Lolth did not call him again for such a task, though he stayed with the dwarves a long time—ten years, he had been here all together. He thought often of the sacrifice, replaying it over in his head when he was alone. He approved of killing Nier, the way he would approve of crushing a fly that bit. He took a similar pleasure in the act, but it was bits after the initial sacrifice that he found most intriguing.
He had been suspicious that the kobolds were tracking him on the way down from the sacrifice. When he walked back, his suspicions were confirmed, though in an odd way; on the route back, he had to slip through a passage in the rock that opened to a small chamber, then a similar path continued. He had disliked it on the way in. The echoless nature of the room and the way the path twisted made it impossible to see or hear anything ahead. It was suspicious when the kobolds hadn’t ambushed him.
One of them had ran into its own trap as they scampered away from him. Sometimes, he still wondered what they had sensed that he didn’t.
Hiding in layers.
He was determined that he wouldn’t keep hiding. Not forever.
They said the Spellplague had ended, officially, but dwarves did not have much magic that wasn’t innate, and he had abandoned his studies when he, well, had nothing to study.
He left Bellan and Qelkan slowly since Nier had died four years ago. With their help, he reshaped a small dead-end down the road into a home, adding a door and some reasonable accommodations. He thus spent less time in the town, which he preferred, though he did still visit his benefactors. He started wandering farther and farther away. Sometimes, he would find something, or kill something of some small value and was able to sell it. In this way, he got by. He repeatedly delved into the Underdark, mostly out of longing to go home, but Lolth gave little and less indication that he was ready for whatever she wanted of him. Not unusual.
He wasn’t unhappy. Often bored silly, horrifyingly lonely, and isolated, yes, but not unhappy exactly. It was nice not having his sisters watching him for mistakes. It was nice doing things because he wanted to, rather than because it was expected of him—even if he was used to portioning out his cooking and baking to feed a household rather than only himself. He discovered, very quickly, that he didn’t actually like being alone. With his sisters, he had sought solitude because there was so little of it. Living alone, he was just reminded of how alone he was.
When it was unbearable, he took up shifts with the dwarves on guard duty, but he would only ever be on the fringes of their society, he on one side of the river and they on the other.
He tossed the smooth stone with a flick of his wrist. Descaronan had taught him to skip stones. They had been waiting for some game animal—he couldn’t recall what. So much of hunting was just sitting around and waiting, so she had shown him how to hold his wrist, how the stone could skip. She could get it to skip up to seven times. The most he could do, even now, was about four, if the fourth counted because that was when it sunk.
The ripples disturbed the water and the rock frightened the blind fish—but it still sank to the bottom in the end and the ripples would always ease. Lolth would cast him out in the world and he would make his way, but in the end, it was all the same.
He glanced at the stones he had gathered into a little pile by his feet.
But was that really that different from these stones? In a thousand years, this river may not even be here. The water could carry the stone, maybe wear it down to sand and spread it over the cavern, maybe carry it down to the magma where the rock could be melted down again and reborn. Or maybe the water would just dry up and it would rest there. Which wasn’t that different from the stones that never were picked up—so maybe it was about the throw, how far it went, the splash it made and the sediment it disturbed.
Or, more likely, he was trying to find metaphor in a simple children’s activity and it had become unnecessarily philosophic.
He had spent almost as much time with the dwarves as he had ever spent with his own people. Was he even really a drow anymore?
Aestith choked at the thought of being other. Not fitting in anywhere, not belonging. He was estranged, but he was a part of that, and he wanted to be again. Why can’t I go home?
But his naked body was the reason he couldn’t go home. Hadn’t he learned enough? Hadn’t enough time passed that he should at least know where to go? What had he really learned here?
He watched the water.
He had learned to wait. He had learned to listen and obey. But those were things he knew before; now they were only reinforced and he was given other reasons beyond those of his childhood. “Because we say so” is such a terrible reason.
He closed his eyes for slightly longer than a blink. What else? He had learned the value of a smile and a joke to defuse confrontation. He had learned that people were people wherever he went. Drow elves had different ways of doing things, but in the end, duergar and drow weren’t that different, he didn’t think. They had different customs and their bodies were quite different, but that was largely happenstance of birth or cultural indoctrination. Ultimately, everyone got hungry or thirsty, tired, horny, bored. They were all made up of skin and meat.
He felt on the verge of some philosophical breakthrough, then a loud crack made him jump. A stalactite crumbled and fell into the water with a splash. His gaze flickered upwards. The stalactites sang. It was a strange, haunting sound he had only ever heard once before as seismic waves and pulsing vibrations echoed off their formations. His eyes widened. Some primal part of his brain, deep where there were no coherent or even sane thoughts, screamed at him to run.
The ground rumbled. He cringed and scrambled from the riverside. He ran, losing his footing twice on the shaking earth. There were no good places to be in a cave at a time like this. Caves were usually safe during an earthquake, which meant that on the surface, it was particularly bad. Or maybe it was due to something else—magical in nature perhaps. But if he got his head under dwarven architecture, it was meant to endure this sort of thing.
He had been a child the last time he had experienced something similar. Jaele had grabbed him and brought him to her room. She had held him while he trembled with every violent rumble. At the time, he had thought it was for his sake but it was probably just to keep him from shrieking and getting himself hurt, which would be a burden for the family.
It stopped. The suddenness made him pitch forward and hit the ground hard. He skinned one palm in the fall and his ankle hurt when he tried to sit up, but the shaking seemed to have stopped.
Idiot, he thought. I should have stayed still.
There were times to run—Virabel with a knife and a grin—and times to stay still. What had possessed him to try to run during an earthquake? He couldn’t say, only that it was stupid and he wished he hadn’t. Maybe he had thought there might be a cave-in and he didn’t want to be trapped on the wrong side of it. Idiot.
He rubbed his ankle. It throbbed. He scraped grit from his palm and struggled to his feet. The first step brought an arc of pain shooting up his leg. He gently eased back down and poked at the bone again. It didn’t feel broken. Bruised, and badly sprained perhaps.
He took a long breath and stared straight ahead. He could tear his tunic and bandage it, then lean heavily against the cave walls on his way back. It would take some time. He wanted to limp back to the water and dip his ankle into its cool streams, let the cavefish nibble his toes. But then his foot would just be wet, and he would be no closer to getting home where he could properly look after it and take care of himself.
The bandage would have to suffice—there was nothing else for it. He pried off the large, serviceable boot, so clearly made by a dwarf trying to make something to fit the slender foot of a drow elf. He rolled down the linsey-woolsey sock and poked again at the ankle. He flinched only a little at his prodding, then sighed deeply as he rubbed it, hoping to ease some of the ache with the blood flow.
He closed his eyes, trying to think of anything other than the pain. Of health, of being whole. Lolth. All his thoughts went back to the goddess, as if there was nothing else for him in his life. Perhaps there wasn’t. And wasn’t a spider the purpose and the beginning of her web? He whispered a prayer.
The pain was gone. He assumed it would begin again when he stood, but when he looked at his ankle, the yellowish, purple tint to his dark skin wasn’t there. The redness on his palm, too, had vanished. Had Lolth healed him? That seemed unlikely.
He prayed, briefly but passionately, then affixed his clothing. Carefully, he continued the way to the small place that was, he told himself temporarily, home. Then walked past it. He wanted to see the town, to make sure Bellan and Qelkan were all right. He imagined they would be. The town was built of limestone, which wasn’t likely to move much.
But suppose it did? If it did move, it would be devastating.
If, he told himself. Don’t be irrational and speculate. You’ll drive yourself mad.
He almost smiled. Bellan would tell him, Your hair is white enough as it is—stop worrying about every little thing.
It was just a remnant of his upbringing, and his paranoia about his body. Perpetual worry was a personality trait by now. And broodiness, Qelkan would have added.
I don’t brood! Aestith would object. I’m thinking.
Then why so gloomy?
And Aestith would politely accuse him of attributing Aestith’s complexion with gloom and they would grunt, the closest approximation to a laugh he thought they were capable of. Aestith liked the duergar; he liked their blunt sense and practicality, and he was grateful to Qelkan and Bellan.
The town had fared better than he had. Why did he even bother worrying over the stability of dwarven architecture, of all things? Yet, he had grown to respect that kind of engineering over magic.
Drow would just sculpt something with magic and if it had an architectural failing, they would kill the architect. Which, he realized, meant that in the end, they learned nothing, because she would never have a chance to improve her design and no one would learn from her failings. Could drow accomplish more if only the smallest traditions changed?
What did it matter if he came to these conclusions alone. What could one lone drow ever hope to accomplish?
#
A road took him to a gnome city, closer to the surface. He didn’t mind that so much as he thought he might initially. He disliked the idea that it felt only a scratch away, but he tolerated it. They regarded him with suspicion at best, and his reserved behavior was mistaken for standoffishness. His silence interpreted as arrogance. There was really nothing he could do to convince them of anything else, which bothered him not at all; the feelings were more or less mutual. And anyway, the city was constructed for them and he didn’t fit.
He hadn’t even felt this tall around the dwarves—perhaps because they were stocky and strong as well, but gnomes were not. They seemed like small pale children with adult brains. He was there only a short while, then went to the outskirts of the city, where they had some accommodations that catered to taller folks. He wasn’t allowed inside of the city anyway.
The first public house turned him away without much explanation. There was only one other, further back from the city. It looked damp, a wee bit rundown. He went into the cavern anyway. The hall curved into a common room with an assortment of crumbling stone and old wooden benches and tables, no two quite alike. A few smoky candles flickered and a fire burned in the hearth. A cluster of humans gathered near to the light, quietly cursing the caves. Those less bothered by the dark sat further from the light. They nursed earthenware mugs filled with murky liquid with little froth. Dice skittered on a table. Cards were laid down. The scent of stale pipe tobacco masked the lack of soap.
Aestith’s gaze carefully did not linger on the crowd. He went to the bar and sat down along an empty stretch. The bartender, a gnome, obviously on a platform on the other side, glanced at Aestith with scarcely concealed distaste. Aestith said, “I’ll have—” His eyes flicked toward each neighbor. “—mead.”
The gnome grunted and shuffled to the back wall. Aestith stared straight forward until the mug was set in front of him and the gnome grunted out something that sounded like a price. Aestith pushed across the coin and took the mug in both hands.
Aestith drank slowly. He hated mead, but he was sick of ale. The half-orc leered at him. Aestith ignored him, for a while, and moved when he saw the orc-blooded rise. He walked quickly, but took care to make it look unintentional, as if he only naturally walked quickly. He sat at the empty half of a bench pulled up near the fire and slung his pack at his feet. He appreciated the fire’s warmth, and liked to watch the flames dance over the coals. A couple of the humans grumbled about “proper wood fires”. Seeing him so comfortable with the light did a bit to put the others’ minds at ease.
One of the humans told stories in Common. Tales of the surface, like Aestith had never heard. They were fascinating, the way a flood was fascinating. Inane details hinged upon his mind, yet he remained incapable of picturing what they spoke of. He assumed some of that was that his Common was not as good as he would have thought.
Finally burning with curiosity, he asked, “What’s rain?” He was glad the unfamiliar word was a single syllable, and he did not think he mangled it.
The humans stopped. Two of them turned and ignored the question. One made a look of disgust. The fourth answered, “It’s water. It falls from the—” He stopped. Aestith tilted his head. “It falls from above, sometimes just a sprinkling, or a downpour.”
Aestith’s brow wrinkled. He didn’t know the last word. “A what?”
“A—Like a torrent.”
Aestith tried to imagine this. “Like a waterfall?”
“Sort of. Except it goes on for miles in every direction.”
Aestith’s brow wrinkled. “What from?”
“Well from—” His face screwed into a frown. “It’s like, far above us. Like the roof of a cave. And water leaks everywhere from it.”
Aestith paused to consider this. “There’s a river or a lake above you? And this is normal?” He couldn’t believe someone would be daft enough to live under such a thing, especially if it leaked so consistently that they had a name for the type of leak.
The man shook his head, but snorted a laugh. “No, it—Well, sort of. The firmament is… Well, it’s just really high up. It’s like water that floats…”
“Water that floats? On what?”
“On air.” By the man’s expression, he clearly realized how insane this sounded.
Aestith only felt more confused for having asked. “I see.”
The man smiled, a tinge of nervousness around the edges. His skin was a dark brown shade. Not the puffy, undercooked pink of his compatriots, not as sickly. The human said, “Sorry. I don’t think I’m describing it very well.”
The humans slowly bled from the room, and the rest of those who actually slept. His breath fogged when he moved from the warmth of the fire. Few places in the Underdark were this cold. They were well away from magma flows.
“Is it always this cold here?” Aestith asked.
The male drow looked up from the block of ironwood he was carving. The other’s eyes lingered on Aestith’s shield. Aestith had repainted it before he had left Dogh Maldur, but he had used a black paint. The image of the spider was only visible in the brush strokes. He thought of Amalette sometimes, and her lectures about artwork, when he looked at it. He wondered if the other saw it too. “In winter.”
“Winter?” Aestith echoed.
“It’s a surface thing. For a time, the world above is cold, and the earth this close to the surface is cold too.”
Aestith shivered. How far were they? Gnomes didn’t live that far from surface, so it really must be just a scratch away. “How long does it last?”
“Months. This one is almost over, but it comes again every year, and then it gets warm again.”
Come keep me warm, Aestith wanted to say. But he didn’t.
#
The problem with traveling alone was being alone. It wasn’t that it was any slower or more dangerous, for he could conceal himself better alone. Simply being alone, however, was boring.
All the novels he had read, in various languages, featured lonely warriors or suchlike, embarking on epic journeys. They were usually alone or assembled a ragtag group of unlikely heroes, yet still seemed “alone” somehow. And the best bits of the books were usually when they were alone. That was when they struggled, or had to best the odds by themselves or riddle with dragons or suchlike. It was when they were alone that you saw who they really were.
Aestith decided that, if he were to ever write his memoirs, he’d have to leave out all the bits with him traveling, lest he bore his reader to tears. What might he say? I walked, and walked some more, stopped and rested for a bit and had a snack, then walked some more? Just after lunch, I stubbed my toe and trod on a beetle? All dreadfully dull. He’d never write his memoirs—if someone wanted to know about his life, they could ask him.
He walked slowly and relatively aimlessly, only following wherever he thought Lolth might have directed him. If he received no sign from her, he might stop and pray for a time for clarity’s sake, or made his own decision—which honestly, he thought the goddess was trying to beat into his brain anyway. That sounded more like her, though in truth, he didn’t know much about his goddess, beyond his blind devotion and her penchant for chaos and desire for obedience. In return, she promised power. What more did he really need?
He must have walked for—tenday, he must remember that it was a tenday, because the Common tongue wasn’t very inventive. He had spent years with the dwarves, but he could not quite shake off the things he had learned as true as a child. It was more akin, to Aestith, as learning another language rather than colloquial terms. Common wasn’t what his thoughts were in, as it were.
The increasing cold drove him down further into the Underdark, where things made a bit more sense to him. He stayed in a town of dwarves once, and a turn or so later, made camp. He had passed a village of drow that were in what he could only call an odd cult. They were not unfriendly and seemed to want him to stay, but his skin crawled near them and he slipped away.
He had found the cavern mostly because he had hit a dead end walking and was too stubborn, and maybe reckless, to backtrack; he had chosen to climb up to the smaller tunnel and crawl, then slide, then tumble through. He had nearly gotten stuck twice, but he had little propensity to panic. Sometimes, it was concerning; fear kept a drow alive, but Aestith’s emotions were always so distant. In that moment, it worked to his advantage and he was able to calmly remove himself from the situation, breathe carefully out, and wriggle away.
He camped there mostly because he was tired of walking. The mushroom forest had been dark, uninteresting.
Once he stopped making such a racket and laid down to relax, the forest slowly came out of hiding. The mushrooms glowed gently, some as small as a finger and others as big as the Tith'Rix family home. Lichen opened with an almost audible murmur. Moss crept over the floor. Thick ironvines snaked down the cave walls. Dimly glowing flora traveled down a gentle waterfall and down the stream. Partially obscured by rocks, the light reflected off enormous pink crystals.
It was beautiful, and quiet. It reminded him, a little, of the grounds at the cleric colleges. The martial colleges were all geared toward training, and the terrain around them was meant to practice footwork more than be visually appealing, but the cleric and magic colleges were places mostly of study, with the odd field to practice out of doors. Most of the grounds were more like parks though. Amalette or Jaele used to bring him through them. Jaele would go to explore, and they would climb ironvines to rocky peaks or leap across streams. Amalette, in contrast, would find a quiet spot, maybe under one of the giant mushrooms, and draw whatever she saw. She made perfect renditions, and he liked to watch her, or lie on his back and stare upwards, at the waxing giant mushrooms. Those ones were always glowing, and many of them sported long strands of torchlight mushrooms dangling from their caps in a variety of colors. Their spores even held a faint glow—blue, pink, red, green, purple, yellow. All different shades or variations of each.
Would the homesickness ever truly pass?
He found, over the course of the next few candlemarks, that he could make minimal sounds, but any kind of banging or a voice above a whisper would cause the sensitive plants to close, and the light would go out. They would do this first nearest to the noise, and it would ripple backward, lighting again the same way.
He was able to carefully harvest some of the smaller specimens, dry them, and put them in a bag. He found a small patch of mushrooms of a similar species to the ones his family used. Those, he tried to cultivate. They might be wild and uncultivated, not nearly as potent, but he knew what he could do with them to improve that—and to manufacture the drug if he so chose. It surprised him, because his family had done such work eradicating it from the areas around Enainsi. He must be a long way off.
He was able to hide from any creature that trespassed through the area by climbing into a crevasse and hunkering down low; fighting would be pointless and could damage the flora. Easier to watch it go. Rarely, anything lingered. It was peaceful here, quiet and restful. He spent his time in quiet contemplation. Long candlemarks passed in meditation as he focused on finding some kind of divine guidance. Or, more likely, his own revelations.
He was safe here. He didn’t feel alien, nor did he feel he had to hide. He felt rested, and it was nice for a long while. After so long running and fearing other drow killing him for his body, the sneers of duergar, the hateful glares of svirfneblin, he did not mind the solitude. It gave him time to rest and meditate. He did not know how long he stayed, but he learned every small secret of the grotto. He knew every path, the best places to hide or trap, the warm bathing pool.
He could leave the grotto as he wished, travel to a nearby settlement to trade items he needed—usually pieces of crystals or mushrooms for clothing or books. Once, someone tried to follow him back, but he went well past it, doubled back later and when he was sure he was alone, went back. He knew he was not followed, because the mushrooms would have given an intruder away. He liked it here. The world was quiet.
He must have stayed for years, alone.
Then he became restless. It wasn’t that there wasn’t enough for him to do—foraging, hunting, and trapping gave him plenty. It took him longer than he liked to recognize it; he may not feel alienated or that he should hide, but he felt lonely. Even that wasn’t quite enough for him to leave when loneliness was often preferable to alienation. But you could be alone without being lonely, and the opposite was true as well. What did he want?
He tried to concentrate on that question, but he only kept coming back to Lolth. Then, what was he even doing here? He couldn’t do anything here, couldn’t serve her, couldn’t please her. She demanded chaos. This was peace. He had to leave, but go where?
He had just been wandering for so long, surely he had to find a direction, a destination at the least?
His brow creased in frustrated concentration and his hand slipped. The knife sliced open his thumb and he jerked back. A fat drop of blood glistened on his thumb. He set the knife down with the mushrooms and pressed a cloth to the cut.
Maybe it didn’t matter, or maybe he’d know when he got there.
#
The drow was close and too far at the same time. In him, she saw potential and opportunity, this accident of the Weave, this deluded mortal.
He was on the cusp of what was needed, but had reached the destination too soon.
She would have to send him away to learn the skills required to complete her task. He wasn’t useful yet.
Her task required a cleric, perhaps even a priestess, and the one she had picked was not yet ready to embark.
But ones such as she had innumerable mortal lifetimes to learn the art of waiting.
And she was patient.
#
The slave knelt at her side. Ondalia inspected the slave’s work on her perfectly manicured nails. The gold glinted in the light. Discovering early on in life that her fellows barely tolerated bright light, she had sought to accustom herself to it, not out of any personal interest or a desire to be different, but rather to use it against them.
The Tith'Rix boy was gone. Ondalia had not been able to discover where to, even after a decade of casual digging. The body had not been recovered, which wasn’t too unusual, but a little suspect; bodies were useful and the Underdark had so few resources that unless it was mangled beyond usefulness or dangerous to reach, it should have been brought back.
Regardless, she knew without doubt that he was somehow alive. She had never bothered to contact him, though right now having him run this errand would be more useful than having to rely on her own vassals. The boy had almost worshiped her from the moment he clapped his eyes upon her; she had recognized the look, for she looked to Lolth similarly.
If he was away from Enainsi, though, he was beyond the point of usefulness to her.
She listened to a human slave read out a list of recent rumors, followed by another list of names of the recently deceased. After that, there was a list of births, then a list of various goings-on. The first slave braided her hair during this, applied powders and creams to Ondalia’s satisfaction, then she relaxed in the chair while the other slave finished the last list. The reading slave had a clear, high voice and spoke carefully. She had been bred here and long used to drow, perfectly tame. Humans did not thrive in the Underdark; they were nearly blind. Ondalia found that to be useful, for it meant it was harder for them to run, though they had seen the punishments for trying. They were cleverer than goblins, too, and for that they had to be watched.
She studied the fresco on the ceiling—an underground mushroom forest, the particular variety of which were found in the Feydark, the Feywild’s version of the Underdark.
“Dismissed,” she told the slaves with a sigh. Both left and she was afforded nearly five minutes of blessed silence before her vassal returned.
The gray-haired male stalked across the room and knelt in front of her. She frowned. “You’re early.”
A pause. “I believe my presence was noted, my lady.”
If she was able to control it, she would have done her best to keep her eyes their usual shade. The Tith'Rix boy wouldn’t have even been noticed. But he was from a merchant family, and they could come and go in the merchant ward. “Why is that?”
He flinched. “I was able to sneak in and pass as the hired help without great difficulty, and I was vague enough with the few questions asked. But I still suspect that the Innis merchant knew.”
She sighed. Most of her fellows were inward-focused, only concentrating on the struggles within the church or politics. She would have been less stressed if she did likewise. “Did you find anything useful?”
A shrug. “Yes and no. Innis has been maneuvering for years to dominate the drug trade. Tith'Rix hold a monopoly of sorts, but I believe it’s tenacious; whatever favor they curried with the Spider Queen is slipping. Innis has produced a female child showing promise for the clergy.”
Innis had been less than forthcoming with that information; she had suspected they were hiding something. They had been trying to buy her favor for some time. This was why. “How old is she?”
“Almost twenty.”
She relaxed by degrees. The girl wouldn’t be going for training for a while yet. It wasn’t only the ruling class that produced clerics. “I had heard a rumor, but it is good to have it confirmed.” Even at the cost of him having been suspected. “Anything else?”
“It should only upset the merchant class. They’ve had a string of ill luck with their caravans.”
Likely more due to Tith'Rix interference. It was good that none of that family had ever produced a cleric. She almost shuddered; they produced so many daughters, many of them twins, most of them talented in one way or another. The money they had, the connections. No, she didn’t want them rising when they could so easily tip the scale. It would have been nice if the Tith'Rix boy had been here, as her own personal eyes and ears to that family.
#
The shadows on the cave wall at first alarmed him—they looked huge and monstrously real, then he realized he was being childish. But shadows meant light. To Aestith, light had always meant magic or a fire, lighted lichen, torchlight mushrooms, maybe glow worms in jars. He touched the hilt of his rapier, then his hand fell away. He followed the shadow, then stopped, staring at the animal casting the shadow.
It was like a rat, but smaller, skinny, with a fluffier tail and a differently shaped head. It held something in its forepaws and chewed. It ignored him at first, but when he didn’t move, it stopped. The seed husk fell from its paws. It tilted its head, as if measuring him as a potential threat. Its tail twitched. It chittered, a high-pitched, offensive sound that echoed distantly, and only, oddly, from one direction. He glanced behind him curiously at the direction of the echo, then looked back at the creature in time for it to dash from its perch and zip away. He looked after the way it had gone, then balked, staring, eyes wide.
It was so bright if he had not waited in the half-light, watching the animal, it may have blinded him. He took a tentative step forward, squinting. He hovered back, away from the mouth of the cave. Aestith expected someone to drag him backwards into the dark, into what he had known and believed. Or, worse, for something to drag him out of the cave into the blinding light of what he would ultimately discover was late sunset. He tilted his head upwards.
Did any of it even matter?