her childhood.

“You haven’t aged,” Catti-brie whispered in the woman’s ear.

Kavita kissed her on the cheek.

“Nayan keeps her young,” Niraj said, and when Catti-brie looked back at him, he nodded his chin toward the far end of the room.

Catti-brie’s gaze locked on the small bed, and her jaw drooped open.

“Nayan?” she whispered, pulling back from Kavita. She looked to her mother, who smiled and nodded then motioned for her to go and see.

Catti-brie quietly moved across the room. She saw a bit of movement first, under some blankets, and she paused, overwhelmed by the thought that she had a brother-overwhelmed and not sure how to even consider this child. Was he really her brother? Similarly, were Niraj and Kavita actually her parents? She had come back to the world fully conscious of her previous life, a life where she had been born to other parents, though she had barely known, and remembered nothing of, her father, and had known her mother not at all.

Still, where did she fit here with this Desai family? She did not even consider herself Desai! Was Kavita no more than a carrier for the will of Mielikki?

These questions had followed Catti-brie since her earliest days in this strange second life.

The blankets moved and the little boy, Nayan, rolled over into sight, his head covered in thick black hair like Kavita, his mouth and jowls wide and expressive like Niraj.

And Catti-brie had her answer, to all of it. The explosion in her heart offered no room for doubt.

This was her baby brother. And these were her parents, her mother and her father, and that it was her second life mattered not at all.

She was home. This was her family, as much as Mithral Hall had been her home and Bruenor was forever her Da.

Whether she was Desai or not mattered not at all, no more than the fact that she wasn’t a dwarf-nay less, she decided, because she was human, just like this family, just like this tribe. The rest of it-skin color, hair color, homeland-was nonsense, fabricated by people who needed to pretend that they were somehow superior for such superficial reasons.

None of it mattered. This was her family, and she could only love them as such.

Nayan opened his dark eyes then. He looked right at her and his whole face smiled, his mouth all crooked and wide and with just a couple of tiny teeth showing.

Catti-brie, charmed, turned back to her parents, who stood together now, leaning on each other.

“May I?”

Kavita laughed. “I will be angry with you if you do not!”

Catti-brie scooped Nayan up in her arms, lifted him up in front of her eyes, and made giggling, nonsensical noises. She had no idea why she might be doing that, but she surely was, and as Nayan thoroughly enjoyed it and laughed aloud, she didn’t stop for a long while, until her arms got tired and she brought the young mister in close on her hip.

“He’s beautiful,” she said, turning back to Niraj and Kavita. “He has just enough of both of you, the best features of both.”

“We are just glad he got Kavita’s hair,” the bald-headed Niraj laughed and winked.

“Tell me you are returned to us,” Kavita bade her. “The threat of Shade Enclave is no more. We are safe now, and so much happier will we be with our Ruqiah with us.”

The smile disappeared from Catti-brie’s face and she gave a resigned sigh. “Mother, Father …” she began, shaking her head. “I have so much to tell you, so much I can tell you now. I left you confused.”

“Speaking of the goddess Mielikki and spouting prophecy about the return of Anauroch,” said Niraj.

“You are a chosen, so you claimed,” Kavita added.

“You remember.”

“Remember?” Kavita echoed incredulously, and she rushed across the floor. “Every heartbeat, I remember,” she said, and she seemed as if she was about to wail. “It was the day I lost my baby girl.” Her voice began to crack. “It has haunted my dreams for twenty years.”

“We always hoped you would come back to us,” Niraj added, moving beside Kavita and taking her arm.

“Let us sit,” Catti-brie bade them. “And I will tell you everything. All of it. And you must believe me, and you must understand that none of it changes the way I feel about you, the love I know here from you. That love sustains me. I need you now, both of you.”

On her hip, Nayan gurgled a spit-filled response.

“And you, too!” Catti-brie said with a laugh. She jostled Nayan, and that was all it took to get him laughing yet again.

“All of it,” she said more seriously to Niraj and Kavita, “the truth of the past, the truth of my arrival into your home, and the promise of the future.”

She motioned to the small table and chairs in the tent and the three sat down, Catti-brie placing Nayan on a rug right beside her chair, Kavita tossing her a bunch of plains-grass dolls Niraj had made for the child, to toy with or chew on as he chose.

And so Catti-brie somberly told her parents the truth-everything, from the details of her previous life to the journey that had led her from Mithral Hall to the divine forest of Iruladoon to Kavita’s womb. These two were not simple nomads; both were trained in the Art, and though Catti-brie noted the doubts expressed initially on their faces-surely they thought their daughter had lost her mind-she could see that she was clearly breaking down the barriers of denial. She watched as Kavita’s hand crept nearer and nearer to Niraj’s, finally clasping his hand tightly and squeezing as if to save her very sanity.

And he was no less glad of the grasp.

Catti-brie told them of her departure from the Desai, trapped and dragged to her time in Shade Enclave with Lady Avelyere and the Coven. She told them of Longsaddle and her journey to fulfill her promise to Mielikki and go to Drizzt, her drow husband-which raised a few eyebrows-on Kelvin’s Cairn. She told them of the war in the west, the Silver Marches.

She told them of Gauntlgrym, of her other father who was now king, of her current quest to rebuild the Hosttower of the Arcane, and the mission that had brought her back to their side.

She finished and leaned forward, placing a hand on the knee of each. “Every word I told you was the truth. You deserve that much at least from me.”

Kavita nodded, but Niraj just sat there staring blankly, trying to digest the amazing story.

For a long while, they sat in silence, other than when Nayan found something particularly amusing or tasty.

“The Netherese remain in the hills below where Shade Enclave once floated,” Niraj confirmed for her, finally.

“You cannot go to them,” said Kavita, shaking her head. “The war is over, but they are no friend to Desai. They will throw you in shackles and use you-”

“I go with the imprimatur of a very powerful friend, who is allied with Lord Parise Ulfbinder,” Catti-brie replied. “An urgent request the Netherese lord will not ignore, and so he will not dare threaten me in any way.”

“You cannot know!” Kavita retorted, but Niraj put his hand on her leg and nodded comfortingly to the rightly-worried mother.

“Perhaps our little Ruqiah has earned our trust,” he said.

Kavita looked into Catti-brie’s eyes. “Our little Ruqiah,” she echoed in a whisper. “Can we even call you that?”

“Of course you can,” said Catti-brie, grinning happily, but that smile did not charm Kavita.

“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.

She simply didn’t have enough reference points to properly bluff, so she decided upon the barest truth.

“I trained with Lady Avelyere,” she said. “Circumstance removed me from Shade Enclave, and only upon returning to the plain was I aware that the floating city was no more.”

“Avelyere?” the first guard asked, and before Catti-brie even nodded he turned to the woman standing beside him and whispered something she could not hear, That woman ran off.

Catti-brie held her breath. She wasn’t very good at this game. Had she erred in the admission? Was Avelyere alive, perhaps? Or another of the Coven who could identify her?

She started to speak again, but was silenced immediately by the guard, and when she moved to argue, he pointed at her threateningly.

She fell quiet and stood there for a long, long while-so long that she moved to some shade and sat down upon a flat stone. Finally she noted a commotion up above, with several of the guards moving back out of sight and returning to stare down at her once more. The war was over, so said Niraj and Kavita, but there was nothing welcoming about this place.

Strangely, the approach to this city among the ruins made her think of Citadel Adbar. She kept that in mind, and reminded herself that the dwarves of that citadel were not an unreasonable lot, even though they were no more welcoming than this group. She thought of Mirabar, too, with its imposing wall and grim-faced guards. She couldn’t really blame the Netherese, surrounded by enemies, surrounded by tribes that held long and justified grievances for decades of oppression.

The great door creaked as it swung open and a host of soldiers rode out astride large, black-furred mounts with curving ram horns. Darkness seemed to follow their every stride, for they exuded the stuff of shadow. Unsure what to make of the greeting, Catti-brie quietly prepared a spell as they neared. With a word, she would exact a blinding holy light to steal the shadows, and before her foes recovered, she hoped, the large raven would fly away.

The riders, five in all, flanked her to either side, with one stopping right in front of her.

“Lady Avelyere, you said,” prompted the apparent leader of the group. She was a thick and clearly strong woman, wearing black plate armor, and with a huge sword strapped to the side of her heavy saddle.

Catti-brie nodded.

“And your name was Catti-brie, so you said.”

“Yes.”

“Stay close and run. We will move quickly.”

“I can summon a mount …” Catti-brie tried to say, but she was moving, having no choice in the matter, as the riders closed in around her and trotted off for the town.

The great gates were closing even as Catti-brie crossed into the settlement, and it felt to her as if they had closed the very sunlight, as well. The place had the smell and taste and images of the Plane of Shadows, a gray and muted place indeed.

The architecture was undeniably beautiful, though. The Netherese had carved out a functioning enclave within the rubble of a mountain and city that had fallen from the sky and shattered. In the chaos of the debris, they had found some measure of order, with Houses carved into great rock walls, a marketplace created from a boulder tumble, and neat roads of black stone cutting smartly through it all.

The pace of the escort remained furious, with common folk dodging aside all the way through the town. They rushed down to a small valley between two rocky mountain spurs. Within the arms of the mountain, a circle of boulders had fallen, or more likely, given the exact spacing of the ten great stones, had been placed. Each was hollowed in some form or another, and with black metal stairwells, railings and balconies set about-it seemed to Catti-brie like some squat version of the drow stalagmite mounds of Menzoberranzan.

The riders dismounted around her, and the commander took Catti-brie by the arm and roughly tugged her along. They went between the nearest two stones, revealing to Catti-brie, in the middle of the circle, a small square structure, open on one side and with a descending stairway.

“She is already announced,” came a voice from those stairs and a woman climbed into view. She was young, younger than Catti-brie even, and dressed in a loose blouse and gray pants, a uniform Catti-brie knew well.

“You may go back to your duties,” the young sorceress told the guard.

“She is a known threat,” the soldier protested, and that caught Catti-brie by surprise for both claims-that she was “known” and a “threat.”

“Lady Avelyere is touched by your concern,” the young student of the Coven, clearly coached, replied. “She is also disappointed in your lack of faith in her ability to control this situation.”

The female guard leader held up her hand in acquiescence and turned around, waving for her minions to go off with her.

On the stairs, the young woman motioned for Catti-brie to join her.

They descended several levels, through a maze of corridors and rooms all splendidly decorated and meticulously cleaned. This was Avelyere’s home, Catti-brie realized, and like the Coven in the floating Shade Enclave, the lady kept true to appearances.

They came to a door hung with curtains. Catti-brie saw Lady Avelyere through the glass, and a mix of emotions swirled. Avelyere had been Catti-brie’s captor, though she had been allowed many privileges. But Avelyere had been as a mentor to her as well, and sometimes a caring one at that. There were occasions where Avelyere, under the terms of the capture, could have punished Catti-brie-indeed, Lady Avelyere could have simply executed Catti-brie at any time, and no one who cared would have ever known.

Inside the room, the lady motioned, and Catti-brie’s escort opened the door and stepped aside, then closed the door behind her, leaving Catti-brie alone in the room with the middle-aged woman.

“Ah, Catti-brie,” Lady Avelyere greeted. She motioned to a chair set across a small table from where she was a seated, and where a glass of white wine was set. “Or should I call you Ruqiah?”

Catti-brie took a deep breath to compose herself, and to remind herself that she was not the little-skilled child who had been in Lady Avelyere’s care. She was Chosen of Mielikki, and a powerful wizard trained by the Harpells. She had faced down Archmage Gromph Baenre, who could likely reduce this woman sitting in front of her to ashes with a snap of his dark fingers.

“I prefer Catti-brie,” she replied.

“Even then, no doubt, when you lied to me under my own roof.”

“When I was a prisoner, you mean, stolen from my family.”

Avelyere started to respond, but just tipped her wine glass.

“I did not kill the body I put in the House to disguise my escape,” Catti-brie told her-for some reason she didn’t yet understand, she wanted Lady Avelyere to know that truth.

“I know.”

“What else do you know?” Catti-brie asked. She picked up the wine and started to bring it to her lips, then paused and looked at it suspiciously.

Then she looked at Avelyere and nodded, and took a sip.

“You fear it poisoned?”

“Lady Avelyere is far too clever and charming for such things. Besides, why would you be angry with me?”

“You left without my permission, and in complete deception.”

“And I return without your permission, and indeed, not even to see you. I came to speak with Lord Parise Ulfbinder, as I was bidden by a mutual friend. I accommodate you by visiting now, but if you wish, I will be on my way to Lord Parise.”

“And if I tried to stop you?”

“I would burn your house down.”

Lady Avelyere stared at her hard and long. “You believe you can do exactly that, don’t you?”

“I believe my road has been difficult enough without your judgment.”

Lady Avelyere continued to stare for only a short while, then smiled and held up her hands. “I am glad that you accepted my invitation, Ruqi-Catti-brie,” she said.

“Then I am, too,” Catti-brie replied. “There are too many questions along too many hallways. But I know in my heart that I bear you no ill will. Believe it or not, good Lady Avelyere, but I am truly glad that you are alive, that you survived the catastrophe that befell Shade Enclave.”

“I believe you, Ruqiah,” the older woman, who was not really older, replied. “And forgive me, but that name still brings joy to me. We watched you, you know.”

“When I was here?” a confused Catti-brie asked.

“When you left. We found you in Longsaddle, or rather, when you were leaving Longsaddle. I watched you climb the lone mountain in Icewind Dale, and reunite with Drizzt Do’Urden. Our lives became complicated, and war came to our door, but still I found time to look in on you from afar during your struggles in the Silver Marches.”

“We saw your victory over the drow and the orcs,” said another voice, a man’s voice. A well-groomed, smartly-dressed man with a beautifully-kempt gray beard and piercing eyes entered the room.

“This is the man you came to speak with,” Lady Avelyere explained.

“Through a scrying mirror, we watched the light emanate from Drizzt Do’Urden, destroying the roiling blackness the drow had placed over the Silver Marches,” Lord Parise Ulfbinder explained. “We witnessed the victory of Mielikki over Lolth, and it was a grand display indeed.”

“Should I feel violated?” Catti-brie asked as she rose and offered the lord her hand. He took it gently and kissed it.

“Lovely lady, we watched only from afar. How could we not, knowing that two goddesses were waging a proxy war through you?”

Catti-brie stepped back and took her seat, lifting the wine for another sip as she tried to figure out what was going on here.

“Did you witness my fight with the woman named Dahlia?” she asked at length.

The two looked at each other, then back at her, and she knew they had not.

“That, I expect, was the truest battle, waged between myself and the troubled elf named Dahlia, with me serving as proxy for Mielikki, and Dahlia championing Lolth, though I doubt the poor woman even understood her role.”

“Will you tell us?” Lord Parise asked, his eagerness not hard to discern.

“An entertaining tale,” Catti-brie promised. “Unless, of course, Lady Avelyere has poisoned my wine here and I will fall dead before I can complete it.”

“Oh, do not be foolish,” Avelyere protested with a sarcastic sigh.

She looked Avelyere right in the eye and remarked, “You never brought pain to my parents.”

“There was a war,” Parise said from the side, where he gathered up a chair and a glass of wine for himself. At the table, Lady Avelyere didn’t let go of Catti-brie’s stare.

“I do not take pleasure in inflicting pain,” Avelyere replied.

“I know, and that is why I was indeed very glad to learn that you had survived the troubles that happened here, in this fallen city, and in the war. I am not your enemy, nor have I ever been.”

“And I did not poison the wine.”

With that, Catti-brie lifted her glass in toast, and Lady Avelyere tapped it with her own.

“It is so good to be among people who understand that life is more complex than darkness and light,” Lord Parise remarked.

In both her lives combined, few words had Catti-brie ever heard that brought a truer sense of comfort. Lord Parise had spoken a simple truth, and a sad one.

Would that more people understood.

Again Catti-brie told her tale of the fight in Gauntlgrym, and the return to Gauntlgrym, where Bruenor was now king. She used that last battle to segue into the issues at hand, the rebuilding of the Hosttower of the Arcane, and at that point, she handed the Jarlaxle’s missive to Lord Parise.

“Wonderful,” he remarked repeatedly as he read the parchment, and when he finished and handed it to Lady Avelyere, he added, “What an amazing opportunity!”

“You will join our efforts, then?”

“I would be forever angry if you did not allow me to do so!” Lord Parise said. He glanced at Avelyere. “Perhaps in this, Ruqiah can be the teacher.”

“The invitation is for you,” Avelyere replied.

“It is a request, not an invitation,” said Catti-brie. “I do not know the level of magic that will be needed on every piece of the Hosttower as we reconstruct it, but we are not afforded the luxury of turning away powerful spellcasters.” She paused and reached across the table to squeeze Avelyere’s hand. “Particularly if they are trustworthy.”

“I would like to join in this quest, then,” Avelyere said. “And I have a few students who might prove useful.”

“This could take years,” Lord Parise warned.

“Perhaps decades,” said Catti-brie. “The work on the Hosttower might continue long after we are all dead.”

“Still, it is the journey of life that matters, and not the goal,” said Lord Parise. “And this journey will prove exhilarating, I expect. To converse with the Archmage of Menzoberranzan! And dragons! Jarlaxle’s missive speaks of dragons!”

“Tazmikella and Ilnezhara,” Catti-brie explained. “Copper dragons, and sisters, and both very powerful in the ways of the Art. A very unusual duo.”

“Splendid!” Lord Parise said, and clapped his hands together. “What wondrous things we might learn.”

Lady Avelyere nodded, but then put on a curious expression as she regarded Catti-brie. “What of your Desai parents?”

Catti-brie wasn’t sure how to take that.

“You do not know? They are capable wizards, both.”

“There are many capable wizards,” Catti-brie replied. “They have a child, a young child.”

“You do not wish them in the midst of a city controlled by the drow,” Lord Parise suggested.

“Reconsider, then,” said Lady Avelyere. “The practices of the Desai spellcasters, who spent decades hiding their talents, are a bit different from those I taught at the Coven, as, I’m sure you discovered, mine are different from those of the Harpells of Longsaddle, and those are different from those of this Archmage Gromph.”

“To truly recognize the old and lost magic that originally built the Hosttower, we may have to look at it from many different perspectives, and so from people skilled in the Art who have trained and honed their skills differently,” Lord Parise added. “This is why Jarlaxle has brought in Archmage Gromph and the dragons, and why he sent you to fetch me. Do not discount the potential contributions of the tribal casters, who employ different vocalizations and movements, even different spell components, in enacting their magical spells than wizards of other areas and schools.”

“I will consider it,” she replied, in a tone that ended that line of discussion. “Time is short.”

“And Jarlaxle is waiting,” said Lord Parise.

“No,” Catti-brie said, and the other two looked at her curiously. “Jarlaxle is away on a most important mission.”

“Another tale!” Lord Parise said happily. He finished his glass and turned back to the bottle.

But that, too, Catti-brie denied. “We must be on the road, immediately.”

“I will find someone to teleport us.”

“There is a place I must go first,” Catti-brie said. “A place not far.”

They left the Netherese enclave soon after, Catti-brie astride Andahar, and her companions upon magically summoned mounts. They rode hard to the south and soon came in sight of the Desai tents.

“Better that we wait here,” Lord Parise said, tipping his chin to Lady Avelyere.

“The war is over,” Catti-brie reminded him.

“I know that, but do they?”

Catti-brie started to reply, but held back as she considered the tribe beyond the tent of Niraj and Kavita. The Desai were ferocious warriors, many of whom had no doubt suffered great losses at the hands of the Netherese. She could not argue with confidence that her companions would be safe among those tents.

She rode in alone to the Desai encampment to bid farewell to her second family, while Lord Parise, Lady Avelyere, and a few others of Avelyere’s Coven, who had caught up with them, waited for her on the Netheril plain.

When the troupe turned to the west, for Luskan, Niraj and Kavita were not among their ranks.