Venom’s Taste

CHAPTER 17

27 Kythorn, Darkmorning

Arvin heard a soft hissing and felt breath stir the hair near his left ear. Someone was bending over him, touching his cheek with something as soft as a feather. It tickled against beard stubble then was gone.

He opened his eyes and saw he was lying on the cold stone floor of the chamber in which he’d discovered Naulg. The transformed rogue was nowhere to be seen, but the yuan-ti was still there. The half blood was kneeling beside Arvin, one of his snake hands hovering just above Arvin’s face. Its flickering tongue was what had brushed against Arvin’s cheek a moment ago. Arvin wet his lips nervously. The eyes of the banded serpent were small, slit-and held just as much intelligence as the half blood’s human eyes. Those serpent hands-like the yuan-ti’s voice-seemed vaguely familiar to Arvin, yet he knew he’d never met this yuan-ti before. He decided that the sense of familiarity must have come from one of Zelia’s memories.

The yuan-ti’s face was illuminated by what was left of the lamp the patch-haired cultist had dropped. The wick was still burning, fueling itself from the patch of spilled oil. Arvin could feel the oil seeping into his hair. Instinctively he turned his head away from it and felt a sharp pain in his shoulder-the one Naulg had bitten. The venom in his spittle had come close to killing Arvin.

He stared up at the yuan-ti. “You neutralized the poison, didn’t you?” He didn’t bother to ask why; that much was obvious as soon as the yuan-ti spoke.

“Did you come here alone or with others?” it hissed.

“I-” Arvin let his words trail off, pretending to be mesmerized by the venom beading at the tips of the snake-hand’s fangs and the head’s slight swaying motion. All the while, he was thinking furiously. The yuan-ti must have heard Arvin and Naulg use each other’s names and realized Arvin had been making a rescue attempt. If Arvin could convince the yuan-ti he was on his own, it might protect Nicco-but he’d doom himself. He needed to convince the yuan-ti that it was more than a rescue mission, that there was vital information only he could provide.

Which, fortunately, there was.

“Rescuing my friend was only one of my goals in coming here,” Arvin answered. “I also wanted to learn more about the Pox. I was ordered to spy on them by a yuan-ti who goes by the name of Zelia.” As he dropped the name, he searched the yuan-ti’s eyes for a sign of recognition.

The yuan-ti’s expression remained unchanged. “Describe her,” it ordered.

“She looks human, but with green scales. There’s nothing else, really, to distinguish her.”

“Her scales had no pattern?”

Arvin shrugged. “Not that I noticed. They were just… green.”

The yuan-ti considered this. Fortunately, it didn’t ask about Zelia’s one distinguishing feature-her hair. Hair color and length was something the scaly folk generally took no notice of; all human hair looked alike, to them. Even so, Arvin wasn’t going to volunteer the information that Zelia was a redhead. Nor was he going to reveal that she was a psion. She’d be all too easy to track down if he did, and Arvin would become… superfluous. But he could whet the yuan-ti’s appetite a little.

“I think Zelia works for House Extaminos,” Arvin continued.

A sharp hiss from the yuan-ti told him he’d struck a nerve.

“Though that’s just a guess on my part,” Arvin continued quickly. “Zelia only engaged my services a few days ago. And she did it in a fashion that hardly endeared me to her. She placed a… geas upon me. If I don’t return with the information she wants in two days’ time, I’ll die.”

“She’s a cleric?”

Arvin nodded.

“Of Sseth?”

“I suppose,” Arvin demurred. As he answered, a part of his mind was focused deep within himself, drawing energy up his spine and coiling it at the base of his skull. When he felt the familiar prickle in his scalp, he narrowed his eyes in what he hoped was a suitably sly expression. “If you remove the geas, I’ll help you kill Zelia or capture her, whichever you prefer. Do we have a deal?”

The yuan-ti cocked his head as if listening to something then gave a thin-lipped smile. Arvin’s hopes rose. His charm must have worked. Then he realized the yuan-ti had heard footsteps in the hall. Arvin heard a rustling in the doorway and turned his head. Slowly-he didn’t want to give the snake-hand an excuse to bite him.

The female cultist who had fled earlier entered the room. She held a flask in one hand. It was metal, and shaped like the rattle of a snake. She started to remove the cork that sealed it then glanced at the yuan-ti, as if seeking his permission.

Arvin wet his lips nervously. “The Pox have already made me drink from one of those flasks,” he told the yuan-ti. “The potion didn’t work on me. As you can see, I wasn’t transformed into a-”

“Silence!” the yuan-ti hissed.

The cultist lowered the flask, a puzzled expression on her face. Seeing it, Arvin realized that the Pox still believed the flasks to contain poison or plague-and he had just come within a word of destroying that fiction. Had he just proved himself too dangerous to be allowed to live? He wet his lips nervously. His dagger was still inside his glove. There was a chance-a very slim chance-that he could kill the yuan-ti before the snake-hand sank its venomous teeth into Arvin’s throat.

The yuan-ti nodded at Arvin. “This man is dangerous,” he hissed. “Why don’t you let me feed him the plague, instead?” He held up his free hand, the jaws of its snake-head open, imploring.

The cultist hesitated. “It should be a cleric who…” Then her eyes softened, and she held out the flask.

Quicker than the blink of an eye, the yuan-ti’s free hand shot out. The cultist gasped as fangs sank into her hand then she immediately stiffened. Unable to breathe, she purpled. Then she toppled sideways, crashing onto the floor like a felled free.

The yuan-ti picked up the flask with one of its snake hands then turned its unblinking stare on Arvin. “You must be tired-why don’t you sleep?” it hissed. “I have no reason to harm you. I need you. Sleep.”

Arvin felt his eyelids begin to close. He mounted the only defense he could think of-the Empty Mind Tanju had taught him-pouring his awareness out in a flood. But it was no use. The suggestion felt as though it came from deep within; it wasn’t something that grasped the mind from without. What the yuan-ti was saying just seemed so reasonable. Arvin was safe enough; the yuan-ti wasn’t finished with him yet. And Arvin was exhausted, after all…

His heavy eyelids closed as the last shred of his resistance fluttered away like a snake’s discarded skin.

27 Kythorn, Fullday

In his dream, Arvin slithered across the floor of the cathedral between its forest of columns, each of which was carved into the form of two vipers twining around each other, one with its head up, the other with its head down. The columns supported an enormous domed ceiling of translucent green stone through which sunlight slanted, bathing everything in a cool light reminiscent of a shaded jungle. Water from the fountain that topped the cathedral dripped through holes in the roof, pattering onto the floor like rain.

Just ahead was one of the Stations of the Serpent-an enormous bronze statue of the god in winged serpent form, his body banded with glittering emeralds and his mouth open wide to reveal curved fangs of solid gold. The base of the statue was wreathed in writhing jets of orange-red fire, symbolic of Sseth’s descent into the Peaks of Flame.

One day, Sseth would rise from them again.

A dozen other yuan-ti were weaving in prayer before the station, mesmerized from by the slit eyes of Sseth. Arvin slithered closer, welcoming the warmth of the oil-fueled fire on his scales. Twisting himself into a coil, he raised his upper body and swayed before the statue then opened his mouth wide in a silent hiss. Feeling a drop of venom bead at the tip of each of his fangs, he lashed forward in a mock strike, spitting the venom forward onto the tray that stood just in front of the statue. The venom landed on the fire-warmed bronze and immediately sizzled as it boiled away.

Hearing the hiss of scales against stone behind him, Arvin turned and saw the priest he had come here to meet. The priest’s serpent form was long and slender and narrow-nosed, with black and white and red stripes running the length of his body. The part of Arvin’s mind that was his own-the part that was observing the dream from a distance, like a spectator watching a dance and unable to resist swaying in time with the music-recognized the priest as the one he-no Zelia-would eventually reduce to a broken-minded heap. But that memory was months in the future.

The priest flickered a tongue in greeting and gestured with a weaving motion. “This way,” he hissed.

Arvin followed him down a side corridor. The priest led him to one of the binding rooms. Inside it, on a low slab of stone, lay the body of a young man-a yuan-ti half blood. The head was that of a snake, with yellow-green scales and slit eyes, and each of the legs ended in snakelike tails, rather than feet. The body was naked. Arvin could see that a number of its bones were broken; one jagged bit of white protruded through the skin just below the shoulder. The left side of the face was crushed, caved in like a broken egg.

Two yuan-ti were working on the corpse, binding it in strips of linen. Both were male and both wore tunics that bore the Extaminos crest. They appeared human at first glance, save for slit eyes and brown scales that speckled their arms and legs. They worked quietly and efficiently-but carefully, giving the corpse the respect it was due as they wound the linen around it. When finished, the binding would be egg-shaped, a symbol of the spirit’s return to the cloaca of the World Serpent.

“Leave us,” the priest said. The two servants exited the room, bowing.

The priest slithered up to the corpse and raised himself above it. Arvin slid around to the other side of the slab. He didn’t recognize the dead man, but he knew who he was-a younger cousin of Lady Dediana. Arvin let his eyes range over the body. The corpse reminded him of prey that had been constricted then rejected as unfit to swallow.

“Keep your questions simple,” the priest said. “The dead are easily confused. And remember, you may ask only a limited number of questions. No more than five.”

Arvin nodded. The information he wanted was very specific. Five questions should do nicely.

The priest swayed above the body in a complicated pattern, tongue flickering in and out of his mouth as he hissed a prayer in Draconic. As the prayer concluded, the mouth of the corpse parted slightly, like that of a man about to speak. “Ask your questions,” the priest told Arvin.

Arvin addressed the body. “Urshas Extaminos, how did you die?”

“I fell from a great height.” Urshas’s voice was a creaking echo, his words sounding as if they were rising out of a dark, distant tomb. Broken bones grated as his smashed jaw opened and closed.

Interesting. Urshas’s body had been found late last night, lying on a road near the House Gestin compound. The tallest of the viaducts that spanned that road was only two stories above street level-and was three buildings distant from the spot where the body lay. “How did you reach that height?” Arvin asked.

“Sseth’s avatar carried me. We flew.”

The priest gave a surprised hiss. “How do you know it was Sseth’s avatar?” he asked.

Arvin’s head snapped around angrily. “I am asking the questions.”

Urshas, however, was compelled to answer: “She told me so.”

“She?” Arvin said aloud-then realized his error. His inflection had turned the word into a question.

“Sibyl,” Urshas answered.

“Sibyl who?” Arvin asked.

“She has no house name,” Urshas croaked. “She is just… Sibyl.”

“Sibyl,” a different voice-one that wasn’t part of his dream-hissed from somewhere close at hand.

Roused to partial wakefulness, Arvin contemplated the dream. At the time of the memory he was reliving, the name Sibyl had meant nothing to Zelia. But it would, in the months to come. Arvin tried to cast his mind into Zelia’s more recent memories, to conjure up an image of Sibyl, but he could not. Instead he made a momentary connection with one of his own memories-of the way Sibyl’s name had popped into his head while Gonthril was questioning him. With it came a realization. It was desperately important that Zelia find out if Sibyl was involved in all of this. If she was, it would give Lady Dediana the excuse she needed to-

“Sibyl,” the voice hissed again.

Fully awake at last, Arvin opened his eyes the merest of slits. He was lying, bound hand and foot, in a different room than the one in which he’d fallen asleep. Its walls were round, not square, and were made of green stone. By the hot, humid feel of the air, the room was above ground, and it was day. The floor was covered in a plush green carpet, on which stood a low table. A yuan-ti half blood-the one from the crematorium-was seated at the table, his back to Arvin. He stared at a wrought-iron statuette of a serpent that held in its upturned mouth a large crystal sphere. Sitting next to it on the table was the lamp that illuminated the room.

“Sibyl,” the yuan-ti hissed again. “It is your servant, Karshis.”

Silently, Arvin took stock. His glove was still on his left hand, but the restraints that held him made it impossible to tell if his magical bracelet was still on his wrist. His wrists were bound together behind his back by something cold and hard; his ankles were similarly restrained. A length of what felt like a thin rod of metal connected these restraints. Glancing down, he saw that his ankles were bound by a coil of what looked like rope but felt like stone. He was hard-pressed to suppress a grin. He’d braided the cord himself from the thin, fine strands of humanlike hair that grow between a medusa’s snaky tresses. The Guild and Secession weren’t Arvin’s only customers, it would seem.

Nine lives, he thought to himself, adding a silent prayer of thanks to Tymora.

The yuan-ti’s attention was fully focused on the sphere, which was filled with what looked like a twisting filament of smoke. This slowly resolved into a solid form-a black serpent with the face of a woman, four humanlike arms and enormous wings folded against her back. As the winged serpent peered this way and that with eyes the color of dark-red flame, tasting the air with her tongue, Arvin made sure he remained utterly still, his eyes open only to slits. Then the winged serpent turned her head toward Karshis, as if she’d suddenly spotted him. Her voice, sounding far away and thin, rose from the sphere. “Speak,” she hissed.

Karshis wet his lips. “A problem has arisen,” he said. “A human spy has discovered the hiding place of the clerics. Fortunately, we captured him.”

“A human?” the black serpent asked scornfully. Her wings shifted, as if in irritation.

“He says he was sent by a yuan-ti who calls herself Zelia. She may be a serphidian of House Extaminos.”

Though the word was foreign, Arvin recognized it as one of the titles used by the priests of Sseth. He suddenly realized that the entire conversation between Karshis and Sibyl was being conducted in Draconic-a language he didn’t speak. Zelia spoke it, however. And the mind seed-a familiar throbbing behind Arvin’s temples-allowed Arvin to understand it.

“Shall we abandon our plan?” Karshis asked.

The winged serpent inside the sphere fell silent for several moments. “No,” she said at last. “We will move more swiftly. Tell the clerics to abandon the crematorium-”

“It has already been done. They have scattered into the sewers.”

“-And to prepare to receive the potion tomorrow night.”

“That soon?” Karshis exclaimed. “But surely it will take more time than that to replace Osran. We haven’t-”

“You dare question your god?” the winged serpent spat, her voice low and menacing.

“Most assuredly not, oh Sibilant Death,” Karshis groveled. Both of his secondary heads hissed as he twined his arms together. “This humble member of your blessed ones simply expresses aloud the confusion and uncertainty that inhabits his own worthless skin. Forgive me.”

“Foolish one,” she hissed back. “Sseth never forgives. But your soul will be spared a descent into the Abyss-for now. There’s still work ahead. See that it is done well. The barrel will be delivered to the rotting field at Middark. When it arrives, be sure the Pox save a little of the ‘plague’ for themselves. After tomorrow night, we’ll have no further use for them.”

“What of the spy?” Karshis asked.

“Kill it.”

Arvin’s heart thudded in his chest.

“But find the serphidian first,” Sibyl continued. “If she has disappeared into some hole, use the human as bait to lure her out again.”

“Yes, Great Serpent,” Karshis answered, bending his flexible upper torso into a convoluted bow. “I will set our spies in motion. She will be found.”

The image inside the sphere dissolved into a coil of dark mist then was gone.

As Karshis rose from the table and lifted the sphere out of the statuette’s mouth, Arvin closed his eyes fully and made sure his breathing was even, slow, and deep. Soft footsteps approached. Karshis prodded him in the ribs with a foot then continued across the room. Arvin heard a key rattle in a lock, the groan of hinges as a door opened and closed, and a click as the door was locked again.

He waited for several moments then opened his eyes. He spoke a command word and the stone coils that bound his wrists and ankles turned back into braided hair and fell to the carpet. Arvin sat up, quickly coiled it, and stuffed it into a pocket.

Tymora willing, he would get out of here-wherever here was.

Crossing to the door, Arvin inspected it carefully. He didn’t want to fall victim to another glyph like the one Nicco had used. This door, however, appeared unmarked. Reaching for his belt buckle, Arvin bent down and fitted its pick into the keyhole. One pin clicked into place, a second-

The door suddenly smashed into his face, sending him crashing to the floor. Blinking away the pain of a bloodied nose, Arvin realized Karshis had returned. The yuan-ti was trying to force the partially open door, which was blocked by Arvin’s body.

One of Karshis’s arms snaked in through the opening, its snake-hand trying to sink its fangs into Arvin. He flung himself to the side, barely avoiding the bite. “Shivis!” he cried, summoning his dagger to his glove. He leaped to his feet in the same instant that Karshis lunged into the room. As the yuan-ti’s snake-hand lashed forward a second time, Arvin met it with his dagger, slicing cleanly through the snake-hand’s neck. The head dangled from a thread of flesh, its eyes glazing as blood pumped from the wound.

Karshis staggered back, hissing with pain, and grabbed at the door with his other snake-hand to steady himself. Seizing his chance, Arvin leaped forward and slammed the door shut, crushing the second snake-hand between the door and its frame. All that remained was the yuan-ti’s main head-which, unfortunately, also had venomous fangs.

The yuan-ti writhed in pain then rallied. Suddenly, the room was plunged into darkness. Unable to see anything, surrounded by a darkness through which not even the faintest pinprick of light penetrated, Arvin backed up warily, his dagger at the ready. He could still hear the yuan-ti’s labored breathing; Karshis was standing somewhere just ahead of him. Could the yuan-ti see in the dark? Would he use it as a screen for a retreat-or an attack? Taking aim by ear, Arvin readied his dagger for a throw.

Karshis slammed into Arvin, knocking him sprawling, facefirst, onto the carpet. Arvin slashed wildly with his dagger-only to feel a snake-arm coil around his wrist, trapping it. A second snake-arm coiled around Arvin’s other wrist, but this snake-arm was slippery with blood. Arvin wrenched one hand free and scrambled to his feet. He tried to leap away, but Karshis’s grip on his other arm was too strong. Held fast, like an unwilling dance partner, all Arvin could do was flail in a circle around Karshis, blindly dodging the yuan-ti’s attempts to bite him. Venom sprayed him each time the yuan-ti lunged and missed.

The dagger was still in Arvin’s gloved hand, but that was the arm Karshis held. Despite the wounds Arvin had inflicted upon him, Karshis was still swift and strong; even if Arvin was somehow able to wrench his arm free, a dagger might not be enough to stop the yuan-ti.

The power stone, however, might.

If it didn’t knock Arvin flat with brain burn.

Swiftly-between one desperate dodge and the next-Arvin cast his mind into the crystal. Linking with it took only a fraction of a heartbeat; finding the power he wanted among the five glittering gem-stars that remained took only an instant more. Arvin felt its energies flow into his third eye, as before, and also into a spot on his spine directly behind his navel. Silver motes of light danced in his vision-and this time coalesced into a line of bright silver light that lanced out at Karshis through the magical darkness. In that same instant, Arvin felt Karshis’s dry, scaly skin suddenly become slippery and wet with ectoplasm and knew that, this time, his manifestation had been a success. Strangely, though, he was unable to lock his mind on the spot to which he wanted to teleport Karshis. His mind remained unfocused, blank, scattered.

Karshis’s body suddenly flexed, bringing his venomous fangs within a hair of Arvin’s throat. Then it exploded. One moment Karshis was lunging at Arvin-the next, a fine spray of mist erupted from him, soaking Arvin, his clothes, and the carpet around him. What remained of the yuan-ti fell to the floor with a thump.

Hissing with relief, Arvin dragged the body out of the pool of darkness and stared at Karshis’s corpse. Its flesh was dotted with thousands of tiny tunnels from which blood was starting to seep; it seemed as if miniscule portions of the yuan-ti had been teleported in all directions. Arvin shook his head in disgust and spat until the bloody, scale-flecked mist was gone from his lips. He wiped his face with a trembling arm then reached into his pocket and pulled out the power stone. The second teleport power had seemed so benign-had he used it improperly? Somehow, he didn’t think so. He hadn’t suffered brain burn, this time. He hissed in relief, glad he hadn’t tried to use it to teleport Naulg.

Out of long habit, he raised a hand to his throat to touch his bead then remembered it wasn’t there. “Nine lives,” he whispered, shoving the stone back into his pocket.

Then he picked up his dagger and rose to his feet. The door was unlocked and open-and the hallway it opened onto was silent. No one, it seemed, had heard the sounds of the fight.

Arvin whispered a prayer of thanks to Tymora. He’d really have to fill her cup this time. But there was much he had to do, first. He had to rescue Naulg… and find Nicco.

But not necessarily in that order.