The Companions

CHAPTER 24

The Year of the Agele ss One (1479 DR) Luruar

Theeagle rode the updrafts of an incoming front, gliding easily to the west, and now with the hilly region known as the Crags in sight. Beyond those rolling hills sat Luskan and the Sword Coast, Catti-brie knew, and the mountain pass that would take her home to Icewind Dale.

Given the limitations of her magic, she expected to pass by Luskan within a few days, and into Icewind Dale to Ten-Towns merely a tenday beyond that.

She was thinking of her more recent home, of Niraj and Kavita, and hoping that they were all right. Had they heard of her death? Had Lady Avelyere gone to the Desai encampment to interrogate them? Or worse, had Avelyere punished them?

The thought unsettled Catti-brie and stole from her the peace of this moment of high solitude. Maybe she should have stayed in Netheril to protect her parents, she thought, to fight, and likely die, beside them if Avelyere came calling.

Certainly die, she nodded. With that slight movement of her head, Catti-brie noticed a strange twinge, a pressure in her limbs akin to what she felt when executing the shapeshifting. Her vision shifted suddenly, too, as if from eagle eyes to human, or something strange in between, and for just a fleeting heartbeat, the sky around her darkened, then seemed backlit, and in the moment between blue daylight and nighttime stars, she saw or imagined a great web of giant strands enwrapping the whole world.

She didn’t know what to make of it; she couldn’t begin to unravel the meaning of the strange sight or of the pressure in her limbs or the strangeness of her vision. The world below seemed suddenly so much farther away then, and for a moment, the woman wondered if some great updraft had lifted her higher.

But no, it was an illusion, Catti-brie realized, and one facilitated by the change in her vision, back to mere human eyes. Her shapeshift was failing!

She focused then on her arcane magic, putting her memorized levitation spell into her thoughts-but they were jumbled thoughts, and she couldn’t sort through the haze. The spell wasn’t making sense to her, the words weren’t coming clear. Something was wrong, very wrong! The flight became strained-she could feel her wings crackling with reversion.

Normally, Catti-brie would have climbed before the reversion, giving her farther to fall, and thus more time to enact her levitation. But the words to that spell simply wouldn’t come to her.

It was Lady Avelyere. The diviner had found her and was attacking her magically, dispelling her dweomers, jumbling her thoughts.

Down she sped, angling steeply, even tucking her wings in a full stoop, knowing that she had to get to the ground as quickly as possible. She noted a stand of pine trees and soared out that way while maintaining the dive.

She felt the magic evaporating and pulled up with all her strength to break her dive. It worked, but a moment later, she felt her arms, not wings, at her sides. Still some fifty feet from the ground, she began to tumble, a human again, and in a place where no human should be. She fought to recite the levitation, but couldn’t remember the words in any sensible order, and hadn’t the time anyway.

She crashed into a thick pine, breaking branches and limbs, bouncing down through the tangle to the lowest branch, where she caught a handhold, but only for a moment before falling free the last dozen feet, to land flat on her back on the ground, where she knew no more.

“The city is in disarray!” Rhyalle reported, bursting into the room alongside Eerika.

Lady Avelyere regarded them briefly before turning back to the window, and offered no immediate response. She could see the tumult in the streets below the Coven, with couriers running all around, no doubt delivering messages from one lord to another.

Something had happened. Something a long while to realize ees …on powerful and dramatic, and not just within the Coven, where they had felt the shift keenly. “What does it mean, Lady?” Eerika dared to ask.

“We don’t know what it is, so how could she answer that question?” Rhyalle scolded.

“Have you done as I asked?” Lady Avelyere asked, turning around to aim her question at Eerika. The younger woman nodded. “Then proceed.”

Eerika looked to Rhyalle for support. They hadn’t started their run to Avelyere’s chambers together, but had met up in the wide foyer of the main building, Rhyalle returning from the streets, Eerika from the old library.

“Lady, the words do not easily form-” Eerika started.

“Try,” Lady Avelyere ordered. “It is a minor dweomer.”

Eerika took a deep breath, then lifted her hand up, palm upward, and began to quietly recite a spell. A few heartbeats later, a burst of light formed in her hand, glowing brightly for just a moment, then growing dimmer. Eerika lowered her hand, but the globe of light remained, hovering in the air before her.

“By the gods,” Lady Avelyere breathed, and she turned back to the window, but looking up to the sky and not to the streets below. Earlier that day, the sisters had found confusion, where spells they had prepared had become jumbled and useless. If that wasn’t curious enough, now Eerika, a young magic-user unskilled in the old ways, had just enacted a spell of light creation, and from an incantation a century and more thought lost to the world.

“What does it mean, Lady?” Eerika asked.

“We are a magocracy,” Lady Avelyere quietly replied. “It means that we will know confusion, then we will find transition, then we will know renewed power.”

The two younger women looked to each other with great concern.

“Mental agility,” Lady Avelyere said to them, turning around to offer them a comforting look. “The Empire of Netheril stands above because we are wiser and more clever. We have felt such cosmic … curiosities, before.” She nodded and motioned to the door. “Go and rest, and when you are renewed, prepare your spells anew. Let us see what tomorrow brings.”

The two women bowed and departed, and Lady Avelyere turned back to her window. Something was going on here beyond her comprehension, beyond anything she had known in her life, she sensed, and feared, and hoped. The world was always in flux-her dear Parise had shared some concerns of “Cherlrigo’s Darkness,” had even hinted that the fabric of magic might yet grow unsteady. Yes, something was in flux, and had not Lady Avelyere herself discovered the rebirth of this favored mortal of the goddess Mielikki?

And now this confusing day, and what it would ultimately mean, Lady Avelyere could not be sure.

But whatever might come from this magical hiccup-for that was the only word she could think of to describe this day’s events-Lady Avelyere meant to benefit from it.

The clever ones always did.

Painful spasms drew Catti-brie back to consciousness. She lay on the ground, blood all around, one leg bent weirdly, surely broken, and one arm throbbing, likely also broken. The sun was very low in the western sky, so she understood that she had lain!” Bruenor warned.5N3Delly Curtieon there for many hours. She was lucky to be alive, she realized.

Her levitation had failed her-why hadn’t she been able to recall the words and cadence of the spell? And why had her spellscar power of shapeshifting worn away so quickly?

The spinning questions brought her back to her fear that Lady Avelyere had found her, and had brought her down. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked all around, desperate, though turning her head caused her more discomfort.

Catti-brie used all of the discipline she could muster, training earned in two lifetimes, forcing aside her fears, forcing herself to focus. She thought of other incantations she had prepared, but none seemed helpful at that moment, and worse, none came clear in her thoughts. If Avelyere arrived before her, would she even be able to muster the slightest of cantrips to defend herself?

She fell back to her greatest safeguard, her most favored dweomer, and concentrated on the weather. She would bring in a storm, yes, and if any enemies appeared, she would strike them dead with powerful bolts of lightning.

She enacted the magic, so she believed, but she needed time for the clouds to gather and the storm to coalesce.

And more than that, she realized, as she began to swoon, she needed to stop her bleeding.

She began to pray, calling to the goddess for spells of healing, and to her great relief, unlike the arcane magical spells, these words, these prayers, did flow through her. She saw the light blue mist gathering at her wounded right arm, flowing from under the wide sleeve of her robe.

The spell came forth and Catti-brie felt a rush of gentle warmth, smooth as satin and decidedly comforting, flowing through her body, sweeping through her like a cresting wave and then breaking with a burst of hot energy upon her broken right arm, upon the very spellscar of the goddess whose favor had granted her this power.

With a trembling left hand, Catti-brie pulled back the sleeve of her robe. She looked upon the spellscar, the head of Mielikki’s unicorn, as the mist dissipated, and she blinked repeatedly, wondering if it was a trick of the light, perhaps, or of her own light-headedness with her loss of blood. For while the scar remained, it seemed even more distinct than before, more like a tattoo now than a birthmark, a unicorn’s golden horn and with the creature’s head similarly outlined in gold.

Another wave of pain brought a grimace and a reminder, and Catti-brie began again her chant, asking the goddess for more. The mist came forth from the unicorn, her divine powers intact and, she thought, even more powerful than before.

She cast a third minor healing spell, and then, her thoughts clearing, brought forth a spell to heal more serious wounds, focusing her energy on her leg. She felt better immediately within the warm cocoon of the blue-bathing light, like the softest of ocean waters sweeping away the weeds. She sat up straighter, and even flexed her knee as the leg straightened out before her.

She would survive her fall. And she would likely walk again the very next day, once her divine powers had renewed, and she could enact further healing upon her battered form.

Catti-brie took a deep breath and held it, then peeled back the sleeve of her left arm.

The seven-pointed star remained, and like the unicorn head, it seemed more distinct now, like the work of an ink artist, except that its sketching was not golden, but blood red, like a web of angry veins pulsing out the marker of Mystra.

Whatline-height: Isummon did it mean?

Catti-brie tried to recall an arcane spell from her repertoire, but alas, like the levitation earlier, those memorized dweomers were lost to her, a jumble of nonsensical words.

On a hunch, she considered one, her favored fireball. She closed her eyes and thought back to the very first time she had cast that spell, in another body a century before, and she tried to fight her way through the incantation jumble.

Now the words sorted, and she heard her own chant, part ancient, part new, and a fiery pea appeared in her hand. She threw it out and willed it out from her, into the air and away from the trees, and there it exploded appropriately, a burgeoning fireball, and the blue tendrils of magical energies glowed around her left arm, around the symbol of the seven-pointed star.

Catti-brie stared at it and shook her head.

What could it mean?

As she continued to stare upon the spot, the flames dissipating to nothingness, something else caught her eye, and brought her more questions. She saw the first twinkles of starlight as twilight descended upon the land.

But where was her conjured storm?

She looked all around. The sky was perfectly clear. Her spell had failed, utterly.

What could it mean?

“What does it mean?” Lady Avelyere asked Lord Parise Ulfbinder the very next day. She and her minions were managing to enact some magical spells, but only barely and only selectively.

“Instability,” Parise replied, and he seemed, and sounded, quite shaken, Lady Avelyere noted. “I spoke with Lord Draygo Quick this morning. It is, perhaps, as we feared.”

“Explain.”

The Netherese lord shook his head. “Something is upon the world-both worlds! — but there is nothing I can yet explain. The Twelve Princes have sought out the wisdom of the priests.”

“The old ways? The old gods?”

“Where is your former student?” Parise asked. “You have located her?”

“Ruqiah?” Lady Avelyere held up her hands helplessly.

“You said that you did not believe her to have perished in the fire.”

“No, certainly it was not her withered body that we found among the rubble.”

“Then where is she?”

“Nowhere near to us, I am sure,” Lady Avelyere replied. “I have magically surveyed all of Netheril-”

“West,” Parise interrupted. “Search in the west. The Sword Coast. Luskan. Icewind Dale.”

Lady Avelyere looked at him curiously. “What do you know?”

“Of course I did my own research and inquiries after you came to me with that most interesting tale,” he answered. “A lone mountain, you described.”

“It could be anywhere.”

“It could be Icewind Dale.”

Lady Avelyere shrugged, for the name meant nothing to her.

“A stretch of barren tundra through the Spine of the World Mountains north of the DesaiIsummon of the city of Luskan,” Parise explained. “Few live there, fewer still travel there, but it was once the home of Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor Battlehammer, and his adopted daughter, Catti-brie.”

“As was Mithral Hall …”

“And the towns of Icewind Dale are built in the shadow of a singular mountain, rising from the tundra.”

Lady Avelyere licked her lips and digested the news. It could be.

“Direct your search between Shade Enclave and Icewind Dale,” Parise commanded. “You will likely find this missing girl.”

“And then?”

“Watch her. Do not return her to Shade Enclave. Let us learn what we may, but safely from afar.”

“We remain five years from her appointed meeting,” Lady Avelyere reminded him.

“A speck of time in the cosmic calendar. But more than enough time for clever Lady Avelyere and her Coven to find this wayward child, yes?” The woman nodded.

“The libraries of Shade Enclave are being opened to all practitioners,” Parise added as Lady Avelyere turned to go. “We must once again adapt our magic, it would seem.”

“The old ways?”

The lord shrugged. “Who can know?”

“Ruqiah, perhaps,” Lady Avelyere quipped, and she shook her head and smiled resignedly, helplessly, and Parise responded in kind.

Catti-brie felt much better the next day, even before she bathed herself once more in the healing magic of Mielikki. Her arcane spells remained a jumble and she discovered that she could barely understand the delicate inflections of the incantations outlined in her spellbook. She felt as if everything magical had shifted several degrees, with different pieces going in different directions. She couldn’t make any sense of it.

“So be it,” she said, and she walked out from under the pine tree boughs that had served as her bedroom. She looked at the rising sun, then all around, to the distant Crags and north, where sat the high peaks of the towering Spine of the World, though she could not see them from this vantage.

She considered her approximate location and the year and season. She had plenty of time to get to Icewind Dale-years even-so perhaps a change of course would be in order here.

“Waterdeep?” she whispered. The lords of that greatest of cities would certainly be investigating the strange happenings-but how might she, a dirty girl from another part of the world, garner any information from those haughty ones? For she was not Princess Catti-brie of Mithral Hall any longer, but merely little Ruqiah of the Desai, and no one of note.

She thought of Candlekeep, the famed library along the coast south of Waterdeep. If any in all the Realms were going to figure out what was going on here, it would be the sages of that most learned of places. But again, how might she gain entrance to such a place?

She lifted her arms and shook them, her sleeves falling back. Her spellscars? Would they get her in?

But they didn’t even look like scars any longer. Any skilled tattooist along the Sword Coast could create the markings inside Catti-brie’s forearms.

The wom a long while to realize ees …onan blew out a deep breath and called upon the spellscars then, thinking to shapeshift and be on her way, whichever way she might decide. Catti-brie closed her eyes and focused on the markings, willing herself to again become a great eagle.

Nothing happened.

She opened her eyes and looked down at her arms. No mist began to form, no hint of magic to be found.

She couldn’t shapeshift. She couldn’t become an eagle, a mouse, or a wolf. The notion struck her profoundly. She remained hundreds of miles from Icewind Dale, and now, so suddenly, the road appeared much more perilous and uncertain.

Catti-brie forced herself to calm down, and rationally played through her options. Even without the shapeshift, and without the storm calling and lightning bolts, she was a disciple of Mielikki, with powers divine. And she was a mage, trained in Silverymoon, trained in Shade Enclave. She was not a lost little child on the open road. She was Catti-brie, who had passed this way before, in another life. She could fight and she could enact magic both divine and arcane. She glanced around, then began to climb one of the pines for a better view. Her injured leg ached for the effort and the deep bending, despite the magic she had enacted upon it.

She thought back to the previous day, when she had been flying on high. Just to the west of her lay a road, she recalled, and she nodded, for she knew that road, the Long Road, it had once been named.

And she smiled as she considered where that road might take her, and what she might learn when she got to that particular destination.

She found an appropriate length of wood to use as a walking stick and set out determinedly. She was Catti-brie. She had returned by the will of Mielikki and for a great purpose, and she would not falter.

She made the road, or what was left of it-for now it was an old and little-used trail-that afternoon and turned to the north. Her leg ached, but she did not stop and did not slow.

The sunlight began to fade, the night descending upon the land, and Catti-brie began to search for an appropriate campsite. She moved off the road, up the side of a small hillock. She had just begun to construct a fire pit, complete with rocks around its edges to shield flames from distant eyes, when the sky to the north lit up suddenly with a great burst of orange flames.

Catti-brie rushed to the northern edge of the hillock and peered off into the distance.

A lightning bolt split the night sky. A fireball followed, and then a star-burst of multicolored sparks and flares of such magnificence that it made the woman giggle in appreciation.

She heard the distant sound of the explosions a few moments later, along with what sounded like a cacophony of cheers.

Another fireball ignited, this one lower to the ground, illuminating the land below to reveal a large mansion set upon a hill.

“Longsaddle!” Catti-brie cried, and it wasn’t so far. All thoughts of camping flew from her then, and she started off with renewed determination.

The night darkened around her, the Long Road seemed in places little more than a wagon rut, but the explosions continued in the north, guiding her way, and soon after she entered the village of Longsaddle, home of the Harpells, a place she had visited in her previous life on several occasions.

All of the townsfolk were outside, it seemed, hundreds of people cheering and dancing at the spectacle on the hill, the spectline-height: Isummonacle on the grounds of the Ivy Mansion, home of the Harpells, where the wizards plied their trade in a grand celebration, it seemed, throwing fire and lightning and all sorts of spectacular dweomers up into the air in a great and splendid display.

“What is it?” Catti-brie asked a young couple she encountered at the base of the hill.

“None seem to know,” the man answered. “But our Harpell wizards appear to be in a festive and fine mood this evening!”

Catti-brie moved around the gathering, gaining the road that led up to the gate of the house on the hill. It appeared as no more than a ten-stride reach of fence, unattached on either end, but Catti-brie knew better. For stretching out from either side was an invisible wall encircling the whole of the hill and mansion.

She arrived at the gate and called out, but none heard or reacted. She could see them, then, wizards atop the hill, many on the mansion’s roof, cheering and throwing their spells, one after another.

Catti-brie called out again, and when that didn’t work, the woman began to whisper a spell of her own. Up in the air above flew the fiery pea, erupting into a fireball of her own making.

The people below her cried out and fell back in surprise-and fear, no doubt. And from above her came shouts and warnings, and the wizards scrambled. In short order, she was confronted by the town guard from below, and soon after that, by a group of Harpells from the other side of the gate.

“Who are you, who throws magic unbidden in Longsaddle?” one wiry old mage in rumpled robes asked.

In response, Catti-brie lifted her arms and shook them, her sleeves falling clear of the markings. “A friend,” she said. “Though I’ve not been here in many years.”

The wiry old mage came closer and looked her over. “I don’t know you.”

“No,” she agreed, shaking her head. “But I know of you, of the Harpells, at least, and some once knew me as a friend. When I tell you my tale, you will understand.”

“Go on, then!” he demanded.

Catti-brie glanced over her shoulder at the town guard, then back at the mage doubtfully.

“Come along then!” demanded a man behind her, but as he approached, the wiry wizard held up his hand.

“Once I knew of Harkle,” Catti-brie dared to admit, hoping that name from yesteryear would spark some recognition. “Once I knew of Bidderdoo.”

“The Bidderdoos?” the man behind her gasped, and fell back, shaking his head.

Catti-brie glanced at him curiously, not quite understanding the reference, or why he had used the plural form of the name. She shook her head and looked back to the mage, to find him already fumbling with the gate. He and the others waved her in and escorted her up the hill.

“I am Penelope,” the middle-aged woman introduced herself, coming into a comfortable room where the others had left Catti-brie, bidding her to be at ease. Catti-brie started to rise from her chair, but the older woman waved at her to remain seated and took the seat opposite.

“Ca-Ru-” Catti-brie started to respond, but she had to pause and laugh at herself, for what should have been a simple greetinline-height: Isummong apparently was not. To use her real name would be to open potential questions much larger than her arrival here at the Ivy Mansion, and to use her Desai name might well make it easier for Lady Avelyere to regain her trail.

“Delly,” she replied with an inviting smile, borrowing another name from her distant past. “Delly Curtie.”

“Well met, then, Ca-ru-delly,” Penelope Harpell replied, smiling knowingly.

“Delly Curtie,” Catti-brie said flatly.

“And what brings Delly Curtie to Longsaddle, pray tell?”

“Your display of magic this night, mostly. I was on the road and noted it, and since I, too, am practiced in the Art-”

“Then you already knew of Longsaddle, no doubt, and needed no fire and lightning display to lure you here.”

Catti-brie stared hard at the woman, who returned the look. She started to concoct some explanation, but realized that she was only digging herself deeper with her lies, beneath the careful gaze of Penelope. These were the Harpells, Catti-brie reminded herself, goodly folk, if quite … eccentric. Ever had the Harpells been allies of the Companions of the Hall, and of Mithral Hall. Indeed, they had come running to Bruenor’s aid when the drow had invaded the dwarf tunnels.

“I was bound for the coast,” Catti-brie said. “But recent events slowed me, and perplexed me, I admit.”

“Do go on.”

“Changes,” Catti-brie replied. “With magic.” She shrugged and threw in her chips, once again pulling up the sleeves of her robe to reveal her two spellscars, now seeming as different colored tattoos.

Penelope’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the woman’s marked forearms, and she leaned out of her seat and moved closer, even reaching down to turn Catti-brie’s arm a bit to get a better look at the seven-pointed star on the left arm.

“What artist did this?” Penelope asked.

“No artist.”

Penelope looked her in the eye once more. “They are spellscars?”

“Or were.”

Penelope stood straight and glanced around. She moved to the door and closed it, then walked back to stand before Catti-brie. She hiked up her robe and turned sideways, revealing a marking on her left hip, a blob of brown and blue discolored skin.

“Would that my own had taken a more attractive appearance, as have yours!” she said. “You did nothing to touch up the scar?”

“It only just happened, when I was alone on the road.”

“And what were you doing alone on the road?”

“Heading for the coast, as I told you.”

“These are dangerous lands for anyone to be traveling alone, even a mage.”

“I was flying,” Catti-brie admitted. “Through the power of the scars, I was flying as a bird. And then I was falling.”

Penelope sucked in her breath.

“What is happening?” Catti-brie asked.

“Are you going to tell me your real name, Delly Curtie?”

“You asked, and Catti-brie nodded. bpa"› expect would not believe me, so no, not yet. In time, perhaps, when we have both come to a place of greater trust.”

Penelope walked around her chair. “You mentioned the Bidderdoos, I am told.”

“Bidderdoo,” Catti-brie corrected.

“A Bidderdoo, then. Which?”

Catti-brie gave a confused little laugh. “Bidderdoo,” she replied. “Bidderdoo Harpell.”

“There is no Bidderdoo Harpell.”

“There was. And what are Bidderdoos, then?”

“Bidderdoo has been dead for a century,” Penelope answered. “His legacy lives on, in the forest around Longsaddle.”

Catti-brie thought about that for a few moments. “Werewolves,” she whispered.

“Yes, the Bidderdoos, so we call them. The townsfolk are quite afraid of them, but in truth, they guard the town and do us no harm. I am surprised that you were not confronted on the road, coming in at night so suspiciously, as you were. But then, perhaps the Bidderdoos were enjoying our celebration.”

“It was quite extraordinary,” Catti-brie agreed.

“An extraordinary display for exciting times,” Penelope admitted. “Strange things have been happening all across the Ivy Mansion.”

Catti-brie laughed at that understatement. “The reputation of the Harpells precedes you, good lady.”

Penelope paused as if to consider her reply, then couldn’t suppress her own grin. “Yes, I expect it does. A well-earned reputation.” She sat in the chair again, her expression growing serious.

“How could you know of Bidderdoo Harpell? And you mentioned another at the gate.”

“Harkle.”

“How could you know of Harkle?”

“I was raised in Mithral Hall.”

Penelope sat up straight and took note. “Raised among the Battlehammer dwarves? And you learned the ways of magic?”

“I am fairly trained,” said Catti-brie. “No archmage, certainly!”

“I saw your fireball,” Penelope replied. “You favor evocation?”

“I like blowing things up,” Catti-brie said with a wry grin. “Spoken like a Harpell!”

“I like blowing things up when I’m not standing next to those things I blow up,” Catti-brie clarified, and Penelope laughed aloud and slapped her knee.

“Maybe not a true Harpell, then,” she replied. “Tell me, have you any other spells in your repertoire this day?”

Catti-brie thought for a moment, then nodded. “A fan of flames,” she said, tapping her thumbs together and waggling her fingers.

Penelope looked around, then motioned for Catti-brie to follow her to a clear spot in the room, where she might enact burning hands without setting the place on fire. “One moment,” the older woman said, then left the room, returning a short time later with two others, a man around the same age as Penelope and one much older.

“My husband, Dowell, and Kipper Harpell, the olde looked at her curiously. o he decidedimst of the clan.”

Both nodded cordially, and Dowell unrolled a parchment, holding it up before Kipper with a nod to Penelope.

Penelope motioned to the empty space before Catti-brie and bade her, “Please proceed with your spell.”

Catti-brie lifted her hands and began the incantation.

“Louder, please, dear child,” Kipper requested.

Catti-brie cleared her throat and went at it again, and a few moments later, a fan of flames spread out from her fingers, a solid dweomer, if not overpowering. She turned to regard the three witnesses, to find them all grinning, and Kipper nodding.

“And look at her arm!” Penelope said, noting the blue mist gathered around Catti-brie’s left forearm. She rushed over and tugged Catti-brie back to the others, pulling back the sleeve to show the seven-starred marking.

“What?” Catti-brie asked.

“Mystra,” Kipper said reverently and bowed his head.

“It is true, then,” Dowell added, grinning widely.

“What?” Catti-brie asked again.

“Your spellcasting,” Penelope started to explain, but Kipper cut her short.

“You drew your power from the old ways,” he said. “Is this how you were trained?”

Catti-brie didn’t know how to respond. It was how she had been trained, but in another life. In this one, not so. “What does it mean?” she asked, deflecting the other’s question.

“The Weave, girl,” Kipper asked, “do you feel it?”

Catti-brie thought back to the moment when her spellscar magic had failed, that flash in the sky, like an eclipse, like a web. Like the Weave of Magic.

She looked at Penelope, her expression quite dumbfounded. “Your celebration,” she managed to whisper, and she put it all together. “Has the effect of the Spellplague ended?”

Penelope hugged her suddenly and unexpectedly. “So we pray,” she whispered. “So we pray.”

Catti-brie glanced out the window of her room at the Ivy Mansion months later, looking back to the east, toward Netheril. Her spellscar powers, the shapeshifting and storm-calling, like those of the other marked wizards at the Ivy Mansion, had not returned, and by all indications, the Spellplague was indeed no more. At long last.

But what did that mean for Niraj and Kavita? Or, Catti-brie wondered, for Avelyere and the Coven?

The Harpells seemed quite overjoyed by the news, even though they had all begun retraining. The library of the Ivy Mansion dated far back before the Spellplague, of course, and so they were well-equipped for this strange shift of magic. And when she thought about it, Catti-brie realized that she was better equipped than almost any! For she had been trained in the old ways initially, after all, and could any other mages in the Realms, other than elves and drow, say the same?

A few, she realized, for the Harpells had not fully abandoned their previous ways.

There were other differences of note between herself and the other wizards around her, and Catti-brie could only attribute it to the special days she had spent in Iruladoon. When asked, and Catti-brie nodded. bpa"› expect she called upon her magic, her spellscars reacted, but that was not true for Penelope or the few others similarly scarred. Even for Catti-brie, the reaction seemed a cosmetic thing only, for her magic was not exceptionally potent-indeed, were she to engage in a spell battle against Penelope, Catti-brie was certain that she would be obliterated in short order.

Still, Catti-brie had a lot to teach the Harpells, even as they invited her to stay on and train under their masters. She was more adept at converting the spells back to the old ways than any, and Kipper and the others truly appreciated her efforts in that regard, and shared some of their best dweomers with her in return.

So for the fourth time since Catti-brie had moved from her warrior ways to that of a wizard, she had found a new school. First she had trained with the great Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, then with Niraj and Kavita, then at the Coven, and now here at the Ivy Mansion. What student of the arcane arts could ever ask for more? She had been fortunate indeed!

“No, the fifth time,” she said aloud, correcting the thought as she recass="indent" ai