...the drow are with her

"Aliara!"

This voice wasn't the sibilant hiss of a drider. It was clear and strong, a feminine voice. Aliara's head twitched up. For a moment, she thought it was Teysa, but then she saw Lil'esh waving to her. The drow trainees were standing in a cluster. Aliara tried to remember their names. Dirreg, she remembered. He sat on the floor with his leg extended in front of him while another drow wiped it with a damp cloth. His foot had been bent into a terrible position. The rest of them had minor bruises and scrapes, and one of them cradled an arm that looked as though it might be broken, but they were all alive. Almost all-- one of them had fallen to one of the shadow wolves. Her body had been recovered and wrapped in a black shroud.

"Where's Teysa?" asked one of them. Her name came to Aliara in a flash: Ty'liv, the merchant's daughter. The others all nodded.

"We saw her fly," said one.

"What was that thing?" asked another.

Aliara shook her head. "She's..." her voice broke, and she blinked back tears. "She's hurt. The Matron took her." She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. As she exhaled, the lines in her face set. Her expression grew stony. Her mouth tightened into a little line. The tears threatening to well up behind her eyes shrank and withered. She took in one more breath and let it out. An aura of icy calm radiated off her. She would not let these vultures see her inner turmoil. She would not.

The drow were all staring at her now, all of those pairs of eyes, red and grey and yellow. She could feel the stares boring into her. All at once she was a child again, a child in a cage, surrounded by passionless grey faces that watched her scream and cry without ever raising a finger...

Something warm brushed her cheek. She looked up to see Lil'esh standing in front of her. Without a word, the drow wrapped Aliara in her arms. The half-elf stood stock-still, every muscle in her body tense. Her arms were held stiffly at her sides, brushing aside Lil'esh's awkward attempt at an embrace. The drow was clearly uncomfortable with such an open display of affection, and she soon stepped backward and looked away. The other drow stood in a semi-circle around Aliara, but none of them dared to step forward to offer comfort. She stared back stony-faced. She knew her expression gave away nothing.

"Mother Lolth won't allow her to fall," said Nikkias, the youngest and frailest of the group. His mother was a priestess and he wore Lolth's holy spiderweb prominently on his breast. "She will deliver Teysa, you'll see." He sounded sure, though his voice quaked.

"Teysa will be fine," Aliara replied. Her tone was perfectly level. She stared with eyes like chips of flint. "She's strong. This is nothing."

Lil'esh's was still looking down with an awkward grimace. She held herself apart from the group and said little. As Nikkias was talking, though, her eyes grew wide, and relief spread across her face. She was staring past Aliara's shoulder. The half-elf turned to see a drider approaching.

"Jy'ven!" Lil'esh cried. She ran towards the drider. Jy'ven was limping, one of her legs was crooked and dragged beneath her, and her body was covered in scrapes and bruises, but she was alive. She said something in the burbling language of the driders, and Lil'esh turned to Aliara. "Jy'ven says... there's a prisoner." Her eyes grew wide. "That drow! The one you hit! I forgot all about him!"

Aliara had forgotten, too. The anger smoldering in her belly flared up again. "Let's go see him, she said, and pulled a fresh dagger from her belt. "I want to hear what he has to say." Lil'esh stared at the dagger with her lips pursed but said nothing.

Jy'ven led them to rocky ledge. The drow was sitting in the floor, his arms and legs bound together with silk. Another swatch of it covered his mouth. One of his eyes had swollen shut, and there was a goose egg rising on his forehead. His eyes grew wide when he saw Aliara and he wriggled in his bindings. Not quick enough-- she pounced on him. Her dagger flashed and the leather of his collar parted, revealing a skinny neck with a prominent Adam's apple. Her blade hovered in the air an inch from his flesh. She took a deep breath and prepared to punch forward.

"Aliara, no!" Lil'esh grabbed her elbow and pulled. The rest of the trainees were standing around in horror. The two women struggled for a moment, their prisoner forgotten. He stared at the blade as it weaved back and forth in front of his face.

"Stop... it!" Aliara grunted. "He... Teysa... let me go!"

"Fine!" Aliara wrenched her arm away, elbowing Lil'esh in the belly, and raised her knife again. "I'll make him talk!"

The drow shook his head wildly. His protests were muffled by his silk gag. Aliara's dagger sliced through it, and he squealed as she cut a furrow in his cheek. The silk fell away and he spat out its last traces.

"Please!" he babbled. "Please, don't kill me, it wasn't my fault! It was Korrio's! Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"Shut up!" Aliara screamed at him. She wanted to slap him, to throttle him, but her anger had drained away as fast as it had come and left her feeling only despair. She sheathed her dagger. "I'm not going to kill you, you fool! What's going on? Who's Korrio?"

"You have to... you have to..." he looked around. "What happened? Where is... where are all the, the soldiers?"

"They ran," Aliara said. "Teysa killed the sorcerer, or whatever he was, and they all ran away."

"Teysa?" The drow looked confused. "The golden lady? She killed him?" His voice was soft with awe.

"Yes," Aliara said. "And now she's hurt. So I'm not in the mood for games. Who was he? Who are you? Why did you come here?"

The drow swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and then nodded. "I'm... my name's Rakkec. I'm-- I was-- a miner. Freelance. Korrio was my partner. My friend. He's the one that the golden lady killed." He gulped. "Sort of. I mean... it was sort of him. I don't know! This has been the worst month of my life!"

"You're the one who came here trying to kill us!" Aliara growled. "If you want sympathy, look elsewhere."

"No! I mean, yes, but it wasn't... you don't understand! I had to!" Rakkec was sweating now, despite the cool air of the cavern. "I told him not to. I told him it was a bad idea. It wasn't him anymore, you understand? It wasn't Korrio. He was never like that. He didn't hate anyone. He was a happy-go-lucky-guy." He sighed. "We were in a mineshaft. Prospecting. An abandoned shaft-- Torrageth didn't want it, said it was unstable, but they use golems and mining engines, so they can't--"

It was gibberish to Aliara. "Shut up!" she hissed. "I don't care about any of this crap! Get to the point!"

Rakkec let out a squeak and his eyes rolled madly. Sweat streamed off his forehead. "Ok! Ok! Please don't hurt me! Look, this was a few weeks ago. Korrio and I were prospecting and we found a cave, hidden underground. There was something inside it. I don't know what it was, some plague or disease, but it got into Korrio and it changed him. He started... rotting... like he was dead but still walking around. And there was this darkness... like greasy smoke..."

Aliara thought about the shadow-wolves and nodded. She'd seen cases of demonic possession before, though none like this. "So your friend got possessed. Then what?"

"Possessed!" Rakkec nearly shouted the word. "That's it! That's exactly it! He started acting different. He didn't care about money anymore, or food, or work. He just holed up in his room for hours. Sometimes I heard him laughing. Sometimes he was... he was sobbing. Begging. It sounded like him, then, but I was too scared to go in. The rest of the time, he sounded different. His voice was all..." he waved his hands in the air in a gesture meant to explain the inexplicable. "Anyways. He told me he'd kill me if I tried to leave. I wanted to, but I was so scared. He dragged me along everywhere. I think he thought of me as a... as a pet. Because we had been friends before, maybe. He took me with him to this... big house. A noble's house. I don't know which one."

"Lockh," said Lil'esh. Both Rakkec and Aliara looked up in surprise. She had been standing there so quietly that Aliara had forgotten she was there. She looked at their surprised faces and shrugged. "Those banners we saw, that was House Lockh. I had to learn all the heraldry as a child."

Rakkec looked her up and down and swallowed nervously. He touched his forelock in salute. "Begging your pardon, m'lady, I didn't--"

"Stop it!" Aliara snapped. "Just finish your story."

"Well, he met with the Lord in his study. I thought we were going to die... I mean, I was taught, never look straight at a noble, never talk to them..." he averted his gaze from Lil'esh. "Well, we didn't. The two of them talked, they didn't include me. They tossed me in a guest room and locked the door. Then the next day Korrio came and got me. He said we were off to do something important and I had to come, and the Lord had gotten all his men together, and then next thing I knew we were here. Nobody was paying attention to me in the battle so I ran off, and then I ran into you and the golden lady, and then someone hit me, and that's... that's everything, I swear." He trailed off, looking embarrassed. "Teysa, you said. Is she badly hurt?"

Aliara's arm twitched. "Keep her name out of your mouth!" she hissed. "In fact, just stay quiet while we figure out what to do with you." She climbed up off him and pointed a warning finger. "Stay there. If you try to run, I'll put a knife through your neck." She beckoned Lil'esh to follow and walked away a few paces.

"So?" she asked, when they were a safe distance away. "Do you believe him?" Confiding in Lil'esh felt strange, but at the moment she had nobody else. And-- this was difficult to admit, but there it was-- she sort of liked the drow. They would never be friends. Aliara was quite confident that she'd never describe a drow that way in her life. But Lil'esh was respectful, and brave, and Teysa had always spoken highly of her. As long as she didn't try to touch her again.

"I... yes, I think so," Lil'esh said. "It's a strange story. But it's no stranger than what we just saw, is it? There was some sorcery driving those men on."

"Have you ever heard of anything like he described?" Aliara asked. "A demon, or something, sealed away underground?"

Lil'esh pursed her lips. "The City is very old," she said. "There are all manner of forgotten places. I've never heard of anything like in his story, but that hardly means anything." She paused. "Are you going to kill him?"

"I'm--" Aliara caught herself and stopped. She took a deep breath, held it for two seconds, let it out. "No. Not yet, anyways. I want to confirm what he's told us. If he's telling the truth-- if he's not just trying to save his own skin-- then no, I don't think I can kill him."

Lil'esh nodded, perhaps a little too quickly. "I think you're making the right decision. We shouldn't act rashly."

Aliara folded her arms and cocked her head to one side. "So. He seemed to react pretty strongly when he heard you talking about heraldry. 'M'lady,' huh? What's that about?"

Lil'esh looked away. A faint flush crept into her cheeks. "I thought you knew?" she said. "I'm-- my mother is Lady Su'tia Riiv."

The name was familiar to Aliara. She supposed Teysa might have mentioned it at some point, but she hadn't paid close attention. She wasn't about to admit that now.

"So you're a lady, eh? What are you doing here, then?"

"I'm the third daughter," Lil'esh replied. "Lit'vi will become the lady. Je'lyn will manage the household and control the money. There's not much left for me. It was this or serve my family as a bargaining chip in a marriage alliance." She shrugged. "I thought it would be more interesting than swanning around the City looking ornamental."

"And so far?" Aliara asked. She swept an arm, an expansive gesture that took in the room full of corpses, the shivering drow prisoner, and the driders working to clear away the carnage.

Lil'esh's gaze panned across the room. "So far I guess I was right."

For some reason that made Aliara snort with laughter. Lil'esh giggled, and that did it; the two of them collapsed in barely contained mirth. The other drow stared at them wide-eyed. Aliara laughed and laughed until tears streamed down her face. It felt like a dam had broken somewhere inside her. Finally she managed to get herself under control.

"Come on," she said, beckoning to Lil'esh. "Let's get back to the warren and find a place to stick this poor sap."