tales_of_faerun | Have Your Cake Part IV (Reply)

A Curse Here, a Blessing There (4355 words) by Somariel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Drizzt Do'Urden, Original Elf Character(s), Alustriel Silverhand, Vierna Do'Urden, Zaknafein Do'Urden, Inthylyn Aerasumé
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Past Rape/Non-con
Series: Part 4 of Have Your Cake, Part 16 of A Crossing of the Realms
Summary:

Maybe the family isn’t big enough…

Beginning notes

This fic was inspired by

senmut and

ilyena_sylph's fic Making the Most of Magical Mayhem and my fic Magical Mayhem with a Pegasus.

It assumes familiarity with those fics, and the previous fics in the Have Your Cake series.

A Curse Here, a Blessing There

1343 DR

Samiar knew, perfectly well, that drow were excellent liars, and one might be using tongues to speak, but… he also knew that it was not possible to fool a pegasus’s innate sense of a person’s nature. Even so, he still twitched his fingers through the motion for detect thoughts, focusing on the drow. "Drizzt Do’Urden, hm? Well, at least we are even on the matter of names, now, though I still do not know the name of your friend there.

"But what curse troubles you, that your own people could not deal with better than I?" The phrasing of his question was deliberate, as even though Drizzt was very clearly not evil, it was still possible that he was neutral, and a Vhaeraunite scout or information gatherer.

"My friend is called Lothalninil," Drizzt said. "As for my people, while the Dark Maiden has been good to me and my family since each of us escaped the Underdark, I remain wary of divine intervention in my life, nor do I wish to develop a habit of relying on those whom my ranging may have taken me quite far from."

That was the truth and nothing but, Samiar felt, reading the truth of the 'no divine intervention' and the 'don't want to depend on family' alike, though a stubborn thread of 'got myself into this, I'll get myself out of it' was woven through the latter. "And the curse?"

"I made a mistake in the last set of ruins I cleared. While I could feel magic, it did not feel innately tainted or wrong, and the box I took from there called to me, for it was inlaid with a cat much like my companion that drew you here."

Drizzt dropped his eyes, and Lothalninil bumped her nose against his chest. "The curse upon it escaped as I opened the box, and now… I need aid."

"You appear to be healthy enough," Samiar said curiously, raising a brow, then flicked his fingers, "no, no. Come, we will talk within my home."

If the pegasus—Lothalninil, he reminded himself—had not been present, he would have cast an arcane eye to keep an eye on Drizzt Do’Urden as he led the way to his tower, but she was, so he was willing to place enough trust in her goodly nature to expose his back to Drizzt.

Sharing drow culture and society notes, the language and writing examples, was familiar to Drizzt from the time he had spent doing the same with Sharr, whom he very much felt would get along quite well with Samiar.

It wasn't until Sam chose to share the tale of one of his youthful misadventures, however, that Drizzt realized just how correct that thought was. Because the other two elves featured in the tale were Samiar's cousin Sharr, and Sharr's friend Kor.

But although the likelihood of there being two such groups with both that structure and those names was vanishingly small, once Sam had finished the tale, Drizzt asked, just to confirm things, "Do you mean Sharrevaliir Silverhand and Korvallen Senahye?"

"Why, yes. How do-" Sam broke off abruptly and stared at Drizzt as the family names sank in. "Wait, Silverhand?!? Is that actually El-, I mean Alustriel, up in Silverymoon, then?"

Not sure what Sam's source of confusion might be, Drizzt chose to answer in the way he thought would have the least chance of being misunderstood. "Silverymoon's current ruler is Sharr's human consort, if that's what you're asking."

"Then we're going up there. If I'd known that really is Alustriel, I would have sought her and Sharr's assistance from the beginning."

As curious as Alustriel was about the guest that Drizzt had called an old friend of both her and Sharr, the timing of the page's message delivery had been such that she could not actually go find out until after evenfeast.

And now, having changed from her evenfeast gown to something more casual, she stood at the door to Drizzt's rooms and knocked.

"Come in" was called in Drizzt's voice—though, for some reason, it sounded higher than usual—so she let herself in.

As she entered, Drizzt and his guest were busy comparing the papers scattered across the table they were sitting at, but before she could do more than register that the guest was a sun elf, they both turned their attention to her, and she gasped in surprise.

"Samiar?!"

"Hello, Elué," he said, even as he got up and came over to her with his hands outstretched in greeting.

Bypassing any sort of hand clasp, Alustriel embraced Sharr's cousin tightly. He returned the hug with equal vigor, and they held it for a long moment.

When they mutually released the embrace, Alustriel took a step back, and reached out to clasp his hands. "It's so good to see you again. But how in the world did Drizzt find you?"

"He was looking for a cursebreaker," Samiar replied.

At that, Alustriel turned her attention to Drizzt, and had to stifle a gasp. Because though she could tell it was still Drizzt sitting at the table, he now had a female body.

"How are you, Drizzt?" she asked.

"Uncomfortable."

"Understandably." Then she turned back to Samiar. "It's easy to see why you wish to consult with me, but what is it about this matter that has you wishing to consult with Sharr?"

"The inscription inside the damned box that was the trigger is in Seldruin."

"And when I unknowingly triggered the curse by opening the box, the whispered words that accompanied it sounded vaguely familiar from my work with Sharr on comparing Seldruin with Drow," Drizzt added.

Alustriel nodded her understanding. "Well, I'd be asking him to come with Kor anyway, simply because of Sam's return, but I'll make sure to tell him Sam brought a translation challenge with him."

Drizzt had been insistent that Samiar should take some time to actually catch up with his family, so once the cursed box had been secured in the workroom Taern had set aside for Sam and Sharr in the Spell Tower, it was several days before any more attention was given to the matter.

The first day that Sam and Sharr worked on translating the inscription went well enough, with the box safely contained in an anti-magic field, but on the second day, Sharr happened to arrive at the workroom before Sam did.

Since both he and Sam had received a copy of the key for the workroom, Sharr chose to enter anyway, and settled down to review the previous day's notes.

He had not gotten very far into them, however, when an explosion in the adjacent workroom rattled the door and shook the furniture.

Setting the notes aside, Sharr stood up and turned to scan the rest of the room for anything else that might have been disturbed.

Movement on the central table caught his eye, and he experienced a frozen moment of shock as the cursed box slid over the edge of the table.

Then instinct kicked in, and he lunged to catch it. He only just managed to do so, grabbing it a bit below the visible line near the top.

And then, much to his horror, a seam appeared below where he had grabbed it, and the box swung open.

Samiar had just exited the stairs onto the level that held the workroom reserved for his and Sharr's work with the cursed box, when a door-rattling boom sounded from the other end of the hallway—which was where their borrowed workroom was.

Concerned over what effect the probable explosion might have had on the organization of yesterday's notes, Sam increased his pace down the hall.

Very shortly, he had reached the workroom, and was reaching for his key when he noticed that the door was not quite closed.

Knowing that had to mean that Sharr had arrived before him, Sam let go of his concerns about the notes, and opened the door.

But he had not gotten more than a couple of steps into the workroom before he noticed something of far greater concern.

Sharr was lying motionless on the floor, his head almost under the central table, with the cursed box close enough to his hands that it had to have been in them when he collapsed. But the most concerning thing was that Sharr had very clearly been struck by the box's curse.

Sighing, Sam stepped back out of the workroom, and knocked on the door of the adjacent one.

It was opened fairly quickly by a human male who looked to be on the younger side even for humans.

"Yes?" the young man said, a distinct note of nervousness in his voice. Which was not truly surprising, as Sam recalled Taern saying that the workrooms used for doing anything likely to explode were in a different area.

"Samiar Ravarel. Am I correct in thinking that you were responsible for the recent explosion?"

"Stordan Helder. Why do you ask?"

"Because it disrupted my own work in a way that had unfortunate consequences for my colleague," Samiar answered.

Stordan's face paled, and he visibly swallowed a few times before replying in a voice that squeaked with nervousness. "What can I do to help?"

"Go find Korvallen Senahye and bring him here," Sam said.

"I will, Saer." Stordan gave a low bow, then turned and headed for the stairs.

Once the young man had entered the stairwell, Samiar went back into his workroom.

The first thing he did was cast the anti-magic field on the box, but once that was taken care of, he used the sending he had memorized for the day to inform Taern of the incident.

Taern's response had been a sigh, a mutter about headstrong young idiots, and a promise to come as soon as he could.

Then Samiar set about checking Sharr over for any injuries that would necessitate moving him before Kor and Taern arrived.

When Sharr regained consciousness, he had to take a moment to just breathe—which felt so odd with the extra flesh on his chest—and catalogue the myriad new sensations his changed body was bombarding him with.

However, he was still working his way through them when the scrape of a chair nearby caused him to open his eyes.

He was lying on the bed in his own rooms, with Kor and Sam both sitting in chairs pulled up beside it.

"Good to see you finally awake again," Kor said, his voice gruff with worry.

"Finally?" Sharr repeated. "How long was I out?"

"Most of the day," Sam answered. "Which at least proved useful in allowing me to analyze the curse's traces on you."

"Did you learn anything useful?"

"There is an escape clause, and it's tied to both something physical and something time-based."

"Still would have preferred it if you hadn't had the opportunity," Kor grumbled.

Sharr sighed. "So would I, but I'll take it as a silver lining to misjudging where I grabbed the box when it slid off the table."

"How do you feel?" Kor asked.

Uncomfortable. Everything feels so different, and it's making it hard to concentrate right now."

Kor frowned. "That's the only problem, though?"

"Yes."

Kor gave a sigh of relief, and Sam smiled.

"Well," Sam said, "you'll presumably be able to concentrate better once you get used to the new sensations.

"Since Drizzt clearly has no problem concentrating."

"Let's hope so," Sharr said, "But speaking of Drizzt, please tell me that he isn't blaming himself for this."

"He didn't even get a chance to do so," Sam said. "The headstrong young idiot responsible was already defying a direct order, so Taern came down hard on him."

Samiar was indeed correct about Sharr's concentration returning once he became more accustomed to the female body's differences, and a few days later, the two of them resumed their work on translating the inscription.

As the weeks passed, Sharr's sons came by to meet or re-meet Samiar—with Thyl also visiting Spirit Sanctuary, resulting in Vierna and Zak being informed that Drizzt had run afoul of a curse, if not the exact details—and eventually, about a month and a half after the translation work had resumed, Sam and Sharr agreed that they had finally determined the correct one, though the implications it carried were unpleasant.

And with the translation found, Alustriel began working with Samiar on figuring out how the curse might actually be broken.

A bit more than three and a half weeks later—and almost exactly two months after he and Kor had started exploring the more intimate aspects of the female body's differences—Sharr noticed a change in his balance, along with a few other changes in how the female body felt.

So that evening, while he and Kor were lounging with Alustriel in her rooms after evenfeast, he asked, "What sort of physical changes accompany a pregnancy?"

Kor jerked bolt upright on hearing that, but Alustriel just gave him a considering look.

And after a moment, she said, "What changes have you experienced, to cause you to ask that?"

"There's been a shift in my balance, my abdomen feels unusually firm, and the breasts are sore."

Alustriel took a deep breath before she replied. "Well, those are all symptoms of pregnancy, so if you're thinking you might be pregnant, you're most likely correct.

"But if you want me to, there's a spell I can use to confirm it."

"Please."

"Then give me your hand."

Sharr complied, and Alustriel cupped her hands around his, then murmured a single word. And in reaction, a faint silver glow arched in a crescent from her right thumb to her left, over his hand.

Alustriel let out a gusty sigh and released his hand. "You are pregnant. About two months along, according to the spell."

Kor made a strangled sound beside him, and Sharr turned to look at his heart's brother. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Are you?" Kor replied.

Sharr took a moment to actually think about it before he replied. "I... think I will be, once I get over the surprise.

"It's not anything I expected-" Sharr paused for a moment to look at Alustriel, who had made a surprised noise when he said that, but she waved for him to continue, so he did. "-and I'm sure there will be some difficult moments due to the mismatch between mind and body, but I'm pleased to be carrying your child."

Kor sighed and threw his arm around Sharr's shoulders. "Alright. But you will let me take care of you during the pregnancy."

"Of course." Then Sharr turned his attention back to Alustriel. "Why were you surprised I hadn't expected this?" he asked her.

Alustriel again took a deep breath before speaking. "What conclusions did you and Sam come to about the nature of the curse and its escape clause, based on the translation you settled on?"

Sharr knew there was a catch somewhere in that question, but he couldn't see where, so he simply answered it. "It's a lover's curse, possibly a spurned one. And I would have said that fulfilling the escape clause requires sex, but given that it's been two months since Kor and I started having it, and the curse hasn't broken yet, I'm not so sure."

"Men." Alustriel rolled her eyes with that exasperated mutter, then sighed. "May you learn the pain of your deeds most personally, by living the life you have given to me. To me, that says pregnancy, and some amount of time breastfeeding the baby after it is born."

Sharr groaned and threw his head back. "Physical and time-based. Why didn't I see that?"

Alustriel smiled wryly. "Because you're not a woman."

"Fair enough," Sharr laughed. "Fair enough."

Roughly two and a half months after Sam and Alustriel had begun their research into how to break the curse, they reluctantly concluded that the only options were requesting divine intervention or fulfilling the terms of the escape clause.

Drizzt had been just as displeased with that conclusion as they were, but after taking some time to think about it, he accepted Samiar's offer to be the child's father.

Drizzt's decision that he would stay at Spirit Sanctuary during the pregnancy resulted in Thyl—who had remained in Silverymoon after coming to meet Samiar again—going there to give Zak and Vierna a full accounting of the situation, so that, when Drizzt did come, they would not be surprised by either his appearance or Samiar's presence, and once Thyl returned, Samiar started on treating Drizzt as a friend he was interested in intimacy with.

Drizzt proved to be more skittish about the process than anyone—including himself—had expected, but Samiar was very careful about always making sure he was comfortable with whatever Sam was doing, and about a week and a half after they had started, Drizzt felt ready to move on to actual sex.

Which ended up not getting very far at all, as experiencing intimacy while naked caused the long repressed memories that were the source of his skittishness to return in full.

When Vierna emerged from her workroom for the evening meal, she was somewhat surprised to learn that Thyl had arrived on Steelheart not much earlier.

But since she was rather hungry, and Thyl did not appear to be excessively concerned, she was willing to wait until after the meal to learn what had brought him to Spirit Sanctuary so late in the day, when she knew that he had to have come from Silverymoon.

Once the meal was over, however, Thyl actually pulled her aside, and said, quietly, "I need to talk to you and Zak."

Well. That he was asking for Zak as well made it likely that whatever brought him here involved Drizzt, but since she knew how much her brother valued his privacy, she simply caught Zak's attention, and indicated a need to talk, with a tilt of her head towards Thyl, and then in the direction of the exit from the communal dining area that would lead to her quarters.

Zak gave a sharp nod in reply, and was moving towards that exit even as she and Thyl started that way.

The walk to her quarters was accomplished in silence, but once all three of them were settled in the conversation area, Vierna couldn't hold off her concern any longer. "What happened with Drizzt?" she asked.

Thyl sighed. "The careful progress he and Cousin Sam were making hit an unanticipated obstacle."

Turning his full attention to Zaknafein, he continued. "As it turns out that he had rather thoroughly repressed his memories of graduation, but exploring intimacy slowly eroded that, until they fully resurfaced when he and Sam attempted to actually have sex."

Zaknafein couldn't help but wince when Thyl finished his explanation, "I... probably should have considered that possibility," he admitted with a sigh.

Putting what Thyl had said together with her own knowledge of Lolthite society, Vierna came to an unpleasant conclusion. "He was raped. During his graduation."

"Yes." The answer came in two voices, Thyl and Zak having spoken simultaneously. And after they exchanged a look, Thyl gestured for Zak to continue.

"The graduation ceremony is for all students graduating that year," Zak said, "both male and female.

"The teachers from Arach-Tinilith and a favored student summon a demon for the student to have sex with, and the drugged incense induces an orgy among everyone else present.

"The incense is likely why it didn't occur to me that those memories could be a problem, since it affects the memory enough that I just plain can't remember anything between that and the end of the ceremony."

"That's useful to know," Thyl said, "because Drizzt very definitely does remember all of it."

Vierna hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe because of his innate sense of evil?

"Because a demon would be a large splash against that."

"That's probably the best explanation we're likely to come up with," Thyl agreed.

"And to return to the current situation," he continued, "since Drizzt is insistent that he still wants to go through with fulfilling the terms of the curse, any further attempts at sex are on hold until he's received aid in properly processing the trauma and has reached a point where he feels ready to try again."

As the weeks passed, Drizzt made slow but steady progress in processing his rape trauma and coming to terms with what had happened in a way that let him move forward with fulfilling the terms of the curse.

Finally, a bit less than two full months after the memories had returned, he felt ready to make another attempt at having sex with Samiar.

And after a day of careful discussion and planning, they successfully went forward with doing so.

The three week wait until a pregnancy could be detected by the spell Alustriel had used to confirm Sharr's was mildly nerve-wracking, even knowing that the curse had most likely been designed to guarantee fertility, but Drizzt managed to find enough to occupy himself with that he was able to avoid dwelling on the matter.

And once his pregnancy was confirmed, he and Samiar said their farewells to those they wished to give them to, then rode Lothalninil up to Spirit Sanctuary.

Samiar had left Spirit Sanctuary after seeing Drizzt settled in—though not without promising to return for the child's birth—but even so, Drizzt and his family were kept abreast of the progress of Sharr's pregnancy, as Thyl had chosen to remain in Silverymoon at least until Sharr gave birth.

Given that Thyl had been updating them by sending, however, it was still a surprise when he teleported to Spirit Sanctuary roughly three months into Drizzt's pregnancy, about five weeks after the Midwinter festival.

But even with his smile making it clear that he had brought good news, the Do'Urdens still gathered in Vierna's rooms as swiftly as they were able to, in order to hear what news had brought Thyl in person.

And once they were all settled, he launched right into it. "Dad gave birth around dawn," he said.

"Were there any complications with the labor or the birth, or for the baby?" Vierna asked.

"Nope," Thyl said. "Unless you count Uncle Kor almost dropping the baby when the midwife said it was a girl."

"That would only count if he had actually dropped her," Vierna said, before giving in to the giggles she could feel bubbling up.

Drizzt was snickering beside her, and Thyl was grinning broadly, but Zak just looked confused by their amusement, which helped her to bring the giggles under control once she had gotten the first rush of them out.

Seeing that Vierna had calmed her giggles, Zak gave voice to his confusion. "Why is it amusing that... Kor... almost dropped the baby?"

"It's not him almost dropping her that's amusing," Vierna explained, suppressed mirth still in her voice, "it's the reason he did so."

"That reason being," Thyl continued, "the fact that until now, Dad has only had sons. So no one was expecting him to finally have a daughter after thirteen sons."

"Oh." Zak took a moment to consider that, then smiled. "That is amusing."

Finally stopping his snickering, Drizzt asked, "What did they name her?"

"Faeliniel Senahye."

Vierna made a surprised noise at that, and when all three men looked at her curiously, she said, "Why'd they choose to use Kor's family name?

"Given that you've previously mentioned that elves pass family names along the maternal line."

"Because Dad never uses the one he received from his mother," Thyl said. "I don't even know what it is, and he's been borrowing Kor's or Charic's for so long, I'm not sure Mom knows it, either."

"Huh. Do you have any idea why?"

"Given that Grandmother and her brother left Myth Drannor before its fall, my best guess is that their family was of a high enough rank that Dad feels it's not safe to use the name."

Vierna quickly ran through what she knew about the fall of Myth Drannor, and winced. "I can see why."

Samiar returned to Spirit Sanctuary a month before Drizzt was expected to give birth, and just three weeks after the Midsummer festival—about five and a half months after Faeliniel's birth—Zanna Do'Urden was born shortly before false dawn, and experienced her first sunrise half an hour later, when Drizzt brought her along for his sunrise vigil.

Samiar chose to stay at Spirit Sanctuary after the birth, saying that he didn't want to miss a single moment with their daughter, and things soon settled into a routine for the new parents, with Sam doing as much to care for Zanna as Drizzt did, even if Drizzt was the only one who could feed her.

Time seemed to pass surprisingly swiftly with a baby to care for, and it felt like it was all too soon before the next Midwinter festival occurred.

But it was barely a week after that when Samiar received a very welcome sending from Alustriel.

As Drizzt settled down to feed Zanna after his sunrise vigil, Sam sat down beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

"Alustriel sent while you were holding your vigil," Sam said. "The curse on Sharr broke while he was sleeping."

Drizzt smiled at Sam in relief. "That is good to know. I had been getting a little concerned over how close we were coming to a year since Faeliniel was born without his curse breaking."

"I think we all were," Sam said. "But it appears that the curse breaks eleven months after the child's birth, so now we know when to expect it for you."

Having a definite end to the curse in sight eased something inside himself that Drizzt hadn't even been aware was wound too tightly, and his mood lightened noticeably over the next few weeks.

And sure enough, just a week before the Midsummer festival, exactly eleven months after Zanna's birth, he woke to find himself restored to his proper body.

Have Your Cake Part IV

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