“Breathe deep, runt,” he said, and to Regis’s shock, he flipped Regis around from his shoulder and plunged him under the water!
The baby squirmed and thrashed for all he was worth, for his very life!
Futilely, of course, for this tiny, uncoordinated, little-muscled form could not begin to counter the strength in the elder halfling’s hands. Reflexively, Regis held his breath, but he could not for long, and the bubbles came forth from his lips. He tried to hold out, fought to keep his mouth shut.
His father was drowning him!
All of the dreams that had carried him out of Iruladoon flashed through his thoughts then. He had imagined the Companions of the Hall rejoined, and this time, he had sworn, he would not be the tag-along, the helpless soul hiding in the back of the battle. No, he would become an equal in the coming trials, and would fight bravely to save Drizzt from the darkness Catti-brie had hinted of, from the clutches of Lady Lolth, perhaps!
But now he wouldn’t.
His little mouth opened and the sea rushed in. He tried not to swallow, not to gasp, but alas, he could not resist.
As he could not break free of his father’s iron grip.
So he would find his final reward, as surely as if he had gone with Wulfgar into the pond. Before he had even been given a chance to prove his worth, it would all be over.
And he would not see his friends again, unless it was in the Green FieldsOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!
“Is that Eiverbreen?” asked a halfling working on the dock not far away.
“Aye,” answered his dwarf companion. “Eiverbreen and his new runt. Pity that Jolee passed in birthing him.”
“Aye.”
“So, eh, what’s that then? Eiverbreen’s set on killin’ the waif? Ah, but who could blame him, and the little one’s better off anyway.”
“Nay, not that,” the halfling answered, and he paused in his work and moved to the near edge of the dock, watching the scene more closely. His dwarf friend followed, hands on hips, neither harboring any intent to interfere, whether this was indeed infanticide or something else.
Regis came out of the water as abruptly as he had been thrust in, his father twirling him up and spinning him around to look him in the eye. The little one sputtered and spat, water flowing out of him as easily as it had gone in. His father, who had just tried to kill him, smiled.
“Not blue,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “Aye, so you’re your mother’s son. By the gods, but luck’s with you, ain’t it? It’s our secret, you know, and you’re to make a fine wage!”
With that, he tucked Regis under his arm and headed back up the long, long boardwalk, back to the lean-to.
The baby’s thoughts spun in confusion. What had that been about? To torture him? To terrify him? To make him think he was being drowned, being murdered? But to what end? What possible gain …?
Regis forced himself to calm down, forced the pulsing questions aside.
He hadn’t drowned-in truth, he hadn’t come close to drowning and had felt no physical discomfort at all beyond the strong and tight grip of his father’s hands.
But he had been under the water for a long time. He couldn’t keep holding his breath. He couldn’t keep his mouth closed, couldn’t keep the water away.
But he wasn’t blue, his father had just told him, and indeed, when he had come up from the water, he hadn’t even been gasping for air.
Was this all the result of his young age, as if, perhaps, his mind couldn’t yet even acknowledge such discomfort? That seemed a possibility, but Regis didn’t think it likely. No, more likely, it seemed to him that he hadn’t registered any discomfort because there hadn’t been any discomfort.
How was that possible?
He clutched tightly at his father’s raggedy shirt as he considered the mystery. He felt something round and hard in his little hand, and gripped it instinctively, and only as they neared their home did he even realize it to be a button.
A button held by a single thread, he realized as he worked it around, and as his father moved to set him back down in his crib, he tightened his grip and pulled with all his strength.
The button came free, and Regis took care to keep his hand closed over it.
“So you’ve got the genasi blood,” his father said, though Regis had no idea of what that might even mean. “That’ll make you worth keeping, lucky runt. Like your Ma. Aye, but we’ll put that gift to she must do.
He walked away then, out of the lean-to.
Regis didn’t understand any of this, of course, but he told himself to be patient. The one thing he had now, Mielikki willing, for all of his plans, was time. Lots of time, but not time enough to be wasted.
Twenty-one years of time, and he would put them to good use. As he had determined when he had walked out of Iruladoon, he would waste not a day.
He managed to lift his little hand up before his eyes, and opened his fingers just enough to see the button. He thought to roll it around his fingers, but an involuntary twitch jerked his arm then, and he nearly lost the item.
If it fell free, he would have no way to collect it … likely a rat would pick it up and scurry off with it.
So he squeezed it instead, repeatedly, training his fingers, training his muscles, and slowly maneuvering one finger or another around it a bit, gaining strength, gaining dexterity. He held it tightly when the wet nurse came to feed him, then he brought his arm down to his side and leaned upon it to secure the button as he slept.
Days later, he managed to shift it to his other hand, his left hand. Again, he brought it up before his eyes, and then he paused and stared.
He noted his thumb and the three fingers beside it, and the stump where his pinky should be.
The image jolted the halfling back in time, to the captivity he had endured under Artemis Entreri, where Entreri had cut off his finger as a warning to Drizzt …
Had that physical wound carried over to this new body? How could that be?
He stared at the stump, and noted then the jagged line of skin and the scab, not yet fully healed. No, this was not a carryover of Entreri’s cruelty, he realized, but an ironic twist of fate. He recalled the moment of his rebirth, when his mother had died, he now understood, and so the midwife had used a knife to slice her open and get him out. He remembered the sharp and burning pain, and now he understood the source.
For a long, long while, the halfling baby lay there, staring at the wound, lost in memories more than in his current hopes and aspirations.
He pressed beyond the shock, though, and repeated the exercises, exactly as he had done with the other hand, squeezing and holding, building his strength and his muscle memory.
Tendays later, he began to roll the button around his fingers, one hand and then the other, feeling the play as it rolled over one knuckle to be caught between that finger and the next and roson of a son o
CHAPTER 6
The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Netheril
No moment of fear, not an instant of doubt, followed Catti-brie out of Iruladoon. In the days she had spent there-the century on Toril-she had danced the movements of Mielikki and sung the song of Mielikki, and so it was with great understanding of the goddess and great confidence in the eternal circle of life itself, that Catti-brie had stepped from the forest to begin her floating journey, to find the womb, to gasp her first breath in her new body, reincarnated, reborn. It happened on the night of the spring equinox.
The holy night of Mielikki, the night of the birth of the goddess’s Chosen.
Wrapped in swaddling clothes, the infant seemed fully helpless before the adult humans milling around in the tent. But even though she could not move her arms under the tight wrappings, Catti-brie instinctively understood that there remained at her disposal several potent spells she could utilize to defend herself, dweomers that needed no movements to enact.