Catti-brie glanced back up the rock cliffs to see the distant rooftops and snaking streams of fireplace smoke drifting up into the cold autumn air. It seemed a cold smoke to her, wrought of a cold fire in a cold place, and she realized at once that she had no desire to go back there, to ever return to Auckney.
She looked back out at the dark waters and a wry smile came over her.
She cast a spell to protect herself from the brutal elements, her right arm glowing softly, bluish tendrils curling out of her sleeve. She hiked up her white and black cape, then moved into the surf and cast another spell, this time with her left arm showing the mist of arcane energy, summoning a mount.
Her waterborne steed arrived, and she packed her leather shoes away into her backpack and settled onto the dolphin’s back. This was no ordinary animal, but a magical creation, fully under her control. She grasped its dorsal fin, and with a thought, sped away.
She stayed near to the shore, her magical mount weaving around the many stones, and she tired quickly, surprised by how taxing the ride proved to be. She was in no hurry, though, other than her desire to be far from Auckney, and so she camped under the shelter of a rocky overhang, nestled beside a magical fire, eating conjured food, and drying her white gown and black shawl over a nearby tree branch.
She was out the next morning, and then again the next afternoon after a long break for lunch and rest, and then called back an enchanted mount for a third run that day, albeit a short one.
Catti-brie found herself at peace, alone with her thoughts and near to nature, near to Mielikki. By the third day, she noted the turn to the north, around the westernmost spur of the mountains, and at midday on the sixth day out of Auckney, Catti-brie stepped out of the water to feel cold dirt under her bare feet instead of wet, hard stone.
The wind thrummed in her ears, and she knew she was home.
She summoned a new mount, a spectral unicorn, and rode east along the north bank of the Shaengarne River, rushing across the leagues. Just beating the snows in the onset of the winter of 1482, Catti-brie came to the town of Bremen, on the southern banks of Maer Dualdon. The wind blew much colder now, and in a colder land than Auckney, but when Catti-brie mingled around the townsfolk of this western village in Ten-Towns, she didn’t feel that way.
Quite the opposite.
She had come home, to a place she knew, and though the faces had changed with the passage of so many decades,hat playthings we be,” an knew wellim Icewind Dale had not, and Ten-Towns had not. She took great comfort in that familiarity, going from town to town as the tendays and months drifted past. With her magical abilities, she came to be seen by the community as an asset, and she soon had friends in every tavern in every town.
She needed to build trust and a network to garner information, and none were better at knowing the comings and goings than those selling food and drink.
The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Icewind Dale
“A most unusual halfling,” Catti-brie whispered, glancing down from the grass atop a ridge to the lakeshore, her eyes filling with tears.
That was how he had been described to her, by one of the many friends she had made since arriving in Icewind Dale. She wasn’t a resident of any of the towns, though she had split most of her time between Bryn Shander, the dwarven complex beneath Kelvin’s Cairn, and this place, Lonelywood.
In Bryn Shander, a tenday earlier, she had heard of this strange character who had come in on a caravan from Luskan, all full of dandy and decoration. A little investigating had led her here, to the outskirts of Lonelywood, looking down on the lake, looking down upon Regis.
And surely she recognized her dear old friend. He wore facial hair now, and his curly brown hair was much longer than she had known, but it was unmistakably Regis, both in appearance and demeanor.
He had survived the decades and had made it home to Icewind Dale.
What a great relief flooded over Catti-brie at that moment. For the months she had been around Ten-Towns, she had waited anxiously for this moment. In truth, she had been surprised to find out that Regis and Bruenor had not arrived in the dale before her, and that reality had only reminded her of the many dangers involved in getting here, in even surviving for twenty-one years in the dangerous Realms. The world was wild and dark; her own trials had only confirmed that.
With her friends not to be found, coupled with the news she had gleaned of Drizzt, who had not been seen around Ten-Towns in more than a decade, and who, it was said, had come running to Icewind Dale in flight from a great demon, and the woman had been near to despair. Catti-brie had seen the memorial to a drow named Tiago outside of Bryn Shander’s western gate, on the spot where Tiago had reportedly destroyed the balor in a great battle that had taken down part of Bryn Shander’s wall and her gate. But that battle had been fifteen years and more removed, and there had been no word of Drizzt. None.
With no sign of Drizzt and being the first of the three who had stepped out of Iruladoon to arrive, there was no small amount of doubt and fear growing in the woman over the last few months, and so her heart truly warmed now at this sight.
For here he was, Regis, reclining on the banks of Maer Dualdon, a fishing line tied to his toe. How many times had Catti-brie witnessed this scene in the years before the Spellplague?
She wanted to rush down and wrap him in a great hug, but she held herself back. She had come too far to rush headlong to Regis, at least until she had learned more about how he had come here, and what he had brought with him, inadvertently or otherwise.
For in the back of Catti-brie’s mind lay her own troubles. She knew that Lady Avelyere had not given up the hunt for her. Even though nearly two years had passed since she had fled the Ivy Mansion, a magical ride that seemed to have put Avelyere off the trail!” Bruenor warned.5N3 certainlyon, Catti-brie did not underestimate the lady’s stubbornness. Avelyere knew that she was alive, that she had faked her death in Shade Enclave, and that she had traveled to the far west. Perhaps Avelyere even knew of Catti-brie’s ultimate destination, Icewind Dale. Catti-brie could not be sure, since she couldn’t be sure of how much she had actually divulged to Avelyere when under the hypnotic dweomers of the powerful diviner. It could well be that Lady Avelyere and her allies were somewhere within Icewind Dale, perhaps even in one of the towns, lying in wait.
If that was so and Catti-brie was caught, then what a wretched friend she would be, to both Regis and Drizzt, to have Regis dragged away beside her.
So she took her joy in seeing him from afar.
She moved back into the forest, not far from his house, and there constructed a shrine to Mielikki, a private garden sheltered from the coming winter, and that she meant to tend throughout the next season, until the night of the spring equinox.
The woman nodded at her choice. She would watch over Regis closely, but in secret.
“Boisterous bunch,” Darby Snide said to Catti-brie when she moved up to the bar in his tavern in Bremen a tenday later. He was a big man, with huge hands and gigantic sideburns that rode all the way down his jawline, just short of connecting at his chin.
Catti-brie looked around, and indeed, Knuckleheader, the tavern, was full this night, and with a raucous crowd, particularly one loud group across the way by the front window. Catti-brie had heard their catcalls when she entered, moving right past them.
“Is that why you sent for me?” she asked. “Or are your larders thin for so many?”
“Could use some food, Miss Curtie, if you’ve the spell to conjure any,” Darby admitted, and Catti-brie nodded. She had spent her first tendays in Icewind Dale right here in Bremen and had taken a room in this very inn, bartering for room and board in trade for her magical dweomers. She conjured food, healed the minor wounds of patrons, even cured a few diseases, all compliments of the Knuckleheader, and in exchange, Darby had treated her quite well.