Matron Baenre walked by the mercenary to the marble cylinder; Sos'Umptu was already inside, waiting. 'Besides,' the first matron mother added with a wicked grin, 'now that House Oblodra has come into the alliance, what choice does
Mez'Barris have?'
Chapter 4 THE FIRE IN HER EYES
Catti-brie pulled her gray cloak about her to hide the dagger and mask she had taken from Regis. Mixed feelings assaulted her as she neared Bruenor's private chambers; she hoped both that the dwarf would be there, and that he would not.
How could she leave without seeing Bruenor, her father, one more time? And yet, the dwarf now seemed to Catti-brie a shell of his former self, a wallowing old dwarf waiting to die. She didn't want to see him like that, didn't want to take that image of Bruenor with her into the Underdark.
She lifted her hand to knock on the door to Bruenor's sitting room, then gently cracked the door open instead and peeked in. She saw a dwarf standing off to the side of the burning hearth, but it wasn't Bruenor. Thibbledorf Pwent, the battlerager, hopped about in circles, apparently trying to catch a pesky fly. He wore his sharp-ridged armor (as always), complete with glove nails and knee and elbow spikes, and other deadly points protruding from every plausible angle. The armor squealed as the dwarf spun and jumped, an irritating sound if Catti-brie had ever heard one. Pwent's open-faced gray helm rested in the chair beside him, its top spike half as tall as the dwarf. Without it, Catti-brie could see, the battlerager was almost bald, his remaining thin black strands of hair matted greasily to the sides of his head, then giving way to an enormous, bushy black beard.
Catti-brie pushed the door a little farther and saw Bruenor sitting before the low-burning fire, absently trying to flip a log so that its embers would flare to life again. His halfhearted poke against the glowing log made Catti-brie wince. She remembered the days not so long ago, when the boisterous king would have simply reached into the hearth and smacked the stubborn log with his bare hand.
With a look to Pwent (who was eating something that Catti-brie sincerely hoped was not a fly), the young woman entered the room, checking her cloak as she came in to see that the items were properly concealed.
'Hey, there!' Pwent howled between crunchy bites. Even more than her disgust at the thought that he was eating a fly, Catti-brie was amazed that he could be getting so much chewing out of it!
'Ye should get a beard!' the battlerager called, his customary greeting. From their first meeting, the dirty dwarf had told Catti-brie that she'd be a handsome woman indeed if she could only grow a beard.
'I'm working at it,' Catti-brie replied, honestly glad for the levity. 'Ye've got me promise that I haven't shaved me face since the day we met.' She patted the battlerager atop the head, then regretted it when she felt the greasy film on her hand.
'There's a good girl,' Pwent replied. He spotted another flitting insect and hopped away in pursuit.
'Where ye going?' Bruenor demanded sharply before Catti-brie could even say hello.
Catti-brie sighed in the face of her father's scowl. How she longed to see Bruenor smile again! Catti-brie noted the bruise on Bruenor's forehead, the scraped portion finally scabbing over. He had reportedly gone into a tirade a few nights before, and had actually smashed down a heavy wooden door with his head while two frantic younger dwarves tried to hold him back. The bruise combined with Bruenor's garish scar, which ran from his forehead to the side of his jaw, across one socket where his eye had once been, made the old dwarf seem battered indeed!
'Where ye going?' Bruenor asked again, angrily.
'Settlestone,' the young woman lied, referring to the town of barbarians, Wulfgar's people, down the mountain from Mithril Hall's eastern exit. 'The tribe's building a cairn to honor Wulfgar's memory.' Catti-brie was somewhat surprised at how easily the lie came to her; she had always been able to charm Bruenor, often using half-truths and semantic games to get around the blunt truth, but she had never so boldly lied to him.
Reminding herself of the importance behind it all, she looked the red-bearded dwarf in the eye as she continued. 'I'm wanting to be there before they start building. If they're to do it, then they're to do it right. Wulfgar deserves no less.'
Bruenor's one working eye seemed to mist over, taking on an even duller appearance, and the scarred dwarf turned away from Catti-brie, went back to his pointless fire poking, though he did manage one slight nod of halfhearted agreement. It was no secret in Mithril Hall that Bruenor didn't like talking of Wulfgar—he had even punched out one priest who insisted that Aegis-fang could not, by dwarvish tradition, be given a place of honor in the Hall of Dumathoin, since a human, and no dwarf, had wielded it.
Catti-brie noticed then that Pwent's armor had ceased its squealing, and she turned about to regard the battlerager. He stood by the opened door, looking forlornly at her and at Bruenor's back. With a nod to the young woman, he quietly (for a rusty-armored battlerager) left the room.
Apparently, Catti-brie was not the only one pained by the pitiful wretch Bruenor Battlehammer had become.
'Ye've got their sympathy,' she remarked to Bruenor, who seemed not to hear. 'All in Mithril Hall speak kindly of their wounded king.'
'Shut yer face,' Bruenor said out of the side of his mouth. He still sat squarely facing the low fire.
Catti-brie knew that the implied threat was lame, another reminder of Bruenor's fall. In days past, when Bruenor Battlehammer suggested that someone shut his face, he did, or Bruenor did it for him. But, since the fights with the priest and with the door, Bruenor's fire, like the one in the hearth, had played itself to its end.
'Do ye mean to poke that fire the rest o' yer days?' Catti-brie asked, trying to incite a fight, to blow on the embers of Bruenor's pride.
'If it pleases me,' the dwarf retaliated too calmly.
Catti-brie sighed again and pointedly hitched her cloak over the side of her hip, revealing the magical mask and Entreri's jeweled dagger. Even though the young woman was determined to undertake her adventure alone, and did not want to explain any of it to Bruenor, she prayed that Bruenor would have life enough within him to notice.
Long minutes passed, quiet minutes, except for the occasional crackle of the embers and the hiss of the unseasoned wood.
'I'll return when I return!' the flustered woman barked, and she headed for the door. Bruenor absently waved her away over one shoulder, never bothering to look at her.
Catti-brie paused by the door, then opened it and quietly closed it, never leaving the room. She waited a few moments, not believing that Bruenor remained in front of the fire, poking it absently. Then she slipped across the room and through another doorway, to the dwarf's bedroom.
Catti-brie moved to Bruenor's large oaken desk—a gift from Wulfgar's people, its polished wood gleaming and designs of Aegis-fang, the mighty warhammer that Bruenor had crafted, carved into its sides. Catti-brie paused a long while, despite her need to be out before Bruenor realized what she was doing, and looked at those designs, remembering Wulfgar. She would never get over that loss. She understood that, but she knew, too, that her time of grieving neared its end, that she had to get on with the business of living. Especially now, Catti-brie reminded herself, with another of her friends apparently walking into peril.
In a stone coffer atop the desk Catti-brie found what she was looking for: a small locket on a silver chain, a gift to Bruenor from Alustriel, the Lady of Silverymoon. Bruenor had been thought dead, lost in Mithril Hall on the friends' first passage through the place. He had escaped from the halls sometime later, avoiding the evil gray dwarves who had claimed Mithril Hall as their own, and with Alustriel's help, he found Catti-brie in Longsaddle, a village to the southwest. Drizzt and Wulfgar had left long before that, on their way south in pursuit of Regis, who had been captured by the assassin Entreri.
Alustriel had then given Bruenor the magical locket. Inside was a tiny portrait of Drizzt, and with this device the dwarf could generally track the drow. Proper direction and distance from Drizzt could be determined by the degrees of magical warmth emanating from the locket.
The metal bauble was cool now, colder than the air of the room, and it seemed to Catti-brie that Drizzt was already a long way from her.
