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“Wait, please.”
There is no discussing such a direct order in the drow city of Ched Nasad, not when you’re but a stranger, and a man to top it off. At this moment, Elduin doesn’t really want to either, because his curiosity is peaked; what could possibly get Lady Zeerith to say “please”? So he waits, and he even turns around for good measure.
“Yes?”
He doesn’t have much contact with her, usually – much to his chagrin, because on top of being slightly more friendly—or less menacing—than the other priestesses, Lady Zeerith is stunning. She has the dark skin of her people, tinted a silvery blue, but where most sport bone-white hair, standing out harshly in the shadows of the Underdark, the inky blackness of hers seems to soften her well-defined features. The ruby red eyes are made all the more striking for it.
He meets that burning gaze now, trying his best not to glance down. Drow clothing tends to be incredibly… revealing, but Lady Zeerith’s tattoo–Lolth emblem, a star amidst eight sharp legs, etched in between her breasts—it serves as a reminder to him. There is no touching a priestess of the Spider Queen, even if still a yath'abban—apprentice—, not for a foreigner like him.
“I wanted to ask you a question.”
She glances away, and Elduin feels a point of anxiety stir deep in his stomach. A question, really, that’s all? Not if she looks this nervous. Nine hells, what is he getting himself into?
“Where do you go once you exit to the surface?”
This was not the question he was expecting, not by a long mile. Lolth-sworn drows don’t have much interest in the surface world, and why would they? It won’t be giving them a warm welcome.
It’s not even giving him a warm welcome, whenever he mentions trading—smuggling—with the Underdark, and he’s a wood elf all the more usual, with the pale unblemished skin and silky auburn hair of his folks. He says in passing that he does business with the Lolth-sworn drows, and all of a sudden it’s like he’s himself a fervent worshipper of the dreaded Spider Queen.
“Um, my first stop is usually the Willow Tree tavern, because it’s the closest place to sleep in a good bed, and they don’t ask too many questions about my business. Then, it depends on what deals I’ve got to honor. Can I ask why you’re asking me this, my Lady?”
He doesn’t quite remember what she had answered, that day. Something about curiosity, if he had to guess. He wouldn’t have believed the truth, anyway—he doesn’t fully believe it now either, even if he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the bed, and that on this bed lies an unconscious Zerrith.
She ran away.
For all that her people worship the Goddess of Chaos, they are generally a lot more measured in their decision-making. Rational, too. Hells, who runs away from their culture’s most sought-after position?
Who risks their literal neck in the process?
He turns to look at her still body, mulling over the cruel irony of the situation. He has had fantasies involving the beautiful priestess and his bed, and he’s got no shame in it, but they had never involved so much blood. He never quite got why his own kind talked of the “bruise-skinned” underelves, until he gazed at her face now, all warm tint having left her complexion with the hemorrhage. The white bandages around her neck make for an almost painful contrast.
He reaches over, gently brushing a strand of black hair away from her forehead. He lets his touch linger on the old scar cutting through Zeerith’s cheek, feeling the slight dip underneath his fingertips, before he pulls away. He wonders how she got it—he will have to ask, once she has recovered. The cleric said she was going to be okay “if nothing else happened”, and when Elduin had pressed on, asking what he meant by that, the man had shrugged, and added that sometimes, gods don’t take it so well to see their followers turning away from them.
Zeerith whines in her magic-induced slumber, her features tensing and relaxing, eyelids opening so very slightly. Her irises don’t burn bright red any more—gone is the feature that irrevocably marked her as a follower of the Spider Queen. Instead, it looks like all color has been drained from her eyes, leaving behind an unnervingly pale silver. Elduin thinks he could get used to it, though—if the drow was so inclined to let him.
It was the commotion that had gotten him to exit the fire-warmed main room of the Willow Tree.
There, under the tavern ensign creaking with each gust of wind, Elduin thought he was going to step into the night and was instead met with the almost blinding glare of dancing fairy lights. And oh, he’d spent enough time in the Underdark to recognize it as the cantrip all drows possessed, courtesy of growing in the shadows if he had to guess. What he had absolutely no clue about, though, was why there were drows fighting in a grand display of magic just outside of this little roadside establishment.
He had all but forgotten about his conversation with Zeerith then, though it slammed back into the forefront of his mind when he finally recognized her.
He recognized one of the others too—a yathrin, fully-fledged priestess, from the same house as Zeerith. Narcelia, if he remembered right. He usually tried to avoid her; no one could ignore the more… violent ways of the Lolth cult, and she was one to wield them without batting an eye. Elduin would have loved to not witness the birth of a drider at her hands. If you asked him, that thing should have been out of one of the nine layers of hell, and not roaming just below the surface, thank you very much. Both that, and what was currently unfolding before his very eyes, triggered an arachnophobia he didn’t even have.
He had heard of the Death Spider spell, infamous as it was. Turned out it was another thing entirely to see Zeerith casting it—to see someone’s very arm turning into an arachnid before starting to eat its owner alive. The agonized screams rang into the cold night air for longer than Elduin would have liked.
But it was three against one, and for all that Zeerith seemed to have a surprising appetence for magic—or was well prepared with stolen scrolls—, she was only an apprentice as far as the Path of Lolth went, and Narcelia was a rune-caster, Elduin came to discover as scalding glyphs were etched into the ground by an invisible hand. Zeerith stumbled, glancing down too late as her back hit a magic barrier. Webs ensnared her hands, running up her legs, trapping her into place.
The lights were bright enough to eclipse the very glow of the moon and stars. Elduin couldn’t tear his eyes away even if every fiber of his being was screaming at it to get the hells away.
Reasonably, he knew he should be safe. Because there was one tiny detail he hadn’t told Zeerith, when she had asked where he was going on his way back from the Underdark; the Willow Tree was no ordinary tavern. Oh, it didn’t house any sort of distinguished clientele, no, and far from it. Simply, it wouldn’t allow inside anyone who hadn’t been invited by one of its residents. For bandits, smugglers, and generally outsiders, it was the perfect place to enjoy a good night’s sleep without a dagger clasped tightly in their grasp.
If the drows would cast their fairy lights close enough to the tavern, of course, it would make it appear, seemingly materializing out of thin air as the invisibility spell yielded, but seeing it still didn’t mean you could enter. One step back over the doorstep, that was all it would take for Elduin to escape, though he wouldn’t look forward to the questions he would likely face on his next round underground. For that alone, surely it would be wiser to go back to his dinner that was cooling down, forgotten at his table.
He still watched, though, as Narcelia began the ritual to repudiate Zeerith—stripping her of her powers, taking away the “blessing of the red eyes”, and forever casting her out of the Lolth-sworn society. He watched, because he had a soft spot for the beautiful priestess, and because he also knew painfully well what it felt like to be expelled from everything you’d ever known, even if it had been for good reasons. Furthermore, he had no idea how good Narcelia’s reasons were. Competition was encouraged amidst the followers of the Goddess of Chaos, and betrayals were common, even—and maybe especially—within the same house.
He was still there when Narcelia’s dagger ran over Zeerith’s throat.
He was still there when the two other drows left, heading back to Ched Nasad, hauling behind the half-eaten corpse of their comrade.
It took a few more minutes before Elduin dared to step fully out of the doorway of the Willow Tree, cautiously making his way to Zeerith as the purple lights sizzled and died in the tall grass. He was expecting a still body, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to meet the gaze of too-wide silvery eyes, silently begging him for help as long-fingered hands desperately tried to staunch the bleeding from her open neck.
He saved her.
Deep down, he had been cursing himself all the while, fearing that somehow Zeerith’s would-be killer could sense that her prey escaped with her life, but so far nothing of the sorts had happened. It’s been a week. Lolth too didn’t seem too interested in the fate of her former priestess, and so Zeerith seems free to begin a life on the surface, forever cut off from the place that had seen her grow.
It’s even her first time out of the Underdark, Elduin has learned—a shake of her head when he asked, as she was still advised not to talk by the cleric that had healed her wound. The sun burns her skin, hurts her eyes. So far, she’s spent most of her days sleeping, and the rest curled up in Elduin’s room, staring at nothing in particular. He has lent her one of his own tunics—she’s as tall as him—so he could wash the blood off the clothes she escaped with, a long-sleeved shirt that was surprisingly on par with the surface’s style. Underneath, her chest was bandaged, tightly, and he thought she had been injured even before what he saw, but he found no blemish on her dark skin other than left by the strips of white cloth themselves. Maybe the cleric accidentally healed that too.
He had asked her if she would like to travel with him, once she’s fit enough, and that’s the first time since she woke up that he saw something glimmer in her eyes, the corner of her lips quirking up in the ghost of a smile. He felt an odd kind of warmth in his chest at the reaction.
Today, he marches back up to their shared room, proudly presenting her with the quill he has borrowed from another patron.
“That way you can answer more than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions,” he explains as her gaze, from the offering, slowly travels up to his face. “You can write, right?”
She can, indeed, but she’s slow, her grip on the quill unassured. He wonders if she wasn’t taught properly, or if maybe she’s just too weak right now. He can decipher her shaky handwriting though. He asks how she’s feeling, if she needs something in particular. Then, finally:
“Why did you run away?”
For the longest time, she stays still, absent-mindedly chewing on her thumb nail. She’s still paler than usual, making the tattooed lines around her mouth more visible, and Elduin tells himself he’s only staring at her lips because of that, because the black ink draws his eye.
Then she starts to write, shielding the words from his view, her arm curled around the paper, until she’s finished. He takes the paper as she holds it out to him, not quite meeting his gaze.
“Because I wanted to live as a man. And my people would never have accepted a male priestess—you saw what happened. I was hoping to run away unnoticed.”
Elduin blinks, and re-reads it, though the words don’t quite make it into his brain.
“As a man?” he repeats, as he doesn’t know what else to say.
He tears his eyes away from the paper, trying to gauge if she’s serious—if he’s serious? What even…?
Zeerith simply nods, now looking up at him in a mixture of expectation and worry. As he doesn’t move, a long-fingered hand tentatively lays on his, giving it a slight squeeze he ignores. And oh, in hindsight, Elduin isn’t quite proud of the way he reacted then—but he did it nonetheless. Slammed the paper back down, and walked out of the room. He headed straight for the tavern owner, behind the counter, and he paid for the room for two more weeks.
However, he stepped back in hours later, and only to retrieve his belongings, leaving behind a coin pouch and the clothes he had lent to Zeerith, currently asleep on the bed. He closed the door behind him quietly enough to not rouse up the drow.
*
Years later
It’s the voice Elduin recognizes.
A bit raspier, a bit deeper than he remembers, sure, but the inflections are the same as when it used to give orders. Low, almost quiet, mocking.
He excuses himself from his drinking buddies, walking around the stone pillar before leaning on it, his fingers still loosely hooked around the handle of his tankard. Oh, he’s not getting any closer, not when the other patrons of Fraygo’s Flophouse prudently inching away from the confrontation. Two humans clad in light armor, a tiefling that for all her stocky build looks like she would rather be somewhere else, and Elduin’s old friend, playing underneath the table with an unsheathed dagger. The guy with the crossbow is yelling, something about a missing shipment, treason or just a trick; he says he will decide what exactly to call it in his report to the city guards, depending on whether or not the missing stones—so it was stolen gems?—are returned to him before that.
“Why would I bother,” Zeerith slowly drawls, “if you’re turning me in any way?”
Long fingers curl around the handle of the dagger, no longer toying with it, bringing it closer to the edge of the table. Elduin wonders how the others are so blind as to not see it. To her credit, the tiefling might have, if the way she has now backed away a good two feet is of any indication.
“Give me one good reason to not slit your throat right here and now.”
The man sputters, and looks around, gesturing in silent outrage, trying and failing to meet any of the other patrons’s gazes. Elduin smiles to himself, slowly shaking his head. What level of idiocy does it take to think others will care about your fate in Fraygo’s Flophouse? It’s the perfect place for shady deals, and that comes of course with its flipside: no one will bat an eye if blood gets spilled, as long as it doesn’t dirty their clothes. Truly, that human’s in over his head. Too bad.
He starts ranting again—and is cut off by his own scream. The dagger still vibrates, driven into the wooden table, pinning his hand to it. And he continues to shriek like a slaughtered pig, as his companion stands up abruptly, her chair clattering on the ground. Behind the counter, the barman place sighs and, discarding his cleaning rag, heads to the inventory room. You learn quickly, working in such a place, to not be collateral damage.
“Karis, do your thing!”
The tiefling shakes her head, and steps even further away.
“Drows can’t be put to sleep.”
Elduin would argue that someone like her could put anyone to sleep, Fey ancestry or not. Is her build just for show, or is it, perhaps, to haul around her targets once she has magic-ed them to sleep?
Anyway, Karis seems to have been hired muscles—or spells?—only, because right there and then, she bails. No point in risking your head for someone who won’t be alive to pay you. And that leaves the woman alone to try and defend her companion, who has now taken the blade out of his flesh, cradling his injured hand closer. Amateur move. If neither of them has healing items, he will bleed out fast.
The woman jumps to the attack—surprisingly, she’s quick enough that she brings down her opponent, drow and human toppling to the ground. She moves for a headlock, but immediately pulls away, yelping in pain. Her unprotected hand sports the distinct shape of a bite mark, bleeding a little.
Biting? That’s playing dirty. Risky, too; the woman could have ignored the sharp sting entirely, and then what? Although, Zeerith’s dagger still lays on the table, out of reach, so maybe that was a last resort, even if Elduin finds it hard to believe the blade doesn’t have a little sister, hidden somewhere under the dark clothes.
Then only does he notice the amulet – a little silver spider, glowing an ominous green. Enchanted, no doubt—drows have always had a knack for magical items. Elduin wonders what this one could do, and if he should maybe step away so he’s sure to be out of the blast radius, but he doesn’t have to wonder for long: the woman suddenly bends over her arm, gasping, but not before he caught a glimpse of the dark veins climbing up her wrist, disappearing underneath the sleeve of her leather armor. A Spider Bite spell, if he had to bet. Depending on her constitution, the poison might very well kill her.
Zeerith spits out the woman’s blood with a disgusted grimace, grabs the dagger and, in the same fluid movement, slits the man’s throat. This time, he doesn’t even make a sound, eyes only widening, mouth hanging open, before he collapses on the table, dead even before nimble fingers release him of his coin pouch. Better not let it go to waste.
“Sorry. But you didn’t even try to convince me not to.”
It’s in the back street running behind the Flophouse that Elduin catches up. He didn’t even try to be discreet, so he must have been heard—and there is no way he hadn’t been noticed in the tavern either—, but for good measure, he calls out:
“Zeerith!”
The drow stops but doesn’t turn around.
“What do you want?”
“What, can’t chat up an old acquaintance?”
Pale eyes turn to him, at last. Oddly, they are almost more unnerving like this than when they shone bright red. Maybe because, for all that drows serve the Goddess of Chaos, the hierarchy in the Underdark isn’t to be messed with—even priestesses still had to answer to their house’s matriarch. Well, adoptive house in Zeerith’s case, from what Elduin had gathered.
The annoyance betrayed by how they narrow at him, those pale eyes, certainly doesn’t help either.
“You didn’t seem interested back then in staying, what did you say? Acquaintances.”
Elduin shrugs.
“Oh, come on. Even if I had changed my mind, you aren’t an easy one to find.”
He does his best to return the stare as the silence stretches on. He remembers the hurt in Zeerith’s eyes, the last time they spoke. How starkly the bandages stood out over the blueish skin of her neck, too.
“It’s Valence, by the way.”
“Uh?” Elduin says, very intelligently.
“My name. It’s Valence now. Might make me a little easier to track down, if you wanted to.”
He pauses, considering—eyeing Zeerith, no, Valence, up and down. Long hair still, but with an undercut now, and tied up, and the dark eye make-up around looks more like a protection against the sun glare—he has seen it before on Seldarine drows—than for aesthetics. The coat is vague enough that he cannot reliably guess the shape underneath.
“The name change, is it… um…” He trips over his words, before he’s suddenly struck with a brilliant idea: “Is it to not be found? The cult, your old people, eh, all that.”
“Very subtle,” Valence drawls, raising a brow—so much for the stroke of genius. “Yes, still a man. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Not a disappointment. Just… you know. Making sure.”
“I do know. So, would that be all?”
He doesn’t miss the hint of bitterness behind those words. On a whim, Elduin takes a step forward, extending a hand—just slowly enough that he could pull it back before it’s cut off, if the need arose—and patting Valence’s shoulder. Oh, he would have never dared with the woman his old friend once was, but… okay, he got the message. He won’t add “bedding a priestess of Lolth” to his list of unlikely grand deeds, not this way at least, but that’s not all there could be.
“Say, do you have a network already? A Guild, anything? That sure was a show, back at the Flophouse.”
Valence’s gaze shifts from trying to burn a hole through Elduin’s hand, still on his shoulder, to the elf’s own eyes. Tattooed lips, finally, stretch into a smile.
“Is that an offer?”
“If you want to. Come on, what about I introduce you to my smuggling buddies? They are stationed a bit south of Wyrm’s Crossing, a short walk from here. No strings attached, just talk and see, okay? We have booze too.”
There is still blood on Valence’s hands, he notices as the drow readjusts the straps of his travel bag, clearly mulling over the idea. They probably should do their best to avoid a patrol, at least until there are other bodies to gossip over. Shouldn’t take long.
“Okay,” Valence finally concedes. “For tonight.”
Elduin leads the way, making sure to keep to the smaller streets instead of the large avenue going straight to the city gates. He can’t quite remember the last time he went there proper. There’s no room for newcomers in Baldur’s Gate landscape of underground deals.
“Tangentially related,” he starts again, “but can you still wield magic? Apart from that handy little amulet, of course.”
“Yes. A bit.”
“Even better! Spider Lady, what, forgot some crumbs behind, didn’t she?”
“Lolth wasn’t the one to cast me away.”
Elduin blinks, surprised.
“Oh, you’re still sworn to her? I didn’t realize.”
Valence makes a noise, low in his throat. Glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, Elduin thinks that, yeah, his old friend’s features have slightly changed, and not only from what he assumed has been a rougher life—not that Ched Nasad was likely much more merciful. A permanent Alteration spell, maybe. In which case, he would have erased his lip tattoo—the spider legs peaking out—if he wasn’t still following the Spider Queen.
“I don’t know anything else. And it doesn’t matter that Narcelia cast me out; figure the Goddess of Chaos won’t mind much a bit of rule-breaking, don’t you think? She has in the past elected a Chosen that hunted her priestesses, after all.”
Elduin laughs.
“A handy loophole, I’d give you that. And tell me, why the new name? It sounds like equivalence, so, not very... Lolth-compliant, if you ask me.”
“Ah, right. It’s a word sorcerers use, at least according to one I traveled with for a while. It defines the interactions some elements can have with others, positive or negative, but it doesn’t hold any intrinsic value. It…” He scoffs softly. “It’s going to sound stupid, but it tasted like freedom. And I like how it sounds.”
“Can I let you in on a secret?” Elduin stage-whispers. “When I changed my last name, I just knew I wanted to cut ties with my family, and I opened a book at random, took half of the first word of the page, half of the last, and there, I had a new patronym. You can’t beat that level of stupid.”
“Vith, I can see why you would get along with my people.”
“Chaos?”
Valence huffs a laugh.
“Yeah.”
“So, tell me, Val’. How does freedom taste like?”