Windwalker - Elaine Cunningham [122]
The survivors eyed him with awe and respect. This was nearly too much for Fyodor to endure. His borrowed form slipped away, and he slumped against the cavern wall.
Someone wrapped a cloak around his naked shoulders and pushed a flask into his hand. He took an obliging sip and found that it contained strong tea thick with honey. The sweetness sickened him, but he remembered the old tales that spoke of shapeshifters who were ravenous after a change. Perhaps the thick liquid would restore his strength. It was too much to hope that it might quiet his thoughts.
His stomach roiled, and a bit of the tea washed back. Fyodor wiped his mouth, and his hand came down smeared with a viscous red. The realization of its source sent him staggering off to be sick in earnest.
"Better?" inquired Treviel when at last he returned.
Fyodor nodded, not able to bring himself to meet the fyrra's eye, but the older man seized his chin and forced it up.
"What you did was well done," he said firmly. "While the wizard lived, the lightning sticks could not do their job. Without them more of your brothers would have died."
"If anything, the wizard died too easily," one of the other men spat. "He was the worse kind of traitor-a human who sided with the drow against his own kind."
The others murmured a vicious assent. Fyodor noted the hatred on their much-loved faces, and his heart broke. It was all too easy to imagine it turned upon him. He was not certain that he did not deserve it.
The Rashemi gathered their dead and walked in silence through the warrens. Fyodor was glad for this silence. He had much to think about.
He had always tried to be an honest and honorable man. Many times he had warned Liriel away from the goddess of her childhood, challenging her to consider if any good could come from a union with evil. Perhaps he should have more closely heeded his own advice.
On the surface of things, this thought was unfair to Liriel, and he knew it. She was no more evil than a snowcat. On the other hand, she had no more morals than the same wild cat. Without guides or restraints, how could anyone safely chart his way? The result of this lack was the tangled deception they now lived. Any lie was difficult to sustain, and Liriel's was especially dangerous.
Fyodor regretted also his naivete in thinking that his people might come to accept Liriel, perhaps even to see her as he did. The Rashemi hated the drow, and he could not fault his people for their deeply ingrained prejudice. Their history bore this out-as, he had to admit, did his own experience.
He loved Liriel, deeply and completely. More importantly, however, he knew her. It was not without reason that Lolth wove Her webs around the errant drow princess. Liriel battled a dark nature, and she never seemed quite sure of the line between right and wrong. Sometimes she didn't seem to realize that such a line existed or even that it should exist.
These troubling thoughts followed him through the winding caves and tunnels of the warrens. By the time the silent band stepped into the light, Fyodor had dragged himself to a painful but inevitable conclusion.
He had done his people a disservice by bringing Liriel among them. If he had not done so, these drow would not have followed her here. These men would not be dead. For the sake of all concerned, he would take Liriel far from Rashemen as soon as he returned to the village. Even if this meant abandoning his duty as a warrior. Even if it meant committing what his people would certainly regard as an unforgivable treason.
Even if it meant leaving his homeland forever.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
circles
Within the Witches' Lodge was a large courtyard walled by vine-draped trees. In the sheltered circle within gathered several of Dernovia's witches. For the first time Liriel was permitted to observe their spellcasting.
In her now-familiar guise of the tall, silver-haired Witch of Shadowdale, she watched intently as the circle of black-clad women moved through their dance, hands joined and voices lifted