No One's Chosen (64 page)

The next morning, Rianaire rose with the sun. She saw
to her armored dress with the help of Síocháin. She descended the
stair and found Méid waiting. She thanked the Regent for all she
had done and went outside.

The sunny street was packed full with people awaiting
her. Nearly one hundred and fifty of them wore armor or carried
fine steel. Townsfolk, she realized. They had added themselves to
Gadaí's number and were ready to march.

It would be a day and a night before they saw the
walls of Spéirbaile, she knew, but they would see them. And when
she had taken back her city, she would see a proper end to the
narrow-minded elves that ought to have died with her mother.

The problem of how exactly she would get into the
Bastion was troubling Aile deeply. The clattering sound from the
bound and gagged elf in the far room was not helping her ability to
work through potential solutions. She had warned him plainly enough
but the fool would not stop groaning and bumping into things. She
stood from the dining table and pushed open the door to the main
room of the small house. He had moved himself halfway across the
room toward the door to the street. Or maybe the curtains had been
his aim, it did not matter.

He turned his head when the door sounded and looked
at Aile with wide eyes. She pulled the last of the cheap blades and
knelt beside him. The elf's protests were muffled by the gag and he
tried to scream and flail as she drew the blade back but Aile held
him steady. The knife plucked the skin apart with a popping sound
and pushed into his chest. Aile stood and returned to the dining
room as the man flailed on the ground. The thuds turned to
scuffling noises and then died out along with the source.

Aile sat back in her chair and stared at the wall.
The house was nice enough to have the dining area separate from the
kitchen. There were two bedrooms as well, she guessed from the
layout of the main room. There was a window in the dining room but
she kept the curtains drawn and still sat out of plain view of it
for safety sake.

She had entered to procure some food and work over
the problems of entering the Bastion proper. Of the threefold walls
of Spéirbaile, it was the one that had no obvious weaknesses. It
was the last clumsy kicks of life in the elf in the far room that
gave her the seed of an idea. There was only one weakness that was
universal among the elves. The people. A smile crept over her face.
The guards. That was the way. It could not be so obvious a thing as
to pay them off, not a Drow. Were she an elf, perhaps, but there
was no amount of covering that would give her the height. A few
changes to her boots could certainly help. It would have to be
enough. It did not solve the problem of working past the guards.
Even if a guard were to take a bribe, thinking her to be an elf,
another might give away the news.

She searched the house and found no suitable wood for
adjusting her shoes but she found a saw and a few other tools meant
for leather working among the elf's belongings. She roughly sawed
the bottoms of the legs from the table she had used for food
before. At the front and back, they would do. She cut free a few
rounds of cloth from the table's covering and tied them to the wood
to deaden the sound to make her ruse less obvious. She would need
shoe tacks to affix them properly and the elf's house did not have
any such thing. The sun was beginning to rise, so Aile left the
house to try finding a cobbler before the world began to stir in
numbers. She had taken some long clothes from the wardrobe of the
dead elf. With them, the bulk of her skin was covered and her hands
tucked well enough into the longer sleeves. She ran the risk of
having them disrupt her grip should she need to draw a blade
quickly, but she was less apt to be stopped if her skin was not in
plain sight.

There was not a cobbler's store among any of the
nearby shops and so she headed eastward toward the Port Road. As
she neared the crossing, the sound of rhythmic chanting sounded low
in the distance and she stopped dead. The Temples, she thought.
That was the place to go. She turned northward and ran again.

There were four temples, one for each of the elven
Sisters. The temples themselves were within the Bastion wall. She
had heard that some of them even connected to the Bastion proper by
way of overwalks that were used by the Údar and the crones. The
temples were devoted to the worship and magics of the Sisters,
called Gifts by the devout. They tended to be institutions of
learning, often focused on the betterment of elven kind. The Temple
of the Fire, it was not like the others though. It was a temple
dedicated to the study of Tine. The Fire was already reviled among
many elves and her followers did little to improve the Dark
Sister's standing.

It was not so much that they caused trouble. Indeed,
those devout to the Fire kept to themselves almost entirely. And
this was the problem. The order was secret and accepted no males.
Likewise, rather than simple robes or something similar as the
others did, the Fire Temple worshipers covered themselves from head
to toe in black silks with jewels in spots they insisted drew the
power of the flame into them. The order had been run out of
Fásachbaile and, while it was tolerated in Abhainnbaile, Spéirbaile
had become the only major center of worship for the Fire and its
patron Sister.

Aile did not know much about the elves and their
order herself. She could barely fathom the machinations that drove
the elves to their daily lives and to try to unravel the nature of
their obsession with four mythical sisters from countless years
past. It would do well enough for her to work herself into the
barracks outside of the Bastion Wall and make off with one of their
robes. They even wore veils, she knew. Veils with small black
squares cut for vision. The garb would keep her face hidden
entirely and her hands.

Movement across the city was slower than she would
have liked. The sun was quickly taking shadows away and there were
more people apt to see her. While she had covered herself well
enough, she could not be bothered to deal with guards. With her
patchwork clothes in the Inner Crescent, she was likely to be
mistaken for a less fortunate child that had snuck her way in.
Especially with the pace she was keeping.

The Port Road was already bustling when the time came
to cross it. She found the straightest line she could manage and
crossed quickly, making sure not to move in such a way as to draw
attention or curiosity. Even the report of a small girl running
about in the Inner Crescent was apt to send guards to actively seek
her out. There was the danger of it until the sun rose, at least.
The sky had begun to turn the deepest of purples and orange crept
in at the edge of the sky, but there was some time yet before the
bulk of the elves would be up. Before, they would have proven a
hindrance, but now that she was on the the north side of the Port
Road the problem had shifted to guards with too little to distract
them from her presence.

She took a short rest to allow the sun to rise and as
the noise of the streets around her grew louder, the Drow moved
along, keeping herself out of sight and finding herself quite
thankful that the area north of the Port Road played host to mostly
residences. The elves left for work, busy with thoughts of the days
business, and paid little mind to an extra body moving north.

The sun was still low in the sky when she arrived at
the barracks square. She had never had call to visit this section
of the city and the layout of it meant that if her disguise failed,
there was little she would be able to do but run and pray. There
were four massive barracks, one for each temple. They each stood
eight storeys high and were made sturdy with thick walls. There was
not glass among the windows and no place had been carved for them
in the thousands of years since the barracks were built. The only
protection from the elements was a small wooden awning that had
been hammered into the stone above each window. It was the same for
all four and there was no way, from the rear to tell what barracks
served which Sister. The entire square was lined with a tall hedge
and she could see that at the center of the hedge were fences of
wrought iron.

Aile made her way eastward around the barracks. They
butted against the side of the mountain that lined the northern
edge of the city and the wrought iron had been built directly into
the rock face. The hedge was more poorly kept near the cliff face,
she could see through to the other side with ease, though she
doubted there would be enough room to slide between the mountain
and the iron bars. She would need to try regardless.

The Drow slid into the crack between the thick hedge
and the stone wall behind her. She made it to the bar easily but
found that she could not fit, as she'd expected. The danger of
heating the wrought iron to push it away was not lost on her, but
any other entry was more likely to see her spotted and would likely
involve climbing. She set her hands to the bar and heated it. She
was careful to see that it did not go red hot. It would need to
cool quickly or else the entire hedge might go. An alternate plan,
she thought. The black iron was obedient and gave her the room to
pass through freely.

Aile found herself in a verdant yard under the shadow
of one of the barracks. There were no elves around and she moved to
the edge of the building. A few in lightly colored robes milled
around the yards. She looked at the front of the buildings across
the square. The icons of the temples were laid into the sides of
the buildings above the doorway in various sorts of stone. Abhainn,
a river of blue gems and Fásach, a pyramid of orange. She ventured
from the edge of the barracks under which she stood to inspect the
front. It was good news. A fire of onyx adorned the front of the
barracks and she moved back to the diminishing shade to hide
herself.

The stones of the side of the building were mostly
worn smooth and the temple had no windows at the bottom most level.
The climb was not hopeless. The back edge of the wall, near the
cliff face, had been somehow worn less than the rest of the only
side available to her. There was no second storey window at that
point of the wall, however, and she would need to climb twice as
far up the place to gain entry.

There was no alternative that she could conceive of,
however, so the climb began. Aile could not have said how long it
took, but progress was tortuously slow. She had wedged her hands
into tiny spaces between the stones at the back of the wall and
essentially made the thirty foot climb with the tips of her
fingers.

When she finally made the window, she fell through it
exhausted. To her dismay, the room was a communal privy for the
worshipers. There would be no clothing here, but still she checked
stall after stall. Nothing. She opened the door and peered down the
bare stone hallway. There was no sound but a small breeze rustling
through the open hallways. She slid out into the hall for a brief
second before ducking into the nearest doorway. There were no doors
save for the privy. The lack of doors was unideal and kept Aile on
edge. The first room played host to six beds and no windows. Each
bed had a footlocker and Aile set to searching them one by one.

The first of them contained plain clothes of brown
and green, nothing worth the effort of stealing. She was through
the first three and moving to the fourth when the soft gasp of an
elf girl came from behind her.

"Thank the Goddess."

"Goddess?" Aile thought. "From the mouth of an elf?"
Aile stood and spun to face her.

The girl was naked and wet from washing. She was
desperately short for an elf, no more than a few inches taller than
Aile. It was rare to see an elf so short. The girl's mouth had
fallen open in surprise. She took a step toward the Drow and began
to speak.

"The Goddess has sent you to me, hasn't she?" The
elf's voice was emphatic. "She… has she chosen me?" The girl licked
her lips and walked closer. She began to grope at herself, fingers
sliding down to her womanhood.

"You are mistaken, elf."

"No," she said, her voice wavering. "The Goddess…"
The girl let out a moan and pulled wet fingers up to show to Aile.
She drew closer and reached out for Aile's breasts. The Drow
stepped back and the girl put on a sly grin. "Must I work for it? I
understand."

The girl fell to her knees and began to masturbate,
moaning loudly. She rubbed herself vigorously and her body heaved,
all the while asking if she was pleasing to see.

Aile stared at the girl in a mix of awe and disgust.
The girl climaxed loudly and shut her eyes. She slumped over
panting and Aile took the opportunity to strike the worshiper
sharply at the base of her skull. The elf fell over unconscious but
smiling.

She wondered how such a race had ever driven her
people to the Blackwood. Perhaps the story was just that. She shook
her head at the girl and went back to searching the footlockers.
Whatever she thought about the Goddess, the deity had seen fit to
put her in the room of one of the few elves of a size with her. It
was the fifth footlocker that held the garbs she was looking for.
She took them and put the unconscious elf into the bed where she
had found the clothes, hoping it would be enough to buy her time.
She would not need long.

The Drow stole back to the privy to dress herself.
The robe the devout wore consisted of a flowing top that fastened
to the veil to keep the neck covered, a long skirt, gloves, and
coverings for the feet and legs beneath that she would not need.
She put on the shift and skirt first, then the veil. The gloves
went on last. When she had dressed she tossed the oddly mended
cloak that had kept her hidden to now out the window and left the
privy.