A/N: Thank you for the review, Liriel. No, it's the first chapter of a (hopefully) much longer story.
Aylena goes outside the city in this one, and is a little more active.
I'm getting the drow words from the Drow Dictionary at drow.virtualave.net. It's the most comprehensive one I've found.
Disclaimer in Prologue.
Chapter 1
Through the Gates
"Mayoe l'quarval-sharess orn naut elhear." (Maybe the goddess won't notice).
-Famous last words.
Aylena glanced back at the house and sniffed. Zenoria got more boring each time she visited. She actually seemed to think that her male twins were deserving of attention, and she had hinted that she didn't even plan to put them through page prince training.
*It's a good thing that my sister has the favor of Lloth, or she would die the moment she hinted at that,* thought Aylena. At the very least, Aylena would have been happy to kill Zenoria herself. It was something of a puzzle to her why Matron Zirrin would simply watch the disappointing daughter she had borne, now the Matron of a minor house herself, and nod at the twins, even if she wouldn't smile at them.
It drove Aylena mad not to know the whys.
But she had given up on this one, at least for now, and was walking briskly towards one of the lesser exits from the city. Matron Zirrin wanted her daughter to stay alive, and Lloth seemed content to remain favoring her. The most Aylena could do was wait, and watch, and be ready to slay her sister the second that Zenoria fell out of favor.
Aylena leaped up on a stalagmite and crouched, letting the candle in her hand go out and her eyes shift fully into the infrared spectrum. Glittering colors of red and purple sprang into being ahead of her. Aylena smiled a little. Only the purple was faerie fire.
Her feet made no sound as she crept closer, but then, the guardians of this exit weren't really the kind that could hear. It was the mind they focused on, and so Aylena concentrated on blanking her thoughts completely, sinking into the dreamy contemplation that she used before the eight-legged idol in the center of their chapel to the Lady. She felt searching minds wheel above her like cloakers on the hunt. She ignored them.
*They cannot sense you,* the words repeated in her mind, over and over. They weren't really audible on the surface of her thoughts-that would have been calling for notice-but formed an underpinning that meant Aylena focused on the words and transformed them into belief, and from there into action. This was the one lesson that her elder sister Sielza, the heir of the Elosthan House, had ever taught her, and she had done it over and over until Aylena could get it right in her sleep. *They cannot notice you. Not will not, but cannot. You fool them. You are not here. You are faerie fire. You are less than faerie fire. You are shaped to escape their notice. You do not exist.*
She stepped past the last brush of a hunting mind, and into the thick tangle of spiderwebs that filled the tunnel entrance. The red glow warned her of a trapped animal somewhere near. She could get caught herself.
But only if she behaved with such utter stupidity that she *deserved* to get caught.
Aylena lifted her arm and brushed it against the nearest strand of the web. At once, a quiver traveled off into the darkness, and then she saw the shape of the great spider crawling towards her, hurrying along the silken strands without catching in a one.
Aylena bowed her head in reverence as the spider approached, deliberately letting her long white hair almost brush against the web, and murmured, "All honor to the Goddess."
The spider paused. Aylena waited. She could hear every slight shift of its body, with senses sharpened to the height that had allowed her to survive one assassination attempt after another. It was deciding whether to fling a cord of silk around her body or not.
Aylena gasped as a loop of thread settled around her neck, and leaned her head back. Heat flared through her veins, and her body glowed. She would now be visible to anyone watching the entrance with eyes, but she didn't care. If they thought she was about to be eaten by the spider, they'd hardly stop the Lady's chosen, and if Lloth chose to grant her passage this time as well, there would be nothing they could do.
Sweet feminine laughter drifted through the passage, and then the loop of silk was gone from her neck. Aylena reached up and stepped into the web, walking along the strands as easily as a spider. Magic thrummed in her veins. The Lady's favor covered her like a second *piwafwi.* And the spider followed as close as an honor guard as Aylena crossed through the web.
The webs were as thick as the stalks in a mushroom grove, and to someone who didn't walk with Lloth's favor, as confusing. It was no wonder that this exit out of the main cave of Ozluethyl was so little-used. But Aylena saw with the eyes of the spider, saw the pattern that underlay it all, and danced through with laughter on her lips and the Lady's name singing in her throat like a second heartbeat.
She stepped off the last strand of the web, into the wild Underdark, and turned back, bowing to the spider. It moved its mandibles at her and scurried back into the thicket of its web, to await another intruder.
Aylena turned and shook out her hair, leaving it flowing out of her cloak as she paced into the darkness. It might reveal her the more easily, but then again, if Lloth didn't want her found, it might not. Aylena liked the challenge of walking through the tunnels and depending on the Lady's fey favor far more than her weapons or her magic.
Besides, it was the best way to increase that favor.
The wide tunnel narrowed inside of a dozen drow strides, sweeping around a corner and dipping dramatically, so that the next cavern beyond had an entrance barely wide enough to crawl through. Aylena dropped to her belly and slithered through, not standing on the other side but turning to a narrow ledge almost flush with the wall.
It would have looked like nothing special to anyone else, but when Aylena said, "*Arlyurlen d'lil quarval-sharess,*" glittering swords of blue faerie fire sprang to life, crossing from ledge to floor and back again and back again until they formed a brilliant triangle. Aylena sped through, stopping with a soft laugh in another place entirely. The triangle had already snapped shut behind her. It remained open for only three seconds at a time, which meant that it could easily cut her in half if she waited too long.
Aylena loved that.
She flung herself down beside the pool in this little cavern, eyes half-closed, basking in the glow of the power that radiated here. Her very own *faerzress.* No one else knew about it, largely because Aylena had arranged quiet accidents for the few people who had found out. They hadn't really insisted on sharing; they had just known about it. Aylena sometimes even regretted their deaths, since that meant there was no one to appreciate what she was doing here.
Aylena rolled over and looked at the statue in the corner of the cavern. Its proportions were still imperfect. She had one leg and the left half of the body the way she wanted them, but she had chipped and flaked at the other three legs for days without avail. They would have to go, she decided with some regret. She would have to do the right half of the statue over again.
She rose and walked over to it. Blue faerie fire sprang up at her approach, and Aylena felt the breath catch in her throat as for a moment the light shone in the stone spider's eyes as if it lived. But, of course, it didn't, and the little flames died, and Aylena resigned herself to disappointment. It would take a lot more than that to make the spider live, even in a faerzress. She had known that, but still, the sense of being close was so keen in her that she writhed with every little semblance of spirit.
She laid a hand on the spider's head. It half-emerged from the stone, head twisted up and to the side as if it were listening for a call. Only one leg perfect, and the other three would have to go. Aylena whispered, "*Alu tarthe.*"
Nothing happened. Aylena groaned as she realized she had slurred the words again. She spoke them carefully, enunciating the consonants so distinctly that it seemed to her as if the stone legs fell away from the body especially sharply, just to please her.
She closed her eyes, sank into the pulse of the power around her, and held up her hands, still speaking with careful distinctiveness. "*Killianen d'chath.*"
When she opened her eyes, the swords of faerie fire were at work, cutting the right side of the body. Aylena lay on the bank of the pool and watched them do it, waving a finger now and then when she wanted a slice in a different place. The swords whirled to obey her, singing a high and clear note that Aylena didn't think anyone else would have been able to hear.
When she had to dismiss the enchantment at last, Aylena was sweat-soaked and panting. Luckily, she had had the foresight to bring something to eat with her this time. With careful hands she fumbled open her pouch and pulled out a handful of filfaer moss. It was easy on her mutilated mouth, and sweet enough. Besides, she liked to eat it, so that she would never forget she had indeed made a vow of vengeance against Kelydda eighteen years ago.
She munched a few times, then fell asleep halfway through.
*****
It was a dream. Aylena knew it was a dream. She looked into the pool before her, and saw her face as she remembered it from before Kelydda's first assassination attempt, smooth and dark-skinned, tongue and teeth and gums invisible. She laughed.
"Is this what you want?"
The mocking, melodious voice came from behind her. Aylena whirled around and knelt, without even looking up. She had heard the voice too many times, whispering in her ear at the height of a ceremony, or laughing when she passed a spider's web.
"Lady," she said.
The laughter came again, and then a slender hand reached out and cupped her chin, bringing her face up. Aylena met eyes of fire, set in a face of such piercing beauty that it made her brain ache and her own suddenly regained looks feel petty and false.
"Is that what you want?" said Lloth's mocking voice.
"My lady?"
"Your looks back? Such a modest ambition. Such a store placed on beauty, when you might do other things."
Aylena gasped. It was one thing to know that her matron trod on blasphemy by leaving her alive, but this was something altogether new. "Lady-beauty is one of your sacred principles."
"What would those be worth if I could not change them as I saw fit?" Rage pealed through Lloth's voice, and Aylena dropped her eyes again.
"Nothing, my lady."
"Choose," said Lloth. "You can have your face back, if you like. You can wake up, and be as you were before."
"And the price?" Nothing was without its price.
"You must give up your other dream, your dream of bringing life to the spider."
Aylena bowed her head. She couldn't question the terms of the bargain. This was the Lady of Chaos, and one didn't do that.
"And if I bring life to the spider?"
"You will remain hideous for the rest of your days, whether you do or not," said Lloth. "This is the last chance I will offer."
Aylena shook her head.
"What was that?"
"I choose to bring life to the spider."
Lloth laughed at her, and the dream dissolved.
*****
Aylena blinked tears from her eyes, and doused them with a handful of pool water, turning to gaze at the spider statue. It was frustratingly hard to make, and she didn't know that she would ever be able to accomplish what she sought.
She could have made the statue move and stir with an enchantment. That was easy enough. But that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted a spider that would live of its own will, of the Lady's will, filled with the spirit of one of the Goddess's children.
She wanted to bring life to the stone.
She ran a hand over the statue's nearest leg, and turned to take the portal back to the tunnel outside Ozluethyl. She couldn't accomplish any more at the moment.
But that didn't mean that she could never accomplish anything. Aylena had determination in her like a second pulse. She would finish the spider and see it walking about with a life of its own, as surely as she would kill Kelydda someday.
What death should she threaten Kelydda with today?
That pleasant speculation accompanied her all the way back to the city, where things promptly went all to the Abyss.
Drow Words:
arlyurlen d'lil quarval-sharess= breasts of the goddess. Yes, it's blasphemous. That's the point.
faerzress= magical strength, a place where the magical radiations of the Underdark are strong.
alu tarthe= go away.
killianen d'chath= swords of fire.
Aylena goes outside the city in this one, and is a little more active.
I'm getting the drow words from the Drow Dictionary at drow.virtualave.net. It's the most comprehensive one I've found.
Disclaimer in Prologue.
Chapter 1
Through the Gates
"Mayoe l'quarval-sharess orn naut elhear." (Maybe the goddess won't notice).
-Famous last words.
Aylena glanced back at the house and sniffed. Zenoria got more boring each time she visited. She actually seemed to think that her male twins were deserving of attention, and she had hinted that she didn't even plan to put them through page prince training.
*It's a good thing that my sister has the favor of Lloth, or she would die the moment she hinted at that,* thought Aylena. At the very least, Aylena would have been happy to kill Zenoria herself. It was something of a puzzle to her why Matron Zirrin would simply watch the disappointing daughter she had borne, now the Matron of a minor house herself, and nod at the twins, even if she wouldn't smile at them.
It drove Aylena mad not to know the whys.
But she had given up on this one, at least for now, and was walking briskly towards one of the lesser exits from the city. Matron Zirrin wanted her daughter to stay alive, and Lloth seemed content to remain favoring her. The most Aylena could do was wait, and watch, and be ready to slay her sister the second that Zenoria fell out of favor.
Aylena leaped up on a stalagmite and crouched, letting the candle in her hand go out and her eyes shift fully into the infrared spectrum. Glittering colors of red and purple sprang into being ahead of her. Aylena smiled a little. Only the purple was faerie fire.
Her feet made no sound as she crept closer, but then, the guardians of this exit weren't really the kind that could hear. It was the mind they focused on, and so Aylena concentrated on blanking her thoughts completely, sinking into the dreamy contemplation that she used before the eight-legged idol in the center of their chapel to the Lady. She felt searching minds wheel above her like cloakers on the hunt. She ignored them.
*They cannot sense you,* the words repeated in her mind, over and over. They weren't really audible on the surface of her thoughts-that would have been calling for notice-but formed an underpinning that meant Aylena focused on the words and transformed them into belief, and from there into action. This was the one lesson that her elder sister Sielza, the heir of the Elosthan House, had ever taught her, and she had done it over and over until Aylena could get it right in her sleep. *They cannot notice you. Not will not, but cannot. You fool them. You are not here. You are faerie fire. You are less than faerie fire. You are shaped to escape their notice. You do not exist.*
She stepped past the last brush of a hunting mind, and into the thick tangle of spiderwebs that filled the tunnel entrance. The red glow warned her of a trapped animal somewhere near. She could get caught herself.
But only if she behaved with such utter stupidity that she *deserved* to get caught.
Aylena lifted her arm and brushed it against the nearest strand of the web. At once, a quiver traveled off into the darkness, and then she saw the shape of the great spider crawling towards her, hurrying along the silken strands without catching in a one.
Aylena bowed her head in reverence as the spider approached, deliberately letting her long white hair almost brush against the web, and murmured, "All honor to the Goddess."
The spider paused. Aylena waited. She could hear every slight shift of its body, with senses sharpened to the height that had allowed her to survive one assassination attempt after another. It was deciding whether to fling a cord of silk around her body or not.
Aylena gasped as a loop of thread settled around her neck, and leaned her head back. Heat flared through her veins, and her body glowed. She would now be visible to anyone watching the entrance with eyes, but she didn't care. If they thought she was about to be eaten by the spider, they'd hardly stop the Lady's chosen, and if Lloth chose to grant her passage this time as well, there would be nothing they could do.
Sweet feminine laughter drifted through the passage, and then the loop of silk was gone from her neck. Aylena reached up and stepped into the web, walking along the strands as easily as a spider. Magic thrummed in her veins. The Lady's favor covered her like a second *piwafwi.* And the spider followed as close as an honor guard as Aylena crossed through the web.
The webs were as thick as the stalks in a mushroom grove, and to someone who didn't walk with Lloth's favor, as confusing. It was no wonder that this exit out of the main cave of Ozluethyl was so little-used. But Aylena saw with the eyes of the spider, saw the pattern that underlay it all, and danced through with laughter on her lips and the Lady's name singing in her throat like a second heartbeat.
She stepped off the last strand of the web, into the wild Underdark, and turned back, bowing to the spider. It moved its mandibles at her and scurried back into the thicket of its web, to await another intruder.
Aylena turned and shook out her hair, leaving it flowing out of her cloak as she paced into the darkness. It might reveal her the more easily, but then again, if Lloth didn't want her found, it might not. Aylena liked the challenge of walking through the tunnels and depending on the Lady's fey favor far more than her weapons or her magic.
Besides, it was the best way to increase that favor.
The wide tunnel narrowed inside of a dozen drow strides, sweeping around a corner and dipping dramatically, so that the next cavern beyond had an entrance barely wide enough to crawl through. Aylena dropped to her belly and slithered through, not standing on the other side but turning to a narrow ledge almost flush with the wall.
It would have looked like nothing special to anyone else, but when Aylena said, "*Arlyurlen d'lil quarval-sharess,*" glittering swords of blue faerie fire sprang to life, crossing from ledge to floor and back again and back again until they formed a brilliant triangle. Aylena sped through, stopping with a soft laugh in another place entirely. The triangle had already snapped shut behind her. It remained open for only three seconds at a time, which meant that it could easily cut her in half if she waited too long.
Aylena loved that.
She flung herself down beside the pool in this little cavern, eyes half-closed, basking in the glow of the power that radiated here. Her very own *faerzress.* No one else knew about it, largely because Aylena had arranged quiet accidents for the few people who had found out. They hadn't really insisted on sharing; they had just known about it. Aylena sometimes even regretted their deaths, since that meant there was no one to appreciate what she was doing here.
Aylena rolled over and looked at the statue in the corner of the cavern. Its proportions were still imperfect. She had one leg and the left half of the body the way she wanted them, but she had chipped and flaked at the other three legs for days without avail. They would have to go, she decided with some regret. She would have to do the right half of the statue over again.
She rose and walked over to it. Blue faerie fire sprang up at her approach, and Aylena felt the breath catch in her throat as for a moment the light shone in the stone spider's eyes as if it lived. But, of course, it didn't, and the little flames died, and Aylena resigned herself to disappointment. It would take a lot more than that to make the spider live, even in a faerzress. She had known that, but still, the sense of being close was so keen in her that she writhed with every little semblance of spirit.
She laid a hand on the spider's head. It half-emerged from the stone, head twisted up and to the side as if it were listening for a call. Only one leg perfect, and the other three would have to go. Aylena whispered, "*Alu tarthe.*"
Nothing happened. Aylena groaned as she realized she had slurred the words again. She spoke them carefully, enunciating the consonants so distinctly that it seemed to her as if the stone legs fell away from the body especially sharply, just to please her.
She closed her eyes, sank into the pulse of the power around her, and held up her hands, still speaking with careful distinctiveness. "*Killianen d'chath.*"
When she opened her eyes, the swords of faerie fire were at work, cutting the right side of the body. Aylena lay on the bank of the pool and watched them do it, waving a finger now and then when she wanted a slice in a different place. The swords whirled to obey her, singing a high and clear note that Aylena didn't think anyone else would have been able to hear.
When she had to dismiss the enchantment at last, Aylena was sweat-soaked and panting. Luckily, she had had the foresight to bring something to eat with her this time. With careful hands she fumbled open her pouch and pulled out a handful of filfaer moss. It was easy on her mutilated mouth, and sweet enough. Besides, she liked to eat it, so that she would never forget she had indeed made a vow of vengeance against Kelydda eighteen years ago.
She munched a few times, then fell asleep halfway through.
*****
It was a dream. Aylena knew it was a dream. She looked into the pool before her, and saw her face as she remembered it from before Kelydda's first assassination attempt, smooth and dark-skinned, tongue and teeth and gums invisible. She laughed.
"Is this what you want?"
The mocking, melodious voice came from behind her. Aylena whirled around and knelt, without even looking up. She had heard the voice too many times, whispering in her ear at the height of a ceremony, or laughing when she passed a spider's web.
"Lady," she said.
The laughter came again, and then a slender hand reached out and cupped her chin, bringing her face up. Aylena met eyes of fire, set in a face of such piercing beauty that it made her brain ache and her own suddenly regained looks feel petty and false.
"Is that what you want?" said Lloth's mocking voice.
"My lady?"
"Your looks back? Such a modest ambition. Such a store placed on beauty, when you might do other things."
Aylena gasped. It was one thing to know that her matron trod on blasphemy by leaving her alive, but this was something altogether new. "Lady-beauty is one of your sacred principles."
"What would those be worth if I could not change them as I saw fit?" Rage pealed through Lloth's voice, and Aylena dropped her eyes again.
"Nothing, my lady."
"Choose," said Lloth. "You can have your face back, if you like. You can wake up, and be as you were before."
"And the price?" Nothing was without its price.
"You must give up your other dream, your dream of bringing life to the spider."
Aylena bowed her head. She couldn't question the terms of the bargain. This was the Lady of Chaos, and one didn't do that.
"And if I bring life to the spider?"
"You will remain hideous for the rest of your days, whether you do or not," said Lloth. "This is the last chance I will offer."
Aylena shook her head.
"What was that?"
"I choose to bring life to the spider."
Lloth laughed at her, and the dream dissolved.
*****
Aylena blinked tears from her eyes, and doused them with a handful of pool water, turning to gaze at the spider statue. It was frustratingly hard to make, and she didn't know that she would ever be able to accomplish what she sought.
She could have made the statue move and stir with an enchantment. That was easy enough. But that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted a spider that would live of its own will, of the Lady's will, filled with the spirit of one of the Goddess's children.
She wanted to bring life to the stone.
She ran a hand over the statue's nearest leg, and turned to take the portal back to the tunnel outside Ozluethyl. She couldn't accomplish any more at the moment.
But that didn't mean that she could never accomplish anything. Aylena had determination in her like a second pulse. She would finish the spider and see it walking about with a life of its own, as surely as she would kill Kelydda someday.
What death should she threaten Kelydda with today?
That pleasant speculation accompanied her all the way back to the city, where things promptly went all to the Abyss.
Drow Words:
arlyurlen d'lil quarval-sharess= breasts of the goddess. Yes, it's blasphemous. That's the point.
faerzress= magical strength, a place where the magical radiations of the Underdark are strong.
alu tarthe= go away.
killianen d'chath= swords of fire.