The Drow's Mistress

Chapter 8 Dangerous Gamble

The callous goblins cared not where they dumped the trash and dead bodies. As soon as they emerged on the surface, they shoved their cart onto its side and sent its contents tumbling into River Damp. Ysilnod hit the icy water hard before bobbing to the surface. Then, he gradually drifted downstream, toward Lake Dipper.

Born and bred in the warm, damp Underdeep, the drow did not do well in the cold. Ysilnod could not recall the last time he had eaten anything. A gnawing hunger sat in his stomach while his hunger pangs throbbed in time with his heart. The icy river water stung his skin like a million needles, seeped through his skin and soaked into the very marrow of his bones. It was torture. He nearly drowned, many times, before he finally pulled himself out of the water and onto land. The effort had drained him utterly. He had passed out before he could drag himself completely out of the lake.

As Ysilnod drifted between wakefulness and unconsciousness, he felt someone yank his jaw open and force something into his mouth. It scalded his throat as it flowed down and into his stomach, where it threatened to burn a hole in his organ. Within seconds, the melting heat spread to his limbs. He could feel it heating every piece of shattered bone and torn tendon in his broken body. He no longer felt the cold, nor pain. A strange warmth filled him. He no longer felt dizzy from blood loss as blood roared through his veins. His slowing heart began to beat faster, a steady drum that sounded deafening in his ears.

He heard something then. It was a name spoken in a powerful, ancient language.

The day was still young. Under the blazing sunlight, the drow was as good as blind. Ysilnod lay there quietly and marveled silently at the miraculous speed at which he was healing. He could hear someone next to him, moving around and grumbling incessantly. He heard the loud clangs of a pot, the sound of wood being chopped and the cracking and hissing of fire. Punctuating the cacophony was tuneless humming and really terrible whistling. To a drow used to stillness and silence, the racket was akin to the clamor from a train of bell-ferrying carriages driving right past him.

A few hours passed. Nobody tried to hurt Ysilnod or tie him up. All the dark elf could hear was the sound of something bubbling in a pot, the quiet thuds of cutlery hitting the mess tin as a meal was had, the soft clinks of coins being counted again and again, and then, silence. His strange companion must have gone to bed. Silence descended. Ysilnod’s eyes snapped open. He sat up silently and tested his limbs. He found, to his utter shock, that he was fully healed. His shattered shoulder and poisoned arm were as good as new. The cuts that he had suffered from his brutal whipping had faded to faint bruises that hardly hurt and were almost unnoticeable.

The revelation left Ysilnod reeling. The most gifted cleric in Mynzoberranzan would need more than a few hours to heal him of the worst of his injuries. The drow’s red eyes fell on his savior. He had had his suspicions as to whom it was. The voice had sounded familiar. The young female berserker whom he had been tasked to kill and who had nearly maimed him was also the one who had saved him.

She was fast asleep right now, curled into herself like a fawn and her purse hidden protectively under her belly.

Ysilnod remembered every single detail of his failed mission. A drow could walk past a member of the surface race, leaving barely an arm’s length between them, and still remain unnoticed. Yet he had been detected that night. As he crouched a few hundred meters away from his target, she had somehow sensed his presence. The drow assassin had been forced to take on a raging berserker in a direct confrontation. Even a fool could predict the outcome of their fight.

The wet sound of lips smacking jerked Ysilnod’s eyes back toward the berserker. His gaze darkened with confusion. He was sitting a few arms’ length away from her. Would that not place her at a far greater danger than she had been twenty days ago?

Perhaps, armed with her strange powerful magic and inhuman strength, she had never feared him.

The drow did not know that Nidia’s pendant did not sense any danger from him at all. He had been banished from the Underdeep. As an exile, he was no longer duty-bound to complete his missions. As his sense of duty dissolved, so did whatever hate he might have harbored toward his target.

Nights on the surface were bitter-cold. Ysilnod wound the blanket around tightly and stayed close to the fire. He did not wish to leave its warm heat. He could escape into the night, but with no clothes, weapons or any knowledge of the surface realm, he would be as vulnerable as a newborn. Everyone aboveground hated the drow. Ysilnod was keenly aware of how helpless he was on the surface. Fire and warmth were a luxury to someone like him.

His enemy had healed him without any strings attached. What did she want from him? He was a drow and a drow would do anything to survive. For a moment, Ysilnod’s fate teetered on the edge as he considered his options. The moment passed. The drow made a choice that was as much a monumental decision as a dangerous gamble.