“Life isn’t that simple,” Alaia said. “Right and wrong, Zaltys, they’re complicated ideas, not all situations are so simple.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes that’s true. I know. But not this time. Julen. Go and get me the green knife, and the straightest bit of bone you can salvage from the cage.”
He went obediently to the mound of vegetation covering the poor altered quaggoth, plucked the knife from the mess, and went in search of a suitable shaft.
“If you do this, you ruin us,” Alaia said quietly. “You ruin the family.”
“If I don’t, I really am that madwoman’s great-granddaughter, and I have no desire to follow in her footsteps-to be a herald for monsters from beyond the back of the stars. The family can get into some less poisonous business. They certainly have the capital to finance it.”
“They won’t see it that way, Zaltys. We’re used to doing things a certain way, and the terazul trade is central to-”
Zaltys turned to her, put her hands on her mother’s shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed her on each bloody cheek. “You raised me to revere family, and I do. But you also raised me to do what’s right, and to protect the natural world. What kind of daughter would I be to you if I didn’t learn those lessons?”
She turned her back on her mother, so she wouldn’t have to see the suddenly very old-looking onetime shaman weep. She looked at her cousin. “Do you object to my plan?”
He shrugged. “I’m seventh in line to run the Guardians, which means I may as well be thousandth in line. No real future there. And someone with my skills will never go hungry. So, sure-let’s do the right thing. But do you think this will really work?” He was attaching the end of the green knife to a long, slender shaft of a bone with a bit of leather cord. Zaltys was impressed; he’d figured out what she had in mind.
“Someone gave you that knife. It certainly seems to hum with primal power, and primal power exists in opposition to the aberrations of the Far Realm. I’m a little bit afraid the dagger might have come from, ah-” She glanced at the yuan-ti. “A certain god who shall remain nameless. But if it works, what choice do we have?”
“Loose at will,” he said, and handed her the improvised arrow. It was a ridiculous thing-so top-heavy with the dagger tied to the end that it would simply spin and hit the dirt, with no fletching to make it fly straight even if it could fly, and the thighbone of some underfed Underdark denizen didn’t make a suitable shaft.
But what else were magical bows for? Krailash said he’d seen this one fire a spear once.
Zaltys nocked it, and as soon as the arrow touched the bowstring, it stopped feeling like an improvised spear and started feeling like an arrow. She aimed, drew, and loosed, and the knife-tipped arrow sailed into the portal where the terazul vines emerged.
Nothing happened. “Damn,” Julen said. “All right, we can at least cut the vines off from their roots in the portal. I’ll see if I can scale the cavern wall.”
The vines trembled. The portal pulsed. Something pushed its way partly through the portal, and afterward, no one could agree on exactly what it had looked like. Zaltys thought it had the head of a fish, while Julen insisted it was more like a bird, and Alaia said it looked like the snout of a mole. Whatever it was, it had far too many eyes, and its mouth was open, and the terazul vines came from inside that mouth, as if they were its tongue-which, given the strangeness of the Far Realm, was entirely possible. The hideous snout was wrapped around with brilliant green leaves, still growing at a ferocious pace, and the creature howled as vegetation choked and bound it.
The creature pulled its head back in, and the portal vanished, just as the larger portal had before. The cut-off ends of the terazul vines drooped where they clung to the cavern wall, and the blue flowers began to shower down, wilting and turning brown as they fell.
“Done,” Zaltys said, and turned to the yuan-ti, who were looking at her with something she uncomfortably identified as awe. “I am Zaltys Serrat, adopted daughter of the Serrat family, natural born daughter of-”
“It’s the girl child,” the yuan-ti who’d spoken to her earlier said. His tongue, long and forked, flickered wildly. “Zaltys, I am Scitheron. I knew you when you were a babe.” He turned to the other snakefolk. “This woman, she is the pureblood, the infant left behind when Iraska sent her people to enslave us. She’s come back! She’s come back to save us!”
“Now maybe you can save me,” Zaltys said. “I don’t suppose any of you know the way out?”
“No,” the yuan-ti said. “But I think that snake is trying to get your attention. Perhaps it is a messenger of our great god Zehir, who chose you as the instrument of our salvation?”
Indeed, the pale serpent was back, coiling and uncoiling itself impatiently, and when Zaltys looked at it, it began to slither away from the fields and the settlement. “Wait,” Zaltys said. “Do any of you yuan-ti speak the language of the Underdark?”
“Deep Speech?” Scitheron said. “I do.”
“Tell these slaves we’ll set them free if they don’t hinder our escape.”
“They are beasts, daughter of Zehir,” Scitheron said, “foul creatures who do not keep the true faith.”
“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.