He could well imagine that meeting, and a shudder coursed down his spine. Simply having to mention “Cherlrigo’s Darkness” and his various theories regarding Abeir-Toril would bring him great humiliation.
Still, the story his scouts had return sure what to make o repertoireoned to tell seemed far too convenient to him. By coincidence a bolt of lightning from a natural storm had slain Alpirs De’Noutess and Untaris just as they closed in on this Ruqiah child? And it had killed her, as well? That was the tale the Desai were telling.
Too convenient.
“Tremaine!” he called to the tiefling, who was just exiting the room. The warrior looked back over his shoulder and Lord Ulfbinder instructed, “Fetch the Lady Avelyere at once.”
The tiefling stared at him for a moment, as if confused, then hustled away.
Parise nodded to himself as he considered his impulsive decision. Avelyere was the proper choice now. She was a skilled diviner and could speak with the dead. And she could detect magic as well as any in Shade Enclave. If, as Parise suspected, the curious little girl was still out there, Avelyere would find her.
“Ruqiah!” Kavita gasped, the word blurting out as if she had been kicked in the gut. She scrambled from her chair, nearly tumbling over, and started for the tent flap, where her daughter stood staring back at her.
Catti-brie eagerly leaped up into her mother’s arms, accepting the crushing hug.
“We thought we would never see you again!”
“I thought so too,” the girl admitted. “But I missed you terribly.”
Kavita kissed her and crushed her close and swung her around in a great dance that went on and on until they both grew dizzy.
“I saw what you did, what the whole tribe did, when the Netherese came looking for me.”
Kavita looked at her curiously.
“I have been around-as the owl who left you in the secret garden,” Catti-brie explained.
“My Zibrija,” Kavita said, tears streaming down her face, and she wrapped Catti-brie in another crushing hug, and Catti-brie did not begin to protest.
“Zibrija!” sounded the nickname again, spoken in a plaintive gasp, as Niraj entered the tent. The man jumped over to his wife and child and propelled them both onto the bed with a great flying tackle. “Zibrija, you have come home!”
Catti-brie’s weak smile showed the limitations of that happy event, something neither of her parents missed.
“Not for long,” she said. “It is not safe for you … or for me,” she added quickly as stubborn Niraj began to protest.
“But you will return?” Kavita asked.
The question burned at Catti-brie. She knew that she shouldn’t be doing this, that she shouldn’t be here. Not now. She had returned to Faerun for one purpose, and it had nothing to do with the Desai tribe, or with these parents who were not really her parents. She could not afford such distractions and risks. But she loved these two, dearly so, as much as she had loved …
Catti-brie swallowed hard and blew a determined sigh, reminding herself of who she was and how and why she had returned.
“I am well,” she assured her parents. “And I’m grateful for what you and the Desai have done for me in deceiving the Netherese.”
“Zibrija!” Niraj cried. Catti-brie understood the s a long while to realize become stopped onad look on his face. She was his child, and what parent would not take such action in defense of his child?
“My name is Catti-brie,” she corrected, because she had to, because if she did not keep these emotions at arms’ length, she would never find the courage to leave this camp again, which she knew she must do.
Kavita threw her hands up over her mouth.
“Ruqiah,” Niraj insisted.
The little girl squared her shoulders, but in looking at Kavita, she had to relent. What harm, after all?
“Ruqiah,” she said. “But I still like Zibrija.”
That brought back Niraj’s smile, and again he tackled her in a great fatherly hug. Catti-brie didn’t fight it, and indeed, she felt warm and safe in his strong embrace.
She did not want to leave, but she had to. She wanted to return, but how could she justify it?
“You’re wizards,” she said suddenly.
Niraj pulled her back to arms’ length and looked to his wife.
“Both of you,” Catti-brie continued. “I have seen it. I have seen you,” she said to Kavita, “using spells to aid in your daily chores.”
“Kavita!” Niraj scolded, but his anger was surely feigned.
” our skill, perhaps, and that skill led to your curious scars,” Kavita replied, and Catti-brie nodded, though she didn’t agree. Her scars, she knew, had come from a different place and a different time, scars rightly earned, scars paid for dearly.
“So you admit that you’re wizards,” she stated more than asked. “You practice the Art?”
The two looked at each other, then Niraj stared hard at her. “You must never tell anyone,” he said quietly. “The Netherese do not allow the Bedine such powers.”
Catti-brie nodded and smiled. “I’m a wizard,” she said.
“A priestess, you mean,” said Niraj.
“A druid, more like it,” Kavita said.
“A bit of both,” she replied. “And a wizard. I was studying the ways of magic in the time of the Spellplague, when the Weave fell.” Both of them swallowed hard.
“I had only just begun my studies,” she explained, “and my repertoire was, and is, meager indeed-a few minor spells, a few cantrips. Less now than when I was afflicted, even, for I cannot remember all that I knew of my studies.”
“A lightning bolt to burn an assassin out of his boots,” Niraj dryly remarked.
“A gift of the spellscar, and no wizard’s bolt,” she assured him. “I had lived most of my life with the sword and the bow, until I was injured in a battle. And so I turned to magic.”
She paused, realizing that she was overwhelming both of them. First she had demonstrated magical powers beyond her years. Then she had flown off from them in the form of an owl. And now she had just strongly implied to them that not only was she not their child, not only was she not a child at all, but that she was a century older than either of them! She questioned the wisdom of telling them any of the truth of herself then, for what unwanted curiosity might that long tale bring?
But then she looked into the dark eyes of Kavita and her doubts melted away. This was her mother, whatever bizarre circumstances surrounded the event of her rebirth. There was nothing but love for her in those dark eyes.
Nothing other than tears, of course, and Catti-brie did not wish to see those tears. Not ever.
“I had only just begun my formal training when the Spellplague struck me, and alas …” Her voice drifted off. “But I was under fine tutelage,” she said almost immediately, pushing forward with her impulsive decision to help these two, her beloved parents, sort through the pain of confusion and the grief of losing their only child. “Perhaps you have heard of Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon?”
Niraj and Kavita again exchanged looks, their expressions revealing a great confusion.
“I’m a wizard, but merely a novice. You’re both skilled at magic. Will you train me further in the Art?” Catti-brie asked, bringing them back to the moment at hand.
“Then you will not leave us?” Niraj asked.
“I will return as often as I can,” Catti-brie heard herself saying, and she could hardly believe the words as they came out of her mouth. But she meant them.
“The child is a clever one,” the young sorceress, Eerika, said to Lady Avelyere, her more accomplished mentor.
Avelyere was in her early forties but still strikingly youthful and beautiful in appearance, with light gray eyes and rich brown hair bouncing below her shoulders. She and her companions had little trouble in locating this mysterious Desai child named Ruqiah. First they had gone to the grave, supposedly of Ruqiah, and a simple spell to speak with the dead had told them the truth: that the corpse within was not the body of the girl they sought.