Bandaluthia Shaniqua

Shaniqua

Diary Page One

The room is still and quiet, lit with small lamps and a single candle secured in a thick dollop of dripped wax. The flame gutters slightly as the door to the room opens and then closes behind the chair. In the chair, the young girl with long white hair looks up, eyes narrowed in anger.
“Are you ready to speak yet? Mogrel?”
The girl spits hard at the floor, sending the thick glob of sputum hard into the speaker’s eye with stunning accuracy. “Half drow!” She says hotly. “And I’ve nothing to say to you.”
A back handed slap sets stars in her vision, glowing gold and silver. When it clears the girl is faced with a man heavily marked with scars. He grins and pulls his fingers roughly through her hair. “Oh, but you do. And if I like the tale, I may well spare you.”
The girl works her wrists against the skilfully knotted ropes, knowing deep inside that it is as hopeless an attempt as any of her previous ones. She will not escape these bonds. “And if you don’t like it?”
“I’ll turn you over to the Watch; it’s not my problem after that.” The man laughs. “Though I may take your hands first! After all, nobody likes a thief.” There is a smile in his hard, black eyes, as he speaks this. A private joke to which only he knows the punch line. “Well?” He lifts an axe, notched and battered but none the less powerful in appearance; fully capable of chopping through her flimsy wrists.
Seeing no other way out, finally, the girl nods, bowing her head a little and drawing a deep breath. “Fine! Fine, I’ll tell you! I don’t see what difference it makes anyway.”

My mother is a drow woman. I say ‘is’ because I assume she’s still alive. It might not be true, but I hope it is. My father is a wild elf, a man I’ve yet to catch a glimpse of other than a brief spying of his face through a grimy shop window. But it was enough; enough to know that he must be punished for soiling my mother.

“Soiling?”
The girl frowns. “Are you going to let me tell the story or not?! I have other stuff to do than stand here all day flapping my lips. Especially if you’re not paying attention.”
With another of those loud chuckles, the man sits down on the table, crossing his legs before him with the axe in his lap. “Excuse me… m’lady,” his voice is heavy with scorn, “please do continue.”
Rolling her eyes, the girl presses on, pressing passed the present and into the cupboards of her memory that store the past.

I was found floating down the river. How I survived the trip from the Underdark I’ll never really understand, but I think I was put in a basket and set sailing. From what I’ve gathered from books of around that time, there was some sort of war or fight going on down there. I imagine that my mother had some grand and wonderful part in it and was unable to keep me. So, she set me adrift hoping that I’d come to a family who could take care of me until it was time for me to return to her. I still believe that. But my basket caught up in some reeds and dumped me into the water where I would have floated away if not for a farmer and his wife pulling crop some distance away.

He splashed into the water to rescue me and forced the water out of my clogged up lungs. Both he and the woman took me home and I grew to know them as ‘Mother’ and ‘Father.’ Ikuya and Dannbayo respectively. There was never any confusion or doubt that they weren’t my real parents; you see, I am a very strange colour. I suppose the mixing of my true parent’s blood caused some strange thing in my skin as I am neither brown like a wild elf or black like a drow elf. I am grey… a colour in between as it were. But my hair is as my mother’s would be and that is white. My eyes too, these are red, though a little paler than I’d really like. It can’t be helped.

Mother and Father raised me kindly, but the fact that they are human and I am not was never very far from my mind. Even from an early age I would wander up the river in attempts to find the exit to the Underdark that I must have come from. I could never find it. Mother despaired that I was trying to leave her – she is a very sensitive woman – but that was not my aim originally. I loved both her and Father dearly; they took me in when many folk might have simply spitted me right then and there. But I felt it wasn’t right; something was missing.

The man yawns, patting his open mouth with the haft of the massive axe. “You’re actually enjoying telling this little tale, aren’t you?”
“Its not so bad,” the girl shrugs, “are you enjoying hearing it?”
“So far I’m yet to hear a reason in it to spare you, but I’m sure it will get better.” A sly smile. “For your sake, I’m sure it will get better.”
The girl merely smiles serenely, shifting her bound wrists for the umpteenth time and finding, finally, that there is some slack in the ropes. She twists her long, slim fingers up and inwards, catching on the loop of a single knot and working it with her nails. “Oh, it will get better.” She promises sweetly. “Just stay with me a little while longer.”

I took to reading books about elves to understand more of myself, but none of them ever told me much about drow. I only knew the name at all because Father spoke it with fear; but he would never explain what it was all about. I soon learnt the truth though, that their first daughter Shandara was stolen away by a drow raiding party. They stormed the area and the surrounding farms and took all the young children away; probably to keep as slaves. I was glad to learn that fact because it explained in some small measure why the adults of the area didn’t like me. In fact, they hated me and called me all sorts of dirty names that I never really understood. But I did after hearing that tale.

That was when I decided to run away. I decided that there was no need for me to stay here and clutter up the lives of Ikuya and Dannbayo any longer. I had a horrid suspicion that they had taken me in out of pity anyway, and that I was only a replacement for the daughter they lost. They never said it, but we have rather similar names and I didn’t like that.

I went back up the river again, once more looking for the entrance to the Underdark and though I didn’t find it, I found something that was much, much better. I found a drow; a man who had been injured on a raid and was too weak to make it back down below. I thought it was a bit odd that he had been left behind, but he just laughed when I said that… said that he expected to be killed as his companions left, so in actual fact he had gotten away from the matter lightly.

I think he was surprised by me. Or disgusted. I can’t really tell which. My odd skin and drow eyes made him think I was a younger member of the raiding party, but it couldn’t be so since I was a girl. He seemed to think that was improper. Anyway, when I realised that I now had the perfect chance, I helped him into shelter – just an abandoned cave – and helped to dress the wound in his leg. It took him a long time to get well enough to move, because he caught a fever somewhere after the second day. He went all hot and sticky and his skin paled almost to the same colour as mine. He kept shouting and calling out names and prayers, especially to some woman called Lolth who I later understood was the beautiful and powerful drow goddess. The Spider Queen.

The man abruptly spits on the ground, missing his prisoner’s feet by a finger’s breadth. “Don’t you bring that name in here!” He snarls.
“Why? Afraid of the Mighty Queen?”
“Bull! But I’d prefer not to call unwanted attention to my humble establishment by having names like that spoke here. Just get on with the story.”

I couldn’t do anything else while he was sick, so I waited with him and looked after him. I found food and kept him clean and watched all through the days and most of the nights. In return, in his delirium, he unknowingly taught me lots of things I never would have normally learned. He talked all about his home Nëntokë and of the war down there that had been going on for nearly twenty five years. That made me pretty excited because that’s just how old I was and I knew then that my guess was right. I had been given up because of the war! He spoke of the pride of the drow and their power in a way that, even though he was obviously really sick, made me proud inside to be drow.

When the fever broke, I finally got to ask his name. He told me that he was Shenjë Omanai, eldest of the five Omanai brothers. It sounded more exciting that it really turned out to be, in the end, but I’d never had brothers or sisters before. He made it sound really grand… until he added that his sister was the one who poisoned him in a bid to have him killed. The poison slowed his reactions and made him slow to the point that he got injured during the raid.

When I asked why, he refused to tell me any more. In fact, I think Shenjë was really angry with me by then because he told me to leave and never speak to him again. There wasn’t really much I could do about it; even though he was weak, he was still pretty strong and he had a sword that was almost as long as my whole arm. So I sat on his chest. I sat on his chest and put my hands on his mouth and nose until he promised to tell me what I wanted to know. That didn’t work either though, because he passed out before I could get any answers.

“Are you serious?!” The man interrupts again, this time, with sheer disbelief shining in the dark pits of his eyes. “You suffocated him?”
Another shrug from the girl, mainly to hide the second loop of rope sliding over her chaffed wrists. She grins. “Only a little bit. He woke up again in a few hours; let me tell you….”

So, he passed out. But, it gave me time to take his sword away and tie him all up so he couldn’t escape. Then, when he woke up again, I told him I’d leave him there all by himself so the bears could get him, if he didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. Then, do you know what he said? He said: “Shizune would be proud of you if she could see you now.”

That was the first time I had ever heard my blood mother’s name. I asked him how he knew Shizune, or who she was and he said that I looked just like her, even though I was a weird colour. Shenjë said that he had told Shizune at the time that it was not safe to set me adrift as she did, that I would surely die. She told him that any drow wanting to call her ‘Mother’ would be strong enough to survive, and that it was unlikely that I would because of the tainting blood of the wild elf. She said I’d be too weak to find her again.

That’s when I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to find the wild elf who tainted me and get rid of him. That would prove to my drow mother that I’m strong enough. When I told Shenjë about my plan he laughed at me again – though he did stop when I threatened to cover his mouth and nose. He told me that the elf slaves once held in the Underdark escaped in the first stages of war and that my father was probably among them. His name was Finrod Helyanwë and he had been ‘rolling about’ with my mother despite her promises to marry him. That’s when I really understood why Shenjë was so angry; I was like proof that my blood mother picked a wood elf over him, even though it was just for fun.

I untied Shenjë and left him behind. It didn’t make sense for me to talk to him any longer and I’d already been there for two weeks. It was up to him to get back to his home now, or do whatever else he wanted to do. None of my business.

Instead, I went all the way back to Mother and Father’s house where they were so pleased to see me that they forgot to be angry at my disappearing. I told them about Shenjë and Shizune and Finrod and, instead of being pleased for me, they were upset and sad. When I told them about my plan to kill Finrod to prove myself to Shinzune they were so angry that they threw me out the house. I still don’t really understand it, but it meant I was free to go looking. So I made for the first town or city that I could find. Bandaluthia.

The man stands up off the table, lifting his axe onto his shoulder. He looks down at the girl tied up in the cheer and squints hard into her face. “So you came here looking for some slave elf man?”
“Yep.”
“Do you even know what he looks like?”
A third lazy shrug this time, completing the loosening of the knots at her back. The girl takes care to keep her hands together, maintaining the illusion of being tied. “No, but all I have to do is ask the right questions, right? This is the nearest settlement to the exit to the Underdark, he would have come here at least for a short time, surely.”
The man gives a wordless grunt. “You’re an optimistic sort aren’t you? Well, don’t worry, kid, the Watch’ll be able to point you on your way.”

The girl grins, lifting her freed hands and slamming them into the back of the chair. At once, a deep impenetrable darkness fills the room. The man has just time to raise his axe before a tiny foot catches him in the groin, doubling him over and finally dumping him onto his knees. He can hear scuffles as the girl moves above and the clank of the axe as she wrestles it from his grip. Then, the door hinges squeal open and shut quickly, signalling her escape from the room.

Several minutes later finds the darkness lifting and the man crawling slowly to his feet, both hands cupped to the painful ache between his legs. The door opens once more to admit another, one who takes in the scene with one eyebrow lifted in an amused, delicate arch. “Got away, did she, Peiter?”
“Oh, leave off!” Peiter stands shakily and leans heavily on the table. “She’s good, alright? Better than I anticipated.”
The new comer slips into the room and seats himself regally in the recently vacated chair. “Is that so? Good enough?”
With another of those grins, Peiter nods his head. “Oh yes. She’d make an excellent Cobblestone Kid.”