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 long-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 …