...they head for home

Remembering the kobold ambush, Teysa was on edge as they set out for the warren, but by the end of the first day she had to admit that perhaps her fears had been misplaced. Perhaps it was the presence of Jez'ria. She had armed herself before leaving the market with a heavy-bladed axe; it was clearly designed to be wielded two-handed, but she hefted it like a toy. Despite her terrible injuries, she still looked formidable. Hitched to a cart, she had seemed like a strange beast of burden; freed, she was clearly a warrior. El'keth, by contrast, looked like a young girl returning from a festival. She had painted her lips-- inexpertly, it seemed, though Teysa was hardly a skilled judge-- and she wore a wide blue skirt that covered the first joint of her arachnid legs. Her torso was swaddled in white-and-gold cloth wrapped over and over like a nomad's robe. She bore the cart without complaint and talked the whole time about the people she had met.

"Teysa, you won't believe it!" she would say. "There were dwarves in masks! Their faces all looked happy or sad, and they all talked one sentence at a time!" Or: "Teysa, I saw a man made all of wood! He had horns and his eyes and mouth were just holes!"

Teysa smiled and nodded along. El'keth's enthusiasm was infectious. "What about you, Teysa?" she asked. "Did you have a wonderful time as well?"

"There were some enjoyable parts," Teysa allowed. "But it sounds like you had a much better time than I did." She reminded herself that El'keth was a child in many ways. She would have to rule someday, but before that day came, she had a lot to learn.

"I've got something you might like, El'keth," Aliara said. She reached into her pack and pulled out a bundle of white cotton. Unfolding it carefully she withdrew the carved piece of wood and held it aloft. El'keth's mouth formed a startled O and her eyes widened.

"What's that?" she asked. "A... wooden crown?"

"No," Aliara said. "It's hyvyth. It's an elven art form."

"Hyth?" El'keth tasted the word. "That doesn't sound like drow..."

"Not drow. Wood elven. From the surface."

"Oh." El'keth looked disappointed for a moment, then her jaw dropped. "The surface? There are elves up there, too?"

"They're a bit different, but yes," Aliara said. "My mother is... was... one. She had a piece of hyvyth when I was a girl. It's like... a book. A whole story, carved on a piece of wood. See the runes?"

She pointed them out, then handed up the piece of wood. El'keth took it like a holy relic and turned it over in her hands. It looked so tiny compared to her. She traced one fingertip delicately over the knotted runes before handing it back.

"A book..." she murmured. "So what does it say? What book is it?"

Aliara looked bashful. "Well... I don't know. I can't read it." For the first time, she sounded a little sad. "My mother could have, but before she could teach me we... we got separated. I can read a little sylvan, but the runes on this are so tiny. I wish..." she trailed off and shook her head. "It's beautiful to have, whether or not we can read it. Besides, wood elven fables are boring. They're all about some young boy or girl wandering away and getting in trouble before they learn an important lesson about obeying your elders or something."

"But surely that is an important lesson?" El'keth asked. "Elders are wise. Jez'ria taught me many things, like how to make change and what to do if a two-legs tries to steal from you."

"And vhat do you do then?" Jez'ria called back from the front of the procession.

"Grab them and shake it out of them," El'keth replied promptly, in the tone of one who had learned by rote.

"Very good, little vun. You are coming along."

El'keth beamed proudly, oblivious to Teysa's arched eyebrow.

"What about you?" Teysa asked. "El'keth, did your mother every tell you stories when you were little?"

El'keth scrunched her face up with the effort of memory. "I... don't think so. After I ascended, she came and found me, and from there I lived in the creche. She taught me some things about the warren and our people. And she told me about you, of course, later on."

Curiosity warred with courtesy in Teysa's head, and won. "When was that? When you ascended? Was it before we came to the warren?"

"I... am not certain." El'keth stared off into the distance. "I think it was. I had been in the creche for some time when Mother told me that she had sent you the city. She was trying to teach me a lesson about leadership, I think. Something about making use of any available tools. While you were gone, she introduced me to the broodmothers."

The casual way she spoke chilled Teysa's blood. She remembered her months of hanging prisoner on the wall of the breeding cave and the agony of her first impregnation. Something in her expression must have gotten through to El'keth, because the drider held up her hands defensively. "Only to look! To meet them! I haven't... I mean, I've never, you know, laid a clutch." She shivered. "For a long time I wanted to, but I don't want to hurt anybody."

Teysa tried to change the subject. "So, do you have any memories from before you ascended? When you were a spiderling? You were, weren't you?" She thought of her own "children," Ruby and Topaz and Jade. Would any of them become a drider like El'keth? She hadn't really considered the question before. The thought made her feel odd. From Aliara's expression, she was thinking the same thing.

"Nooooo..." El'keth looked a bit uncomfortable now. "I remember... warmth. And softness. And a sound, I think maybe... maybe my broodmother was singing to me."

Teysa stopped in midstride. She thought back to the women she had freed, and those she had been unable to. When she next spoke, her voice was slow and careful. "Do you know your broodmother's name, El'keth? Do you know who she was?"

"No," El'keth said. "My mother said she didn't know either. There were many of us, in the nursery. All my brothers and sisters... I was the only one who ascended. The others didn't... I don't... I don't know what became of them."

The rest of the journey home was quiet and introspective. Teysa kept thinking about her spiderlings, and the others, countless hundreds or thousands scurrying in the dark. How many of them 'ascended' to driderhood? How many of them simply lived and died in the caves? How many broodmothers had borne them, how many endless cycles of impregnation and relief, to produce how many new driders? It's over now, she told herself. No more slavery. No more violation. There is a way forward. I know it.

She wished she sounded more convincing.

They made camp for the night and ate the remains of their travel rations. Jez'ria surprised them all by unrolling a rack of lamb and a tall jug of honey-thick mead. "A little extra from the market, eh?" she said. The lamb was delicious; the mead so thick and sweet that Teysa could barely finish her cup. She went to bed with its warmth still spreading comfortable fingers through her belly.

She lay in the tent, Aliara cradled in her arms. The half-elf idly traced her fingers through Teysa's hair. "Tey," she said quietly, "I really think you could use a vacation. You've never had one, have you?"

"Vacation?" Teysa looked her in the face. "I suppose not. I never thought about it."

"Have you thought about retirement?"

In truth, Teysa had assumed she wouldn't live to see retirement. Most paladins didn't. The thought left her oddly discomforted. "Not anytime soon, Li. I mean, there's so much to do. The warren needs us."

"Sure. For now. But not forever. You'd like to retire someday, right? With me?"

Teysa smiled. "That sounds nice. I don't think you'd like the farming life. It's a lot of work."

"Pft. We'd get farmhands. Big strapping fellows covered in muscle." Aliara squeezed Teysa's bicep and smiled. "Or maybe just the two of us. We could get a little cottage and a flock of goats. Maybe when things quiet down a bit, we take a vacation? Just to see what it's like. We can come back after, I promise. It'll do you some good to get into the sunlight again."

"Maybe." Teysa wasn't smiling anymore. She could feel the familiar dread clawing at her stomach. Maybe that is all I need, she thought. Maybe this will all go away if I spend some time in the sun.

"I'll consider it, ok, Li? For now, we have a lot to do. Starting with sleep."

"Ok, dear." Aliara leaned forward and planted a kiss on the tip of Teysa's nose. "Goodnight."

She awoke early the next morning and shook off the last fitful vestiges of an uneasy dream. She had been tiny, a few inches tall, and running through a stone forest. Somewhere overhead was her mother, as high as a mountain, but there were mountains everywhere and no way to tell which was hers. She woke with a gasp and rolled over. Next to her, Aliara murmured something and twitched a leg. Teysa stepped carefully over her on her way out of the tent.

They had barely been traveling an hour when familiar signs started to appear. The drider-sculpted tunnels lacked the flat and regular appearance of the dwarven ones, but they were clearly artificial; stone had been pushed and flattened like clay to create passages wide enough for the spider-women to move comfortably. The outer pickets waved them onward, and soon enough they were back in the familiar caves.

As they unhitched El'keth from the cart, one of the Matron's courtiers approached them. Teysa tried to remember her name and failed. She was still learning the subtle details that set the lesser driders apart; most of their faces were all inhumanly perfect, like statues, and only their relative sizes set them apart. This one bowed and waved her fingers in the air, sculpting a magic sigil. Only a few of the driders spoke the common tongue, even now.

{greetings savior/honored one/hero. the matron wishes to see you.}

Teysa shook her head absently. Hearing the magically translated voices of the driders always left her feeling as though she had a soap bubble in her ear.

"Lead on, then," she said. Aliara fell in step beside her.

The Matron was in her audience chamber, as ever. She nodded politely at Teysa-- the closest she would come to a formal bow.

"How wasssss the market, Teyssssssa?" she asked. Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed. "You ssssssmell of blood and sweat. Wasssss there trouble?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle," Aliara said. She had a self-satisfied little smile on her face. Teysa could sense the tiny undercurrent of uncertainty in the Matron's voice.

"Nothing serious, Matron," she said. "El'keth quite enjoyed her trip. And I received some of the answers I was seeking."

"Good. That isssss... good," the Matron said. "My time growsssss clossssse. I have need of a broodmother. You are their keeper; will you ssssselect one for me?"