by Lisa Smedman
He thought quickly. Slumber—and dream—were important parts of Sseth’s worship. In midwinter, a select few of the serpent god’s priests underwent the Sagacious Slumber, a month-long hibernation during which they communed with their god, gaining new spells, but that didn’t seem to be what was going on here. It sounded as thought Sibyl was looking for something in the dreams of her worshipers.
Arvin had an idea what it might be: a clue to the whereabouts of the Circled Serpent, an artifact Dmetrio Extaminos had found during his restoration of the Scaled Tower one year ago. Sibyl’s minions had managed to get their hands on half of the Circled Serpent, but the other half was still in Dmetrio’s possession. He’d hidden it so well, even Karrell hadn’t been able to find it.
If Arvin’s guess was right, he would be conveyed directly to Sibyl, welcoming ceremony or not. If not…
He decided he’d take the risk. He stared up at the ceiling as if lost in thought. “There was more,” he told the scribe, “a second part to my dream.”
“Yes?” she said, dipping her quill in the pot of ink that sat on the bench next to her. She gave a soft, hissing sigh. Her thoughts—which Arvin was still reading—held a note of bored indulgence. He was attracted to her—most males were—and he wanted to keep talking. He was probably making the second part up, she decided.
“There was a serpent,” Arvin continued. “A silver serpent. Its body was coiled back upon itself in a circle.” He sketched a circle in the air with his hands. “It was swallowing its own tail.”
Arvin fought to contain his smile as he listened to the scribe’s thoughts race. She scribbled furiously. It was exactly what she’d been waiting to hear. Mistress Sibyl had instructed her—personally instructed her!—to pay close attention to any mention of circled serpents.
“Go on,” she prompted.
“A man was holding the silver serpent—a yuan-ti,” Arvin continued, “a man with a high forehead, narrow nose, and dark, swept-back hair.”
The scribe frowned as she wrote that down. Arvin had neglected to mention scale color and pattern, the first thing a yuan-ti typically mentioned, when describing another of his race.
“Oh yes,” Arvin said, as if suddenly remembering. “There was something odd about him. He didn’t have any scales. His skin was almost … human.”
He managed to inject a shudder of disgust into the word that satisfied the scribe. “Did you recognize him?” she asked.
“I think it was Dmetrio Extaminos,” Arvin answered.
While she recognized the name, it didn’t trigger the sudden rush of excitement Arvin had expected. The scribe, he decided, had been told only so much.
“Where was he?” she asked. “In your dream.”
“He was in …” Arvin said that much then deliberately halted.
He didn’t know where the royal prince was. Nobody else in the city did either—at least, nobody the guild had been able to question. After being recalled from Sespech six months ago, Hlondeth’s former ambassador had made a brief appearance at the palace then simply disappeared. Arvin had tried to contact Dmetrio with a sending, but it had met with the same lack of success as his attempts to contact Karrell. Dmetrio was either dead or shielded by powerful magic.
“Yes?” the scribe prompted.
Arvin drew himself up in a stiff pose and looked down his nose at her. “That, I think, is something for the ears of our mistress alone, hatchling.” He used the diminutive term, despite the fact that he had assumed an appearance that wasn’t much older than the scribe.
She hissed softly at the verbal bite. How dare he, she thought. She, a ssethssar of the temple, and he a mere lay worshiper! She started to bare her fangs then remembered the task she had been charged with. The mistress would be displeased, indeed, if this impertinent male died before his dream was recorded.
“Mistress Sibyl is too busy to meet with you,” she began. “Tell me your dream. I will ensure—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Arvin said, waving a hand. It was tingling fiercely, the scales on it starting to shrink. Already the belt around his waist felt tighter. “The welcoming ceremony. I was supposed to be part of it but chose to dream instead. Take me to Sibyl—immediately.”
That made her blink. He dared address the mistress by name alone? Perhaps she’d misjudged him. A few of the high serphidians had attended Dreamings in the past, but he wasn’t one she recognized. She took careful note of his face—then blinked as she noticed it was changing. The black-and-gray scales were melting away into human flesh …
A spy! her mind shrieked. I must—
The scribe raised her hands to cast a spell. As she began reciting her prayer, Arvin manifested a power. He was already inside her mind, which made it easier, but in order for his deception to work he needed to manifest two powers at once.
He peeled back her layers of memory, starting with the sound she was currently hearing: the tinkling noise that was his power’s secondary manifestation. Working backward from there, he erased the moment of realization that he was a not yuan-ti, but human—a spy—and the memory of his scales disappearing and human features emerging. At the same time, he remanifested his metamorphosis, restoring his body to serpent form.
In the middle of his mental labors, the scribe’s spell went off and a snakelike whip of glowing red energy lashed out from her hand. It slapped across his shoulder, burning through the fabric of his shirt and sending a hot wave of pain through the flesh below. Arvin gasped, fighting to maintain his concentration. For a moment, it almost slipped away—scales stopped blossoming on his body, and the scribe managed to lay down another layer of memory: an image of Arvin as he shuddered under her mystic lash.
Then he regained control. He stripped this memory away, together with several others, peeling her memories down to the point just before his metamorphosis had ended, leaving her with the memory of him ordering her to take him to Sibyl. At the same time, he completed his transformation, forcing his body back into yuan-ti form.
When it was over, he was no longer listening to her thoughts, but he could guess what they were. She would wonder why he was suddenly panting and sweaty, why he was turning his shoulder away from her, as if hiding something.
“You’re … unwell?” she asked, her voice uncertain.
“Uneasy,” he corrected. “The dream left me … uneasy. It is sure to unsettle Si—Mistress Sibyl—as well. The sooner I describe it to her, the better.” He waved a hand, as if dismissing her. “Take me to her now. I will follow.”
“Yes, High Serphidian,” she said.
Laying down her quill and parchment, she slid off the bench and slithered up the hallway. Arvin followed, shifting the strap of his backpack to cover the bright red stripe of burned flesh on his shoulder.
She led him for some distance through the catacombs along a route so convoluted Arvin became lost. He doubted he’d be able to find the dreaming chamber again, then laughed grimly as he realized that it probably wouldn’t matter. He’d accepted the fact that killing Sibyl would probably be the last thing he ever did. With Karrell gone, his own life no longer mattered. What he needed to focus on was making sure the attack was successful.
After a while, the bone decorations were replaced by bare stone walls that had been carved in a pattern that resembled scales. Arvin’s heart quickened as he realized they were approaching Sibyl’s lair. Villim’s text had described Varae’s temple as having walls like these. Several times the scribe led Arvin through arches that had arcane symbols graven into their stonework. Arvin’s skin tingled as he passed through their magical fields. Though his heart raced each time he felt the wash of magical energy, no alarm sounded. Karrell’s ring protected him, shielding his thoughts and suppressing any auras that might have given him away as an enemy of Sibyl.
The ancient temple, a veritable stronghold, was crowded with yuan-ti. The scribe led Arvin past an egg-filled brood chamber that was warmed by crackling braziers and a great hall in which dozens of yuan-ti feasted on an enor
mous millipede whose head and tail had been staked to either end of a long dining table. The diners tore out chunks of the still-wriggling insect, and washed it down with blood-tinged wine.
Along the way, they passed several guards: grotesque, hulking blends of human and reptile that bore an unsettling resemblance to the hideous creature Arvin’s best friend Naulg had become, after being forced to drink the Pox’s transformative poison. Arvin gave a mental shudder as he passed them and had to work hard to keep his expression neutral.
Eventually they came to a chapel in which clerics coiled in reverent prayer before a statue, carved from gold-veined black marble, of a winged serpent with four arms and enormous rubies for eyes.
A statue of Sibyl.
One of the clerics turned to watch Arvin and the scribe as they passed—then hurried out of the chapel to clap a hand on Arvin’s shoulder—his burned shoulder. With an effort, Arvin prevented himself from wincing. A sheen of acidic sweat broke out on his face.
“Where are you going?” the cleric hissed.
The cobra hood that surrounded his otherwise human looking face flared as he spoke. A forked red tongue flickered out of his mouth, tasting the air next to Arvin’s cheek.
Arvin knew that his morphed body would smell as yuan-ti as the real thing, yet he was hard-pressed to damp down the unease he felt. The yuan-ti was a cleric, a serphidian of Sseth, and a powerful one, judging by the elaborate cape he wore. The scales sewn onto the garment had been fashioned of fingernail-thin slivers of precious gems, which glittered in the lanternlight that filled the corridor. The cleric would know dozens of spells, perhaps one powerful enough to strip Arvin of his disguise.
“We are going to the altar room,” the scribe answered. “This one dreamed of the Circled Serpent. I am taking him to the mistress.”
“The Se’sehen are arriving,” the cleric said. “The mistress is busy welcoming them.” He turned to Arvin. “Your dream can wait.”
“That’s true,” Arvin said, shrugging his backpack off his shoulders, “but this can’t.”
As he spoke, he manifested a power that would allow him to falsify one of the cleric’s senses—in this case, the sense of sight. The cleric was a difficult subject. Arvin had to force his way into the man’s mind with a mental shove that he worried might give him away. The cleric shook his head, as if trying to clear his ears of an annoying ringing.
As Arvin opened his pack, allowing the cleric to inspect its contents, he shaped what the other man saw. The pack actually held a net Arvin had spent the past three months weaving from yellow musk creeper vines—a net ensorcelled with the ability to entangle its victim upon a spoken command—but what the cleric “saw” as he opened the pack was something entirely different:
A gleaming half-circle of silver.
Half of the Circled Serpent.
Arvin closed the pack and withdrew from the man’s mind. When he looked up, the high serphidian had an eager look on his face.
Arvin could guess what the man was thinking—that he, rather than a lowly scribe, should be the one to deliver the Circled Serpent half to Sibyl. He was probably also weighing his chances of overpowering Arvin and taking the backpack from him. The cleric glanced at the distinctive ridges above Arvin’s eyes then looked away, obviously deciding not to take on an opponent whose venom was more potent than his own.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Sithis,” Arvin answered, giving a common yuan-ti name—one that was much more pronounceable with a forked tongue. “I’m one of Ssarmn’s men,” he added.
He waited, tense, wondering if his ploy would work. Ssarmn was the slaver from Skullport who had supplied Sibyl with the potion that would have turned the humans of Hlondeth into her slaves, had Arvin not thwarted her plan. That had been a year ago, but with luck—Arvin resisted the urge to touch the crystal at his neck—Ssarmn was still involved in Sibyl’s operation.
“Ah,” the high serphidian hissed. He waved the scribe away. “You may leave,” he ordered. “Return to the dreaming chamber.”
“But—”
The protest died on her lips at the look the high serphidian gave her. Cowed, she turned back the way she had come, but not without taking a good, long, quizzical look at Arvin’s burned shoulder, revealed since he’d removed his pack. Arvin tried to manifest the power that would erase that glimpse from her memory, but before he could she had slithered out of range.
Motioning for Arvin to follow, the cleric led Arvin to a corridor that curved downward. The inside wall of the spiraling ramp was punctuated with vertical slits, and through these Arvin heard a sound like the hissing of waves on a beach. Glancing through one of the slits, he caught sight of a circular room, far below, bathed in lanternlight. Its floor was covered in thousands of snakes of every size and color imaginable. They slithered in a steady flow around a raised dais of glossy black obsidian.
Several times during their descent toward that room, Arvin heard a popping noise over the hissing of the snakes. He saw what was causing the sound when they reached the bottom of the ramplike corridor. One moment, the dais was bare; the next, a yuan-ti materialized on it. The dais must have been a portal, linked with some distant place.
The yuan-ti who had appeared on the portal was dressed in a white loincloth, high laced sandals, and a cape made from the pelt—complete with head—of a jungle cat whose golden fur was spotted with black. A necklace of heavy gold beads hung against his scaled chest, and on his head was perched an elaborate headdress decorated with circles of jade.
Arvin winced at the irony. The noble was from the Se’sehen tribe—Karrell’s tribe—the people she’d come north in an effort to save.
Even though they were allies of Sibyl.
A cobra rose from the slithering mass and obediently presented its flared hood for use as a stepping stone. The noble stepped onto it. Other cobras did the same. Moving from one head to the next, the yuan-ti crossed the tangle of serpents that surrounded the dais, making his way toward a doorway whose frame was the gaping mouth of the beast lord’s face. The cleric, meanwhile, led Arvin around the edge of the room—the snakes parted to clear a path for them—toward the same exit.
“Remain silent,” he hissed. “I will announce you.”
Arvin followed, tense with the knowledge that he was so close to his goal. Acidic-smelling sweat trickled down his temple, and he brushed it away. Ahead—down the curved corridor that connected the portal room to the one beyond—he could hear murmuring voices. Not one but dozens of Se’sehen must have come through the portal. In the chamber ahead, Arvin could see a large cluster of similarly garbed nobles. Moving among them were gem-caped high serphidians like the one Arvin followed, as well as a handful of yuan-ti in finery common to the Vilhon Reach: nobles from Hlondeth.
One of the high clerics, a woman, had hair that consisted of dozens of tiny, intertwined serpents. He knew her by reputation—everyone who lived in Hlondeth did—but had never expected to meet her face to face. She was Medusanna of House Mhairdaul, elder serpent of the Cathedral of Emerald Scales, high cleric of Hlondeth’s most prominent temple, a yuan-ti abomination who was rumored to be able to petrify with a mere glance.
As the cleric led Arvin into the chamber, Medusanna turned to stare at them. She had been talking in the language of the Se’sehen with one of the nobles. Arvin’s heart lurched as he heard a word he recognized—one that Karrell had taught him. Kiichpan. Beautiful. Swallowing his emotion, Arvin met Medusanna’s eyes with a steady look and silently prayed that his disguise would hold—and that the rumors were wrong.
It did, and they were.
Instead of resuming her conversation, Medusanna continued to stare at Arvin as the cleric led him deeper into the gathering.
The chamber in which the Se’sehen and clerics had assembled had a ceiling whose stonework was set with a profusion of metal blades that hung, point down, giving the appearance of fangs. All were rusted and some had fallen out like rotten teeth, leaving holes behind.
The walls to the right and left were carved with depictions of the beast lord in his various animal forms, each with a serpent draped around its shoulders and whispering in his ear. Between them were arched corridors that led off into darkness, five on either wall.
At the far end of the room stood a broad stone altar, carved to resemble a serpent coiled upon a clutch of eggs and flanked by two stone pillars—the twin tails of the serpent. Between these swirled a cloud of darkness that even Arvin’s potion-enhanced vision didn’t quite penetrate. Just in front of the altar, a rusted iron serpent statue held an enormous sphere of crystal in its jaws. Arvin swallowed, worried. If Sibyl appeared to her followers inside the crystal ball, instead of in person, all his efforts of the past six months would have been for nothing.
The darkness between the pillars began to swirl, as if an invisible fan stirred it. As it did, the yuan-ti assembled in the chamber fell silent. Then they began to chant. “Ssssi-byl. Ssssi-byl. Ssssi-byl.” Arvin found himself swaying in time with the others. With an effort, he wrenched his mind away. Filling it with the memory of Karrell being yanked into the Abyss helped.
An enormous abomination burst out of the darkness. Ink black and nearly three times the height of a human, she hovered above the altar, lazily flapping her leathery wings. Two of her clawed hands held a spiked chain that glowed red as burning coal; the other two were empty. They rose into the air, drawing out the hissing adulation—then swept down.
A wave of shimmering energy swept from those hands, fanning out in front of her as it struck the floor. Arvin heard the nobles and clerics in front of him cry out in terror as it swept past them, saw them writhe and roll their eyes—and the magical fear crashed over him like an icy surf. Screaming, he sank to his knees, fighting for control and dimly noticing that others around him were doing the same. Even Medusanna had been driven to her knees, the snakes that made up her hair thrashing and spitting.
“Control,” he whispered.
He threw up a psionic barrier, pressing with mental hands against the waves of magical fear emanating from the altar. The need to scream, to grovel, lessened a little, enough for him to glance in the direction of the altar where Sibyl sat coiled. Hatred helped him focus, but still a tiny part of his mind whimpered in fear.