Cards Reshuffled

Despite all the grief caused by being a Child of Bhaal, I sometimes think that there are those who are worse off than I am. At least people usually don’t try to kill me as soon as they catch sight of me. Well, not unless you count some of the people I’ve already met, but that’s different.

Excerpt from ‘Ruminations Of A Master Bard’

She was floating, drifting through a red mist. There was an insistent pain at her throat, tugging at her, and she felt weak, too weak to move. There was sound as well, the faltering, weakening sound of a heart. My heart, Zaerini thought. Growing slower. I’m dying.

As she had before, she tried to struggle, to get loose, but she was too weak, she couldn’t even move properly. There were arms holding her, cradling her close, almost tenderly, but they were cold. No human warmth. Not the arms she was longing for. Edwin…I’m sorry. This time I’m the one who’s leaving, and I won’t be coming back from this one. I’ll miss you. I’ll miss all the others as well. Immy…I tried.

Memories flickered through her head. Being tied to a table, the knives slicing through her skin as cold and sharp as the teeth currently locked to her throat. Irenicus. And further back, pain and humiliation as hostile hands touched her…over and over again. Reiltar. At least he died. I wonder if I’ll see him on the other side?

And then there was an angry hiss, and the teeth were torn away from her throat, letting her blood flow freely, covering her with lovely warmth. Hot…so hot. There was a loud ‘thunk’, and more a pained scream, and more of the wet warm blood covered her, except this blood wasn’t her own. The arms that had held her disappeared, simply faded away into nothing, and she felt herself hit the stone floor painfully. Fighting to get her eyes open she saw a face hovering above her, illuminated by the red glow of her heat vision, but it wasn’t the face of one of her friends, as she had hoped. This was a face straight out of the darkest tales of the Realms.

Her rescuer was female, and shared her own slight build and pointy ears. However, the stranger’s skin was a dusky gray, almost black, and her hair a silvery white. Large and curious eyes burned with red fire in a pointy face that gave nothing away. Drow! But then she noticed that her first impression hadn’t been entirely correct. The pointy ears were very similar to her own, not as tall as those of a full elf, and the skin wasn’t dark enough. A…a half-Drow? I’d heard of those…but they’re extremely uncommon, aren’t they? I think they’re usually killed at birth by the full Drow, and it’s not as if either elves or humans love them either. Hardly fair if you ask me. “Who…who are you?” she managed to say, frightened at how weak her voice sounded. She certainly hoped the other woman had no intention of killing her. She had lost a lot of blood and was still doing so; she didn’t have a hope of defending herself.

“Paina,” the other one hoarsely said, in a voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in a very long time, and then she looked surprised. “My name…is Paina.” Then her face turned harsh. “What are you doing here? Have you come to hurt my friends?”

“Your…friends?”

“Yes. My friends.” There were soft sounds in the darkness, and the prone half-elf could feel something touching her gingerly. Something long, and hairy. She had a nasty feeling that she knew what it was, a feeling that was confirmed when a large number of bulging black eyes met hers. There is a giant spider sitting on my chest. There is a giant spider sitting on my chest. THERE IS A GIANT SPIDER SITTING ON MY CHEST! She coughed, feeling her head spin as more blood trickled from the puncture wounds in her throat. Oh, and I’m still dying, I guess. “No,” Zaerini said. “I didn’t come to hurt your friends.”

“Yet you and your friends slew many of mine. Why should I not kill you? I might have let the vampire have you, except his kind are a greater threat than you. They kill my poor spiders whenever they run into them.”

“I’m sorry…they attacked us. The spiders, I mean. We had to defend ourselves.” The bard tried to think of something better to say, but the loss of blood was making her weaker by the moment, and it was so hard to think. “I am…I am Zaerini,” she said. Try to make her think of you as a person, not an enemy. That’s a start. “I mean you no harm. Not…not my friends either. Will you help me?”

Paina raised a silvery eyebrow. “Help you?” she said, her voice dripping scorn. “Why should I? Nobody ever helps me, nobody except my friends here, and everybody hates them and fears them as much as they hate me.”

“I’m sorry…I’m half-elven myself, you know. Not like being half-Drow, but I still know what it’s like when people hate you over something you can’t help, over…over who you are. Nobody deserves that.”

“Maybe,” the half-Drow said. “But that I don’t deserve it doesn’t stop them.” She sighed. “Still…I think I will help you. Tracking you led me to killing a blood drinker.” She poured something into the wounded woman’s mouth, and Rini could feel the wounds closing up. She was still terribly weak, and she thought the loss of blood might well still kill her, but the danger wasn’t quite as immediate. “There,” Paina said. “Now you will keep a little longer, and I will…talk to you.” There was an old longing in the red eyes. “I…haven’t talked to anybody in a very long time.”

The bard felt an instant surge of compassion for her fellow half-elf. And I thought it was bad when humans or elves looked down on me. At least they don’t try to kill me on sight, unless they know about the Bhaal blood, and that doesn’t show on the outside, the way her skin and hair do. Briefly she was reminded of Viconia. The Sharran cleric had been a full Drow of course, but she had still known what it was to be hunted for the color of your skin. I wonder where Vic is these days…I hope she got that house of her own she was planning to buy. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I’d probably go funny in the head if I didn’t have anybody to talk to. But I’ll talk to you, if you want. So…er…where did you come from? How did you wind up here?”

Paina’s story was short, and sad. She had no memory of her parents, and did not know how she had been spared the common fate of a half-Drow child. Her earliest memories were of trying to survive on the streets of Athkatla, and managing to do so, just barely. There were plenty of people willing to use or abuse what to their eyes looked like a Drow, and some who were willing to pay for it. Some were even willing to pay her. She had done what she had to, in order to survive. Selling herself was bad, stealing was far preferable but she wasn’t too good at picking pockets, not good enough to make a regular career out of it. She could occasionally steal from her more drunken clients though. And then she had accidentally stumbled across the deserted tunnels beneath the graveyard, and she had left the world that despised her to descend into the darkness. Taming the spiders had been slow work, but she had prevailed eventually, and by now she considered them her only friends. She never left her tunnels, and usually she killed anybody who go near enough to be a threat. “I meant to kill you too,” she said, red eyes very calm. “I followed you and the others before, but you never saw me. I can be very, very quiet. But then the blood-sucker came and took you. I wanted to kill him first. And then…I wanted to talk to you.”

“Well…you have talked to me,” Zaerini said, fighting against the weakness that once again was threatening to overtake her. The healing potion had helped some, but she could tell that it wasn’t enough. “And I hope you won’t kill me. I don’t want to kill you. I’d…I’d help you if I could.”

“Help me?”

“Yes…maybe you could come with us? Out of the tunnels?”

The half-Drow shook her head violently, white tresses flying. “No! I will never go up there again. It…is not safe. The surface people cannot be trusted.” She hesitated. “I will not kill you…if you die it will be the blood-sucker’s doing. But if you live…you will have something.” She placed a small, hard object in the bard’s hand. “This…is Khittix. She was my first friend…I will miss her. But she has been telling me lately that it is time for her to go elsewhere.”

“I can’t take…”

“You must. She has told me that she has to go; it was she who sent me to you. I will do as she asks, not for your sake, but for hers. I will do no more. If you are not strong enough to live, then you are not strong enough to keep her, and then she may return to me.” The red eyes were filled with a strange mixture of anger, sadness and longing. “I will go now.” Then Paina was gone, disappeared into the darkness without a sound, leaving a puzzled half-elf behind.

Rini lay in the darkness for some time, trying to keep breathing. It was harder than you might think. She could feel herself weakening again, minute by minute, and she wasn’t strong enough to get to her feet. As she fought for her life the strange conversation with Paina kept flickering through her mind. What must it be like to live like that? Feared and shunned by all who see you? Hurt and outcast? No wonder she does not trust. I think…that was another reason for her not to want to fully heal me. She was afraid of what I might do to her if I was stronger. Only when I was on the brink of death did she dare approach. And…I am not away from that yet. Not yet.

Her fingers roamed over the item that Paina had given her. Small, hard and cold, it felt made of some stone. Obsidian, maybe? It was mostly round, but there were things sticking out of it. Eight things. Eight long things. Like…legs. A spider? A figurine of a spider? Paina spoke of ‘her’…of her friend. She could have been deluding herself I suppose but…I wonder. That name she used – what was it? Khittix. Yes. That was it. “Khittix…” she murmured. “Khittix, if you can hear me, then come to me.”

The figurine trembled for a moment, then grew cold, so cold that it burnt her fingers and she was forced to let it go. It dropped to the ground with a small clatter, and she could suddenly feel something touching her hand, probing gently. Something soft and hairy. Managing to turn her head she saw the largest spider she had ever seen, larger than even the great Sword Spiders of the Cloakwood Forest. It was easily the size of a large dog, and wild thoughts of trying to take it for walks on a leash almost made her laugh out loud, despite her predicament. “Khittix…” she said, her voice filled with wonder. Then she had an idea. She had tried to reach her mind out to find her familiar, but she couldn’t find her. Probably Softpaws was too far away, out of range. But if she could manage to communicate her wishes to the spider… “Khittix,” she whispered. “I need you to do something. Can you find my friends and bring them here? Can you?”

The spider chittered at her, mandibles clicking. There was a sense of comprehension about the way she eagerly jumped up and down. “Good girl! Here, wait just a moment. You’ll have to be careful. They won’t know you’re a friend, they’ll think you’re trying to attack them. You have to be very careful so they don’t hurt you, all right?”

Khittix waved one of her legs in a dismissive gesture, then scurried off through the darkness, hopefully in the right direction. I hope she’ll be all right, Rini thought. The others are bound to be pretty trigger-happy by now.

As a matter of fact Zaerini was quite right about that, despite the fact that the only party member in possession of an actual trigger was Jan Jansen, adventurer, inventor and turnip-salesman. The gnome kept staring at the shadows of the corridor he was currently walking along, expecting something to leap out at him at any moment, crossbow swiveling here and there. Already there had been more of the shadow creatures, some more ghouls, and a couple of lumbering bandage-wrapped humans smelling vaguely of cinnamon and old dust. Mummies, Edwin had called them. Strange burial habits humans have. Not as strange as those of old Hannibal ‘Gnasher’ Jansen the Cannibal Gnome though. Now there was a story to strike fear into the hearts of little kiddies everywhere, particularly with the way he used his toothpick…

Despite the ever present threat of monsters, Jan was actually quite pleased to be scouting ahead of the group a little, looking for traps. Once Zaerini’s disappearance had been noticed, the others had more or less lost their heads. Minsc had gone berserk, trying to hack through the walls in order to get to his Witch, Jaheira snarled and snapped at everything that moved and Edwin and Anomen were quivering bundles of nerves and kept sniping at each other more than ever. Jan was worried too, of course. He liked his party leader, and was very eager to have her safely returned. But he didn’t see what shouting about it was going to accomplish. I guess it’s because none of the others are rogues, he thought as he carefully manipulated a sneakily hidden pressure plate into a locked position, keeping it from raining fiery death and destruction on him. An impatient thief doesn’t live very long, usually. Unless he has a front as a legitimate merchant, like that slimy little turnip-hating sleaze who married Lissa. Now, a front as an illegal merchant, that is quite different, far more respectable, if only she’d see it…

A sudden sound from the shadows alerted the gnome to the fact that he was no longer alone, and he raised his crossbow a little. Then his eyes widened with surprise as he saw an enormous, poisonously green spider come hurrying towards him from a side passage, its multitude of little eyes glittering black in the faint illumination of his mage light. Reacting instantly, he raised his beloved crossbow and took careful aim. Just a little closer, and there’ll be itsy bitsy little spider bits flying all over. Just a little closer…