Unlike her friends who had similarly journeyed from Iruladoon, Catti-brie had taken no infantile confusion with her. The instincts of childhood gnawed at her, of course, but because of her communing with the goddess, she was better prepared for this journey by far, and more knowledgeable and thus able to keep those penetrating pangs and desires in their proper place.
Good fortune had followed her, as well, for her mother-she heard the name Kavita spoken tenderly by her father and others-doted on her, lifting her often and holding her close. That is, when Kavita wasn’t passing the baby around to the other women who flocked to the Bedine tent, all wanting to cuddle with the newborn. To the Bedine tribe of the Desai, the birth of a child was a grand celebration indeed, and Catti-brie-Ruqiah, they called her-was the center of that play.
She wisely held silent throughout the pawing and the cooing and the continual conversations directed at her, just inches from her face, for she understood well what had happened to Wulfgar when he had been reborn, and feared that she, too, could forget herself and spout some actual words.
And so, like her journey in the first in the tunnels around Mithral Hallar5N3?” she asked;src: url(kindle: embed:000phases of her departure from Iruladoon, the baby who was really a woman lay back and observed, and let the beauty of the experience grant her insight and more knowledge. Many times in those first days, did Catti-brie silently give extra thanks to Mielikki.
Only a few days later, the tribe was on the move again, Catti-brie, swaddled tightly as always, strapped to her walking mother’s back. She strained her eyes, focusing on the land as the miles rolled by, trying to get a feel for where she might be.
Patient and observant, the baby learned and watched, and when she was alone in the dark of night, she prayed and she practiced, perfecting her little voice so that she could again sing the notes of Mielikki. She regretted the tight binding of the cloth wrapped around her, though, and feared that it would take her some time to properly perfect control of her arms and legs.
But she had time, she reminded herself.
“She’s beautiful,” Kavita said to Niraj as she stood by Ruqiah’s cradle. The night outside was dark and quiet-even the wind seemed to have drifted off to sleep. “But her eyes are so blue! How can that be?”
“They will darken with age,” Niraj assured her. “As did mine.”
“And so her hair will fall out?” Kavita asked, teasing her bald-headed husband.
“No,” he said, moving near and placing his hand gently on Kavita’s bare shoulder, and feeling, as he did, the raised skin of her long scar. He bent in and kissed her there, on the shoulder blade, where she had been marked so dramatically by the whip of a Netherese enforcer who had heard a whispered rumor that Kavita was practicing magic.
That one had learned the hard way that Kavita was indeed a wizard, and so was her husband, Niraj, who had laid the man low with a bolt of lightning. How pathetic the brutal enforcer had seemed then, trying to work his arm and snap his whip from his back in the sand-Sand Kavita’s spell had then dug out from under him, and which had been abruptly put back, only now atop him, burying him alive, by the subsequent enchantment of Niraj and Kavita.
“She will have the thick tresses of her mother, I am sure,” Niraj added, running his hand through Kavita’s hair. He could feel the tension within his wife. “What troubles you, my love?”
“The Netherese are everywhere,” Kavita said. “With every pilgrimage, there are more to be seen, shadowing us from the hills, stopping and inspecting and questioning, always questioning.”
“They are sand crabs,” Niraj agreed, “who came uninvited to our land. Our land I say, and we will be here long after they are gone, when the winds of Anauroch return and the land of Netheril is long forgotten!”
“By then, we’ll be long forgotten,” Kavita replied.
“But our descendants …,” Niraj replied, nodding his chin toward their baby girl.
“We must take care, special care,” Kavita said. “For Ruqiah, more than for ourselves.”
Niraj didn’t disagree. They were wizards, but secretly so, for the Netherese rulers of this land had forbidden the Bedine to practice the Art.
Kavita looked around, left and right, then focused her gaze on the tent flap for a few moments, holding silent and cranOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!
Niraj sucked in his breath. He had seen the birthmark before-or at least, had seen what he hoped was a birthmark.
But now there could be no doubt, for this was no ordinary birthmark. A distinct figure, resembling a seven-pointed star, was set in a circular field of red.
“Spellscar?” Niraj asked, seeming confused, for he had not heard of one quite this distinct before.
Kavita pulled out the baby’s other arm and turned it to reveal the inside of the forearm, where a second marking loomed.
“A curved blade?” Niraj asked, and peered closer. “Nay, a horn, a unicorn’s head! She is twice-marked?”
“And her scars will be harder to conceal.”
“She should wear them with pride!” Niraj insisted.
“The Netherese would not agree.”
“Damn them! We are Bedine, not chattel!”
Kavita put her finger over her husband’s lips to silence him. “Be at ease, my husband,” she quietly coaxed. “We are free upon our land. Let us not be bound by our hatred for those who claim dominance. Claim, but do not truly hold us in chains.”
Niraj nodded and kissed his wife, and pulled her across the room to their bed.
Little Ruqiah opened her eyes, having heard every word. They had not rewound the cloth around her and so for one of the rare times in her young life, her arms were free. She took the opportunity to flex them and move them, and felt indeed as if a great weight had at last been lifted from her. She managed to get both of her little arms into view long enough to study that which her parents had discussed.
The images, the scars, brought her back to a morning long ago, when she had awakened in her tent beside her husband Drizzt. They were on their way back to Mithral Hall, unaware of the great changes that were even then beginning to befall their world.
On that fateful day, Catti-brie had been struck by a falling strand of Mystra’s magical Weave, the Weave of Magic itself, and the blinding power of magical energy bared had overwhelmed her and driven her mad.
The Weave of Mystra, the Lady of Magic, who carried as her symbol the seven-pointed star.
She had not recovered from that interaction, and indeed, had inadvertently afflicted Regis with the insanity as well. In that confused state, Catti-brie had passed away, and Mielikki had taken her spirit from Mithral Hall.
She looked at her right forearm, at the horn, the unicorn horn symbol of Mielikki, and gave thanks and praise, her blue eyes filling with tears of joy.
The Year of the Six-Armed Elf (1464 DR) Netheril
Ruqiah sat in the corner, pretending to play with the polished stones Niraj had given to her. It had been a long first year of life anew, full of deception that had greatly wearied this imposter child. She had crawled early, the Bedine believed, at only five months, and had walked before her tenth month, and quite capably, it seemed. InOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!
She hadn’t talked yet, though she had much to say, and she wasn’t even sure of when such conversation might be appropriate, for in her previous life, Catti-brie hadn’t had much contact with children.
She knew it was important to seem somewhat appropriate to her age, both for her own sake and for that of her parents, whom she had already come to love as if they were actually her family.
Catti-brie had learned much in the year she had spent as Ruqiah. The Bedine were prisoners in their own land, this land that had been Anauroch, but was now known as Netheril, the heart of Netherese power. These conquering Netherese would not suffer Bedine to be more than simple tribesmen and nomads, wandering the wasted ways of the still barren and windblown lands that had once been the great magical desert of northern Faerun.