Return to El'keth

El’keth was where Teysa had left her, working at her loom. She hummed under her breath as she spun, a tuneless sound that nonetheless managed to be both cheerful and infectious. At these moments, with her guard down, she seemed more like a child than ever—a precocious child perhaps, hovering on the cusp of womanhood, but a child nonetheless.

Once, that had cheered Teysa up. She had loved her sisters and leaving them behind was the hardest part of her paladin training. Meeting El’keth was like having a little sister again, naïve and innocent.

Now that naivete looked like weakness. There are hard times coming, Teysa thought, and she will need to be hard to meet them. The thought made her sad. There was something pure about El’keth’s innocence, something worth protecting. Teysa hoped that a piece of it might survive the trials to come.

“Teysa!” El’keth said, looking up from her weaving with a warm smile. If she was still nervous after the way they had parted earlier that day, she gave no sign of it. “How are you doing?”

“Surviving,” Teysa replied. “I talked to your mother about Aliara.”

“And?” El’keth’s smile remained, but it became brittle. “I hope she is safe.”

“Me too.” Teysa settled in next to El’keth at the loom and lowered her body until they were looking eye to eye. “You know why she’s gone, right? You understand the significance?”

“To kill that drow who attacked us? To get ****?”

“No, not ****,” Teysa said, shaking her head. “Lord Lockh is still a threat to us, El’keth. He is still out there, and he’ll be coming back.”

“How do you know?” El’keth asked. Her voice quavered slightly. “Maybe he’s learned his lesson.”

“He performed a coup, El’keth,” Teysa said. “He overthrew the Church of Lolth. If nothing else, he has to come here to finish them off.”

“Lil’esh and the rest?” El’keth shook her head. “We can’t let him do that!”

“No, we can’t,” Teysa agreed. “But it’s not just the drow. Think about it. Why did he attack us in the first place? It’s not just about plunder. If you’re looking for treasure, there are much easier targets than a fully populated drider warren. He wants us dead, personally. The coup was meant to support his campaign against us, not the other way around.”

“How can you know that?” El’keth protested. “What if we taught him to leave us alone?”

Teysa sighed. She was starting to grow annoyed. El’keth clearly wanted to believe that the danger was over, but that was an illusion she could ill afford.

“If he just wanted to take over the City, he would have done so before depleting his forces against us,” she explained. “He did it because he had to, because his first attack failed. Now he has more power than ever. Of course he will come back to finish what he started.”

By the time she was finished talking, El’keth’s eyes were as wide as saucers. Dismay was written on every line of her face. “Are we doomed?” she asked in a tiny squeak. “Should we flee? How can we possibly survive?”

“We fight.” Teysa made a fist with one hand and pounded it into her other palm. The sudden noise startled El’keth and made her jump a little. “All of us. Drow and drider alike. Including you, El’keth. You have to learn to fight.”

“I have been!” El’keth protested. “I came to all of your lessons! Even before you…” She gestured at Teysa’s spider body and trailed off.

“That’s a start,” Teysa said, “but you only came because your mother ordered it, didn’t you? She told me she wanted you to learn strength. Don’t deny it, I remember you at lessons. You were always cautious.”

“I don’t like hurting people,” El’keth admitted. “Unless I really have to.”

“Well, now you really have to.” Teysa’s voice was grim. “Come, El’keth. We should spar. I understand more now about how a drider fights. Do you have your own suit of armor?”

As they left, El’keth cast one last longing look back at her weaving. Teysa saw and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“It will be there when you get back, El’keth,” she said. “You pick up a spear today so that tomorrow you can go back to your loom.”

El’keth nodded and followed her out.

The drider princess did, as it happened, have her own suit of armor. It was ornate, with silver filigree inset along the edge of the breastplate, forming a pattern of cobwebs. Her helmet bore a crest of horns that rose like a duchess’s hennin. Her spear was a work of art, its haft molded to fit her grip and layered with strips of platinum and gold, but Teysa found it well-made and finely balanced. The broad, leaf-shaped blade held a razor’s edge.

Teysa’s own armor was simple and utilitarian, without any adornment but the dents and scratches it had picked up over its lifetime. Her spear was a simple shaft of black iron with a steal triangle for a head. She had thought that learning to fight with her new body would be a chore, but the adjustment was much easier than she’d anticipated. New reflexes overlaid her old ones, seamlessly transmuting fighting instincts honed on two legs to eight. She’d had to relearn something things: balance, posture, and how to adjust for her newfound strength. But even these lessons came quickly and fluently. It felt good to be fighting again, to be honest. In a time of turmoil and change it was a reassuring constant.

She withdrew after their latest clash and let El’keth catch her breath. Every part of her wargear was of the highest quality, and Teysa had no doubt it had been hand-crafted in the drider forges to the Matron’s exacting specifications. The only part that was less than perfect was the warrior inside. Decked out in her panoply, El’keth certainly looked fearsome, and she sank effortlessly into the fighting stance Teysa had taught her. Yet as soon as she came under attack, her façade cracked. She flinched away from the most ferocious attacks and met the others with a hesitant parry, as though she were constantly second-guessing her judgment. In three minutes of sparring Teysa could have killed her a dozen times over. Even pulling her blows, El’keth was soon bruised and moaning.

“What’s wrong, El’keth?” Teysa asked. “I know you remember the spear forms I taught you. You were brave enough on the road last month!” That felt like so long ago now. Another lifetime entirely.

“That was different!” El’keth protested.

“How so?”

“I was scared! I just… reacted!”

Teysa laughed. “That’s what fighting is! If a man is running at you with a polearm held high, do you think you have time to consider whether you should address him in the Fifth Form or the Seventh? Of course not! You stab him and you hope to avoid being stabbed back! Most of your decisions will be instinctive. That’s what this training is about: making sure those are good instincts.”

“What instincts? On the road I just panicked.” El’keth slouched and held her spear loosely in one hand, its butt end resting on the cave floor. “I was so scared. I think I always will be.”

“Of course you will.” El’keth looked up in surprise; whatever answer she’d expected, that apparently wasn’t it. “I’m scared every time, El’keth,” Teysa said. “Every warrior is. If she tells you she isn’t, she’s either a fool or a liar.”

“Really? You?” El’keth scoffed. “You’re not scared of anything, are you?”

“Are you calling me a fool?” Teysa smiled, and the tension between them ebbed slightly. “I’m scared of lots of things. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be maimed. I don’t want to fail my friends.”

I don’t want to lose Aliara, she thought, and pushed that fear down. Even now, it still haunted her.

“Bravery isn’t the absence of fear,” Teysa explained. “It’s what you do when you’re afraid. It’s not brave to cook breakfast. It’s brave to go into battle knowing you might die. You accept that knowledge and fight anyways.”

“Well… it’s not just fear,” El’keth confessed. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know I’m a drider. We’re larger and tougher than just about anything else down here. I know that sometimes we have to fight to survive. I just don’t like killing. I don’t think I should.”

“I wish more driders felt the same way you do,” Teysa replied. “More people, generally. The world would be a better place. You don’t have to like killing. It’s probably better if you don’t. Liking killing too much turns soldiers into murderers. You should just accept that, in this world, sometimes it’s something you have to do. You do whatever you can to avoid it, but when you’re put in that situation, you act decisively and without regret. Usually, just being willing and able to kill means you won’t have to.”

“Now you sound like my mother,” El’keth said. “She talks a lot about strength. How you have to be strong, because the alternative is to be weak.” She sighed. “That can’t be right, can it? There can’t be just the two options.”

“There are different kinds of strength,” Teysa said carefully. She knew she was treading on dangerous ground here. The Matron had told her—ordered her, really—to ready El’keth for combat. She was trying to shape the girl into a proper heir. If Teysa undermined her, the Matron would not be pleased. “Sometimes strength requires ****. Sometimes it requires mercy. Real strength, strength of heart, means knowing which to use.”

“If you say so,” El’keth replied. She did not sound very sure. “I just want to make her proud.”

Something in her tone seemed strange to Teysa. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Your mother is very proud of you. She told me just the other day.”

“No, not her,” El’keth said, waving a hand irritably. “Lolth, I mean. The Goddess.”

That was new. Aside from the Matron, Teysa had never heard any of the driders express more than a passing interest in their Goddess or their faith. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, or didn’t believe—religion just seemed not to occupy their thoughts overmuch. Teysa had been about to resume their bout, but now she found herself curious.

“What about Her?” she asked. “Do you think She isn’t proud of you now?”

“I don’t know!” El’keth said. “I never used to think about Her at all! When I was small, that is, just-hatched. My mother has been talking to be about Her. She says that we are steward of Lolth’s creation, made in Her image. She says that we have a duty to live up to Her expectations.”

Teysa frowned. “That’s… quite a lot to put on your shoulders.”

“Mother says that because we are stronger, we must carry a greater burden,” El’keth said earnestly. She sounded as though she were reciting by rote. “She says that we are fallen creatures, and we have a duty to climb back up to civilization.”

She really did a number on your head, didn’t she? Teysa thought. She knew that what she had to say next was likely to get her in trouble, but she pushed ahead anyways. Some things were more important than the Matron’s favor.

“Your mother is carrying her own burden,” she said. “Her guilt. She committed awful crimes. Raising you properly, preparing you for leadership, is part of her penance. But don’t let her put her chains on you. You don’t have to expiate her sin. You are your own person, El’keth. What Lolth wants for you is to live a long and fruitful life, to be kind, to nurture Her other creatures, and to make Her realm a better, more loving place.” The words came naturally to her, though she hadn’t prepared them in advance. They sounded right in her head and even better on her lips.

El’keth looked up her, her eyes as bright as polished jet. “How do you know all that?” she asked. “Did she tell you?”

Teysa hesitated before answering. To be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure where those words had come from. She’d felt them like a stirring in her soul. Had it been Lolth’s influence? Or had she just been inspired? Was that really Lolth’s will, or Teysa’s?

“Not exactly,” she said. It seemed to safety and most truthful response. “But Gods don’t normally give you express instructions. You do what you feel is just, and if you are on the right track, they have a way of letting you know.”

“Well, I want to do those things!” El’keth said. “I do! I want to make the world a better place! I just don’t know how to do all that and be a warrior, too. Is that really what Lolth wants for me? To be a killer?”

Teysa shrugged. “I don’t know, El’keth,” she said. “But you have to do the job that’s in front of you. Lolth won’t shelter us from our enemies by Herself. She expects us to fight in our own defense when we have to.” She took a few steps backward and planted her spear butt against the ground. “We do this so that we may have peace later on. Focus on that goal, and whatever **** you may have to do in the interim will be easier to bear. Now, again. Address me from the first form, and let’s see how much you remember.”