by Tim Pratt
Krailash couldn’t decide whether to walk away, or attack the nearest derro overseer, or lunge at Alaia. The conflicting demands of honor, pride, dignity, and duty pulled him in different directions, and paralyzed him.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to make a decision. He heard shouting, and when he looked toward the slave pens, he saw Zaltys—looking dirty, and disheveled, but human—running his way, trailed closely by Julen.
His training had him on his feet and racing in her direction before he had a moment to think. He was a protector, and Zaltys and Julen were in need of protection, because they were being pursued by a horror his eyes could not quite comprehend.
ZALTYS AND JULEN WERE ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SQUARE when they heard the shout: “Stop them!” Though they probably shouldn’t have, they paused long enough to look back. At first, Julen thought some kind of forest monster was pursuing them, perhaps one of the ambulatory and minimally self-aware conglomerations of carnivorous vines that waylaid travelers in the jungle. But as the green figure stumbled down the steps, fragments of greenery tearing away and fluttering behind, he realized it was Iraska. Shouldn’t have pulled out the knife, he thought, but he’d done so automatically—you didn’t leave a perfectly good knife sticking in a dead body. You could never tell when you’d need another blade, especially a magical one.
The Slime King was bloody and her robes were frayed. The vines weren’t coming away easily; they were taking chunks of flesh and fabric with them—but she was alive, and her phantom tentacles were lashing in the air. Most of the derro in the settlement were still busy subduing the creature that had crawled out of the portal, but she’d brought two blindfolded guards with her and, worse, all the little sovereigns and some of their creations, including the quaggoth with the eyes of a beholder wavering on stalks. One of those eyes emitted a reddish light, and the facade of bones on a low building near Julen and Zaltys burst into flames.
“Zaltys, vanish, save yourself!” he shouted, but she just grabbed his hand and pulled him along after her. She’d managed to hide him in her shadow once before, but she couldn’t take him with her if she stepped through shadows to escape, and she was apparently unwilling to go without him. That was very thoughtful of her, though it was also a trifle suicidal. They dodged among the buildings as the crowd of derro and their furious Slime King pursued them, and sooner than Julen expected they’d burst out among the mushroom fields. The derro behind them were gaining, and the overseers in the field were staring at them in surprise, so Julen dropped his pack to lose the weight and make himself run faster—he had his weapons with him, and losing his food and drinking water and lockpicks didn’t rank among his current worries. He pulled his hand away from Zaltys and ran toward the field of mushrooms, shouting “Split up!” and hoping they could at least reduce the number of pursuers after each of them.
“No!” Zaltys shouted, and pointed toward the long low cages made of pale wood—the slave pens, obviously.
Dedication to family is all well and good, he thought, but I’d rather be alive than noble. But he couldn’t very well yell that sentiment, and who knew, maybe if they freed the slaves they could escape themselves in the ensuing confusion. Assuming the slaves weren’t all too cowed or drugged to bother causing any confusion.
“Mother!” Zaltys shouted, and Julen thought, Aren’t we a bit old to be calling for mommy? Then Zaltys shouted “Krailash! You heard me call! You came!” and Julen realized she was calling to people there in the cavern—Krailash was there, holding his great battle-axe, and Alaia was there too, though her ever-present dire boar spirit companion was nowhere to be seen. Julen began to grin. The Slime King was formidable, certainly, but Alaia was one of the most powerful shamans in the region, and shamans lived to destroy unnatural things like Iraska had become. He wondered what she would do—summon giant bears to eat their enemies? Call up a wind to strip the flesh from Iraska’s old bones? Summon a priory of ghost panthers to slash and bite and claw?
But she didn’t do anything. She just stood there, staring at Zaltys. And Zaltys veered off course, running to one of the cages. There were eight or ten creatures inside, roughly human-sized, and all more or less snakelike. Some had the lower bodies of serpents, while others had arms and legs, but all had the heads of snakes—as essentially reptilian creatures, they didn’t look so terribly different from Krailash, except for the absence of frills on the cheeks and ears, and the fact that they mostly lacked legs. They stared at Zaltys in confusion as she started smashing at the bars of their cage with her magical bow. It was no way to treat such a weapon—bows weren’t clubs, and could be easily broken—but then, it was a magical bow, and you could probably use it to smash down a brick wall without breaking the back or the belly or even spoiling the curve. Still, it was surprising to see Zaltys use her bow that way, when she wouldn’t even risk damaging it by leaving it strung, but desperation did strange things to a person.
Krailash rushed toward Zaltys, holding his axe high, and for a moment, Julen thought, He’s realized she’s yuan-ti, he’s going to kill her! But instead, Krailash grabbed her, swung her around behind him as easily as Julen would have moved a kitten, and then struck the cage with Thunder’s Edge. The bars splintered and shattered at the first blow, and the yuan-ti started to slither hesitantly out.
Julen looked behind him, and Iraska and her terrible retinue were very close, kicking up spores as they charged through the mushroom fields toward them. He drew his green knife again, hoping he wouldn’t need to use it, still waiting for Alaia to do something suitably shamanic and conflict-ending. Krailash took a stance between the onrushing horde and the members of the Serrat family he was sworn to protect, and the freed yuan-ti—knowing a good thing when they saw it—hurried behind him as well. The other slaves in the pens, kuo-toa and quaggoths and bullywugs and who knew what else, all chattered and screamed and shouted and croaked and pleaded for freedom. Zaltys stepped beside Krailash, her magical bow in her hands, her woefully underfilled quiver of arrows hanging from her shoulder. “For family!” she shouted, and nocked an arrow.
Then Alaia pushed past her, and stepped in front of Krailash, and said, “Avert your eyes, children!”
Julen, who’d learned very well to obey his elders, turned his head aside, and that’s when Alaia apparently exploded in a burst of blinding light.
Krailash realized what Alaia was going to do an instant before she did it, and squeezed his eyes shut. Still, the light was bright enough to make his eyelids glow red, just a flash, there and gone, and he opened his eyes, knowing the advantage wouldn’t last for long.
“I may have lost my powers, but at least I still have this nice robe,” Alaia said, smoothing the fabric of her robe of stars. The magic in the gown allowed it to create a sudden flash of light, blinding one’s enemies—and for the light-sensitive denizens of the Underdark, it was be even more debilitating. The charging woman—a human? how strange—wearing tattered shreds of vines pressed her hands to her eyes and howled, while the derro and their monstrous followers stumbled around in a daze. Only two of the derro were unaffected, hulking figures with blindfolds wrapped around their eyes, and Krailash decided to kill them first, but an arrow and a throwing knife steaked past him, striking them both down courtesy of Zaltys and Julen pressing the advantage. Krailash lunged into action, swinging his great axe and bellowing, attacking any derro who came close.
The fight was going well—truly, it was more of a massacre—but then something insubstantial but impossibly strong, like the tentacles of a ghostly kraken, wrapped around his chest and lifted him into the air, hurling him at the cavern wall. He struck with enough force to knock all the wind out of him, and slid down. Dazed, unable to get his breath, he stared up at the twisting portals that hovered over the field. They were moving, drifting like clouds, but coming together, forming into a larger sphere that crackled with lightning in colors he didn’t know the names for—colors that made his head ache and his eyes burn. Only the portal on the wall, where the
terazul flowers emerged, didn’t move—otherwise all the spheres floating in the cavern drew together, like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
He didn’t know what it meant. Probably it was important. Possibly even deadly. He should do something about it, if only he could remember how to stand up, and how to move.
Zaltys was impressed by her mother’s light show, but a bit disappointed it didn’t flash-fry the derro where they were standing—she’d expected something more powerful, but her mother’s journey had probably been arduous, to judge by the bloody scratches on her face. Zaltys felt guilty about Alaia’s presence, since now she was in danger too. Zaltys had only wanted to help her family; she hadn’t meant to endanger her other family.
She’d had some hope that, once she freed them, the yuan-ti might wade into battle spitting venom and flashing fangs, but they seemed content to stand back and see how things developed. Hardly surprising, given that they’d been enslaved for nearly twenty years, but disappointing nonetheless.
While their enemies were blind, Zaltys and Julen did their best to pick them off, starting with the two blindfolded derro and then focusing on Iraska. Julen threw his green knife, but by bad luck it just missed Iraska and instead struck the quaggoth with the beholder eyes, which went down in a mass of crawling greenery. Julen swore and threw ordinary daggers at Iraska, but her phantom tentacles batted them away, so he shifted his attention, hurling more knives and felling other derro—including Bug-eater, who said, very clearly, “Not fair!” before dropping to the ground with a hilt growing out of his chest.
Zaltys stared at Iraska, and willed all other distractions to drop away. She lifted her beautiful bow, and reached behind her for an arrow: one of the special ones Quelamia had given her. The arrowhead glittered like a diamond. The wizard had told Zaltys it was a shard of crystal from something called the Living Gate, a potent weapon against aberrations and Iraska was at least part aberration with her spectral tentacles lashing.
The distractions of the battlefield fell away. Krailash was charging in with an axe, Julen was throwing knives, and her mother was handing the yuan-ti long shafts of bone and urging them—futilely—to use them as clubs, but Zaltys only let herself see Iraska, a terrible apparition in shreds of greenery. She settled into her stance, nocked the arrow, and drew smoothly, pulling back until her fingers touched the corner of her mouth. She sighted a little low and to the side to account for paradox—the strange way an arrow curved out and around when it left a bow—but she needn’t have bothered. With a bow like that, she couldn’t miss.
Just before she loosed, Zaltys saw Iraska take notice of Krailash, who was rapidly laying waste to her warriors—who were, after all, mostly savants and mad chirurgeons, not even proper derro fighters. Her terrible tentacles lashed out and grabbed Krailash, flinging him against the wall.
Zaltys gasped, and her fingers let go of the bowstring without her volition. The shot was spoiled, she was sure, but the arrow flew straight, flickering out of sight when an armless derro spurting blood from his wounds stumbled into its path, and reappearing on the other side of the obstruction. The crystalline arrowhead hit Iraska dead in the center of her chest, knocking the old yuan-ti onto her back among the mushrooms. The moment the arrow struck the Slime King, the phantasmal bahannoth that surrounded her like a foul aura writhed wildly, screamed, and disappeared.
Zaltys rapidly used up the rest of her arrows, loosing them almost casually at the surviving derro. She used the two with magical arrowheads too, and so one of the derro burned, and one turned to stone, but she didn’t pay much attention. Her great-great-grandmother or aunt or whatever she might have been was dead. The rest was just mopping up. The last few derro broke and tried to run back to the settlement, but the yuan-ti slaves chose that moment to act, surging forward with their clubs and taking them from behind, swinging wildly but effectively. Zaltys winced. They were taking out the frustrations of long captivity on their oppressors, she understood that, but still, attacking fleeing enemies seemed like poor form.
Julen touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he said.
“I am. I don’t know about Krailash.” Alaia was kneeling beside the fallen dragonborn, and Julen and Zaltys hurried to her side.
“I can’t understand you,” Alaia was saying. “Krailash, I’m sorry, I’m trying, but your jaw, it was broken on the wall, I can’t—”
“Voo. Geen. Ortals.” Krailash’s face was smashed, and he was trying to stand up, with Alaia doing her best to hold him down. The fact that she, a hundred-and-ten-pound human, managed to hold a three-hundred-pound dragonborn down suggested his injuries were grave.
“Mother, heal him, please,” Zaltys said, “he’s suffering.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, Zaltys, I wish I could. My powers have, ah … It’s complicated. If we can get him to the surface—”
“Ortals!” Krailash tried to shout, and blood spurted from the remains of his mouth. His eyes were wide and intent.
“Is he saying ‘portals’?” Julen said.
“Probably,” the Slime King said. Zaltys turned, and Iraska was there, holding the arrow that should have killed her in her hand. All the portals above the field and over the settlement had somehow formed together into a single vast orb, which hovered just behind her, big as a manor house. The yuan-ti in the field were cowering and covering their heads, hiding from its terrible blue-green light.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Iraska snapped the crystalline head off the arrow and slipped it into her sleeve, then broke the arrowshaft in her hands, dropping the pieces. “You shot me with a shard of the Living Gate, which once formed a wall between the realms of madness and the Astral Sea. Impressive. But that crystal kills aberrations—not necessarily mortals. All you did was banish my balhannoth. Which was a bit like halfway dying myself. I hadn’t realized how deep into my body and my being its tendrils had extended. But that’s the Far Realm for you. So subtle and insidious it makes the cunning of Zehir seem like a brass band falling down the stairs in comparison. Shame you wasted the arrow, Zaltys. If you’d loosed it into my portal, I bet it would have closed up.” She walked closer, the gate hovering behind her, and Julen threw a knife, but the portal flared bluer, and a rosy pink tentacle lashed out of the portal and dashed the blade aside. Even with her balhannoth dead, Iraska still had the support of creatures in the Far Realm.
“That was my last dagger,” Julen said quietly. “Oh, well. Good effort, everyone.”
“You can still join me, Zaltys. Turn on these fools. You can be a hero, the sole survivor of the massacre that killed the rest of the Travelers. I can show you the pathways of power. I don’t want to let my friends from the Far Realm come through this portal just yet. We haven’t quite come to terms, and they’d much rather emerge in a more populated place anyway, like Delzimmer. Especially since your family has been preparing the way all these years by poisoning so many citizens with terazul flowers, turning the addicts into unwitting pawns of the realm of madness, just waiting to be activated. When we invade, the taint in their blood will transform them into aberrations.”
Zaltys looked at her mother, eyes wide—the terazul were connected to the Far Realm? Alaia wouldn’t meet her gaze.
Iraska went on. “They’re gluttonous, you see, and prefer a larger meal, and more chaos. But if you force my hand, I’ll open the gates now. Well?”
“Run, Zaltys,” Alaia said. “Use your armor, slip through shadows. Get to the surface. Get the Guardians. Tell them to avenge us.”
“There’s another way,” Zaltys said, and jumped at Iraska.
Only to fall on her face when Krailash seized her ankle with one of his hands. He spoke, and though the words were a bit mushy coming from his ruined face, she could understand him: “My duty.”
The dragonborn heaved himself from the cavern wall, axe in hand, and barreled straight for Iraska. Her eyes widened, and a tentacle licked from the portal, but he swung his axe almost casually and severed it. Krailash struck Iraska
with his head lowered and his shoulder out, lifting her off her feet and driving her into the portal. His own momentum carried him through the portal with her, and they both vanished.
The portal writhed and sparked and twisted, curling in on itself, losing length and width and depth until nothing remained but a wisp of greenish vapor and a chemical stink like something from an alchemist’s shop.
“The arrowhead,” Zaltys said. “She still had it in her sleeve, the piece of the Living Gate.” She shook her head. “The portals are closed. And Krailash …”
“He gave his life to protect the family,” Alaia said. “I wasn’t sure he would. I’m ashamed I ever doubted him.”
“That portal didn’t close,” Julen said, pointing to one Zaltys hadn’t noticed before, hovering near the cave wall. “Why didn’t it join with the others?”
“It is very old,” one of the yuan-ti said, slithering over, wringing his oddly humanlike hands. “The other slaves, some of them have been here for much longer than we have, and they said this portal has always been here. It was opened by the first Slime King long ago.”
“Are those terazul?” Zaltys said, squinting. “The vines, coming out of the portal … Those are our flowers, aren’t they? That’s what Iraska meant, isn’t it, about us poisoning the people of Delzimmer—about us preparing them.”
“Zaltys,” Alaia said carefully. “I didn’t know. I swear. I had no idea they came from the Far Realm.”
“You do now,” Zaltys said. “So what do you propose to do about it?”
“I propose we leave before the other derro come back. I propose we take your, ah, original family members back with us, and then return to camp, and go home. I’ll tell the other ranking members of our family what I’ve found out, and I’m sure they’ll do the right thing. Given some time and preparation, we can diversify the business a bit better, make some investments, and ease out of the terazul trade.”