Either they’d found a better life and chosen not to share it, or, more likely, they’d been taken by any of the myriad predators that lurked among the trees. The settlement was ultimately doomed, with fewer and fewer eggs laid by the females every year, and fewer of the children surviving to adulthood. Every life there was precious, every snakeman willing to die-or, for preference, kill-for the glory of the Great Serpent, Master of Poisons and Shadows, their god Zehir. Which was why Scitheron hoped the low priest wouldn’t bring up-

“The child,” the low priest said. “You will see that she is disposed of?”

“If that is your will,” he said, but the low priest cut him off.

“It is the will of your god.”

Scitheron bowed his head. He had not, himself, had a vision of Zehir for many years, though he sometimes sensed the presence of the great one while the anathema fed its thousand mouths in the pit during evening sacrifice. He wondered if the low priest truly had direct communication with the god, or if she was just fulfilling her own whims. But asking a question like that was a greater blasphemy than asking whether good food should be thrown to a seemingly mindless creature in a pit because tradition dictated it must be done. Still, Scitheron could try again. “Such creatures can be useful, most low. Within your own long life you have seen a yuan-ti born with a semblance almost human. You remember old Iraska? She came from the same family line as this new child, and in the time of our grand-broods Iraska was sent as an agent to the city in secret. The low priest before you said her birth was a great omen, that such creatures are marked by destiny, to further the goals of our god. Iraska posed as human among those who would persecute the serpentfolk for our faith, and she rose most high in their debased society. I saw her once when I was young, and I’m sure you did too. This new girl child may not be a sign of decline-she could be a useful tool, indeed, her birth may even be interpreted as a sign of the god’s favor-”