by Tim Pratt
He was not even quite two years younger than her, and he was trying hard to make her laugh and impress her with his ability to avoid being eaten by giant spiders and carnivorous vines, but the most he’d gotten from her in terms of affection was a pat on the back and some ruffled hair. He still might have simply enjoyed and agonized in the frustrated bliss of being so close to the untouchable object of his affection, but the prospect of a summer spent insinuating his way into her affections suddenly seemed in danger. Of course Zaltys wanted to charge into the Underdark, despite her total ignorance of the realm and its dangers, to save some people she’d never met, just because they happened to be related by an accident of blood. Julen could have told her that birth parents weren’t so great-his own mother was essentially a work of art observed from afar, a beautifully-attired and impossibly distant matron who spent most of her time in her chambers with her lady’s maids, while his father was a more frequent and altogether more harrowing presence in his life. But Zaltys hadn’t given him the chance to make those arguments, nor would they have meant much to her anyway, he suspected.
When she vanished, leaving him alone on the edge of the camp, his first thought was to go to Alaia and warn her, but he knew Zaltys would perceive that as a betrayal, and it would ruin any chance he had of being more than a soft city boy in her eyes. He considered going to Krailash, in hopes of enlisting his help to intercept Zaltys and convince her not to do anything impulsive, but he knew the dragonborn would tell his mistress what her daughter had tried to do, so betrayal would still be an issue. Besides, Zaltys would be hard to hold, given the capabilities of the armor Quelamia had made for her, and she was the kind of person who would exert heroic effort to do something she’d been ordered not to do.
So there was nothing for it. Julen would just have to go after Zaltys on his own. He didn’t have her ability to step from shadow to shadow, but he could move pretty fast when the need arose, and she’d have to spend some time digging to widen the hole his shovel had fallen through sufficiently to squeeze herself through. He entered camp and made his way to his campsite, near the inner ring of carts, and picked up his pack. The bag seemed unusually heavy, so he opened it up, and frowned at what he saw inside.
In addition to his clothes and spare knives and antitoxins and lockpicks, there was a pouch of trail rations; flint and steel; an everburning torch; a piece of blue chalk; and a small clear crystal bottle with a stopper. The latter looked sort of familiar, but surely it couldn’t be … He pulled the stopper and tipped some of the clear fluid inside onto the ground. The level of water in the bottle didn’t change at all. His father had a bottle much like this one, though the crystal was a different color; he jokingly called it his drought insurance. That bottle had a connection to the plane of elemental water, and would pour forth pure water forever, albeit in a small trickle. It was a powerful magic item, and now someone had given him its twin. He continued digging through the bag and found, sheathed, a small dagger that wasn’t his own. When he drew the knife, he was surprised to see the blade was bound in verdigris, and the hilt worked with a pattern of green enameled leaves and vines. A green jewel set in the hilt of the dagger pulsed with a gentle light when his thumb touched it, and his eyes widened. The dagger was magical. What it did, exactly, he didn’t know, but it was no ordinary knife. It was a gift from someone who wished to remain anonymous, obviously.
That meant he had an ally in camp, someone who knew he was going to go into the Underdark, presumably-someone who knew Zaltys was going there too. Who could know such a thing? There was a psion somewhere in camp-he’d never met her-charged with erasing the memories of the laborers and guards after the caravan returned to Delzimmer, so they couldn’t reveal the secret location of the terazul vines. It was said some psions could perceive possible futures, so perhaps the mysterious figure had seen a vision of Zaltys’s quest. Or it could be the wizard Quelamia-she was an eladrin, an otherworldly race that had untold powers, and she certainly seemed to know more about everything than anyone else. And, of course, Alaia was a shaman with a profound connection to the natural world and the ability to observe the actions of others in secret through the eyes of her spirit companions, but what motive would any of them have to help him pursue Zaltys? Why wouldn’t they simply stop her?
He didn’t have time to think about it. If he was going to catch up with Zaltys before she lost him in the caverns underground, he needed to move.
Julen shouldered his pack and headed nonchalantly for the perimeter, past the guards and laborers who took no notice of him, hiding once behind a cart while Krailash went striding by on some errand or another. He wasn’t supposed to leave camp unescorted, since even the seventh heir to the Guardians was a valuable commodity, and if any of the guards had seen him, they would have stopped him.
But he wasn’t a child. He was an operative trained by the best agents in the Guardians, and if he didn’t want to be seen, no one in camp would see him.
Someone in camp did see him creep off into the jungle, though not with ordinary eyes, and that watcher smiled. Things were moving forward as expected. Events underground would be unpredictable, and it might all still end in tragedy, but there was reason to be hopeful. Justice might yet be done, and order restored, and catastrophic futures of madness and death averted. Giving Julen the knife instead of Zaltys was a gamble, but if Zaltys failed, perhaps Julen could succeed in her place. That would be sad, of course, and would annoy the other party to the arrangement, but the watcher was concerned only with results, not with the cost of attaining those results.
Being concerned with anything else, given the situation, was a sure path to heartbreak.
Chapter Nine
Alaiawasn’t in her wagon, fortunately, so Zaltys was able to fill her pack in peace and take a few of the healing potions kept in the emergency stores in her mother’s locked chest. Once she’d finished packing-her hands shaking with anxiety, excitement, and other, less identifiable emotions-she almost stepped into a shadow, but she stopped by her mother’s little folding desk first.
Zaltys sat down, pulled the writing surface down and locked it into place, opened a drawer, and took out one of the small sheets of paper her mother used to write messages to send back to the city. She dipped a pen in her mother’s inkwell, considered, and wrote a few brief lines. She folded the paper and wrote her mother’s name on it, then took another sheet, and wrote a slightly longer note. After folding that one, she wrote “Krailash” on the outside. She didn’t seal the notes with wax, partly because she didn’t want to take the time, and partly because a blob of wax wouldn’t stop her mother from reading the note addressed to Krailash if she decided to do so. Zaltys wondered if Alaia would respect her privacy or not, but in a sort of distant, theoretical way. After years of being profoundly concerned with earning her adopted mother’s respect, Zaltys found that, this night, she didn’t care at all. To let her believe all these years that she’d been the sole survivor of a massacre, instead of the sole escapee from a village enslaved … She could understand why her mother had lied to her, but that didn’t mean she would forgive her.
Satisfied with her arrangements, Zaltys stepped into a shadow in the corner of the wagon, emerging on the edge of camp-and stumbling to her knees as darkness crept in on the edges of her vision.
Oh. The darkness receded, and she rose unsteadily to her feet. Her new shadow armor was magical, yes, but magic had limits, and could exert a strain on those who used it, something she knew intellectually but had seldom experienced personally. It was just as well. She probably shouldn’t learn to depend on the armor’s capabilities-it might make her naturecraft lazy. Better to keep the shadow-shifting power as an option of last resort.
She set off into the woods, back to the purported grave site of her family, a grave which might, remarkably, lead instead to her saving their lives. If there were derro slavers in the area looking for Rainer, she could capture one, and force it to lead her to the slaves, where she could reunite with her l
ong-lost people. A lot of girls, she knew, dreamed of discovering they were secretly princesses, and of rejoining their rightful families and being lifted out of poverty. But how many adopted princesses went in search of their original families, who were almost certainly simple jungle-dwelling villagers or refugees?
Family is family, she thought.
As she crossed the stone plaza where she’d been found as a baby, she thought she heard something, a sibilant whisper, and she spun, drawing her short blade. Something slithered across the stones-something that looked like a headless shadow snake.
Is my armor haunted by the ghost of its owner? she thought, terrified by the idea. She feared nothing she could shoot or stab, but ghosts … She’d never heard of haunted armor, but there were stories of cursed magical items, and what was a ghost but a curse with a point of view?
The shadow snake didn’t vanish, but lingered at the edge of the plaza, and after a moment’s hesitation she stepped toward it. The snake began moving, and Zaltys followed.
And began to wonder if she was having a dream, that dream, because apart from her headless guide, it was exactly like her recurring nightmares: walking down the path, toward the pit. The stone grate was more moss-encrusted, chipped, and weathered than it was in her dreams, but otherwise it was the same, a circle easily a dozen feet across with a trapdoor of old, rusted metal set in the center. The shadow snake slithered into one of the holes in the grate-a hole far too small for it, too small for anything bigger than a human finger, but the ghosts of shadow snakes were apparently untroubled by mere physical reality.
Did she dare open the trapdoor? She stepped onto the grate, testing it with her foot first and finding it reassuringly solid. Was it, perhaps, some other entry to the Underdark? Were the visions a message from some god or another, meant to help her save her family?
“So hungry. So thirsty.”
That voice didn’t sound inside her head, but from the depths of the pit. It was a dry, dusty, rattling voice. “Who’s there?” Zaltys said.
“Child of Zehir,” the voice said. “You have neglected your old king. I hunger, and my hungers hunger. Where are the people?”
She’d asked her mother who Zehir was, the first time the name was spoken in her dreams, and her mother had frowned. “A god of darkness and deception,” she said, “beloved of poisoners and assassins. Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” The family deity was Waukeen, goddess of merchants and trade, though Alaia also kept a shrine to Mielikki, goddess of the forest and of rangers. As a shaman, she had little use for gods in general, since her connection to the primal magic of the world was rather more direct, but as she said, a little reverence couldn’t hurt, and shows of piety reassured the workers. But they were good deities-or at least deities unopposed to goodness-while Zehir …
“Why do you call me a child of Zehir?” she said. “I don’t worship … that.”
“You are an instrument of the god, as am I,” the voice whispered. “You even come to me arrayed in shadow. You are death from the dark. You are poison and revenge. Set me free, and we will conquer. Set me free, and I will raise you high. Set me free, and we-”
Zaltys fled, running away from the pit. Krailash knew a lot about the yuan-ti-she gathered some of them, far away from here, had once killed a number of his friends-and he spoke, sometimes, of the serpentfolk who’d once lived in this jungle, and the horrible god-monsters called anathemas that they kept trapped in pits even as they venerated them. The voice must belong to such a beast, or something even worse, and she couldn’t let it hypnotize her or confuse her or fill her head with lies. No doubt it whispered to anyone who came close enough, and it was surely the source of her dreams, as well. Perhaps being a native of this jungle, however long since removed, made her unusually susceptible to the creature’s powers. But she was strong; she was an heir to the Serrat family. She could not be tricked that way.
When she finally reached the false grave, shaken by her encounter with something from her dreams, she found someone waiting for her. “Julen,” she said. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous.”
Julen sighed and drove down the shovel again. “Of course it’s dangerous. Just walking through the jungle to get here was dangerous-I trod on something that tried to eat my boot. But here I am. I can’t let you go alone. I’m surprised I got here before you, though.”
Unwilling to mention the snake and the pit, she said, “I had to write a note before I left. I told you, this isn’t your problem, I’m going to save my family-”
“You’re my family,” he said. “So your family is also my family. ‘This-and-thus,’ as my father says, whenever he wants me to understand something is self-evident.”
“My mother will kill me if anything happens to you.”
“Your mother will have my father kill me if she finds out I let you go into a nasty hole in the ground without trying to stop you. So take me along and let me keep trying to talk you out of this.”
Zaltys crossed her arms. “No. I won’t let you go. Not even if I have to tie you up and leave you here.”
“You don’t have any choice, Cousin,” he said cheerfully, lying on his belly beside the hole, peering into the depths and probing around with the shovel. “You can’t tie me up for long. I’m trained by the Guardians-we’re tough to tie down. And even if you could, say if you knocked me unconscious first, you can’t leave me asleep or tied up out in the jungle. I’d be eaten by something. And if you try to leave without me, I’ll start yelling, and the scouts will hear me, and come over, and Krailash will haul you out by the scruff of your neck.”
“This is blackmail!”
“Yes.” He rose and tossed the shovel aside. “I’m blackmailing you into letting me help you. I’m a monster. Listen, Zaltys. What do you know about the Underdark?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s deep. It’s big. It’s dark. Wet. Dank. Slimy. Drow live down there, and other things, I guess. Derro, apparently.”
“Right. You don’t know anything. But you know my brother Malon makes all our trade arrangements with the dwarves and the drow, he’s been down underground loads of times, and I’ve heard all about it, not even including what I read in the books and scrolls my father’s forced on me. I know a few things you could stand to find out. What do you know about glowstone?”
“Stone. That glows.” She heard the petulance in her own voice, and hated it.
“Ha. And wormrock? It’s not rock made out of worms, I’m afraid. How about Ghaunadaur, the Elder Eye?”
“Some kind of monster god, isn’t he?” she said, vaguely remembering horror stories told by other kids. “Lives underground?”
“He’s one of the gods worshiped in the Underdark. Not that I expect us to run into him, or Lolth either, but it’s good to know about the presiding deities, don’t you think? How about darkrock? The Upperdark and the Lowerdark? Purple worms? Fungal altars? Doomlight crystals? Aboleths?” He shuddered. “I hope those are nothing but stories and legends, but if they’re not …”
“Fine, you know more than I do. Though I don’t know how much things you learned from books or stories will help us in the dark.”
“They can hardly hurt us,” he said. “And I’ll note you’re saying ‘us,’ now, too.” He gestured to the hole. “I made a better opening to the cavern underneath. What do you say we lower a rope and get this over with?”
She stepped closer to her cousin, torn between frustration and affection. “Julen, I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Then we’re in agreement.” He touched her cheek and grinned. “I don’t want me to get hurt, either.”
Zaltys went down the rope first, followed by Julen. They couldn’t see anything much at all, and Julen whispered, “First decision: do we make a light? It might call attention to us.”
“We won’t get far if we can’t see. And if the light does bring a derro to us, so much the better-we can force it to tell us where the slaves are kept.”
She took a sunrod from her pack and struck the golden tip against the rough stone floor. Light flared at the end of the iron rod, illuminating the space around them. The sunrods were an alchemical marvel, or else magical-she wasn’t sure. The light they cast was steadier than torchlight, but sunrods were less useful than torches for setting enemies or their dwellings on fire. You couldn’t have everything.
The cavern was the size of the great hall in the family meeting house, full of rubble and dust. The shovel Julen had lost earlier was on the ground. He folded the shovel and tied it to the outside of his pack. It was unwieldy, but Zaltys thought it was a good idea-they might need to be able to dig down here.
“There,” Julen said, pointing. A tunnel, partially obscured by fallen rocks, led off from one end of the cavern-the end that led back toward the caravan site. “I wonder if we’ll end up underneath our own campsite?” he said.
“We’ll see,” she said, and led the way, holding her sunrod aloft. They moved a few rocks aside, widening the opening, but once they stepped into the tunnel, it wasn’t as claustrophobic as Zaltys had expected. “Looks like an old mine shaft,” she said, pointing out the squared-off shape of the passage.
“Should have brought one of the dwarf craftsmen from the camp. They know about mines.”
“I don’t think there’s much to know, except: a long time ago there was a mine. This passage was used for something else more recently, though. A passageway for slavers, coming up from wherever. Is there, I don’t know, a derro city?” The notion seemed outrageous. They were in a hole in the ground.