“What’re ye sayin’, girl?” Bruenor asked. “Are we dead or ain’t we?”
“We are,” Regis answered. “But we don’t have to be.”
“Or we can be,” Wulfgar stated coldly, almost angrily. “As is the way of the world, natural and right.” He met Catti-brie’s stare without blinking, without bending. “I lived a good life, a long life. I have known children-I have buried children!”
“No doubt they are all dead now,” Catti-brie admitted. “Even had they been blessed with your longevity, for many decades have passed on Toril since you entered Iruladoon.”
Wulfgar winced at that, and seemed near panic, or rage, at that moment, digesting the almost incomprehensible truth.
“Nothing is demanded of you, of us, any of us,” Catti-brie said to them all. “The goddess intervened, for the sake of her favored Drizzt, but will not take from us our choice. I am her messenger here, nothing more.”
“But yerself’s going back,” Bruenor said.
Catti-brie smiled and nodded.
“Well, if ye’re going back to be born as a baby, then ye ain’t to be much help to Drizzt, I’m thinking,” said Bruenor., I believe.”Itim“ Not for many the year!”
Again she nodded. “The Sundering is not yet upon the world of Toril. I expect then, that the time of Drizzt’s peril is not yet upon him.”
“So ye’re to go back and grow up all over again?” Bruenor asked incredulously. “And where might ye be?”
Catti-brie shrugged. “Anywhere,” she admitted. “I will be born of human parents, though in Waterdeep or Calimport, Thay or Sembia, Icewind Dale or the Moonshaes, I cannot say, for it is yet to be known. To be reborn into the great cycle is to fly free in spirit until you are found and bound within a suitable womb.”
“When druids reincarnate, they can come back as different races, as animals, even,” Regis remarked. “Am I to leave the forest to become a little rabbit, scampering away from wolves and hawks?”
“You will be a halfling, born of halfling parents,” Catti-brie promised. “That would surely be more in the way of Mielikki, and more in accordance with Mielikki’s demands.”
“What good might ye be to Drizzt as a rabbit, ye dolt?” Bruenor asked.
“Maybe he’s hungry,” Regis replied with a shrug.
Bruenor sighed against the halfling’s sly grin, but the dwarf turned more serious again, obviously so, as he spun back on his beloved daughter. He breathed hard and tried to speak, but shook his head, defeated by emotion.
“I can’no do it,” he said suddenly, and he choked upon the words. “I had me day and found me rest!” He seemed almost frantic, and looked at Catti-brie with eyes rimmed with moistness. “I earned me way to Moradin’s seat, and so Dwarfhome’s waitin’.”
Catti-brie stepped aside and motioned to the pond. “The road is there.”
“And what’ll me girl think o’ me, then? Bruenor the coward?”
Catti-brie laughed, but sobered quickly and rushed to throw a great hug upon Bruenor. “There is no judgment in this choice,” she whispered into his ear, and she let herself then slip into the Dwarvish accent she used to carry when she was very young and living in the Battlehammer tunnels beneath Kelvin’s Cairn. “Me Da, yer girl’ll e’er love ye, and not e’er forget ye.”
She hugged him tighter, and Bruenor returned the grip tenfold, crushing Catti-brie against him. Then, abruptly, he pushed her back to arms’ length, the tears now rolling down his hairy cheeks. “Ye’re going back to Faerun?”
“I am indeed.”
“To help Drizzt?”
“To help him, so I pray. To love him once more, so I pray. To live beside him until I am no more, so I pray. The Deep Wild awaits, eternally so, and Mielikki is a patient hostess.”
“I’m going back,” Regis stated flatly, surprising them all and turning every eye toward him.
The halfling didn’t melt under those curious looks.
“Drizzt would go back for me,” he explained, and he said no more, and crossed his arms over his small chest and set his jaw firmly.
Catti-brie offered him a warm smile. “Then we will meet again, alive, so I hope.”
, I believe.”Itim“ Oh, by the iron balls o’ Clangeddin!” Bruenor huffed. He hopped back from Catti-brie and put his hands on his hips. “Beardless?” he asked.
Catti-brie smiled, seeing all too clearly where this was heading.
“Bah!” the dwarf grumbled and spun away. “Let’s be goin’ then, and if we’re to be landin’ all around Faerun, then where’re we to meet and how’re we to know, and what …?”
“In the night of the spring equinox in your twenty-first year,” Catti-brie answered. “The Night of Mielikki, in a place we all know well.”
Bruenor stared at her. Regis stared at her. Wulfgar stared at her. The gaze of all three burned into her, so many questions spinning, so much left to ask, and yet none of it, they all knew, possible to answer.
“Bruenor’s Climb,” she said. “Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale, on the night of the spring equinox. There we will join anew, if we have not found each other previously.”
“No!” Wulfgar stated flatly behind her, and she turned around to see the big man step farther into the pond. His stern visage softened under the gazes of his three friends. “I cannot,” he said quietly.
He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “My days beside you, I treasure,” he told them. “And know that I did love you once,” he said to Catti-brie directly. “But I gained a life beyond our time, back in my homeland with my people, and there I found love and family anew. They are gone now, all of them …,” His voice trailed off and he pointed to the pond, and he was pointing toward Warrior’s Rest, they all knew, the promised heaven of his god, Tempus. “They await. My wife. My children. Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Catti-brie said, and both Bruenor and Regis echoed the sentiment. “There is no debt to be repaid here. Mielikki would offer the choice to Drizzt’s dearest friends, to the Companions of the Hall, and you are among that group. Farewell, my friend, and know that I once and ever loved you and will never forget you.”
She walked to the pond, right into the water, and embraced Wulfgar warmly and lovingly and kissed him on the cheek. “Warrior’s Rest will be greater with Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who too awaits your arrival.”
She walked out as Bruenor and Regis moved to similarly embrace the barbarian. Regis came back from the pond eagerly, Catti-brie noted, but Bruenor glanced back many times as he moved to join the other two.
Withending the con
CHAPTER 4
The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Citadel Felbarr
"Suren that the winter’s in me old bones,” King Emerus Warcrown said to Parson Glaive, his friend and advisor. King Emerus stretched his arms wide, his muscular shoulders flexing and bulging. He was past his two-hundredth birthday by many years, but still possessed a physique that would make a fifty-year-old jealous, and few of any age would wish to engage in combat with this proud old shield dwarf! He walked to the side of the room and grasped a large log in just one hand, easily hoisting it in his powerful grip and tossing it onto the flames.
“Aye, but she’s a rough one,” agreed Parson Glaive, the principle cleric in Citadel Felbarr, leader of the church, and the dwarf Emerus had recently appointed as Steward-in-Waiting should anything ill befall the king. “Snow’s piled high around the west Runegate. I’ve set a horde o’ shov’lers to work cleaning it afore the next caravan rolls through.”
“Won’t be rolling anytime soon!” Emerus said with a belly laugh. “Sledding, maybe, but not rollin’!”