Venom in Her Veins (forgotten realms)

by Tim Pratt

  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.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  "Yes, all right,” Zaltyssaid. “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.”

  Sh
e 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 keep 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.

  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?”