Venom in Her Veins Read Free Page B

quickly, Marley, and be watchful. Tell Alaia we’ll report back before nightfall—and if we don’t, she should close ranks and move the caravan out.” Krailash doubted the woman would obey, at least not readily. In theory, Krailash’s word was absolute in matters of caravan security, but if he wasn’t physically present to make sure Alaia listened, she might decide she knew better, and stay to harvest another day.
    Hard to blame her, when a day spent gathering flowers would eventually translate to enough gold to buy a small house in town or a large farm in the country.
    Marley nodded and set off, the infant nuzzled against him, chin resting on his shoulder. The child’s green eyes seemed to look straight at Krailash, but it was surely coincidence—as he understood it, infant humans were appallingly nearsighted, lacking the keen vision every dragonborn had at birth, lost in a world of blurs and light.
    “After you,” Rainer said, and Krailash grunted, looking away from the child to the path broken in the jungle brush. He walked slowly, axe in his hands, trying to makesense of the trail sign, but he was no ranger. Should have called for the head of the caravan scouts. All he could tell was that a great many people had passed this way, some resisting that passage violently. The path was big enough for Rainer to walk beside him, and they moved in silence for a long distance, the jungle gradually closing back over them from the relative openness around the ruined courtyard. Whoever had attacked the child’s tribe hadn’t attempted to cover the tracks of their departure at all, which suggested either stupidity or confidence.
    Rainer tripped over a stone and swore. That stone was the first of many—they were back in the ruins, among the rubble and fragments of vine-encrusted walls. Colorful snakes slithered away from the path as they approached, which could mean there were yuan-ti nearby—the serpentfolk tended to attract snakes—or it could mean nothing at all. The jungle was full of slithering things.
    The path was harder to follow in the ruins, since there was no longer a pathway of broken and crushed vegetation, but some of the prisoners had been bleeding, and spots of blood left something of a trail. They picked their way over the stones and over broken bits of statuary until they reached a relatively intact wall that butted up against a huge doorway: two massive, weathered stone slabs standing upright, with a third slab laid across the top. The structure still had a roof, though it was damaged and pocked with gaping holes. Anything could be waiting inside.
    “Well,” Rainer said, voice pitched low. “Do we go in?”
    Krailash listened intently, but didn’t hear any signs of life inside. He knew from bitter experience that prisoners, even cowed ones, weren’t usually silent—there weresobs, whimpers from injuries, fierce whispers. “I will go in,” he said at last. “You wait here, to make sure no one ambushes us from outside.”
    “Yes sir.” Rainer lifted his sword, a tight grin on his face.
    Krailash stepped through an archway wide enough that he couldn’t have touched both sides with his arms out-retched, and into what might once have been a temple. The carvings on the wall were relatively well-preserved, and they looked like the work of yuan-ti, all twining serpents and fangs and a many-headed snake he recognized as one aspect of Zehir, a god of poison, darkness, and treachery. Krailash, like most dragonborn, valued honor above all else, and this vile deity of the snakemen was abhorrent to him. He was glad their settlement had crumbled so far, but sorry they still persisted at all.
    He took a step forward, eyes adjusting to the dimness just in time to stop him from plunging into the pit that filled the center of the temple.
    At first, Krailash assumed the ten-foot-wide hole was part of some dark ceremonial function of the yuan-ti temple, who were said to keep pits of snakes and to hold their