Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [76]
Thus Liriel was plainly visible to the heat-perceptive eyes of the Underdark's many strange and deadly creatures, and therefore in constant danger.
The young drow kept keenly alert as she walked. Yet her heart was not in the hunt. She was not entirely certain she still had a heart: grief and rage had left her feeling strangely hollow.
Liriel was accustomed to betrayals both large and small, and she was still trying to assimilate her realization that she must shrug them off and move ahead – albeit with caution. So it had been with Bythnara, whose snippy comments and small jealousies had once pained her deeply. So it had been even with her father, who twelve years earlier had wronged Liriel more deeply than any other person had before or since.
But it would not be so with Xandra Shobalar, Liriel vowed grimly. Xandra's betrayal was different, and it would not go unremarked – or unavenged.
Vengeance was the principle passion of the dark elves, but it was an emotion new to Liriel. She savored it as if it were a goblet of the spiced green wine she had recently tasted – bitter, certainly, but capable of sharpening the passions and hardening resolve. Liriel was very young, and willing to accept and overlook many things in her dark-elven kindred. This, however, was the first time she had seen the desire for her death written in another drow's eyes. Liriel understood instinctively that this could not go unpunished if she herself hoped to survive.
But at a deeper, even more personal level, the girl bitterly resented Xandra for forcing her to disregard her own deep instincts and act against her will.
Liriel rebelled bitterly against the need to submit to her Mistress's demands, yet what else could she do if she was to be accounted a true drow?
What else, indeed?
A smile slowly crept over Liriel's dark face as a solution to her dilemma began to take shape in her mind. There is much more to being a drow, her father had admonished her, than engaging in crude slaughter.
The painful weight on the young drow's chest lifted a bit, and for the first time she realized a very strange thing: she did not fear the dreaded wild Underdark. It seemed to her that this wilderness was a wondrous, fascinating place full of unexpected turns and twists. There was danger and adventure and excitement in the very air and stone. Unlike Menzoberranzan, where every bit of rock had been shaped and carved into a monument to the pride and might of the drow, out here everything was new, mysterious, and full of delightful possibilities. Here she could carve out her own place. Liriel fell suddenly, deeply, and utterly in love with this vast and untamed world.
"A grand adventure," she said softly, repeating without a trace of irony the words of her own discarded dream. A sudden smile brightened her face, and as she bestowed an affectionate pat upon an enormous, down-thrust spire of rock, she added, "The first of many!"
Without warning, a bright ball of force rounded the sharp corner of the tunnel ahead and hurtled toward her.
The battle had begun.
Training and instinct took over at once: Liriel snapped both hands up, wrists crossed and palms out. A field of resistance sprung up before her an instant before the fireball would have struck. The girl squeezed her eyes shut and tossed her head to one side as the brilliant light exploded into a sheet of magical flame.
Liriel dropped flat and rolled aside, as she'd been taught to do in such attacks. The magical shield could not withstand more than one or two impacts of such power, and it was prudent to get out of the