He fell back, quickly replaced by Drizzt, who wrapped Catti-brie in a tight hug and eased her to the floor. The drow looked at Cadderly, his expression begging for an explanation, but he saw the priest even more perplexed, wide-eyed and staring at his hand.

Drizzt, too, took note of the hand that Cadderly had placed upon Catti-brie. What appeared as a blue translucence solidified and became flesh tone once more.

“What was that?” the drow asked as soon as Catti-brie settled. “I do not know,” Cadderly admitted. “Words I hear too often in these times. “Agreed.”

“But you seem certain that my wife cannot be saved,” said Drizzt, a sharper tone edging into his voice.

“I do not wish to give such an impression.”

“I’ve seen the way you and Jarlaxle shake your heads when the conversation comes to her. You don’t believe we can bring her back to us—not whole, at least. You have lost hope for her, but would you, I wonder, if it was Lady Danica here, in that state, and not Catti-brie?”

“My friend, surely you don’t—”

“Am I to surrender my hope as well? Is that what you expect of me?”

“You’re not the only one here clinging to desperate hope, my friend,” Cadderly scolded.

Drizzt eased back a bit at that reminder. “Danica will find them,” he offered, but how hollow his words sounded. He continued in a soft voice, “I feel as if there is no firmament beneath my feet.”

Cadderly nodded in sympathy.

“Should I battle the dracolich with the hope that in its defeat, I will find again my wife?” Drizzt blurted, his voice rising again. “Or should I battle the beast with rage because I will never again find her?”

“You ask of me … these are questions …” Cadderly blew a heavy sigh and lifted his hands, helpless. “I do not know, Drizzt Do’Urden. Nothing can be certain regarding Catti-brie.”

“We know she’s mad.”

Cadderly started to reply, “Do we?” but he held it back, not wishing to involve Drizzt in his earlier ponderings.

Was Catti-brie truly insane, or was she reacting rationally to the reality that was presented to her? Was she re-living her life out of sequence or was she truly returning to those bubbles of time-space and experiencing those moments as reality?

The priest shook his head, for he had no time to travel the possibilities of such a line of reasoning, particularly since the scholars and sages, and the great wizards and great priests who had visited Spirit Soaring had thoroughly dismissed any such possibility of traveling freely through time.

“But madness can be a temporary thing,” Drizzt remarked. “And yet, you and Jarlaxle think her lost forever. Why?”

“When the madness is tortured enough, the mind can be permanently wounded,” Cadderly replied, his dour tone making it clear that such was an almost certain outcome and not a remote possibility. “And your wife’s madness seems tortured, indeed. I fear—Jarlaxle and I fear—that even if the spell that is upon her is somehow ended, a terrible scar will remain.”

“You fear, but you do not know.”

Cadderly nodded, conceding the point. “And I have witnessed miracles before, my friend. In this very place. Do not surrender your hope.”

That was all he could give, and all that Drizzt had hoped to hear, in the end. “Do you think the gods have any miracles left in them?” the dark elf quietly asked.

Cadderly gave a helpless laugh and shrugged. “I grabbed the sun itself and pulled it to me,” he reminded the drow. “I know not how, and I didn’t try to do it. I grabbed a cloud and made of it a chariot. I know not how, and didn’t try to do it. My voice became thunder … truly, my friend, I wonder why anyone would bother asking me questions at this time. And I wonder more why anyone would believe any of my answers.”

Drizzt had to smile at that, and so he did, with a nod of acceptance. He turned his gaze to Catti-brie and reached out to gently stroke her thick hair. “I cannot lose her.”

“Let us destroy our enemy, then,” Cadderly offered. “Then we will turn all of our attention, all of our thoughts, and all of our magic to Catti-brie, to find her in her … elsewhere lucidity … and bring her sense back to our time and space.”

“Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt said, and Cadderly blinked in surprise.

“She was petting the cat, yes.”

“No, I mean in the next fight,” Drizzt explained. “When the Ghost King began to leave the field, Guenhwyvar fled faster. She does not run from a fight. Not from a raging elemental or a monstrous demon, and not from a dragon or dracolich. But she fled, ears down, full speed away into the trees.”

“Perhaps she was hunting one of the crawlers.”

“She was running. Recall Jarlaxle’s tale of his encounter with the specter he believes was once a lich of the Crystal Shard.”

“Guenhwyvar is not of this plane, and she feared creating a rift as the Ghost King opened a dimensional portal,” Cadderly reasoned.

“One that perhaps Guenhwyvar could navigate,” Drizzt replied. “One that perhaps I could navigate with her, to that other place.”

Cadderly couldn’t help but smile at the reasoning, and Drizzt offered a curious expression. “There is an old saying that great minds follow similar paths to the same destination,” he said.

“Guen?” Drizzt asked hopefully, patting his belt pouch. But Cadderly was shaking his head.

“The panther is of the Astral Plane,” the priest explained. “She cannot, of her own will, go to where the Ghost King resides, unless someone there possessed a figurine akin to your own and summoned her.”

“She fled the field.”

“Because she feared a rift, a great tear that would consume all near to her, and the Ghost King, if their dangerous abilities came crashing together. Perhaps that rift would send our enemy to the Astral Plane, or to some other plane, but likely the creature is anchored enough both here and in the Shadowfell that it could return.” He was still shaking his head. “But I have little faith in that course and fear a potential for greater disaster.”

“Greater?” Drizzt asked, and he began a hollow laugh. “Greater?”

“Are we at the point where we reach blindly for the most desperate measures we can find?” Cadderly asked.

“Are we not?”

The priest shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he admitted, his gaze fixing on Catti-brie again. “Perhaps we will find another way.”

“Perhaps Deneir will deliver a miracle?”

“We can hope.”

“You mean pray.”

“That, too.”

He lifted the spoon to her lips and she did not resist, taking the food methodically. Drizzt dabbed a napkin into a small bowl of warm water and wiped a bit of the porridge from her lips.

She seemed not to notice, as she seemed not to notice the taste of the food he offered. Every time he put a spoonful into Catti-brie’s mouth, every time she showed no expression at all, it pained Drizzt and reminded him of the futility of it all. He had flavored the porridge exactly as his wife liked, but he understood with each spoonful that he could have skipped the cinnamon and honey and used bitter spices instead. It wouldn’t have mattered one bit to Catti-brie.

“I still remember that moment on Kelvin’s Cairn,” he said to her. “When you relived it before my eyes, it all came back into such clear focus, and I recalled your words before you spoke them. I remember the way you had your hair, with those bangs and the uneven length from side to side. Never trust a dwarf with scissors, right?”

He managed a little laugh that Catti-brie seemed not to hear.

“I did not love you then, of course. Not like this. But that moment remained so special to me, and so important. The look on your face, my love—the way you looked inside of me instead of at my skin. I knew I was home when I found you on Kelvin’s Cairn. At long last, I was home.

“And even though I had no idea for many years that there could ever be more between us—not until that time in Calimport—you were ever special to me. And you still are, and I need you to come back to me, Catti. Nothing else matters. The world is a darker place. With the Ghost King and the falling Weave, and the implications of this catastrophe, I know that so many trials will fall before me, before all goodly folk. But I believe that I can meet those challenges, that we together will find a way. We always find a way!