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SharrSapphire in the Wheel (1,857 words) by [personal profile] somariel
Chapters: 1/1
Other Fandoms: Wheel of Time
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Warnings Apply
Relationship: Alustriel Silverhand/Sharrevaliir
Characters: Alustriel Silverhand, Drizzt Do’Urden, Laeral Silverhand, Bruenor Battlehammer, Ensemble Cast
Additional Tags: Fusion, Canon Divergence
Series: Part 9 of A Crossing of the Realms
Summary:

What if the canon divergence of the series "SharrSapphire" happened in the series "The Ranger and the Wheel"?






Beginning notes
Inspired by [personal profile] senmut and [personal profile] ilyena_sylph's series SharrSapphire and The Ranger and the Wheel.

This fic contains a certain amount of borrowing from the first two fics in the series "SharrSapphire", since some scenes from those fics are covered in this one, with alterations based on the changes caused by them happening in the fusion universe of the series "The Ranger and the Wheel".

If you are confused by this fic, please go read the series "The Ranger and the Wheel" through "Champion of Mielikki, Champion of the Light" and the series "SharrSapphire" through "The Sapphire's Secret", as this fic very much assumes familiarity with both series to those points.





SharrSapphire in the Wheel
1298 DR

A flare of surprise over the Warder bond, suddenly cut off as the bond was masked to the point that she could only tell it was still there by the absence of the gaping wound in her psyche its breaking would cause was concerning enough.

But Andy sending to her barely half an hour later, saying that she needed to come to the village because there had been an attack, and now they had a mystery on their hands, was enough to trip Alustriel over into full-blown worry.

Arriving at the usual teleport point in the village to find both Andy and Korvallen waiting for her did not help, not did their insistence on waiting to explain until they were inside and she was sitting down.

The explanation given—a ritual hunt, a large band of orcs wearing enough spells against detection to buy a small kingdom, Sharr just… vanishing… right after the fight started—at least justified their caution, because that would have been an unpleasant shock if she had not already been aware that something had to have happened to Sharr.

“Well,” she said, once they were finished, “I can at least assure you that Sharr is not dead, because the Warder bond is intact. But it’s so muted that that’s all I can sense about it, and it’s more the absence of the wound to my psyche a broken bond would create that I’m sensing, rather than the presence of the bond itself.”

“It’s good to know that he’s still alive,” Korvallen said, “but that still leaves the question of what happened to him for the bond to be masked so completely.”

“Would an anti-magic field affect the bond like that?” Andy asked.

Alustriel took a moment to consider the idea. “Possibly, though that still doesn’t explain why he vanished. Especially since planar travel can be ruled out.

“That masks the bond to the point that only the strongest emotions come through, and in a muted form, at that. Which does not match what I sensed not too long before you sent to me.”





1333 DR, early summer

The pull that Drizzt and Aronna had followed into the eastern Lurkwood turned out to have been guiding them to deal with a very young green dragon. Once the dragon was dead, they had gathered up the small hoard it had managed to accumulate, and set up a camp not far from the small cavern that had been its lair.

While helping gather up the hoard, Drizzt had felt something tingle, so now that he and his teacher were settled down for the night, he started sorting through the portion he had gathered to find the tingling item. Most of it was coins of various sorts, but there were a few gemstones as well… and then one sapphire, more blue than most anything he had seen in nature so far, caught his attention.

He drew it up, knowing it felt like the weapons he had used and the gear he had worn before he was dumped on the surface. Six rays radiating from the center of one side of the rectangular gem made a star.

“What’s that, Drizzt?” Aronna asked.

“I felt something magical while gathering the hoard,” he replied. “This seems to be what I felt.”

“It’s a lovely gem. I wonder what spell it holds?”

As if in answer, the sapphire gleamed brightly, just before Drizzt’s own sense of evil warned of something approaching and Gnasher gave a low growl. Hastily, Drizzt stowed the stone in his belt pouch, then drew his blades—

—just in time to face the first of the arriving worgs.





As soon as he had dealt a fatal injury to the last worg, Drizzt backed away, hastily dropped his blades, and dug the sapphire back out of his belt pouch. As he had suspected, the stone’s glow had dimmed significantly, and as that final worg died, so did the glow.

“This is a very useful gem,” he said.

“The glow was a warning about the worgs, then?” Aronna asked.

“It seems so. And it was just a bit faster to detect them than my own senses were.”

“In that case, you should use some rawhide to make a wrapping for it, so you can wear it as a pendant.”





1344 DR

As the weather got even colder heading into the tundra winter, Drizzt noticed that the rawhide wrapping for the sapphire was starting to become cracked and brittle. So before it failed entirely, he approached Bruenor to see if the dwarf had any suggestions for a holder more suited to the weather in Icewind Dale.

After taking a look at the gem and listening to Drizzt’s explanation of what it did, Bruenor had suggested what he called a ‘basket-wrap’. Drizzt had needed the term explained, but once Bruenor had, he agreed that it sounded like a reasonable solution. Thankfully for Drizzt’s desire to learn, Bruenor was willing to take the time to show him how to make the wrap himself, and so, before winter had fully set in, the sapphire was safely cradled in a basket woven of silver wire.





1349 DR

While Drizzt had not intended to have the ruler of Silverymoon play messenger for him, he had not yet written a letter for the Harpers to deliver to Laeral when he and Lindsar had met Lady Alustriel outside of Deneir’s Library.

And so, knowing that the sending anklets the sisters used to stay in touch with each other would be a much faster means of passing on the message, before they parted ways, he asked the Lady if she would do him the favor of letting Laeral know that he had a magical item that he wanted her to take a look at.

Lady Alustriel had readily agreed, and Laeral had arrived that evening.

Introducing Laeral to Lindsar had resulted in some sharing of tales, but after a bit, Laeral wound down the one she was telling, then turned to Drizzt. “So what’s the magical item you want me to look at?” she asked.

Removing the chain he wore the basket pendant on, Drizzt handed it over to her. “This sapphire.”

“That’s the one that you said glows to warn of nearby evil, yes?”

“It is,” Drizzt agreed.

“So what’s happened that you now want me to take a look at it?” Laeral asked.

“Something I first noticed when you and Qilué removed the shroud from me, but which has been consistent over the years since then, is that in addition to glowing to warn of evil, it also grows warm—without any glow—when silverfire is manifesting.

“And while I didn’t think much of it originally, the fact that it became almost burning hot during the battle at the glacier when all four of you there used silverfire simultaneously was odd enough for me to decide it’s worth having you investigate.”

“That is definitely worth investigating,” Laeral agreed. “Do you mind if I start now?”

“Not at all.”

With that settled, Laeral put the stone down on the table in front of her and set to work. Detect magic was first, just to make sure there weren’t any traps laid for someone trying to analyze the magic on the stone, but when that only returned a single aura of strong conjuration magic, she moved on to identify.

The result of that spell was decidedly unexpected, so Laeral chose to double-check it with analyze dweomer. But when that produced the same result, she sat back and shook her head in bafflement.

“Well,” she said, after taking a moment to think over how to phrase things, “the sensitivity to silverfire isn’t the result of any spell on the sapphire that I can detect. However, the sapphire is a soul trap, so I suppose it’s possible that the sensitivity is somehow tied to whoever is trapped inside it.”

“There’s a person in there?” Drizzt looked at the pendant with a frown on his face, then looked back to Laeral with intense worry. “I… I had no idea. How do I fix this?”

“Thankfully, it’s quite simple, at least for someone who knows as many dwarves as you do,” Laeral said. “All you have to do is break the gem.”

“I’d best go find Bruenor, then,” Drizzt said. “Because no one as good as that person must be deserves to be imprisoned.”

“Tell him tonight, yes,” Laeral agreed, “but I think it would be safer to wait on the actual breaking until after I refresh my spells tomorrow, just in case you’re wrong, and the soul responds to evil so strongly because it is evil in itself.”

And if she was saying that as much to beat down her faint suspicion—or maybe hope—of who that person might be as because she truly believed it, well, she certainly wasn’t going to admit it to anyone.





The next day, after Laeral had memorized her spells, she, Drizzt, and Bruenor gathered in one of the small rooms off of the main chamber that had been set aside for use as workshops if needed, with Lindsar watching through the open door.

Drizzt set the stone down on the table serving as a work surface, then backed up so Bruenor could stand in front of it.

“Shame tae break such a lovely stone,” Bruenor said, shaking his head, “but we cannae leave some'un trapped like this.” He paused for a moment, then lifted a broad chisel to the stone’s surface, hammer in his other hand. He took a deep breath, then brought the hammer down on the end of the chisel.

But instead of splitting the stone, the blow caused a strong magical backlash, and left the stone intact.

“That was a spell shattering,” Laeral told Bruenor, who had to set his tools down and to wring his arms out a bit. She was a bit surprised by the fact that there had been another spell on the stone, but she knew that one of the weaknesses of detect magic was that stronger auras were capable of concealing weaker ones.

“Good tae know,” Bruenor said, squeezing his hands down opposite forearms again, working out the jolt of magic. Once he could safely grip chisel and hammer again, he cast the sapphire an aggrieved look and set the chisel to it. “Here we go again,” he muttered, and swung the hammer back, then down.

This time, the stone broke, and a blue light flashed brightly, bringing the smell of a spring day in the forest. Laeral held her breath waiting for her eyes to clear from the flash… and when they did, a full-blooded elf in hunting armor with ornate patterns was there.

“Oh, yes!” she cried, feeling incredibly euphoric that her faint suspicion had proved correct. ~Alustriel,~ she sent, ~you need to come to the Battlehammer warehouses immediately.~

~What? Why? Can it wait? The Warder bond just opened fully again.~

~I know! Look!~ Laeral shared her vision with her sister.

~Sharr?!~ Alustriel cried. ~How…?~

~The thing Drizzt wanted me to look at turned out to be a soul trap. Sharr was inside.~



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