Khaless gritted her teeth when she heard the door open. It was Ghaundar again, come to flush her out of her hiding place to go be sociable. She wasn't in the mood. He always wanted to go out for drinks or spend money or even take a few short patrols outside of the city. The last of those things she was always eager to do—Menzoberranzan was stifling right now, probably because she was still under Haelra's watchful eyes. Everyone else she'd managed to successfully evade through the longest patrols between the drow cities, all the way from Erelhei-Cinlu to Rilauven to Yvoth-Lened and back again, encompassing much of their world. It kept her well away from House Baenre's nobles, with whom she'd had more to do than she wanted to already. Mercifully, Andzrel seemed to have forgotten about her. He was probably quite easily distracted and an opportunist at that.
"Sulking?" he said, watching her pack up her armor neatly. She'd be leaving for a patrol to just below the surface soon for the first time in nearly a year. Chaszmyr had gotten tired of giving her the good assignment eventually. Or at least it was an interesting one, anyway. Anything beyond the city's walls was a dangerous task to perform.
Something in Khaless had changed after that surface raid, the same as it had changed after House Kenafin. It seemed to drive her devotion to the Spider Queen. More often than not he caught her praying in her quarters in silence. That was the only thing that ever seemed bring her any peace. Other than that, she alternated between harsh heat and bitter cold in her moods. And he wasn't one to pry, but she seemed unhappy. And like it or not, she was one of the closest people in the world to him, so the last thing he wanted was to see her like this for any period of time. He'd tried everything he could think of, including buying her ink and a stylus again. He and Haelra were the only two who knew about that guilty pleasure. It hadn't even made the slightest of changes.
Even the priestess was a little worried despite her station and natural inclinations.
"You want to stay in tonight, don't you?" Ghaundar said, studying his fellow soldier. Her shoulders were tense even as she moved around the room preparing. Her food and water were already packed. They'd be supplemented by anything she could hunt on the way or any springs and rivers she could find. "Not even up for a little jaunt?"
After House Kenafin, she had been lost. Now all he could read in her was anger living in the center of her chest. He'd seen her let it out in sparring match after sparring match, even on patrol against their enemy. It wasn't that she enjoyed deaths, just that she needed to vent on something. She was taking something personally. "No. I've got to get ready," she said brusquely, her arms folded across her chest defensively as he looked at her. She didn't like being scrutinized and never had.
Ghaundar shook his head. He knew she probably wasn't happy about her assignment that close to the surface again. So he did the only thing he thought would cheer her up. The male drow tackled her, knocking them both to the floor and into a groundfight. It was a play-fight, not the real thing, and neither of them were in armor where they could accidentally do harm to each other. She was an expert at deflecting his blows and sneaking hits in, but he could overpower her if he caught her.
At least it made her laugh.
They swatted at each other for a good five minutes, wrestling around on the floor and pretending to stab each other except with empty hands. It was a game. She would slap him and he'd clip her with a fist, never enough to do any serious damage but enough to be felt and certainly enough to distract. Finally, Khaless kicked away from him and leaped up to her feet. She flashed him a smile. "Thanks."
"You needed something to take you out of yourself. You can't think when you're trying to win," he said, brushing off. The gratitude as only he would. "Feel better?"
"A little," she admitted. "I still have to get ready to leave, though."
"Are you going up to the surface?" Ghaundar asked very quietly. He'd seen a couple of her drawings of the surface world and knew she liked to steal away up there to sketch something that would later become beautiful in ink. Nothing else would draw her up there, he knew. The idea that she might have followed Eilistraee never crossed his mind. The very idea was absurd. This was Khaless Dryaalis, as cold as they came when she was on the battlefield. He'd seen her snipe foes in the head from the shadows or slide her dagger into their kidney from hiding more times than he could count. She was no moon-kisser.
She shrugged. "I was thinking about it. It's been a long time. I guess we'll see."
"Do you want me to come with you?" he offered. She turned him down every time, but he felt like the gesture should be made now more than ever with her mind ill at ease. Khaless would talk about anything with him except how she was feeling. She was even more closed off than the average drow, always trying to keep things close to her chest. He didn't think of that as a healthy strategy for coping with everything that happened. He knew that surface raid had bothered her, but whenever he subtly hinted he wanted to know, she would snap at him and tell him absolutely nothing.
Khaless shook her head and started folding her clean clothes. She tucked them away inside her bag. She didn't want to talk about it. Maybe it was wrong of her to keep everything in, and Goddess knew it wasn't healthy, but she couldn't expect Ghaundar to understand. And she certainly couldn't expect him to keep her secret. It was hard enough on her. If a priestess put him to the question, she knew he would eventually break and then he would die too.
"You know you can talk to me, don't you?" the grizzled veteran said even as he backed up to head out of her quarters.
Khaless turned around and again there was that little flash of a grateful smile. "Thanks." Like summer lightning, it was there one second and gone the next. But she made her decision then. She would go to the surface. Not to meet Alassëa and Rûdhon—she was in no way ready for that—but to make her own prayers to Eilistraee and maybe an offering of some kind. Then she could draw and hunt and do whatever she pleased for a night before returning to the underground. Maybe she could find the connection to the world above and her goddess's graces that she had been lacking for so long.
"Of course I'm upset," Alassëa said, crossing her arms as she looked out into the forest from the small rise they were sitting on. "She hasn't been to the surface in months now. She's hiding away again." It was a lazy summer evening, fireflies flitting through the warm air and deer raising their heads up nearby. The fawns had lost their white spots not so long ago. A sense of peace and calm covered the forest like a blanket, except here. The priestess of Eilistraee had been growing more and more upset the longer they went without seeing their friend.
"You are angry at her," Rûdhon said gently. "What do you think would happen if she returned and you shouted at her? Alassëa, I am certain that wherever she is, Khaless is in enough pain because of the surface raid. There is no need for you to punish her more. Besides, we don't even know..." He hesitated. "...if she is still alive."
The cleric made a sound of disbelief. "Khaless is always fine," she said, even though she found doubt creeping into her mind. It was dangerous in the Underdark, the rogue had always said. And she meant more than the wildlife. Alassëa couldn't imagine what it was like to live in Menzoberranzan, forever watching over her shoulder. Keeping everything she was hidden for fear of it being exploited. Treachery around every corner and daggers in every shadow. "How is Thalion?"
"Restless," Rûdhon said. He'd been slowly working to undo the damage the surface raid had done to the avenger of Shevarash's perception of the drow. It meant sharing his stories of Khaless and her experiences with the surface. Some were amusing, others pleasant, and a few heartbreaking. Like the time they had tried to explain to her what family was like on the surface and she'd just looked at them like a lost little girl. For the drow, their only family was by blood, and it was rarely a happy relationship. It had some effect on the wood elf, at the very least. Rûdhon had caught him spending moments just looking at the drawings within the book when he thought no one was watching him. Even Alassëa didn't know that he still had it. She'd presumed it destroyed.
He was learning to read drow. Like Alassëa, he struggled very much to speak even basic words. It was his accent, the way he formed the words. A language that seemed so like elvish proved very alien indeed, but it was adding to his understanding of the drow. The linguistic roots of the drow word for love being in madness, for example. It was impossible to study the language without the culture and Thalion seemed to be interested. "Know thy enemy," he'd quoted once over a text on the drow tongue. Rûdhon had been nudging him in the direction of understanding in the hopes that he would begin to temper his stance on the drow. It didn't really seem to be working.
"I still don't understand why she saved me," Siladhiel said, sitting with her two mentors. They had taken her under their wings now that her family was gone. Despite everything that had happened, she had still turned to Eilistraee. That one moment of kindness stood out starkly to her against everything she'd been told about the drow.
"No one understands why Khaless does what she does," Alassëa said with a sigh. "I thought I was beginning to understand her, but then that surface raid. Why would she do something like that?"
Rûdhon had an inkling, though he said nothing aloud. He didn't imagine such raids were something one could opt out of. If Khaless was trying to remain hidden and alive, she would have been forced to consent. Selfish, perhaps, but not exactly malicious. Was it evil? He couldn't really say. Drow tended to think in terms of necessity. That had been Khaless's worldview when they first met. Over and over, he had tried to instill in her a sense of good and evil. And she had argued every step of the way, but sometimes he saw it behind her eyes. The moments where she really understood. And then there were times like this where he found himself looking at her behavior and unable to say anything other than that she had reverted back to that primal urge to survive at any cost.
Thalion was not far away, patrolling the area around the narrow entrance to the Underdark. He heard a soft hint of a sound from the crevice and hid himself in the standing stones clustered around the cliff-face of the tall hills that held the fissure. Slowly but surely, he could see a slender, hooded figure making her way out of it. She could walk through it easily. It had been that wide ever since it had been expanded by their human guest. He drew back his bow and let an arrow fly. It nearly hit her, hissing past her ear.
Khaless dropped instinctively, falling flat and then immediately moving as fast as she could in a low crawl to get behind something sturdy—in this case, behind a tall spruce tree.
"I said I would kill you next time we met," Thalion called, stepping out from his hiding place. He could see her looking around the tree's trunk at him with crimson eyes. They were so different from a surface elf's, just like the rest of her. She saw it was him and stepped out a little, her hands carefully away from her weapons. "That didn't discourage you?"
"I have no quarrel with you," she said, tone cautious and careful. She knew that as soon as that bow came up, she would be a dead woman. She couldn't dodge arrows for an infinite amount of time, if even at all. "I'm not here as a spy or a raider."
"That sounds suspiciously like what a spy would say. A spy who has killed elves, no less," he commented, but his arm went slack. "Why are you here, then? Alassëa is furious with you still and Rûdhon is as indifferent as always."
"I am not here to see them. I wanted to be alone on the surface for a time. I failed my goddess and I wish to atone. Surely that is not so foreign to you," she said. He could see sincerity in her face and hear it in her voice. "Understand that I am not a good woman. I don't know how to live by Eilistraee's teachings. I try, and I fail, and then I try again. This time I will likely fail too."
"Honest for a drow," he said, lowering his bow. "I have something that belongs to you."
Khaless raised an eyebrow. "Is it an arrow destined for my heart?"
"That too," Thalion said, throwing an arrow at her. She caught it deftly out of the air and examined it. It was a good arrow with a straight grain and expert fletching. The head had a slender taper and a wicked point to punch through armor even more sturdy than her own.
She slid it into her quiver. The plain shaft didn't match her others which had all been blackened. "I'm keeping this," she said. "You'll have to shoot me with another."
"I have plenty," he retorted, pulling out a slender, leather-bound volume.
Khaless felt her heart jump up into her throat. It was safe? She'd thought she had lost the book forever. It was almost laughable to be so attached to simple ink on paper, but for her, it was the one thing she had untainted by Lloth and all her teachings. It had been her confidant and silent companion for quite a while and held everything she had ever written in Eilistraee's honor. "You kept it?" she said, surprised and on edge. Was he going to destroy it now where she could see it? She wouldn't put it past a follower of the elven god of vengeance.
Thalion had to step closer, perilously into knife range, to hand it to her. He held it out and dark fingers almost reverentially lifted it from his grasp. "It had interesting pictures in it," he said, surprised by how wide her smile was when she took it back from him. He could see an actual grin, her teeth stark white against the ebony of her skin. It didn't last, for a moment she seemed so completely genuine and almost child-like in her excitement,
Khaless ran her fingers over the cover, then flipped it open. It was a little more well-thumbed than when she'd lost it, certain pages clearly favorites of the elf's, while others—like the image of Lloth—hadn't been glanced at very often. "You liked them," she said almost teasingly as she snapped the book shut.
"You have a good hand for a drow," he said with forced indifference. It was hard not to be embarrassed at being caught on her side in any way.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but there was a smile touching her lips. "You have good taste for an elf." It was the first time she'd used the elven word for his race rather than the drow one.
He realized he'd lowered his bow and she still wasn't going for him. Instead, she pulled back her hood and shook her long hair loose before turning her face up towards the moon. Bathed in the silver light of the moon, for a moment she almost looked as though there was a little bit of elf in her face. Then she looked back at him thoughtfully and the illusion evaporated. He found he preferred it when she looked like a drow, with sharp, narrow features and deep, almost blood red eyes. "Sit down. Not here, I mean. Over on that stone in the moonlight," she ordered, pointing. When she saw a hint of anger in his expression, she made a soft sound of annoyance. "I'm not going to kill you, Thalion."
He started at the use of his name. She had bothered to remember it? It was enough to make him start moving towards the smooth outcropping of rock. It wouldn't be an uncomfortable seat. "And what are you going to do?" he asked. He knew now that he had distance, he could kill her at any time. She seemed busy with her bag that she'd set on the ground. She was crouched down fishing through it until he saw her draw something out—ink, a water-skin, a stylus, and a brush. "Are you going to draw me?"
"Clever," she said with a definite touch of sarcasm. It irked him, but now he was curious. It must have been very easy for her to draw a drow—she saw them all the time. But an elf? Could she even do it?
Before he really could process what he'd tacitly agreed to, she was sketching with a pencil she usually used for mapmaking. He wasn't certain how he felt about being her model, but on the other hand, it gave him a chance to study her as her lips pressed into a line and her brow furrowed. A lock of hair fell forward into her face and he felt a faint urge to fix it just before dark fingers brushed it back. The minutes ticked by quietly before he finally asked, "Why art? Don't you have your hands full killing things?"
"The Underdark teaches patience if nothing else. And sometimes that means you have time on your hands to fill with something. Particularly guard duty on the outer walls. Dangerous things very rarely approach Menzoberranzan. I used to sit up in the watchtower and sketch all the time. Mostly the city, but sometimes the other guards or the animals of the caravans below," she explained, switching to ink. Sometimes she painted on the shadows and shading with various amounts of water mixed with the ink. But for the most part she was drawing the lines of his face, attending carefully to every detail. She wasn't in any rush, sitting on the ground with the book in her lap. A strangely peaceful air had descended over the clearing despite the fact that it was two foes in there.
"So you're just a soldier?" he said cautiously. Part of him was surprised. The only drow he'd heard of being on the surface aside from raiding was a noble. He had assumed the same of her, particularly with her skill and fine equipment. It seemed war was so important to the drow that they trained their soldiers very well and made sure they were properly equipped.
"A scout, really, but I'm a fair shot, so they had me up on the wall often enough. It was mind-numbingly boring," she explained softly. His pale skin both made it harder and easier to draw him. The shading was very different, but she enjoyed it all the same. Ever so slowly, his face seemed to come alive on the paper as more and more detail appeared out of the blank white.
"And a follower of Eilistraee? How do you survive?" Thalion asked despite himself. He knew he shouldn't care, that he should shoot her dead whether or not she really followed the Dark Maiden. She was still a drow. But after all that time looking at the book and reading over the poetry written for her goddess, it was hard to just write her off completely. Rûdhon had said it was out of necessity that she'd been on that surface raid, that it hadn't been her choice. The avenger of Shevarash wasn't certain if that was true or not. Rûdhon doubted anyone would be willing to listen, but Thalion...he understood necessity. Sometimes one had to do something that might seem or even be evil in the course of bringing justice to those who had done wrong. That was what he saw his duty as an avenger to be, but the truth wasn't simple that way. It wasn't always discriminating. So in his own way, he could sympathize.
He noted the way her jaw tightened in response. "I don't," she said. "It is merely a slow death, stretched out over months or years. Eventually the Church catches everyone and the end is painful beyond anything you could imagine. And before that? It is secrets and paranoia. Forever watching all around lest you be caught even though you know it can only last so long."
Thalion felt a twinge of sympathy in his chest. It would be terrible to live like that. He tried to imagine what it would be like to spend every day with a sword dangling over his head by a thread, destined to fall and slay him where he stood. Painfully and slowly at that. He winced and shifted uncomfortably. With that in mind, it seemed even more surprising that she hadn't killed him. "Why don't you just leave?"
She laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. He heard the stylus scratching away against the paper. "And go where? The wilds? That's just as bad, but in a different way. Or maybe the surface where drow are so welcome? How long do you think I would have before I was killed up here if I tried to make my way for any length of time? A week, maybe two? I'm sure the rest of your order would be very understanding."
"Fair enough," he conceded. He was quiet until she finished. Khaless blew lightly on the drawing, trying to help it dry. Once it was in no danger of smudging or smearing, she gently cleaned away the last pencil lines and approached him with the book in hand. Then she held it out for him to see. Thalion was surprised to see himself in amazingly life-like detail, with little calligraphy in one lower corner of the portrait. "Is that my name?"
"As close as I could come," Khaless said with a small smile. She actually handed the book over to him again, even though she missed having it in her hands. It had been more unpleasant to be parted from it than she might have admitted.
He noticed that she'd written below his portrait too, those same drow phrasings that were meaningless without the knowledge of the cypher. "What does it say?" he asked, running his finger beneath the calligraphy as he stood where they could both see it on the book's pages. "More verses to Eilistraee?"
"Yes. Asking for her forgiveness," the rogue said. She brushed her hand over the page, then looked up at him. "This book is too dangerous for me to keep now. It has a portrait of an elf in it. But I would not see it destroyed. You kept it before."
Thalion looked up at her. "You aren't really telling me to keep it, are you?" he said in disbelief.
"I'm asking, elf," she said a little more sharply, like she was thinking of snapping at him. Her white hair fell into her face and she looked at him with narrowed crimson eyes. "It's in no way obligatory." She suddenly turned and left him standing with the book, sweeping up her things easily and slinging her bow across her back. "I have to go. Next time."
"I'll kill you next time, drow," he said, closing the book as he watched her go. It was becoming almost a way to say goodbye. The volume felt familiar in his hand, his thumb brushing over the leather cover as he watched its owner move away into the shadows beneath the trees. Maybe he was keeping it, but he knew he was really just holding onto it for her.
She turned back, crimson eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "I'll count on it, Thalion." And then she vanished into the darkness without a trace.
