The Companions

CHAPTER 29

The Year of the Awakened Sleepers (1484 DR) Icewind Dale

The sun rode low in the eastern sky, the first rays of daylight reaching across Icewind Dale to tickle the icy ridges of the peaks of Kelvin’s Cairn. Regis paused at his cottage door, admiring those crystalline outlines.

“Marking Bruenor’s Climb with a light of hope,” Catti-brie remarked when she came up beside him.

The halfling nodded, hoping her observation was prophetic. The pair solemnly started out from the small cottage near the lake. Bolstered by Catti-brie’s protection spells, armed with potions Regis had brewed, and their step lightened by the much better weather that had settled over Ten-Towns in the past couple of days, the duo made good time in their westward trek.

They spoke little, however, for each settled within personal fears on this most important of nights, the spring equinox of 1484. For Catti-brie, this, her birthday, was the promise, the possible fruition of the hopes Mielikki had offered in the magical forest of Iruladoon. She was a priestess of Mielikki, indeed, Chosen of the goddess, and so she went forth with her expectations high, but with her eyes opened wide.

She knew the possibilities, all of them, and from all that she had seen, along with her understanding of Mielikki’s offering of a chance and nothing more, those many potential outcomes appeared far more dire than promising. But she had to go.

For Regis, this was the intersection, the great crossroads of his second life. Here he would repay the debt to Mielikki, and here he would know again, so he{font-size: 0.75rem;IesKing Emerus no less hoped, the greatest friends with whom he had ever shared a road.

But now there were others, he knew, and alternate roads that beckoned. The Grinning Ponies traveled the Trade Way, and Donnola led Morada Topolino far to the east, and either organization would welcome him back with open arms. He had not forgotten his oldest friends, of course, but Regis had hedged his bets, or at least, circumstance had given him the opportunity to do so.

The fall of darkness beat the duo to the base of Kelvin’s Cairn. There they paused and looked up the familiar trails from a life lived long ago. Catti-brie had climbed the mountain the previous summer, just to ensure that Bruenor’s Climb was still accessible, but she had only gone up once, and only briefly, and never to the top.

She hadn’t been.