Bleary eyed after yet another long, restless night, Catti-brie pulled on a robe and crossed her small room, hoping to find comfort in the daylight. Her thick auburn hair had been flattened on one side of her head, forcing an angled cowlick on the other side, but she didn't care. Busy rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she nearly stumbled over the threshold and paused there, struck suddenly by something she did not understand.
She ran her fingers over the wood of the door and stood con fused, nearly overwhelmed by the same feeling she had felt the night before, that something was out of place, that something was wrong. She had intended to go straight to breakfast, but felt com pelled to get Drizzt instead.
The young woman shuffled swiftly down the corridor to Drizzt's room and knocked on the door. After a few moments, she called, "Drizzt?" When the drow didn't answer, she gingerly turned the handle and pushed the door open. Catti-brie noticed immedi ately that Drizzt's scimitars and traveling cloak were gone, but before she could begin to think about that, her eyes focused on the bed. It was made, covers tucked neatly, though that was not unusual for the dark elf.
Catti-brie slipped over to the bed and inspected the folds. They were neat, but not tight, and she understood that this bed had been made a long while ago, that this bed had not been slept in the previ ous night.
"What's all this?" the young woman asked. She took a quick look around the small room, then made her way back out into the hall. Drizzt had gone out from Mithril Hall without warning before, and often he left at night. He usually journeyed to Silverymoon, the fabulous city a week's march to the east.
Why, this time, did Catti-brie feel that something was amiss? Why did this not so unusual scene strike Catti-brie as very out of place? The young woman tried to shrug it away, to overrule her heartfelt fears. She was just worried, she told herself. She had lost Wulfgar and now felt overprotective of her other friends.
Catti-brie walked as she thought it over, and soon paused at another door. She tapped lightly, then, with no response forthcom ing (though she was certain that this one was not yet up and about), she banged harder. A groan came from within the room.
Catti-brie pushed the door open and crossed the room, sliding to kneel beside the tiny bed and roughly pulling the bedcovers down from sleeping Regis, tickling his armpits as he began to squirm.
"Hey!" the plump halfling, recovered from his trials at the hands of the assassin Artemis Entreri, cried out. He came awake immediately and grabbed at the covers desperately.
"Where's Drizzt?" Catti-brie asked, tugging the covers away more forcefully.
"How would I know?" Regis protested. "I have not been out of my room yet this morning!"
"Get up." Catti-brie was surprised by the sharpness of her own voice, by the intensity of her command. The uncomfortable feelings tugged at her again, more forcefully. She looked around the room, trying to discern what had triggered her sudden anxiety.
She saw the panther figurine.
Catti-brie's unblinking stare locked on the object, Drizzt's dear est possession. What was it doing in Regis's room? she wondered. Why had Drizzt left without it? Now the young woman's logic began to fall into agreement with her emotions. She skipped across the bed, buried Regis in a jumble of covers (which he promptly pulled tight around his shoulders), and retrieved the panther. She then hopped back and tugged again at the stubborn halfling's blan ket shell.
"No!" Regis argued, yanking back. He dove facedown to his mattress, pulling the ends of the pillow up around his dimpled face.
Catti-brie grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, yanked him from the bed, and dragged him across the room to seat him in one of the two wooden chairs resting at opposite sides of a small table. Pil low still in hand, still tight against his face, Regis plopped his head straight down on the table.
Catti-brie took a firm and silent hold on the end of the pillow, quietly stood, then yanked it suddenly, tearing it from the surprised halfling's grasp so that his head knocked hard against the bare wood.
Groaning and grumbling, Regis sat straight in the chair and ran stubby fingers through his fluffy and curly brown locks, their bounce undiminished by a long night's sleep.
"What?" he demanded.
Catti-brie slammed the panther figurine atop the table, leaving it before the seated halfling. "Where is Drizzt?" she asked again, evenly.
"Probably in the Undercity, " Regis grumbled, running his tongue all about his cottony feeling teeth. "Why don't you go ask Bruenor?"
The mention of the dwarvish king set Catti-brie back on her heels. Go ask Bruenor? she silently scoffed. Bruenor would hardly speak to anyone, and was so immersed in despair that he probably wouldn't know it if his entire clan up and left in the middle of the night!
"So Drizzt left Guenhwyvar, " Regis remarked, thinking to downplay the whole thing. His words fell awkwardly on the per ceptive woman's ears, though, and Catti-brie's deep blue eyes nar rowed as she studied the halfling more closely.
"What?" Regis asked innocently again, feeling the heat of that unrelenting scrutiny.
"Where is Drizzt?" Catti-brie asked, her tone dangerously calm. "And why do ye have the cat?"
Regis shook his head and wailed helplessly, dramatically drop ping his forehead again against the table.
Catti-brie saw the act for what it was. She knew Regis too well to be taken in by his wily charms. She grabbed a handful of curly brown hair and tugged his head upright, then grabbed the front of his nightshirt with her other hand. Her roughness startled the half ling; she could see that clearly by his expression, but she did not relent. Regis flew from his seat. Catti-brie carried him three quick steps, then slammed his back against the wall.
Catti-brie's scowling visage softened for just a moment, and her free hand fumbled with the halfling's nightshirt long enough that she could determine that Regis was not wearing his magical ruby pendant, an item she knew he never removed. Another curious, and certainly out of place, fact that assailed her sensibilities, fed her growing belief that something indeed was terribly wrong.
"Suren there's something going on here that's not what it's sup posed to be, " Catti-brie said, her scowl returning tenfold.
"Catti-brie!" Regis replied, looking down to his furry topped feet, dangling twenty inches from the floor.
"And ye know something about it, " Catti-brie went on.
"Catti-brie!" Regis wailed again, trying to bring the fiery young woman to her senses.
Catti-brie took up the halfling's nightshirt in both her hands, pulled him away from the wall, and slammed him back again, hard. "I've lost Wulfgar, " she said grimly, pointedly reminding Regis that he might not be dealing with someone rational.
Regis didn't know what to think. Bruenor Battlehammer's daughter had always been the levelheaded one of the troupe, the calm influence that kept the others in line. Even cool Drizzt had often used Catti-brie as a guidepost to his conscience. But now...
Regis saw the promise of pain set within the depths of Catti brie's deep blue, angry eyes.
She pulled him from the wall once more and slammed him back. "Ye're going to tell me what ye know, " she said evenly.
The back of Regis's head throbbed from the banging. He was scared, very scared, as much for Catti-brie as for himself. Had her grief brought her to this point of desperation? And why was he sud denly caught in the middle of all this? All that Regis wanfed out of life was a warm bed and a warmer meal.
"We should go and sit down with Brue, " he began, but he was summarily interrupted as Catti-brie slapped him across the face.
He brought his hand up to the stinging cheek, felt the angry welt rising there. He never blinked, eyeing the young woman with disbelief.
Catti-brie's violent reaction had apparently surprised her as much as Regis. The halfling saw tears welling in her gentle eyes. She trembled, and Regis honestly didn't know what she might do.
The halfling considered his situation for a long moment, coming to wonder what difference a few days or weeks could make. "Drizzt went home, " the halfling said softly, always willing to do as the situ ation demanded. Worrying about consequences could come later.
Catti-brie relaxed somewhat. "This is his home, " she reasoned. "Suren ye don't mean Icewind Dale."
"Menzoberranzan, " Regis corrected.
If Catti-brie had taken a crossbow quarrel in her back, it would not have hit her harder than that single word. She let Regis down to the floor and tumbled backward, falling into a sitting position on the edge of the halfling's bed.
"He really left Guenhwyvar for you, " Regis explained. "He cares for both you and the cat so very much."
His soothing words did not shake the horrified expression from Catti-brie's face. Regis wished he had his ruby pendant, so that he might use its undeniable charms to calm the young woman.
"You can't tell Bruenor, " Regis added. "Besides, Drizzt might not even go that far." The halfling thought an embellishment of the truth might go a long way. "He said he was off to see Alustriel, to try to decide where his course should lead." It wasn't exactly true, Drizzt had only mentioned that he might stop by Silverymoon to see if he might confirm his fears, but Regis decided that Catti-brie needed to be given some hope.
"You can't tell Bruenor, " the halfling said again, more forcefully. Catti-brie looked up at him; her expression was truly one of the most pitiful sights Regis had ever seen.
"He'll be back, " Regis said to her, rushing over to sit beside her. "You know Drizzt. He'll be back."
It was too much for Catti-brie to digest. She gently pulled Regis's hand off her arm and rose. She looked to the panther fig urine once more, sitting upon the small table, but she had not the strength to retrieve it.
Catti-brie padded silently out of the room, back to her own chambers, where she fell listlessly upon her bed.
Drizzt spent midday sleeping in the cool shadows of a cave, many miles from Mithril Hall's eastern door. The early summer air was warm, the breeze off the cold glaciers of the mountains carrying little weight against the powerful rays of the sun in a cloudless sum mer sky.
The drow did not sleep long or well. His rest was filled with thoughts of Wulfgar, of all his friends, and of distant images, memo ries of that awful place, Menzoberranzan.
Awful and beautiful, like the dark elves who had sculpted it.
Drizzt moved to his shallow cave's entrance to take his meal. He basked in the warmth of the bright afternoon, in the sounds of the many animals. How different was this from his Underdark home! How wonderful!
Drizzt threw his dried biscuit into the dirt and punched the floor beside him.
How wonderful indeed was this false hope that had been dan gled before his desperate eyes. All that he had wanted in life was to escape the ways of his kin, to live in peace. Then he had come to the surface, and soon after, had decided that this place, this place of buzzing bees and chirping birds, of warm sunlight and alluring moonlight, should be his home, not the eternal darkness of those tunnels far below.
Drizzt Do'Urden had chosen the surface, but what did that choice mean? It meant that he would come to know new, dear friends, and by his mere presence, trap them into his dark legacy. It meant that Wulfgar would die by the summons of Drizzt's own sis ter, and that all of Mithril Hall might soon be in peril.