A/N: More and more action. Wow. The story's moving quickly. I hope everyone is enjoying it as much as I am ;).
Disclaimer in Prologue. The drow are still not mine.
Chapter 3
Unintentions and Questions of Loyalty
"L'alurl khalessev abbil zhah dosstan." (The best trusted friend is yourself).
-Drow Proverb.
Aylena pounded towards the front gate of Elosthan House. The statues of displacer beasts on either side, the House guardians, stuttered into motion as she passed and then resumed their stillness, recognizing her for a member of the nobility.
Aylena passed through the gates and looked around. No one was in the courtyard at the moment. Above her, the balcony was also deserted, and she clasped the House symbol that hung about her neck and called on the power to levitate.
"Back so soon, sister?"
Even given everything that had happened to her today, Aylena had no choice but to turn around and gape at that. The voice was male, and the sheer insolence in it angered her beyond words. Her anger only increased when she saw her brother Renorth-well, the Matron had borne him; thank the Lady of Spiders they had different fathers-walking casually towards her. He had been hiding in the heat-shadow of one of the statues, she thought. That very act, that he had dared to spy upon a noble female, was infuriating.
"Elderboy," she said. "You should be careful how you speak to a priestess of Lloth."
"Not yet a full one."
Aylena drew breath to yell, and then saw the sword on his left hip coming out of its sheath with a snap so fast she would be lucky to miss being skewered. Once again, she had to fling herself to the ground and roll away. And Renorth came after her in seconds, long strides more fleet and graceful than Sielza's. There were advantages to warrior training; Aylena had to admit that.
She rolled back under the balcony and spoke a quick prayer to the Goddess as she pulled a small clump of web from her belt pouch.
Renorth was almost upon her when she cast the spell. At once, a floating web filled the air, settling upon him and dragging him to the ground.
Renorth lashed out in a rage with two of the three swords he carried, but even their fine edges couldn't cut one of Lloth's webs. Aylena stepped forward, smiling as she looked at him.
"Your life is forfeit, Elderboy," she said. "To think that you would dare attack a female-"
She stopped.
Renorth's insolence was indeed out of place. He had never dared speak like that to her before, even when she was a child and just beginning to learn the ways of Lloth and the House. He mumbled, and kept his eyes on the floor, and went somewhere else when the Matron and her elder sisters were feeling in a particularly vicious mood, if he could. He held the position of Weapons Master, but the Matron treated him as little better than a common soldier, and Aylena had followed her lead.
If he had struck back at her...
He must have been confident, very confident, that the Matron could do nothing.
Aylena didn't stay to finish Renorth off, tempting though it was. She called on her magic instead and rose into the air, sweeping around the balcony and settling on the edge like a hunting bat.
"Matron?" she asked, trying her best not to sound hurried or out of breath. Matron Zirrin hated for any of her children to sound so, claiming that it brought disgrace upon Elosthan.
Ominous silence answered her.
Aylena stepped forward, and pushed beyond the glittering curtain of beads that hung there into the room beyond, trusting to Lloth to protect her.
Nothing happened, and for a moment she breathed more easily. Then she saw who sat on the elaborately carved chair the Matron usually occupied. At once, her chest tightened, and her hand firmed on her belt pouch.
"Matron Zenoria?" she said. "I didn't expect to find you here."
Her sister smiled tightly at her. Zenoria was the Matron of House Zelossa, a minor family she had founded, but not particularly favored in any other way. Lloth had seen fit to grant her an ungainly face, a huge clumsy body that was almost six feet tall, and long hair that was too thick and always in need of washing. And sons, Aylena reminded herself. If one looked upon their faces and forms and blessings, they were almost equal, Aylena's disfigured face being made up for by the favor of Lloth.
"Sister," said Zenoria. "We hoped that you might return. Therranz and Kisrin were getting impatient to play with you."
Aylena held back a shudder. The male twins' idea of play was to hold something down and torture it until they died. Aylena saw absolutely nothing wrong with cruelty in its place, but that place was in the hands of a high priestess, not the hands of boys just barely three years old.
"Where is Matron Zirrin?" she asked, changing it just in time from "the Matron." Zenoria would fly into a rage if Aylena didn't remember her status. "I have an urgent message for her."
Zenoria shook her head. "I am afraid that she was suddenly taken sick."
"Taken sick?" Aylena asked blankly. She couldn't imagine any calamity that could befall the Matron while she walked in the full throes of Lloth's favor, which she had always done despite doing strange things like keeping a disfigured daughter alive.
"Yes, taken sick." Zenoria rose to her feet, hair not swirling behind her in the usual graceful movement of a drow priestess but falling limply down her back. She saw Aylena noticing and made an irritated gesture with one hand. "But she left me a message for you."
"What was that?" Aylena wished that she could read Zenoria's mind, but that art was reserved for high priestesses alone, and Lloth hadn't yet seen fit to grant it to Aylena. She would have to wait and see how this dangerous game played out.
Zenoria smiled and held up a hand. Aylena didn't recognize the cold light beginning to glow around her fingers, black in the infrared spectrum, but she didn't need to.
It was a spell.
Aylena dodged again-*this seems to be my day for it,* she noted to herself-and ran towards the door. It flew open at her call, then almost slammed shut again as Zenoria shouted the opposite command. Aylena shouted for it to open again, and got through while Zenoria was so mad that she could hardly speak.
Now.
Where would the Matron be?
Aylena didn't even pause before she ran along the carved halls in the direction of the room she had never been allowed to visit, or even go near. Spiders chattered at her from the walls and paced her, but didn't stop her. Aylena didn't know why. They should.
Shortly she rounded the final corner and saw the door to Matron Zirrin's private chambers shining before her, guarded by jade spiders and statues of deadlier creatures. Aylena was not concerned; she could fight her way through them if need be. What concerned her were the strands of some spell she had never seen before threading the corridor, all of them glowing with a soft, bright blue light that was deeper and richer than faerie fire.
Aylena had no idea what would happen if she touched them. Something suitably nasty, no doubt.
Just then, from beyond the barriers, Matron Zirrin cried out in pain.
That did it. Aylena stepped forward and through the glowing blue barriers, intent on reaching her Matron.
The lines of light seemed to sink within her. Aylena shivered as she briefly felt a sensation like passing through the water of Calinthzyl, the extremely cold small lake a few miles from Ozluethyl's borders. She wished she could wrap her arms around herself, but she seemed to have lost all control of her body, or even sensation of it. She felt the cold, and she felt a vast eye watching her and examining every corner of her being, but nothing else.
Then the coldness and the sense of being watched was gone. Aylena stumbled forward, beyond the lines of blue light. She put her hands out in front of her so she wouldn't crash into the first jade spider.
There was no jade spider.
Aylena turned and looked behind her. The blue barriers were back in place, and if she squinted enough she could make out a distinctly different hall beyond them, one that bristled with weapons and wards. Here, though, there were none, and the hall was an expanse of smooth carved stone straight to the Matron's door. Matron Zirrin had protected her private quarters all these years with an elaborate illusion.
Her heart in her throat with admiration of the risk, Aylena turned and laid a hand on the door.
It shimmered and wavered at her coming, and then Aylena was in a chamber so vast and so draped with luxuries that she could have spent hours looking and still not seen them all. She was concerned with the dark elven woman who lay in the center of the enormous bed, though. Matron Zirrin was stiff, as if in death, and the glow of her body was dangerously cool.
Aylena came forward and knelt beside the bed, reaching out to caress her mother's hand.
At once, Zirrin's fingers closed on her own, and she turned her head. Eyes that held more heat than all her dying body possessed focused on Aylena, glowing. "Aylena," she said.
"Matron." Aylena bowed her head.
"What are you doing here? How did you get past the *vharren d'zin'olhyrran?*"
Aylena shivered at the name of the powerful enchantment. "I stepped into them, and felt as if an eye were looking at me. And then I passed through, Matron," she said simply.
For a moment, there was a smile in those red eyes. "They found the loyalty in you," said Zirrin. "You are truly loyal to me." A spasm seized her then, and she turned her head away, grimacing. "Cover your eyes," she whispered.
Aylena had just barely obeyed when a flash of heat nearly blinded her, despite the warning. It had come from her mother's body. It was so great that Aylena was surprised it did not set the hangings around the bed afire. When she looked again, timidly, even more heat had faded from Zirrin's body.
"What is it?" whispered Aylena. She did not doubt that it was poison or magic, but she had never in all her studies encountered something that could do this. The sound of Matron Zirrin's voice, low and exhausted, didn't help.
"I do not know, Daughter. It seems to consume the heat from me in great bursts. When I get cold enough, I will die. Or perhaps the shock of the fires will kill me." Her voice was cool towards the end, as if she would be interested in witnessing her own death.
"What can be done?"
"Nothing."
Aylena lowered her head. "I will pray to the Spider Queen."
"Lloth helps or not, as she chooses."
"I know," said Aylena quietly, and then prepared herself to fall into her prayers.
A hand closed on her hair, jerking her head up. Zirrin's eyes focused on her, searching. "Why?" she asked, in a whisper that Aylena thought would have been a shout, could she have summoned the strength. "Why would you risk so much for me? Why not join your sisters and brother?"
"Because I am loyal to you."
The Matron gave her a little shake. "I know that, or the *vharren d'zin'olhyrran* would not have let you through. But why are you throwing your lot in with me?"
Aylena found herself smiling, a bitter smile she had not known she possessed. She felt her tongue move in her mouth in that odd way, and knew her mother's eyes followed it. "My brother and sisters despise me," she said. "For my disfigurement. And I would not survive long, if Zenoria were to become mistress of Elosthan House."
"Is that all?"
"You are my Matron," said Aylena, and then fell into her prayers rather than wait for another interruption, as much an act of defiance against the Matron as she had ever dared.
Drow words:
vharren d'zin'olhyrran= wards of loyalty, a spell that insures only those truly loyal to the caster can pass.
Disclaimer in Prologue. The drow are still not mine.
Chapter 3
Unintentions and Questions of Loyalty
"L'alurl khalessev abbil zhah dosstan." (The best trusted friend is yourself).
-Drow Proverb.
Aylena pounded towards the front gate of Elosthan House. The statues of displacer beasts on either side, the House guardians, stuttered into motion as she passed and then resumed their stillness, recognizing her for a member of the nobility.
Aylena passed through the gates and looked around. No one was in the courtyard at the moment. Above her, the balcony was also deserted, and she clasped the House symbol that hung about her neck and called on the power to levitate.
"Back so soon, sister?"
Even given everything that had happened to her today, Aylena had no choice but to turn around and gape at that. The voice was male, and the sheer insolence in it angered her beyond words. Her anger only increased when she saw her brother Renorth-well, the Matron had borne him; thank the Lady of Spiders they had different fathers-walking casually towards her. He had been hiding in the heat-shadow of one of the statues, she thought. That very act, that he had dared to spy upon a noble female, was infuriating.
"Elderboy," she said. "You should be careful how you speak to a priestess of Lloth."
"Not yet a full one."
Aylena drew breath to yell, and then saw the sword on his left hip coming out of its sheath with a snap so fast she would be lucky to miss being skewered. Once again, she had to fling herself to the ground and roll away. And Renorth came after her in seconds, long strides more fleet and graceful than Sielza's. There were advantages to warrior training; Aylena had to admit that.
She rolled back under the balcony and spoke a quick prayer to the Goddess as she pulled a small clump of web from her belt pouch.
Renorth was almost upon her when she cast the spell. At once, a floating web filled the air, settling upon him and dragging him to the ground.
Renorth lashed out in a rage with two of the three swords he carried, but even their fine edges couldn't cut one of Lloth's webs. Aylena stepped forward, smiling as she looked at him.
"Your life is forfeit, Elderboy," she said. "To think that you would dare attack a female-"
She stopped.
Renorth's insolence was indeed out of place. He had never dared speak like that to her before, even when she was a child and just beginning to learn the ways of Lloth and the House. He mumbled, and kept his eyes on the floor, and went somewhere else when the Matron and her elder sisters were feeling in a particularly vicious mood, if he could. He held the position of Weapons Master, but the Matron treated him as little better than a common soldier, and Aylena had followed her lead.
If he had struck back at her...
He must have been confident, very confident, that the Matron could do nothing.
Aylena didn't stay to finish Renorth off, tempting though it was. She called on her magic instead and rose into the air, sweeping around the balcony and settling on the edge like a hunting bat.
"Matron?" she asked, trying her best not to sound hurried or out of breath. Matron Zirrin hated for any of her children to sound so, claiming that it brought disgrace upon Elosthan.
Ominous silence answered her.
Aylena stepped forward, and pushed beyond the glittering curtain of beads that hung there into the room beyond, trusting to Lloth to protect her.
Nothing happened, and for a moment she breathed more easily. Then she saw who sat on the elaborately carved chair the Matron usually occupied. At once, her chest tightened, and her hand firmed on her belt pouch.
"Matron Zenoria?" she said. "I didn't expect to find you here."
Her sister smiled tightly at her. Zenoria was the Matron of House Zelossa, a minor family she had founded, but not particularly favored in any other way. Lloth had seen fit to grant her an ungainly face, a huge clumsy body that was almost six feet tall, and long hair that was too thick and always in need of washing. And sons, Aylena reminded herself. If one looked upon their faces and forms and blessings, they were almost equal, Aylena's disfigured face being made up for by the favor of Lloth.
"Sister," said Zenoria. "We hoped that you might return. Therranz and Kisrin were getting impatient to play with you."
Aylena held back a shudder. The male twins' idea of play was to hold something down and torture it until they died. Aylena saw absolutely nothing wrong with cruelty in its place, but that place was in the hands of a high priestess, not the hands of boys just barely three years old.
"Where is Matron Zirrin?" she asked, changing it just in time from "the Matron." Zenoria would fly into a rage if Aylena didn't remember her status. "I have an urgent message for her."
Zenoria shook her head. "I am afraid that she was suddenly taken sick."
"Taken sick?" Aylena asked blankly. She couldn't imagine any calamity that could befall the Matron while she walked in the full throes of Lloth's favor, which she had always done despite doing strange things like keeping a disfigured daughter alive.
"Yes, taken sick." Zenoria rose to her feet, hair not swirling behind her in the usual graceful movement of a drow priestess but falling limply down her back. She saw Aylena noticing and made an irritated gesture with one hand. "But she left me a message for you."
"What was that?" Aylena wished that she could read Zenoria's mind, but that art was reserved for high priestesses alone, and Lloth hadn't yet seen fit to grant it to Aylena. She would have to wait and see how this dangerous game played out.
Zenoria smiled and held up a hand. Aylena didn't recognize the cold light beginning to glow around her fingers, black in the infrared spectrum, but she didn't need to.
It was a spell.
Aylena dodged again-*this seems to be my day for it,* she noted to herself-and ran towards the door. It flew open at her call, then almost slammed shut again as Zenoria shouted the opposite command. Aylena shouted for it to open again, and got through while Zenoria was so mad that she could hardly speak.
Now.
Where would the Matron be?
Aylena didn't even pause before she ran along the carved halls in the direction of the room she had never been allowed to visit, or even go near. Spiders chattered at her from the walls and paced her, but didn't stop her. Aylena didn't know why. They should.
Shortly she rounded the final corner and saw the door to Matron Zirrin's private chambers shining before her, guarded by jade spiders and statues of deadlier creatures. Aylena was not concerned; she could fight her way through them if need be. What concerned her were the strands of some spell she had never seen before threading the corridor, all of them glowing with a soft, bright blue light that was deeper and richer than faerie fire.
Aylena had no idea what would happen if she touched them. Something suitably nasty, no doubt.
Just then, from beyond the barriers, Matron Zirrin cried out in pain.
That did it. Aylena stepped forward and through the glowing blue barriers, intent on reaching her Matron.
The lines of light seemed to sink within her. Aylena shivered as she briefly felt a sensation like passing through the water of Calinthzyl, the extremely cold small lake a few miles from Ozluethyl's borders. She wished she could wrap her arms around herself, but she seemed to have lost all control of her body, or even sensation of it. She felt the cold, and she felt a vast eye watching her and examining every corner of her being, but nothing else.
Then the coldness and the sense of being watched was gone. Aylena stumbled forward, beyond the lines of blue light. She put her hands out in front of her so she wouldn't crash into the first jade spider.
There was no jade spider.
Aylena turned and looked behind her. The blue barriers were back in place, and if she squinted enough she could make out a distinctly different hall beyond them, one that bristled with weapons and wards. Here, though, there were none, and the hall was an expanse of smooth carved stone straight to the Matron's door. Matron Zirrin had protected her private quarters all these years with an elaborate illusion.
Her heart in her throat with admiration of the risk, Aylena turned and laid a hand on the door.
It shimmered and wavered at her coming, and then Aylena was in a chamber so vast and so draped with luxuries that she could have spent hours looking and still not seen them all. She was concerned with the dark elven woman who lay in the center of the enormous bed, though. Matron Zirrin was stiff, as if in death, and the glow of her body was dangerously cool.
Aylena came forward and knelt beside the bed, reaching out to caress her mother's hand.
At once, Zirrin's fingers closed on her own, and she turned her head. Eyes that held more heat than all her dying body possessed focused on Aylena, glowing. "Aylena," she said.
"Matron." Aylena bowed her head.
"What are you doing here? How did you get past the *vharren d'zin'olhyrran?*"
Aylena shivered at the name of the powerful enchantment. "I stepped into them, and felt as if an eye were looking at me. And then I passed through, Matron," she said simply.
For a moment, there was a smile in those red eyes. "They found the loyalty in you," said Zirrin. "You are truly loyal to me." A spasm seized her then, and she turned her head away, grimacing. "Cover your eyes," she whispered.
Aylena had just barely obeyed when a flash of heat nearly blinded her, despite the warning. It had come from her mother's body. It was so great that Aylena was surprised it did not set the hangings around the bed afire. When she looked again, timidly, even more heat had faded from Zirrin's body.
"What is it?" whispered Aylena. She did not doubt that it was poison or magic, but she had never in all her studies encountered something that could do this. The sound of Matron Zirrin's voice, low and exhausted, didn't help.
"I do not know, Daughter. It seems to consume the heat from me in great bursts. When I get cold enough, I will die. Or perhaps the shock of the fires will kill me." Her voice was cool towards the end, as if she would be interested in witnessing her own death.
"What can be done?"
"Nothing."
Aylena lowered her head. "I will pray to the Spider Queen."
"Lloth helps or not, as she chooses."
"I know," said Aylena quietly, and then prepared herself to fall into her prayers.
A hand closed on her hair, jerking her head up. Zirrin's eyes focused on her, searching. "Why?" she asked, in a whisper that Aylena thought would have been a shout, could she have summoned the strength. "Why would you risk so much for me? Why not join your sisters and brother?"
"Because I am loyal to you."
The Matron gave her a little shake. "I know that, or the *vharren d'zin'olhyrran* would not have let you through. But why are you throwing your lot in with me?"
Aylena found herself smiling, a bitter smile she had not known she possessed. She felt her tongue move in her mouth in that odd way, and knew her mother's eyes followed it. "My brother and sisters despise me," she said. "For my disfigurement. And I would not survive long, if Zenoria were to become mistress of Elosthan House."
"Is that all?"
"You are my Matron," said Aylena, and then fell into her prayers rather than wait for another interruption, as much an act of defiance against the Matron as she had ever dared.
Drow words:
vharren d'zin'olhyrran= wards of loyalty, a spell that insures only those truly loyal to the caster can pass.