Venom in Her Veins

Chapter Fifteen

The trio of came crawling out of the pool, hauling their repulsive, shimmering bodies onto the stone floor of the cavern. Yes, Julen thought, I’ve eaten my last seafood dinner. Nothing but meat and greens and fruit for me from now on, and the livelihood of the hardworking fishermen of Delzimmer be damned. The Kuo-toa seemed more curious about him than openly aggressive, though who could say for sure? They had the heads of fish. Their expressions were the very definition of inscrutable. Still, the best-case scenario was they’d ignore him and leave him to starve to death. It seemed far more likely they’d murder him outright, or try to enslave him, though how would they drag him through their underwater tunnels without him dying in the process? Presumably they had some magic to address the problem.

Pondering such things helped him keep the paralying fear at bay, more or less, though what did it matter if he were paralyzed? He was chained, which was almost worse.

Someone came hurtling over the waterfall and landed in the pool with a titanic splash. Could it be Bug-eater, having changed his mind about taking the scenic route, come to rescue Julen from slavery in order to press him into another flavor of slavery? From his angle on the cavern floor, next to the bloodstain that was the only thing left of his dream-interpreting captor, he couldn’t see much at all to prove his hypothesis. The kuo-toa all turned, though, not so much whirling on the balls of their finned feet as dragging their bodies around in a half-circle to face the pool. They were obviously amphibious, but their bodies were clearly made more for moving underwater. They’d probably be graceful swimming around under the surface of some horrid lightless sea, but on land they moved like fish with legs, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Someone came gasping to the surface of the water and started splashing toward the edge of the pool, and Julen couldn’t help but feel envy. He could have made a decent showing when he fell in the water too, if he’d been unbound. The kuo-toa grunted and squealed and raised their weapons, and the person dragging themselves up out of the water looked up, and saw them, and looked past them, and saw Julen.

It was Zaltys. She was dirty, even after her dunk in the river, and so loaded with supplies that she looked like a human pack mule, and her hair was wet and plastered to her face, and her eyes were wide and, if they weren’t terrified, it was only because they hadn’t yet finished looking surprised.

She’d never looked more beautiful to him, not even in his dreams. The kuo-toa hurled harpoons at her, and she promptly vanished. A nice trick, doubtless courtesy of her fancy new armor. The harpoons splashed harmlessly in the water, and as the kuo-toa reeled them back, peering into the depths to see where their prey had gone, they started to sprout arrows from the backs of their heads. Julen looked up, and Zaltys was standing over him, having emerged from the shadows of the cavern, dropped both her packs at her feet, and drawn her weapon. Her bow seemed no more substantial to his eye than a twist of black smoke against a twilight sky, but the arrows looked precisely like what they were-spinning shafts of death.

The kuo-toa thrashed, exactly like fish caught and tossed to the floor of a boat, gradually going still. They didn’t stink like dead fish, yet, but Julen assumed it was only a matter of time. “Nice to see you, Cousin,” he said, the casual tone he tried for rather spoiled by the croaking sound of his voice. He wasn’t thirsty, precisely, given the gallons of river water he’d swallowed, but the strain of expelling all that water from his body had torn up his throat.

“Good to be seen.” Zaltys kneeled, tugging futilely at his shackles. “Magical chains,” she said. “I have no idea how they work, there’s not even a keyhole.”

“I noticed. A shame I lost my pack. There was a knife inside.”

Zaltys held up a pack by its sodden shoulder straps. “This pack?” She opened it, and drew out the sheath. “This knife?” Drawing the blade, which flashed green in the dim light. “Where did you get this, anyway? Borrow it from your father’s desk drawer?”

Julen shook his head, rattling his chains. “See if it’s magical enough to cut through these, would you?” As Zaltys slipped the blade into the link of a chain, he explained that they had a secret benefactor who’d left the blade and a source of fresh water in his pack, among more mundane supplies. “Any guess who it might be?”

“No idea. No one knew about my plans.” She jammed the blade in and began twisting the hilt.

“Then how did you find the pack?”

“Attached to a dead derro in a tunnel,” she said.

“The labyrinth man,” Julen murmured. Zaltys ignored him. “How did you come to find me, then?”

“Another derro. A live one. He told me you were down here. Well, he didn’t tell me, exactly, but I inferred.”

“Did he have glowing bug guts in his beard?”

“The very one,” she said. “I gather you two met.” She grunted and gave the dagger a final hard twist.

The link holding his wrist shackles to his ankle shackles gave way, and Julen stifled a scream as he was, finally, able to stretch out his limbs. The agony of releasing his cramped muscles was simultaneously horrible and delicious. Zaltys ignored his contented, pained moans and broke the links closest to the shackles on each ankle and both wrists, carefully coiling up the remaining chains and stuffing them into a pack-Julen’s pack, he noticed. Well, that was fair. She’d been carrying a lot of extra weight. It was his turn. “In case we can use them for something later,” she said. “Not sure I can do anything about the shackles themselves, unless you want me to risk jamming this knife between your wrists and the metal …? No? I thought not.”

Julen stood up, continuing to stretch and bend and work his protesting muscles. “It’s fine. Chunky metal bracelets and anklets are all the rage among the fashionable youth in Delzimmer this season. So what now? Retrace our steps and flee with our lives?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “We’ve come this far. Might as well see it through, otherwise we’ve just wasted a lot of time.”

“If you insist.” He shouldered his pack and looked toward the dead kuo-toa, wondering if they should rifle their bodies to see if they had anything worth stealing. The idea was distasteful in the extreme, not because of any inherent moral hesitation when it came to robbing corpses-he was a member of the Guardians, after all, whose unofficial motto was “Do Whatever’s Necessary”-but because the kuo-toa were just so loathsome.

“What do you call those, then? Come across them in your books?”

“Kuo-toa,” Julen said. “Fish people.”

“Ha. Fishmeat. They’re the fish, and I was supposed to be the meat. Some joke.”

“You lost me,” he said. “But that’s all right. I’ve been down here long enough to be used to being lost.”

“These fish people. Are they dangerous?”

Julen nodded. “Reckoned to be one of the most dangerous of the races dwelling in the Underdark, though really, none of those races are what you’d call harmless. Apparently they’re prone to plagues of madness that can sweep through a whole community like the flu-or fin fungus, I suppose. These seemed sane enough, but who can guess what’s happening in a fish-person’s mind?”

“Communities. So this isn’t likely to be some isolated family group, then, that just happens to live in this pool.”

Julen shook his head. “I don’t think so. Hunting or scouting party, I’d guess. The pool is probably connected to a bunch of subterranean tunnels.”

Zaltys sighed. “In that case we’d better be going, and quickly. I was holding onto a sunrod when I fell over the waterfall, but I lost it when I hit the water, and for obvious reasons, I couldn’t swim down to retrieve it. Sunrods are remarkable devices. Did you know they go right on glowing even when they’re submerged in water?”

Julen whistled. “Creatures down here seem to be fairly sensitive to light.”

“Yes. We’ve left a handy beacon for any fishfolk that come swimming by, which will lead them to a trio of their murdered kinsmen.” She put her booted foot on the back of one kuo-toa’s neck, grasped her arrow, and pulled it free, shaking the slimy tissue off the arrowhead before putting it in her nearly-empty quiver. She retrieved the other two arrows, humming tunelessly as she worked.

Julen counted. “Do you really only have nine arrows left?”

“Yes. I do have extra bolts for these horrid little hand crossbows, but I ran into a little trouble and spent several arrows I couldn’t recover.” She nudged a kuo-toa with her foot. “Shame none of this lot were archers. I’d take their harpoons, but I don’t know how to use them, and I’m already clattering when I walk from carrying all this excess ordnance.” She yawned. “Now that we’re together, we’d better find a place to eat and take turns getting a little sleep before we try to find the slaves. I imagine it’s daylight up above by now, and this running around all night is starting to wear on me. And I could do with drying out-this magic armor sheds water nicely, but I’m soaking otherwise. I need to get this stuff off me and air out my skin a bit.”

Julen, distracted by the thought of Zaltys removing her armor and, ah, the things she wore underneath, swallowed hard.

“I don’t suppose we dare to build a fire. The smoke would choke us anyway.” She sighed.

“At least it’s not cold. Or hot either. The Underdark has that advantage over the jungle. I napped a bit while I was being dragged. Very refreshing. So once we find a nice bolt-hole, I’ll take first watch.” They moved away from the pool, their way lit faintly by the glowing crystalline structures on the walls, picking their way around tumbled heaps of rocks, moving along the slight but discernible downward slope.

Zaltys produced Julen’s piece of chalk with a grin and handed it over. Every hundred yards or so he left a mark on a stone or stalagmite so they could find their way back. Although, come to think of it, there wasn’t much point. They couldn’t very well climb up the waterfall. They’d have to find another way to the surface. Presumably the derro went up and down all the time, so they could hunt for slaves. Perhaps they’d put up some useful signposts. “Thank you for saving me,” Julen said, more seriously than he usually spoke to his cousin. “I thought I was done for. Several times.”

“Finding you was my only priority,” Zaltys said, patting him on the shoulder in a depressingly sisterly sort of way. “But now that I have, and you haven’t had bits of yourself lopped off for a derro stewpot, it’s back to my original mission. I’m happy to have your help.”

Julen pointed at a ribbon or curling whiteness in the cavern. “Look at that snake. It’s almost like it’s walking along with us.”

“How in the world,” Zaltys said, and then swore, rather inventively. “The damn thing’s not even wet!”

She’s a strange one, Julen thought, but it’s all right. She’s stolen my heart, and I owe her my life, so she can be as strange as she likes. I’m all sewn up.

Krailash woke with a gasp from a terrible dream. He’d been in the Underdark, all his men massacred by a creature from a treacherous race, Alaia without a proper defense-

Ah. Yes. That was all true. Alaia stroked his scaly brow and said, “Shh, it’s all right.” She paused. “Actually, it’s all terrible. We’re trapped miles below the surface and I have no idea where my daughter is. But you’re not going to die.”

“My injuries …” He sat up, noting his armor piled in a rather disorderly heap against the far wall of the small, low-ceilinged cavern. The only light came from the faintly glowing body of the spectral boar, but it was enough to see by. He touched his arms and legs, and though they were sore, the skin red with raised welts and crusted with dried blood, there were no gaping wounds, no shattered bones.

“I am a shaman,” she said. “I couldn’t do much for the dead men we had to leave behind, but I was certainly capable of treating the worst of your wounds. You won’t die right away, at any rate. The hardest part was getting you into this side tunnel-the boar helped me drag you-and we’re still too close to the swordwings’ lair for my comfort, but at least I can’t hear buzzing. I doubt we’re safe, but we’re probably in less danger than we would be out in the open on the Causeway.” She yawned hugely. “And now that you’re awake, I’m going to get some sleep. I have no idea if it’s even day or night, but it’s well past time I got some rest. While I’m out you can formulate a brilliant plan to rescue my daughter and my nephew and get us out of this place alive.” Alaia curled up on her side with her cloak bundled for a pillow, and promptly began to snore.

Krailash stood up and tested his body, moving through a battle kata that used nearly every muscle he had, but only going at half-speed. There were a variety of new aches and pains complementing the old familiar twinges and injuries from long ago, but he was still in relatively sound working order for a dragonborn two-thirds of the way through a life of adventuring. These past few decades serving Alaia and her family had made him soft, but he hadn’t forgotten all his training and experience. The derro’s betrayal had surprised him. Most intelligent creatures would try to save their own lives, unless they were particularly honor bound or fanatical, but these mad slave-takers couldn’t even be counted upon to act in their own self-interest.

Krailash sat and brooded over the dark turn the journey underground had taken while Alaia got her rest. Because doing useful work was the best medicine, he scouted down the corridor. He could understand why Alaia had ducked into the first safe-looking side tunnel, but he disliked being backed into a place with only a single exit. About fifty yards down the corridor, it took a sharp left turn before returning to the Causeway.

A figure robed and cloaked in dusty gray-black cloth sat cross-legged before the entryway to the tunnel. His-her? its? — face was obscured by an equally dark hood, and it held a squirming rat the size of a pheasant in its hands. With a deft twist, the figure snapped the rat’s neck in its gloved hands, then pressed the rat into the shadow where its face should have been. Krailash expected horrible sounds of chewing and slurping and cracking bones, but there was only silence, which was somehow worse-as if the intruder had eaten the rat whole in a single swallow.

“Enjoying your stay?” the figure asked, and the voice was male, Krailash supposed-though it was mostly just whispers and a rasp like a dagger on stone. “I have mixed feelings about this place, myself. I have a certain proprietary interest in darkness and treachery, which suit the Underdark, but there are other forces down here that are more or less inimical to me.”

“Who are you?” Krailash said. He’d encountered a god, once, or rather its avatar, while adventuring decades earlier, and though that had been a relatively benevolent being and this one struck him as rather more malevolent, he felt the same sense of outsized presence, as if the being before him were the fin of a shark protruding from the water, the true extent of his form hidden in unfathomable depths. “Are you the Slime King the derro mentioned?” Krailash didn’t think gods made a habit of directly smiting those who killed their subjects, but perhaps the deity of an insane race would be similarly unpredictable. He gripped his axe, though attacking a god with Thunder’s Edge would be as effective as attacking a great red dragon with a soup spoon.

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.”