Archmage (5 page)

“They didn’t get into the halls afore, and they won’t next time, if there’s e’er to be a next time,” Bruenor insisted. “And now we’re knowin’ the threat and there are ways we can better prepare.”

“Some of us always knew, King Bruenor,” Harnoth said, and it was clearly meant as a jab at the dwarf who had signed the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge.

“Are ye thinkin’ to drive us apart, King o’ Adbar?” King Emerus was quick to retort. “Cause aye, that’s what yer words’re doing now. And don’t ye doubt that Felbarr’ll be standin’ with Mithral Hall if ye keep on with it.”

“As will the cities of Silverymoon and Everlund,” Aleina added with an equally grim tone.

King Harnoth, young and full of pride, started to respond in an animated and angry fashion, but Oretheo Spikes put a hand on his shoulder to calm him, and when the young king snapped his head about to regard the Wilddwarf, Oretheo nodded and led him off to the side.

“He’s a stubborn one,” Catti-brie remarked.

“He lost his father not long ago, and his brother was slain in the war,” Drizzt reminded. “As were many of his most important advisers. He sits atop a throne now, alone and unsure. He knows that he erred many times in the last year, and that we saved him from certain doom.”

“Then he might be offerin’ some gratitude and a dose o’ well-earned humility, eh?” asked Bruenor.

Drizzt shrugged. “He will, but on his terms.”

“If Adbar refuses our plan, then yerself and meself’ll raise the army we’re needin’ to get yer quest done, me friend,” King Emerus promised.

“We’ll not be raising that number without Adbar,” Bruenor said.

“So we’ll go to Mirabar and find more allies—should be thinkin’ that anyway,” said Emerus. “Them boys are Delzoun, and so’re yer boys in Icewind Dale. We’ll get back Gauntlgrym, don’t ye doubt!”

“ ‘We’ll’?” Drizzt asked, catching on to Emerus’s hint.

“Much to talk about,” was all the King of Citadel Felbarr would say on that subject at that time.

Harnoth and Oretheo Spikes came back over then, the King of Adbar seeming much less animated.

“Me friend here thinks Adbar’s holding strong with two thousand less,” Harnoth explained. “So half yer force’ll be marchin’ under the banner o’ Citadel Adbar, King Bruenor.”

“No,” Bruenor immediately replied, even as the others began to smile and even cheer. All eyes turned sharply on the red-bearded dwarf with his surprising answer.

“No banners for Adbar, Felbarr, or Mithral Hall,” Bruenor explained. “As in the war we just won, we’re walkin’ under the flag o’ our Delzoun blood, the flag o’ Gauntlgrym!”

“Ain’t no flag o’ Gauntlgrym!” Harnoth protested.

“Then let’s make one,” Emerus Warcrown said with a wide grin. He held up his hand to Harnoth, and after only a slight hesitation, the young King of Adbar took that hand firmly in his own.

Bruenor, meanwhile, began producing flagons of ale from behind his magical shield, one for each of the four dwarf kings assembled on the field.

And so they toasted, “To Gauntlgrym!”

The work at the ruins of Dark Arrow Keep continued for several tendays, with the massive orc fortress being stripped down to a watchpost with only a couple of towers left standing. There had been a small debate about whether to dismantle the place or perhaps refit it more to accommodate dwarven sensibilities, but Bruenor had pointed out, rightly so, that leaving any semblance of Dark Arrow Keep intact might entice the orcs to try to reclaim it.

Reclaiming it, after all, would be a lot easier than rebuilding it from rubble.

So they ripped the rest of it down, except the meager watchtowers, and they carried the great logs to the river and floated them downstream where they could be caught at Mithral Hall and used as fuel for the hearths and forges.

The docks, too, were dismantled, as were the surrounding orc villages, now abandoned, erasing all remnants of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows from the Silver Marches. As summer turned to fall, the dwarves and their allies marched for their respective homes, with the three citadels pledged to meet throughout the winter months to plan the spring march to the west.

“What’s troubling you?” Catti-brie asked Regis on that journey to Mithral Hall. Regis had joined in the cheers and drinks and “huzzahs,” of course, but every passing day, Catti-brie had watched him, and had noted a cloud that often passed over his cherubic face.

“I’m weary, that’s all,” he said, and she knew he was lying. “It’s been a long and difficult year.”

“For all of us,” Catti-brie said. “But a year of victory, yes?”

Regis looked over at her, his seat on his pony far below the tall shoulders of Catti-brie’s spectral unicorn. His smile was genuine, though, as he quietly offered, “Huzzah for King Bruenor.”

But there was the cloud again, behind his eyes, and as he turned back to the road in front of them, Catti-brie figured it out.

“You’re not coming to Gauntlgrym with us,” she stated. In the shadows of his eyes, she didn’t have to ask.

“I have said no such thing,” Regis replied, but he didn’t look at her when he spoke.

“Nor did you deny it, even now.”

She watched the halfling’s face tighten, though he still would not look over and up at her.

“How long have you known?” Catti-brie asked a short while later, when it became apparent to her that Regis was simply not going to lead this conversation.

“If Bruenor was marching to war in Gauntlgrym, and Drizzt was in Cormyr, or the Bloodstone Lands perhaps, what would you do?” Regis asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Would you accompany Bruenor on his quest, this latest quest in a perhaps unending line of quests, or would you desire to find Drizzt once more and resume your life beside him?”

“Donnola Topolino,” Catti-brie realized then.

“My love for her is no less than yours for Drizzt,” Regis explained. “I left her to fulfill my vow, and because I knew my friend Drizzt needed me. And so I traveled from Aglarond halfway across Faerûn to Icewind Dale, and stood with you and the others as we found our friend near death.”

The woman nodded, her open, sympathetic, and inviting expression prompting him forward.

“And this war we have just won,” Regis explained. “It was important, and in truth a continuation of that which we had started those decades ago. I served as Steward of Mithral Hall in the days of the first Obould.”

“I remember well, and you served with great honor.”

“And so I came back to finish what we started, to complete the circle,” the halfling explained. “In both of these duties, I nearly died—I’m not afraid to die. I never was, and certainly am not after my time in the enchanted forest of Mielikki.”

“But you are afraid that you will never see your beloved Donnola again,” the woman reasoned.

“This is a dwarf war, the quest of the Delzoun brotherhood,” Regis tried to explain. “I’m not a dwarf. Drizzt has said that taking Gauntlgrym from the drow could take years, and then holding it will likely prove to be a task that will stretch for decades. At what point . . . ?” His voice trailed off, the question unasked.

“Have you finished your service?” Catti-brie finished for him, and Regis finally did look up at her, plaintively. Her smile was warm and disarming. “You have done more than any could ask, my friend. None will judge you for leaving now, though surely we all will miss you.”

“Brother Afafrenfere is only passing through Mithral Hall,” Regis explained, “then going south to Silverymoon and Everlund, and to the south road to Waterdeep.”

“He has explained as much, that his time here is at its end,” Catti-brie agreed. “All are grateful for his actions here, for indeed he is credited in no small part in killing the white dragon on the slopes of Fourthpeak. A great ally is Brother Afafrenfere.”

“From Waterdeep, he’ll find the Trade Way, which I rode with the Grinning Ponies before I found you on the banks of Maer Dualdon. I will go with him, all the way to the port of Suzail, and I’ll sail home east to Aglarond while he sails northeast to the city of Procampur and the Bloodstone Lands.”

“I wish I could dissuade you.”

“You know that you cannot.”

“You are in love, Reg . . . Spider Parrafin,” Catti-brie said. “I only hope that one day I will meet this halfling woman, Donnola Topolino, who has so stolen your heart.”

“You will,” Regis vowed. “I will lead her to the road of adventure beside me, or so I hope. And that road will lead to Gauntlgrym.”

“It is a wider world than you imagine, I fear. When Wulfgar left us for Icewind Dale, did we not proclaim that we would all meet again.”

“I did—with Wulfgar, I mean. As did Drizzt.”

“And?”

The halfling swallowed hard at that poignant question, for that meeting with Wulfgar in Icewind Dale had been friendly enough, but strangely unfulfilling to all three of them.

“Are you saying that I should not return? Or that I should not go?”

“I surely do not want you to go!” the woman replied. “But no, you have no choice, my dear friend. I have seen you looking east in your quiet moments—we all have. You cannot spend your days wondering about your beloved Donnola. You’ll always have the Companions of the Hall, Spider of Aglarond. Always will you remain one of us, and so, always welcomed wherever we are, with open arms and wide smiles, and kisses from me—so many kisses!”

“I tried to be worthy of the Companions of the . . .” Regis started to say, but his voice trailed away.

It was becoming very real to him, then, Catti-brie knew. He was leaving them, and the weight of that was only now truly descending on his small shoulders.

“Worthy? You are a hero, in every sense of the word. You saved Wulfgar’s life in the tunnels south of Mithral Hall. Twice!”

“After he came for me.”

“It is what we do for each other,” said Catti-brie. “I only wish I could accompany you to Aglarond.”

Regis nodded and swallowed hard, and forced Catti-brie to look him in the eye, his expression very serious, which confused the woman.

“Wulfgar has agreed to come with me,” Regis explained.

For a moment, Catti-brie seemed unbalanced, as if she would simply fall off the side of her magically summoned mount. She steadied herself quickly, though, and managed a nod.

“He has agreed to stand beside me in my journeys,” Regis explained. “Perhaps he feels as if our trials together in the Underdark . . .”

“He owes you a life debt.”

“One for which I would never demand payment.”

“He is happy to repay you. Likely, he is happy to find the open road and more conquests . . . of various natures.”

“Say nothing, I beg you,” Regis was quick to reply, as if Catti-brie’s remarks had reminded him of something. “Well, we will go to Drizzt and Bruenor together, but for now, it is our secret. Agreed?”

“Why?”

Regis motioned forward with his chin, leading Catti-brie’s gaze to Wulfgar, and to the Knight-Commander of Silverymoon.

“Aleina Brightlance is quite smitten with him,” Regis explained.

“Perhaps she will go with you.”

Regis was shaking his head before Catti-brie finished the thought. “Her duty is to Silverymoon. There are rumors that she will be given command of Sundabar when it is rebuilt.”

“You have chosen love,” the woman reminded. “Perhaps she . . .”

“I do not think Wulfgar would want her to come,” Regis explained. “He’s . . . different now. I don’t believe he desires a family—he already had one, in his previous life. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren— he knew them all. He outlived many of them. He had already mentioned to me that his biggest regret in the road I have chosen is that he’ll not travel with you back through Longsaddle.”

“Penelope Harpell,” Catti-brie said with a laugh.

Regis shrugged. “Our secret?”

“One we have to share soon with Drizzt and Bruenor, that we can all properly prepare to say good-bye.”

The halfling nodded and turned his focus once more on the road ahead. He had to do that, Catti-brie knew, to make sure she didn’t see the tears that were welling in his eyes.

Later that day, the great marching force split, with the elves turning east to the River Surbrin, where their boats waited to ferry them and the thousands from Citadel Adbar across to the Glimmerwood.

King Emerus and his charges of Citadel Felbarr could have gone that way as well, but he opted to march farther south, to the Surbrin Bridge, beside his friend Bruenor so they could further discuss this great adventure that awaited the dwarves in the most ancient Delzoun home of all.

That very night, Catti-brie and Regis found Bruenor, Wulfgar, and Drizzt alone by a fire. They took their seats beside their friends, with food and drink all about.

“Call in Guenhwyvar,” Regis bade Drizzt.

The drow looked at him curiously, for it seemed a strange request. “Ain’t none in the world to attack the army about us,” Bruenor said. But Regis looked to Drizzt and nodded, and Catti-brie did, too, and so the drow pulled out his onyx figurine and brought in the sixth member of the Companions of the Hall.

All gathered then, Regis and Wulfgar announced their plans, and Bruenor’s cry of dismay split the night and turned many nearby eyes their way.

“It’s me greatest quest!” the dwarf protested, on the edge of desperation. “I can’no be doin’ it without ye!”

“Yes you can,” Catti-brie answered. “
We
can. Drizzt and I will be beside you, and thousands of your sturdy kin as well.”

Bruenor looked at her sharply, clearly feeling he had been deceived, or as if he was the last to know.

“They have to go,” Catti-brie insisted. “Their business—Regis’s business in particular—is no less urgent than your own. More urgent than your own, I say, for Gauntlgrym has been there for thousands of years, and will be there for thousands more, no doubt, but Donnola . . .”

She looked at Regis, who nodded his gratitude.

“Yer girl?” Bruenor asked incredulously, as if the thought of chasing a woman when such a grand adventure lay in front of them was perfectly ludicrous.

“The woman I will make my wife,” said Regis. “Perhaps we will name our first child Bruenor, though I fear his beard will disappoint you.”