Venom in Her Veins

Chapter One

Scitheronslithered away from the feeding pit, hands bloodied with the remnants of the pre-dawn sacrifice. The segments of his lower body, a serpent’s tail the thickness of a tree trunk, compressed and expanded, propelling him along the worn path through the ruined temples of the settlement, a forgotten outpost that was once the thriving heart of his sect. The stench of the anathema’s pit still clung to Scitheron’s forked tongue, no matter how fiercely he flickered it, and he thought, not for the first time, that the community would be best served by sending down a sacrifice liberally laced with poison some morning, to put everyone in the settlement out of the anathema’s misery, and allow them to relocate to one of the serpentfolk settlements rumored to thrive in the deeper jungle.

But such thoughts were blasphemy. Scitheron’s people worshiped the god Zehir, and though much diminished, his cult still cared for the last of Zehir’s chosen ones, the anathema who writhed, multiform and mad, in the pit overseen by Scitheron and the other remaining priests. The yuan-ti deeper in the jungle were devotees of the old god Sseth, the fools. Scitheron would rather die a true believer of Zehir than go over to their ancient, withered faith.

The malison guards at the entry to the main settlement nodded as he approached, their rusty scimitars hanging uselessly at their belts. Both had proud heads of serpents, but one had two legs like an ape, something that reminded Scitheron of the other task he had to carry out that night. There are so few of us now, he thought, it seems wrong to kill a potential warrior for Zehir while she’s still a babe, but it is the low priest’s will.

“How does the god fare this night?” the two-legged guard said.

Scitheron made the sign of the fangs. “The anathema is not a god. His kind were kings and emperors once, before the madness …” He shook his head. “The anathema is well. Quiet. I fed him three skinned apes, and he seemed sated. That should appease him until the sun rises over the horizon.”

“Waste of good food if you ask me,” Two Legs began, but the other yuan-ti guard slapped him on the side of the head hard enough to make Two Legs stumble.

“Blasphemer,” he muttered, and gave a slight bow to Scitheron. “He is young, and stupid. I would understand if you must tell the low priest of his transgression.”

At the mention of the priest, Two Legs clutched the hilt of his scimitar and began flickering his tongue wildly.

“That won’t be necessary,” Scitheron said. “This time. But Zehir hears all, half-ape. Remember that.” He could have had the guard executed, but they couldn’t spare an able-bodied snakeman, especially for so mild a blasphemy. Seeing the guard suitably chastened, Scitheron continued through the remnant of the walls, to find almost the entire population of the settlement gathered in a plaza, sharing a communal breakfast of whatever the elite abomination hunters-all three of them-had been able to gather in the forest. Once the abominations had been the shock forces of their sect, armed with swords and grasping coils that could crush the life from any enemy. But those left were a sad remnant.

“Scitheron.” The low priest approached, pure-white scales making her seem eerily ghostlike in the morning light. “Your chores are complete?”

“Yes, most low.”

“Good, good.” The low priest touched his shoulder and guided him to a corner of the courtyard, beneath the weathered remains of a statue that Scitheron, to his shame, could not begin to identify. The low priest looked around at the assembled crowd, only a few dozen yuan-ti, not even a stable breeding population, truth be told. Some years before, a group had gone in search of another branch of their sect, rumored to thrive in the east, but they had never returned. Either they’d found a better life and chosen not to share it, or, more likely, they’d been taken by any of the myriad predators that lurked among the trees. The settlement was ultimately doomed, with fewer and fewer eggs laid by the females every year, and fewer of the children surviving to adulthood. Every life there was precious, every snakeman willing to die-or, for preference, kill-for the glory of the Great Serpent, Master of Poisons and Shadows, their god Zehir. Which was why Scitheron hoped the low priest wouldn’t bring up-

“The child,” the low priest said. “You will see that she is disposed of?”

“If that is your will,” he said, but the low priest cut him off.

“It is the will of your god.”

Scitheron bowed his head. He had not, himself, had a vision of Zehir for many years, though he sometimes sensed the presence of the great one while the anathema fed its thousand mouths in the pit during evening sacrifice. He wondered if the low priest truly had direct communication with the god, or if she was just fulfilling her own whims. But asking a question like that was a greater blasphemy than asking whether good food should be thrown to a seemingly mindless creature in a pit because tradition dictated it must be done. Still, Scitheron could try again. “Such creatures can be useful, most low. Within your own long life you have seen a yuan-ti born with a semblance almost human. You remember old Iraska? She came from the same family line as this new child, and in the time of our grand-broods Iraska was sent as an agent to the city in secret. The low priest before you said her birth was a great omen, that such creatures are marked by destiny, to further the goals of our god. Iraska posed as human among those who would persecute the serpentfolk for our faith, and she rose most high in their debased society. I saw her once when I was young, and I’m sure you did too. This new girl child may not be a sign of decline-she could be a useful tool, indeed, her birth may even be interpreted as a sign of the god’s favor-”

The priest shook her noble head. “Old Iraska disappeared long ago, taken by things in the jungle after she returned from her mission in disgrace. Most of those living here never knew Iraska at all, and would gag at the thought of a yuan-ti indistinguishable from an ape. But even if you’re right, if this child could be used as a spy-do you imagine we have any need for a spy among the humans anymore? The nearest city of any size is Delzimmer, and to reach it requires an arduous journey through treacherous jungle and over barren plains. How would we use such an infiltrator? Would we send her to their market to buy food for us? How would she bring it back?” The low priest moved closer. “And how would she learn the ways of humans? The last human cultist dedicated to our cause died in my grandmother’s time.” The low priest paused. “As I recall, the anathema ate him. Which did little to win other humans to our cause.”

“We could foster her in a human village, perhaps,” Scitheron said. “Or even leave her for the caravan that passes near sometimes. If we left her near their camp, they might find her, and raise her, and …” He trailed off at the look of disgust on the low priest’s face.

“Let her believe herself human? No. Better to kill her-which is what the humans would do when they realized her true nature anyway. She is a freak, Scitheron. A sport. She turns her face away from meals of meat, and her weak ape’s mouth is good only for suckling. She doesn’t even have teeth. She can only feed by slurping blood from a cloth.” The low priest shuddered. “Perhaps, in the old times, they knew what to do with such creatures, knew how to raise them, but life is harder here. Her birth has been seen as an ill omen since her egg first cracked open. The people mutter that Zehir has turned his back on us, that our serpent nature is being withheld, that all our children will be ape-faces from now on. The child’s mother can barely stand to look upon the tiny thing, and who can blame her, when her other children are already slithering about, foraging for their own food? The occasional two-legs can be useful, they can run and climb better than some others, but this girl has barely any serpent nature. No. For the good of the settlement, she must die. At least she will serve as a meal of the anathema. And I’ll have no more of this talk of destiny. We are barely surviving, hardly able to maintain our devotions to Zehir. I can’t have you stirring up discord and false hope among the others. Or questioning me either. The anathema is not above eating blasphemers, as you well know.”

Scitheron bowed his head. “As you will, most low. I will make the sacrifice at the midday feeding.”

“Mmm,” the low priest said. “No. Better to do it now.” She showed her fangs. “Not that I expect you to disobey-you have always been obedient-but I can see it troubles your mind. Finish the task then, and you can move on. Besides, it’s an act for the shadows, as all gifts for Zehir must be.”

Scitheron flickered his tongue in assent and slithered to one of the low buildings, a rare structure that still had portions of its roof. It was the nursery, where the youngest yuan-ti slithered and wrestled and twined, and where one child mewled and waved her brownish, soft, unscaled limbs around, gazing about her with disturbingly round-pupiled eyes in her strange flat face. He picked her up, and she cooed at him. Her skin, at least, was not as delectably warm as the furred creatures of the jungle-she resembled a human, apart from a few patches of scale here and there, but she still had a serpent’s blood.

“Forgive me, child,” he said. “Forgive me, Zehir.” Cradling the girl in his arms, he emerged from the low building and slithered across the plaza toward the pit of their sole remaining anathema, the last living god-touched member of their sect. The other yuan-ti watched him as he went, some making the sign of the fangs when he passed.

Scitheron was halfway to the pit when he heard the screams. They were not the screams of his people-who were, anyway, not screamers by nature, preferring to do even their dying in silence-but the screams of attacking warriors. He almost dropped the child in his fright, but he kept her close to his underbelly as he slithered quietly back toward the plaza. He called on his god’s power to drape him in a clinging shadow to hide him from enemies, and peered from the jungle’s growth.

Horrors had descended on the plaza. Humanoids, most shorter than Scitheron, wearing black leather armor. Their flesh, where it showed, was as pale as the underside of poisonous mushrooms. They cackled as they swung their war picks, the harvesters among them wielding magical black iron shackles that wound around the limbs or tangled the coils of the yuan-ti who attempted to flee.

Derro, Scitheron thought.

The baby mewled, softly, and Scitheron covered her mouth with his hands. The invaders couldn’t have heard the child’s sound over the violence happening in the plaza, but if she cried out again, Scitheron would snap her tiny neck to preserve himself, child of destiny or no. The derro were one of the most feared races of the Underdark, which meant the sinkhole that had opened in the floor of the main temple a few days before was more than merely an accident of nature-it was a breach point, allowing insane horrors from the depths to attack in their midst.

The abomination guards had fought back, and they lay dead on the stones of the courtyard. The settlement’s lone cobra striker spat venom in the face of one of the slavers, the enemy’s flesh melting away, but the attacker only cackled wildly and lashed out with its club. Derro were insane, tainted by their association with aberrant creatures and their devotion to the outer horrors of the so-called Far Realm, where madness was sanity and reality ran like melting wax. Another derro unleashed bolts from a small, lethal repeating crossbow into the striker’s flared cobra hood and scaled throat, felling the brave warrior. For the most part, though, the derro didn’t kill-they weren’t there for murder. They were there for slaves, and indeed, many of the harvesters were already dragging away writhing prisoners. The only ones dead were the guards, the abominations, the striker, and the low priest, who had attempted to call on the power of Zehir to protect the settlement, with some success, as the crushed bodies of a few derro around her attested. But it hadn’t been enough, and crossbow bolts had pierced her in a dozen places, cold blood oozing onto the stones.

The battle, such as it was, wound down. Some of the more thuggish derro, armed only with clubs, gathered up their dead, and the bodies of the fallen yuan-ti too. Of course, Scitheron thought sourly. Why leave good meat for the jungle beasts?

There was only one hope. It wasn’t much of a hope. But he could go back and free the anathema from its pit. The god-king was mad, but it still had some connection to Zehir, and perhaps some vestige of loyalty to its people would lead it to strike against the derro? The tales of anathema in battle were legendary, and some of their crumbling frescoes depicted such clashes in gloriously gory detail.

Scitheron could move faster without a mewling infant in his arms. And if the anathema didn’t help him, if he ate him instead, this ape-faced girl might be the last remnant of this particular sect of the serpentfolk. Not that she was likely to survive on her own, among the jungle creatures, but he’d do what he could. He set her gently behind a pillar and covered her in a scattering of broad leaves. She cooed at him again, her eyes bright, her limbs waving uselessly.

This errand might be useless too, but it was the best he could do.

Scitheron approached the pit, but stopped before he reached the great barred roof that covered the anathema’s prison and lair. Voices were speaking, in the guttural tones of Deep Speech, the language of the dwellers below the earth. Scitheron knew some words in that tongue, and thought he heard “treasure” and “king.”

Well, the anathema was something of a treasure, and something of a king, but-

A derro screamed, and Scitheron smiled. The foolish slaver must have lifted the trapdoor that opened into the pit, where sacrifices were given, and become a sacrifice himself. Scitheron slithered closer, and saw one of the derro gazing down into the pit, where, by the sound of things, his fellow was being messily devoured. Scitheron had no weapon, but he was a cleric of Zehir, and he raised his hands to call the power of his god to rack the remaining derro with the pain of a thousand coursing venoms.

Before he could speak the dark prayer, another derro lunged into his vision, cackling, white hair caked with blood, a war pick in one hand and a set of shackles in the other.

Scitheron prayed for death, but Zehir did not oblige him, and he was beaten to the ground, bound, and dragged away. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but with the other, he watched as a derro opened its filthy breeches and pissed a stream down into the anathema’s pit, cackling all the while, and then slammed the trapdoor shut.

So ends this holdfast of the faith, Scitheron thought. The only one of his people left-apart from the trapped anathema-was the girl child, and she would almost certainly be killed by some passing jungle beast before the sun reached the crown of the sky. So Zehir wills, he thought, and saw the faint hint of sunlight touch the sky just before the derro dragged him through the door of the temple to the yawning pit in the floor that led into the devouring darkness.

Before they threw him into the shallowest part of the Underdark, he thought he heard, faintly, the child’s long and lonely cry.