The histories he’d read all said derro were mad, but that only made them more dangerous. His father had taken him to an asylum once, to see a man who’d killed fourteen respectable women in Delzimmer before being captured. That man had chatted amiably with voices only he could hear, and claimed to take his murderous instructions from a neighbor’s pet wolfhound-the wolfhound had been examined, and was determined to be an ordinary dog, not a lycanthrope or demon in disguise or anything else unusual, and certainly nothing capable of controlling a man’s mind. The killer had, unquestionably, been insane, but he’d eluded the authorities for months, carefully laying false trails that pointed blame toward his imaginary enemies, and his booby-trapped basement lair had taken the lives of a dozen city guards before he was apprehended. His father had told him all that, and said, “You see, Julen, madness doesn’t mean stupidity. The mad can be clever and cunning-sometimes even wise-and because their motivations are often impossible for sane men to comprehend, they are almost impossible to predict and troublesome to manipulate. Some like to employ the mad as assassins or enforcers or ultimate threats, but I advise against it. If such measures seem necessary, invest in a skilled actor who can pretend to madness. Actors are easily manipulated, especially by the lever of vanity, and often have the sort of moral flexibility that proves useful in our operatives.”
The derro weren’t actors. They were twisted beings, despised even by the other races in the Underdark, tainted by their dark researches and assignations with aberrations, and they couldn’t be bribed, or begged, or outsmarted, or reasoned with, which limited his diplomatic options. Trying to kill the mad was also troublesome, as they often fought on happily when sane people would have given in to the inevitability of death. The situation wasn’t hopeless-the Guardians held that almost no situation was-but it was certainly dire. Escaping from the derro was the main priority.
Julen examined the shackles as best he could by feel, probing for the lock with his fingertips, because he’d been lockpicking since he was old enough to hold a burglar’s tools. But there was no lock, and as he shifted, the metal grew warm and contracted, squeezing his hands and ankles more tightly. Magic, then. That was problematic. He wondered if the green knife in his pack could help, but one of the derro must have taken it. The dagger at his belt was also gone, but the throwing knives were still hidden in his sleeves. No help now, in this bump-and-drag situation, but of potential use later.
There was something else up his sleeve: the piece of pale blue chalk he’d found in his pack. He’d secreted it there with some idea of marking their descent through this labyrinth so they could find their way up again.
“It’s not a labyrinth,” the derro dragging him said in an unsteady, high-pitched voice, like a drunken child’s. “Common mistake. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has only a single path. It’s a circuitous path, takes a long time to traverse, and there are lots of twists and turns, but there are no branch paths, no moments of choice, no dead ends-you can’t get lost in a labyrinth, you can just get bored. A labyrinth is a means of meditation, or a way to make a minotaur’s mealtime more entertaining for the watchers. But this, this is no labyrinth. There are paths here with a thousand branches, that all end in death. It’s more like a maze, though not one of your silly garden mazes with hedges. This is a maze that spreads out front and back and to and fro and up and down, all bridges and pits and overs and unders. You can’t map it because there are things here that eat maps and maps that eat mapmakers and things that eat appetites.” The voice lapsed into silence.
After a long moment, Julen said, “You can read minds?” That seemed the only answer, unless Julen had been muttering about labyrinths aloud, and he was fairly sure he hadn’t fallen that far from the heights of his Guardian training.
“What? No one can read minds. There are no minds to read except mine, because mine is the only real mind, and none of you things that pretend to have minds can possibly read a mind like mine.” There was a sound of a scuffle, and the derro who’d spoken squawked in pain. The relentlessly scraping forward motion stopped, and the chains holding Julen went slack. He considered trying to escape, but he would have had to crab-scuttle along the tunnel, and he wouldn’t have made it far, even if the derro were apparently fighting among themselves.
The chains tightened again, and Julen’s movement resumed, and he bumped against a leather-clad body curled on the ground, catching the rank whiff of spilling entrails and fresh blood.
“I see death. It’s a labyrinth of light and dark,” the fallen derro whispered as Julen was dragged past him, and then exhaled its final breath.
Madness, Julen thought. The remaining two derro ahead of him began to sing in a croaky but harmonious way in what he thought was a Dwarvish dialect. But no one tried to take his chalk, so he shook his sleeve until the slim cylinder fell into his hand, and left intermittent marks on the ground as he was dragged. The chalk glowed, faintly luminous, which suggested it was magical, which further suggested it wouldn’t be easily wiped off. He hoped. Leaving Zaltys a trail to follow was probably his best hope of survival, at least until some other opportunity presented itself. Assuming she hadn’t been captured too. What if she was counting on him to save her?
It seemed an unlikely prospect, given her capabilities, but the idea that Zaltys might need him strengthened his resolve to escape, even more than the prospect of being tortured by these chattering, cackling, singing lunatics.
Zaltys was justly proud of her tracking skills, but they weren’t doing her much good at the moment. She had excellent night vision, but that required some stray beam of light somewhere for the eye to capture and amplify. Underground, she was beyond the reach of starlight. There were sunrods left in her pack, but she didn’t want to give away her position. The derro had stopped giggling, but they must still have been relatively close by, assuming she hadn’t crept right past a branching tunnel. There was a terrible stink there, too, as if she were crawling through a sewer, though there was no particular dampness.
Her foot, sliding along the stone before her to feel the way, hit something heavy but yielding, and metal clinked against leather.
There in the dark, she closed her eyes. If it was a dead body … if it was Julen’s body … Was the salvation of family members she’d never met worth the death of a cousin she knew and liked and even, now that she thought about it, loved?
Crouching, she ran her hands along the body, feeling for the face. Coarse hair, stiff and clotted with filth, touched her fingers. The hair was far too long to be Julen’s; he kept his clipped unfashionably short because, he said, long hair was a liability in a fight. Zaltys, who was a bit vain about her own long dark hair, agreed in theory, but settled for pinning and tying hers up most of the time.
Relief washed through her. This was some dead derro then, probably, but killed by whom? Julen himself? It was possible. She searched the body as best she could by feel, going cautiously in case there were hidden barbs or bare poisoned blades. Hanging from the dead man’s rather bloody belt she found the wicked shape of a repeating hand crossbow, loaded with a full case of five bolts, and extra ammunition besides. She had some of the classical archer’s contempt for crossbows, considering them too easy to use and dismissing their lighter bolts as incapable of the penetrative power of an arrow loosed from a conventional bow, but a crossbow that small would be easier to use at close range, so she let practicality overcome distaste and hung it from her own belt.