As far as Catti-brie and Regis could guess, it had to have been Bregan D’aerthe following the monster to Bryn Shander, and in that line of thought, Regis wondered if he had done right in not revealing himself to Jarlaxle back in Luskan. Perhaps he and Catti-brie, and Bruenor if the dwarf ever arrived, would travel back that way and find Jarlaxle, hoping to learn the whereabouts of Drizzt.
“Well then, what do we do? Was it all for naught?” As he asked the question, Regis was already formulating his own answer. If Drizzt wasn’t to be found, then he would bid Catti-brie to return with him to Aglarond, to Donnola Pericolo, where she could help Morada Topolino battle the lich, if there remained a lich to battle.
And no, he told himself then, resolutely so, it had not been all for naught. Far from it. He, Spider Topolino, would forge a second life whatever fate brought before him, a life shaped in the lessons of the first.
“Hold faith,” Catti-brie told him. “Mielikki told us when to meet, and that day fast approaches.”
“Bruenor has not arrived, but winter has,” Regis reminded. “Your Da may well be dead again, gone to Dwarfhome and his rewards.”
The woman nodded, nothing in her posture or expression denying a word of what he said.
“We do the best we can, in the hope that our work will aid Mielikki and our friend,” she replied.
“If Drizzt is even still alive,” Regis mumbled, but he also nodded his agreement. He would climb Kelvin’s Cairn beside her on the night of the equinox. He feared that they two would be up there alone, however, and from that realizatline-height: IBruenor didonion, Regis came to wonder if perhaps Lady Lolth had already taken Drizzt. Was their mission to become a rescue, then? Were they, just the two of them, expected to go to the fabled Demonweb Pits to retrieve their captured friend of old?
Regis swallowed hard, thinking that a lich didn’t seem so formidable after all.
“Hold faith,” Catti-brie said again, and she moved to gather the pot of broth.
Regis nodded, but he could see the fear clearly stamped upon her pretty face. Drizzt was nowhere, by any accounts either of them had heard-and Catti-brie had been gathering such accounts for more than a year here in Icewind Dale. The drow had not been seen in these reaches for nearly two decades, if the stories about the battle of Brynn Shander’s eastern gate were to be believed.
And indeed, Drizzt had gone out of Ten-Towns in that long past year, to the east, not the west, onto the wild tundra.
He was almost assuredly dead, Regis knew, and so did Catti-brie, he realized.
And Bruenor?
“You went to Stokely on your return from Bryn Shander?” the halfling asked suddenly.
Catti-brie turned and nodded to him, then shook her head slowly, her expression grim.
Regis understood the implications. If Bruenor had returned to Icewind Dale, he would surely have gone there, to the place he had long called his home, to be with others of Clan Battlehammer.
Bruenor was not in Icewind Dale-not alive, at least.
“There was no promise,” Catti-brie said suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“Mielikki turned the prism of reality just a bit to offer a chance, yet her design was not a prophecy, but a hope.”
Regis swallowed hard. “Twenty-one years is a long time,” he admitted. “I barely escaped death on several occasions, and my road remained long in doubt.”
Catti-brie nodded.
“Perhaps our friend … our friends, were not as fortunate,” the halfling said.
Catti-brie held up her hands and gave a little shrug, and Regis noted moisture rimming her deep blue eyes.
He moved quickly across the floor and wrapped Catti-brie in a tight hug, needing her support as much as he was offering his own.
The Year of the Awakened Sleepers (1484 DR) Outside Luskan
“Ye’re sure to be dead, then, and so I’ll miss ye,” the farmer woman said to the dwarf who had lived in her barn and worked for her and her husband through the winter. “And just when I was getting fond of ye, Mister Bonnego Battleaxe, off ye go running, and to Icewind Dale, of all the foul places! Ah, but what a fool y
CHAPTER 29
The Year of the Awakened Sleepers (1484 DR) Icewind Dale
The sun rode low in the eastern sky, the first rays of daylight reaching across Icewind Dale to tickle the icy ridges of the peaks of Kelvin’s Cairn. Regis paused at his cottage door, admiring those crystalline outlines.
“Marking Bruenor’s Climb with a light of hope,” Catti-brie remarked when she came up beside him.
The halfling nodded, hoping her observation was prophetic. The pair solemnly started out from the small cottage near the lake. Bolstered by Catti-brie’s protection spells, armed with potions Regis had brewed, and their step lightened by the much better weather that had settled over Ten-Towns in the past couple of days, the duo made good time in their westward trek.
They spoke little, however, for each settled within personal fears on this most important of nights, the spring equinox of 1484. For Catti-brie, this, her birthday, was the promise, the possible fruition of the hopes Mielikki had offered in the magical forest of Iruladoon. She was a priestess of Mielikki, indeed, Chosen of the goddess, and so she went forth with her expectations high, but with her eyes opened wide.
She knew the possibilities, all of them, and from all that she had seen, along with her understanding of Mielikki’s offering of a chance and nothing more, those many potential outcomes appeared far more dire than promising. But she had to go.
For Regis, this was the intersection, the great crossroads of his second life. Here he would repay the debt to Mielikki, and here he would know again, so he{font-size: 0.75rem;IesKing Emerus no less hoped, the greatest friends with whom he had ever shared a road.
But now there were others, he knew, and alternate roads that beckoned. The Grinning Ponies traveled the Trade Way, and Donnola led Morada Topolino far to the east, and either organization would welcome him back with open arms. He had not forgotten his oldest friends, of course, but Regis had hedged his bets, or at least, circumstance had given him the opportunity to do so.
The fall of darkness beat the duo to the base of Kelvin’s Cairn. There they paused and looked up the familiar trails from a life lived long ago. Catti-brie had climbed the mountain the previous summer, just to ensure that Bruenor’s Climb was still accessible, but she had only gone up once, and only briefly, and never to the top.
She hadn’t been.
EPILOGUE
The Year of the Awakened Sleepers (1484 DR) Shade Enclave
"Brilliant,” That playthings we be,” aneverything GrandfatherOrd Parise Ulfbinder remarked, staring into the scrying pool, looking through Lady Avelyere’s divination magic to the unfolding scene atop the solitary mountain in Icewind Dale. “If we had any doubts regarding the divine inspiration of our dear little Ruqiah, they are surely dispelled."