Venom in Her Veins

“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.

Chapter Twenty-Three

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.”

“And you want to punish the derro for some transgression against you.”

“The Slime King was one of my servants once. She betrayed me, and my other followers, and went over to the derro. That was some time ago, as humans reckon the years, but I’ve only just noticed in the past dozen years or so-I’m a busy god. I’d like to see the traitor’s works destroyed and my people freed.”

Quelamia nodded. “And you believe you have an instrument in the caravan.”

“Zaltys,” Zehir said, ending the name in a hiss. “She is only a babe now, but she will grow up, and when she does she should be the direct cause of the Slime King’s downfall. There are certain pleasing symmetries in that arrangement, which you would not appreciate. Zaltys is my chosen one. Shutting off access to the Far Realm would distress the Slime King, but, ah, reducing the amount of madness in the world is hardly my area of expertise.”

“Fine,” Quelamia said briskly. “I can help make sure Zaltys is raised to learn martial skills, and magical and psionic ones, if she shows any aptitude. And I can offer weapons capable of combating the influence of the Far Realm-a shard of the Living Gate, a dagger imbued with the power of the Feywild, perhaps other things. I can give Zaltys the means to achieve what you ask. What will you provide?”

“Guidance through the Underdark, where I’m able. Safe passage, where it’s possible. A push in the right direction if things go off course. There are forces in the dark that would stand against me, but I can provide certain advantages, if not overwhelming ones. And of course, I am a god. I can influence events in such a way that Zaltys will want to go into the Underdark to rescue my servants. It’s remarkable what one can achieve with dreams and visions and whispers. And the odd snake to lead someone out of the dark.”

“I trust you will do so subtly,” Quelamia said. “If the Serrat family had known that I intended to destroy so much of their livelihood … if Alaia knew that I had planned to let Zaltys find out what she truly is …”

“Seeing such treachery in a noble eladrin is a rare and delicious thing,” the god said, voice dark with amusement. “Are you sure you don’t want to become my worshiper? You wouldn’t be the first eladrin to pledge