~22. Ancient Feuds~
Torafein
“They have to be getting their supplies from somewhere.”
Torafein blinked his eyes open, as Crysla’s whisper tugged him from near-sleep, her skin warm against his back. They’d taken to leaning against one another through the bars, their only source of comfort these past dark days. Her tender flesh pressed against his torn and scabbed body was almost enough to dull the ever-present burning of his wounds protesting natural healing.
“Sorry,” Torafein said, through labored breaths. It had been a while since he’d last been healed, and his strength was rapidly decaying. “What did you say?”
“Supplies,” Crysla repeated. “They don’t carry the Wild look about them. They must be getting food from some source that isn’t foraging.”
“Mmm.” Torafein struggled to think through the fog of his mind. Part of him resented Crysla’s ill-timed question. He’d almost been asleep. Rest was getting harder to come by as the pain increased to incessant. “Does it matter if they are?”
Of course it mattered. The strategist in him knew it did. But right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“If they’re using teleporting magic,” Crysla said, “then we must either be outside the Outer Rim or near enough to its border that they can step beyond the barrier to use it.”
Torafein closed his eyes, wading through congealing thoughts. This was important. This was how they survived. The planning and plotting. It gave them hope. They needed hope.
No, what they needed was a bath. And fresh clothes. And warm bread and frothy ale and anything that wasn’t prison. Hope didn’t heal bruises.
But planning did.
“Teleportation is high level magic,” Torafein said. Though he himself wasn’t a wizard, his mother had tried damn hard to make him one. Magical prowess was what the Xarrin family was known for, after all. “Unless they’re hiding a wizard or a sorcerer, I don’t see how they could pull it off.”
“A magic item, perhaps.” Crysla shifted, her shoulder-length hair brushing against his neck, reminding him what he didn’t have anymore. “If we could get our hands on it we could…”
She never finished the thought. Probably because she realized the absurdity of it. If they got their hands on it, what? They teleport themselves in chains to Menzoberranzan? That was assuming they were outside of the magical barrier that prevented teleportation and scrying within five miles of Launa’s walls. Then they would need the command word, as most items required a command word, and all of that assumed Toloruel wouldn’t cut their throats before they stepped outside of their prison cavern.
This thread was a dead end. Crysla knew it, and Torafein did too.
“We could destroy it,” Torafein said. “Force them to break camp and return. That would buy Launa time.”
“I was thinking that we take it and run…”
Torafein laughed, a bitter sound, which became a cough. He’d never been much of an optimist himself. He liked to see things exactly as they were, and in this case, what he saw was bad. Their chances of survival dwindled daily. Hourly? He couldn’t remember. He’d lost count of the cycles he’d been keeping track of. It could have been months. It could have been days.
Mindra would tire of them soon. She’d command their execution. They were never getting out of this.
Unless…
A sound met his ears, causing him to stiffen. The slight whisper of fabric against fabric. His eyes darted out into the darkness and found no one, but he knew what he’d heard.
“Show yourself, demon,” he growled, and for one, agonizing moment, nothing happened. Everything remained still and silent, and Torafein was on the brink of admitting he’d been hallucinating after all.
Then he appeared, seated before them, legs crossed and face hidden behind his glabrezu mask.
“Has anyone ever told you,” said Ivory, shaking his head. “That your special skill is ruining the moment? I was rather enjoying your speculation.”
Crysla was on her knees, grasping one of the bars in her still-chained hands. Her strength remained where Torafein’s had failed, a testament to the power of magical healing. “How long were you there, snake?” she snapped. “Lurking in the shadows like a coward. What is it you want?”
“Temper, my dear,” Ivory said. “You catch more flies with spider silk than sulfur.”
As if setting her whole being in defiance of his words, Crysla let out a feral sound, full of rage and hate. It might have been intimidating, but they’d never know it. Ivory didn’t move and his mask hid his expression.
Yet something told Torafein it wasn’t fear he hid behind that infernal visage, but a smile.
Torafein took a steadying breath, willing himself to find the motivation to play this wretched game. He was just so tired. “You’re welcome to join our speculation,” he finally said. “We’re discussing your ample supplies.”
Crysla gave him a sharp look, but there was no use hiding it from Ivory. Skulking around invisibly? He’d probably already heard that and much more. Who knew how often he’d listened in on their private conversations.
“Ah, yes. We are quite well fed, it is true.”
“Care to share?”
“The food or the information?” Ivory asked, with a slight tilt of his head. “I wonder which would be more satisfying. Hunger aches more when briefly sated, and information you cannot act on festers and taunts. Perhaps I should offer you both.”
Gods, he liked to talk. Yet somehow he managed to avoid saying anything productive. Was that a skill they taught in whatever crevice he had crawled out from?
Crysla must have been feeling the frustration as well. She slumped back in her cage, her unkempt hair falling in her eyes. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, and Torafein didn’t like the defeat he heard in her tone. “You said you don’t follow Lolth, so why do you care about us? Is it gold? Are you a mercenary?”
They’d asked this question before, to no avail. Torafein wasn’t expecting an answer now, so it was a shock when Ivory’s mask swiveled to take her in, regarding her in what Torafein imagined was open curiosity.
Maybe even a willingness to talk.
“Do the clerics of Eilistraee not know their own stories?” Ivory finally asked, leaning back on one hand as though he intended to get comfortable and remain. “Do they truly believe Lolth to be their only enemy?”
Crysla’s eyes narrowed. “I know the stories,” she said. “We do not lie in our legends the way the Spider does.”
“Oh?” Ivory’s mask tilted again, and Torafein longed for him to remove it, so he could read the szarkai’s expressions. “Shall we test that?” He sat up, tenting his fingers together, his fathomless demon eyes boring into Crysla. “After the beginning, when the gods were congealed, Corellon Larethian contributed to the realms with his creation of the elves. All the elves.”
Torafein’s brows lifted in surprise, lacking the energy to conceal his thoughts. What Ivory spoke of boldly was only whispered in deep caverns among drow, the secret truth that Lolth didn’t want her children to remember, lest it undo all her shadowy work.
“He took a wife,” Ivory continued, intoning his tale like a bard. “Araushnee, the moon to his sun, the darkness to his light.”
“And Araushnee betrayed him,” Crysla interrupted, a note of irritation in her voice. “I know the tale well, demon. What’s your point?”
“Araushnee mothered twins,” Ivory continued, as though Crysla hadn’t spoken. “Vhaeraun the boy, and Eilistraee, the girl.”
“Yes, and—”
But Ivory refused to let his tale be interrupted. “Araushnee coveted her husband’s power. She and Vhaeraun plotted to destroy him. They deceived Eilistraee into murdering her own father.”
“Corellon lives,” Crysla corrected. “Eilistraee did not kill him.”
“No, she did not,” Ivory agreed. “He certainly got lucky, though, wouldn’t you say? But I digress. Where was I. Ah, yes. Araushnee was banished, her children with her, and she became Lolth, the demon-queen of spiders.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with why you’re doing this.”
“I’m getting there, my dear.”
The way he called her dear, with warm affection, incited such a fury inside of Torafein that he almost thought he could rip the chains off his wrists and throttle the elf. He didn’t move, though, knowing from experience that no amount of hatred could tear the metal from his bones.
“We grow tired of your words,” he said instead. “Get there quickly, szarkai.”
“Or what?” Ivory’s mask turned toward him. “I will lose my captive audience?”
He had the nerve to laugh at his own joke.
Torafein’s fingers flexed. One day. One day…
“You know the story, of course.” Ivory’s attention returned to Crysla. “How the noble and selfless Eilistraee chose exile with the drow, setting herself up to be the savior of her mother’s lost followers.”
Yes, they knew the story. But more importantly, Ivory knew it. And yet he scorned her, and still claimed not to follow Lolth.
“But I wonder,” Ivory said. “How closely do you follow the lineage of Vhaeraun? Are you aware he begot a son?”
Beside him, Crysla paled. “Selvetarm?”
“Ah, so you do know the story.” Ivory sounded pleased. “A sanitized version, I am sure. One that paints your goddess as innocent as a conveniently enchanted bow.”
“Eilistraee is innocent!” Crysla insisted.
Torafein was lost now. Though he’d been among the first to settle in Launa, had watched the city grow and flourish as Eilistraee brought them new people, he’d only paid cursory attention to the stories that wove their religion. He believed, he truly believed, but his faith had never needed the small details to root it.
“Is she, now?” Ivory asked, a sadistic smile in his voice. “Was she innocent when she took her nephew under her wing and filled his head with promises of prosperity? Was she innocent when she taught him to follow her path of kindness and mercy, and then abandoned him when he needed her most?”
“She did not abandon him,” said Crysla. “By the time she got there, it was too late. It was Lolth who tricked him into killing the demon Zanassu, knowing what it would do to him. It was Lolth who—”
“How utterly convenient,” Ivory said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Do you hear yourself? Always blaming Lolth for your troubles. Just as the followers of Lolth blame the faeries. On and on the game goes, with no one accepting responsibility. As if the gods were flawless.”
The longer he spoke, the more contemptuous he sounded. As if they’d finally found a subject of which he was passionate.
“You may frame it however you desire,” Ivory said, leaning back on his palms. “Whatever comforts you in your nightmares. But no matter how you try to flavor it, it doesn’t change the fact that your goddess claims to set captives free, yet abandons her own kin to permanent enslavement and insanity. Which makes her either powerless or a liar, neither of which are worth worshiping.”
Crysla was seething, clawing at the leather collar that bound her magic, with no results. It could only be removed by the one who placed it or a more powerful magician. All she was doing was wasting her precious energy.
“So you’re the pawn of an angry god,” Torafein said, attempting to steal control of the conversation back.
Ivory chuckled. “Aren’t we all?” His mask remained fixed on the struggling Crysla, and Torafein imagined a sick smile plastered behind the metal face. “The only difference between you and I, my dear, is that I understand I am being used, and embrace it.”
Torafein closed his eyes, allowing himself a brief fantasy of being strong again, of slipping his fingers around Ivory’s windpipe and crushing it until the albino drow turned blue. But fantasies created longing, and longing was a bitter poison. So he opened his eyes again and said, “Why embrace it? What’s in it for you?”
Ivory sat up, and when he spoke, his voice had become light and conversational once more. “I’m actually glad that you asked.” He peeled away the glove covering his bony white fingers. “No one ever asks why, anymore. It’s rather disappointing. But, in the short answer, Selvetarm and I have much in common.”
Ivory held out his hand for Torafein to see. “As you can imagine, I, too, was an abandoned child. Though I would not claim unloved—would not an unloving mother have given her ugly szarkai newborn to Lolth? Yet I was placed in a basket and left to the Wilds to be devoured.”
“Sounds unloved to me,” Crysla spat, even though she and Torafein both knew better.
To be left to fate rather than skewered by the spider-blade was a true act of love. Mothers could be given in their children’s stead were it to be found out.
“Perhaps.” Ivory shrugged, returning his glove to his hand. “I’ve never needed the emotion, so I don’t care whether it was ever offered to me. But I do understand life-debt. When a god scoops you out of your cradle and ensures you are given a chance to live, you don’t say no when they ask for a favor. Selvetarm has asked for the heads of Eilistraee’s followers. In exchange, I receive my vitality. It’s a fair trade, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t.” Crysla looked away. “The blood of my sisters will testify against you. Your retribution is coming.”
Ivory laughed. “Shall I fear retribution from a goddess who can’t even save her own people?” He started to rise, but Torafein sat forward.
“Wait,” he said, and Ivory did. “If your story is true, then shouldn’t you hate Lolth’s followers just as much?”
At least, that’s what Torafein thought he understood from the context. He’d ask Crysla for the full details after they were done squeezing every possible drop of information Ivory might be willing to give them.
“I don’t hate anyone’s followers,” Ivory said. “Just as I do not hate either of you. My quest is a business transaction, nothing more.”
So he claimed, yet his vehemence against the gods had cracked through his calm facade.
Torafein frowned, and Ivory finished rising, brushing his gloved hands against his voluminous trousers.
“Are you surprised I so readily admit it?” He shook his head, making that irritating tut-tutting sound. “If ever I needed proof that the Great Torafein Xarrin was a blood-traitor, here you have presented it. You forget where you came from. We are drow. Using each other is what we do.”
“Well we don’t have to,” Crysla said, her voice thick with emotion. “There are other ways.”
“Indeed, so I have heard,” Ivory said. He moved to stand before her cage, slipping the key out of his sleeve. “But I’m happy to hear it again from your fair lips. Come, the others await. You can tell me about it between your screams.”
Torafein wanted to close his eyes, wanted to look away as the familiar game played out. Crysla would fight, Ivory would win, and he would drag her limp and helpless out of the cavern, then the torture would begin.
But this time, it was worse. Because Crysla didn’t fight. When Ivory opened the cage and extended hand to her, she took it, hobbling to her feet. Perhaps she intended to trick him, to lull him into a false sense of security, and then attack.
Yet if she did, it didn’t work. Ivory pricked her with the same numbing poison that dropped her into his arms. He carried her sweetly out into the larger cavern, where the torment was heralded by her shrieks.
And he never brought her back.
Disclaimer: Forsaken by Shadows is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Forsaken by Shadows 57: Ancient Feuds