Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [139]
A moment's panic threatened to claim Liriel. Passion was familiar, reassuring territory, one of the few emotional outlets permitted among the drow. If not this, she wondered, then what? She simply did not know another way.
Then Fyodor held out his hand, and with a cry of mingled triumph and relief she went to him.
The moon rose high, bathing their campsite in gentle light, but they did not notice the passing of time. The human knew none of the elaborate games the drow played, and Liriel found she did not miss them. This was something entirely different, both exhilarating and deeply disturbing.
There was an honesty between them, an intimacy as merciless as sunlight. It scorched her soul as painfully as dawn stung her eyes. It was almost more than she could bear, yet she could not turn away.
Liriel struggled to gather herself, to regain some vestige of control. They tumbled together, and she rose above him and claimed command of the intimate dance. But even then his intense blue eyes held her in an embrace that was uncomfortably close. The drow closed her own eyes to take refuge in darkness.
Fyodor saw this, and he did not need the Sight to recognize the sheer self-preservation in the gesture. He had accepted Liriel's offer of herself as the gift it was, though he did not understand what the giving meant to the drow girl. Nor was he sure what place this night would have in his own life. Yet, in the uncanny way of his people, he knew without understanding that his destiny was somehow linked with this dark-elven girl. The sheer insanity of that thought did not trouble him; Fyodor was well accustomed to taking life as he found it.
Inexplicably, he thought of the snowcat kitten he had befriended years ago, knowing full well it could never be tamed. He'd accepted this with the calm resignation that was the heritage of the Rashemi people. He did not fault the cat for following its nature, or wish the animal could be other than it was. But he did not hold back his heart then, and he did not now. Those who thought knew embracing a drow was utter madness. Those who dreamed understood life's joy was measured in moments.
Fyodor raised a hand to stroke the dark elf'scheek. A faint smile touched Liriel's lips, and he traced it with a gentle finger. Her golden eyes opened, focused, and then turned hard. She put his hands away from her and looked him full in the face. For a moment, Fyodor thought he saw a hint of moisture behind the cold amber. Then Liriel clenched her hand into a fist and drove it toward her lover's temple.
A burst of bright pain exploded in Fyodor's head, searing his senses and eclipsing the moonlight. When the light and pain faded, he knew only darkness.
Liriel rose to her feet and dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. Bitterly she cursed herself for letting down her guard, for betraying her drow upbringing. The cost-as shed expected-had been high.
The drow glanced toward her discarded clothing, but there was no time to dress, no time even to seize a weapon. So she merely stood, as coldly proud as any high priestess of Lloth, as the first of the dark-elven hunters slipped into the moonlit clearing. She did not fear them. After all, she had her magic, and it would take more than a few drow fighters to overcome a wizard of her ability.
The drow hunters-six, all told-formed a cautious ring around the campsite. Liriel recognized the four she had felled with sleeping poison, as well as the male with short-cropped hair and the dragon tattoo on his cheek. She glanced at his arm and gave him a faint, mocking smile, which broadened when his comrades flanked him and forcibly kept him from drawing his sword against her. But her smile vanished when a copper-haired, black-eyed drow pushed past the hunters and into the circle. Another wizard tipped the balance decidedly in the fighters' favor.
"Nisstyre,"