“Fret is full of magic, I am told,” Catti-brie said, glancing at Wulfgar.

Alustriel shook her head. “Fret finds the beauty, he does not create it.”

“He finds it as well as Drizzt finds orcs to slay, or Bruenor finds metal to mine, to be sure,” said Wulfgar.

“He has mentioned that he would like to search for the same in Wulfgar, as well.”

Catti-brie laughed as Wulfgar chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve not the time.”

“He will be so disappointed,” said Alustriel.

“Next time we meet, perhaps,” said Wulfgar, and his words elicited a doubting glance from Catti-brie.

She stared at him deeply for a long while, measuring his every expression and movement, and the inflections of his voice. His offer to Fret may or may not have been disingenuous, she knew, but it was moot in any case because Wulfgar had decided that he would never again visit Silverymoon. Catti-brie saw that clearly, and had been feeling it since before they had departed Mithral Hall.

A sense of dread welled up inside her, mingling with that last special moment she had shared with Wulfgar. There was a storm coming. Wulfgar knew it, and though he hadn’t yet openly shared it, the signs were mounting.

“This is Master Tapwell of the Rearing Dragon, a fine establishment in the city’s lower ward,” Alustriel explained. The short, round-bellied man came forward a step, rather sheepishly. “A common respite for visitors to Silverymoon.”

“Well met,” Catti-brie greeted, and Wulfgar nodded his agreement.

“And to yerselves, Prince and Princess of Mithral Hall,” Tapwell replied, dipping a few awkward bows in the process.

“The Rearing Dragon played host to many of the refugees that crossed the Surbrin from Mithral Hall,” Alustriel explained. “Master Tapwell believes that a pair who passed through might be of interest to you.”

Wulfgar was already leaning forward eagerly. Catti-brie put her hand on his forearm to help steady him.

“Yer girl, Colson,” Tapwell said, rubbing his hands nervously over his beer-stained apron. “Skinny thing with straw hair to here?” He indicated a point just below his shoulder, a good approximation of the length of Colson’s hair.

“Go on,” Wulfgar bade, nodding.

“She came in with the last group, but with her mother.”

“Her mother?” Wulfgar looked to Alustriel for an explanation, but the woman deferred to Tapwell.

“Well, she said she was her mother,” the tavernkeeper explained.

“What was her name?” Catti-brie asked.

Tapwell fidgeted as if trying to fathom the answer. “I remember her calling the girl Colson clear enough. Her own name was like that. Same beginning, if ye get my meaning.”

“Please remember,” Wulfgar prompted.

“Cottie?” Catti-brie asked.

“Cottie, yeah. Cottie,” said Tapwell.

“Cottie Cooperson,” Catti-brie said to Wulfgar. “She was with the group Delly tended in the hall. She lost her family to Obould.”

“And Delly gave her a new one,” said Wulfgar, but his tone was not bitter.

“You agree with this assessment?” Alustriel asked.

“It does make sense,” said Catti-brie.

“This was the last group that crossed the Surbrin before the ferry was closed down, and not just the last group to arrive in Silvery-moon,” Alustriel said. “I have confirmed that from the guards of Winter Edge themselves. They escorted the refugees in from the Surbrin—all of them—and they, the guards, remain, along with several of the refugees.”

“And have you found those refugees to ask them of Cottie and Colson?” asked Catti-brie. “And are Cottie and Colson among those who remain?”

“Further inquiries are being made,” Alustriel replied. “I am fairly certain that they will only confirm what we have already discovered. As for Cottie and the child, they left.”

Wulfgar’s shoulders slumped.

“For Nesmé,” Alustriel explained. “Soon after those refugees arrived, a general call came out from Nesmé. They are rebuilding, and offering homes to any who would go and join with them. The place is secure once more—many of the Knights in Silver stand watch with the Riders of Nesmé to ensure that all of the trolls were destroyed or chased back into the Trollmoors. The city will thrive this coming season, well defended and well supplied.”

“You are certain that Cottie and Colson are there?” Wulfgar asked.

“I am certain that they were on the caravan that left for Nesmé, only days after they arrived here in Silverymoon. That caravan arrived, though whether Cottie and the child remained with it through the entirety of the journey, I cannot promise. They stopped at several way stations and villages along the route. The woman could have left at any of those.”

Wulfgar nodded and looked to Catti-brie, their road clear before them.

“I could fly you to Nesmé upon my chariot,” Alustriel offered. “But there is another caravan leaving by midday tomorrow, one that will follow the exact route that Cottie rode, and one in need of more guards. The drivers would be thrilled to have Wulfgar and Catti-brie along for the journey, and Nesmé is only a tenday away.”

“And there is nowhere for Cottie to have gone beyond Nesmé,” Wulfgar reasoned. “That will do, and well.”

“Very good,” said Alustriel. “I will inform the lead driver.” She and Tapwell took their leave.

“Our road is clear, then,” said Wulfgar, and he seemed content with that.

Catti-brie, though, shook her head.

“The southern road is secured and Nesmé is not so far,” Wulfgar said to her doubting expression.

“This is not good news, I fear.”

“How so?”

“Cottie,” Catti-brie explained. “I happened upon her a few times after my wound kept me in the lower tunnels. She was a broken thing, in spirit and in mind.”

“You fear that she would harm Colson?” Wulfgar said, his eyes widening with alarm.

“Never that,” said Catti-brie. “But I fear that she will clutch the girl too tightly, and will not welcome the reaching hands of Wulfgar.”

“Colson is not her child.”

“And for some, truth is no more than an inconvenience,” Catti-brie replied.

“I will take the child,” Wulfgar stated in a tone that left no room for debate.

Aside from that undeniable determination, it struck Catti-brie that Wulfgar had named Colson as “the child,” and not as “my child.” She studied her friend carefully for a few moments, seeking a deeper read.

But it was not to be found.

CHAPTER 9

AT DESTINY’S DOOR

I don’t like this place.”

A trick of the wind, blowing down a channel between a pair of towering snow dunes, amplified Regis’s soft-spoken words so that they seemed to fill the space around his four dwarf companions. The words blended with the mourn of the cold breeze, a harmony of fear and lament that seemed so fitting in a place called Fell Pass.

Bruenor, who was too anxious to be anywhere but up front, turned, and appeared as if he was about to scold the halfling. But he didn’t. He just shook his head and left it at that, for how could he deny the undeniable?

The region was haunted, palpably so. They had felt it on their journey through the pass the previous spring, moving west to east toward Mithral Hall. That same musty aura remained very much alive in Fell Pass, though the surroundings had been transformed by the season. When they’d first come through, the ground was flat and even, a wide and easily-traversed pass between a pair of distant mountain ranges. Perhaps the winds from both of those ranges continually met here in battle, flattening the ground. Deep snow had since fallen in the teeth of those competing winds, forming a series of drifts that resembled the dunes of the Calim Desert, like a series of gigantic, bright white scallop shells evenly spaced perpendicular to the east-west line that marked the bordering mountain ranges. With the melting and refreezing of the late winter, the top surface of the snow had been crusted with ice, but not enough to bear the weight of a dwarf. Thus they had to make their trudging way along the low points of the still-deep snow, through the channels between the dunes.