The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1
Leradien

The boy was loath to go to school the next day. He was still living down the humiliation of the fire ant and, before that, the accident with the arrow. He figured he'd had enough of school. He doubted anyone would miss him anyway–leastways his teachers and especially the one he’d shot with his arrow.

He liked to think Ronthiel would miss him and maybe Rebecca, the new elf girl. Although why she should do so was beyond his reason. No doubt she had laughed at him along with all the others. He was just a “goat boy” to her, too. It would be better if he died and never saw her again than to see her laugh at him now. He would deny her that pleasure. He would stay away from school, forever and ever. No! He would never go back. He would spare himself that mockery. If his aunt insisted he go, he would refuse. Why, even if Rebecca was to invite him to her birthday party, he would refuse–well, maybe not refuse. He might go to that. But nothing else would ever be enough to live down the last two day’s humiliation enough to cause him to go back to school ever again. Nothing! Not even Ronthiel’s promised bow would he return for. Well–wait–he would go back for that. But that’s all! Nothing else–the bow and the girl’s birthday–and that’s it. The other students could just sit in their curiosity about why he never returned. Of course, he’d have to go back to give Ronthiel his new flute, and he most certainly had to go back to school to show everyone his new knife. They would all die of envy when he did. So he’d have to go back for that–probably tomorrow.

But, other than that, he was never going back.

With that point decided upon, the boy headed up the rocky cliffs above Gold Creek where only his hoofed feet could go. There, he shortly he came upon the pariah of the village, Leradien the drider, the cursed daughter of a drow. All the elves cordially hated and dreaded Leradien, because, being a dark elf, she was conspiring and lawless and vulgar and just plain bad–or all the things the boy wished to be.

So he delighted in her forbidden society and wanted to be just like her. There is something about the forbidden that makes it powerfully desirable–like the apple in the Garden of Eating.

The boy wasn’t at all like the rest of the respectable elves, in that he envied Leradien’s outcast condition. He was even under strict orders not to play with her. So, of course, he played with her every chance he got.

Drow were elves that lived in vast underground cities who knew the magic of illumination. Leradien also lived underground but in a cliff cave up on Gold Creek as an outcast. All drow worship their spider queen and keeper, Lolth, who punishes all drow who fail her like Leradien into outcasts by changing them into driders. From the waist up, Leradien was a beautiful young woman but, from the waist down, she was a demon spider with eight legs.

Now that alone would have made her frightening enough, but she had red eyes and Leradien’s eyes fairly glowed with wickedness. She could freeze you right in your tracks just by looking at you. The Light Elves said a drider’s eyes was filled with the madness of insanity and Leradien’s certainly were scary. But the fear she commanded did not end there. Drow women are bigger and stronger than their men, towering over their subjects with a regal blend of height and biceps. Leradien, the village’s very own Amazonian marvel, left the local elf boys wondering if they should start lifting acorns. They say driders are terribly strong anyway, so she was definitely not one to be messed with. That made her scary three times over.

You could count that as four times if you included her mind. Drow do stuff. They enslave other races and kill for territory or gain. They scheme against the surface races and would probably be a major force if they weren’t always scheming against their own kind and killing each other. Drow based their society upon violence, murder, cunning, and the philosophy that only the strong survive. Hence, the only equals of drow were the race of humans.

Leradien had separated herself from drow society by living on the surface. Whatever she’d done to deserve her punishment of being turned into a drider by Lolth, she didn’t share or seem to mind. That was unusual because Lloth intended driders to feel hate and revulsion for what she turned them into. Yet Leradien had no such complaints. So far as he knew, she was happy with things as they were.

Leradien lurked in her cave by day, for drow are blinded by sunlight, and then came out and hunted by night. Although, for some reason or other, she could bear the light if she wanted. She just didn't want to.

The elves knew of her but would not go into her cave after her. Elves can see like hawks above the ground but are as blind as moles underground and so they don’t go there–especially when they know there’s a drider ahead.

Unlike the surface elves, Leradien dressed herself in the skimpiest of clothes and, for a girl, looked to be a near full-grown woman and a mighty fine looking one at that and with the promise of becoming even more beautiful if you can believe it. Compared to the willow wisp women of the Light Elves, her figure was in perennial bloom and she wasn’t beneath showing it off, either. She was most wondrous to look upon, all strong, slim and slender, and with her long white hair swishing and floating about her like spun silk. Leradien's perfect face, figure, and flowing mane were a siren’s song to the boy’s eyes, just pure attraction to behold. She was all beauty, power, and darkness—just the way he liked her.

The boy knew enough not to come too near her though, for she would enslave him as her mate for life if she ever captured him. Yet, looking at her beauty, it did not seem to be all that bad a fate. So he did not fear her nearly as much as he probably should have.

Rather, the boy deeply envied her. Leradien came and went at her own free will. She did what she wanted when she wanted. She called no one master or obeyed anyone, and all feared her even though she was the most strikingly beautiful creature of all Durham Forest, spider and all.

He hailed the romantic outcast from the opening to her cave. “Hello, Leradien!”

“Hello, little boy,” came her sultry, inviting voice from within.

The boy recognized the sound of her feeding.

“What’s that you got?” he asked.

“A rabbit,” was the reply

“Let me see him, Leradien. Oh! My! He’s pretty limp. Bit him already have you? Where’d you get him?”

“Caught him in one of my webs,” she answered.

You didn't want to get caught in one of Leradien's webs. They were like a thousand times stronger than anything. She could catch a deer in one, and had.

“Have you already sucked the blood out of him?”

“Not all. I was going to let him live.”

“Well! If you change your mind, when you’re done with him, I could use him. That is unless you’ve got a use for it.”

“Come closer and I’ll give him to you now,” she invited.

“Ummm! That’s okay. I’ll let you finish him first.”

From the darkness of her cave, her glowing red eyes assessed him. “So what is a dead rabbit good for to you, goat boy?”

“I can give it to my aunt for the meat and make gloves or a hat from the fur.”

“You’ve never made anything in your life, boy, but trouble.”

“I can’t do it, but my Aunt Athiel can.”

“You know your aunt can’t take care of you forever,” said Leradien in a voice full of rich, inviting tones. “You should come here and live with me and let me take care of you,” she offered, her voice husky with the want of him. “I can give you fresh rabbit meat every day and you won’t ever need furs. My spider silk will keep you all wrapped up nice and warm, and all cozy.”

“I don’t know,” the boy replied with a different mind. “It seems elves live a long time. My aunt might just take care of me forever.”

“But the other elves don’t want you around. I do,” Leradien said. “And have you ever seen a more beautiful, or desirable, woman than me?”

The boy started to nod his head in ready agreement, but then remembered Rebecca.

“Oh, wait!” he corrected himself. “One.”

Leradien’s red eyes suddenly narrowed sharply and her body tensed. “What?! What do you mean–one? How is that possible? What’s her name?”

“If I tell you, you’ll just kill her.”

“Of course!” she said. “I’m a drow. It’s what we —don't expect me to change.”

“I don’t want you to change.”

“Then tell me who she is. Let me kill her, and I’ll again be the most beautiful, desirable woman of your dreams.”

“I don’t want you to kill her.”

“Then how else am I to eliminate the competition?”

“If you love me,” he challenged, “you won’t kill her.”

“No! No!” she corrected him. “Where'd you ever think that? If I love you, I should kill her. That way I can have you and she can’t!”

“That’s selfish.”

“If you lived in a cave by yourself, you’d be selfish too, boy. Besides! What makes you think this other girl isn’t also selfish?”

“She doesn’t seem that way, although I don’t rightly know for sure.”

Leradien eyed him and gave a knowing shake of her head.

“She doesn’t even know you exist, does she? How much more selfish can she be than that? So you see? I’m not so bad. How many other girls are willing to kill for you just to prove they love you? I’ll bet she certainly isn’t.”

“No, of course, she isn’t.”

“Then she doesn’t love you.”

“That’s not how the other elves see it.”

Leradien disagreed.

“You know what I think of how Light Elves see things. Besides,” she said. “You’re a satyr. What do you care about how elves see things?”

Dark Elves despised Light Elves for their being above self-gratification. The boy had to admit that while the Light Elves’ attitude in that way seemed admirable; he didn’t want to practice it, either. He just didn’t have much in common with them. The fact was, he had much more in common with the Dark Elf Leradien than anyone else.

“I suppose you’re right, but you’ll also make me your slave,” he said. “And you know what satyrs think of being slaves.”

“How do you know? You might enjoy being my slave. How do you know you won't? Have you ever asked yourself that?"

That did seem a fair question. He took a step closer to see if she'd capture him.