Luneth

Teysa considered speaking to Jez'ria, but she had a feeling that would be a waste of time. Jez'ria had been human once, but she and Teysa could not be more different. She was standoffish at best, hostile at worst, with a scornful sneer perpetually pasted to her upper lip. Luneth was more inscrutable, but on the few occasions Teysa had seen her she had been unfailingly polite. She was a little frightening, in truth. Her gaze was distant, as though her glassy black eyes were always fixated on a point some six inches behind Teysa's head. Her hair was long and blonde, so pale it was almost white, but she wore it bound up in a tight bun when she was out hunting. She would spend days away from the warren, leaving and returning on her own private timetable and speaking to no one but the Matron.

Teysa found her in the larder, a cave near the audience chamber that was kept perpetually chilly by some kind of drider magic. Stepping into it was like stepping back in time, to the icehouse outside the Abbey of St. Petronia. There, the chill had bit at Teysa even through layers of linen and wool. Now, she barely registered it. Yet another unexpected perk of her new status; temperatures that would have had the human Teysa chattering her teeth simply felt brisk. This cave had been planed smooth along the walls and floor, and iron rings set into the ceiling, from which hung chains and silk robes. This was where the driders-- carnivores all-- kept their kills: cave-lizards, massive eyeless fish, and more anonymous chunks of meat. Since the drow had arrived a space had been set apart for sausages and fillets, but the driders still ate most of their meat raw. Teysa hadn't been able to bring herself to go that far, but the sight of the dangling carcasses filled her with an uncomfortable, gnawing hunger.

"Luneth?" she asked, picking her way across the frozen ground. The other woman turned and regarded her placidly. Luneth was tall but unnaturally slender for a drider. She wore a silver chain necklace and a matching torc on one arm, but no other clothes except for a leather strap that ran from shoulder to waist. Her quiver hung from this, along with her bow, a massive piece of bone-white wood strung with what looked like silver thread. A bow was not the most practical weapon for hunting in the stalagmite-filled Underneath, but Teysa had seen her bring down a cave-beast from three hundred paces, threading her shot between the thickets of rock with unnerving precision.

"Hello, Teysa," Luneth said. As always, her voice was quiet, with a strange lilt to it that might have been a trace of accent. She fixed Teysa with her strangely penetrative gaze.

"What have you brought us?" Teysa asked, wishing she had thought of a smoother icebreaker. Luneth looked down at the carcass on her workbench as though seeing it for the first time.

"Cave-serpent." She held it up to demonstrate. The beast was massive, nine feet of scaly grey flesh that was already starting to peel. One dead eye stared sightlessly at Teysa, and she shuddered. She had been subsisting on soup since her transformation, thick stew filled with mushrooms and fish. Eating raw meat was still a bridge too far for her.

"Are you... going out hunting again?" Teysa asked. It was a safe enough question. Luneth seemed discomforted in company, even that of other driders, and had barely been seen since the drow had arrived.

"Yes."

Teysa paused, awaiting an elaboration, but none seemed forthcoming. "Can I... come with you?" she asked hesitantly.

This time, the pause was long enough that she considered asking again, but finally Luneth nodded. "Yes."

She turned and set off without looking back, leaving Teysa to keep up as best she could. Luneth's movements were fluid and strange; her legs flowed like a centipede's, and she hunched her back as she went. Somehow, her strange gait was both fast and silent-- Teysa struggled to match her, and her own footsteps rang off the stone.

They left the warren via a side passage Teysa hadn't even known was there and entered the raw, unworked caverns of the Underneath. The light here was dimmer, in some places absent entirely. Teysa found that she could still see in the darkness, but vaguely; it was like looking at a lit room through a heavy sheet of gauze. She was surprised to find herself out of breath. She hadn't thought that could still happen, but the pace Luneth set was grueling.

"Luneth," she gasped. "Wait!"

The other drider pulled up short so quickly Teysa almost ran into her. She turned around and gave Teysa another long, patient look. "Why did you come with me, Teysa?" she asked, her voice no louder than a whisper.

Teysa took a deep breath. There was nothing for it; she simply had to forge ahead.

"Luneth," she said, "how long have you been a drider?"

For the first time, Luneth's expression changed. She looked faintly surprised, though she still did not focus on Teysa's face. "Many years," she said at last. "Many, many years. Before you were born."

This answer surprised Teysa, though she tried not to show it. "Was it... was it hard for you?" she asked. "The change, I mean. Losing your body."

Luneth looked down at her body and then back up at Teysa. "I still have my body, Teysa. This is my body."

"I mean--" Teysa struggled to put her feelings into words. "The body you used to have. You came from the surface, right? Don't you miss that? Being able to go outside, feel the wind in your hair? Don't you miss your family?"

"Family?" Luneth echoed. "I have my family. You are my family now. We are sisters. The Matron is our mother."

Teysa could feel herself getting frustrated. Luneth's voice was airy and light, as though she was discussing the weather. Her answers seemed glib, but her tone was nothing but earnest. Teysa decided to push her a little harder.

"You were an elf, right?" she asked. "Don't you miss the forests? The rain? The feel of grass under your--"

"What do you know about elves?" Luneth asked. There was an edge in her voice now. It had appeared so suddenly that Teysa took an involuntary step backwards. Luneth reached back and grabbed her bow in one hand. "What do you think you know?"

Teysa thought hard. "Well, you... that is, they live in forests. They have a seasonal pantheon. They make living art from wood and moss... uh... they don't like intruders..."

"They hunt intruders." Luneth spoke with satisfaction. "The wheel of the seasons spins ever onward. Karanos is autumn, the changing of leaves and the wind that breaks the bough. He is also the hunter, arrow-swift, the stalker who trades **** for life. He feeds the people with his spear and his arrows. He is ****, arrow-swift, silent as the wind until he chooses to strike. But when the frost comes, Karanos dies and Bhiria is born, the rime-runner, the snow maiden. She melts to give life to Ostros, the Spring Prince, garlanded in flowers, and then he yields to Aineh, the summer queen." She looked Teysa in the eyes for the first time. "Do you understand? Hunting is for autumn. In spring we plant, in summer we till, in winter we rest, but in autumn we harvest. That was what I did. What I lived for. None could shoot as straight as me, nor move as quietly. I was a shadow under the trees, I was the breaking branch. I never wasted an arrow, not once. I could tell you where every one landed, and every one bit living flesh and drank life's blood."

The moment passed, and she looked down again, her voice regaining its calm monotone. "I was only alive when I hunted. Every winter, I would die again. I grew resentful. My people lived full lives, but for me, three-quarters of the year was a waking nightmare. I withdrew. I grew sullen and quiet. One day I could stand it no more, and on midsummer eve-- the longest day of the year, when the shadows grew so tall they loomed like mountains-- I took a white hind at the forest's edge." She smiled, her eyes faraway, transported by the memory. "She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. I took her with one shot from five hundred paces. I have never made a shot like that again. I never will. But when my people learned what I had done, they cast me out." She reached back and lifted her hair, tilting her head as she did to give Teysa a good view of her scalp. Behind her ear, the flesh had been scarified in a cross pattern; at the center of the cross, it had been stripped down to bare bone and had never grown back.

"They would not kill me, but they wanted me to die all the same. They cursed me: the sun peeled the flesh from my bones, the wind cut my like knives. I resolved to live, to spite them, but I had to go underground. I found work among the drow, but I hated them. They are murderers, not hunters. They respect nothing but strength and wealth. Then the Matron found me, and... made use of me." Her mouth tightened to a grim line.

"I would survive this, too. I would not die far from the sun and moon. She saw this in me, and she asked me what I would do to survive, and I told her: anything. So I was uplifted. I am faster than I was before, stronger, tireless. I am a shadow among shadows. And the prey down here! In the woods of my birth, the most dangerous creature I could find was a wolf or bear. Here, I am the prey as often as I am the hunter." The corners of her lips turned up in a mirthless smile. "Here, I am alive."

Teysa felt sick to her stomach. It was difficult to read anything in Luneth's glossy black eyes, but the triumph in her smile was unmistakable. "You don't miss it, though?" she asked desperately. "The sun? The wind? The trees? Your tribe?"

"No." Luneth was quiet again, almost shy. "I don't. To hunt is to live, to live is to hunt. I need nothing more. I know that the others see me as less than. Because I was born with two legs, I am not 'true.' I do not care. I would hunt them if I could. Prey that can think is the worthiest of all." She pulled an arrow from the quiver at her back and nocked it silently. Teysa flinched back involuntarily, but Luneth was aiming past her shoulder. There was a sharp hiss and a sound like tearing silk, then a meaty sound of splitting flesh and a heavy thump. Teysa turned in time to see a cave-lizard, a great crocodilian more than twelve feet long, thrashing out its last breaths on the stony floor. An arrow shaft protruded from its eye.

Heartsick, she followed Luneth and helped her hoist the massive corpse. Before lifting her end, the other drider dipped two fingers in the pool of blood spreading beneath the great scaly head and wiped it across her cheek. She held out her hand to Teysa, who drew back and shook her head.

"This is your life now, Teysa," Luneth said. "We are your sisters. Nothing in the Underneath is faster than you, nothing is stronger, nothing is tougher. We are the apex predators now, and everything else is prey. In your old life you were weak, or you would not have been captured. Now you are strong. And the strong are strongest alone."