This errand might be useless too, but it was the best he could do.

Scitheron approached the pit, but stopped before he reached the great barred roof that covered the anathema’s prison and lair. Voices were speaking, in the guttural tones of Deep Speech, the language of the dwellers below the earth. Scitheron knew some words in that tongue, and thought he heard “treasure” and “king.”

Well, the anathema was something of a treasure, and something of a king, but-

A derro screamed, and Scitheron smiled. The foolish slaver must have lifted the trapdoor that opened into the pit, where sacrifices were given, and become a sacrifice himself. Scitheron slithered closer, and saw one of the derro gazing down into the pit, where, by the sound of things, his fellow was being messily devoured. Scitheron had no weapon, but he was a cleric of Zehir, and he raised his hands to call the power of his god to rack the remaining derro with the pain of a thousand coursing venoms.

Before he could speak the dark prayer, another derro lunged into his vision, cackling, white hair caked with blood, a war pick in one hand and a set of shackles in the other.

Scitheron prayed for death, but Zehir did not oblige him, and he was beaten to the ground, bound, and dragged away. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but with the other, he watched as a derro opened its filthy breeches and pissed a stream down into the anathema’s pit, cackling all the while, and then slammed the trapdoor shut.

So ends this holdfast of the faith, Scitheron thought. The only one of his people left-apart from the trapped anathema-was the girl child, and she would almost certainly be killed by some passing jungle beast before the sun reached the crown of the sky. So Zehir wills, he thought, and saw the faint hint of sunlight touch the sky just before the derro dragged him through the door of the temple to the yawning pit in the floor that led into the devouring darkness.