Tim Pratt - Venom in Her Veins

“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 ?”

“The Far Realm,” said a voice behind them.

Stupid, not to set a guard, Julen thought. But if it’s just one of them, maybe we can …

He and Zaltys turned. There was just one derro standing before them, smiling-it was an incongruous expression on such a hideous face-and wearing a robe covered in what appeared to be living, blinking eyes of various hues. Zaltys thought the derro was female, though she didn’t look noticeably different from the males-a trifle shorter, perhaps, but mostly the difference was in the higher pitch of the voice. The derro woman wasn’t even armed, unless the obviously magical robe counted as a weapon. But there were another dozen derro arrayed a dozen steps behind her, holding their wicked little hand crossbows, some of them muttering to themselves, others bouncing on the balls of their feet, and one scratching his chin with the barbed point of the bolt in his loaded weapon. They looked the sort to shoot on a whim and not bother to ask any questions later.

“Our spells aren’t perfect yet,” the smiling derro said. “We’ve managed to create pockets of potential in which semistable portals to the Far Realm sometimes form, and many of us have developed the ability to open what might best be termed windows to the Far Realm, through which the mind-altering wonders of that place may be glimpsed-it’s instructive for our study, and useful as a weapon, since such glimpses of the Far Realm tend to drive the uninitiated mad, at least temporarily. Long enough to club them over the head and chop off their arms and legs, anyway. Would you like to see? No? Very well. Then if you don’t think we should drive you mad and experiment on you, what should we do with you instead? Armed invaders don’t often make it this close to our settlement, and I’m curious why you’ve come.”

Julen was fairly certain that was a trick question, so he was glad when Zaltys spoke up, because it meant he didn’t have to. “We are emissaries from the surface, with a proposal for the Slime King.”

The derro in the back began to murmur among themselves, the points of their crossbows wavering but not entirely moving aside-shifted enough that their shots would probably maim rather than kill, which was small comfort.

The smiling derro took no notice. “I am a savant of the People, sometimes called the Slime Clan by the lesser races, and I am in personal service to the Slime King. You may give me any message to pass on. I’m sure by the time I have an answer for you you’ll still be alive, though possibly not in exactly the same body you started out in.”

“The message is to be delivered personally,” Zaltys said firmly. “Or we’ll simply leave, and your king won’t ever know what we have to offer.”