Page 12 of Astarion

And there she left him, in the dusty passage under the cellar, and maybe he cried again a little, out of gratitude, but he would never, ever admit it.

—

Astarion’s hiding place was in an unused bedroom that had become a storage area for unwanted furniture. There was a chest shoved into one corner, halfway underneath a tilted bed frame. It had a lock that even a paladin could have picked, though only if they really wanted some sheets that had been folded for so long that they crunched when you tried to unfold them.

Under the sheets, however, was a false bottom, and inside that was a rather clever combination lock keyed to a date that had no significance to anyone but Astarion and a young man more than a century dead. He unlocked it, wiped his dusty hands on the sheets, and reached down into a recess carved into the floor itself.

His fingers touched silk.

He drew the fabric out. It was a silk scarf of the most exquisite material, cool and slick, like woven ice. There was a velvet coat in the hiding place as well, heavy with brocade, and a spidersilk cloak lined with satin. He let the textures flow over his fingers like liquid, eyes closed. Darkvision could not show him the colors anyway, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that Cazador had never seen them at all.

More than a century in the vampire’s service had turned sex into a tiresome chore. Food was an empty shadow of its former self, on the days when he wasn’t choking down decaying rat. Trance was nightmare-tainted, and he certainly did not have the luxury of losing himself in drugs. Blood was the only thing he truly enjoyed, and Cazador knew it all too well and withheld it at his whim.

But Cazador did not know about this. A single sensual pleasure still belonged to Astarion: that silk was still a cool whisper and velvet a warm glide against his fingertips. This solitary thing remained untainted…as long as the old man never found out.

That was why Astarion’s rooms were so spartan. Even the velvet curtains were the same type that were hung all over the palace. He was careful never to even run a hand over them when Cazador was present.

Sometimes, when he had leave to hunt and the old man was busy tormenting someone else, he smuggled clothes out in a bundle and changed into them outside the palace. They made him feel, however briefly, like himself again. He had chosen these for himself, and Cazador had never touched them.

He knew, with hard certainty, that if the vampire ever learned of it, his last pleasure would be taken from him. The old man would strangle him with silk, or entomb him, wrapped in velvet, for a tenday or a month or a year, until the touch was a horror that haunted his nightmares.

So he was careful never to let the secret slip, and because Cazador sought luxury for the trappings of wealth and not inherent longing, the vampire never cared or even noticed.

One of the many innovations brought by the Lady of Silverymoon was the institution of village schools throughout the region. Astarion’s schooling had previously been conducted in a haphazard fashion by a crotchety old druid who showed up for a tenday or so at a time, usually arriving in the form of an ox carrying baskets full of books, slates, and chalk. Astarion had learned to read, write, and do basic sums, but not with any great enthusiasm. It was possible he had learned to count only so that he could tally up the number of warts and moles that sprouted from the old druid’s skin like mushrooms.

Then the school opened. The schoolmistress was a lovely young human woman who always smelled of lavender and had a smile like dawn breaking. Astarion, who had just turned eight, was instantly and profoundly smitten, and he drove himself to new heights of scholarship to please the object of his affections. He didn’t even try to find loopholes in the rules she laid down, which for Astarion was a declaration of devotion on par with slaying dragons.

“Now, write me an essay, class,” she said one day. “Tell me what you want to do when you grow up, and why. It should be at least six lines long.”

His classmates groaned. Six lines? That was an impossible length—longer than most books of magic, surely! But Astarion was not the only one smitten by the schoolmistress, so the single room filled with the squeak of chalk on slates and the mumbling of students engaged in the ancient practice of padding out sentences with extra verbiage.

Astarion, meanwhile, stared at the blank surface, his mind a whirl of silk and velvet and southern cities and the smell of lavender, and thought that six lines wasn’t nearly enough to cover it.

—

Astarion was twelve years old when the messenger arrived.

She was tall and lithe and human, dressed in leather that had been cut to show diamonds and half-moons of brilliant violet suede underneath. Her hair was dark and curly, and her skin was the color of oak bark. Astarion, who was lurking behind the stone wall that led to the house, watched her beating the dust from her boots, her lips pursed in distaste. Then she straightened her clothes, retrieved an envelope from her pack, and knocked on the door.

His mother answered. Astarion could hear her gasp of dismay, then a swallow came shooting out of the doorway, leaving the messenger standing on the front step and the door hanging open.

He watched his mother’s wild-shaped form arrow across the sky, then slipped out from behind the wall and approached the messenger.

“Are you from Silverymoon?” he asked, that being the grandest place he could think of.

The human woman turned, her eyebrows rising. Her eyes were tawny, a shade lighter than her skin, and full of secret amusement. “You must be young Astarion.”

That someone so grand knew his name was so astonishing that he forgot she hadn’t answered his question. “Yes, ma’am.” He bowed as well as he could, aware that he wasn’t good at it. When he straightened up, the woman was looking past him to his father, who was coming up the long pathway from the vineyard.

“Lady Erikinia sent me,” she said.

“Who?”

She looked back to Astarion, clearly surprised. “The Lady Erikinia? Your great-great…you really don’t know? Hells, the old lady won’t like that one bit.”

“My great-great what?”

But he didn’t get an answer, because by then his father was in earshot. “So it’s time, is it?” his father said, as if continuing a conversation he and the messenger had already begun.