Chapter Text
The ox-cart jumps, and Rolan’s bones grind. He keeps losing his line on the page.
‘These damned country roads. I can’t wait to reach the city and some wretched civilisation.’
‘How much further, Rolan?’ Cal asks eagerly, putting an escaped potato back into its sack. Another one falls out immediately, and Rolan kicks it off the side. If it wasn’t undignified enough, being hauled about in a farmer’s cart - having to share it with that farmer’s produce is an almost lethal blow.
‘A few hours,’ he says. ‘As I understand it, once we are through the forest, the citadel itself will be in sight.’
‘The others are probably settled in Baldur’s Gate by now,’ Lia says wistfully. ‘Shame that wizard never got back to you.’
He scoffs. ‘A mere pretender to mastery, no doubt. I consider myself to have had a lucky escape.’
‘Look!’ Cal points through the thick woodland canopy, a mass of green pines and gnarled wood. ‘You can just about see the mountains!’
Rolan looks up from his spellbook long enough to note that it is pretty, in a rather tolerant way.
‘Thinking about your apprenticeship?’ Lia smiles. ‘You know, we’re expecting way more impressive light shows after this. No pressure.’
‘My… apprenticeship.’ Rolan clears his throat, and thumbs the corner of his page. ‘Indeed. It will take me no time at all to master the Weave, I am sure, once I have the necessary resources. You can expect far greater marvels than Prestidigitation soon.’
‘I wish we knew more about this Phaere,’ Lia adds contemplatively, much to Rolan’s dismay. ‘What if she’s a slavedriver? Or -’
‘I won’t have you disparaging my new Mistress before any of us has so much as met her,’ he snaps.
‘Heh,’ Cal laughs. ‘Mistress. Sounds a little… suggestive, don’t you think?’
Rolan’s face burns. He shoves it deep in his spellbook, his stomach and tongue tied with nerves. The hour approaches when he’ll have to explain to Cal how unwittingly close he is to the truth… and Rolan does not foresee his siblings taking that well.
He avoids further discussion of the subject until the cart’s clattering journey brings them, at last, to the torch-lit city gates in the thick, gentle dusk. Rolan jumps out of the cart, dusts down his precious robes, and straightens to his fullest, most imposing height.
‘This letter confirms my audience with… Queen… Phaere,’ he announces, waving the seal in the city guard’s general direction as his voice quietly skims over her title. ‘Shall I proceed to the castle directly?’
The guard woman, inspecting the farmer’s crops with disinterest, looks up at him with a grin.
‘So you’re the latest challenger. Oooh, I don’t think she’s had one with horns before.’
Rolan gives her a contemptuous sneer that he hopes is visible in the low firelight - though he does not dare to tell her to piss off. ‘Well? Where do I go?’
‘Any tavern you fancy. Be sure to identify yourself to the owners. Her Majesty will send someone round when she decides she is ready to… receive visitors.’
‘Hmmm. What’s that Rolan?’ Cal ducks around Rolan’s carefully shielding body. ‘Are we -’
‘It is too late tonight,’ Rolan interrupts, and then stops, annoyed by the guard’s amused smirk. ‘Don’t you have something else to do?’
‘If things don’t go well tomorrow,’ she says with a suggestive glance, ‘you can come and try with me instead. I’m much easier to please.’
Cal frowns. ‘What?’
‘Pay her no heed.’ Rolan sets off on foot ahead of them, summoning Lia with a sharp wave of the hand. ‘She must have me confused with someone else.’
‘Oh. If you’re sure.’ Cal sounds unconvinced. Lia hoists her packs back up, detaching her eyes from a pasted notice.
‘Anything interesting?’ Cal asks.
‘An offer of safe haven for… driders?’ Lia says, puzzled. ‘Suppose they need it more than most.’
Rolan feels safe enough to offer comment, as they approach an enticingly cozy tavern.
‘The rulers of this kingdom are descended from Drow exiles. They fled Lolth’s wrath.’
‘Ahhh,’ Lia says, with a slight nod. ‘Interesting. Anyway. Let’s get some food. And a pint.’
‘Several pints,’ Cal adds gleefully.
‘Steady on,’ Rolan says, frowning.
‘Oh, come on Rolan. We’re celebrating, aren’t we?’ Lia throws her arms around both of her brothers, dragging them through the tavern door. ‘To our new home!’
A raucous shout greets them as they enter. ‘Your new home? Welcome! Drinks on you then?’
Rolan winces. Attention is the opposite of what he wished for - but as Cal and Lia get swept into two of the only empty seats by ale-warmed drinkers, he feels his best choice is to let them enjoy themselves whilst he arranges a room for the night. This seems to be a mostly-human establishment, with the exception of a couple of hobgoblins having their own private and very intense conversation; he should probably consider them lucky to have attracted only positive notice. Perhaps if he can simply usher them all upstairs soon enough -
But as he leans over the bar, his heart sinks. Cal is bragging about him, at full volume. Rolan’s eyes flick over to see him taking an enthusiastic swig of someone else’s proffered drink, before continuing.
‘My older brother there is a great wizard. And he’s come to be an apprentice to an even greater one. Fear - Fear-y - what’s her name, Lia?’
The human tavern-keeper’s greying eyebrows raise as he addresses Rolan. ‘Let me guess. You have -’
‘An audience with the Queen,’ Rolan hisses, flashing his letter once more. ‘Don’t - ’
‘Don’t tell them about it? I don’t think I need to, lad.’ He takes a gulp of his own pint, the merriment dancing in his dark brown eyes. ‘I think your secret is about to be revealed.’
Rolan’s mouth tightens into a grimace. ‘One room please,’ he says hastily. ‘Dinner for three. And - ’
It’s too late. From across the room, he hears a booming laugh.
‘Queen Phaere?’ the laughing woman says. ‘Oh, your brother has told you a pretty story.’
‘What?’
Lia’s tone is immediately disbelieving, and Rolan wishes that disbelief was well-placed. As it is, he holds his breath, and stares very hard at the glass pressed into his hand by the tavern-keep. It’s some kind of purple spirit.
‘Drink up,’ the man whispers with a grin. ‘You’re going to need it. Not the first I’ve seen who tried this.’
Great. In one quick motion, he throws the drink down his throat. The spirit burns rich with aniseed and plum, but even its intense, peculiar taste cannot drown out the most unwelcome of his senses - his hearing.
‘Your brother,’ says a robust, only slightly slurred voice, ‘has come to eat the Queen out.’
Rolan turns just in time to see as Cal spits, snorts, gargles and finally chokes on his ale.
Lia slams down her drink.
‘You all think you’re being funny, do you? Should have fucking known a warm welcome was too good to be true.’
‘Oh love. Don’t get upset. Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Oh, and you’ll all find that very funny, won’t you,’ Lia snarls. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. Pricks.’
The need to interrupt strikes Rolan urgently, but so does the embarrassment. It can only get worse, the longer he lets it go on - but he can’t bring himself to say anything. Instead, he ardently pretends not to hear a single word.
‘Ah. Lia.’ Cal coughs up a little more of his inhaled drink. ‘Look at that picture.’
‘What picture?’ she snaps.
Cal points to a crudely-painted image hung above the bar, of an imposing half-Drow woman; regal in her bearing and roughly-rendered jewels, in the bold line of her nose and the sweep of her elven jaw. Our most noble Queene Phaere, the legend below reads. Rolan swallows.
‘Cal - Lia - we should retire for the evening.’
‘Oh, no.’ Lia’s jaw drops. She stalks over to the bar and slams down her coins, in a manner that makes Rolan nervous. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I am serious,’ he snaps. ‘Entirely so.’
Cal’s eyes widen. ‘Rolan - you - what?’
He feels the eyes of everyone in the tavern lock on him, their gazes every shade of amused to downright taunting.
‘Go on. Tell them, pretty boy,’ shouts one.
‘I am a grown man, not a boy,’ he spits.
‘Well, we’ll all know if that’s true tomorrow,’ comes the laughing reply.
‘Someone get the poor man a drink,’ another heckler says with a sympathetic grin.
Lia takes a long drink of hers with a grim expression, her eyes staring defiantly at Rolan. Waiting for an answer.
He scowls.
‘Let me be the one to explain.’ A young, thickly-built woman sidles up to Lia, nudging her rather familiarly in the ribs. ‘Our beloved Queen labours under a little curse.’
‘Lolth’s doing,’ one of the hobgoblins interjects helpfully. Wonderful. He’s even got their attention.
‘Is that important?’ the woman fires back, before returning her address to Lia. ‘Anyway. She’s cursed to only like men, but to find no man’s body or tongue satisfying - except for one.’
Rolan’s face burns under the heat of Lia’s suspicious gaze.
‘What the Hells does this have to do with my brother?’
There is a painfully long pause. Finally, in the absence of anyone else to save him, he coughs up the truth.
‘Many years ago, the Queen of this land issued an open invitation. A challenge. Any man might try his hand - ah, tongue - at pleasing her, and whoever does will win his place as her… concubine.’
‘Concubine?’ Lia mouths, at a rare loss for words. Rolan watches the artificer’s cogs turn in her mind. ‘Sorry. I must have misheard. We came all the way here - left the safety of the other tieflings behind - spent four tendays on the road - for you to give up on everything you cared about to become a… a… concubine?’
‘If I were of noble blood, success in the challenge would end in marriage. But as I am not, I will have to be content with a slightly lower station.’ He frowns at the tankard of ale pressed into his hand, pushing it away with a displeased grimace and a condescending, ‘No thank you. I prefer wine.’
‘Ooooh,’ the gifter sneers, snatching it back. He’s a gangly, blonde-haired man wearing, in Rolan’s opinion, the ugliest tunic he’s ever seen. ‘Taste for the finer things already I see. And for being a prick. Word of advice, pal: rein that in tomorrow, or she’ll have your head.’
‘Can she do that?’ Cal squawks.
‘Oh aye,’ the blonde man says, his eyes alight with malice. ‘Why, some say she chops the head off every man who fails to make her sing.’
It is at this point the tavern-keep intervenes, leaning his wiry torso over the bar. ‘Slander the Queen in your own bloody house. In here, we respect her name.’
He turns to Cal.
‘Don’t be worried lad. She’s a fair woman. Only executed a handful of the really disrespectful ones. Some men think they’ve won a prize just by tasting the Queen, as if she didn’t invite them there herself.’
‘There was one man,’ Lia’s determined new friend chimes in, ‘who got so angry that he failed to make her come he shouted the whole court down that she was frigid and incapable of the deed. At which point she demonstrated with her own fingers right in front of him and all the assembled courtiers, before having him - kkkkkkkkkh.’ She draws a theatrical finger over her throat.
Rolan swallows, and steadies his voice, determined not to be unnerved. ‘I am sure there has been a parade of worthless suitors before me. So few people in this world know the measure of their own talent, and most have none to measure at all.’
‘But…’ Cal starts. ‘Rolan?’
‘What?’ he asks testily.
‘You haven’t had a girlfriend in years!’
Rolan scowls. ‘And?’
‘Well… how do you know you’ll be any good at it?’
Before he can answer, Lia breaks in. ‘Of course he doesn’t bloody know. You arrogant fool, Rolan.’
‘For your information,’ he snaps, ‘my skills at… such feats… are as honed as any other of my faculties. In recent years, I have read many books on the subject.’
He leaves out the countless hours beneath the cover of dark, tenderly licking his own fingers until he was sure he could replicate every instruction in those books with the required delicacy. A humiliating practise, but one he is sure will pay off now. It must, or he will have made an almost unforgivable error in bringing them here.
Lia is giving him a very cold, very long stare.
‘Years?’ she says eventually. ‘You’ve been planning this for fucking years?’
‘Well - ’
‘You know what,’ she snaps, ‘I don’t want to fucking hear it. You’ve lied to us this whole time. We could have been in Baldur’s Gate, Rolan. With others like us. I was only happy about this because magic was your dream. Never thought you’d pack it in for a sackful of coin and a gilded cage.’
‘I’m not packing anything in,’ he fires back. ‘Everything I am doing is in service of magic. Of finding us a home. But of course, you know nothing. I’ve worked myself to the bone to provide for you and Cal. Even if it were a mere handful of coin - you do not understand its value.’
‘I’m sorry we’re such a burden,’ Lia snaps.
‘That is not what I meant!’ Rolan shouts.
He’s suddenly aware of the crowd again, watching with keen interest.
‘We’re not talking about this here.’ He grabs their key off the bar and stomps off in the direction of the stairs, hoping that the door it belongs to will be obvious.
It’s not. He finds himself, shame-faced, returning downstairs to ask the tavern-keeper which room is theirs.
‘It’ll be alright lad,’ the man says. ‘It’s not what most families want to hear, but they’ll get over it soon enough. I’ll say a prayer to Sharess for you.’
‘Hmm.’ Rolan turns over the key in his hand.
‘Suppose you’ll want a bath in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ Rolan says gratefully. He hadn’t even thought of that amidst his nerves.
‘That’ll cost extra.’
Rolan waves his hand. Of all the things to care about now, a few coins hardly weigh the scales.
Cal and Lia’s murmurs cease the moment he arrives back upstairs. They stay silent for a little while after their dinner arrives, Lia rubbing her brow in between spoonfuls of her stew. Cal’s eyes are fixed on him, but his tongue stays still; eventually, it is Rolan who breaks.
‘Oh for the Gods’ sakes! If you wish to tell me again how stupid I am, be my guest!’
‘I don’t think you’re stupid, Rolan,’ Cal says, his face a wide-eyed picture of concern.
‘I do,’ Lia cuts in acidly.
Cal turns over his stew with an unhappy frown. ‘Lia, he’s doing it for us.’
‘We never asked him to!’
Cal sighs. ‘But Rolan, I don’t understand. Are you giving up on magic?’
At last, an answer they’ll be happy with.
‘Of course not,’ he says. ‘No amount of gold could prevail on me to do that.’
‘And how does that fit with… pleasuring a queen for a living?’ Lia asks.
‘Queen Phaere’s library is renowned as one of the greatest of the surface realms, especially on the subject of magic. Her mother escaped from the Underdark with a large collection of Drow texts, and when she married Phaere’s father, the previous king, she combined those works with his extensive library. The Queen herself is said to be deeply well-read, and to value knowledge highly.’
Cal grins. ‘Have you got a crush on her, Rolan?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snaps. ‘You cannot have a crush on someone you have only read about. I simply appreciate those with the proper regard for magic.’
‘But - Rolan.’ Lia softens a little, looking out of the small, lead-laced window onto the dim street below. She turns to face him. ‘She’s a Drow. And a queen. You know what they’re like. What if she -’
‘Half-Drow,’ Rolan corrects her. ‘But yes. The challenge proclamation suggests she expects a certain… submission from the man who succeeds.’
‘You really think you’d be good at that?’ She shakes her head. ‘You can’t stop yourself being rude when people buy you drinks you don’t like. I don’t see how you can hope to survive under such a woman. And - what if she’s awful? What if she -’
‘I know what I’m getting into!’ he growls.
‘You can’t do this! It’s not too late - we can leave - ’
‘I’m not leaving! Don’t you understand - this my chance to be a great wizard. To have an entire kingdom’s resources at my disposal.’
‘At the cost of being owned? How am I supposed to watch my brother kneel and grovel and feel good about that? That’s not the Rolan I know!’ Lia’s struggle to keep her voice down ends in a strangled hiss. ‘Please, Rolan. Don’t do this.’
‘You don’t know me!’ he retorts.
Cal buries his face in his hands and lets out a small, muffled whimper. ‘Please stop arguing. Rolan might die tomorrow.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Rolan says, at the exact moment Lia shouts, ‘That’s why we’re arguing!’
Cal jumps to his feet, splashes his face with water from the basin and announces with as much angry determination as he can muster, ‘Fine. Argue all night if you want. I’m taking the box bed.’
After that, it seems like there isn’t much left to say. The bed door slams after Cal, and Rolan and Lia silently share the double. Lia tosses and turns and makes irritable sighing noises all night; if he had less on his mind, he would give her a sharp elbow to the side. But as it is, he stares pensively out at the window, watching the faint strands of moonlight caught in the glass.
If only he could tell Cal and Lia that the idea of being owned is not just acceptable, but… intoxicating. He’s known that for a long time, and yet fought it; even as he practised so often for this day, he told himself it was mere insurance, a last option in case no others arrived.
But all his fantasies are tangled with loving hands stroking his hair and collars around his neck and firm, tender voices praising him and commanding him and scolding him. And every night for years, as he sinks exhausted into embrace of his bed, he’s imagined instead the arms of someone beautiful and powerful, someone to love and worship and obey.
She is so close by now, and he is determined not to fail.