She thought back to the day when she and Wulfgar had left Mithral Hall for Silverymoon. She remembered the reactions of Bruenor and Drizzt—too emotional for the former and too stoic for the latter, she realized.
Wulfgar had told them. He’d said his good-byes before they set out, whether in explicit terms or in hints they could not miss. It hadn’t been an impulsive decision brought about by some epiphany that had come to him on the road.
Catti-brie grimaced through a sudden flash of anger, at Bruenor and especially at Drizzt. How could they have known and not have told her?
She suppressed that anger quickly, and realized that it had been Wulfgar’s choice. He had waited to tell her until after they’d recovered Colson. Catti-brie nodded as she considered that. He’d waited because he knew that the sight of the girl, the girl who had been taken from her mother and was to be returned, would make things more clear for Catti-brie.
“My anger isn’t for Wulfgar, or any of them,” she whispered.
“Eh?” asked the driver, and Catti-brie turned her head and gave him a smile that settled him back to his own business.
She held that smile as she turned back to stare at the empty west, and squinted, putting on a mask that might counter the tears that welled within. Wulfgar was gone, and if she sat back and considered his reasons, she knew she couldn’t fault him. He was not a young man any longer. His legacy was still to be made, and time was running short. It would not be made in Mithral Hall, and even in the cities surrounding the dwarven stronghold, the people, the humans, were not kin to Wulfgar in appearance or in sensibility. His home was Icewind Dale. His people were in Icewind Dale. In Icewind Dale alone could he truly hope to find a wife.
Because Catti-brie was lost to him. And though he bore her no ill will, she understood the pain he must have felt when he looked upon her and Drizzt.
She and Wulfgar had had their moment, but that moment had passed, had been stolen by demons, both within Wulfgar and in the form of the denizens of the Abyss. Their moment had passed, and there seemed no other moments for Wulfgar to find in the court of a dwarf king.
“Farewell,” Catti-brie silently mouthed to the empty west, and never had she so meant that simple word.
He bent low to bring Colson close to the flowering snowdrops, their tiny white bells denying the snow along the trail. The first flowers, the sign of coming spring.
“For Ma, Dell-y,” Colson chattered happily, holding the first syllable of Delly’s name for a long heartbeat, which only tugged all the more at Wulfgar’s heart. “Flowvers,” she giggled, and she pulled one close to her nose.
Wulfgar didn’t correct her lisp, for she beamed as brightly as any “flowvers” ever could.
“Ma for flowvers.” Colson rambled, and she mumbled through a dozen further sounds that Wulfgar could not decipher, though it was apparent to him that the girl thought she was speaking in cogent sentences. Wulfgar was sure that Colson made perfect sense to Colson, at least!
There was a little person in there—Wulfgar only truly realized at that innocent moment. A thinking, rational individual. She wasn’t a baby anymore, wasn’t helpless and unwitting.
The joy and pride that brought to Wulfgar was tempered, to be sure, by his realization that he would soon turn Colson over to her mother, to a woman the girl had never known in a land she had never called home.
“So be it,” he said, and Colson looked at him and giggled, and gradually Wulfgar’s delight overcame his sense of impending dread. He felt the season in his heart, as if his own internal, icy pall had at last been lifted. Nothing could change that overriding sensation. He was free. He was content. He knew in his heart that what he was doing was good, and right.
As he bent lower to the flower, he noted something else: a fresh print in the mud, right on the edge of the hardened snow. It had come from a shoddily-wrapped foot, and since it was so far from any town, Wulfgar recognized it at once as the print of a goblinkin’s foot. He stood back up and glanced all around.
He looked to Colson and smiled comfortingly, then hustled along down the broken trail, his direction, fortunately, opposite the one the creature had taken. He wanted no battle that day, or any other day Colson was in his arms.
All the more reason to get the child back where she belonged.
Wulfgar hoisted the girl onto his broad shoulder and whistled quietly for her as his long legs carried them swiftly down the road, to the west.
Home.
North of Wulfgar’s position, four dwarves, a halfling, and a drow settled around a small fire in a snowy dell. They had stopped their march early, that they could better light a fire to warm some stones that would get them more comfortably through the cold night. After briskly rubbing their hands over the dancing orange flames, Torgar, Cordio, and Thibble dorf set off to find the stones.
Bruenor hardly noticed their departure, for his gaze had settled on the sack of scrolls and artifacts, and on a tied tapestry lying nearby.
While Regis began preparing their supper, Drizzt just sat and watched his dwarf friend, for he knew that Bruenor was churning inside, and that he would soon enough need to speak his mind.
As if on cue, Bruenor turned to the drow. “Thought I’d find Gauntlgrym and find me answers,” he said.
“You don’t know whether you’ve found them or not,” Drizzt reminded.
Bruenor grunted. “Weren’t Gauntlgrym, elf. Not by any o’ the legends o’ the place. Not by any stories I e’er heard.”
“Likely not,” the drow agreed.
“Weren’t no place I ever heared of.”
“Which might prove even more important,” said Drizzt.
“Bah,” Bruenor snorted half-heartedly. “A place of riddles, and none that I’m wanting answered.”
“They are what they are.”
“And that be?”
“Hopefully revealed in the writings we took.”
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted more loudly, and he waved his hands at Drizzt and at the sack of scrolls. “Gonna get me a stone to warm me bed,” he muttered, and started away. “And one I can bang me head against.”
The last remark brought a grin to Drizzt’s face, reminding him that Bruenor would follow the clues wherever they led, whatever the implications. He held great faith in his friend.
“He’s afraid,” Regis remarked as soon as the dwarf was out of sight.
“He should be,” Drizzt replied. “At stake are the very foundations of his world.”
“What do you think is on the scrolls?” Regis asked, and Drizzt shrugged.
“And those statues!” the halfling went on undeterred. “Orcs and dwarves, and not in battle. What does it mean? Answers for us? Or just more questions?”
Drizzt thought about it for just a moment, and was nodding as he replied, “Possibilities.”
PART 3
A WAR WITHIN A WAR
We construct our days, bit by bit, tenday by tenday, year by year. Our lives take on a routine, and then we bemoan that routine. Predictability, it seems, is a double-edged blade of comfort and boredom. We long for it, we build it, and when we find it, we reject it.
Because while change is not always growth, growth is always rooted in change. A finished person, like a finished house, is a static thing. Pleasant, perhaps, or beautiful or admirable, but not for long exciting.
King Bruenor has reached the epitome, the pinnacle, the realization of every dream a dwarf could fathom. And still King Bruenor desires change, though he would refuse to phrase it that way, admitting only his love of adventure. He has found his post, and now seeks reasons to abandon that post at every turn. He seeks, because inside of him he knows that he must seek to grow. Being a king will make Bruenor old before his time, as the old saying goes.