brightened the young woman's mood.
'I have come from Bruenor,' the drow ranger said to Cobble. 'He mentioned something about testing the holy water for the ceremony.'
'Tasting,' Cobble corrected, and he hopped all about, looking this way and that. 'Yes, yes, the mead,' he said, obviously flustered. 'Bruenor's wanting to settle the mead issue this day.' He looked up at Drizzt. 'We're thinking that the dark stuff will be too much for the soft-bellied group from Silverymoon.'
Cobble rushed about the large chapel, scooping buckets from the various fonts that lined the walls. Catti-brie offered Drizzt an incredulous shrug as he silently mouthed the words, 'Holy water?'
Priests of most religions prepared their blessed water with exotic oils; it should have come as no surprise to Drizzt, after many years beside rowdy Bruenor, that the dwarven clerics used hops.
'Bruenor said you should bring a generous amount,' Drizzt said to Cobble, instructions that were hardly necessary given that the excited cleric already had filled a small cart with flasks.
'We're done for the day,' Cobble announced to Catti-brie. The dwarf ambled quickly to the door, his precious cargo bouncing along. 'But don't ye be thinking that ye've had the last word in all of this!' Catti-brie snarled again, but Cobble, rambling along at top speed, was too far gone to notice.
Drizzt and Catti-brie sat side by side on the small pedestal in silence for some time. 'Is the apron so bad?' the drow finally mustered the nerve to ask.
Catti-brie shook her head. 'Tis not the garment, but the meaning of the thing I'm not liking,' she explained. 'Me wedding's in two weeks. I'm thinking that I've seen me last adventure, me last fight, except for those I'm doomed to face against me own husband.'
The blunt admission struck Drizzt profoundly and alleviated much of the weight of keeping his fears private.
'Goblins across Faerun will be glad to hear that,' he said facetiously, trying to bring some levity to the young woman's dark mood. Catti-brie did manage a slight smile, but there remained a profound sadness in her blue eyes.
'You fought as well as any,' Drizzt added.
'Did ye not think I would?' Catti-brie snapped at him, suddenly defensive, her tone as sharp as the edges of Drizzt's magical scimitars.
'Are you always so filled with anger?' Drizzt retorted, and his accusing words calmed Catti-brie immediately.
'Just scared, I'm guessing,' she replied quietly.
Drizzt nodded, understanding and appreciating his friend's growing dilemma. 'I must go back to Bruenor,' he explained, rising from the pedestal. He would have left it at that, but he could not ignore the pleading look Catti-brie then gave him. She turned away immediately, staring straight ahead under the cowl of her thick auburn locks, and that despondence struck Drizzt even more profoundly.
'It is not my place to tell you how you should feel,' Drizzt said evenly. Still the young woman did not look back to him. 'My burden as your friend is equal to the one you carried in the southern city of Calimport, when I had lost my way. I say to you now: The path before you turns soon in many directions, but that path is yours to choose. For all our sakes, and mostly yours, I pray that you consider your course carefully.' He bent low, pushed back the side of Catti-brie's hair and kissed her gently on the cheek.
He did not look back as he left the chapel.
Half of Cobble's cart was already empty by the time the drow entered Bruenor's audience hall. Bruenor, Cobble, Dagna, Wulfgar, Regis, and several other dwarves argued loudly over which pail of the 'holy water' held the finest, smoothest taste-arguments that inevitable produced further taste tests, which in turn created further arguments.
'This one!' Bruenor bellowed after draining a pail and coming back up with his red beard covered in foam.
'That one's good for goblins!' Wulfgar roared, his voice dull. His laughter ended abruptly, though, when Bruenor plopped the pail over his head and gave it a resounding backhand.
'I could be wrong,' Wulfgar, suddenly sitting on the floor, admitted, his voice echoing under the metal bucket.
'Tell me what ye think, drow,' Bruenor bellowed when he noticed Drizzt. He held out two sloshing buckets.
Drizzt put up a hand, declining the invitation. 'Mountain springs are more to my liking than thick mead,' he explained.
Bruenor threw the buckets at him, but the drow easily stepped aside, and the dark, golden liquid oozed slowly across the stone floor. The sheer volume of the ensuing protests from the other dwarves at the waste of good mead astounded Drizzt, but not as much as the fact that this probably was the first time he had ever seen Bruenor scolded without finding the courage to fight back.
'Me king,' came a call from the door, ending the argument. A rather plump dwarf, fully arrayed in battle gear, entered the audience hall, the seriousness of his expression deflating the mirth in the tasting chamber.
'Seven kin have not returned from the newer sections,' the dwarf explained.
'Taking their time, is all,' Bruenor replied.
'They missed their supper,' said the guard.
'Trouble,' Cobble and Dagna said together, suddenly solemn.
'Bah!' snorted Bruenor as he waved his thick hand unsteadily in front of him. 'There be no more goblins in them tunnels. The groups down there now're just hunting
mithril. They found a vein o' the stuff, I tell ye. That'd keep any dwarf, even from his supper.'
Cobble and Dagna, even Regis, Drizzt noted, wagged their heads in agreement. Given the potential danger whenever traveling the tunnels of the Underdark (and the deepest tunnels of Mithril Hall could be considered nothing less), the wary drow was not so easily convinced.
'What're ye thinking?' Bruenor asked Drizzt, seeing his plain concern.
Drizzt considered his response for a long while. 'I am thinking that you are probably right.'
'Probably?' Bruenor huffed. 'Ah, well, I never could convince ye. Go on, then. It's what ye want. Take yer cat and go find me overdue dwarves.'
Drizzt's wry smile left no doubt that Bruenor's instructions had been his intention all along.
'I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar! I will go!' Wulfgar proclaimed, but he sounded somewhat ridiculous with his head still under the bucket. Bruenor leveled another backhand to silence his spouting.
'And elf,' the king called, turning Drizzt back to him. Bruenor offered a wicked smile to all of those about him, then dropped it fully over Regis. 'Be taking Rumblebelly with ye,' the dwarf king explained. 'He's not doing me much good about here.'
Regis's big, round eyes got even bigger and rounder. He ran plump, soft fingers through his curly brown hair, then tugged uncomfortably at the one dangling earring he wore. 'Me?' he asked meekly. 'Go back down there?'
'Ye went once,' Bruenor reasoned, making his argument more to the other dwarves than to Regis. 'Got yer- self a few goblins, if me memory's right.'
'I have too much to-'
'Get ye going, Rumblebelly,' Bruenor growled, leaning forward in his seat and nearly overbalancing in the process. 'For the first time since ye come running back to us-and know that we're knowing ye're running! — do what I ask of ye without yer back talk and excuses!'
The seriousness of Bruenor's grim tone surprised everyone in the room, apparently even Regis, for the halfling offered not another word, just got up and walked obediently to stand beside Drizzt.
'Can we stop by my room?' Regis quietly asked the drow. 'I would like my mace and pack, at least.'
Drizzt draped an arm over his three-foot-tall companion's slumping shoulders and turned him about. 'Fear not,' he said under his breath, and to accentuate the point he dropped the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar into the halfling's eager hands.
Regis knew he was in fine company.
