Tim Pratt - Venom in Her Veins

“It’s the girl child,” the yuan-ti who’d spoken to her earlier said. His tongue, long and forked, flickered wildly. “Zaltys, I am Scitheron. I knew you when you were a babe.” He turned to the other snakefolk. “This woman, she is the pureblood, the infant left behind when Iraska sent her people to enslave us. She’s come back! She’s come back to save us!”

“Now maybe you can save me,” Zaltys said. “I don’t suppose any of you know the way out?”

“No,” the yuan-ti said. “But I think that snake is trying to get your attention. Perhaps it is a messenger of our great god Zehir, who chose you as the instrument of our salvation?”

Indeed, the pale serpent was back, coiling and uncoiling itself impatiently, and when Zaltys looked at it, it began to slither away from the fields and the settlement. “Wait,” Zaltys said. “Do any of you yuan-ti speak the language of the Underdark?”

“Deep Speech?” Scitheron said. “I do.”

“Tell these slaves we’ll set them free if they don’t hinder our escape.”

“They are beasts, daughter of Zehir,” Scitheron said, “foul creatures who do not keep the true faith.”

“Please, just tell them?”

Reluctantly, Scitheron spoke to the kuo-toa, and bullywugs, and quaggoths, and the others, and then returned. “They are impressed by your ferocity. While some hate humans, they hate the derro who enslaved them far more, and say they would rather hurt them than you. They wonder, would it be all right if they tried to kill the rest of the derro, or do you demand that pleasure yourself?”

“They should do whatever they think is best,” Zaltys said.

“You know, they aren’t family,” Alaia said. “And they might turn on us. You don’t owe them freedom.”

“No one should be a slave,” Zaltys said. “To anyone.” Julen helped her strike open the cages with clubs made of bone, and most of the slaves-the ones who weren’t drugged-emerged, some tending to their sick, others racing toward the settlement. None tried to attack Zaltys-indeed, they seemed afraid of her. But she had helped kill the Slime King. Did that make her a liberator, or was she herself the Slime King now? Ascension by assassination seemed likely to be the derro way. If so, she didn’t want the title.

The pale serpent still writhed impatiently, so Zaltys lifted her pack-only to have one of the yuan-ti who had legs take it from her wordlessly and strap it on his back. She nodded her thanks, and the creature nodded back, its black inhuman eyes impossible to read. One of the other yuan-ti handed her a clutch of her spent arrows that he’d retrieved. Treacherous murderous evil chaotic adherents of Zehir-perhaps. But capable, it seemed, of performing acts of simple gratitude.

“Let’s leave this place,” Zaltys said, and they followed the slithering snake on its long and winding journey back out of the Underdark, the screams of the slaves attacking the settlement receding gradually behind them.

Why aren’t the laborers off … laboring?” Glory said, frowning at the unruly camp as she emerged from her wagon. People were running to and fro, shouting, or standing around like old statues, or chattering excitedly in little clumps.

“I told them not to bother,” Quelamia said, squatting in the dirt-she even managed to squat regally-near her own wagon. “The terazul flowers are all dead. This enterprise is over. Everyone will be going home soon.” The eladrin wizard didn’t seem particularly bothered by the turn of events, but Glory just stood there, stunned.

“The flowers are dead? What happened?”

Quelamia was methodically stripping bark from a small tree branch. “Order has been restored, at some cost, though the damage already done cannot be undone easily. But time will correct the worst of them, as the ones tainted by the terazul potions live out their normal spans and die. If a portal had opened in Delzimmer, and some of the old creatures from beyond had emerged into the city, those addicts who had ingested the flowers of the Far Realm may have found themselves turned instantly into zealous cultists. Or they might simply have gone mad and attacked everyone around them. Or the effects could have been stranger-perhaps the addicts would have sprouted pseudopods or developed horrible psionic powers and attendant manias. Who can say? But now all the flowers we’ve plucked this year have turned to dust, and the potions and powders for sale by the Traders may well have lost their potency as well, as the connection to their true source has been severed. The job is done, and any collaborations along the way can be safely forgotten.” Quelamia rose with her stripped-bare twig and gestured at her living wagon with it.

The wheels fell off, and the platform holding the tree dropped a few feet to the ground. The tree settled into the earth as if it had been there forever, suddenly just a part of the landscape, smaller than the surrounding trees, but not otherwise noticeably out of place. The leaves and bark were different from the other trees in the jungle in some way Glory couldn’t immediately articulate, since her sum total knowledge of trees was limited to the fact that some shed their leaves in the autumn while others had needles.

“Farewell, tiefling,” Quelamia said. “You have full authority over the camp, but don’t worry-it won’t be for long.”

“Wait wait wait. You’re going ?”

Quelamia nodded. “My true mission here has been accomplished. And my ostensible mission, to serve Travelers of the Serrat family, is irrelevant, as the Travelers no longer serve any purpose. So I will go, yes.”

“You’d better tell me what in the blasted ruins of Mulhorand is going on here.” Glory crossed her arms. “I’m tired of the cryptic I’m-a-million-year-old-feything routine. I want answers, and if you don’t give them to me, I’ll take them.”

Quelamia cocked her head. “There’s no reason it can’t be told, though I’m not inclined to stay here and do the telling. The Serrats may be wroth about my role in this, and though they pose no threat to me, I don’t relish conflict, so I had best be going. Yes, I think it’s better if you take the answers. Reach into my mind, then. I have something to show you.” The wizard took Glory’s warm hands in her own cool ones, and opened her mind.

Glory was used to slipping in through cracks in automatic mental defenses, but going into the eladrin’s mind was like strolling in through an open door-though she got the sense that openness would extend only to the one particular room of her mind that Quelamia wanted her to see. The room was actually the size of all outdoors, specifically the jungle, specifically at night. Dark trees crowded in from the sides, and in the center, there was a ruined plaza, and Quelamia sat cross-legged on the stones.

This is fifteen years past , Quelamia whispered into Glory’s mind, which was quite a trick, since Glory was inside her mind.

A figure emerged from the trees, cloaked in a garment of dust and shadows, and sat cross-legged across from Quelamia on the ground. “Eladrin,” it said, voice a whisper.

“God,” Quelamia said, nodding as if greeting an equal. “You may call me Quelamia.”

“You may call me the Serpent Lord, Master of Poisons and Shadows, Keeper of Secrets and Teller of-”

“I will call you Zehir, if you don’t mind.” Quelamia was polite. “The full list of honorifics would be rather time consuming, and I should get back to camp before I’m missed.”

Zehir laughed like a hundred serpents hissing at once. The form underneath the cloak didn’t move like a human body at all. “Fair enough. This shouldn’t take long. We have certain parallel interests. You want to stop the Slime King of the derro from opening a vast portal to the Far Realm, and to cut off the roots of the poisoned terazul trade.”