Maestro (20 page)

The two Desai looked at each other, then back to Catti-brie.

“I carried that with me, that knowledge that somewhere out there were two people who would forgive me, no matter my actions, who would love me, who would do anything for me. That was my crutch and my armor. Those feelings, so deep and so true, helped me more than you can imagine on those dark and difficult stretches of my journey.

“And now my joy at the victories my friends and I have achieved is tenfold because I have shared it with you. And now my quest, as difficult as anything I have ever tried to do in my life—in both of my lives!—is easier. Because I know that even if I fail, you will be here for me, loving me. Not judging, but helping. I cannot tell you how important that is to me. My steps are so much lighter . . . I go to Shade Enclave unafraid. I return to the Hosttower’s ruins confident. I am not afraid of failure because I know you are here.”

The tears flowed freely, from all three, and the hugs lasted a long, long while.

Then it was Kavita and Niraj’s turn to tell Catti-brie about the war on the plains of Netheril, of how they fought side by side, adding their sorcery to the sheer grit and muscle of the proud and fierce Desai.

Catti-brie was horrified to learn that the two had battled the same Lady Avelyere in a contest of fireballs and lightning bolts. Avelyere was much more accomplished in the ways of the Weave, Catti-brie was certain, but Avelyere’s principal studies were on the arts of deception and clever diplomacy.

The auburn-haired woman found herself breathing an audible sigh of relief to learn that Avelyere, too, had left that field very much alive—and Catti-brie hoped that was still true.

Her reaction caught her parents off guard.

“She was kind to me,” Catti-brie explained. “And she did not kill you when I fled her coven, though under Netherese law, she could have. Perhaps there is some good in our enemies—in some at least.”

“I don’t know if she lives or if she perished in the war,” Niraj said.

“That battle was early on, in the first attack by the Netherese,” said Kavita. “Long before Shade Enclave fell from the sky.”

“I hope she is alive and well,” Catti-brie admitted. “And I hope that my hope is not troubling to you.”

“The war is over,” said Kavita. “Neither side is unburned in a simmering pot.”

The sheer generosity of that remark had Catti-brie smiling yet again.

“So be it, but I fear you going there,” said Niraj.

Catti-brie nodded, understanding his sincere concern. “I am a capable priestess and sorcerer,” she said with a wry grin. “And I’ve been trained to fight by the most capable warriors in the land. You should witness the spectacle of my drow husband wielding his twin scimitars!

“But I’ll need none of that. I come with a message from—”

“Yes, yes,” Niraj interrupted.

“A drow husband . . .” Kavita whispered, and shook her head.

“He is as fine a man as I have ever . . .” Catti-brie started, but Kavita stopped her with an upraised hand.

“If he makes you happy, then he makes me happy,” she said. “But it is beyond my understanding!”

“You will meet him and your understanding will change,” Catti-brie assured her. “And your expectations, too, I expect.”

“This does not change the fears I hold for you going back to the Netherese,” Niraj said.

“Find the finest warrior in the tribe and send him to me, and I will leave him sprawling in the mud,” Catti-brie replied.

Kavita laughed and said, “I have seen that before, my Ruqiah!”

“Yes, yes, you already explained. We could not stop you from going on your journey when you were but a child, so we know that we cannot stop you from your chosen course now. Please come back to us when you are done with the Netherese, and before you travel to the west, that we know you are safe.”

“I promise.”

Giant broken stones and crumbled castle walls formed a natural maze in the foothills of a small mountain cluster on the Netheril Plain, the detritus of the fallen city. Shade Enclave had towered over the plain from on high, a testament to magical power and architectural grandiosity.

And now it was a ruin, fallen from the sky, shattered, its broken bones scattered all around the foothills.

Catti-brie rode into the pile of mountains, stone, and masonry on Andahar. She had thought to summon a simple and more typical spectral horse, that she would not broadcast her allegiance to a goddess the Netherese would not favor, after all, but in the end, she had settled again on Andahar. She came as a representative of Jarlaxle and Bregan D’aerthe. She need not fear.

What seemed chaos showed more order than she had anticipated as she approached the piles of rubble. Among those broken stones, the Netherese had fashioned walkways, chambers, and parapets, and, finally, a very heavy iron door.

Faced by a line of grim-faced guards glaring down at her, all armed with long spears and crossbows, Catti-brie dismounted and dismissed her summoned unicorn.

“Your name?” one of the guards demanded.

“I am Catti-brie of Icewind Dale,” she said, and she wished that she had considered her identity more carefully before saying that. Would that name mean anything to the people of this new Shade Enclave? Would Parise Ulfbinder know it? Jarlaxle had hinted to her that the Netherese lord wasn’t completely ignorant of the goings-on that had brought her here, or even of the godly intervention that had brought her back to Faerûn from the afterlife.

“I beg entrance,” she said.

“On what grounds?”

“I once lived here,” she replied, and she turned her face skyward. “Up there. I had friends—”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Not so long.”

“I was there,” said the guard.

“We all were,” said another. “I know not your face or your name.”

Catti-brie held up her hands. She wasn’t sure how far she could go. When she had run out on the Coven, Lady Avelyere’s school of magic, she had faked her own death. She had no way of knowing how far that news had spread, and no way of knowing if others of Avelyere’s students had left Shade Enclave.

She simply didn’t have enough reference points to properly bluff, so she decided upon the barest truth.

“I trained with Lady Avelyere,” she said. “Circumstance removed me from Shade Enclave, and only upon returning to the plain was I aware that the floating city was no more.”

“Avelyere?” the first guard asked, and before Catti-brie even nodded he turned to the woman standing beside him and whispered something she could not hear, That woman ran off.

Catti-brie held her breath. She wasn’t very good at this game. Had she erred in the admission? Was Avelyere alive, perhaps? Or another of the Coven who could identify her?

She started to speak again, but was silenced immediately by the guard, and when she moved to argue, he pointed at her threateningly.

She fell quiet and stood there for a long, long while—so long that she moved to some shade and sat down upon a flat stone. Finally she noted a commotion up above, with several of the guards moving back out of sight and returning to stare down at her once more. The war was over, so said Niraj and Kavita, but there was nothing welcoming about this place.

Strangely, the approach to this city among the ruins made her think of Citadel Adbar. She kept that in mind, and reminded herself that the dwarves of that citadel were not an unreasonable lot, even though they were no more welcoming than this group. She thought of Mirabar, too, with its imposing wall and grim-faced guards. She couldn’t really blame the Netherese, surrounded by enemies, surrounded by tribes that held long and justified grievances for decades of oppression.

The great door creaked as it swung open and a host of soldiers rode out astride large, black-furred mounts with curving ram horns. Darkness seemed to follow their every stride, for they exuded the stuff of shadow. Unsure what to make of the greeting, Catti-brie quietly prepared a spell as they neared. With a word, she would exact a blinding holy light to steal the shadows, and before her foes recovered, she hoped, the large raven would fly away.

The riders, five in all, flanked her to either side, with one stopping right in front of her.

“Lady Avelyere, you said,” prompted the apparent leader of the group. She was a thick and clearly strong woman, wearing black plate armor, and with a huge sword strapped to the side of her heavy saddle.

Catti-brie nodded.

“And your name was Catti-brie, so you said.”

“Yes.”

“Stay close and run. We will move quickly.”

“I can summon a mount . . .” Catti-brie tried to say, but she was moving, having no choice in the matter, as the riders closed in around her and trotted off for the town.

The great gates were closing even as Catti-brie crossed into the settlement, and it felt to her as if they had closed the very sunlight, as well. The place had the smell and taste and images of the Plane of Shadows, a gray and muted place indeed.

The architecture was undeniably beautiful, though. The Netherese had carved out a functioning enclave within the rubble of a mountain and city that had fallen from the sky and shattered. In the chaos of the debris, they had found some measure of order, with Houses carved into great rock walls, a marketplace created from a boulder tumble, and neat roads of black stone cutting smartly through it all.

The pace of the escort remained furious, with common folk dodging aside all the way through the town. They rushed down to a small valley between two rocky mountain spurs. Within the arms of the mountain, a circle of boulders had fallen, or more likely, given the exact spacing of the ten great stones, had been placed. Each was hollowed in some form or another, and with black metal stairwells, railings and balconies set about—it seemed to Catti-brie like some squat version of the drow stalagmite mounds of Menzoberranzan.

The riders dismounted around her, and the commander took Cattibrie by the arm and roughly tugged her along. They went between the nearest two stones, revealing to Catti-brie, in the middle of the circle, a small square structure, open on one side and with a descending stairway.

“She is already announced,” came a voice from those stairs and a woman climbed into view. She was young, younger than Catti-brie even, and dressed in a loose blouse and gray pants, a uniform Cattibrie knew well.

“You may go back to your duties,” the young sorceress told the guard.

“She is a known threat,” the soldier protested, and that caught Cattibrie by surprise for both claims—that she was “known” and a “threat.”

“Lady Avelyere is touched by your concern,” the young student of the Coven, clearly coached, replied. “She is also disappointed in your lack of faith in her ability to control this situation.”

The female guard leader held up her hand in acquiescence and turned around, waving for her minions to go off with her.

On the stairs, the young woman motioned for Catti-brie to join her.

They descended several levels, through a maze of corridors and rooms all splendidly decorated and meticulously cleaned. This was Avelyere’s home, Catti-brie realized, and like the Coven in the floating Shade Enclave, the lady kept true to appearances.

They came to a door hung with curtains. Catti-brie saw Lady Avelyere through the glass, and a mix of emotions swirled. Avelyere had been Catti-brie’s captor, though she had been allowed many privileges. But Avelyere had been as a mentor to her as well, and sometimes a caring one at that. There were occasions where Avelyere, under the terms of the capture, could have punished Catti-brie—indeed, Lady Avelyere could have simply executed Catti-brie at any time, and no one who cared would have ever known.

Inside the room, the lady motioned, and Catti-brie’s escort opened the door and stepped aside, then closed the door behind her, leaving Cattibrie alone in the room with the middle-aged woman.

“Ah, Catti-brie,” Lady Avelyere greeted. She motioned to a chair set across a small table from where she was a seated, and where a glass of white wine was set. “Or should I call you Ruqiah?”

Catti-brie took a deep breath to compose herself, and to remind herself that she was not the little-skilled child who had been in Lady Avelyere’s care. She was Chosen of Mielikki, and a powerful wizard trained by the Harpells. She had faced down Archmage Gromph Baenre, who could likely reduce this woman sitting in front of her to ashes with a snap of his dark fingers.

“I prefer Catti-brie,” she replied.

“Even then, no doubt, when you lied to me under my own roof.”

“When I was a prisoner, you mean, stolen from my family.”

Avelyere started to respond, but just tipped her wine glass.

“I did not kill the body I put in the House to disguise my escape,” Catti-brie told her—for some reason she didn’t yet understand, she wanted Lady Avelyere to know that truth.

“I know.”

“What else do you know?” Catti-brie asked. She picked up the wine and started to bring it to her lips, then paused and looked at it suspiciously.

Then she looked at Avelyere and nodded, and took a sip.

“You fear it poisoned?”

“Lady Avelyere is far too clever and charming for such things. Besides, why would you be angry with me?”

“You left without my permission, and in complete deception.”

“And I return without your permission, and indeed, not even to see you. I came to speak with Lord Parise Ulfbinder, as I was bidden by a mutual friend. I accommodate you by visiting now, but if you wish, I will be on my way to Lord Parise.”

“And if I tried to stop you?”

“I would burn your house down.”

Lady Avelyere stared at her hard and long. “You believe you can do exactly that, don’t you?”

“I believe my road has been difficult enough without your judgment.”

Lady Avelyere continued to stare for only a short while, then smiled and held up her hands. “I am glad that you accepted my invitation, Ruqi—Catti-brie,” she said.

“Then I am, too,” Catti-brie replied. “There are too many questions along too many hallways. But I know in my heart that I bear you no ill will. Believe it or not, good Lady Avelyere, but I am truly glad that you are alive, that you survived the catastrophe that befell Shade Enclave.”