by Tim Pratt
Julen, distracted by the thought of Zaltys removing her armor and, ah, the things she wore underneath, swallowed hard.
“I don’t suppose we dare to build a fire. The smoke would choke us anyway.” She sighed.
“At least it’s not cold. Or hot either. The Underdark has that advantage over the jungle. I napped a bit while I was being dragged. Very refreshing. So once we find a nice bolt-hole, I’ll take first watch.” They moved away from the pool, their way lit faintly by the glowing crystalline structures on the walls, picking their way around tumbled heaps of rocks, moving along the slight but discernible downward slope.
Zaltys produced Julen’s piece of chalk with a grin and handed it over. Every hundred yards or so he left a mark on a stone or stalagmite so they could find their way back. Although, come to think of it, there wasn’t much point. They couldn’t very well climb up the waterfall. They’d have to find another way to the surface. Presumably the derro went up and down all the time, so they could hunt for slaves. Perhaps they’d put up some useful signposts. “Thank you for saving me,” Julen said, more seriously than he usually spoke to his cousin. “I thought I was done for. Several times.”
“Finding you was my only priority,” Zaltys said, patting him on the shoulder in a depressingly sisterly sort of way. “But now that I have, and you haven’t had bits of yourself lopped off for a derro stewpot, it’s back to my original mission. I’m happy to have your help.”
Julen pointed at a ribbon or curling whiteness in the cavern. “Look at that snake. It’s almost like it’s walking along with us.”
“How in the world,” Zaltys said, and then swore, rather inventively. “The damn thing’s not even wet!”
She’s a strange one, Julen thought, but it’s all right. She’s stolen my heart, and I owe her my life, so she can be as strange as she likes. I’m all sewn up.
Krailash woke with a gasp from a terrible dream. He’d been in the Underdark, all his men massacred by a creature from a treacherous race, Alaia without a proper defense—
Ah. Yes. That was all true. Alaia stroked his scaly brow and said, “Shh, it’s all right.” She paused. “Actually, it’s all terrible. We’re trapped miles below the surface and I have no idea where my daughter is. But you’re not going to die.”
“My injuries …” He sat up, noting his armor piled in a rather disorderly heap against the far wall of the small, low-ceilinged cavern. The only light came from the faintly glowing body of the spectral boar, but it was enough to see by. He touched his arms and legs, and though they were sore, the skin red with raised welts and crusted with dried blood, there were no gaping wounds, no shattered bones.
“I am a shaman,” she said. “I couldn’t do much for the dead men we had to leave behind, but I was certainly capable of treating the worst of your wounds. You won’t die right away, at any rate. The hardest part was getting you into this side tunnel—the boar helped me drag you—and we’re still too close to the swordwings’ lair for my comfort, but at least I can’t hear buzzing. I doubt we’re safe, but we’re probably in less danger than we would be out in the open on the Causeway.” She yawned hugely. “And now that you’re awake, I’m going to get some sleep. I have no idea if it’s even day or night, but it’s well past time I got some rest. While I’m out you can formulate a brilliant plan to rescue my daughter and my nephew and get us out of this place alive.” Alaia curled up on her side with her cloak bundled for a pillow, and promptly began to snore.
Krailash stood up and tested his body, moving through a battle kata that used nearly every muscle he had, but only going at half-speed. There were a variety of new aches and pains complementing the old familiar twinges and injuries from long ago, but he was still in relatively sound working order for a dragonborn two-thirds of the way through a life of adventuring. These past few decades serving Alaia and her family had made him soft, but he hadn’t forgotten all his training and experience. The derro’s betrayal had surprised him. Most intelligent creatures would try to save their own lives, unless they were particularly honor bound or fanatical, but these mad slave-takers couldn’t even be counted upon to act in their own self-interest.
Krailash sat and brooded over the dark turn the journey underground had taken while Alaia got her rest. Because doing useful work was the best medicine, he scouted down the corridor. He could understand why Alaia had ducked into the first safe-looking side tunnel, but he disliked being backed into a place with only a single exit. About fifty yards down the corridor, it took a sharp left turn before returning to the Causeway.
A figure robed and cloaked in dusty gray-black cloth sat cross-legged before the entryway to the tunnel. His—her? its?—face was obscured by an equally dark hood, and it held a squirming rat the size of a pheasant in its hands. With a deft twist, the figure snapped the rat’s neck in its gloved hands, then pressed the rat into the shadow where its face should have been. Krailash expected horrible sounds of chewing and slurping and cracking bones, but there was only silence, which was somehow worse—as if the intruder had eaten the rat whole in a single swallow.
“Enjoying your stay?” the figure asked, and the voice was male, Krailash supposed—though it was mostly just whispers and a rasp like a dagger on stone. “I have mixed feelings about this place, myself. I have a certain proprietary interest in darkness and treachery, which suit the Underdark, but there are other forces down here that are more or less inimical to me.”
“Who are you?” Krailash said. He’d encountered a god, once, or rather its avatar, while adventuring decades earlier, and though that had been a relatively benevolent being and this one struck him as rather more malevolent, he felt the same sense of outsized presence, as if the being before him were the fin of a shark protruding from the water, the true extent of his form hidden in unfathomable depths. “Are you the Slime King the derro mentioned?” Krailash didn’t think gods made a habit of directly smiting those who killed their subjects, but perhaps the deity of an insane race would be similarly unpredictable. He gripped his axe, though attacking a god with Thunder’s Edge would be as effective as attacking a great red dragon with a soup spoon.
The god laughed, like silk cloth rustling. “The Slime King? No. Really, rather … no. I’d be offended at the suggestion if my people weren’t whisperers and keepers of secrets. It’s only right you don’t know my name. You don’t need to. I’m here—or not here, but briefly projecting a fragment of my consciousness here—to tell you where to find your wayward child.”
“Zaltys? And Julen?” Krailash said.
“Zaltys, anyway. The other doesn’t interest me. Do you see this serpent?” A long, pale snake slithered out of the god’s sleeve and coiled around Krailash’s feet. “Follow it, and it will lead you where you need to go.”
Krailash frowned. “The last time I followed the directions of a stranger, I was nearly killed by a hive of swordwings. Why should I believe this time will be any different?”
The god shrugged, one shoulder moving higher than the other, as if he were hunchbacked. Was he deformed under those robes? Which gods appeared in crippled forms? Krailash had never spent enough time listening to clerics. “Stumble in the dark and die, then. I don’t mind. Zaltys may succeed without you, but your assistance would certainly help, if you can reach her before something down here kills you. Providing a guide for a while is about as much help as I’m willing to exend to you. And that’s mostly because fostering desperate hope amuses me.”
“Forgive me,” Krailash said, bowing his head, on the theory that gods appreciated signs of respect. “But with your powers, surely you can make sure Zaltys does succeed?”
“Of course I could. But this is the realm of the bloody god Ghaunadaur, and where he doesn’t rule, Lolth the spider-goddess does. Neither of those are friends of mine, and even making myself known here to this extent risks drawing their attention, and bringing … unwanted consequences.”
Just like Quelamia and … someone else, Krailash thought. Afraid to venture
into the dark for fear of calling the attention of foes deadlier than the derro. I’ve never been so glad to be small and unimportant, even if it does mean doing all the work myself.
The god’s robe rustled strangely. “It is more my nature to act indirectly. Biding time until the moment is right, then sending a servant to offer a poisoned cup or slip in a venomous dagger, never …” The god sniffed. “A frontal assault with an axe.” The god rose to his feet—assuming he had feet. “Follow my serpent, or don’t. Either way you’re unlikely to see the sun again, though Zaltys might.”
“But, why do you want to help Zaltys?” Krailash said. “Why would something like you be interested in her?”
“You really don’t remember, do you? What Zaltys truly is? That psion has torn some impressive holes in your mind. But I don’t tell secrets, so I won’t help you recover your abused memories. I have an interest in Zaltys—in her mission and in the woman herself. If you help her, you may not earn my gratitude, but at least you won’t incur my wrath.” The god waved one gloved hand, and the robe collapsed in a heap, dozens of snakes streaming out of the pile and slithering off in all directions. Krailash prodded the cloak with the shaft of his axe—thinking the garment of a god might be useful to Quelamia—but it just deteriorated into clumps of gray cobwebs. The god hadn’t really been there, then, not exactly—it had fashioned a body of serpents and spider webs to deliver its message.
And its guide. The pale snake remained, slithering around and around Krailash’s boots like a housecat nuzzling its owner’s ankles.
“I am not bound by contract or duty to take orders from a god,” Krailash told the snake. “I’ll tell Alaia and let her decide.”
YES, ALL RIGHT,” ZALTYS SAID. “I KNOW IT’S PROBABLY not technically morning, but we woke up, and we had breakfast, so we might as well call it morning.”
“I think it must be closer to midafternoon,” Julen said, peering up at the ceiling of the tunnel as if he might see the sun if he squinted hard enough. “I know it doesn’t matter, but I’ve got a pretty good body clock, and—”
Zaltys suddenly pressed her body against him, flattening him against the tunnel wall. She was a bit taller than he was, so her neck was pressed right against his face, and the scent of her, even sweaty and streaked with cavern dust, was intoxicating and somehow exotic. Her body was pushed against his, and though he couldn’t really feel anything—she was in snakeskin armor, after all, with padding under that, and clothes under that—the proximity made it easier to imagine feeling her body against his more vividly than had ever been possible before.
Mustn’t kiss her neck, he thought. For one thing, she would slap him, or be quietly horrified, or be amused, and any of those outcomes was worse than the consequences of inaction.
Plus, he knew they were probably quite close to dying at the moment, since the only reason she’d flatten him against the wall with her own body was to hide him in her shadowy aura, and the only reason to do that was to avoid being seen by something horrible, probably a monstrous enemy armed with weapons that had far more barbs than necessity dictated. He did his best to peer over her shoulder, noting that although he could see just fine through the cloak’s shadow of concealment, the world was drained of color and rendered in the stark blacks and smudged grays of a charcoal drawing. He could see the derro coming down the tunnel well enough—shock of white hair, enormous white eyes, armed with … a fishing pole?
Admittedly, it appeared that the pole was fashioned from the thighbones of humanoids and baited with a chunk of bleeding organ meat. But still, it was just a fishing pole. He went past them, muttering to himself in Deep Speech, and once he followed a curve and disappeared out of sight, Zaltys slid her body away from his, and color—what color there was down there, where the only light came from clumps of glowing crystal—returned to the world.
“If people are just wandering around going on fishing trips, we must be close to their settlement,” Zaltys said, voice in a low whisper.
“Can you imagine fishing in the pools down here? Or eating what you caught?” Julen mimed gagging.
“I’ve only had trail rations two meals in a row, and already raw cave fish don’t sound bad to me,” Zaltys said. “We’ll have to go carefully now.” She uncased her bow and strung it in a few quick, practiced movements that Julen couldn’t entirely follow—she bent at the waist, hooked one end of the bow on the outside of her ankle, trapped that end with her other foot, bent the whole bow practically inside-out with her hands, and somehow slipped the string over the top end. The result was a relatively compact bow with graceful and sinuous curves his eye couldn’t entirely follow. That was probably because it was a magical bow imbued with mystic geometries, though he was willing to admit it might simply be his ignorance regarding the tools of archery.
“Why don’t you leave it strung all the time? More useful that way.”
She shook her head. “Ruins it. Leave a bow strung, and it starts to hold that bent shape, and doesn’t try to stretch back the way it used to be anymore. You lose all the tension that makes the string tight, and without that tension, there’s no power in the draw, no strength behind the bowshot. Eventually the whole bow would go as slack as an out-of-tune harp, and you’d just have a bent stick with a bit of string tied to it, not a deadly weapon.”
“Yes, all right, but that’s a magic bow, right? I mean, it’s probably immune to normal sorts of stresses.”
Zaltys looked at him with a combination of exasperation and patience he’d grown accustomed to in the days she’d spent trying to teach him the ways of the jungle. “You may be right. But if it were your magical bow, would you risk ruining it? Besides, if you don’t have time to string your bow before the enemy’s upon you, the bow is no good to you anyway. It’s a weapon to use at a distance. If the enemy’s close by, you’re better off with a knife—or even a pointy stick.”
“So what’s the plan, exactly? Pick off all the derro we see with arrows and throwing knives? You’ve got, what, eight or nine arrows? I’ve got a lot of knives, but probably not one for every derro. I suppose we could throw rocks.”
She grimaced. “A frontal assault doesn’t seem like a good idea, no. I guess I imagined there’d be a big sort of cage, maybe made of bamboo, with my family locked in it, and I’d just go untie a bit of rope and open the door and we’d sneak out before anyone noticed us. Maybe there’d be a guard or two to subdue first. Do you suppose it’s going to be like that?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say. As I told you, there were a few things about the derro in the books I read—they’re mad, sunlight causes them excruciating pain, they’re hated by everyone but aberrations, and they’re obsessed with some place called the Far Realm—but they didn’t discuss how or where slaves were kept, and Rainer didn’t like to talk about it. One thing I learned in the Guardians is, however complicated you expect something to be, prepare for it to be at least twice as complicated. Maybe it won’t be, but in that case, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s better to be overprepared.”
“Ha. We’ve got a magic bow, a few arrows, some crossbows made so badly they might tear themselves apart just from the strain of firing, a green knife, and a lovely crystal decanter of clean water. Maybe we can trade that for the slaves.”
“We’ve got our wits too,” Julen pointed out. “And we’re sane, which must be worth something. I wonder if a diplomatic option is possible—the derro mentioned someone called the Slime King, which means there must be some ultimate authority we could conceivably appeal to. I mean, we do come from a ridiculously rich and powerful family, Zaltys. Perhaps we can buy your family out of here? Assuming the sovereign of the derro is less lunatic than his subjects, anyway. The Guardians exist to do the jobs diplomacy can’t, so I don’t mind skulking around, but we haven’t even tried diplomacy.”
Zaltys made a face; Julen was astonished to see she was still pretty anyway. “The thought of negotiating with slave-taking murderers doesn’t really appeal to me, but let’s k
eep it in mind if the other approach fails. We can always claim to be emissaries from the land above. Are you ready? I don’t know what we’ll see when we go around the next curve.”
Julen spread his hands. “Some new wonder, no doubt. Perhaps a pit full of offal, or a stalactite shaped like a humorous body part. Lead on. I’m ready.”
Holding her bow at the ready, moving in a low crouch, Zaltys continued down the tunnel, Julen at her heels.
They got their first look at the derro settlement together.
The tunnel ended in the largest natural cavern they’d yet encountered, so huge the ceiling was impossible to discern, and might have passed for the sky on a cloudy moonless night. There was light, in the form of wagon-wheel-sized spheres of bluish green vapor that acted as miniature floating suns, bobbing in the air at irregular intervals. Before them stretched a vast field of fungus, clearly some sort of farm, and creatures of various races labored among the mushrooms, filling baskets with food—Julen recognized kuo-toa, and gray-skinned humanoids that might have been duergar, and bearlike things with matted fur that he assumed were quaggoths. There were a few figures of unrecognizable species, dressed in voluminous rags—could they be humans? Maybe even Zaltys’s family? A pair of derro roamed lazily among the mushrooms, lashing out with barbed black whips, and the slaves flinched and moaned when the overseers came near, picking mushrooms more quickly.
Beyond the fields, Julen could just make out the silhouette of low buildings, which surprised him—he’d imagined the derro living in warrens of caves, since they didn’t strike him as builders. As they crept along the side of the cavern, skirting the mushroom fields and making their way gradually to the settlement proper, Julen was able to discern more details. The buildings were squat and squarish, made of stone and heavy timbers, exceedingly functional. Julen suspected they’d been built by dwarves—or the dark dwarfkin called duergar—for mining operations, perhaps, and later taken over by derro.
