Venom in Her Veins (forgotten realms)

by Tim Pratt

  “A snakeman? That’s nonsense. And you will not erase any of my-”

  “They call them purebloods,” Glory said, sitting down. “Yuan-ti who look almost human, throwbacks to the nonserpent stock in their heritage. Or creatures chosen by the dark gods to infiltrate the lesser races, depending on what you believe. The yuan-ti use them as spies and traitors, send them to live secretly among humans, spreading the cult of their gods, or just sowing discord and making trouble. Anyway, that’s what Zaltys is. The fact that we cut out her scales with an enchanted knife doesn’t change her nature. We didn’t want her to find out she’s the scion of a cult of evil snake people. If she did …”

  “What?” Quelamia said. “You think if she found out her parents were, as you say, ‘evil snake people,’ it would make her pursue a similar path?”

  Glory shrugged. “Some say evil’s in the blood. Believe me, I’ve heard it said a lot-I’ve got devil in my bloodline. I don’t think I’m evil, but then, a cultist of Zehir probably doesn’t think they’re evil, either, just devout. I know you and Alaia believe that how you’re brought up is what matters-that if she could be raised without the influence of Zehir she would be indistinguishable from a human. Maybe you’re right-she doesn’t wear her evil heritage on her face, and I’m sure that helps.” Glory touched her horns. “But what if Zehir is interested in her? I know, hardly likely. So leave all that aside. Even if Zaltys has no natural tendency toward dark behavior, finding out you’re not even the same species as your adopted family, that’s got to mess with your head. It’s a secret we wanted to keep from Zaltys until she was older. Funny thing is, Alaia was going to tell her soon, even though I said I thought it would be a bad idea. Alaia figured as an adult now, Zaltys deserved to know about her heritage. Of course, we’d still have to keep it a secret from everybody else.”

  “Yuan-ti are scum,” Krailash said, nearly trembling with rage. To keep this from him! Didn’t they understand the implications? “If Zaltys is truly what you say, how can we know she wasn’t planted by cultists of Zehir for us to find? That she isn’t a spy like these other purebloods? Perhaps unknown even to herself, with commands planted deep in her mind, waiting to be activated when she’s head of the Travelers? What if this is part of some deep plan to rebuild their fallen empire? I must tell Alaia.”

  “She knows,” Glory said wearily. “Alaia, Quelamia, and me-we’re the ones who know. There’s a reason we don’t let you remember, because you always get so paranoid. Zaltys’s people were stolen by slavers when she was an infant. There’s no big plot. The yuan-ti settlement here was a tattered remnant. They weren’t capable of a plan this baroque and drawn-out-I can’t believe anybody is. Zaltys was raised human, and more importantly, she was raised to be a Serrat, and that’s what counts.” Glory waved her hand.

  Krailash’s sense of outrage and betrayal suddenly became a sense of confusion and bewilderment, and after a moment, he shook his head. Why was he standing here? There was work to be done, and the heir to his mistress was in danger. “I have to gather my men to go after Zaltys and Julen. Take care of the camp while we’re gone, please. We’ll return as soon as we’re able.” He left the wagon before they answered him, troubled by the sense that he was forgetting something important, but soon he was shouting at his men, and the necessity of the moment covered over his misgivings.

  “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay?” Krailash asked, as Alaia cursed and tripped over another tree root. “I know it’s been some time since you ventured into the wilderness.”

  “I grew up in this jungle,” she snapped. “My mother initiated me into the shamanic arts under these very trees. I belong here.” A branch wrapped with thorn vines brushed her arm and made her hiss.

  Krailash considered saying more, but didn’t. The truth was, in her youth, Alaia had been profoundly connected to the jungle, and had flourished as a shaman. But the needs of the family had forced her to spend more and more time in the city, and when she took over the Travelers when her mother passed, she’d given in to the inevitable fate of spending half the year in the city. Krailash could remember when she’d had two spirit companions at her feet, matched boars, but in the past twenty years she’d only had one. A shaman was meant to be a protector of the wild places, and while Alaia did steadfastly defend the area where terazul flowers grew, she did so for largely civilized reasons, and that tension had seemingly diminished her shamanic powers, if only because it sowed disorder and conflict in her own mind. A priest who strayed from their chosen deity as much as Alaia had strayed from her path might find himself on the wrong end of a god’s rage, but shamans took their power from the primal force of the natural world, which, lacking consciousness, was not prone to fits of pique or thoughts of vengeance. Alaia was still powerful, but she’d seldom had cause to call on that power, and Krailash wondered if she was still as capable as she assumed.

  Sensing the blackness of her mood, he tried to change the subject. “I was surprised when Zaltys chose the path of a ranger, rather than the path of the shaman.” Surprised you let her choose it, was the unspoken remainder of that sentence.

  “Ha,” Alaia said. “It’s just as well. With my luck she would have become a disciple of the World Serpent.”

  Krailash frowned. “What’s wrong with that path? World Serpent shamans are formidable.”

  “Hm. Never mind. Suffice to say I don’t like snakes, even astral snakes that hold the world in their protective coils. Being a ranger suits her better, and I daresay it’s a more practical specialty for the head of the Travelers.” She paused by a tree to catch her breath, and the dozen guards in a moving ring around her paused as well. “How much farther to this accursed temple?”

  She’d never been there, Krailash realized. She’d never seen the chasm that led to the Underdark, or the rubble that covered it. She didn’t want to remember the origins of her daughter, he supposed, and who could blame her? “Not much farther,” he said. How much farther they would have to go once they made it under the temple, he could not guess, and did not care to speculate.

  “My spirit companion is down there in the dark already, though it’s nearly reached the limit of its range-I swear there was a time when it could travel farther away from me than this. It’s found no sign of Zaltys, though it has discovered some sign of the derro slavers.” She stopped abruptly, and swore, reaching into the sleeve of her robe. “This is yours. Zaltys left it for you, and in the confusion I forgot about it.” She passed over a letter, not sealed, just folded, with his name written in Zaltys’s surprisingly elegant script. “I didn’t read it,” Alaia said, as if she’d been accused.

  “I know.” Though he also knew she would hover by him and demand to know what it said. Squinting in the dim torchlight from the surrounding guards-a beacon to any animals in the jungle, but also a warning-he scanned the half page of words. “She says she doesn’t blame me,” he said. “That she knows I was only following orders, and that, ah …”

  “That I’m the only liar of note?” Alaia said.

  Krailash nodded. “More or less.” He shook his head. “We just wanted to give her a sense of closure, however tragic, so the thought of her lost parents wouldn’t eat at her. But even the best-intentioned lies can have unintended consequences.”

  “Mmm. I see there are quite a few more words there,” Alaia prompted.

  “The rest is just an apology for not coming to see me to organize the scout schedule, with some suggestions for how it might best be done,” he said. Krailash folded the letter in half, then in half again, and pushed it down into a pouch at his belt. “We should move on. Going is slow in the Underdark, I’ve heard, and we may catch up to them soon if we hurry.”

  Alaia grunted assent, and they continued walking through the jungle. Zaltys and Julen had left barely a trace of their passage, but a crowd of soldiers made a more obvious path, and went more slowly too, breaking through obstacles Zaltys and Julen would have leaped over or slipped beneath. “I don’t understand why
she took Julen with her,” Alaia said. “That doesn’t seem like her. My daughter has always been of the opinion that she can do anything by herself.”

  “Seems rather more likely it was Julen’s idea, don’t you think?” Krailash glanced at his mistress. He was surprised to see she had no idea what he was talking about. “He’s madly in love with Zaltys, you know,” he said. “You can see it written on his face like lines of ancient imperial poetry every time he looks at her.”

  “Love? Nonsense, he’s her baby cousin,” Alaia sighed. “When did I get so old, Krailash? I know I never married, but there was a time when I at least dabbled in thoughts of love, when I had the free time. And the boy is nearly sixteen now, isn’t he? I’m sure he’s been falling in love with housemaids and shopgirls and his tutors for years by now. Naturally Zaltys would catch his eye.”

  “And her being an adoptee means they’re not necessarily idle thoughts,” Krailash said.

  Alaia groaned. “I can’t think of political marriages-or the possibility of a brat from the Guardians trying to put his hands on my daughter-just now. You don’t think … does Zaltys reciprocate his feelings?”

  “I’ve seen no evidence of anything more than familial affection on her part,” Krailash assured her.

  “That’s something,” Alaia said.

  “Here’s the plaza.” Krailash pointed. “Where we found Zaltys as a baby.”

  “Let’s hurry along to the place where we’ll find her as a teenaged girl, then, hmm?”

  Krailash took her to the false grave, noting the two holes, one of which opened down into darkness. He set his men to widening the opening-it was far too small for a dragonborn, or even the larger human guards-while Alaia paced impatiently around the wreckage of the temple. After a few moments when the only sound was picks and axes striking the ground, Alaia tapped Krailash on the shoulder. “I’m an idiot,” she said. “Look at me. I’m wearing robes. To go crawling around in caves and tunnels.”

  He nodded, having wondered when she was going to notice that, and opened his pack. “Quelamia caught me just as I was leaving camp and handed me this. She said you might need it.” He passed over a bundle of bluish-black cloth embroidered with tiny white stars.

  Alaia shook it out and held it up, frowning. The exotic cloth aside, it was a simple enough gown, if elegantly cut. “Rather fancy dress for grubbing about in holes in the ground.”

  “Quelamia says it’s as good as leather armor at a tenth the weight.” He shrugged. “Wizard things, I imagine.”

  Alaia squinted. “I think this is a robe of stars. Quelamia mentioned owning one once.”

  “Sounds quite mystical,” Krailash said politely.

  “I gather it can be used to bring light to dark situations. I won’t test that now, but if it can turn a sword blade, I’m well pleased. I’m going around this wall to change.”

  “Not without an escort. I’ve lost one of the family to derro already, and won’t lose another. Rainer just went around the corner once, and he was stolen in moments.”

  “Fine, then, come along, but don’t ogle.”

  “You aren’t even my species,” he grumbled. “It would be like ogling a monkey. No offense.” He followed her around a fragment of freestanding wall, and averted his eyes while she changed.

  “Well?” she said, and Krailash looked her over. She was rather regal in the garment, and the stars seemed almost to twinkle.

  “You look like a magic user, all right,” he said.

  “Oh good. Stab me?”

  Krailash sighed, took a dagger from his belt, and pressed the point very gently against the sleeve of the gown. “Feel anything?”

  “Pressure. No pinprick. Give me a slash.”

  Krailash swung the knife, at an angle shallow enough that it wouldn’t cause much damage beyond shaving off a bit of skin if it got through. But the blade bounced off as if he’d struck boiled leather. “Won’t do you much good if a boulder falls on you, but it will afford some protection. Do you think you can crawl around on hands and knees in it if need be?”

  “Without even scraping my knees,” she said. “Nice thing about magical robes-they tend to adjust to fit. All right, now that I’ve held everyone up, let’s get moving.”

  When they came back to the false gravesite, the hole was big enough for the whole party to descend. Krailash sent three men ahead, then himself, then Alaia, and the last three men in the back. They were all well-provisioned and well-armed. Krailash began to regret bringing his great battle-axe Thunder’s Edge when they entered the old mining tunnel, because it would be impossible to swing with any power in such confined space, especially with his allies pressed in so close.

  “Wait,” Alaia said, and the company halted. “My spirit companion is just up ahead, in a sort of nexus room connecting many of these tunnels, and it senses movement.” Her eyes widened. “Derro! They’re coming in from all sides, they’re going to-”

  The guard at the front of the tunnel screamed as dozens of crossbow bolts struck him simultaneously, his death cry a counterpoint to the demented giggling of the onrushing derro attackers.

  Chapter Eleven

  Julen woke up with entirely too much understanding. There was no blissful moment of confusion, no disorientation, no instant when he thought he might be having a terrible nightmare. His years of training at the hands of the Guardians had made such self-delusions impossible, and when consciousness returned to him, he knew exactly what was happening.

  He’d fallen into a pit, and been drugged and captured by derro slavers, and his future would either be very short and very unpleasant, or very long and indescribably more unpleasant. The heavy metal shackles binding his ankles were attached to similar cuffs around his wrists, the two sets of restraints joined by short chains, forcing his knees into a drawn-up position. He lay on his left side, curled body scraping painfully against the rough tunnel floor as his captors dragged him by a long chain attached to the shackles. There was precious little to see, as the tunnel was dark, and the derro apparently had no need for light. They weren’t giggling, but they were talking to themselves, in guttural tones that must have been Deep Speech, along with occasional fragments of Common, words that made no sense out of context and probably didn’t make much sense anyway: “melon,” “candlelight,” “fencepost,” “dung,” “matrimony.”

  The histories he’d read all said derro were mad, but that only made them more dangerous. His father had taken him to an asylum once, to see a man who’d killed fourteen respectable women in Delzimmer before being captured. That man had chatted amiably with voices only he could hear, and claimed to take his murderous instructions from a neighbor’s pet wolfhound-the wolfhound had been examined, and was determined to be an ordinary dog, not a lycanthrope or demon in disguise or anything else unusual, and certainly nothing capable of controlling a man’s mind. The killer had, unquestionably, been insane, but he’d eluded the authorities for months, carefully laying false trails that pointed blame toward his imaginary enemies, and his booby-trapped basement lair had taken the lives of a dozen city guards before he was apprehended. His father had told him all that, and said, “You see, Julen, madness doesn’t mean stupidity. The mad can be clever and cunning-sometimes even wise-and because their motivations are often impossible for sane men to comprehend, they are almost impossible to predict and troublesome to manipulate. Some like to employ the mad as assassins or enforcers or ultimate threats, but I advise against it. If such measures seem necessary, invest in a skilled actor who can pretend to madness. Actors are easily manipulated, especially by the lever of vanity, and often have the sort of moral flexibility that proves useful in our operatives.”

  The derro weren’t actors. They were twisted beings, despised even by the other races in the Underdark, tainted by their dark researches and assignations with aberrations, and they couldn’t be bribed, or begged, or outsmarted, or reasoned with, which limited his diplomatic options. Trying to kill the mad was also troublesome, as they often fought o
n happily when sane people would have given in to the inevitability of death. The situation wasn’t hopeless-the Guardians held that almost no situation was-but it was certainly dire. Escaping from the derro was the main priority.

  Julen examined the shackles as best he could by feel, probing for the lock with his fingertips, because he’d been lockpicking since he was old enough to hold a burglar’s tools. But there was no lock, and as he shifted, the metal grew warm and contracted, squeezing his hands and ankles more tightly. Magic, then. That was problematic. He wondered if the green knife in his pack could help, but one of the derro must have taken it. The dagger at his belt was also gone, but the throwing knives were still hidden in his sleeves. No help now, in this bump-and-drag situation, but of potential use later.

  There was something else up his sleeve: the piece of pale blue chalk he’d found in his pack. He’d secreted it there with some idea of marking their descent through this labyrinth so they could find their way up again.

  “It’s not a labyrinth,” the derro dragging him said in an unsteady, high-pitched voice, like a drunken child’s. “Common mistake. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has only a single path. It’s a circuitous path, takes a long time to traverse, and there are lots of twists and turns, but there are no branch paths, no moments of choice, no dead ends-you can’t get lost in a labyrinth, you can just get bored. A labyrinth is a means of meditation, or a way to make a minotaur’s mealtime more entertaining for the watchers. But this, this is no labyrinth. There are paths here with a thousand branches, that all end in death. It’s more like a maze, though not one of your silly garden mazes with hedges. This is a maze that spreads out front and back and to and fro and up and down, all bridges and pits and overs and unders. You can’t map it because there are things here that eat maps and maps that eat mapmakers and things that eat appetites.” The voice lapsed into silence.