The Companions

CHAPTER 5

The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Delthuntle

Regis walked out of Iruladoon and into the blinding light with sure and determined strides. His resolve was no less than that of Catti-brie, who took this journey as a matter of faith and devotion to her goddess, Mielikki.

For Regis, it was the second chance that he dearly, desperately wanted. For so long had he been the tag-along, the one to be rescued instead of the heroic rescuer. He couldn’t help but believe that he had ever been the weak link in the chain that formed the Companions of the Hall.

No more, he decided.

Not this time around.

He was holding Catti-brie’s hand, and then he was not. He was in the springtime forest, and then he was not.

He was walking, and then he was floating.

He was up among the stars, it seemed, with the world, all white and brown and so much blue turning below him, and he felt free, freer than he had ever been in his corporeal days, freer than anything he had ever known. At that moment, swallowed by the celestial spheres, Regis felt as if he could float and swim forevermore and be perfectly content.

The world grew larger-that was how he perceived it until he realized that he was falling, diving back into the sphere of Toril, and he was not afraid. He saw the outlines of the great land of Faerun, of the Sword Coast that he had sailed many times and knew well, of the lands of the Silver Marches and then an inland sea, a vast great lake, with jagged coastlines of jutting peninsulas and long harbors.

Into the water he went, and it did not feel to him as if he was swimming, or submerged, but rather as if he had joined with the substance, had become as liquid himself, flowing breezily through the wash with barely an effort.

He reveled in the journey, excited by the elemental domain. He guessed this to be another gift of Mielikki, because he was unaware of his genetic heritage, unaware that he was venturing the long roots of his rebirth. He expected that his two companions were similarly soaring, but he was wrong, for this was his journey alone, a particular added touch to the halfling he would become.

Darkness enveloped him, dark and soft walls pressing against him tightly, holding his arms close to his chest. Still he felt as if he was deep within the liquid of the Inner Sea, and his own heartbeat reverberated in his ears.

Ka-thump.

No, not his own heartbeat, he realized to his horror and his comfort, all at once.

He was in the womb.

The heart was his mother’s heart-or would this female be considered his surrogate mother? He could not be sure, could not sort it out. Not then, not there, for there was only the impulse, the urge to struggle and twist until he was free. The walls worked around him, nudging him, twisting him, pushing him, bidding him to find his escape.

The heartbeat grew more intense, louder and faster, louder and faster.

He heard the calls of the outside world, a cry of pain, a plea from a deeper voice.

“Don’t you go!”

The flesh walls pressed in on him, squeezing him, urging him. He flailed and worked furiously, recognizing this as the moment of his birth, and knowing, instinctively and reflexively, that he had to get out.

The heartbeat intensified. Another scream sounded from afar, followed by more frantic pleas and cries.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

The muscles pressed, squeezing him more tightly.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

He could sense that it was too tight, too intense, the cries too desperate.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

Another cry. Something was amiss, he sensed.

Silence.

Darkness.

The flesh walls did not contort around him.

He reached and clawed, unable to draw breath. He tried to squirm and fight, but he could not. He got one arm up high, over his head.

He felt the bite of a blade, but he could not cry out, and his arm slid back before him, a coppery taste filling the watery tomb around him.

But then it was opened, peeling apart before him at the edge of a sliding knife, and he was pulled free, hoisted from his womb, his tomb, and roughly spun around and thumped hard upon his back. He sputtered and gagged, then coughed and cried. He could not help but cry, terrified, confused.

In that jumbled moment, he didn’t know, didn’t understand, that his new mother was dead.

He felt the bugs crawling over him, but could not coordinate his little arms enough to swat at them.

An annoyance, he told himself repeatedly though the days and dark nights, for these were merely bedbugs and cockroaches and the like, the same insects he had suffered in Calimport. In truth, the insects were the least troubling of the surroundings the baby Regis found. He couldn’t move much-even his head was too heavy for him to swivel it around while laying on his back-but he had noted enough of the ramshackle abode to realize that his new family, which seemed to be comprised of only himself and his father, was perfectly destitute.

This wasn’t even a house, not even a shack, but merely a piling of sticks, a lean- to in a decrepit part of some dirty city. A wet nurse tended to his needs, but only arrived sparingly, twice a day by his count, leaving him to lie in his own waste, leaving his belly to growl with hunger, leaving the bugs to crawl around him.

He could see the sky above through the openings in the hastily piled boards, and noted that it was almost always gray. Or perhaps that was a trick of his young eyes, still trying to find some focus and clarity.

But it did rain quite often, he knew, the water dripping in upon him.

If he had been wearing clothes, they would always have been wet.

He lay there one morning, drizzle coating him so that his skin glistened in the diffused daylight, trying hard to get his hand to slap a particularly annoying gnat aside, when a loud crash alerted him that he was not alone.

His father came up beside him, towering over him as he lay in his makeshift crib, which was no more than a piece of old wood with beams piled along its sides to prevent him from rolling off.

Regis studied the man carefully, his dirty face, his missing teeth, his glassy eyes and scraggly hair. The years had broken this one, though he was not very old, the baby who was not a baby realized. He had seen this before, so many times, on the streets of Calimport in his first youth, some century-and-a-half removed. The constant struggle for basic needs, the helplessness, with no way to escape and no place to escape to; it was all there, etched indelibly and not to Icewind Dale.. Fo on on the face of this halfling standing over him, in lines of sadness and helpless frustration.

Surprisingly strong hands reached down to grab Regis and he was easily hoisted from his bed.

“Here’s to hoping you’re your mother’s son,” the halfling said, bringing Regis against his shoulder and moving swiftly out of the house.

Regis got his first view of the city then, and it was a large place, with rows of shacks and shanties stacked before the high-walled lines of more respectable houses. One hill, far off, sported a castle. His father turned onto a boardwalk, leading downward from their position, and rambled along for many, many steps, through turns and down stairs, along some more declines. Few buildings were to be seen around the raised planks, and those were merely ramshackle and simple things.

Soon there were birds all around them, everywhere, flying and diving and squawking noisily, and it took Regis some time to recognize that these were water birds, mostly, and indeed, it wasn’t until this halfling he presumed to be his father turned down yet another long and declining way that Regis came to understand this boardwalk as a long wharf, and this city a port-though, strangely, a port built far from the water’s edge.

And what a grand ocean it was, he noted at one turn, catching a glimpse of seemingly endless waves. He thought of Luskan or Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep or Calimport, but this city wasn’t any of those. Still, they were traveling west, he knew from the sun in the sky, and so he figured this must be the Sword Coast.

He didn’t smell any salt in the air, though.

They moved down to the shore, a small beach tucked between a variety of smaller wharves and boardwalks. Many boats bobbed in the waters around them. A human couple threw an oft-repaired net out into the surf. Another halfling dug for shellfish in the sand at water’s edge.

His father splashed into the water, up to his waist.

“Breathe deep, runt,” he said, and to Regis’s shock, he flipped Regis around from his shoulder and plunged him under the water!

The baby squirmed and thrashed for all he was worth, for his very life!

Futilely, of course, for this tiny, uncoordinated, little-muscled form could not begin to counter the strength in the elder halfling’s hands. Reflexively, Regis held his breath, but he could not for long, and the bubbles came forth from his lips. He tried to hold out, fought to keep his mouth shut.

His father was drowning him!

All of the dreams that had carried him out of Iruladoon flashed through his thoughts then. He had imagined the Companions of the Hall rejoined, and this time, he had sworn, he would not be the tag-along, the helpless soul hiding in the back of the battle. No, he would become an equal in the coming trials, and would fight bravely to save Drizzt from the darkness Catti-brie had hinted of, from the clutches of Lady Lolth, perhaps!

But now he wouldn’t.

His little mouth opened and the sea rushed in. He tried not to swallow, not to gasp, but alas, he could not resist.

As he could not break free of his father’s iron grip.

So he would find his final reward, as surely as if he had gone with Wulfgar into the pond. Before he had even been given a chance to prove his worth, it would all be over.

And he would not see his friends again, unless it was in the Green FieldsOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

“Is that Eiverbreen?” asked a halfling working on the dock not far away.

“Aye,” answered his dwarf companion. “Eiverbreen and his new runt. Pity that Jolee passed in birthing him.”

“Aye.”

“So, eh, what’s that then? Eiverbreen’s set on killin’ the waif? Ah, but who could blame him, and the little one’s better off anyway.”

“Nay, not that,” the halfling answered, and he paused in his work and moved to the near edge of the dock, watching the scene more closely. His dwarf friend followed, hands on hips, neither harboring any intent to interfere, whether this was indeed infanticide or something else.

Regis came out of the water as abruptly as he had been thrust in, his father twirling him up and spinning him around to look him in the eye. The little one sputtered and spat, water flowing out of him as easily as it had gone in. His father, who had just tried to kill him, smiled.

“Not blue,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “Aye, so you’re your mother’s son. By the gods, but luck’s with you, ain’t it? It’s our secret, you know, and you’re to make a fine wage!”

With that, he tucked Regis under his arm and headed back up the long, long boardwalk, back to the lean-to.

The baby’s thoughts spun in confusion. What had that been about? To torture him? To terrify him? To make him think he was being drowned, being murdered? But to what end? What possible gain …?

Regis forced himself to calm down, forced the pulsing questions aside.

He hadn’t drowned-in truth, he hadn’t come close to drowning and had felt no physical discomfort at all beyond the strong and tight grip of his father’s hands.

But he had been under the water for a long time. He couldn’t keep holding his breath. He couldn’t keep his mouth closed, couldn’t keep the water away.

But he wasn’t blue, his father had just told him, and indeed, when he had come up from the water, he hadn’t even been gasping for air.

Was this all the result of his young age, as if, perhaps, his mind couldn’t yet even acknowledge such discomfort? That seemed a possibility, but Regis didn’t think it likely. No, more likely, it seemed to him that he hadn’t registered any discomfort because there hadn’t been any discomfort.

How was that possible?

He clutched tightly at his father’s raggedy shirt as he considered the mystery. He felt something round and hard in his little hand, and gripped it instinctively, and only as they neared their home did he even realize it to be a button.

A button held by a single thread, he realized as he worked it around, and as his father moved to set him back down in his crib, he tightened his grip and pulled with all his strength.

The button came free, and Regis took care to keep his hand closed over it.

“So you’ve got the genasi blood,” his father said, though Regis had no idea of what that might even mean. “That’ll make you worth keeping, lucky runt. Like your Ma. Aye, but we’ll put that gift to she must do.

He walked away then, out of the lean-to.

Regis didn’t understand any of this, of course, but he told himself to be patient. The one thing he had now, Mielikki willing, for all of his plans, was time. Lots of time, but not time enough to be wasted.

Twenty-one years of time, and he would put them to good use. As he had determined when he had walked out of Iruladoon, he would waste not a day.

He managed to lift his little hand up before his eyes, and opened his fingers just enough to see the button. He thought to roll it around his fingers, but an involuntary twitch jerked his arm then, and he nearly lost the item.

If it fell free, he would have no way to collect it … likely a rat would pick it up and scurry off with it.

So he squeezed it instead, repeatedly, training his fingers, training his muscles, and slowly maneuvering one finger or another around it a bit, gaining strength, gaining dexterity. He held it tightly when the wet nurse came to feed him, then he brought his arm down to his side and leaned upon it to secure the button as he slept.

Days later, he managed to shift it to his other hand, his left hand. Again, he brought it up before his eyes, and then he paused and stared.

He noted his thumb and the three fingers beside it, and the stump where his pinky should be.

The image jolted the halfling back in time, to the captivity he had endured under Artemis Entreri, where Entreri had cut off his finger as a warning to Drizzt …

Had that physical wound carried over to this new body? How could that be?

He stared at the stump, and noted then the jagged line of skin and the scab, not yet fully healed. No, this was not a carryover of Entreri’s cruelty, he realized, but an ironic twist of fate. He recalled the moment of his rebirth, when his mother had died, he now understood, and so the midwife had used a knife to slice her open and get him out. He remembered the sharp and burning pain, and now he understood the source.

For a long, long while, the halfling baby lay there, staring at the wound, lost in memories more than in his current hopes and aspirations.

He pressed beyond the shock, though, and repeated the exercises, exactly as he had done with the other hand, squeezing and holding, building his strength and his muscle memory.

Tendays later, he began to roll the button around his fingers, one hand and then the other, feeling the play as it rolled over one knuckle to be caught between that finger and the next and roson of a son o