by Tim Pratt
Since then, though, the derro had made improvements. The structures were embellished with lean-tos and more elaborate additions made of cloth and salvaged wood, and many of the roofs boasted spindly towers of splintering wood and, perhaps, bone, with platforms on top, though none were currently inhabited. Every roof sported at least one long, slender spike, and most had several, all draped with garlands made of small bones and topped with skulls: human, derro, duergar, kuo-toa, and others that were unrecognizable. Derro hurried in and out of the buildings, occasionally pausing to speak or attempt to stab one another, some weeping, others giggling, some in scholarly robes carrying armloads of scrolls, and one with an enormous floppy bright green hat that seemed as out of place as an ornamental goldfish in a chamberpot.
“Nice place they have here,” Julen said. “I must hire their decorator for our summer estate.” Zaltys shushed him, and made a run from the edge of the cavern to a refuse-pile on the outskirts of the cluster of buildings. The heap seemed to consist mainly of broken bits of armor and shattered swords and other odd lengths of ruined metal, which made sense when Julen realized the building nearest the pile was a smithy, sparks of orange light just visible through the open doorway and the clang of a hammer on metal ringing out.
Zaltys peered around the edge of the heap, and Julen did his best to look too without exposing himself too much. There were derro passing by near enough that he could have hit one with a throwing knife. Entirely too close for comfort, and no sign of a bamboo cage full of slaves with their bags all packed, just awaiting rescue. A search of the buildings would prove difficult. In a normal city, Julen would have waited until dark, and then crept around for some discreet housebreaking reconnaissance, but who knew when the derro slept? What if they stayed awake in shifts? In eternal darkness, “nocturnal” and “diurnal” cease to be useful descriptive terms.
Beyond the smithy, there was a sort of central courtyard, with an enormous glowing blue-green sphere bobbing in the center. Behind that loomed a building almost as large as the biggest counting house in Delzimmer, with broad stone steps leading up to the towering, square-edged, rather boring-looking pillars in front. Several of the more scholarly-looking derro were bustling up and down the steps, though they weren’t that much different from their leather-clad brethren; while Julen watched, one derro in a patched midnight blue robe crept up on another one that was reading a scroll, stabbed the reader in the kidneys, snatched up the scroll, and scampered away into the huge building. None of the other derro passing by paid the least bit of attention to the casual murder and theft.
“Do you think the slave pens are on the other side of the mushroom field?” Zaltys whispered.
Julen shrugged. “Makes as much sense as anything else. I doubt they’re in that palace or university or bathhouse or whatever that building is.”
“Probably where the Slime King lives,” Zaltys said. “So keep it in mind if we need to try that diplomatic option. If we circle around the settlement and come back to the fields on the other side—”
Suddenly the sphere of blue-green light in the central courtyard began to twist and writhe, tentacles of eye-wrenching color lashing out as the whole thing roiled. A high-pitched whine filled the air, and all the derro passing by stopped and stared at the light. Julen exchanged a glance with Zaltys. “What—” he began, but then went silent.
Something emerged from the ball of light. The creature was larger than the portal through which it arrived—Julen’s eyes watered trying to make sense of that fact—and the thing was rather spherical itself, with small eyes bobbing on long stalklike appendages, most of its face taken up by a single, much larger, eye above a vast mouth full of long and pointed teeth. A crowd of derro converged on it from all sides, and two or three fell as shimmering rays beamed from some of the creature’s eyestalks—one derro burst into flames, and one disintegrated like he was made of dust, while a third froze in place like a living statue. There were too many derro from too many directions though, and they threw opaque nets—essentially oversized black blankets, though presumably made of something stronger than ordinary cloth—over the creature, blinding it, and began dragging it down to the ground by the simple force of two-score arms pulling. Once it was down, they bundled the creature up like a sack of old clothes, then beat the sack with clubs until it stopped moving. A few of the derro tied off the ends of the nets and began dragging it up the stairs into the building Julen had begun thinking of as the Collegium, because it reminded him of the university in Delzimmer.
“What just happened?” Julen said.
Zaltys stared at him. “You’re the expert. Tell me what we saw.”
Julen shook his head. “I think that, that floating eye thing, was a beholder.”
Zaltys took in a hiss of air through clenched teeth. “Even I’ve heard of those. Eye-tyrants. Supposed to be some of the most fearsome monsters in the world, and these derro brought it down like it was a routine occurrence.”
“Maybe it is,” Julen said, looking around the cavern with growing horror. “It came out of that bobbing ball of light. What if it’s not just a magical lamp? Derro can see quite well in the dark, and most of their slaves can too, so what would they want with lights in their town? What if the light is sort of a side effect—”
“They’re portals,” Zaltys said, which rather spoiled Julen’s plans for a grand reveal of that speculation, but he nodded.
“Not wide-open portals, I’d guess, or we’d see more traffic streaming through them, but at least places where portals sometimes open. But portals to where?”
“The Far Realm,” said a voice behind them.
Stupid, not to set a guard, Julen thought. But if it’s just one of them, maybe we can …
He and Zaltys turned. There was just one derro standing before them, smiling—it was an incongruous expression on such a hideous face—and wearing a robe covered in what appeared to be living, blinking eyes of various hues. Zaltys thought the derro was female, though she didn’t look noticeably different from the males—a trifle shorter, perhaps, but mostly the difference was in the higher pitch of the voice. The derro woman wasn’t even armed, unless the obviously magical robe counted as a weapon. But there were another dozen derro arrayed a dozen steps behind her, holding their wicked little hand crossbows, some of them muttering to themselves, others bouncing on the balls of their feet, and one scratching his chin with the barbed point of the bolt in his loaded weapon. They looked the sort to shoot on a whim and not bother to ask any questions later.
“Our spells aren’t perfect yet,” the smiling derro said. “We’ve managed to create pockets of potential in which semistable portals to the Far Realm sometimes form, and many of us have developed the ability to open what might best be termed windows to the Far Realm, through which the mind-altering wonders of that place may be glimpsed—it’s instructive for our study, and useful as a weapon, since such glimpses of the Far Realm tend to drive the uninitiated mad, at least temporarily. Long enough to club them over the head and chop off their arms and legs, anyway. Would you like to see? No? Very well. Then if you don’t think we should drive you mad and experiment on you, what should we do with you instead? Armed invaders don’t often make it this close to our settlement, and I’m curious why you’ve come.”
Julen was fairly certain that was a trick question, so he was glad when Zaltys spoke up, because it meant he didn’t have to. “We are emissaries from the surface, with a proposal for the Slime King.”
The derro in the back began to murmur among themselves, the points of their crossbows wavering but not entirely moving aside—shifted enough that their shots would probably maim rather than kill, which was small comfort.
The smiling derro took no notice. “I am a savant of the People, sometimes called the Slime Clan by the lesser races, and I am in personal service to the Slime King. You may give me any message to pass on. I’m sure by the time I have an answer for you you’ll still be alive, though possibly not in exactly the same body y
ou started out in.”
“The message is to be delivered personally,” Zaltys said firmly. “Or we’ll simply leave, and your king won’t ever know what we have to offer.”
“Leave? No, no, that’s not likely.”
“Wait here, Julen, while I show them what we can do,” Zaltys said, and faded from sight like a shadow disappearing in the sun.
Wait here, Julen thought. Like I have any choice. It was a bold bluff, no mistaking. He was sure his admiration for his cousin’s bravery would be a great comfort to him if he died.
Zaltys reappeared a moment later on top of one of the spindly towers nearby, bow drawn, arrow unmistakably pointed at the savant, who’d finally stopped smiling. “This is a good sniper position,” Zaltys said. “If you had any sense, you’d have bowmen of your own posted here.”
“Yes, fine,” the savant said. “You can make yourself very nearly invisible in dim light. We’re all very impressed. But didn’t you notice my robe is covered with eyes? I can see invisible things, girl, which might hamper your escape.”
“Oh,” Zaltys said, nonplussed but quickly recovering. “Not if I put an arrow through your eye, it wouldn’t.”
“A point,” the savant said. “Now come down from there. Don’t make me open a portal and drive you mad. Playing with your food is slightly less fun if the food’s too mentally distressed to realize it’s being eaten. I’ll take you to the Slime King. There may even be a reward in it for me, like getting to watch you be consumed by something with more eyes than tentacles and more tentacles than teeth. Asking to meet with the Slime King is like a fish asking to be hooked and gutted and worn like a hat.”
“You wear gutted fish like hats?” Julen asked.
“Only on Fish Day,” the savant said impatiently. “Now come down from there, archer.”
Zaltys faded from sight again, and reappeared beside Julen. Most of the guards wandered off when it became apparent there would be no immediate killing, but a couple of others trailed along as the savant led them toward the Collegium—including one with glowing green smears in his beard.
“I know you,” Julen said.
“Me too,” Zaltys said. “I tied you up and left you by a waterfall. No hard feelings?”
The derro grunted and said something in a strange language. The other guard said, “He’s taken a vow of incomprehensibility. He speaks Deep Speech to those who speak Common, Dwarvish to those who speak Elvish, like that.”
“But he spoke to me in my own language earlier,” Zaltys said.
The guard shook his head. “Impossible. Must have been someone else. We derro are nothing if not rigorously consistent.”
“So what did he say just now?” Julen asked.
The derro shrugged. “I respect his vow, so I choose not to understand him.”
“Oh.” Julen thought for a moment. “What’s Fish Day?”
“No idea,” the derro said. “Never heard of it. Savants are all lunatics if you ask me. So. Be honest. Are you the agents of Zhentarim here to kill the Slime King and allow me to ascend to the throne?”
“No,” Zaltys said carefully. “That’s not us.”
“Ah well. They’ll be along soon enough I’m sure. My sister’s skull, I keep it in my sleep-hole, it told me my time of glory is nearly here, and I just need to bide my time, so that’s me, here I am, I’m biding.”
Bug-eater said something and laughed.
“Truer words were never spoken,” the other derro said, and wandered off just as they reached the broad stone steps. The derro who’d been murdered in front of the Collegium earlier was completely naked, his clothes all stolen, and another derro in a filthy white apron crouched by his head and methodically shaved off his hair with a rust-speckled straight razor.
The inmates are running the asylum, Julen thought.
“The Slime King is quite deep in the chambers below,” the savant said, pausing between two massive pillars. “I can’t be responsible if you’re killed by anything along the way. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me your message?”
Zaltys shook her head.
The savant sighed. “Fine, then. Let’s go.”
Bug-eater said something that sounded as if it were meant to be reassuring, but followed up by pointing his crossbow at them meaningfully, so Zaltys and Julen went after the savant. “Welcome to the center of derro innovation and magical science,” she said. “Mind your step. Some of the puddles down here will melt your feet off and feast on the slurry left behind.”
Julen glanced down, instinctively looking for such deadly puddles, and noticed the pale snake was still with them, slithering along unnoticed in their wake. Definitely something strange going on there, but compared to the mysteries and oddities he’d encountered in recent days, it barely rated a mention.
WE’RE FOLLOWING A SNAKE,” ALAIA SAID. “AND AS FAR as I can tell, it’s just a snake. I’m fairly well attuned to the primal whispers of the natural world, and they tell me: ordinary cave snake, lives on bugs and rodents, no particular intelligence.”
“And yet, you’d think a normal cave snake would want to avoid a heavily-armed dragonborn instead of behaving like a frisky kitten.” Krailash’s head moved in a constant side-to-side sweep, his senses alert for the possibility of ambush, with Alaia holding the sunrod aloft. They were back on the Causeway, a broad avenue of blood-smeared stone smashing straight as an arrow shaft through caverns large and small. The snake led them along at a steady but not punishing pace, and Alaia’s spirit boar acted as their forward scout.
“I doubt that snake’s afraid of us,” Alaia said. “If it lives down here it’s dodged significantly worse things. It’s probably just leading us to its favorite mouse hole.”
“I doubt that. A god set it on this path.” Krailash skirted one of the smears of dried blood.
“So you said. I believe in the gods, of course, but I’ve never had much use for them. I revere the wild, and the wild was here before most of the gods, and it will outlast them. It’s hard to imagine a god taking any interest in our situation, though, especially one as unpleasant as you describe.”
“You’ve never doubted one of my reports in the thirty years we’ve been together,” Krailash said mildly. “Is there a reason you doubt me now?”
She scowled. “All right. I believe you saw what you say you saw.” He started to object, and she held up her hand. “And I suppose I believe your interpretation of what you saw too. A god. A god who made a body out of snakes, who takes an interest in Zaltys, who loves secrets and whispers … I find the idea rather troubling. I don’t want to believe it. The implications are too disturbing. I want to believe you were deceived by some trickster creature, some lying Underdark denizen, a larva mage or a drow illusionist or something.”
“Not impossible,” Krailash said. “But we’re lost in the Underdark, and the snake, at least, gives us something to follow.”
“Last time we followed something down here it led us into a trap,” she grumbled.
The snake slithered toward the jagged opening of a tunnel leading off the Causeway. “A change of direction,” Krailash said. “A hopeful sign.”
“Mark my words, we’ll find nothing but a nest of newborn rats. Which might make a nice change from these trail rations. You could break your teeth on them.”
“Perhaps you could, but my teeth are of altogether stronger stuff.”
They stepped into a cavern spotted with blood, the floor scattered with bits of shredded flesh. Predators and prey of the Underdark had clashed there, and recently, but there was no sign of any living monsters.
Or so he thought at first. Something fluttered near the ceiling, and Krailish squinted upward, fearing they’d stumbled upon another swordwing. He’d expected the Underdark to be full of things that crawled and oozed and slithered; the presence of things that flew was even worse. But whatever the creature was, it wasn’t the size of a swordwing, and seemed more like a bobbing balloon with trailing tentacles.
Grell. The derro
who’d led them to the swordwing hive had mentioned such things: blind floating hunters bearing barbed tentacles. Krailash was a melee fighter, but he would have given much for a javelin or a bow or even a sling; the creature was beyond the range of his axe, even if he made a great leap. He exhaled his icy breath upward, hoping to stun the creature and make it fall to the ground, where he could make short work of it with Thunder’s Edge. But the creature floated aside with surprising agility, and Krailash’s breath just limned a few stalactites in frost.
“Krailash, what—” Alaia said, but then a great pain burst in his head, and black flowers blossomed in his vision, and he fell to his knees. His mouth filled with the taste of copper and rotten meat, and Alaia was shouting but he couldn’t answer, he couldn’t understand, there was something in his mind—
He stood up, though not because he willed it. His vision took on a reddish tinge. The grell is controlling me, he thought, terrified, as he raised his axe. He tried to fling the weapon away, but the effort was futile. Gods, the horrors of the Underdark were unending. He tried to tell Alaia to run. Even with her powers, he might be able to strike her down, especially because she was looking at him with concern, asking if he was all right. She hadn’t noticed the grell floating high in the cavern like a puppetmaster pulling Krailash’s strings. If she didn’t try to defend herself, he could split her in two with one blow of Thunder’s Edge, and what greater horror could there be for one such as himself, who held honor sacred above all else? To murder the woman he’d spent the past three decades trying to protect?
Krailash raised his axe high.
