Venom in Her Veins

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.”

She 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.