The Drow Hath Sent Thee

by Martha Carr

  Bianca drew in a raw, gasping breath. The burning runes blazing on her flesh flickered and faded back into angry red scars again. The woman blinked furiously at the vaguely recognizable outline of her daughter’s face beneath the black flames. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, then she croaked, “Cheyenne, I believe you’re on fire.”

  Maleshi snorted. Corian clapped a hand to his head before turning away in relief.

  Cheyenne swallowed, and the black flames racing across her body snuffed out. With a groan, she rolled onto her back and lay beside her mom, staring at the reconstructed ceiling. “Jesus.”

  “Ha! That’s it!” Venga leaped away from them, clapping two hands together and throwing the other two into the air. “It worked!”

  “Congratulations,” Cheyenne muttered. “You were almost too late.”

  “Ah, but the timing was perfect.” A low, rumbling chuckle escaped the necromancer, his scaly lips peeled back to reveal a stained row of razor-sharp teeth. “There is so much more to discover after this. Yes. I should run more tests.”

  “No!” Cheyenne coughed and groaned as she sat up and glared at the scaleback. “For fuck’s sake, give it a rest with the tests. Just for a minute.”

  He scowled at her and stormed back to his workbench. “No appreciation for the process. No gratitude. Everyone loves a fell-damn drow who can rebuild an entire room by thinking it, sure, but I’m the one who thought quickly and worked even faster.” He thumped a fist on his chest and snarled. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  Cheyenne couldn’t hold herself up any longer and thumped down on her back again. I had to black-fire my own mom into submission. We’re in way over our heads.

  Cold fingers nudged Cheyenne’s hand, and she turned her head on the floor to look at her mom. Bianca stared at her with wide eyes, the flames now gone from them and her breath coming slowly and steadily again. The woman took a tighter grip on her daughter’s hand and swallowed.

  Cheyenne studied her mom’s face, then glanced at the shimmering circlet of black light that looked like a collar. “Are you okay?”

  Bianca squeezed her hand and whispered, “Thank you.”

  The drow couldn’t say anything. If we talk about it, I’m gonna fall apart. She nodded slowly, her hair whispering against the ground.

  Her mom took a sharp breath. “I love you.”

  Cheyenne’s nose burned, the onset of tears blurring her vision, and she squeezed her mom’s hand back and whispered, “I love you too.”

  “Well.” Maleshi cleared her throat and grimaced as she stepped over to the Summerlin women, pressing a hand against her side. She extended the other hand toward Bianca and nodded. “Let’s get you off the floor, huh?”

  “Thank you.” Bianca took the general’s hand and accepted a gentle lift to her feet. When Maleshi released her, the woman frowned down at her hand. “Which of us is bleeding?”

  “Me,” Maleshi replied.

  At the same time, Cheyenne muttered, “I am.”

  “Huh.” The general glanced at the blood on the hand she’d used to help Bianca up and chuckled. “But this isn’t mine.”

  Bianca wiped her bloody hand on her joggers in an uncharacteristic attempt to clean it off.

  Ember scrambled across the floor on her hands and knees as Cheyenne sat up. “Jesus Christ, Cheyenne. I thought you were dead.”

  “I know. I guess I should’ve thrown an ‘I’m okay’ in there, huh?”

  The fae let out a weak laugh of disbelief and reached out for her friend’s hands. “Damn. Looks like someone filleted your palms open.”

  “Just burns, and a little scraped off on the floor. Oh, and some scissors stabbed my thigh.”

  “Yeah, I can at least do something about all that.” As the golden glow of Ember’s healing magic pulsed above each of the drow’s hands, then her thigh, Cheyenne looked at her mom.

  Bianca stared at the general’s abdomen and pointed at Corian. “Mr. Nightcreature?”

  Cheyenne would have laughed if she hadn’t been concerned with the crimson stain growing through Maleshi’s shirt beneath her hand. “Corian.”

  “Hmm?” As he turned to look at them, Maleshi grunted and staggered to the wall. He was at her side in a flash of silver light, shushing her and holding her up with one hand as he peeled her hand away from her side with the other.

  Maleshi grimaced and gazed at him through fluttering eyelids. “Not as bad as Karu Ga’abil, eh, ma gairín?”

  Corian shook his head. “Almost.”

  The general’s legs wobbled and gave out beneath her, but Corian gripped her tighter to keep her upright. “Maleshi. Look at me. Stay here.”

  “I just need some rest. Maybe a bottle of Bloodshine.” She started to chuckle but cut off in a groan. “Or two.”

  “No, what you need is a healer.” Ember slapped Cheyenne’s healed palms, then pushed to her feet and trudged across the lab to the nightstalkers. Her footsteps echoed softly across the floor, and the fae was the only magical in the room not looking at the lack of space between the soles of her shoes and the ground. “All right. There’s nothing special I need to know about healing a nightstalker, is there?”

  Maleshi and Corian exchanged wide-eyed glances. “I certainly hope not.”

  “Right. Just let me know if anything feels weird.” Ember studied the massive stain below the general’s ribcage, then lifted the hem of Maleshi’s shirt and winced. “Ouch.”

  “Yep.” Maleshi grunted and stared at the ceiling, “Any time would be great, Ember. I’m not made of blood.”

  “I mean, technically, you are.”

  “Just do it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I got it.” Ember closed her eyes and took a deep breath before her healing golden light grew between her palm and the massive, gaping slice on the general’s side. A thoughtful hum escaped her, and her eyebrows flickered together. When the healing was finished, she stepped away from the nightstalkers and let out a surprised chuckle. “Wow. That was more than I expected.”

  Maleshi lifted her shirt again and raised an eyebrow at the perfectly healed wound, still slick with her blood. “Takes a lot outta you, huh?”

  “I mean, nothing I can’t handle.” Ember swiped her hair out of her face. “You might wanna sit down for a while, though. Just in case.”

  Corian chuckled. “Yeah, you too.”

  “What? No, I’m fine.”

  “Apparently so.” He looked down at her feet and raised his eyebrows.

  Ember followed his gaze and let out a strangled gasp when she saw her feet touching the ground. Then her knees buckled.

  Maleshi’s hand shot out to grab Ember’s arm, and she hauled the fae back to her feet. “You obviously haven’t forgotten how to use them, so do it.”

  Ember blinked at the nightstalkers, then spun to stare at Cheyenne. “Tell me what’s happening right now.”

  “Exactly what it looks like, Em.” Cheyenne nodded. “You’re back.”

  “Fuck. I mean, fuck, yeah!” Ember swallowed and dropped to the floor, steadying herself with a hand against the end of the shelf. Her legs spread out in front of her, and she thumped her fists down harshly on both thighs. “Ow, shit. Ha!”

  Bianca sniffed, and Cheyenne looked at her. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  “Just something in my eye, Cheyenne. You know.” The woman wiped her eyes and stepped to the far end of the lab to pretend to look at Venga’s unorganized supplies on the long shelves.

  What the fuck? She cries for Ember’s legs, and that’s it? A sharp laugh burst from Cheyenne’s mouth, and when everyone glanced at her, she lost it. She threw her head back and howled with laughter, rocking as she tried to push to her feet.

  Corian leaned toward Maleshi and muttered, “Remind you of anyone?”

  “She just got buried beneath the ceiling, trying to save and incapacitate her mother at the same time.” Maleshi smacked the back of her hand against his chest and shook her head. “Don’t jump to conclusions just yet.”
<
br />   “True. That is a uniquely Cheyenne combination.”

  Wiping tears from her eyes, Cheyenne gasped several times and finally got hold of herself. “I’m fine. I’m good.” She chuckled again, then cleared her throat. “Totally fine.”

  Ember accepted the drow’s hand up and stomped her feet on the floor. “Damn, that feels good.”

  Bianca turned, one hand on the wavering black collar around her throat. “Would anyone mind telling me why I seem to have been shackled around the neck?”

  Every magical in the room turned expectantly to Venga. The lab fell silent, then the necromancer slammed a clawed hand on his worktable. “Oh, now you want my opinion, do you?”

  He whirled, and his tail thumped the wall.

  Cheyenne glanced at her mom. “How about just the facts?”

  “Fine. I made an educated guess after the reaction between Bianca’s blood and the Nimlothar leaf. As it turns out, I was correct.”

  “What about?” Maleshi asked, folding her arms.

  “About Bianca’s adverse reaction to the Undoing. And vice versa, of course.” The necromancer pointed a claw at Bianca. “That device is powered by a small dose of the Undoing’s organic composition, plus extra viable and quite powerful combinations.”

  “Wait a minute.” Cheyenne blinked. “You put a necklace made out of the blight around my mom’s neck?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it, Cheyenne, I suppose that will do.”

  “No. Take it off her. Right now.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She stormed across the lab to him and summoned a churning sphere of black energy. “Now.”

  The necromancer didn’t flinch. “So, you want a second round of the debacle in my lab, is that it?” Venga hissed and nodded at Bianca. “Because that’s what will happen if I remove the device before we have everything in position for the vessel to fulfill its purpose.”

  “Her.”

  “What’s that?”

  Cheyenne forced her anger back down and swallowed. “Bianca is a human woman. You know, my mother. Not ‘it’ or ‘the vessel.’”

  “Yes. Anyway.” Venga peered around her to get a glimpse of his invention again, which pulsed around Bianca’s neck. “If anyone else were to endure prolonged exposure to even that much of the Undoing, I’d say they’d have three to four days before the infection would spread.”

  “You’re not making a very strong case for yourself, scaleback.”

  “But your mother is the vessel, Cheyenne. She repels that particular poison, and that device keeps her activated abilities, if you will, dormant. Until, of course, the time comes when we are fully prepared to heal Ba’rael’s bastardization of the Undoing from Ambar’ogúl, et cetera, et cetera. It’s perfectly safe. For her.”

  The energy sphere snuffed out in Cheyenne’s hand, and she turned to stare at her mom. “You feel weird from wearing that thing, say something, okay?”

  “Of course.” Bianca tilted her head and tugged lightly on the circlet. “Though I will say the mere fact that this exists on my person is weird.”

  “Wait.” Ember took a sharp breath and pointed at Venga. “How did you get the idea that the blight triggered the vessel? Her blood was on the Nimlothar leaf.”

  “Ah, yes.” Venga scratched his scaly head with a clawed hand, sending a rain of dry skin and dirt to the ground. “Well, that’s simple. The Undoing—and we should stop calling it anything but what it is—has reached the last Nimlothar in the Heart, so I suppose we’re working on a bit of a faster timetable.”

  Cheyenne and Ember looked at each other, and the drow’s shoulders drooped. “Shit.”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  After that, Cheyenne had no choice but to tell them about her dream from the night before that had, in fact, become her waking reality: seeing Neros, finding R’leer in the bazaar, their visit to Agalyse, and what the darkseller drow had told her they needed to do. The discussion after that was more of a unanimous decision. Cheyenne had to take R’leer up on his offer to help heal the forest because after what they’d learned about the way Bianca and the blight interacted, it sounded a lot like this mass drow exodus out of Hangivol and into the mountains was a one-solution-fixes-all-problems kind of deal.

  For now, Bianca was safe, Cheyenne was being poisoned to death, and all they needed was the okay from R’leer that he was ready to head out to the Nimlothar forest for a good old-fashioned deathflame bonfire. Whatever that was supposed to look like.

  With Bianca resting in a private room in the Crown’s fortress and Ember off on her own two legs for a solo walk around the city, Cheyenne headed out that night to find R’leer one more time and get a status update. When she reached the bazaar, the darkseller was in the middle of tossing a scrawny orc dripping with brown sludge out of his shop and into the already dirty underground alley.

  “I don’t want to see your face for at least another three hundred years, Zur.”

  The orc stumbled across the avenue, wiping slime off his face and flicking it onto the cobbled stones at his feet. “Greedy fucking drow. You have any idea what I had to go through to get that?”

  R’leer’s draping strands of beads and bones clacked when he lifted his hand and pointed down the avenue. “Better make it four hundred. Go clean yourself up.”

  Cheyenne turned to watch the orc sloshing off with a trail of reeking muck in his wake, then nodded at R’leer when he noticed her approach. “Looks like fun.”

  He smirked. “For me. Why are you here?”

  She stopped. “What?”

  “I haven’t sent for you yet.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was invite-only.” Cheyenne glared at him, and the corner of the darkseller’s mouth twitched in amusement.

  “Well. That was my next order of business anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It seems you’ve beaten me to it.”

  She tried to peer around him and through the curtain of strung bones into his shop, but it was impossible. “You’re ready?”

  “We are ready.” Raising his eyebrows, R’leer gestured at his shop. “Though there are still some steps left before we head out for all the action. Care to join me?”

  “For what?”

  He dipped his head and flashed her a crooked smile. “The last steps, Cheyenne. Having trouble listening?”

  “It’s been a day.” Shooting him a sarcastic smile, she brushed past him and slipped through the curtain of bones into his shop.

  R’leer peered up and down the avenue of the darkseller bazaar, then turned to follow her inside. “Indeed. I have to ask, was that little event in the Heart earlier today your doing?”

  Cheyenne stopped in front of the counter cutting through the center of the shop and pretending to study the items there. Of course he knows about that. “No. That was a sloppy necromancer.”

  “Ah. Understandable.” The darkseller clasped his hands behind his back and stopped on the other side of the counter to stare at her.

  When he didn’t say anything, she stepped farther down the display and glanced at him. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then stop staring at me like that.”

  R’leer smiled. “As you wish.”

  His intent gaze made her temples and the tips of her ears flush hot. “You can’t say, ‘As you wish,’ and then not do as the other party wishes.”

  “Then what do you want me to say?”

  She stared at him for a moment longer, then stepped farther down the counter and picked up what looked like a hardened glittering peanut shell before tossing it back into a woven basket filled with the same. “You could start by telling me what the next steps are.”

  “Hmm.” He kept staring at her until she’d had enough and turned to fake-peruse the items on the opposite counter, her back facing the darkseller. R’leer chuckled. “It’s only one more step. I’ve done what I could to make the process as easy as possible for you, but admittedly, you’ll
have to do most of the heavy lifting. Being the Black Flame and all.”

  “Well, I can climb and take care of the heavy lifting, so it shouldn’t be a problem.” Cheyenne looked over her shoulder at him. “What do I have to do?”

  “Send a message to every drow in Hangivol and tell them we leave for the northern mountains. Tonight.”

  She snorted. “So that’s the big plan, huh? Just shoot out a mass memo, like, ‘Hey, drow. The dead Nimlothar aren’t dead and need our help, so rally your pitchforks and torches, ‘cause we’re gonna burn down the whole damn thing and save ourselves. Oh, yeah, and you have to give up your life to heal a bunch of magical trees.’”

  R’leer eyed her as she moved along the counters. “Agalyse said we must lend them our lives, not hand them over.”

  “Right. Well, until I have proof that it’s anything else, I’m gonna keep calling this a suicide mission. That way, we won’t be disappointed if something goes wrong.” Which it usually does.

  “You still don’t understand your part in this, do you?”

  “Oh, no. I do.” Cheyenne turned and spread her arms. “I’m the bridge between worlds, darkseller. The only way to get from point A to point B, and there aren’t any other options because I’m pretty sure I’m Plan B also.”

  R’leer tilted his head and watched her stroll casually around his shop, highly amused by her half-sarcastic, half-serious performance.

  “So fine, I’ll send this damn message. And I’ll sign it, ‘By Order of the Black Flame’ too. How does that sound?”

  “I suppose that will do.” Grinning, the darkseller headed to the counter on the other side of his shop. “Come. I’ll help you make sure you say everything that needs to be said.”

  “You mean, what I spelled out isn’t up to par for drow-wide messaging?”

  R’leer ignored her and opened a metal box on the counter, turning it around so the contraption inside faced Cheyenne when she approached. “One of the only working message boxes down here. They come in so handy, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it with all the other tech.”

  “Right. You are prepared.” Cheyenne widened her eyes at the old-world messaging system with a snort, and her activator pulled up the thin lines of code and prompts for inputting whatever the hell she wanted and sending it to every drow in Hangivol.