?s="indent" aid="LTT2M"›What had seemed a chore each morning, other than the diving, which he loved, quickly became an entirely new and important talent for the youngster to perfect.
When the sun reached its zenith each midday, Regis was handed off from Wigglefingers to Donnola, to become her personal page and attendant. So began his training with weapons, and Donnola was quite the swordswoman! And devilishly clever with a knife, too.
“Fighting is about your balance and your position,” she told him early on in their sessions.
Regis nodded, allowing himself to become a sponge for all that she had to say, although, having lived and traveled beside one of the finest finesse warriors of the Realms for most of his previous life, he realized that he would finhe had returned to Fa
CHAPTER 15
The Year of Splendors Burning (1469 DR) Shade Enclave
Settled along the western wall of the Netheril’s floating capital city of Shade Enclave was a compound that seemed as out of place within that city of harsh black spires and foreboding walls as the city itself, which sat atop a floating inverted mountain of stone, seemed out of place in a world that obeyed the basic laws of nature.
This compound was called the Coven, and Catti-brie found it a most interesting keep indeed. Here Lady Avelyere and her devoted followers, all female, and all except for Catti-brie, Netherese, practiced and studied, engaging in contests throwing lightning bolts as archers might compete with arrows. Here, in protected rooms with cautious oversight, sorceresses of varying skill dared to try out new spells, or combinations of known dweomers pieced together for new and greater effect.
In the basement was a summoning room of careful design and meticulous crafting, lined with powerful runes to prevent some demon or devil from breaking free of the room even if it managed to overpower the summoning wizard.
The Coven stood as a testament to magical learning, and as functional as the place might be, it was surely beautiful, crafted with a woman’s eye and a cultured vision of comfort and sophistication. The exterior view was not dominated by a large central tower, as was so often the case in this dour city, and often the case among the abodes of wizards in the Realms, particularly with male wizards, which led, of course, to no small amount of lewd joking among the sorceresses of the Coven, but by several domes leafed in various precious metals. Leering gargoyles did not stare down from every in the general directionar5N3 Garumn’s Gorge;src: url(kindle: embed:000 corner of every roof, but gutter spout statues of shapely sirens and nymphs, and cheerful brownies overlooked the compound.
The keep’s interior proved no less appealing to the eyes, with fine fabrics all around, as rugs and tapestries gaily decorated and vibrant with color dominated the decor. Sweeping stairways lifted the imagination and large windows, many of colored glass, brought in ample light for study in most of the many rooms. The place was airy and clean, with the younger students assisting the many Bedine servants, often magically. Indeed, the first spells Catti-brie learned in her first tendays at the Coven involved conjuring a magical invisible servant, and creating water, wind, and magical light: four especially useful practices for illuminating cobwebs, blowing them away, and cleaning up after them.
Strangely, to Catti-brie, this keep in particular, and Shade Enclave in general, evoked memories of both Silverymoon and Menzoberranzan all at once, for they held the sweeping and grandiose beauty of the former and the magical decorative improvisation and sheer otherworldliness of the latter. Surely the Coven stood far apart from the other structures of the teeming city of Shade Enclave, and seemed perfectly out of place among the shadowy and hard-edged dark structures that otherwise dominated the city.
Her first few tendays in the keep of Lady Avelyere were not unpleasant, with an easy combination of chores and studies-studies Catti-brie was more than happy to devour. Her goal was to grow strong in the Art, and this place afforded her that exact opportunity. Her training under her parents had been acceptable, if limited, but this … this was a grand academy with instructors quite proficient in the various schools of magic, from fire-throwing, explosive evokers, to diviners, to those skilled at summoning creatures from the nether planes.
She was not mistreated. The beating she had taken upon her capture seemed an anomaly, an initial warning and nothing more, and the other women of the Coven welcomed her now, particularly Rhyalle, who assigned Catti-brie a room very near to her own.
Yes, this place would suffice, and indeed help her in her ultimate goal. Catti-brie went at her studies with great determination-and with far more insight and previous experience and training than her mentors could ever anticipate.
She excelled, and the sorceresses of the Coven pushed her all the harder.
And she excelled, still.
To her surprise, however, within a short while, Catti-brie did not find any real level of contentment with this arrangement, for uneasy feelings gnawed at her through the days. She could not speak with Mielikki, could not offer worship to the goddess who had given her this second life. Shade Enclave was a city devoted to magic, and in an empire that had once tried to unseat a goddess and claim supremacy over magic for its own spellcasters. In her very first days in the Coven, Catti-brie had been asked repeatedly about her proficiency with healing powers, from whence they had come, and her apparent druidic abilities.
She had deflected the question with shrugs and incredulity, wisely insisting that she didn’t even know that the two types of magic, arcane and divine, were of different sources. That had apparently satisfied her captors, but not in any way that made her comfortable to even attempt any contact with, or to offer any prayers to Mielikki in the home of Lady Avelyere.
She thought of Niraj and Kavita constantly, and prayed that they were well. Lady Avelyere had hinted that she knew of Kavita and Niraj’s secret, which came as a veiled threat to Catti-brie.
So it was one night that Catti-brie crept from her room and made her way quietly on bare feet to the back wall parapet of the Coven. There she looked up at the city wall, not so far away, and saw that it was unguarded. She closed her eyes and began a spell.
“If you become a bird and attempt to fly away, I will loose a bolt of lightning that will blow you out of the sky,” came the voice of Lady Avelyere behind her. The young girl froze, the hair on the back of her neck standing up.
Catti-brie swallowed hard, trying to sort out her next move. She reflexively glanced up at the sky and wondered how long it might take her to create enough of a disturbance above for a lightning bolt to come to her call. It was a ridiculous thought, though, for even if she managed such a thing, powerful Lady Avelyere would easily destroy her.
“Do not make me regret taking you in, little Ruqiah of the Desai,” Lady Avelyere went on, coming closer.
“N-no, Lady, of course not,” Catti-brie heard herself stammer.
“You have no permission to leave,” the diviner insisted. “I spared your life on condition of your acceptance into my school, and now that you are here, the rules apply, dear little Ruqiah, and without exception.”
“I wasn’t leaving,” Catti-brie replied.
“Oh, but you were. Do not take me for a fool, I warn. I heard your thoughts as easily as I watched you walk from your room.”
Did Avelyere know, then, of Catti-brie, and not just of Ruqiah? Did she know of Catti-brie’s devotion to Mielikki? Had everything Catti-brie feigned when captured just unraveled?
“Then you know I meant to return,” Catti-brie said, more forcefully and evenly now as she found her determination, her courage, and her grounding. If Avelyere knew everything about the girl’s secret thoughts, she wouldn’t be confronting Catti-brie on the wall of the Coven at this time, with so much at stake.