Regis held his pipe in his hand, then, making no move to return it to his lips as he stared up at his huge friend. The tone of Wulfgar’s voice, one of reverence—but more than that, one of warmth and profound joy—had caught him by surprise here, he realized. As did the serene look on Wulfgar’s face. The big man was staring out over the lake now, as calmly as Regis had just been, and the pipe was in his mouth, and was settled there quite nicely, Regis thought.
“He didn’t kill me,” Wulfgar went on, and he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to Regis—and likely giving voice to the internal conversation that had found him in the waters of the pond in Iruladoon. “He took me in. He gave me life and gave me home, and gave me, with all of you and with the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer, family. All that I became after that battle, I owe to Bruenor. My return to my people and the woman I came to love and the children I came to know …” He paused and flashed Regis an ear-to-ear smile, his white teeth shining within the frame of his yellow beard. “And the grandchildren!” he said with great enthusiasm.
“They are all gone now?” Regis asked somberly.
Wulfgar nodded and looked back out at the lake, but his expression was not one of loss or sadness, or even resignation. “To Warrior’s Rest, so I must believe. And if that promise holds truth, then there they will be when I am no more again, when the road of my grave is straight to the halls. What are a few decades of delay against the hopes of the eternity of godly reward?”
“If?” Regis said, picking up on that curious reference. They had all been dead, of course, and through the power of a goddess had returned to life. Could there be any doubt for any of them now regarding an afterlife?
He studied Wulfgar carefully as the big man shrugged and answered, “I do not know what lies on the other side of the cave beneath the waters of the pond, any more than I knew the reality of life after death before my journey to that strange forest.”
“Yet you died and went there, by the power of a goddess.”
“Perhaps.”
Regis stared at him incredulously.
“Who can know the truth of it?” Wulfgar asked. “Perhaps it is all a wizard’s trick, yes? A magical weave of deception to twist us and turn us to his desires.”
“You cannot believe that!”
Wulfgar laughed, took a deep draw, and almost managed a smoke ring—and one accompanied by only a minor fit of coughing.
“It does not matter,” Wulfgar said absently. “And only when I came to appreciate that truth, that I could not know the end of the road through the cave at the bottom of Iruladoon’s pond …” He paused again and seemed to be fighting for the right words. It seemed to Regis that his friend had found an epiphany beyond his ability to explain it.
“Whatever the gods have planned for me after I am truly and fully dead is theirs to determine,” Wulfgar went on. “Only when I came to truly appreciate that was I able to stop asking myself what Tempus wanted from me.”
“And ask instead what course was best for you,” Regis finished for him.
Wulfgar looked down at him and smiled once more. “What an ungrateful son I would be, what a foul friend indeed, had I gone through the other way and dived into that pond.”
“None of us would have judged you.”
Wulfgar’s expression reflected sincerity as he nodded his agreement. “Yet more confirmation that I was right to return,” he said, and his next smoke ring actually looked like a ring.
Regis wasted no time in sending a smaller ring right through it.
“I wasn’t coming,” Bruenor admitted to Catti-brie and Drizzt. Catti-brie sat by the drow’s bed as Drizzt leaned back, half-sitting, half-lying, still weak from his wounds. The dwarf shook his hairy head—his beard was growing in thick once more—and paced around the small room as if it were a cage.
The admission didn’t really shake Drizzt, but he noted the surprise on Catti-brie’s face.
“Reginald Roundshield, Guard Captain o’ King Emerus himself, at yer service!” Bruenor said with an almost-graceful bow.
“It’s an incredible tale,” Drizzt replied, shaking his head and considering the adventures his four friends had shared with him in the last couple of days. Regis had taken center stage in those bardic games, and if only a portion of what the halfling had claimed was true, then he had lived a thrilling second life indeed. “You, all of you, lived as children of others, and with full recollection of your life before. I can hardly believe it, though I do not doubt you.”
“Knocked me brains about near to batty. Aye, took me to the drink, it did!” Bruenor said with an exaggerated wink.
“King Emerus,” Drizzt mused. “Citadel Felbarr?”
“Aye, the same.”
“And how fares the good king?”
Bruenor shrugged. “All the land’s on edge. And all the land’s smellin’ with the stench o’ orcs.”
“That is why you almost turned aside from your course here and your pledge to Mielikki,” Catti-brie reasoned, and once more, Drizzt noted a bit of surprise, and even a bit of annoyance, in her reaction to Bruenor’s claim.
Bruenor started to answer, but held back and seemed to Drizzt to be weighing his words very carefully. Uncharacteristically so.
“You just said—” Catti-brie prompted.
Bruenor waved a hand to silence her. “I came to fight for me friend, so let’s find the fight and be done with it.” He looked to Catti-brie as he finished, as if expecting her to lead them right out on the hunt.
“What fight?” Drizzt asked.
“Who can know?” Catti-brie answered, speaking to Bruenor, not Drizzt. “We have done as the goddess bade us. And had we not—”
“I would have died up there on Kelvin’s Cairn that night,” Drizzt interrupted. He took Catti-brie’s hand and she looked into his eyes and nodded. His wounds would have proven mortal, she had already told him, as she had explained that Mielikki had guided her and the others to that particular spot on that particular night.
“Then we’re done here, and I’ve a road to be walking!” Bruenor declared.
“You intend to leave us?” Drizzt asked.
“Oh, yerself’s coming with me, don’t ye doubt,” the dwarf replied. “Got something I need to fix—something yerself needs to fix with me.”
“Many-Arrows?”
“The same.”
Drizzt shook his head helplessly. “There is no war,” he said quietly. “Surely that is a good thing.”
“There’ll be war,” Bruenor argued. “Soon enough if it ain’t started already, don’t ye doubt! In me days with Felbarr, then with Mithral Hall—”
“You returned to Mithral Hall?” the other two asked in unison.
Bruenor stopped his pacing, finally, and took a deep and steadying breath. “Aye, but they’re not for knowin’ me as anything but Reginald Roundshield—Little Arr Arr, as Emerus’s boys called me. Spent the better part of ’79 there, and I’m tellin’ ye true. War’s coming to the Silver Marches, and coming soon if it ain’t already on.”
“You cannot know that,” Drizzt insisted. “It was averted before, and so it might be again.”
“No!” Bruenor shouted, and stamped his boot. “No more! Wrong I was in signing that damned treaty! Did nothin’ more than hold it off.”
“We had little choice.”
“We had every choice!” Bruenor came back, again loudly as he clearly grew more and more agitated. “I should’ve put me axe right through the skull o’ that stinkin’ Obould and been done with it! And Mithral Hall … aye, but we should’ve stood strong.”
“The other kingdoms refused to help!” Drizzt reminded.
“Stood strong!” Bruenor shouted, and stamped his boot again. “And they’d’ve come in, don’t ye doubt! And we’d’ve been done with Obould and his ugly orcs then and there.”
“With thousands killed on both sides.”
“No shame in dyin’ when ye’re killin’ orcs!”
The door pushed open and Regis and
Wulfgar rushed in, looking around as if expecting to find a fight in progress.
“You took a chance,” Drizzt said, and he tried to calm his voice, though mostly unsuccessfully. “One that might reshape the relationship of the races to the orcs throughout the Realms, if the peace holds.”
“Maybe I ain’t wanting that.”
“You would prefer war?” Drizzt asked. He looked to Catti-brie for support, and was surprised by her stern expression—directed at him, not Bruenor. “King Obould offered us a different way,” Drizzt pushed on anyway. “We could not defeat him, not alone, perhaps not even if all the kingdoms of the Silver Marches had joined in with our cause, which they would not. The peace has held there, by all accounts.”
“I been there,” Bruenor muttered. “Not so peaceful.”
“But not war, either,” said Drizzt. “How many have been born, or have lived out their lives peacefully, who otherwise would have known only misery and death under the trample of armies?”
“And how many now will know the stamp o’ them boots because we didn’t put Obould back in his hole a hunnerd years ago?” Bruenor shot right back.
“It was never going to be an easy road to a lasting peace,” said Drizzt. “But it was worth the chance.”
“No!” Catti-brie cried. Both the drow and the dwarf stared incredulously at the usually gentle woman. “No,” Catti-brie said again, quieter now, but no less insistently. She shook her head to accentuate the point and declared, “It was no more than a fool’s game, a false hope against harsh reality.”
“You were there,” Drizzt reminded. “On the podium in Garumn’s Gorge beside the rest of us as Bruenor signed.”
“I wished to go out and hunt Obould with you and Bruenor and Regis,” Catti-brie replied, “to kill him and not to break bread.”
“But in the end, you came to agree with the intent and terms of the treaty.”
“And I was wrong,” came her simple admission. “You, my love, were wrong, most of all.”
The room held silent for a long while after that, the others mulling over the surprising reversal and accusation from the woman. Drizzt stared at her hard, as if she had just shot an arrow through his heart and soul, but she didn’t back down an inch.
“It seems that I missed eventful times,” said Wulfgar, who had left his friends and Mithral Hall before the advent of the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, never to return. He gave a little laugh, trying to break the tension clearly, and just as clearly, he failed.
“I advised Bruenor as I thought best,” Drizzt said quietly.
“It was a good plan,” said Regis, but no one seemed to notice.
“Ye could’no’ve bringed me to sign the durned paper if me heart didn’t agree with ye,” Bruenor said.
“Bad advice is often given from a place of good intent,” Catti-brie remarked.
“Did you drag us back to the world of the living so that you could play out some unexpected anger over a decision made a century ago?” Regis demanded, and this time, he commanded center stage, stepping out in front of Bruenor to boldly confront the woman.
Catti-brie looked at him, her expression showing surprise for just a moment before a smile widened on her pretty face.
“It was a mistake, and a grand one,” she said. “We all need to know that now, I believe, for the choices we will find before us will likely prove no less momentous than those we made before.”
“Those we made wrongly, ye mean,” said a clearly agitated Bruenor.
“Aye,” Catti-brie agreed without the slightest hesitation—and again, without the slightest caveat against her assertion to be found in her tone, her expression, or her posture.
“Ye seem awful sure o’ yerself, girl,” Bruenor warned.
“They are orcs,” she replied, her tone deathly even and unforgiving. “We should have killed them, every one.”
“Their women, too, then?” Drizzt asked.
“Where’s the babies’ room?” Catti-brie replied in her best dwarf voice as she echoed the merciless battle cry usually reserved by the bearded folk for when they broke through the defenses of a fortress of goblinkin or evil giantkind. It was an old joke among the dwarves more than anything else, a reason to smash their mugs together in bawdy toast. But when Catti-brie spoke it then, it seemed to the other four as if she was as serious as death itself.
Drizzt visibly winced at the proclamation. “And you would take the blade …?” he started to ask.
“Yes,” she said, and the other four shuddered a bit as the cold wind of sheer indifference blew through them.
Drizzt couldn’t tear his incredulous stare from the woman standing before him, suddenly so tall and beautiful and terrible all at once in her white gown and black shawl. He felt Regis staring up at him from the side, but couldn’t manage to glance back at the halfling, and knew that he had nothing to offer that likely plaintive expression anyway. For none in that room were more confused at that moment than Drizzt himself!
“What is this about?” Regis quietly asked him.
“The burden you carry blurs your judgment,” Catti-brie said to Drizzt. “As you see yourself, you hope to find in others—in orcs and goblins, even.” She shook her head. “But that cannot be, with only very rare exception.”
“Ye’ve become very sure o’ yerself, girl,” Bruenor warned.
Behind him, Wulfgar laughed, and that surprising interjection turned them all around to consider him.
“Mielikki told her this,” he explained, and he nodded to Catti-brie, turning them all back to face the woman.
Who still did not blink, and indeed, even nodded her agreement to confirm Wulfgar’s assessment.
“The goblinkin are not as the other races of the world,” Catti-brie explained. “They are not as the humans, the halflings, the elves, the dwarves, the gnomes … even the drow. That is your mistake, my love. That was the mistake all of us made that long-ago day when we agreed to the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge. We hoped to see the world through our own perspectives, and projected that common sense to the hearts of the orcs. Perhaps because we wanted so badly to believe it, perhaps because we were given little choice, but in any case, we were wrong. Mielikki has shown me this.”
Drizzt shook his head, though more in confusion than disagreement.
“They are evil,” Catti-brie stated simply.
“Have you met my kin?” Drizzt sarcastically replied.
“The difference is not subtle,” she immediately replied, as if expecting that very line of questioning. “Your people—most of your people—are nurtured in the webs of a demon goddess, who has built within your culture a structure of control that oft leads to acts of evil. The ways of the drow, often evil I agree, remain a matter of choice, of free will, though the institutions of the drow distort that choice in the direction the Spider Queen’s demands. This is not the case with goblinkin or most giantkind.”
“Ye think a ranger might know this,” Bruenor said off-handedly, and when everyone turned to him, the dwarf shrugged and laughed. “Well, ain’t that the whole point o’ yer training, elf?” he asked of Drizzt.
Drizzt turned back to Catti-brie. “I met a goblin once who would argue against your point.”
“Nojheim, I know,” she replied. “I remember your tale.”
“Was I wrong about him?”
Catti-brie shrugged. “Perhaps there are exceptions, but if so, they are greatly deviant from their race. Or perhaps he was not full with goblin blood—surely there are examples of goodly half-orcs, even full communities of half-orcs who coexist in peace.”
“But not full-blooded goblinkin?” Drizzt asked.
“No.”
“We should assume then that they—all of them—all orcs, all goblins, gnolls, and kobolds are simply that? Simply evil?” Drizzt asked, letting his skepticism and dismay shine through his tone. “We should treat them without mercy, and strike without parlay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You sound very much like the matron
mothers of Menzoberranzan when they speak of other races,” he scolded.
But again, Catti-brie didn’t blink and didn’t back away a step. “Were Bruenor to claim such against … say, Nesmé, then his claims would be compatible to those of your matron mothers,” she explained. “Not my claims. Not regarding goblinkin. They are created to destroy, nothing more. Their godly design is as a blight upon the land, a scourge and challenge to those who would serve goodly purpose. It is not a king they serve, or even a goddess, as with the drow. Nor are these the words designed by kings who would conquer, or races seeking supremacy. This is the simple truth of it, I tell you as Mielikki has told to me. The goblinkin are not nurtured to evil. Evil is their nature. That distinction is not subtle, but profound, and woe to any who blurs that line.”
“King Obould saw a different way,” Drizzt reasoned. “A better way for his people, and by his strength …” He stopped in the face of Catti-brie’s scowl.
“That was the deception, to us and to Obould,” Catti-brie said. “He was granted great gifts by the magic of the shamans of Gruumsh One-eye, and indeed, by Gruumsh himself. Physical gifts, like his great strength—greater than any orc should know. But also, he was given wisdom and a vision of a better way for the orcs, and he believed it, and through his strength, so they have pursued that course.”
“Then your point does not hold!” Drizzt argued.
“Unless it was all a ruse,” Catti-brie continued, undaunted. “Through Obould, Gruumsh led the orcs into society, a sister-state to the kingdoms of the Silver Marches, but only because he believed they could better destroy that society from within. Even with the army he had constructed, Obould could not have conquered the Silver Marches. Tens of thousands of goodly folk would have died in that war, but the kingdoms of the Silver Marches would not have fallen. This time, it would seem that Gruumsh demanded more of his fodder minions.”
“And we gave it to him,” Bruenor said with great lament.
Drizzt looked at him in alarm, and then turned back to Catti-brie, whose eyes finally showed a bit more regret—some sympathy, perhaps, but not disagreement with the grim assessment.