So all these years Quelamia had been playing a deep game of her own against some adversary in the Underdark, with Zaltys’s heritage part of her endgame. Glory shuddered. People as ancient as Quelamia could be so cold. She could have just told the Serrats the true nature of the terazul flowers, but it wouldn’t have helped. Even if the Serrats had stopped selling them, some other enterprising mortal would have stepped in to get rich. That wasn’t an issue anymore. Oh, it was nice that the natural balance had been restored and the monsters from the Far Realm held at bay, but the fact was, with the terazul trade ruined, Glory was almost certainly out of a job.
While the chaos of the camp intensified around her, Glory went into her trailer, filled her pipe, and sat puffing thoughtfully. Mostly, she hoped Zaltys was okay. Snake person or not, the girl was all right. And maybe now that she was done being used like a piece on a game board she could become her own person at last.
They had to stop, eventually, to rest; they were all exhausted. They found a little side corridor that seemed easy to defend, and Julen took the first watch, while Alaia and Zaltys and the yuan-ti slept. Julen tried to watch the opening and the yuan-ti too. It was exhausting, and he was glad when Zaltys stirred, said she couldn’t sleep, and took over from him, sitting with her back to a cavern wall and her bow in her lap and her eyes looking faraway at nothing.
Julen curled up next to his aunt Alaia and slept, and dreamed, and in the dream, the god Zehir appeared to him, as a serpent with a human face. Such a vision would have terrified him in waking life, but it was a dream, and he knew it was a dream, so he took it in stride.
“Hello, ape,” Zehir said. “Did you enjoy your visit to the caverns?”
“No,” Julen said. “I can’t say I did.” Suddenly Julen was in a clearing skinning something-as he’d skinned the shadow snake once-though he couldn’t quite tell what he was skinning. He had the vague sense that he was somehow skinning himself.
“Are you happy with the outcome, at least, little Guardian?”
“My family’s fortunes have been cut in half,” Julen said. “My friend Krailash is dead. Zaltys is … I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now.”
“True,” the man said. “But the derro who transgressed against my people have been punished for their affront. Better still, the traitorous Iraska has been sent to a realm of madness and death. It is strange, ape-I love treachery, but I despise traitors, at least when I’m the one being betrayed. At least I have amused myself for a while, and sowed discord among your family. Do you think they’ll welcome you back, when they find out your part in reducing the family fortunes? The venom you humans generate yourselves, the emotional toxins, are more potent than anything found in the fangs of my serpents.” He paused. “The eladrin wizard got what she wanted too, of course, which is a shame, but you can’t have everything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Julen said. He was almost done skinning himself. Every breeze was like a jolt of electricity. Perhaps I’m molting, he thought. Like a snake shedding its skin before starting a new life.
“I know,” Zehir-for it was suddenly obvious to Julen this must be Zehir-said. “I know you don’t. It’s pointless coming here. I should talk to Zaltys, but I don’t think she’d be very receptive. But I can’t help gloating and spitting poison at someone, even if they’re just nasty words. It’s my nature.”
Julen woke up. The rest of the group stirred, and soon they followed the snake again, up steeply ascending tunnels. Julen fell into step near the front, with Zaltys, and said, “How are you, Cousin?”
“Confused,” she said. “One of the yuan-ti, the one called Scitheron? He crept up to me last night while everyone else was asleep and said he was glad they hadn’t sacrified me to the anathema like they’d planned. I guess they were going to feed me to a monster, when I was just a baby, because I looked too much like a human. He said my survival was destined, and that I’d proven the nature of that destiny by saving them. He told me he knew I would come to serve Zehir, and said I should use the power and influence of the Serrat family to cultivate human cultists in Delzimmer, with an eye toward taking over the city. She said I should make a list of enemies we could later sacrifice to the god, and started going on about slow poisons.” She shook her head. “I told him I’d think about it just to get him to go away. It’s pretty much exactly what Iraska wanted me to do.” She paused. “And it’s pretty much what the Serrats have been trying for decades-to take over the whole city, I mean.”
Julen thought for a moment. “Seems to me there’s a difference, though,” he said at last. “The Serrats believe in family. They found you in the jungle and took you in. They never would have fed you to a monster. When children are born simpleminded or sick in this family, we take care of them, make them as comfortable as we can, we don’t kill them. Maybe the Serrats are unscrupulous-all right, I’m a Guardian, I know we’re unscrupulous-but those yuan-ti are evil. And it’s not because serpentfolk are born that way, not because they’re rotten from the start. You’re proof enough of that. They choose evil. What the Slime King said, about ‘your nature’ … I don’t believe it. Nature’s not everything. You may have venom in your veins, Zaltys, but that doesn’t make you a snake.”
“But these yuan-ti are my family too,” she said. “They’re my blood.”
“Am I your family?” Julen said. “Is Alaia? We’re not your blood. We never thought we were, we knew from the start you weren’t a Serrat by birth. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re family. And when a Serrat proves to be unreliable or treacherous, we give them a purse and send them out to make their own way, we don’t sacrifice them to some evil god or enslave them. Blood might give you the color of your hair or your eyes or the length of your stride, you might inherit good teeth or strong arms or quick wits, but family is something you make, at least as much as it’s something you’re born into. And you’ve made yourself something good. Something better than the serpentfolk have chosen to be. Something better than most of the Serrats, I have to say.”
Zaltys put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good friend, Julen.”
Ah, we’re friends then-that old twist of the knife, he thought, loving her more than ever, snake or not.
“And a good cousin. Thank you for coming down here with me. Even though it didn’t work out like I expected.”
“I’m not sure life ever does,” he said.
They emerged, blinking, into the afternoon sunlight, not from the ruins where they’d descended, but not terribly far from the caravan, either. The yuan-ti prepared to return to their old home ruins, with Scitheron pausing by Zaltys and asking if she’d return to say good-bye before she left. She promised she would-no reason to antagonize them-then accompanied Julen and Alaia back to the caravan.
Everything there was being packed up for the return trip home, under Glory’s supervision. “Welcome back,” she said, obviously noting Krailash’s absence, but choosing not to comment on it. “I guess you won?”
Alaia laughed bitterly. “In a way. I’ve never seen a win bring such ruin. Where’s Quelamia?”
Glory sighed. “Ah. Long gone. I guess I should tell you a story. Come on, let’s eat some real food and I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much.”
Afterward, Zaltys went to her mother’s wagon, and sat down across from her. Alaia looked blankly around at her totems, which had become so many useless knickknacks. “What will you do?” Zaltys said. “When you return to the city?”
Alaia shook her head. “There’s nothing for me there. I’d be cut off financially, probably, for coming back empty handed. If the rest of the family find out my part in the end of the terazul trade, they won’t be happy. Besides, I’m head of the Travelers, and there’s no reason to Travel anymore. I don’t think business was the right path for me, truly. If I’m no longer a trade princess, I’d better go about learning to become a shaman again. I’m going to stay here in the jungle, and try to regain the connection to the primal world I lost. That I gave up.” She glanced at Zaltys. “Your … other family. They say they have some interesting shamanic traditions they could share with me, relating to the World Serpent.”