Redemption of the Drow

On the way, he literally bumped into Kerri. He had hoped to avoid the meeting, and expected the worst when Kerri blocked his path and spoke to him.

"Maxi, I can understand why you must go back to Jade."

This was so much not what Maxi was expecting that at first he did not take in what Kerri was saying, instead feeding through his head excuses for not continuing his affair with her.

"What did you say?" he blurted out at last. "I thought you wanted more of me".

"Oh I do!" cried Kerri, "but you made me see what I never understood before".

"What's that?" asked Maxi guardedly, still not sure of where the conversation was leading.

"Why one woman can be better than any other. I always thought any man was the same as any other man, except that some forced themselves on me. But all of them treated sex like defecation; something necessary to give relief from pressure but not something to dwell on. You are the first man to really excite me, make me want more. And this must mean that just as some men are better than others, so are some women. Naturally Jade can give you what no other woman can, and you must stay with her if that is where your heart lies."

Maxi nodded. He had worked hard for Jade's acceptance and love, and now he had attained it, he had also come to the conclusion that throwing it away would be folly. But it was gratifying that Jade's only real rival also knew this.

"You're quite right," he said. "Jade is a remarkable woman. Tough and self contained, extremely brave yet also emotional and vulnerable. She is also part human, and I tire of eugenic drow perfection, even though my upbringing makes me yearn for perfect beauty."

Kerri nodded. "I had a wonderful time, and you have encouraged me to keep looking for love. There will be others like you -- not afraid to make love to an ex-temple slave. I just need to find them." Kerri threw her arms around Maxi, gave him a quick hug then hurried off.

Chapter 6: the unknown god

Mira and Jade sat dangling next to each other on a hammock-like structure in a tall tree hundreds of metres above the ground. Almost as far above the ground as the drow live below ground, thought Jade. Adventuring with different races certainly puts a different perspective on life. Facing them in a similar structure was a mature looking elf, Navaras by name, who they had been conversing with for the best part of a day, but with no signs of boredom or lapses of attention. From time to time they had taken short breaks, and had been served refreshments, cool draughts of water with a twist of something in it that banished hunger and tiredness as well as thirst.

Now they gazed silently as the sun started to set over the elven forest. The leaves were just turning and were various shades of green and gold. A gentle wind stirring the trees provided a cooling breeze, and squirrels and other furry creatures scuttled up and down, giving a pleasant background to rest their eyes on while they talked. Even through her thick sun shades Jade thought she had never seen anything so beautiful.

Jade had been told she was the first dark elf to be the guest of the above ground elves, and not many dwarfs had ever had that privilege either. They would not have been allowed in at all if it were not for a fortuitous attack by Xiana's forces in the pre-dawn.

Jade and Mira had unwrapped themselves from each other two hours before sunrise and had set out immediately, to avoid the bird attacks. But before they had got to the grove, the horses both gave tremendous whinnies and bucked suddenly. Both riders were thrown immediately, and the horses galloped away at top speed. As the two travellers got up, dazed and winded, they saw what looked like a patch of night that had fallen onto the earth. As it advanced on them it split into several smaller patches, all with the appearance of a rabid black hound.

Mira attempted to banish the demonic creatures. One or two slunk away, but the majority of them, a dozen or so, kept coming towards them, howling.

Jade knew charms and steel would not hurt them, and quickly prepared a magic fire. The green flames leapt out of her hands and caught on to some pine needles in front of them. The fire spread to some nearby dead trees and started blazing. The dogs drew back howling, deterred but not dismayed. They sat back on their haunches just outside the light given off by the flames and waited. Magical fire is no better than mundane fire in its requirement for fuel, and once the flames died to a smoulder, the dogs started to close in.

Mira cast a spell of endless illumination, which blazed from her hand, and immediately the dogs fell back again. The pair kept close together and advanced. They were close to the grove and needed to make it before the dogs found a way of dispelling their protection.

Suddenly one of the dogs rushed at the light. Jade cast a spell. Sizzling bolts of energy thudded into the dog, and it gave a terrible banshee-like howl that echoed throughout the landscape. A second dog tried the same trick, and met the same fate. As long as the dogs made isolated attacks the pair should be safe, provided Jade had enough magical energy to keep the spells up until they made it to the elven grove.

The dogs then started howling and snarling at each other and it looked as if they were about to mount a concerted attack. Sure enough the dogs leaped together at the light. Jade anticipated this and cast more magic fire, straight into the middle of the charging pack. The howling, screeching and yelping must have been heard back in Formen. Several of the dogs had been destroyed or banished, and the remainder slunk away.

The pair heard a clear bell-like laugh from a nearby tree, and a tall slender elf jumped down, landing softly on his feet. He was joined by half a dozen companions, all men, dressed in green to blend with the trees, and carrying staffs and longbows.

"A dwarf and a dark elf, unless I am mistaken." the first one said. "And why would the devil hounds be chasing you?".

"To stop us meeting you. They are fearful of what we may discover."

"You think we would meet with our dark kindred? Even you must know that we are sworn enemies."

"Oh for goodness sake," snapped Jade. "That was ages ago. None of us were around then. Can't you get over it? I'm only part drow anyway. I'm also part human. The humans at Formen sent me to you for help. The drow have signed a treaty of peace with humans and dwarfs. We need to fight the renegade drow who have rebelled against them.

The elf took the letter from Jim and read it. "Your leader at Formen I know well and respect. But I would still not let you in, or your dwarf companion, if I did not see with my own eyes, and particularly with my own ears that the fell creatures of the nether plains want you removed from this world. You must have something that threatens them a great deal.

"And you are wrong if you think we were not here at the time of the partition," the elf continued. "We elves are long livers and I remember it well. Come; Navaras expects you."

The other elves fell in step behind the pair, and they were marched through the forest towards the elven grove, reaching it just as the first rays of the sun turned the sky a lighter red.

#

Navaras had talked for hours, but first he had listened. Jade told him everything; the death of Trieste, her period of slavery, the battle with the mind slayer, her time with the humans, Terry's information on who killed her mother, the partially successful revenge trip that had established Elspeth as High Priestess, and Xiana's counter rebellion. She even mentioned Freda and her companions, and told the kindly elf how they had all died.

"And no doubt you are suffering survivors' guilt," said Navaras gently. "It is quite normal in battle. Another source of suffering that war brings. The survivors often suffer more than the casualties."

"If I had not cared for them I would not feel the same way," said Jade. "Much as I love Maxi, one of his faults is he never remembers a comrade, never feels anything if someone fighting by his side never returns."

"Your friend Maxi is a professional soldier," said Navaras. "He was brought up by the drow to be a killing machine. If he ever gave in to survivors' guilt it would destroy him. It is a credit to him that he escaped his conditioning at all. As it is to you. Your feelings are commendable. They show you can love. Our Enemy will of course try to twist that love into guilt, so you think it is not worth feeling it. But the Enemy is wrong; as you now know, everything has a price, and the price of love can be high. But it is worth paying in full.

"And that brings us to your reason for being here. You are looking for the source of that Power that you have felt only fleetingly, so you can overthrow the kingdom of the evil Spider Goddess and free the drow to be more like themselves. More like us in fact."

"What do you mean?" said Jade. We are the dark elves. We are as different from you as light is from darkness."

"Oh no," said Navaras, "we have more in common than you realise. You know of course of the legend of the separation, how the drow sought out the Spider Goddess, disdaining our own frivolities."

Jade knew the legend very well. She had told it to Freda and her companions when they wanted to know how the Über-drow came into being. But after tasting the beauty and peace of the elven grove Jade questioned why her ancestors had broken away from this paradise to burrow under the ground in all its ugliness. To have their eyes become so used to dark that they could not even enjoy the above ground beauty when they were inside it, and to live such miserably violent and short lives.

Yet although Jade had lived among humans for six years, and had no reason to love her race, there remained some residual loyalty for her own kind, and she refused to see them as all bad. There must have been something that the drow needed to rebel against, though she certainly could not think of what it might be.

Navaras continued. "According to your version, we were too frivolous for you. So you and your Spider goddess both rebelled against the gods. Our version differs slightly. You did not in fact seek the Spider goddess; she did not exist at that time. You made her. The Spider Demon is the manifestation of all that is most evil in dark elven society; the insatiable cruelty, the rejection of family, and the dominance of the feminine. Our own gods are equally ephemeral, they too only exist as long as we want them to. But I think you will find they are more congenial to happiness than your Spider."

Jade was silent. It had never crossed her mind that the gods may have been created by their worshippers. Perhaps Maxi was right in rejecting them. But if that was the case, whence came their powerful magic? If not from the gods then something or someone else must be controlling them.

Mira cut in, "so are our war gods also made up?"

"None of the gods are 'made up'. They are quite real. They just have a different type of reality. But like our gods, the dwarfen war gods have part of the ultimate reality inside them. It is this that allows them to channel healing, and why someone like Freda, who your friend described, could become part of the priesthood. She saw instinctively the distinctions between that which is truly divine and those traits that have been fashioned by culture and tradition. You are a healer. Where does your power come from?"

Mira thought for a bit. "We are taught to use the power in the herbs we use. And to channel the power in nature itself. The same power can be drawn to us when repelling or disintegrating the dead. We are calling them back to the earth where they should have rightly stayed."

Navaras nodded. "You are using the unknown Power. The one the elves use to stay immortal, the Power the dark elves also have, but chose to turn their back on. You see, Jade, there is one way that the drow version of the legend is true. The drow were more cunning innovators and inventors. We elves do have a flighty streak, something I know that dwarfs like Mira also look down on us for.

"In our version, the separation of the elves the dwarfs and the humans came down to the role of innovation. The dwarfs chose to burrow into the earth and delve for precious jewellery, fashioning items of great beauty. They sacrificed immortality for art. The humans wanted knowledge, so they went to the less hospitable parts of the earth's surface, to subdue it and find out how everything works.

The early drow were not called the dark elves but the grey elves, and some of their descendants live still. For them it was not knowledge or art for its own sake that they craved, but the fashioning of elaborate and ingenious devices; devices not to kill and maim, but to make life easier and at the same time to provide an intellectual challenge.

"So out of all the races, the grey elves were closest to us. They wanted to keep immortality, enjoy the bounties of nature, yet at the same time coax more from it. In itself this was not a bad thing, and as the evil ones expanded and nature became harder to coax, it even became a useful skill.

But there existed one among your kindred, Lilith by name, who wanted more than that. It is a small step from coaxing nature to dominating it, and then an even smaller step to using nature to dominate others. Lilith took those steps, and ensured that she became the dominator. Her power grew and she gathered like minded women to her cause and made them her priestesses.

Until eventually the Lilith power dominated drow thinking, and manifested itself in your Spider. The strongest attribute of the drow, their inventiveness and innovation, became concentrated only on finding yet more ingenious methods of hurting and torturing.

"Yet I can see that drow inventiveness is not dead, only dormant, and can wake up given the right conditions. Those sun shades you wear are a practical example of drow ingenuity."

"We have not heard this version," said Jade. "The name you gave is however familiar. It is a variant of Lolth, the name given by some to the Spider. But only the High Priestesses dare say the name aloud, and I would not do so myself outside this protected space."

"Your Spider does not exist in the same way you do," said Navaras. "But the High Priestesses are also right. Lilith the evil channelled all her power, all her will to harm into a new cult, and the Spider became her alter ego. Lilith is mentioned too in legends spread by some human cultures, where she is considered an evil influence on human kind. In their patriarchal legends she is the succubus who lured the first man into her evil ways. So you can see now why I say the drow are more like us than you think."

Jade felt better than she had for a long time. The thick suffocating blanket of guilt had not lifted entirely, but she now saw it as a trial she had to endure, not an enemy that was destroying her. Mira also seemed more relaxed. In part this was because she drew much of her pleasure from Jade's state of mind, and she could tell that Jade was feeling better. But there was also something about Navaras that drove away sadness, and she felt more optimistic about her own future. Terry and his son would be back with Elspeth by now and they would be making passionate love. But now Mira felt not even a residue of jealousy and was even able to wish them well.

"This has been very interesting and useful to me," said Jade, and Mira nodded in agreement. "But we still don't know how we can get to the nether regions and fight Xiana and her Spider fiend on her own ground."

"You came to us because you thought we immortals would know about the death-defeating god. But you have the potential to be immortal too, if only you knew it. And the twisted Über-drow are also immortal until they are hacked apart -- you know this better than anyone. It is not those who cannot die that you need to search for, but those who can live.

"None of us can meet the Spider in her own web using their own power, you have worked that out. But the clues have been there for you all along. None of you can heal with your own power either. Jade, do you even understand one small part of where your magical singing ability comes from. The truth is that everything good comes from the unknown god of love, and that is the Power you must draw on if you are to defeat the Spider. But I cannot simply give you that power by casting a spell. You must do some difficult work on yourself, some genuine soul searching and ask the Power to help you. The question is whether you are ready to do this."

Jade spoke hesitatingly "I feel at peace in this grove talking to you, and with my friend beside me. I feel I could do anything. But whether I would feel the same resolve outside, with the dogs attacking, or in the drow complex with Xiana's forces ranged against me, I cannot say."

Navaras nodded. "Wise words. But to a great extent you make your own peace. Has not Maxi's love, and the love of Mira, your friend, given you peace? Naturally you need to all support each other, so if you can do it here then you will find a way. Though I warn you that the enemies will be fell. They will be inside you not out, but no less formidable for all that."

Jade said, "I have done some terrible things. As a slave I delighted in pounding other prisoners when I was ordered to. I excused it on the basis that I was just following orders, but still I chose to enjoy doing so. I told myself they were just half-orcs and scum. Then when the halflings treated me the same way because I was drow, calling me temple trash, I realised what I had done wrong. Would I have to atone for this?" Jade started to sob, and Mira put her arms around her.

"If by atone you mean make amends, alas that is impossible. What is done cannot be undone. But you will feel the full impact of the evil you have done, and that is something not everyone can do. You are a brave woman, Jade, but this requires a different form of courage."

Jade was silent. She had never liked introspection, and wondered what she would be required to do.

Navaras stood up. While they had been talking the sun had set. "Come," he said. "You can make a decision in the morning. "Nothing evil will touch you here so you can sleep soundly." He led them across a rope bridge to another tree, and thence to a wooden platform with a roof of leaves, and furnished with a soft sumptuous bed and more hammocks. A tall pitcher of the elven draft stood by the bed with two glasses.

The two friends had done nothing all day but laze around, drinking and talking with Navaras. But nevertheless they suddenly felt a heavy tiredness, exhausted from the emotions they had been releasing. They got into the bed and fell asleep almost immediately, their limbs lightly entangled in each other.

Chapter 7: Preparations

When Terry entered Elspeth's chamber and he heard her squeal of delight beyond the door, Maxi knew that his boss would not be disturbing him for some time, so he could put systems in place to properly secure their stronghold. It was gratifying to now be supreme commander of the army, second only to the High Priestess, but after the scene with Elspeth he had misgivings about serving again in his old capacity. Apart from his brief love spurt with Trieste, he could not say he had ever been happy among the drow, and he wondered whether he had made the right choice.

Then he absorbed himself in the thorny problem of securing an underground complex which leaked into enemy territory like lymph through the body; oozing into places it was not welcome, through tiny passageways that even the drow don't know about. Maxi called in the battalion commanders and placed them on duty in each tributary of the Secretarial Spoke. Their charge was to patrol the passageways and block off side passages. If this was impossible they were to guard them, and set up rapid communications with the bulk of the men standing guard in the Spoke passage.