Redemption of the Drow

Kerri had wanted Elspeth's succession to be later rather than sooner, for the simple reason that she did not want to be purged, which always happens to favourites of the previous reign. Even Elspeth had reluctantly come to the conclusion that purging was sound policy, and had instituted a massacre of Xiana's sadistic Secretariat, before putting her own appointees, Kerri included, in their place.

Maxi was experienced at political manoeuvrings. Able to thrive as a man in a woman's world; able to keep his place in society in spite of his far too monogamous relationships, and even able to protect the daughter of the woman he loved. He was also a man of courage; one who was not intimidated by authority, who would not hesitate to risk the wrath of the High Priestess by telling her what she needed to know. Elspeth's throne would be a lot more stable with Maxi there to steady it.

Kerri could not understand why attraction to a woman was so important. Surely as chief adviser to Her Holiness he could pick any woman he wanted. Jade was beautiful no doubt, but not the only beauty in the drow stable. Maybe it was something to do with her being part human. Kerri knew that human men had forked dicks, so maybe human women had some similar genital peculiarity that made them more alluring. Quite intriguing really.

#

Kerri had been right to be concerned about the succession. Two years on from the first diplomatic mission to Formen, Elspeth's reign was looking decidedly shaky. Most of the younger women and all of the men had remained loyal to Elspeth; they knew when they were better off. But a considerable number of older women, making up most of the priestesses and military leaders, had defected to Xiana, who was rumoured to be hiding out among the many sinuous tunnels in the underground realm.

At the time of the succession and the purges reluctantly ordered by Elspeth, a concerted search had been made for Xiana's assassin twins; but to no avail. There had in fact only been one mysterious death since Elspeth's accession, so it was not even certain that the assassins were responsible, but for some the shadow of their presence was taken as the substance. Those of a nervous disposition, those with ambitions above their ability and those with a ruthless streak started to drift away. For them the attractions of a free society were found wanting in comparison with the drow lust for power, or the simple desire to not end up garrotted while they slept.

Fortunately the majority of the drow stayed with Elspeth, especially the soldiers, though Elspeth could not be sure whether they were motivated by loyalty or expedience; a High Priestess who can heal is after all a major attraction for a warrior. But the possibility of assassination attempts put everyone on edge. Resources were wasted setting guards and watching each others back, that should have gone on bonding the drow into a cohesive unit.

Elspeth herself had her quarters guarded with all the magical wards she could cast, her dwarfen free labourers checked thoroughly for secret doors and passage, and she always made sure she was surrounded by bodyguards.

The continuous head turning to watch backs sapped morale, and Elspeth was floundering, lacking experienced non-lackey advisers. Kerri had begged Her Holiness to let her go to the humans again and seek out help from Maxi.

"What about the half-caste?" Elspeth had said.

Kerri swallowed hard, screwed her courage and then replied. "You mean Jade? The woman who helped you defeat your predecessor and put you on your throne?"

Elspeth turned red. She raised her arm to strike this impudent servant, former temple slave, who she had raised from cave slime to a position of prestige. But then the irony of this action claimed her attention, and she lowered her arm. "Yes," she said between gritted teeth, "I mean Jade."

Kerri had almost voided her bowels when Elspeth raised her arm, but now she breathed an audible sigh. She was not going to be beaten after all.

"With respect, Holiness," she went on. "Times are changing. Those who are left with you are the more courageous and the broad minded, and will respect the person not the race. Jade has a first class brain, and she is a gifted enchantress. You would do well to have them both here."

Elspeth thought about this. Perhaps her servant was right -- perhaps Kerri was right. And if half-castes could be accepted in the Temple then maybe her son would be welcome back too. She had heard nothing from Terry or from her son, except indirectly through Kerri and other emissaries she had sent to the dwarfs. Terry and Mira had named him Harald, after one of their friends and the boy's dwarfen god father, but that is all she knew.

Terry had obstinately refused to communicate with her. Elspeth thought she knew why, and thinking about it she could hardly blame the woman. But it would be nice to have Terry back here. She started day dreaming, then suddenly snapped back to reality as she realised her nipples were hardening, and Kerri would see them.

"Very well," she said. "You may visit the humans once more and bring Jade and Maxi to me if they will come. Take whatever consort can be spared."

Kerri bowed and took her leave.

#

Mira got out of bed and looked at the sleeping form of her husband. As she had expected, her reading the letter had caused a hideous row. Terry had even hit her; something he had never done before or since. But, also as Mira had expected, the shock had galvanised Terry to some extent, and for many months afterwards their relationship had gained in passion. Now however, two years on, Terry was lapsing back into the benevolent lackadaisical pattern he had previously adopted. Something will have to be done to reignite our fire, thought Mira. And then she felt something she had not experienced for two years. They were being watched. Xiana was on the move again.

Mira went into a chant to block Xiana's spying attempt. The attempt was stronger than she remembered from the last time she had successfully blocked Xiana in the lair of the arakne and Mira had to work hard and concentrate.

Jade had warned her about Xiana before they left. They knew that she had been beaten back and humiliated, but all the more dangerous because of this. Sooner or later, she would make a move, try to get back her power, and now it seemed this had started. If Xiana was spying on her, it was very likely she was spying on Jade and Maxi as well. Mira knew that she would need to make a journey. Her hands drifted down to her crotch as she thought of seeing Jade again.

Chapter 3: The meeting

The Council chamber at the Formen City Hall was more crowded than it had ever been. Jim the City Leader had been usurped in his place at the head of the table by the Duke Liam; a foppish middle aged man attended at all times by his own valet. Jim sat on his right together with his scribe. Maxi and Jade were both present, their eyes covered with dark obsidian light shades. Kerri was there to represent the drow; her effeminate guard at her side to do her bidding if required. Mira and old Harald represented the dwarfs. The drow emissaries were also wrapped in obsidian shades, and Jade noticed that the Duke appeared intimidated by being unable to see their eyes. Yet another use for this new product, she thought.

Jade looked across to Mira, remembering the previous evening. Maxi had been out on one of his patrols, and she and Mira had taken a walk outside the city gates to a forested area. There they had entered a cave, and immediately fell into each others arms. Mira had groaned and latched her mouth on Jade; she had then reached up Jade's skirt and started groping.

Jade removed her hand. "Let me take your clothes off," she said.

Jade had taken off Mira's dress, and found she had nothing on underneath. She stood back and admired Mira's stocky body, smoother than most dwarfs but still with a prominent pubic mound.

"Stay still," she whispered as she ran her tongue over Mira's large breasts, then down to the hairy patch below her belly button. Mira moaned some more; then threw herself at Jade, tearing at her and knocking them both down. Jade laughed and restrained her again. "Careful," she said. "This is an expensive dress. Let me do it."

Jade stood up, slipped out of her dress and carefully folded it. She stepped out of her undergarments and stood astride Mira lying on the ground, allowing Mira to look up at her. Then Jade lowered herself to the floor inside Mira's waiting lips.

The next half hour was a noisy symphony of groans, yelps and cries, spiced by the scent of sexual juices. Until the two of them fell asleep, snuggled together, their hair in each others faces. They woke up when it was dark and walked arm in arm back to the city, parting when they got close to the guest quarters that Mira was staying in.

Mira was also thinking of their lovemaking the previous evening as she looked across the table at Jade. She felt again the sticky wetness between her thighs and felt Jade's fingers inside her stroking and stimulating the flow. She had never felt such sexual tension and release as she had last night. Terry was a considerate lover but not an exciting one, and even Freda's betrayer, who she had been in love with for a time, was not nearly as exciting in bed. Jade was in a class of her own; simultaneously gentle and aggressive, wild and passive, giving and grasping. From the first time they had met, Mira had been in awe of Jade. Now she was both in love and afraid. Jade winked at Mira from inside her shades, something that Terry, sitting next to her, would not be able to see. Mira flushed and looked away.

Terry was bored. He had been invited to the meeting as one of the heroes of the coup that had ushered in a thawing of relationships between human and drow, but as the initial greetings and pleasantry rituals droned on, he found his mind wondering. He had been attracted to Mira because of her compassionate nature but now realised that marrying her had been a mistake. Elspeth had appreciated his sexual prowess, but often Mira seemed to be only mildly interested, and then as a matter of intellectual curiosity rather than passion.

Terry wondered whether he would see Elspeth again, and he had been looking for signs of her in his son, another bone of contention between him and Mira, who was jealous of the time the two of them spent together. Terry was only listening with half an ear to the talk, when he suddenly heard something that interested him very much, and caused him to stop day dreaming and pay attention.

Maxi was also listening to the speaker. It was Kerri, telling the meeting, nay, begging them to help Elspeth in her fight against the Xiana faction. Kerri asked Maxi again to come back to the drow, but this time she was including Jade as well. Maxi noticed that Terry was also listening. Nice boy, he thought, brave and dependable, but totally stupid. Maxi had suspected what Jade had been doing last night, after he had come home and found her flushed and eager, and then when he saw the way Mira looked at her, he knew for sure.

Maxi was not brought up in a culture where monogamy was seen as the norm, so he was not jealous the way most human men would be. He did however feel a vague annoyance that Jade would choose Mira of all women, someone who he thought of as rather insignificant for all her obvious talent. Now if it had been Kerri instead.

Maxi looked towards where the emissary was talking. Graceful curves, stylish looks, soft sensuous voice. Then there were the rumours of her sexual deviancy. Maybe she could make up a threesome with him and Jade. A better prospect than the half-caste dwarf. Just then, he realised that the Duke was addressing the meeting and he forced himself to concentrate.

Kerri had been attempting to convey to the company the parlous state of Elspeth's defences against an enemy that was growing in power. Just before she had set out, the Temple itself had been subject to an attack by Xiana's rebels. They had been accompanied by several arakne, those twisted products of drow and demonic ingenuity. Elspeth had held them back, using the extra power she had gained from the healing god. Such was her power that two of the arakne had crumbled into dust. This unnerved the leading priestesses to such an extent that two of them immediately fled, and three more, after hesitant glances at their colleagues had run to Elspeth's side.

Unfortunately Elspeth had seemed as astonished at her power as her enemy, and this bolstered the morale of the remaining enemy priestesses who had rained down bolts of fire, ice, steel, gas and mind spells upon Elspeth and her train. Elspeth's elite guard had replied with a hail of crossbow bolts. They rushed the priestesses in a phalanx, cutting down the first row, but then they in turn were held back by a huge bloated demonic creature that had appeared from the subterranean staircase to the torture chamber. Behind the beast were more arakne, and behind those some lesser demons lurching and twitching; hell spawn, screams, incubus maggots and itches.

Elspeth and her train executed an orderly retreat to the Secretariat Spoke. There they stood their ground, waiting for the demons and other beings to attack. But it appeared as if their enemy had got what they wanted with control of the temple, because they made no move towards Elspeth. Instead, the bloated arakne started sprinkling purple liquid on the temple braziers; a general precursor to a powerful spell.

Elspeth did not care to wait for the spell to take effect. Instead she cast two spells herself, which she had previously prepared. The first was a chant that amplified a message whispered through the labyrinthine drow complex into every room, dungeon, chamber cave and hole. When they heard it, soldiers, artisans, temple slaves, farmers and others all knew to come to the network of tunnels leading in and out of the Secretariat Spoke. Once Elspeth's top Secretariat priests had gathered around her, they combined in chanting a more powerful spell; a ward across the Secretariat Spoke close to the Temple entrance, ensuring that nothing could penetrate from the Temple along the Spoke. Elspeth and her followers were now restricted to only one Spoke. Xiana had free run of the Temple and the rest of the complex. Elspeth was High Priestess in exile.

#

After Kerri had given her report, Mira spoke next of the way she had sensed Xiana's spying, and then Jade pointed to her scar. It certainly appeared as if Xiana was active again, after several years silence.

"The question is what do you want us to do about this?" The foppish duke spoke for the first time.

"Why, ally yourself with the High Priestess, the City and the Dwarfs, man," old Harald spoke up.

"And what is in it for the Royal House?"

"Do you need to ask, your Grace?" said Jim. "We have had peace between the human and dwarfen frontier settlements and the drow for the last three years. We have never been so prosperous. You must have realised that the proportion of taxes taken by your Grace from Formen and the frontier settlements has increased since High Priestess Elspeth ruled the drow. And now she is in trouble, expedience as well as friendship demands that we help her."

"Oh, you speak of expedience," sneered the Duke. "But it is not expedient for us. Our own Royal House is not under threat. We are protected from the drow by several days march through fields, desert and forest. If you choose to live near the frontier of the wild, you must defend yourselves as best you can. Same goes for you dwarfs. The mines are richer closer to the drow territory, but so are the risks. You have taken the wealth, you have to bear the cost. The Royal House will not help you in your quest."

There was an awkward silence, and then Jim spoke up. "With the greatest respect your Grace, there are wider diplomatic...."

"I can't fucking believe I am hearing this!". Jade stood up, took off her dark glasses and fixed the Duke with a withering stare. "You are no better than Xiana. She sacrificed my mother in battle for dwarfen gold. And you are sacrificing your own people whose taxes you have taken. Protection of the realm is your job. And you are leaving us here unprotected. You are nothing but a treasonous thief!"

"Enough, Jade," said Jim, also raising his voice, and Jade could see that normally confident and self contained leader was starting to flounder "Your Grace, I must apologise...".

"Screw apologies!" yelled Maxi. "Jade is right. You're a poxy thief, prepared to take our taxes when it suits you, and then to sneak away into your hole like the coward you are when things get tough. Do you think that distance can protect you from the drow? Jade and I will join with Elspeth and the dwarfs. When we have defeated the spider fetishists we will come back for you. We will search you out, no matter how long it takes, and we will burn your miserable castle to the ground -- just before we disembowel every one of you cowardly scum."

Jim mopped his brow, and said nothing. Kerri looked away. The drow emissaries did not understand what was being said, but they stood up and put their hands on their weapons. The Duke had been snared by Jade's gaze and he was now blanching visibly. His valet had put a glass of wine in front of him and he gulped it back.

Maxi pointed to the Duke. "By daybreak tomorrow, you will have a battalion of cavalry on the way to this city as fast as you can move them, or you will pay back every penny of taxes you have received for the past three years so we commission our own mercenary army. You can choose which one you prefer."

The Duke stuttered. "R..Really, there is no need for such unpleasantness. I will of course ensure Formen will be adequately protected, I merely wished to take a prudent a..approach, taking into account all risk factors and contingency..."

Maxi let the Duke ramble on. He had obviously won. Everyone around the table was now glancing at Maxi and Jade admiringly. Jim had recovered his composure and bowed his head slightly, speaking to the Duke. "We are of course grateful for the contributions made by the Royal House. Your Grace must have a number of preparations to make and it would be discourteous to keep you here..."

The Duke took the hint, and the opportunity to leave with at least some of his dignity intact, and swept from the room, his valet trotting behind him.

"Thank you, Maxi for your contribution," put in Kerri quietly when he had left. "The next question is whether you and Jade will be accompanying us, as Elspeth requested."

"Our duty is plainly here," said Maxi. "On the other hand, we have not yet avenged Trieste. Xiana still lives."

"But lives in hell," said Jade. "We set out to punish her. But she is punishing herself far more effectively than we can ever do. All of us here have someone dear to us. Lovers, friends or family. Xiana has nothing but hate, and it is eating her up inside. And can revenge against someone like her really mean anything? Those who are incapable of remorse cannot be forced to confront the evil they have done."

Old Harald nodded at Jade. He recognised the wisdom of his daughter Freda in the half elf. But then he replied.

"This is no longer just about you, or your mother. This is a battle for control, for the sort of world we want. Xiana already has a foothold among us," he nodded towards the seat the Duke once occupied, "and we must make sure her influence does not get any stronger. It seems that you are needed to help your friends among the dark elves. We dwarfs can assist the humans to fight Xiana on the battle ground. But if we win this will be at best a temporary victory. We need strong people who know the drow to do battle with them on their own territory, and totally crush this demonic spider they fear and worship. Only then will be have any lasting peace."