Venom in Her Veins

by Tim Pratt

  “Go on, then,” said one of the two guards inside the door. “The king awaits.”

  Zaltys and Julen stepped tentatively forward. The ceiling there was high, and every footstep on the neatly-swept stone floor rang and echoed. They skirted wide around the pool—Zaltys noted that it was easily large enough to hold an aboleth, and wondered if the Slime King lurked below. Perhaps the more human figure on the far side was merely a secretary or translator.

  But nothing broke the surface of the pool, so they continued around it, to the little pocket of normality formed by the arrangement of tables and lamps and chairs. They went around to the other side of the desk, and faced the person working there.

  It was a small human woman wearing a simple housedress, peering at a sheet of parchment with her nose very close to the paper. The woman was quite old, the dark skin of her hands thin and wrinkled, her hair as white as a derro’s but much more fine, pulled back in a bun on top of her head. After a moment she looked up from the paper. “Ah. The emissaries from the surface world. I’ve been following your progress. It’s remarkable you made it this—” She broke off abruptly and stared at Zaltys. “Extraordinary,” she murmured, and tilted her head, gazing at Zaltys’s face as if checking her own appearance in a mirror.

  Zaltys wasn’t sure what to say. Of all the things she’d expected to find when she entered the chamber of the Slime King, a rather grandmotherly old woman was not one of them.

  “Are you … the Slime King?” Julen said.

  The woman glanced at him, inclined her head, then went back to staring at Zaltys.

  “It’s only that … forgive me,” Julen stammered. “From the name, I supposed …”

  With obvious effort, she tore her gaze from Zaltys and looked at Julen. “You expected something different. Fair enough. It’s just a title, really. I’m sure the original Slime King was both male and slimy, but not all of them have been. There was an aboleth once … and a mind flayer—that didn’t end well, he’s displayed upstairs. In fact, they both are. And for a while, I understand, the Slime King was actually just the corpse of a grell philosopher. That king is generally ranked as one of the four or five best in the clan’s history. He was supposed to have been very contemplative. Anyway, it hardly made anything worse. But I’ve been the Slime King for some time now.” She looked back at Zaltys. “Tell me, young lady. Where are you from?”

  “Delzimmer.”

  The Slime King shook her head. “Not originally. Not with that coloring. The Delzimmer folk are paler by far, and the shape of your face … Where do your people hail from?”

  “That’s kind of why we’re here—” Julen began. “Silence, human,” the Slime King hissed. Then she looked back at Zaltys and said sweetly, “Do you know, dear? Where your people come from?”

  “The jungle,” Zaltys said. “My village was taken by slavers when I was a baby. I was the only one left behind.”

  The Slime King sat back in her chair and laced her hands across her stomach. “I thought so,” she said. “Your face—it looks almost like mine did, when I was your age. It’s lovely to see you, child. Family is so important.”

  “What are you talking about?” Zaltys said.

  “My name is Iraska,” the Slime King said. “And I’m either your great-great-grandmother or your great-great-aunt.” She smiled, showing her teeth for the first time, and her canines were long and curved, like the fangs of a serpent.

  Things in camp were going badly. Having the big boss, her daughter, the head of security, and half a dozen of the most dedicated guards leave unexpectedly tended to lead to a certain amount of shirking, lollygagging, malingering, and—even for those who weren’t actively lazy—general confusion and delay.

  Worst of all, Glory had to let people see her, and remember her, and try to convince them that she was, in fact, qualified to give them orders. The morning after everyone else went underground, she stood in the center of camp on an improvised platform made of stacked crates and cleared her throat. The workers having their breakfast didn’t pay her any mind, and she realized she was still—automatically—blurring herself out of their mental vision. So she’d made herself visible, startling a few people nearby, and cleared her throat again. “Hello. Everyone. My name is Glory. I’m, ah, part of the camp leadership. Alaia and Krailash are off on an important errand, so they’ve put me in charge, and—”

  “We’ve never seen you before!” one of the cooks shouted, the outburst followed by general muttering, including some, unfortunately, from armed men eating their breakfasts alongside the laborers.

  “I keep to myself,” Glory said. “But I’m here now, so if there are any problems, you can bring them to me. Otherwise things should just proceed as—”

  “She’s a tiefling,” a guard said. “You can’t trust them. She’s practically a devil. Probably sent from some cult of Asmodeus out in the jungle to seduce us all to destruction.” He sounded somewhat hopeful on that last point, and Glory wished she’d worn something a little less revealing. She wasn’t used to worrying about that sort of thing. She could sense the mood of the crowd, and while they weren’t about to attack her with pikes and torches, they also weren’t taking her leadership seriously. Not that she wanted to be a leader anyway.

  Then Quelamia mounted the platform next to her, resplendent in her gold and green robes, holding a staff of living wood, her otherworldly eyes seeming to look at every face in the crowd at once. “You all know me,” she said, her voice loud and clear and carrying, though she didn’t particularly seem to be raising her voice. “I am the senior wizard of the Traveling Serrats, and I have sheltered you from storms, slain your enemies, and punished your transgressions, as your leader Alaia variously willed. I say to you now: this tiefling has been granted the authority to rule the caravan during Alaia’s absence. Her voice is the voice of the family, and to disobey her is to disobey the family, with all the dire consequences that implies. Do you all understand?”

  The crowd shouted affirmation, and Quelamia nodded to those assembled, nodded rather more curtly to Glory, and descended the platform again, going about her business.

  “Okay then,” Glory said. “As I was saying, if you have any concerns, you can come to me, otherwise just go about your jobs. You all know what to do.”

  Before she could come down off the platform, people began shouting at her. The cooks complained that the hunting parties weren’t bringing back enough fresh meat. The hunters complained that half the barrels of arrows brought from the city were junk, shafts made of green wood and fletched with duck feathers, which was apparently an outrage. The interim guard captain, appointed by Krailash, had some question about guard rotations, which Glory couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The laborers wanted to know if they should go back to the same terazul vines they’d been harvesting yesterday, or move over to a more promising patch on the other side of some particular ruins, with the caveat that if they were supposed to go there, they’d need more guards, not to mention some men to go in and clear out some kind of poisonous bush first. The scouts wanted to know if they should take men to destroy a troop of guardian apes they’d noticed, though they were about half a mile outside the official perimeter, just in case the apes came over to make trouble later. The guard who’d worried she was here to seduce them all wanted to know why he hadn’t seen her around camp before and let her know he had a flask of some fine liquor if she was looking to unwind. And, and, and …

  Glory began to rub her temples as a headache started to throb. How did Alaia deal with this? There didn’t seem to be people pounding on her door all the time. Probably Krailash handled a lot of it, and many of these people probably took care of their own damn problems rather than bother the supreme boss, but as far as they were concerned Glory was just a hireling like them, not Family, and thus, not untouchable.

  Eventually Glory got them to form an orderly line and ask their questions one at a time, and then she just looked inside their minds to see what they thought the best decision
would be, and then simply agreed with those, for the most part—she’d learned long ago that at least half the people who ask questions really just want confirmation that their inclinations are the right way to go.

  The guard who wanted to share his liquor was told to come to her wagon after sunset, because even if he was an idiot and a bigot, he had lovely biceps, and she could always make him forget he’d even talked to her afterward. Mind-controlling someone into wanting physical intimacy was a monstrous crime, but wiping the mind of an attractive moron after some consensual fun was just sensible relationship management. Her power had spared her a lot of bad consequences from ill-advised one-night frolics. Shame it wasn’t sparing her from her first horrible foray into leadership.

  “It’s hard bossing people around when you don’t want them to know you exist,” Glory complained, dropping into a chair in Alaia’s trailer. The eladrin wizard Quelamia was there, apparently staring at nothing, which probably meant she was doing very important mental work. Glory had never peeked into Quelamia’s mind—wizards were touchy about their secrets, and the fey were hard to read anyway, and okay, Glory had tried once, and Quelamia had some formidable psychic barriers—but she wondered, sometimes, what it was like inside that cool and aloof head. Green and tranquil, quite unlike Glory’s own fiery red and char black thoughts? “Feel free to, you know, jump in and tell people what to do out there in camp any time. I’m not cut out for managing people. At least, not that way. Making people do stuff is one thing. Telling them to do things is a whole different proposition. I don’t like it.”

  “Do you believe in evil?” Quelamia said. She didn’t look at Glory, but the psion decided to assume the question was meant for her.

  She pointed to her horns. “I’m a tiefling. I’ve got evil in my ancestry. Of course I believe in it. Is this about Zaltys again?”

  “But many call their enemies evil,” Quelamia said, “even if they are not so different from themselves. Some would call the Serrats evil. The effects of terazul are often terrible, and without the family’s trade, that poison would be far less widespread. And how many evil creatures consider themselves evil? There are some, certainly—degenerate races and dark gods and undead wizards and ancient dragons that revel in cruelty, but I’m sure many of them don’t actually consider themselves evil so much as superior. More important than anyone else, and willing to do terrible things to further their own interests, no more concerned about the deaths they’d cause than Krailash worries about stepping on ants. Some of those creatures are simply mad. Is madness the same as evil? Are the evil, by definition, also mad? Even when they seem cold, calculating, and sane?”

  “Believing you’re more important—more real—than everyone else,” Glory said. “And acting on that belief. That’s a pretty good working definition of evil.”

  “Then most thinking creatures are evil, at least sometimes.” Quelamia finally looked at her. “Most beings are selfish. True altruism is the province of rare holy ones.”

  “Or the mad,” Glory offered. “There’s a thin line between holy and crazy just like there’s a thin line between evil and crazy.”

  “Another question, then. A simpler one: Is it evil to commit evil acts in pursuit of good? Betrayal, murder, lies—are these still crimes if they’re done for a just cause, and if that cause is won?”

  “Pretty much every king in the world would say no. Sometimes you have to commit horrors to prevent worse horrors. Every war that’s ever been called a just war operated on those terms.” Glory yawned. Working for a living was exhausting, and she definitely counted managing as working. “Why the philosophical musings?”

  “Perhaps the only real evil is that of aberrations,” Quelamia said. “Outsiders from other realms—the Far Realm—creatures that don’t belong here, creatures who poison reality itself by their very nature. Entities which are toxic to nature and rationality and beauty and loyalty and love. Is that possible? That every other thing we call evil is simply a matter of degree, an issue of point of view? But then even aberrations may not be evil inherently—in their own world, they may be perfectly right and proper. It is only the context of their wrongness that makes us call them evil. Can I truly believe that?”

  “You lost me,” Glory said. “My moral system is pretty much at the level of: murder, bad. Giving poor people bread, good. And do what you have to do in order to survive, because dead people don’t have the luxury of torturing themselves about whether they’re good or evil.”

  “You’re right,” Quelamia said. “There’s something to be said for pragmatism.” She touched Glory’s shoulder, hand as light as a dried leaf. “We do what we must. What more can be expected of us?”

  “So, is this about Zaltys? You think we should have gone into the Underdark with Alaia and Krailash? Because I have to admit, I do feel guilty about that, but I think I’d feel even more guilty about letting my brain get eaten by a mind flayer.”

  “I made the right choice,” the eladrin said, rising. “I believe that. I must. And you must make peace with yourself about your own choices.” She swept out of the room like a queen taking leave of her court, and Glory had never been more tempted to try to knock down Quelamia’s mental barriers and read her thoughts.

  She was a little bit afraid of what she might find out if she dared.

  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU CONVINCED ME TO RIDE DOWN A waterfall,” Alaia said, wringing icy water from her long hair, drops pattering the corpses of kuo-toa. “And I can’t believe you were right.”

  “Going down the waterfall was the obvious path forward,” Krailash said. “There were clear signs that a body had been dragged down the tunnel, and no sign of it being dragged back out again, so where else could it have gone? I can’t be completely certain Zaltys was here.” He rose from his examination of the dead fish creatures. “But these were definitely killed by arrows—not crossbow bolts, but arrows—and the only archer I know of down here is Zaltys. These broken lengths of chain on the ground are from the shackles the derro use on their slaves. I think Zaltys managed to catch up with the derro who took Julen, and saved him. I think these were his chains.”

  “Where do the kuo-toa come in?” Alaia said.

  Krailash shrugged, the padding under his armor squelching. “Probably just a hunting party that swam through underwater tunnels and came upon Zaltys at the wrong time.” He went to the edge of the still pool and peered down. He’d very nearly drowned, coming down the waterfall in plate armor, with his massive axe in his hands. The weight of arms and armor had dragged him to the bottom of the pool, and he’d had to use all his strength to climb up the rough side of the pool, underwater, and haul himself onto the dry cavern floor. He was lucky he hadn’t had to unhook his armor and leave it rusting at the bottom of the pool, if it had been a little deeper, he would have. Meanwhile, Alaia’s magic robe hadn’t even gotten wet, water sliding off it like rain from a duck’s feathers.

  The water was dark, but still, and his eyesight was very good. “There’s the corpse of a derro down there,” he said. “And what looks like a burned-out sunrod. But no Julen, and no Zaltys. Which means I’m right, and they’ve continued on their journey.”

  “So let’s follow in their footsteps.”

  Krailash shook his head. “I have to take off my armor and try to squeeze some of the water out of the padding underneath—the weight is impossible. I’ve never wished for fire breath before, but it would be useful—some heat to dry these things out would be wonderful.”

  “Perhaps I can work something out,” Alaia said.

  Krailash nodded and began unbuckling his armor, letting the weight drop and groaning with the pleasure of being unencumbered. Plate armor wasn’t pleasant to wear for extended periods of time, and he was well aware that he didn’t smell as good as he might—in that respect, the dunk in icy water had done him some good. Alaia was watching him, and he grinned. “Avert your eyes, woman. Have you no modesty?”

  “I’m not attracted to lizards,” she said dryly. “
Your virtue is safe with me.”

  When he’d stripped off his padded armor, he did his best to drape the pieces over jutting rocks to dry as Alaia instructed. She took a carved totem from her pack and began to chant in a melodic singsong, and gradually a breeze began to flow through the room, gradually increasing to a fairly steady wind that reminded Krailash poignantly of how much he missed the world above, where the movement of the air was so common he could take it completely for granted. After a while, Alaia stopped chanting, and the breeze dropped. Krailash checked his padding and grunted. “Very nearly dry. Nicely done. You should hire yourself out to propel sailboats.”

  She snorted. “I’ll have you know I can summon those same winds to make even a hulking thing like you leap about in combat as deftly as a carnival acrobat. Using it to dry clothes is a bit like using your battleaxe to dice an onion, but we work with what we have. Now get dressed. I’d become half-convinced Zaltys was dead, and hoped only to die in avenging her, but now you’ve given me hope that she might be alive after all.”

  “Indeed,” Krailash said, reluctantly putting his heavy second skin back on. “Of course, as a professional soldier, I expect failure, death, and tragedy, but I begin to think another outcome is possible. Perhaps this will even end happily. We might be able to rescue whatever remnants of Zaltys’s people remain enslaved and get them back to the surface. The derro are dangerous, but they won’t expect us to strike in their home settlement, and their madness makes them vulnerable to superior tactics.”

  Alaia frowned, as if thinking intensely. “If we find any humans among the slaves,” she said finally, “or for that matter dwarves, or dragonborn, or even elves, improbable as that seems in this region, then we should certainly do our best to rescue them. But don’t expect too much. Life in the Underdark as slaves to the derro … I don’t expect there are many survivors from Zaltys’s family.”