The sky was too big.
He had never even fathomed something so big could possibly exist. He knew, academically, that the earth was big, but it had never felt like one solid entity—not really. You can only see portions of it at a time, so it never felt unknowably large. The sky, however, was too high up, too large. It swallowed the entire world, and the landscape just went on and on forever. No walls to cut it off, no darkness to cover you. No safety in stone. Even the air was wrong.
Aestith no longer breathed the breath of the earth. It was the cold sharpness of the sky or the heat of the sun. He could bear the subtle differences between the upper cave system and the Underdark, away from the gentle radiations that felt comforting to him. Here, every pull of his lungs felt like inhaling poison if he dwelled on it.
Outside the windows, the snow fell as if driven there by a windigo, but there wasn’t one. Easier if there were; something could be done to stop it. The nights were long in winter—which he would approve of if not for the abominable cold and wet.
He had not intended to “winter” at the inn. Fact of the matter, the innkeep had not intended that either, but it was a town along the road, too small to have regular guards and bandits had come by several times to collect “protection” fees. When they had seen Aestith, they had left town though. By some stroke of luck, the innkeep saw that.
“Aestith,” the innkeep had said some turns past. “That was your name right? Where do you plan to winter?”
He had been confused, not yet understanding the nuance of Common, that some nouns could be verbs. “I don’t understand.”
“Where do you intend to stay the winter? I’ll put you up for free if you stay and keep those bandits away. Throw in two meals. If you need some extra coin, I could even find you some work.”
When the innkeep had explained what winter was, Aestith had reluctantly agreed.
The bandits were cowardly by nature, and unwilling to actually test their badly made swords; they were thugs and bullies, not fighters. They stayed away, and may have gone elsewhere since then, for they had not seen much of them since he had begun his stay.
Just as he had found dwarves to be fascinating, he also found humans fascinating.
The winter was long, and the inn had been visited by many the odd holy woman or man, who had left behind religious pamphlets, tracts, or even a book. One thing he liked about the surface was the ready availability of reading material.
Aestith read them all with dull interest that left him angry and irritated. The pamphlets and tracts often said one thing, then when he looked at the source material, it was different, or out of context. Why the deception?
It infuriated him that Lolth was viewed as evil for a desire for blood sacrifice. Then what was Odin doing in that tree if not a sacrifice of himself to himself? And the followers hanged people, or christened ships with blood. Aestith usually read a bit, then went to knead out his frustrations and anger on bread dough. Working with surface flour had been another education that he had painstakingly acquired.
Many surface people criticized slavery, even while docking their workers’ wages. Aestith attributed slavery more to culture than religion. Besides, he had come to learn of plenty of other cultures and religions whose holy books endorsed slavery—if they ignored it now, that was their prerogative, but it wasn’t what the words read. Bellan had hinted that it was their blind superiority complex; this too, he ignored, because plenty of other peoples held similar convictions.
Some travelers would hurl the casual insulting term his direction and mention genocide and war-like tendencies of drow, but that still confused Aestith. Humans had repulsively short lives, and they seemed to see peace as an interruption to war. A drow could go a decade without killing someone. Humans couldn’t seem to.
In the end, Aestith saw enough parallels in one culture and another to cause discomfort. Now he could only think, They bitch that we’re savage, but they’re just as savage and worse—hypocrites! This only solidified his belief that drow were superior; he had never been under a delusion that his people weren’t murderous. Humans were.
He had encountered one wood elf who despised Aestith on sight. Aestith held distaste for her, but only the ordinary sort; he didn’t spit in her food or drug her wine. She called him “murderer” under her breath, which bothered him not at all, though this seemed to fuel her hatred, as if he had tacitly admitted to it by not bothering to engage. It had come to a head on her last night at the inn, where she had followed him into the kitchen. She had been drinking and this time loudly proclaimed the accusation. He had quietly went about his business, letting her rant until she was spent, then he looked up and said, “Do you feel better?”
That had sparked a new floodgate of incoherent rage and obscenities. And, despite that the world over hated drow, the whole room heard her cursing and swearing at him, and heard him asking her gently if letting her anger out helped her. She was the one escorted from the room and told to keep her head about her, not him. And that, too, taught him something about people. If they were angry, it did no good to engage. Let them burn themselves out, let them hurt themselves. He was glad, suddenly, that he so rarely felt anger. What good did it do? It had done her no good at all, had it?
It made him think of other things, things he preferred not to contemplate—his future, namely. Lolth would guide him to a point intentionally or no, for he lived his life under her principles and wishes, but he had to do something with his life. He wouldn’t fit into the old life, so he had to discard it like outgrown clothing. What did he want to do?
The thought caused him no small amount of discomfort, for it had never been a question he had been allowed to ask himself. There was no “want”. He did things because he had to, because it was expected, because he had to do certain things and that was the end of it. But what did he want, ultimately?
He supposed… to go home. Next, he thought, dismissing it outright. He bit his lip as he internally formed and then dismissed plans.
The traders were talking about some adventure in the desert about a mirage of a golden palace and a desert madness born of lack of water—the surface was a horrible place—when the iron bell over the door clanged for more guests. The open door let in the cold and a swirl of snow. Aestith shivered, even in his warmest clothes; Enainsi was hot and he had never experienced cold like this before. He had bound his small breasts and worn pants just to keep that much warmer.
“Bring them in! Step back! Give them some air! Any of you travelers know healing of any sort?” The innkeeper knocked a tin bowl off a trestle table. Walnut husks spilled over the floor. Two people laid someone down on the table.
The travelers shook their heads. One piped, “I know a bit about herbs.”
“Right,” he sighed. “Rob, go run and get the barber, eh? Get!”
His son careened out the door without his coat. In the common room, heavy boots clunked over the floor, doors opened and shut. Voices spoke over one another in rapid succession.
“It’s bad,” the barber said with a shake of his head. He had been in a battle or two, as a field surgeon. “All I know to do is to cut it off.”
“No, that can’t be,” a new traveler said.
The publican’s wife shoved a man aside and looked at the one on the table. “Help me get his pants off—let’s look at the leg.”
The man screamed when they touched him. Someone held him down and the leather cowl slipped from his hair. Aestith stilled. The man’s head turned. A drow. It puzzled Aestith that the humans did not simply leave him to die if he had gotten hurt, not because Aestith thought the other should die if he got hurt, but because surface people held so much resentment to drow raiding parties and suchlike. People tended to hate what they didn’t understand; they didn’t understand Lolth’s desire for struggle, and they refused to protect themselves so they died as a result of it.
The rest of the group were armed and armored, dressed for poor weather—adventurers, it seemed. Maybe part of some guild, hence the concern over a fallen guild member.
The herbs-woman elbowed her way to the table to look at the leg. The drow’s leg was so badly burned the boot needed to be cut off to see the extent of the flame’s kiss. Removing the leather peeled back flesh with it.
His companion said, “A dragon. A small one. But…”
“Idiot,” someone swore.
“No, not the dragon. It wasn’t a dragon what did this. It was—”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
The herbs-woman shook her head. “I’ll need volunteers to hold him down. Get him some liquor. We’ll need hot water and some rags.” She swiped her stringy hair back. “Someone heat a copper-bottomed pan. To staunch the blood flow.”
Aestith squeezed forward. His stomach pressed against the trestle table. He inched his way toward the leg, then recoiled at the sight of the wound. It was burned, twisted, melted like a charred bit of bacon.
A mustachioed human slammed a meaty fist into the table so hard it bounced and the drow hissed like a cat in pain. “Can’t we do nothing for him? Wrap it in a poultice til we get ‘im to a proper healer?”
“And wait for the leg to die? So it can just rot off on its own and spread to the rest of him?”
“We can cut it off if it comes to that!”
The barber got his saw.
It wasn’t like magic was illegal here; he had known plenty of magic-users. It was that, well, Aestith stood out enough as-is. In Enainsi, a drow simply didn’t call attention to themselves without certain calculations and precautions, particularly not a male drow. But he could heal this.
Aestith ignored the shouting, the arguments. He closed his eyes and beseeched his dark goddess. His lips moved in Elvish like a child learning to read, “For the faith I bear you. For the people you command. May I serve you always.”
The sensation of casting the spell was different than the magic he had performed before. Stronger, heavier. Magic lifted from him as if he were throwing lead balls or rolled off of him like sap. It left behind pieces of itself like water running over rocks. It spiraled down his fingers where it danced over the stranger’s damaged cutis. Healing energy sunk into the burned flesh, rushing deep inside it. Fresh blood surged through previously damaged veins and arteries and brought a new sensation of agony.
The man gasped as if he might scream if he could only manage to move past the pain of his dead leg. Time turned back on the cooked muscle. Blood flowed through it. Muscle expanded. Skin cracked and nearly split, then seemed to catch up to the internal healing. It grew and the wrinkles smoothed out. Flesh curved over muscle. The curled toes straightened. Melted toenails grew firm. Even the fine hair prickled and grew over the leg.
Aestith’s hand trembled. Disbelief slackened his jaw. He had done that. How had he known to do it? How could he have guessed that it would work?
Ondalia had healed him once. But healing was not exclusive to clerics. He should not think he could be so blessed. Who had ever heard of someone like him being a cleric of Lolth?
The drow on the table sighed in relief and his shoulders drooped. He rolled his head to look at Aestith. Aestith met his gaze, then tried to hurry away, but it was impossible; too many people had been watching.
Aestith was not allowed to retreat back to his quiet sanctity. He was ushered into a seat and the guild wanted to talk to him, to thank him, to buy him a drink or a meal or to talk, making jokes about how Aestith had been holding out on them or suchlike. The sellswords, including the drow, were part of some guild and were allocated together by chance. They could have left the other to die, but they hadn’t.
Aestith eventually got the entire story from the sellswords; they were journeying home after signing up for some company or another. The dragon, they admitted, had not attacked them. The dragon had merely made a lot of noise and then they investigated. They claimed the creature had been so horribly mangled that putting it out of its misery was an act of pity more than of valor, which was when the necromancer had found them. The necromancer in question was dead at cost. It had been doing something with the dragon’s blood, but Aestith didn’t stick around long enough to hear what, and didn’t care.
It was well past supper when Aestith was finally able to slip away, then managed to further avoid the common room by busying himself where he had left off in the kitchen—part of his board was paid in labor while the publican’s wife was with child. How he had convinced them to trust him even that much, he didn’t know. The publican’s wife had taken care of the stew and had made biscuits to go with it anyway. Aestith would have added dumplings to the stew. Still, he wanted to make the dough for tomorrow’s bread, and there were other things to take care of too.
He tossed the mother dough into the bowl and reached for the sack of flour. The door opened. He assumed, without looking, that it was the publican or his family, so he continued.
“They lied, you know. The necromancer is still out there,” someone said, in perfect Deep Drow.
Aestith dropped the cup in the flour bag and looked up as if he had been caught under suspicious activity. The other stared respectfully downward. Aestith opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. He hated being caught off-guard. “Couldn’t you knock?” he said.
He flinched. “I did. It’s loud out there—maybe you didn’t hear it?”
Aestith looked back at the table. He had probably just dismissed it as more common room noise. “Could be.”
“There is no way I can reward you proper thanks. I would have lost the leg otherwise,” he explained.
Aestith shook his head to object, then stopped. He was taller than Aestith, by perhaps an inch, maybe less. Drow were not especially tall, as height was a detriment in caves. Aestith was two inches below five feet himself. “What’s your name?”
“Valanxal. In your debt.” And he knew what that meant, to drow, by his expression—somewhere between resignation and pain. He stared at the worn wooden floor. “I’ve never met a Lolthite cleric so willing to heal.”
Aestith straightened, suddenly glad that he had bound his breasts and had not worn a dress today. He couldn’t believe he was really a cleric, but this stranger thought he was! He saw no harm in letting the other believe that. “Nor are likely to again.” A pause. “I’m Aestith, like Aesdondia.”
He did not recognize the dragon’s name. “What may I do to serve you?”
Aestith shook his head. He didn’t want someone in his debt. He—
A spider wove a web in the corner and dropped down on one long strand. He stilled and leaned against the counter. “Not me. Never me.” Aestith raised his head. “The power that healed you is Lolth’s and it is through her divinity you are healed. Why don’t you contemplate what that means, and remember who you are and what you are meant to be.”
Valanxal flinched. “It is easy for you, isn’t it?” Then his eyes widened as he seemed to realize what he had said, and who to. “I do not mean—”
“You have lost all due respect, haven’t you? Do you even remember who you are and where you come from? Do not lie to me and tell me you were born here and do not know. I can see in your eyes that you know better.” Aestith's teeth gritted.
He lifted his head, temper rising against better judgment. “I do not mean to cause offense, cleric, but you are here too.”
“Yet I haven’t forsaken my goddess nor forgotten my home.”
He backed up a pace, as if Aestith could undo the healing he had done. Valanxal’s eyes closed in quiet submission. “You are right.” They opened. “Only tell me what to do.”
Aestith looked at the web, but the spider was gone. “I ask only that you pay the goddess proper respect, Valanxal.”
He nodded. “I am out of place. I had intended only to thank you and instead I have caused offense.”
Aestith threaded his lower lip through his teeth. “I suppose I can… concoct a way for you to make it up to me.” He cocked an eyebrow.
Valanxal caught the tone in his voice. His lips twitched in a dim smile.
#
The next evening, Aestith found, neatly folded on his bed, a rose-colored necklace, the sort of thing someone might barter for a healing. It was the color of Jaele’s hair in candlelight. Grief and loss flickering over his face, replaced by anger.
He stormed out of the room, but didn’t see Valanxal in the common room with his guild, so he turned back.
Aestith shut himself in his room and twisted the lock. A hand on his shoulder made him jump. His elbow caught the intruder in the jaw. Aestith kicked. The intruder fell backwards, then braced himself against the wall. In a fury, Aestith raised his arm to strike him again. Valanxal moved his hand automatically to catch it.
Valanxal stared at the arm, at Aestith's lithe figure, his demure stature. The way Aestith’s arm was raised lifted his tunic enough to expose part of his effeminate waistline. His eyes widened as he understood why Aestith had steadfastly refused to undress, had insisted on only oral.
Aestith wrenched his arm back. His heart hammered and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. It had always been a possibility that his sexual partners could become violent. Valanxal was between Aestith and the door, but there were people only a few feet down the hall. If he screamed, someone would hear. Aestith tensed for a blade, a fist.
Instead, Valanxal turned from him and opened the door. Valanxal glanced back at him. The male’s lips curled in something almost a sneer. “I thought you were attractive. I was wrong. You’re an abomination, and your family is weak for not killing you at birth.”
Aestith glared. No protestation he could make would matter; drow strove for perfection, and Aestith was no perfect specimen of feminine or masculine.
The door closed, leaving him alone. He sunk onto the bed and crossed his arms over his belly, sick with the thought of being here, so far from the Underdark. The necklace spilled from his hand onto the bed and he thought about throwing it. He wanted more than anything to just go home. Valanxal was wrong.
Lolth had chosen him to a purpose—it had to be. He knew that he was doing something wrong, but he just didn’t understand what. Had he been here too long? It had been a good place to start, and certainly, he needed to leave, but where to? He had to have more faith.
#
Valanxal left the day after last, striking out into the blinding snow. The weather had lifted, and they had places to be. Aestith had spent the interim carefully avoiding his disgusted sneers. He had no way to tell if he had mentioned it to his companions, but imagined he had not, considering that they would know they had gotten into bed once already. Small blessings.
The publican’s wife’s stomach swelled plumply. Under her many layers of wool, Aestith may not have noticed if he didn’t know to look. Because miscarriage and infant death were so common, the couple had not yet told anyone, but the walls were not as thick as they assumed and it was a small town, so their secret did not keep.
“... Having her here is dangerous. How do you know she’s not some advance scout?”
“Aestith has been here since late autumn,” the innkeep drawled. “Anyway, she’s a great cook.”
It was a variation of the same conversation that his landlords had been having for several days, ever since she had discovered that she was pregnant.
“How long until she poisons everyone? We’re having a baby. We can’t have her around it.”
“She’s around the boy and you don’t mind.” The “boy” was no kin to the publican, but when one marries a whore, one acquires a few things.
“They say that drow can influence the unborn.”
Aestith didn’t even know how that was possible. If drow could do such things, the Underdark would be a very different place. But people said that about witches too. Anything they didn’t understand, really.
“In the spring then…”
Aestith didn’t particularly want to wait that long, and neither did the publican’s wife. Both of their desires, however, were halted by one of the many vile parts of the surface world—the weather. Aestith knew little enough of being on the surface, and traveling in inclement weather was not a skill he knew—and both of the humans were reasonable. When Aestith saw the publican next, he commented that he had every intention to leave when the snow melted. The man seemed relieved, and no doubt prayed for spring.
She kept away from Aestith, sometimes whispering prayers under her breath, which amused him. Did her god ever speak to her? Did it grant her any power or protection? He smirked, warm with delight despite the chill of the season. If it was stillborn, it would serve her right. And if it wasn’t, turned out perfectly ordinary, well, that suited him too; the drow hadn’t influenced the unborn. Or maybe she would justify it and say it was her own faith and devotion that warded her from his influence. It interested him that, no matter the outcome, she would blame him for the bad and praise her gods for the good. Why?
Drow just weren’t like that. If something bad happened, it could be Lolth, but it was just as likely ill luck—outside the clergy anyway. And if something good happened, it could be Lolth’s favor, or it was just as likely your own cunning and power. Aestith could not grasp the logic of praising a god who seemed to have so little to do with one’s life as these surface deities seemed to. And there were so many! Wasn’t it so much simpler to only serve one?
When he left the village, he didn’t even know where to go exactly. Wherever the road led.
Which sounded fine in theory, from a comfortable padded chair of a storyteller sitting before a warm fire. In reality, the road wasn’t just fraught with perils for the lone traveler because it was dangerous—Aestith could handle himself and he knew better than to venture into less-traveled places, so he stuck to the main roads and didn’t cut across country even when he may have preferred it. He also wore a cloak that shadowed his face so that a casual glance would not give away his lineage—and it infuriated him that he felt that was necessary, or even just that it was more convenient to not be as hassled.
Traveling brought a whole host of minor inconveniences, a series of annoyances, and a collection of unpleasantness. He much preferred travel in the Underdark. The Underdark had drafts and vents where air might gush suddenly, but it was nothing at all like the wind that plagued the surface world. Enainsi was warm all year around, close to a volcano as it was. Aestith had never experienced this kind of cold before.
If Aestith looked with the vision to which he had grown up with, in infrared, the night sky was a mass of fire and burning, like a thousand suns coalescing in the sky together. The stars felt like thousands of eyes staring at him, and the moon seemed to follow a person. If he looked at it, it seemed to have a face—which was nonsense but he couldn’t shake the feeling—and that face watched him. To say nothing of the sun!
Aestith could probably illustrate for hours on how awful daylight was, though based on what he could see in infrared of the night sky, he had a deep suspicion that the stars were not that different from the sun, but for whatever reason did not hurt his sensitive eyes as badly. The nicest thing he had to say about the sun was that it was, for a time, pleasantly warm. He had come out on the surface in fall and it had been warm enough to, on a particularly dry stretch, bake the soil before the days shortened drastically. The surfacers said that the summer would come and it would be warmer, but why did this strange cycle go on continuously for no conceivable purpose? No one supplied him with an answer to this beyond folklore.
Aestith froze suddenly, listening with his head slightly tilted. He wasn’t particularly adept at hunting or tracking himself, but one thing that had always bothered him about the surface was how loud it was. Birds constantly twittering, insects droning, wind—all so incredibly loud.
The birds had stopped, maybe some time when he was lost in a list of personal complaints. He reached for his rapier, hand on the hilt. Bandits? Aestith had to admit, he made a decent target. Joke was on them, though—he didn’t have enough worth stealing.
The day was cold and gloomy, and that was probably the only thing that saved him; when the wolf moved from the brush, he saw the large, warm body amidst the cool foliage. Its muscles bunched. It leapt. Aestith reached for his shield on his back—too late. It closed the distance between them, all mangy fur and claws. Spit dribbled from its teeth. Its heavy paws hit Aestith in the shoulders. Rock and earth slid under his boots.
The rapier slipped from his fingers.
The pair rolled. Aestith’s hands raised automatically to protect his face from the gnashing teeth. Its teeth pierced his flesh, yanking his arm away from his face. Aestith’s eyes widened. The scrawny wolf tugged and yanked on the limb. Its fangs caught on the fabric and it jerked its head, only momentarily distracted. The blade was too far and the knife was at the wrong hip.
His muscles tensed. Unblinking, he whispered a prayer, his devotion to Lolth, his desire that the wolf should suffer. His body erupted in a radiant fire, burning with no heat. The starving wolf let go of his arm with a pained yelp. Aestith reached toward it. His hands sank into the thick fur and he willed the fires to burn.
The stench of burning fur and scorched earth filled his nostrils. The wolf pulled away, frantically fleeing the fire. The power coursed through Aestith and he pointed at the fleeing animal. “May Lolth take you,” he whispered, half a prayer, half a curse. It filled him to overflowing and exploded like an engorged waterskin. A bolt of energy struck the wolf in the back, lancing through its singed hide.
The wolf staggered. Blood dripped over the road, and it fell. When Aestith approached it, it was still breathing. It was a mercy to dip the rapier into its neck. The beast had been alone, not so unlike himself.
He wiped the sweat from his brow. A dull throbbing in his sword arm reminded him of the damage the creature had inflicted. His mouth twitched in irritation. He touched the wound with his free hand, murmuring a prayer. Just as before, the flesh knitted. He flexed his arm. The fire that had scorched the wolf had not touched him. Lolth had given him the power to heal and the power to slay that which opposed him.
He didn’t know, exactly, what this was. Aestith knew his faith, his devotion. He knew that he had healed himself and another, and this new power, too, to harm as well as heal. What was more, he felt, without question, that he could do more. He was limited, not by his own abilities, but by his own ignorance of this power.
Aestith’s throat was dry and he felt suddenly dizzy. His breath caught in his throat. With a trembling hand, he clutched his chest as if to contain his pounding heart. His stomach flopped, but not in fear. Trepidation and awe, yes, but not at the ritual of combat; Lolth had blessed him more than he realized.
I’m a cleric.