'Ye can be leaving,' she snapped at the too dignified lady.
'Drizzt is indeed making for MenzoberranzanI' Alustriel announced, and Catti-brie came forward again, anxiously, her embarrassment lost in the face of more important news.
'I ventured into the spirit world last night,' Alustriel explained. 'There one might find many answers. Drizzt traveled north of Silverymoon, through the Moonwood, on a straight line for the mountains surrounding Dead Ore Pass.'
Catti-brie's expression remained quizzical.
'That is where Drizzt first walked from the Underdark,' Alustriel went on, 'in a cave east of the fabled pass. It is my guess that he means to return by the same route that led him from the darkness.'
'Get me there,' the young woman demanded, rising from the water, too intent for modesty.
'I will provide mounts,' Alustriel said as she handed the younger woman a thick towel. 'Enchanted horses will allow you to speed across the land. The journey should take you no more than two days.'
'Ye cannot use yer magic to just send me there?' Catti-brie asked. Her tone was sharp, as though she believed that Alustriel was riot doing all that she could.
'I do not know cave's location,' the silver-haired lady explained.
Catti-brie stopped toweling herself, nearly dropped her clothing, which she had gathered together, and stared blankly, helplessly.
'That is why I have brought Fret,' Alustriel explained, holding up a hand to calm the young woman.
'Fredegar Rockcrusher,' the dwarf corrected in a strangely melodic, singsong voice, and he swept his arm out dramatically and dipped a graceful bow. Catti-brie thought he sounded somewhat like an elf trapped in a dwarfs body. She furrowed her brow as she closely regarded him for the first time; she had been around dwarves all of her life and had never seen one quite like this. His beard was neatly trimmed, his robes perfectly clean, and his skin did not show the usual hardness, rockiness. Too many baths in scented oils, the young woman decided, and she looked contemptuously at the steaming tub.
'Fret was with the party that first tracked Drizzt from the Underdark,' Alustriel continued. 'After Drizzt had left the area, my curious sister and her companions backtracked the drow's trail and located the cave, the entrance to the deep tunnels.
'I hesitate to point the way for you,' the Lady of Silverymoon said after a long pause, her concern for the young woman's safety evident in her tone and expression.
Catti-brie's blue eyes narrowed, and she quickly pulled on her breeches. She would not be looked down upon, not even by Alustriel, and would not have others deciding her course.
'I see,' remarked Alustriel with a nod of her head. Her immediate understanding set Catti-brie back.
Alustriel motioned for Fret to retrieve Catti-brie's pack. A sour expression crossed the tidy dwarf's face as he moved near the dirty thing, and he lifted it gingerly by two extended fingers. He glanced forlornly at Alustriel, and when she did not bother to look back at him, he left the room.
'I did not ask ye for any companion,' Catti-brie stated bluntly.
'Fret is a guide to the entrance,' Alustriel corrected, 'and nothing more. Your courage is admirable, if a bit blind,' she added, and before the young woman could find the words to reply, Alustriel was gone.
Catti-brie stood silently for a few moments, water from her wet hair dripping down her bare back. She fought away the feeling that she was just a little girl in a big and dangerous world, that she was small indeed beside the tall and powerful Lady Alustriel.
But the doubts lingered.
Two hours later, after a fine meal and a check on provisions, Catti-brie and Fret walked out of Silverymoon's eastern gate, the Sundabar Gate, beside Lady Alustriel, an entourage of soldiers keeping a respectful but watchful distance from their leader.
A black mare and a shaggy gray pony awaited the two travelers.
'Must I?' Fret asked for perhaps the twentieth time since they had left the castle. 'Would not a detailed map suffice?'
Alustriel just smiled and otherwise ignored the tidy dwarf. Fret hated anything that might get him dirty, anything that would keep him from his duties as Alustriel's best-loved sage. Certainly the road into the wilds near Dead Ore Pass qualified on both counts.
'The horseshoes are enchanted, and your mounts will fly like the wind itself,' Alustriel explained to Catti-brie. The silver-haired woman looked over her shoulder to the grumbling dwarf.
Catti-brie was not quick to respond, offered no thanks for Alustriel's effort. She had said nothing to Alustriel since their meeting earlier that morning, and had carried herself with an unmistakably cool demeanor.
'With luck, you will arrive at the cave before Drizzt,' Alustriel said. 'Reason with him and bring him home, I beg. He has no place in the Underdark, not anymore.'
'Drizzt's 'place' is his own to decide,' Catti-brie retorted, but she was really implying that her own place was hers to decide.
'Of course,' Alustriel agreed, and she flashed that smile—that knowing grin that Catti-brie felt belittled her— again.
'I did not hinder you,' Alustriel pointed out. 'I have done my best to aid your chosen course, whether I think it a wise choice or not.'
Catti-brie snickered. 'Ye just had to add that last thought,' she replied.
'Am I not entitled to my opinion?' Alustriel asked.
'Entitled to it and givin' it to all who'll hear,' Catti-brie remarked, and Alustriel, though she understood the source of the young woman's demeanor, was plainly surprised.
Catti-brie snickered again and kicked her horse into a walk.
'You love him,' Alustriel said.
Catti-brie pulled hard on the reins to stop her horse and turn it halfway about. Now she wore the expression of surprise.
'The drow,' Alustriel said, more to bolster her last statement, to reveal her honest belief, than to clarify something that obviously needed no further explanation.
Catti-brie chewed on her lip, as though seeking a response, then turned her mount roughly about and kicked away.
'It's a long road,' Fret whined.
'Then hurry back to me,' Alustriel said, 'with Catti-brie and Drizzt beside you.'
'As you wish, my lady,' the obedient dwarf replied, kicking his pony into a gallop. 'As you wish.'
Alustriel stood at the eastern gate, watching, long after Catti-brie and Fret had departed. It was one of those not-so-rare moments when the Lady of Silverymoon wished that she was not encumbered with the responsibilities of government. Truly, Alustriel would have preferred to grab a horse of her own and ride out beside Catn'-brie, even to venture into the Underdark, if necessary, to find the remarkable drow that had become her friend.
But she could not. Drizzt Do'Urden, after all, was a small player in a wide world, a world that continually begged audience at the Lady of Silverymoon's busy court.
'Good speed, daughter of Bruenor,' the beautiful, silver-haired woman said under her breath. 'Good speed and fare well.'
Drizzt eased his mount along the stony trail, ascending into the mountains. The breeze was warm and the sky clear, but a storm had hit this region in the last few days, and the trail remained somewhat muddy. Finally, fearing that his horse would slip and break a leg, Drizzt dismounted and led the beast carefully, cautiously.
He had seen the shadowing elf many times that morning, for the trails were fairly open, and in the up-and- down process of climbing mountains, the two riders were not often far apart. Drizzt was not overly surprised when he went around a bend to find the elf approaching from a trail that had been paralleling his own.
The pale-skinned elf, too, walked his mount, and he nodded in approval to see Drizzt doing likewise. He paused, still twenty feet from the drow, as though he did not know how he should react.
'If you have come to watch over the horse, then you might as well ride, or walk, beside me,' Drizzt called. Again the elf nodded, and he walked his shining black stallion up to the side of Drizzt's black-and-white mount.
Drizzt looked ahead, up the mountain trail. 'This will be the last day I will need the horse,' he explained. 'I do not know that I will ride again, actually.'
