Catti-brie smiled at him, then fell over him in a great hug. Regis leaped over and joined in, for many of his days here had been spent in chasing the singing woman, always unsuccessfully. The three broke and looked back at Wulfgar, whose expression reflected the turmoil within. and not to Icewind Dale.. thinkim
The barbarian had only been here for three days in Iruladoon’s time, and had no more understanding of the place than Bruenor-or than Regis, even, who had wiled away his many hours here sitting by the pond, tending his small garden, and fashioning pieces of scrimshaw out of the knucklehead trout bone that always seemed to be readily available.
“You finally stopped that singing …,” the halfling started to say, but Bruenor cut him short.
“Ah, me girl,” he said, running his strong hand-his strong young hand, he noted-across Catti-brie’s pretty face. “So many’s the years gone by. Ye’ve ne’er left me heart, and every road I been walking’s been an emptier way without ye.”
Catti-brie put her hand atop his. “I am sorry for the pain,” she whispered.
“Surely I have gone mad!’ Wulfgar roared suddenly, and all turned back to consider him once more.
“I was on the hunt,” he whispered, speaking more to himself than to the others, and he began to pace, his long strides propelling him back and forth before the others. “An old man …” He paused and turned to the other three, holding his arms out wide.
“An old man!” he insisted. “A man with children older than I now appear, with grandchildren older than I now appear! What healing I have been given, I do not know. Am I cursed or am I blessed?”
“Blessed,” Catti-brie answered.
“By your god?”
“Goddess,” the woman corrected.
“Goddess, then,” said Wulfgar. “I am blessed by your goddess? Then I am damned by Tempus!”
“No,” Catti-brie started to answer, and she broke free of Bruenor and stepped toward Wulfgar, who visibly winced and backed from her, step for step.
“This is madness!” Wulfgar cried. “I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who serves Tempus! I am slain. I accept my defeat and my mortality, but this is no hall of my warrior god! Nay, this is no blessing!” He spat the last sentence at Catti-brie as if casting his own curse.
“Youth?” he asked with a derisive snort. “Healing? Are those the blessings? At what cost?”
“It is not like that,” Catti-brie assured him.
Bruenor touched her on the cheek and she turned around.
“You died in Gauntlgrym,” Catti-brie told him. “Beside Thibbledorf Pwent, yes, but know that you won the day and were buried with honor beside your shield dwarf and beside the gods’ throne in the entry chamber.”
Bruenor started to reply, but the words caught in his throat. “How could ye know?” he asked instead.
Catti-brie merely smiled contentedly, erasing all doubt anyone might have had of her claims.
“I’d be a lyin’ old dwarf if I said that me heart’s not full in seein’ ye, all three of ye!” Bruenor whispered. “But I’d be a liar, too, if I telled ye that any halls but Moradin’s are me place and reward for the life I knowed.”
Catti-brie nodded and started to reply, but a rustle turned her back again, just in time to see Wulfgar disappearing in she must do.
“Me boy!” Bruenor yelled after him, but Catti-brie put her hand on the dwarf’s pointing arm to quiet him, then took him by the hand, bade Regis to take her other hand, and led them off in pursuit.
“Wulfgar, do not!” she called after the man. “You cannot leave. You are not prepared!”
They caught sight of Wulfgar again a few moments later, crossing a small clearing and running toward a lighter area that seemed to mark the forest’s edge. Bruenor and Regis tried to speed up and heighten their pursuit, but now Catti-brie held them back, and the very grass around their feet seemed to agree with the woman, or answered the woman’s call, the blades rolling up over Bruenor’s boots and Regis’s furry toes to hold them fast in place.
“Do not!” she warned Wulfgar one last time, but the stubborn barbarian didn’t slow at all and charged to the forest’s edge.
“Ye stopped us, so stop him!” Bruenor told her, tugging at the unyielding roots, but Catti-brie continued to stare after Wulfgar and shook her head.
The trees hung thick and dark around him, but Wulfgar saw the light and made for it, hardly aware of his movements. He felt more like he was swimming than running, felt moist and warm, though it was not raining and the forest had seemed dry enough.
But he was not in the forest, he realized, and the light became a pinpoint and nothing more, and his movements were jumbled and uncoordinated. He felt as if he had been wrapped in thick cloth and thrown into a pond.
He felt … he didn’t know what he felt as his thoughts jumbled incoherently. He saw the light, though just a speck now, and he made for it, his body twisted and turning, arms trapped, legs moving weirdly, uncontrollably.
The light grew and he couldn’t breathe. Frantic, Wulfgar pushed on more forcefully, and the wrappings around him seemed to flex and writhe-he could only think of a giant constrictor snake or a purple worm! Yes, it was as if he had leaped into the maw of a purple worm, but its convulsions, whether inadvertent or not, served him in his current course, as the light grew before him.
He pushed his head through and tried to reach his arm above him, when he was grabbed, suddenly, rudely, powerfully! Oh, so powerfully!
Yanked forth, he felt as if he was flying, rising up high into the air, one titanic hand wrapping around his head fully, the other grabbing at his body and hoisting him with such ease. For a moment, he feared that he had been thrown among a horde of giants, for they were all around him, but then he realized that they were too large even for giants! He could feel them, he could hear the reverberations of their thunderous voices.
Not giants! Too large! Titans, the forest had thrown him into a lair of titans!
Or gods, even, for these creatures were so far beyond him, so much more powerful than he. His hand hooked on one giant finger and he pushed with all his strength, but he might as well have tried to move a boulder the size of a mountain!
Gurgling through gobs of spittle and some slime he did not understand, he fought and he coughed and finally, finally, Wulfgar cried out for his god, “Tempus!” His voice sounded so thin and indistinct. He struggled, and the titan-beast holding him cried out. Wulfgar cursed it, evoking Tempus’s wrath. and not to Icewind Dale.. thinkim
And then he was flying-nay, not flying.
He was falling.
Standing at the edge of the lea in the magical forest, Catti-brie began to sing once more.
“Girl, go get me boy!” Bruenor cried, but his voice sounded distorted.
“What are you doing?” Regis asked, his words slowing and speeding strangely as the magic of Catti-brie’s song warped time and space itself. Then they three, too, found themselves in a strange tunnel, winding their way quickly along. This wasn’t the same as Wulfgar’s experience, however, for no sooner had Bruenor or Regis even registered the strange effect than they came out of it, rushing out from the root of a willow tree to suddenly find themselves standing with Catti-brie beside the small forest pond once more.
And there lay Wulfgar, gasping and trying to rise, propping himself up on his elbows and muttering, only to fall back to the grass.
He managed to turn to face his friends at Bruenor’s call, his face ashen, his arms trembling.
“Titans,” he rasped. “Gods. The altar of the gods!”
CHAPTER 2
The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Netheril
Lord Parise Ulfbinder of the Empire of Netheril shifted uncomfortably in his seat, poring over each of a hundred parchments again and again. He kept glancing to the side, to his crystal ball, almost expecting another magical intrusion from his peer and friend, Lord Draygo Quick, who resided outside the city of Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell, the dark sister of the Prime Material Plane.