knot. For the first time in many days, Wulfgar seemed to approve completely of Catti-brie's reasoning, and the nod of his head, and of Bruenor's and of Cobble's, was certainly appreciative when Pwent made no move to answer.
"How long will Drizzt be gone?" the barbarian asked, to change the subject before Pwent could find his irritating voice.
"The tunnels are long," Bruenor replied.
"He will return for the ceremony?" Wulfgar asked, and there seemed to Catti-brie to be some ambivalence in his tone, an uncertainty of which answer he would prefer.
"Be sure that he will," the young woman put in evenly. "For be sure that there'll be no wedding until Drizzt is back from the tunnels." She looked at Bruenor, thoroughly squashing his protests before he ever uttered them. "And I'm not for caring if all the kings and queens of the North are kept waiting a month!"
Wulfgar seemed on the verge of an explosion, but he was wise enough to direct his mounting anger away from volatile Catti-brie. "I should have gone with him!" he growled at Bruenor. "Why did you send Regis along? What good might the halfling do if enemies are found?"
The ferocity of the lad's tone caught Bruenor off his guard.
"He's right," Catti-brie snapped in her father's ear, not that she wanted to agree with Wulfgar on any point, but that she, like Wulfgar, saw the opportunity to vent her anger openly.
Bruenor sank back in his chair, his dark eyes darting from one to the other. "Dwarves're lost, is all," he said.
"Even if that is true, what will Regis do but slow down the drow?" Catti-brie reasoned.
"He said he'd find a way to fit in!" Bruenor protested.
"Who said?" Catti-brie demanded.
"Rumblebelly!" shouted her flustered father.
"He did not even wish to go!" Wulfgar shot back.
"Did too!" Bruenor roared, leaping up from his seat and pushing the leaning Wulfgar back two steps with a sturdy forearm slam to the lad's chest. "'Twas Rumblebelly that telled me to send him along with the drow, I tell ye!"
"Regis was here with yerself when ye got the news o' the missing dwarves," Catti-brie reasoned. "Ye didn't say a thing about Regis telling ye to send him."
"He telled me before that," Bruenor answered. "He telled . . ." The dwarf stopped suddenly, realizing the illogic of it all. Somehow, somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered Regis explaining that he and Drizzt should go after the missing dwarves, but how could that be, since Bruenor had made the decision as soon as they all learned that dwarves were missing?
"Have ye been tasting the holy water again, me king?" Cobble asked respectfully but firmly.
Bruenor held his hand out, motioning for them all to be quiet while he sought his recollections. He remembered Regis's words distinctly and knew he was not imagining them, but no images accompanied the memory, no scene where he could place the halfling and thus straighten out the apparent time discrepancy.
Then an image came to Bruenor, a swirling array of shining facets, spiraling down and drawing him with them into the depths of a wondrous ruby.
"Rumblebelly telled me that the dwarves'd be missing," Bruenor said slowly and clearly, his eyes closed as he forced the memory from his subconscious. "He telled me I should send himself, and Drizzt, to find them, that them two alone'd get me dwarves back to the halls safely."
"Regis could not have known," Cobble reasoned, obviously doubting Bruenor's words.
"And even if he did, the little one would not have wished to go along to find them," Wulfgar added, equally doubtful. "Is this a dream - ?"
"Not a dream!" Bruenor growled. "He telled me ... with that ruby of his." Bruenor's face screwed up as he tried to remember, tried to call upon his dwarven resistance to magic to fight past the stubborn mental block.
"Regis would not - " Wulfgar started to say again, but this time it was Catti-brie, knowing the truth of her father's claims, who interrupted him.
"Unless it wasn't really Regis," she offered, and her own words made her mouth drop open with their terrible implications. The three had been through much beside Drizzt, and they all knew well that the drow had many evil and powerful enemies, one in particular who would have the wiles to create such an elaborate deception.
Wulfgar looked equally stricken, at a loss, but Bruenor was fast to react. He jumped down from the throne and blasted between Wulfgar and Pwent, nearly knocking them both from their feet. Catti-brie went