“Is such treatment truly a needed thing?” he asked her.
The drow shrugged. She untied the white silk from her waist and stuffed it carelessly into her bag, not caring that this action brought another wail of pain from the evil creature below. But the look on Fyodor’s face did trouble her. He was clearly upset by Liriel’s casual enslavement of the nereid.
“Would you agree that the information provided by a nereid slave was a ‘needed thing’ if I told you that you, in ignorance of this information, might have killed the wrong man?”
Fyodor frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What if Ibn did not kill Hrolf?”
“He attacked you. His death is earned thrice over.”
“All right, granted, but I do not believe he killed Hrolf or that he has any part in Ruathym’s troubles. The first two times Ibn attacked me, I think he was driven mostly by his hatred of elves and his superstitions about females aboard ship. He didn’t want to endanger the other sailors. But today he attacked me because he thought I was partly responsible for Hrolf’s drowning, because of my involvement with the sea elves. Did you see how surprised he looked when I suggested that he drugged the men of Holgerstead with that wretched mead? I was too angry to see this before,” Liriel admitted. “But if this is true, it means there is yet a traitor on Ruathym. We must find him—or her—and not regret the means it takes to do so!”
Fyodor nodded somberly as he took this in. He did not quite agree with the drow’s ruthless treatment of the nereid, but he recognized the importance of uncovering the traitor. “Do you know who it is?”
“I think so,” Liriel said shortly. “Did it not seem strange to you that Dagmar appeared in Holgerstead the very day of the attack? With a wagonload of provisions for her ‘bride price,’ no less?”
“Not really. This is the custom of the land.”
“But where could the mead have come from except Hrolf’s warehouse? And who else had a key, besides his first mate and me?”
“There might have been many. Hrolf was a man who trusted easily.”
“True, but consider this: just before Dagmar left for Holgerstead, she went alone to the warehouse to pick up a few things, apparently as payment for the poor sod who had to take her. Isn’t it possible she added a keg or two of mead to sweeten the deal?”
“Possible,” Fyodor admitted, “but it does not seem likely. Even if the mead were tainted, even if it came along with Dagmar’s bride price, who is to say this was not an accident, but a deliberate act of treason? Dagmar’s devotion to her people is beyond question. Why else would she go to Holgerstead as second wife in Wedigar’s household?”
Her friend’s steadfast defense of the Northwoman was beginning to wear on Liriel’s nerves. “Small loss, if she knew the man would be dead long before she was required to bed him,” she snapped. “Not that it would be such a hardship. Wedigar is not entirely without appeal, as humans go.”
The young man flinched; he could not help but take personally the drow’s dubious assessment of human men. “Hardship only in that she does not care for him,” Fyodor said stiffly.
Liriel eyes narrowed and turned hard. “But she does care for you, is that what you are saying?”
“I am saying that Dagmar’s willingness to go to the bed of a man she hardly knows—be that Wedigar or me—speaks well of her desire to do her duty to Ruathym,” he explained. “It is not the way of Northwomen to take such things lightly. I do not see how a woman with such devotion to duty could become traitor.”
His words cut Liriel like shards of glass, for despite all her early adventures with this or that drow playmate, she herself hardly took “such things” lightly. Had Fyodor truly so little understanding of what she had gone through before she could accept him as a friend, much less a lover? Fyodor had demanded more of her than she had known was in her to give. To Liriel, a drow of Menzoberranzan, the path that led to such intimacy had been one of painfully won insight, of enormous change and growth. In light of all this, for Fyodor to vaunt the Northwoman’s reticence as virtue was past insult!
“As to Dagmar’s motives, we shall know them soon enough,” Liriel proclaimed wrathfully. “Perhaps you cannot look beyond a woman’s pretty face, but by the power of Lloth, I can!” The drow snatched up her obsidian pendant and brandished it purposefully.
A look of horror crossed Fyodor’s face. “Do not,” he admonished her. “Little raven, have nothing more to do with this goddess!”
An inhuman rage rose in her like a dark, crackling flame. Liriel recognized in it the touch of the Spider Queen, and too late she remembered the cruel rituals required of the drow priestesses who served her. The jealous goddess did not allow her clergy to form close attachments of any kind and was particularly offended by the idea that a priestess might become fond of a mere male. Often were the females of Menzoberranzan required to sacrifice their mates, their lovers, and even their sons to appease the Queen of Spiders. Lloth would not long countenance an alliance with a human male, especially if that male presumed to intrude upon Liriel’s devotion and duties. Fyodor did not realize how precarious was the path he trod. Until this moment, neither had Liriel.
“Do not speak ill to me of Lloth,” she warned him. “I am pledged as priestess to her. This I did, in exchange for the Elfmaid’s magical escape.”
Fyodor gasped and reached for her hands. “That was the doing of your goddess? Liriel, it is no wonder you wept, knowing to what you had given pledge! Never have I felt such despair in a place, or such evil!”
“Or such power,” she added coldly.
“But at what price?” he persisted. “How can good come from evil? I fear for you, little raven, and for what you might become. Already you have taken a slave and accused a good woman of treachery.”
His words held enough truth to sting her, and she snatched her hands away. “Have a care how you speak to me,” she snarled. “Need I remind you that I could command you to rip out the heart of that ‘good woman’?”
A stunned silence met Liriel’s words.
For what seemed like a very long time, she and Fyodor merely stood and stared at each other. It was obvious the man was shocked by this outburst, but no more so than Liriel herself. For the first time ever, the young drow heard in her own words the echo of her grandmother’s malevolent voice. For a moment, the ancient evil that was Matron Baenre had lived and breathed and found a home in Liriel’s heart.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered.
Fyodor nodded, silently accepting her words. But Liriel knew by the sadness in his eyes that he doubted the truth of them—and he knew she doubted it, too.
Impulsively she threw herself into her lover’s arms, wishing to recover the closeness they once knew. Fyodor held her lightly, but beneath her seeking hands the muscles of his shoulders and chest and arms were tensed, forbidding. He offered no response to her, and no welcome. Liriel raised questioning eyes to the young man’s face.
“My lady, would you command this of me, as well?” he asked in a tight voice.
Stunned by this accusation, Liriel fell back from the unwilling embrace. Through the transparent window of Fyodor’s eyes, she read both his profound pain and rigid pride, and suddenly she understood the depth of the blow that she had dealt his honor. By the very suggestion that he might do evil at her bequest, she had gone against his dearly held faith in her as wychlaran, and in himself as a berserker knight pledged to a worthy lady. And noble and selfless though he might be, his own very personal pride was also deeply wounded. Most painful of all, Liriel saw that Fyodor had come to fear, and to regret, the link that had been forged between them.
With a little cry, she tore herself from him and raced wildly away.
This time, Fyodor did not follow.
After a time alone to compose herself, Liriel returned to Ulf’s cottage. She went straight to the garden and to the wooden boxes where she’d seen the odd seaweed Dagmar had tended. She wanted to see if it matched the description given
her by the nereid. But there was nothing in the salty water but a few somnolent clams.
Given all that had happened, Liriel could not help but doubt her own memory and the conclusions she had drawn. She hadn’t looked all that closely at the sprout she’d nibbled, nor did she truly know whether or not Dagmar had had anything to do with the attack on Holgerstead. Perhaps Fyodor was right—perhaps the power Liriel courted was changing her. Perhaps it was already warping her perspective and inflaming her desire for petty revenge.
Liriel resented Dagmar for her early condescension and for her attempt to seduce Fyodor. That alone would be enough to send many a drow into an out-of-control fury. So many of her people were blinded by their singleminded lust for vengeance. She wondered if this was the taint left by the worship of Lloth, the ash that remained upon the soul when the flame of power burned low.
The young drow had always taken great pride in her independence of mind. She had chosen and controlled her own destiny to an extent unimagined by most of Menzoberranzan’s drow. But it occurred to her now that in her quest to retain her drow powers, she might well have lost much of herself. Where one began and the other left off, she could no longer say.
Finally, too heartsick and exhausted to ponder the matter more, Liriel entered Ulf’s cottage and climbed the ladder into the loft. She plunged gratefully into slumber and the oblivion it offered.
Much later that night, a soft, weighty pressure stole the drow’s breath and tore her from slumber. Instinctively her fingers closed on the dagger that lay within reach. She lunged upright, slashing out as she rose.
In a haze of lazily drifting duck feathers stood Dagmar, dressed in her nightclothes and holding half of a severed pillowslip in each hand. The woman and the drow stared at each other in stunned astonishment.
“You might have killed me,” whispered the Northwoman.
“That was the general idea,” Liriel snarled. She rolled off the far side of the bed, putting some space between herself and the much larger human. “What in the Nine Hells do you think you’re doing, intruding upon me like this? It might be your father’s house, but it’s my room! And haven’t you the sense not to creep up on a sleeping drow?”
Dagmar shrugged. “I was downstairs, unable to sleep. I heard you call out as if you were in danger.”
“And so you rushed to my aid armed with a pillow?” Liriel sneered. “This, from a daughter of warriors!”
The girl’s chin lifted. “When I entered the room the first time,” she said evenly, “I was relieved to find that you were threatened only by a bad dream. I saw that you did not have a pillow. I brought you one, thinking it might help you sleep better.”
“You put it on my face,” Liriel pointed out.
“It fell from my hand,” Dagmar returned.
Liriel stared at the girl for a long moment. All of her earlier suspicions returned to her, for she had caught Dagmar in not one lie, but two. Yet the young Northwoman’s face was set in strong, certain lines, and there was no hint of duplicity in her pale blue eyes.
The wench was good, Liriel acknowledged with a touch of perverse admiration. She hoped her own performance, as she accepted Dagmar’s explanations and sent her on her way, was equally convincing.
Liriel waited until she heard the faint creaking of the roping that supported Dagmar’s mattress. She eased on her elven boots and cloaked herself in her piwafwi. Silent and invisible, she crept down the ladder into the main room of the cottage, then wriggled out an open window into the night.
The drow made her way swiftly to the barracks where Fyodor slept. She found his room and shook him awake.
Acting on sudden impulse, Liriel crawled under the blankets and nestled into Fyodor’s arms. She poured out her story—beginning with her own self-doubts and fearful misgivings. With unfamiliar candor she admitted her fears about the dangers that her reluctant priestesshood held for her, and also for him. Fyodor held her as she spoke, and she felt in his physical strength a symbol of the steadfast honor that was like a lifeline to her. She spoke of this, too. Never had the proud and solitary drow poured forth her heart so completely. In its own way, it was a sharing equal to that they had known at the foot of Yggsdrasil’s Child.
At length she described the scene that had transpired in her bedchamber, and once again she laid out her accusations.
This time Fyodor listened with a more receptive mind, but he was still slow to accept.
“It might have been as Dagmar said,” he ventured. “Perhaps she did not mean to do you harm—perhaps the pillow did slip from her hands.”
“She was still holding it after I sliced it in half,” Liriel pointed out. “But even if she’d caught it as it fell, there is a more basic question: why did she come into my room in the first place?”
“Perhaps you did call out in your sleep.”
“ ‘There are those who think, and those who dream,’ ” Liriel quoted softly. “You are forgetting something, something that Dagmar could not possibly know: drow do not dream.”
Fyodor was silent as he sorted through all that she had said. “Do what you must to unveil the traitor,” he said somberly. “I will help you where I can and try not to question your methods overmuch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DEEPER
In the dark hours before morning, the shaman’s daughter crept down to the shore and dragged her small boat off the beach. The familiar signal had been left the night before, the strange pattern of pebbles and shells indicating that once again Dagmar was required to meet with one of the creatures who held captive that which was dearest to her heart.
She hadn’t rowed far beyond the cove when a pair of slender, webbed hands seized the rim of her boat. Dagmar barely had time to draw in a startled gasp before the creature leaped in and seated himself across from her. The little boat rocked wildly as Dagmar stared at one of the sea elves her nets had recently ensnared. She recovered her wits quickly and dove for the fishing knife at her feet, a thin blade longer than her forearm.
But the elf was faster still. He seized her wrist with one webbed hand and hurled her back onto her seat. “I like this no better than you do,” he said with cold disdain. “But there is news from Ascarle. Listen well, so I need not look at you any longer than I must.”
“At our last meeting, you promised vengeance against me for ensnaring you!”
“If I acted only to please myself, I would have slain you that day and relished the deed,” the sea elf responded. “But the powers of Ascarle wish otherwise. You do your job well enough, and the failure of the raid at Holgerstead is not laid upon you. In other matters, however, you have been too diligent. Leave off the kelpies; there are far too many in these waters. I myself dodged one—and the human she was in the process of drowning—only to be caught by another a few lengths away.”
The color drained from Dagmar’s face. “We were so close!” she whispered. “The day we caught you, if only we’d cast our nets farther out to sea, Hrolf might yet be alive!”
“A little late for regrets,” the elf taunted her. He reached into a sealskin bag and drew forth a small, folded object. “A token from your mistress. Plans have changed; you are not to destroy the drow and deliver her body to the sea. But the new shapeshifter still lives, and your mistress finds this most displeasing.”
Dagmar stared at the grisly object in the elf’s hand: a bloodstained lock of pale yellow hair, proof that her twin-born sister still lived.
Although all of Ruathym thought Ygraine had been lost in a sudden spring squall, the truth of the matter was that the two sisters had been waylaid by Luskan pirates. The cruel Northmen had cast lots over the girls; Ygraine was chosen as hostage and Dagmar as spy. There was little chance their warrior kindred might rescue the girl, for Ygraine was held captive in a place far beyond the reach of men. Nor was there the possibility that Ygraine, although in captivity, might find her way to an honorable death. Dagmar had been shown a tapestry that held the tormented spirits of slain elves, so she mi
ght know what Ygraine’s fate would be should she fail to follow orders.
Dagmar’s gaze fell on the knife still clenched in one fist, the knife that had sent her betrothed husband—Thorfinn, the future First Axe of Ruathym—to his ignoble death, the knife that would have slain Fyodor of Rashemen and Holgerstead, had he yielded to her that night. There were times when any man, even the greatest of warriors, was vulnerable to the quick thrust of a knife, a time when caressing fingers could count to the spot between the third and fourth rib, force the blade in, and pull the knife down. This and more she was willing to do, to end Ygraine’s captivity.
She turned her eyes upon the sea elf seated across from her. Unlike most of her people, she understood that the sea folk bore no special enmity against her people. She had been astonished to learn that this one was part of the plot against Ruathym, and that he was willing to implicate the elves in the island’s woes. More, he was willing to work with her to this end, even after she had unwittingly attacked him!
“I know why I must betray my people,” she said softly. “But what of you?”
The male responded with a smile of pure malevolence. “Like most of your kind, you are easily deceived by appearances. I am no more elf than you are!”
With these cryptic words, the apparent sea elf dove into the water and disappeared. Dagmar sat silent for a long time and then rowed back toward the shore. Her movements were slow, weighted down by the knowledge that many of her people would soon be dead. At least their deaths would be won in honorable battle, their place in the Northman afterlife assured.
For herself, Dagmar no longer held such hopes. Her soul was in the hands of her tormenters, just as surely as those of the unfortunate sea elves in distant Ascarle, who were locked for eternity in a prison made of wool and silk. But this no longer mattered to her. All that Dagmar valued was held captive, and she would do whatever it took to claim back what was hers.
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