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Tiefling Trouble 1
Setting: camp.
Gods below, it’s wet out there! It’s been hammering down all day, the roads are half washed out, and by the time you stumbled into this quiet spot just off the Risen Road you were all thoroughly soaked.
Most of your companions have managed to squeeze their tents into a shallow cave beneath the cliff edge. As usual, you’re sitting by the fire while they go about their end-of-day business. You’re huddled under a waxed canvas cloth you looted from a wrecked monastery along the way – one of the most loot-free environments you’ve ever seen. The monks must have had a good tidy-up before they left.
Every now and again you lift the lid on a large pot nestled amongst the embers, and give the contents a stir. What it is exactly you can’t quite tell. It reminds you of the story of Stone Soup, where each newcomer to the witch’s fireside adds one ingredient to the pot, which started life as boiling water and a single large rock. It’s only a couple of days’ worth of gleanings, and the bones from yesterday’s meals, but it smells good and nobody’s going to turn down something so warming to the belly. Not today.
A scuffle behind you, and you turn to see Lae’zel march into camp, sword held aloft in one hand, and the other gripping a small, struggling bundle slung over her shoulder. She drops it at the fireside while she sheathes her sword, and you see that it’s a small child, sodden and dripping, hair plastered close to his head. What in Faerûn?
His face is familiar, and you recognise the mute tiefling boy who’d shown you a way into Mol’s child-sized kingdom beneath Emerald Grove.
“Hey,” you say, trying to get his attention. “Doni, isn’t it?”
The child grunts but doesn’t reply, and you remember he hadn’t responded to any of your remarks the last time you met. This time you pay more attention, and realise that he can’t quite bring himself to meet your eye. He’s looking everywhere except your face. And he’s shivering so hard it makes his teeth chatter. Poor kid’s half frozen.
“Come here.” You pull off your canvas cover and hold it over his head. When you start moving he can’t help but walk with you. Lae’zel has her eye fixed on him, and he’s clearly aware there are no quick exits available here. You rummage in the equipment chest.
“I’m sure. Hang on. Yes!”
You pull out a pair of short, grubby brown trousers and a light leather corselet. Early on, before you’d had ‘the’ conversation with him (“Not to bite anything we can talk to.” “Ridiculous. You’re a druid. You even talk to trees.”) Astarion had fed on a gnome and then pillaged its corpse. Its clothing got tossed in the chest with everything else you’re meaning to deal with one of these days.
You hold the canvas sheet up in front of the rock-face and gesture with your eyebrows. One non-verbal response deserves another, and Doni takes your meaning immediately, ducking behind the cloth to strip off his soaked rags and don the dry clothing. It’s not a bad fit, though he’s going to need a belt to keep the trousers up. The boots are too big, but once the rain stops you’ll find some dry grass to pack them with. That’ll be warmer, too.
He stands there under the overhang while you nip into the cave to speak to the vampire, then follows you obediently back to the fire where you hand him a mug of stone soup. He makes short work of it, seeming grateful that you don’t ask him any more questions. The rain’s finally stopped and a faint gleam of light comes through from the west, where the sun’s rapidly dipping behind the hills. Astarion wanders down and sits next to you, ignoring the kid and apparently observing himself in his hand mirror – the mirror in which he hasn’t seen his reflection for, oh, two hundred years or so. He turns the mirror this way and that, until you grunt in satisfaction, then holds it still.
In the meantime, you’ve been dredging up the memory of a teaching from many years ago. For a year or two the kids in your home grove had been addicted to a secret language they’d learned from a travelling pedlar and his kid. It proved so addictive that even the Elders ended up learning it, and they decided to teach it to every child from then on. But it’s been a long time, and you’re pretty rusty.
You pause when you’re ready and look down at Doni. He is staring steadfastly ahead, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. You squirm until you’re half facing him, but still able to see his reflection in Astarion’s mirror. Then you begin to sign.
At first there’s no response. You try a different greeting, and the boy’s face registers an interest. Then you ask him directly, hands moving slowly but clearly, and his own hands begin to move. Within seconds you stop and simply watch him, still ignoring you, but responding directly to your query, hands moving in gesture after gesture. His fingers fly, like a person who has been long-silenced and is suddenly given the power to speak.
Now you begin to say his words aloud as he signs them, quietly at first, then with growing confidence as you see him flash you a lightning-fast direct glance. His fingers slow a little as he matches his delivery to your verbal translation.
“We got caught in the rain. Mol found a cave for us, away from the others.”
He makes a sign you don’t recognise, then, when you don’t translate, glares at you from under his brows and repeats it slowly. “Tieflings?” He nods and looks away.
You wonder about the face he makes when he says ‘others’. Back at Emerald grove you’d assumed most of the kids at the tiefling camp were with parents or families, playing a children’s game of thieves and (dishonest) shopkeepers. But this avoidance of the others? Could Mol’s gang all be orphans?
“The cave went back and back. It was warm in there. But we were hungry.”
Wyll’s been watching and listening to your translation. Like magic he appears with a chunk of day-old bread, that Doni tears into as if it’s come from Baldur’s Gate’s finest bakery. The conversation comes to an inevitable stop as the boy’s talking hands become eating implements, but he’s finished faster than you thought possible.
“Mol found a crack in the wall. The heat came from there. She thinks there’s a treasure, but we’re all too big to fit through.”
He finishes and for the first time looks at you openly, albeit only for a moment. Astarion puts down the mirror, no longer needed since the kid’s anxiety has settled and he’s turned his body towards you. You think you understand his meaning. Lae’zel has picked up on it too – as soon as you glance at her, she nods.
“I know where. At least, I know where this cub first approached me. Cubs cannot be left alone and hungry. They are the warriors of the future, and must be attended.”
She grabs some blankets and more bread from the store and strides away. You hurry after her, certain she won’t bother to wait for you if you’re slow.
Back at the fire you hear the vampire talking. “Here, hold this,” as he hands down the mirror.
Doni glances at his reflection and excitedly begins signing again.
“Cease that. I don’t understand your hand waving.” Astarion, putting on his best sharp, insolent, arrogant voice. The voice that he uses to conceal emotion, such as a feeling of vulnerability. Or caring. “Anyway, you need both hands for this.”
And now, mirror forgotten, Doni is clutching a bigger mug of soup, both hands needed, while the vampire retrieves his possession, somehow miraculously unbroken, and sits down again beside the boy.