“What artist did this?” Penelope asked.
“No artist.”
Penelope looked her in the eye once more. “They are spellscars?”
“Or were.”
Penelope stood straight and glanced around. She moved to the door and closed it, then walked back to stand before Catti-brie. She hiked up her robe and turned sideways, revealing a marking on her left hip, a blob of brown and blue discolored skin.
“Would that my own had taken a more attractive appearance, as have yours!” she said. “You did nothing to touch up the scar?”
“It only just happened, when I was alone on the road.”
“And what were you doing alone on the road?”
“Heading for the coast, as I told you.”
“These are dangerous lands for anyone to be traveling alone, even a mage.”
“I was flying,” Catti-brie admitted. “Through the power of the scars, I was flying as a bird. And then I was falling.”
Penelope sucked in her breath.
“What is happening?” Catti-brie asked.
“Are you going to tell me your real name, Delly Curtie?”
“You asked, and Catti-brie nodded. bpa"› expect would not believe me, so no, not yet. In time, perhaps, when we have both come to a place of greater trust.”
Penelope walked around her chair. “You mentioned the Bidderdoos, I am told.”
“Bidderdoo,” Catti-brie corrected.
“A Bidderdoo, then. Which?”
Catti-brie gave a confused little laugh. “Bidderdoo,” she replied. “Bidderdoo Harpell.”
“There is no Bidderdoo Harpell.”
“There was. And what are Bidderdoos, then?”
“Bidderdoo has been dead for a century,” Penelope answered. “His legacy lives on, in the forest around Longsaddle.”
Catti-brie thought about that for a few moments. “Werewolves,” she whispered.
“Yes, the Bidderdoos, so we call them. The townsfolk are quite afraid of them, but in truth, they guard the town and do us no harm. I am surprised that you were not confronted on the road, coming in at night so suspiciously, as you were. But then, perhaps the Bidderdoos were enjoying our celebration.”
“It was quite extraordinary,” Catti-brie agreed.
“An extraordinary display for exciting times,” Penelope admitted. “Strange things have been happening all across the Ivy Mansion.”
Catti-brie laughed at that understatement. “The reputation of the Harpells precedes you, good lady.”
Penelope paused as if to consider her reply, then couldn’t suppress her own grin. “Yes, I expect it does. A well-earned reputation.” She sat in the chair again, her expression growing serious.
“How could you know of Bidderdoo Harpell? And you mentioned another at the gate.”
“Harkle.”
“How could you know of Harkle?”
“I was raised in Mithral Hall.”
Penelope sat up straight and took note. “Raised among the Battlehammer dwarves? And you learned the ways of magic?”
“I am fairly trained,” said Catti-brie. “No archmage, certainly!”
“I saw your fireball,” Penelope replied. “You favor evocation?”
“I like blowing things up,” Catti-brie said with a wry grin. “Spoken like a Harpell!”
“I like blowing things up when I’m not standing next to those things I blow up,” Catti-brie clarified, and Penelope laughed aloud and slapped her knee.
“Maybe not a true Harpell, then,” she replied. “Tell me, have you any other spells in your repertoire this day?”
Catti-brie thought for a moment, then nodded. “A fan of flames,” she said, tapping her thumbs together and waggling her fingers.
Penelope looked around, then motioned for Catti-brie to follow her to a clear spot in the room, where she might enact burning hands without setting the place on fire. “One moment,” the older woman said, then left the room, returning a short time later with two others, a man around the same age as Penelope and one much older.
“My husband, Dowell, and Kipper Harpell, the olde looked at her curiously. o he decidedimst of the clan.”
Both nodded cordially, and Dowell unrolled a parchment, holding it up before Kipper with a nod to Penelope.
Penelope motioned to the empty space before Catti-brie and bade her, “Please proceed with your spell.”
Catti-brie lifted her hands and began the incantation.
“Louder, please, dear child,” Kipper requested.
Catti-brie cleared her throat and went at it again, and a few moments later, a fan of flames spread out from her fingers, a solid dweomer, if not overpowering. She turned to regard the three witnesses, to find them all grinning, and Kipper nodding.
“And look at her arm!” Penelope said, noting the blue mist gathered around Catti-brie’s left forearm. She rushed over and tugged Catti-brie back to the others, pulling back the sleeve to show the seven-starred marking.
“What?” Catti-brie asked.
“Mystra,” Kipper said reverently and bowed his head.
“It is true, then,” Dowell added, grinning widely.
“What?” Catti-brie asked again.
“Your spellcasting,” Penelope started to explain, but Kipper cut her short.
“You drew your power from the old ways,” he said. “Is this how you were trained?”
Catti-brie didn’t know how to respond. It was how she had been trained, but in another life. In this one, not so. “What does it mean?” she asked, deflecting the other’s question.
“The Weave, girl,” Kipper asked, “do you feel it?”
Catti-brie thought back to the moment when her spellscar magic had failed, that flash in the sky, like an eclipse, like a web. Like the Weave of Magic.
She looked at Penelope, her expression quite dumbfounded. “Your celebration,” she managed to whisper, and she put it all together. “Has the effect of the Spellplague ended?”
Penelope hugged her suddenly and unexpectedly. “So we pray,” she whispered. “So we pray.”
Catti-brie glanced out the window of her room at the Ivy Mansion months later, looking back to the east, toward Netheril. Her spellscar powers, the shapeshifting and storm-calling, like those of the other marked wizards at the Ivy Mansion, had not returned, and by all indications, the Spellplague was indeed no more. At long last.
But what did that mean for Niraj and Kavita? Or, Catti-brie wondered, for Avelyere and the Coven?
The Harpells seemed quite overjoyed by the news, even though they had all begun retraining. The library of the Ivy Mansion dated far back before the Spellplague, of course, and so they were well-equipped for this strange shift of magic. And when she thought about it, Catti-brie realized that she was better equipped than almost any! For she had been trained in the old ways initially, after all, and could any other mages in the Realms, other than elves and drow, say the same?
A few, she realized, for the Harpells had not fully abandoned their previous ways.
There were other differences of note between herself and the other wizards around her, and Catti-brie could only attribute it to the special days she had spent in Iruladoon. When asked, and Catti-brie nodded. bpa"› expect she called upon her magic, her spellscars reacted, but that was not true for Penelope or the few others similarly scarred. Even for Catti-brie, the reaction seemed a cosmetic thing only, for her magic was not exceptionally potent-indeed, were she to engage in a spell battle against Penelope, Catti-brie was certain that she would be obliterated in short order.
Still, Catti-brie had a lot to teach the Harpells, even as they invited her to stay on and train under their masters. She was more adept at converting the spells back to the old ways than any, and Kipper and the others truly appreciated her efforts in that regard, and shared some of their best dweomers with her in return.
So for the fourth time since Catti-brie had moved from her warrior ways to that of a wizard, she had found a new school. First she had trained with the great Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, then with Niraj and Kavita, then at the Coven, and now here at the Ivy Mansion. What student of the arcane arts could ever ask for more? She had been fortunate indeed!