by Tim Pratt
The battle, such as it was, wound down. Some of the more thuggish derro, armed only with clubs, gathered up their dead, and the bodies of the fallen yuan-ti too. Of course, Scitheron thought sourly. Why leave good meat for the jungle beasts?
There was only one hope. It wasn’t much of a hope. But he could go back and free the anathema from its pit. The god-king was mad, but it still had some connection to Zehir, and perhaps some vestige of loyalty to its people would lead it to strike against the derro? The tales of anathema in battle were legendary, and some of their crumbling frescoes depicted such clashes in gloriously gory detail.
Scitheron could move faster without a mewling infant in his arms. And if the anathema didn’t help him, if he ate him instead, this ape-faced girl might be the last remnant of this particular sect of the serpentfolk. Not that she was likely to survive on her own, among the jungle creatures, but he’d do what he could. He set her gently behind a pillar and covered her in a scattering of broad leaves. She cooed at him again, her eyes bright, her limbs waving uselessly.
This errand might be useless too, but it was the best he could do.
Scitheron approached the pit, but stopped before he reached the great barred roof that covered the anathema’s prison and lair. Voices were speaking, in the guttural tones of Deep Speech, the language of the dwellers below the earth. Scitheron knew some words in that tongue, and thought he heard “treasure” and “king.”
Well, the anathema was something of a treasure, and something of a king, but—
A derro screamed, and Scitheron smiled. The foolish slaver must have lifted the trapdoor that opened into the pit, where sacrifices were given, and become a sacrifice himself. Scitheron slithered closer, and saw one of the derro gazing down into the pit, where, by the sound of things, his fellow was being messily devoured. Scitheron had no weapon, but he was a cleric of Zehir, and he raised his hands to call the power of his god to rack the remaining derro with the pain of a thousand coursing venoms.
Before he could speak the dark prayer, another derro lunged into his vision, cackling, white hair caked with blood, a war pick in one hand and a set of shackles in the other.
Scitheron prayed for death, but Zehir did not oblige him, and he was beaten to the ground, bound, and dragged away. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but with the other, he watched as a derro opened its filthy breeches and pissed a stream down into the anathema’s pit, cackling all the while, and then slammed the trapdoor shut.
So ends this holdfast of the faith, Scitheron thought. The only one of his people left—apart from the trapped anathema—was the girl child, and she would almost certainly be killed by some passing jungle beast before the sun reached the crown of the sky. So Zehir wills, he thought, and saw the faint hint of sunlight touch the sky just before the derro dragged him through the door of the temple to the yawning pit in the floor that led into the devouring darkness.
Before they threw him into the shallowest part of the Underdark, he thought he heard, faintly, the child’s long and lonely cry.
THE GATHERING PARTY WAS COLLECTING BLOSSOMS IN THE first blush of dawn’s light when they heard the child’s cry—sharp, brief, and loud. Krailash frowned, and the three humans under his protection looked up from their work, eyes wide over the white cloth masks that covered their noses and mouths, heavily gloved hands pausing in their work. The dark blue flowers they picked, growing on lush green vines that thoroughly entwined the broken pillars and all the nearby trees, filled the air with their sweet, subtle scent as the women and their guards listened to the silence, and then the cry came again.
“That’s a baby,” one of the women said. “And hungry, by the sound.”
“Keep working,” Krailash said. The immense rust-colored dragonborn cocked his head and hefted his two-headed war axe. “I’ll investigate.”
“Could be a trap,” said Rainer, one of the guards under Krailash’s command. He sounded like he relished the prospect. Rainer was a capable fighter, and more importantly for his job, he looked menacing—he was unusually big for a human, with a scarred face and broad shoulders, and though he wasn’t a half-orc, Krailash thought he might be a quarter-orc, or at the very least had some orcish influence in his bloodline. Though Krailash made sure the guards under his command drilled and kept in shape, there was precious little actual fighting in the job, which could be difficult for men like Rainer, who thrilled to the impact of metal on metal—or, better yet, metal on flesh.
“And who would set this trap?” Krailash said. “The family’s business rivals? Hardly seems likely. If they were this close to the source of the flowers, they wouldn’t need a ruse. They’d already know everything they’d hoped to find out.”
“I was thinking more about the locals,” Rainer said. “We’ve all glimpsed yuan-ti in the ruins nearby.”
Krailash shook his head. His voice was measured, and solid as the iron shield strapped to his back. “No one hates yuan-ti more than I do, or with better reason.” He’d tried to bury the memories of his first time adventuring, young and eager, his scales still shining and unscarred, and the brave companions who’d set forth with him to seek treasure in an abandoned temple in a land beyond the jungle—a temple that, in fact, had been home to a vast tribe of yuan-ti and their fanatical Snaketongue cultists. One of Krailash’s party had turned out to be a traitor, secretly a cultist working for the yuan-ti, who’d led them in as human sacrifices. Only Krailash had survived, and his loathing for the snakemen had only grown more profound over the years. But the few of that race who lurked in the jungle nearby were pitiful, half-starved things barely holding onto life. He said as much to Rainer. “These serpentfolk are broken remnants. Their numbers dwindle every year, and there weren’t enough of them to be a threat a decade ago. They are mad cultists, devoted to feeding the monsters they venerate. When we come too close, they hide in what remain of their temples to Zehir.” The dragonborn spat after speaking the snake-deity’s name.
The child cried again. “That’s no serpent spawn,” Krailash said. “Sounds human to me.” He’d heard the mewling of human children before, and something deep within his armored heart turned over at the sound. His adventuring days were behind him. For the past ten years and more he’d been a protector instead, and that cry was the sound of someone who needed protection. “There are a few human refugees and halfing tribes in the jungle,” he said after a moment. “Though I know of none so close by. We shall see. Rainer, you and Marley come with me. The rest of you, watch the harvesters.”
The young, jug-eared guard Marley swallowed but stepped forward. Rainer drew his sword and took the rear as Krailash pushed his way through the jungle. At nearly seven feet tall, and weighing three hundred pounds, Krailash was not the largest or strongest thing in the jungle, but he was far from the smallest or weakest. After spending so many years on the caravan route, he knew the likeliest dangers well, and broke his trail with confidence, sweeping aside branches and vines with his axe. He paused whenever the child cried out, adjusting his direction as necessary. Sound carried strangely in the jungle, bouncing off the towering trees and occasional overgrown ruins of old halfling settlements and yuan-ti temples.
The wall of green parted before his axe, and a clearing was revealed: a broad courtyard of once neatly-jointed stones, long since jostled out of true by the slow motions of the earth and the growth of tree roots underneath. A squalling, naked child with skin the rich brown of new leather lay in the shadow of a pillar. The stone was carved with the likeness of some extinct jungle beast, eroded into a shape of vague menace by the weather of centuries. Fresh blood spotted the stones nearby, and there were other signs of recent violence: broken bits of weaponry, shreds of torn cloth, a few teeth scattered on cobblestones.
The child was naked, tipped on its back, limbs waving like an overturned turtle. Female. Krailash had always found the sight of human infants vaguely alarming. They were so helpless and needy—unlike dragonborn, who could walk and feed soon after emerging from the s
hell. They became self-sufficient in a few years. When Krailash’s shadow fell across the girl child, shielding her from the sun, she quieted, and gazed up at him with wide eyes the same rich green as terazul leaves. If she found the sight of a seven-foot-tall rust-scaled humanoid dragon frightening, it didn’t show—but for a child so young, everything was new, and most things were probably more interesting than frightening.
Rainer walked the perimeter of the courtyard, looking at the signs of battle, while Marley just swallowed and stared at the scattered teeth, which were not human or dragonborn: they were long, needle shaped, and bloody at the roots.
“The blood’s not dried yet,” Rainer said, crouching to examine the stones. “You can see the undergrowth is broken there, people were dragged away.” He shook his head. “The yuan-ti must be better organized than you thought. Either they missed the child or didn’t think she was worth eating, or raising to be a slave, or sacrificing to their anathemas. The monsters left a trail as broad as a boulevard in Delzimmer, easy to follow … Did you want to investigate?”
Krailash considered. He was philosophically opposed to slavery and the sacrifice of sentient creatures, and besides, this had happened rather too close to the trade route for his liking. Assessing potential dangers to the family trade was part of his job as head of security. If there were unusually bold yuan-ti—or something worse—operating here, it would be good for him to know. “I do.”
Rainer nodded. “What about the girl?”
“Marley will take her to Alaia. You and I will follow this trail.”
“Just us? Alone?”
Krailash showed his teeth. He’d been around humans long enough to learn how to smile. “Alone? Not at all. I’ll have my axe, and you’ll have me.”
Rainer picked up the child and thrust her at Marley, who took her as if she might be venomous. The infant squalled at first, then clutched at the front of the guard’s shirt and tried to gnaw one of his buttons. “She’s a tiny thing,” Rainer said. “Amazing she survived whatever happened here. I’d never want one of my own, of course, but I can see the appeal. Cute.” Rainer was almost as tall as Krailash and not far short of his weight, all of it battle-hardened muscle, so he could afford to speak sentimentally, whereas someone scrawny like Marley had to make a far greater show of toughness. Rainer touched the girl’s cheek. “She makes you feel … protective, doesn’t she?”
Krailash nodded, though he knew his protective instinct sprang from a different source—he didn’t find tiny apes cute, exactly, but he hated to see the harmless and the innocent endangered. “Step quickly, Marley, and be watchful. Tell Alaia we’ll report back before nightfall—and if we don’t, she should close ranks and move the caravan out.” Krailash doubted the woman would obey, at least not readily. In theory, Krailash’s word was absolute in matters of caravan security, but if he wasn’t physically present to make sure Alaia listened, she might decide she knew better, and stay to harvest another day.
Hard to blame her, when a day spent gathering flowers would eventually translate to enough gold to buy a small house in town or a large farm in the country.
Marley nodded and set off, the infant nuzzled against him, chin resting on his shoulder. The child’s green eyes seemed to look straight at Krailash, but it was surely coincidence—as he understood it, infant humans were appallingly nearsighted, lacking the keen vision every dragonborn had at birth, lost in a world of blurs and light.
“After you,” Rainer said, and Krailash grunted, looking away from the child to the path broken in the jungle brush. He walked slowly, axe in his hands, trying to make sense of the trail sign, but he was no ranger. Should have called for the head of the caravan scouts. All he could tell was that a great many people had passed this way, some resisting that passage violently. The path was big enough for Rainer to walk beside him, and they moved in silence for a long distance, the jungle gradually closing back over them from the relative openness around the ruined courtyard. Whoever had attacked the child’s tribe hadn’t attempted to cover the tracks of their departure at all, which suggested either stupidity or confidence.
Rainer tripped over a stone and swore. That stone was the first of many—they were back in the ruins, among the rubble and fragments of vine-encrusted walls. Colorful snakes slithered away from the path as they approached, which could mean there were yuan-ti nearby—the serpentfolk tended to attract snakes—or it could mean nothing at all. The jungle was full of slithering things.
The path was harder to follow in the ruins, since there was no longer a pathway of broken and crushed vegetation, but some of the prisoners had been bleeding, and spots of blood left something of a trail. They picked their way over the stones and over broken bits of statuary until they reached a relatively intact wall that butted up against a huge doorway: two massive, weathered stone slabs standing upright, with a third slab laid across the top. The structure still had a roof, though it was damaged and pocked with gaping holes. Anything could be waiting inside.
“Well,” Rainer said, voice pitched low. “Do we go in?”
Krailash listened intently, but didn’t hear any signs of life inside. He knew from bitter experience that prisoners, even cowed ones, weren’t usually silent—there were sobs, whimpers from injuries, fierce whispers. “I will go in,” he said at last. “You wait here, to make sure no one ambushes us from outside.”
“Yes sir.” Rainer lifted his sword, a tight grin on his face.
Krailash stepped through an archway wide enough that he couldn’t have touched both sides with his arms out-retched, and into what might once have been a temple. The carvings on the wall were relatively well-preserved, and they looked like the work of yuan-ti, all twining serpents and fangs and a many-headed snake he recognized as one aspect of Zehir, a god of poison, darkness, and treachery. Krailash, like most dragonborn, valued honor above all else, and this vile deity of the snakemen was abhorrent to him. He was glad their settlement had crumbled so far, but sorry they still persisted at all.
He took a step forward, eyes adjusting to the dimness just in time to stop him from plunging into the pit that filled the center of the temple.
At first, Krailash assumed the ten-foot-wide hole was part of some dark ceremonial function of the yuan-ti temple, who were said to keep pits of snakes and to hold their venerated monsters underground to receive sacrifices, but a moment of study showed him the chasm in the floor was actually evidence of some catastrophe. The edges were cracked and ragged, stones heaved up and statuary toppled on the edges, with only impenetrable darkness within. Was it a sinkhole, or …?
No. There was a single bright drop of blood on the edge of the pit. The prisoners had been led here and taken down into the dark. Perhaps not yuan-ti slavers at all, then, but something worse: some subterranean dwellers from the Underdark, the vast system of caverns, tunnels, lightless seas, underground rivers, and hidden cities that legend said formed a savage world beneath the world. Yuan-ti certainly weren’t the only creatures with fangs in their mouths. Krailash shivered. Despite his reptilian appearance, he was as warm-blooded as any human, and the thought of innocents dragged into those lightless depths by savage drow, or brutish kuo-toa, or fouler races he’d never heard of, chilled his blood and troubled his heart.
Well. He wouldn’t be going down there. But he could do something about this particular doorway to the depths—
He heard something from outside, a dull thud that could have been a falling stone from the ruins, or something more ominous. “Rainer!” he shouted, and then looked uneasily at the hole in the floor, wondering if his voice would call attention to whatever lived within. The other guard didn’t answer, and Krailash hurried for the entryway, emerging into the light to find Rainer gone, his sword on the ground. A faint shout gave him a direction to follow, and he ran deeper around the side of the temple where he found another crack in the earth, this one smaller, but opening on the same black depths.
Rainer’s helmet rested, upside-down, on the edge of the p
it.
Whatever had stolen the child’s village away had stolen Rainer too. And it was Krailash’s fault for coming alone, and not bringing sufficient support. He considered leaping into the dark, roaring and swinging his axe, but Rainer had been a capable fighter too, and that hadn’t helped him. The enemy could be using poison, traps, ambush, anything. Rainer’s loss was a blow, but the safety of the caravan was paramount. With a last look around—the jungle could hide almost anything—Krailash set off for the caravan at a run. He needed help to neutralize this threat.
Loath as he was to admit it, he needed magic. Magic could accomplish in moments what it would take twenty men with shovels and picks a tenday to do.
KRAILASH STOPPED BY THE HARVESTING OPERATION TO assuage his worry that the whole party had been kidnapped by dwellers from the Underdark, but everything there was business as usual, the workers carefully plucking petals from the terrible, beautiful flowers and putting them away in baskets. “Where are Rainer and Marley?” one of the guards asked, but Krailash ignored him, barked orders to pull the harvesting detail back to the caravan, and led the way. The trip to the camp didn’t take long, but to Krailash, it felt like the march of a thousand miles through hostile territory in wartime. When they reached the camp, he finally allowed himself a deep exhalation of relief. The perimeter was marked with wooden posts topped by faintly-pulsing purple and red crystals that their wizard, Quelamia, assured him would keep the mindless jungle beasts away, and his sentries were on the lookout for other dangers. Krailash hurried past the paddock where the oxen were contentedly munching their feed and producing copious quantities of manure—fortunately upwind of the camp proper—and hailed his guardsmen. “Tell Alaia I need a moment of her time,” Krailash said, and a messenger dashed away.
