Now that she and Holg were climbing them, Kagur saw that the walkways winding up the cavern wall had no true angles or corners. Neither did the windows and doorways. Every shape was rounded in a way suggestive of the flowing, twisting way a snake would move.
Up close, her surroundings looked even older and more ruined. Invisible from the ground far below, a number of the crystal lamps no longer glowed, while a great many of the chambers beyond the openings were altogether empty. In others, only rats crouched, and lizards skittered.
But the city was plainly inhabited at the very top of the wall, just below the place where it curved out to form the cavern ceiling. Here, sentries flanked the well-lighted entrance to the Lady Ssa’s apartments. Piping, rhythmic but shrill and atonal, wailed from inside.
The humans’ escorts conducted them on into a big, long room that Kagur supposed corresponded to a Kellid tribe’s communal tent. The luminescence of green crystals glinted on pale stone and the assembled snake-people.
The serpentfolk Kagur had seen hitherto were squat and burly despite their inhuman sinuosity. The creatures attending Lady Ssa were, too, but their mistress was willowy enough to make skinny Holg appear fat by comparison. Jewelry glittered on her body, from the spiky tiara on her head to the rings on the lazily shifting end of her tail.
Lounging in a high-backed golden chair, she stared at Kagur and Holg for a few moments. Then, bracelets sliding and clinking on her curling arm, she waved her hand, and the piper stopped the high, discordant droning.
“I’ve heard tales of your upstart race,” said Lady Ssa, “and plainly, the stories didn’t lie. You’re animals, fit only for slavery, with minds too primitive to endure the touch of an advanced intellect. Be grateful I’m willing to lower myself and converse with you in your own fashion.”
Kagur twitched her mantle back, making sure it wouldn’t hinder her if she needed to draw her sword. She thought she was being sneaky about it, too, but Lady Ssa threw back her head and made a sibilant, pulsing noise that was just barely recognizable as a laugh.
“I didn’t mean that I intend to enslave you,” the reptile woman said. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy playing with you, infusing you with the rarest curiosities from my collection of venoms one tiny drop at a time …” Rattling her countless ornaments, she shuddered as though the mere thought was almost unbearably erotic. “But much as I’d like to, I can’t. If the Lady Ssa broke her own hard-won peace, folk would fear to come to market, and that would deprive me of any number of amenities.”
“Why did you send for us?” Kagur asked.
Lady Ssa shook her head. “So blunt. So insolent. The stories didn’t lie about that, either.”
“Do you know any stories about the sun in the depths?”
“Yes,” the serpent lady said, “as it happens, I do, and when my guards reported you were inquiring about it, I decided we should talk.”
Kagur tried not to show the hope that had just flared inside her. “Others we’ve met here have claimed the same thing.”
“But the others all retracted the claim when you persuaded them it would be dangerous to deceive you.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you mustn’t hope to frighten me. I have warriors and sorcery to protect me. But I wouldn’t stoop to lie to creatures so generally inferior. That would be unworthy of my majesty.”
“No doubt, my lady,” said Holg, “no doubt. Still, it might help to move this parley forward if you gave us a hint of exactly what you know or, at the very least, told us how you know it.”
“Couched thusly, your demand is simply a subtler form of insolence.” Lady Ssa’s forked tongue flickered between the large gleaming fangs at the front of her jaws. “But I’m feeling indulgent. Whether a lady is a ruler or a savant—and I’m both—it’s part of her vocation to learn everything she can about the world around her. To that end, I’ve purchased maps and collected traveler’s tales. Thus, though I myself have never descended to the Vaults of Orv, I recognize the one you seek. I believe the surface explorers who made the map called it Deep Tolguth.”
“Tolguth!” That was the name of a famed settlement east of her tribe’s lands, in a region where eerily warm winds and rivers melted the snow. The Blacklions had never traded there in her lifetime, but all had heard stories of the great lizards that hunted its valleys, larger even than the mammoths. What ties could it have to this lightless realm?
Regardless, it wasn’t important. Kagur saw Holg open his mouth to ask just such a question, and cut him off before he could speak.
“And you’ll tell us how to get there,” she said. “Even though you hate our kind. How convenient for us. What do you want in return?”
The snake woman hesitated as though choosing her words carefully. Then: “The tombs of my ancestors lie far below our feet. Something has … infested and profaned them. I want you to clear it out.”
“Why haven’t you done it yourself,” Kagur replied, “you, your warriors, and your sorcery?”
“The crypts are forbidden to serpentfolk except when our faith dictates. Whereas you are beneath the notice of the hallowed dead and the gods.”
“How lucky for us,” said Holg. “What form does the infestation take?”
“Shining blue mold and a thing like an enormous centipede. My people have only glimpsed it from a distance.”
The blind shaman nodded. “I’ve done my share of poking around in tombs, but in this case, I’m hesitant—”
“We’ll do it,” Kagur said.