Vanity's Brood

by Lisa Smedman

  She whirled around, her small eyes searching the room. Arvin gasped aloud as pain shot through his own back. It felt as though a dagger was embedded there. Something wet oozed down his back: not blood, but ectoplasm. The Naneth-seed must have manifested a power that transferred the pain of her wound to him.

  The pain shattered Arvin’s concentration, giving the Naneth-seed a brief glimpse of him. Her second psionic attack followed the first, swift as thought. Arvin tried to throw up a shield against it but wasn’t quick enough.

  Air exploded from his lungs in a rush as an invisible band of psionic energy looped around his chest then tightened. His own psionic power faltered as he fought for breath—and failed. He was visible.

  “You again,” the Naneth-seed said, the hissing of her secondary display overlapping her words.

  Arvin struggled to draw a breath. He tried raising a mental fortress, but the Naneth-seed beat it down. He started to form a construct out of ectoplasm to attack her, but before it was fully shaped she usurped control of it and ran it headlong into a wall, splattering ectoplasm everywhere. He would have tried charming her, but there was no breath left in his lungs. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t even beg. He did manage the most tenuous of links with her mind and found a faint source of hope: she was debating ending the power that was preventing him from breathing and replacing it with one that would force him to take his own life. That would draw out his death, allowing her to savor it.

  Then she changed her mind. No, she would end Arvin’s life more quickly. Returning with the upper half of the Circled Serpent was more important, especially since Sibyl had been alerted.

  When the Naneth-seed finally noticed Arvin listening in on her thoughts, she gave a brutal mental shove, propelling him from her mind. Then she squeezed harder.

  Arvin sagged to his knees as darkness clouded the edges of his vision. He blinked furiously, trying to find the force of will to resist the Naneth-seed’s manifestation. As he struggled, he thought he saw Pakal’s arm move. A moment later, despite the dark spots that clouded his vision and the roaring in his ears, he was certain of it. The paralysis the skeleton had inflicted was wearing off.

  Pakal’s eyes fluttered, then opened to stare at the Naneth-seed. One hand crept toward his hollow reed while the other fumbled open the pouch at his belt.

  The reed scraped against the floor. The Naneth-seed turned toward the sound.

  With the last bit of his consciousness, Arvin manifested a power—one of the first he’d ever learned. A faint droning filled the air. Instead of completing her turn toward Pakal, the Naneth-seed glanced at the doorway, distracted.

  The last thing Arvin saw before losing consciousness was the dwarf raising the hollow reed to his lips.

  The next thing Arvin knew, Pakal was slapping him awake. Groggily, Arvin pushed him away and drew a shaking breath. He sat up—and had to wait for the room to stop spinning before he could speak. He felt as though he was going to be ill.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Pakal pointed at the Naneth-seed, who lay face-down on the floor. She’d landed with one arm stretched out above her head, pudgy fingers splayed. One of her fingers, Arvin noticed, was encircled with a band of amber: the teleportation ring she’d used to spirit Glisena out of her father’s palace. A tiny feathered dart protruded from the back of the Naneth-seed’s neck, just above Arvin’s dagger. He stared, not believing his eyes, at his defeated foe.

  “Is she—”

  “Dead.” Pakal offered Arvin his hand.

  Arvin sighed with relief. The fact that the dwarf had saved him was a sobering thought. Arvin should have, with his increased powers, been able to deal with the seed on his own. He took the dwarf’s hand and climbed to his feet.

  “Nice shot,” he said.

  He nudged the big woman’s body with a toe. He half expected it to rise from death, as the skeletal serpent had.

  Pakal picked up the Circled Serpent and placed it back inside the box, then pointed forked fingers at the room’s only exit. His face paled as he lowered his hand.

  “Sibyl comes this way,” said the dwarf. “Are you certain you will not come? I can turn your body to air once more.”

  Arvin picked up his backpack and glanced inside. The net had indeed knotted itself into the pack, but a few quick strokes of his knife would cut it loose.

  “I’m not leaving until I kill Sibyl,” Arvin replied.

  He yanked his dagger from the Naneth-seed’s back and got to work.

  The dwarf shook his head. “I will be gone before then. Even if you succeed, you may be trapped here.”

  “No, I won’t,” Arvin said. He tilted his head at the Naneth-seed’s hand. “Her ring is magical. It can teleport me out of here. Assuming, that is, that I survive.”

  As he spoke, he continued working to free his net. It was tricky work; one slip and he’d sever a strand of the net itself, ruining it. He could hear the whuff-whuff-whuff of wings in the corridor beyond the chamber, as well as running footsteps and the slither of scaly bodies. Sibyl and her clerics drew closer.

  Pakal laid a broad hand on Arvin’s shoulder. “You are a braver man than I. Thard Harr grant you strength.” He began the prayer that would turn his body to air.

  It was cut short by an angry hiss from the corridor outside. “Naneth!” Sibyl shouted. “You will regret betraying me.”

  A heartbeat later, a wave of magical fear boiled into the room, even stronger than before. Panic filled Arvin’s mind as he whirled, searching for a way out of the chamber. There was only one exit, and it led straight to Sibyl. He was trapped …

  No. There was another way out. Shoving his way past Pakal, who cringed on the floor, Arvin grabbed the Naneth-seed’s hand. He sobbed in relief as he located the band of amber on one of her pudgy fingers. Yanking it free, he threw it onto the floor.

  “Ossalur!” he cried.

  The ring expanded.

  Waves of magical fear lashed Arvin toward the circle of amber, which had grown to nearly two paces wide. Safety lay just a step or two away. Outside the chamber, he could hear Sibyl’s furious hissing, could feel the rush of air from her wings as she approached.

  No! he thought, fighting the compulsion to flee.

  Rallying, he turned and scooped up his pack. The moment he’d been waiting for, planning for six months, was at hand. Sweat erupting on his brow from the strain, he plunged a hand into the pack. He’d almost freed the net. One good yank and it would be in his hands, ready to throw.

  Then another wave of fear struck. Pakal leaped to his feet, wide-eyed. He clutched the box tight against his chest in white-knuckled fingers, trembling like a mouse about to be consumed by a serpent.

  Arvin, fighting against the icy blasts of fear that threatened to sweep him off his feet like a hurricane, turned toward the doorway and saw Sibyl, her wings folded against her back, slithering through the hole. He started to yank the net from his pack …

  Then Sibyl looked at him. Saw him. As a third wave of magical fear struck, the courage Arvin had found a moment before melted to slush in his veins. Screaming, his pack dragging behind, he darted for the ring. He grabbed Pakal as he ran past, yanking the dwarf with him into the circle of amber.

  The scaled halls of the Temple of Varae vanished.

  So did the magical fear.

  Arvin cursed. Six months of planning and preparation, ruined. Despite the fact that his terror had been magically induced, he was disgusted with himself. He was a psion, a master of mind magic. His will should have been stronger than that. He ground his teeth together then reminded himself that all was not lost. At least he’d had the presence of mind to pull the dwarf to safety and to bring his pack with him. Maybe, gods willing, he’d get a second chance to throw his net at Sibyl.

  Still trembling from the after effects of the magical fear, Arvin extricated himself from Pakal and looked around. The ring—shrunk back to its normal size—had teleported them to a rooftop garden under an open, starry sky. A fount
ain tinkled, spraying the nearby potted plants with a cool mist. Arvin took a closer look at the plants, each fashioned into a topiary of a coiled serpent. He’d seen them before. Even as the realization struck him, he heard a gate creak open. A woman swayed into view from the staircase leading to the railing-enclosed rooftop—a woman with long red hair, and a freckling of green scales.

  Zelia.

  “Arvin!” she hissed. She glanced down at Naneth’s ring. “What have you done with my seed?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Arvin stared back at Zelia for a heartbeat—then threw up a mental tower around himself. A loud droning burst from his throat as he imagined himself in the form Tanju had taught him: one hand clenched above his head, a wall of iron around his will. With a thought, he expanded the walls of his mental tower outward to include Pakal, imagining his free hand extended to the dwarf behind him. Zelia was certain to attack their minds, but she wouldn’t kill them before finding out what they were doing with Naneth’s ring. Arvin’s psionic tower would shield them from the worst of it.

  The attack came immediately. Arvin heard the distant, tinkling-bell sound of Zelia’s secondary display and felt her try to force her awareness into his body. Her will slithered around the defense he’d thrown up like a tide of snakes trying to find cracks in a tower wall. One forced its way through and entered his right hand. His fingers spasmed open, no longer under his control, and the backpack he held fell to the floor. The tendril of will wormed its way upward inside his arm, its scales rasping against bone; Arvin shoved it down and out with a mental push.

  “Pakal!” he shouted. “Your darts!”

  Instead of reaching for his blowpipe, the dwarf grunted a prayer and fluttered his hands. Pakal’s body began disappearing as it turned to air. Arvin groaned, realizing Pakal was about to abandon him.

  Zelia, meanwhile, had managed to find another chink in Arvin’s defenses. Her mental snake slid inside his neck. It wrenched his head to the side, forcing him to look away from her. Two more tendrils of will forced their way into his legs. Zelia swayed forward, eyes triumphant.

  “Kneel,” she ordered. “Submit to me.”

  Arvin’s knees buckled under him. Zelia smiled. Arvin tensed, terrified that she was about to seed him.

  Her attention, however, was divided. She turned toward Pakal, a frown of concentration on her face. Pakal, however, continued his transformation. He stared at Arvin with eyes that held a hint of remorse and said something in his own language then vanished from sight. A breeze stirred the top of the nearest plant, then rippled away across the topiaries and over the wall.

  Zelia cursed.

  Her hold on Arvin lessened a little—enough for Arvin to manifest another power. Summoning energy into a power point at the base of his scalp, he created an illusionary image of himself prostrated at Zelia’s feet. At the same time, his real self vanished from sight. Zelia frowned at the spot where the illusionary Arvin lay, probably wondering why he had capitulated so easily.

  Arvin began drawing ectoplasm from the Astral Plane, shaping it into a vaguely human-shaped blob. Sparkles of silver light burst from his forehead as he worked, giving his position away. Zelia’s head whipped up—but in that same moment the construct’s fist slammed into her temple, snapping her head to the side. She collapsed in a boneless heap, crashing into the side of the fountain as she fell. Mist drifted down on her splayed body and closed eyelids.

  Its chill didn’t revive her.

  Arvin ended his manifestation, and the construct disappeared. Shaking, he rose to his feet. He couldn’t believe it. A year ago, he’d felled Zelia with a similar trick, using a simple psychokinetic power to levitate a knot of rope and knock her unconscious. Shaking his head in wonder, he touched the crystal at his throat.

  “Nine—”

  A hiss of laughter sounded behind him. Whirling, Arvin saw a second Zelia enter the garden.

  “Surely you didn’t think it would be that easy?” she said, closing the gate behind her.

  She cocked a finger at him, as if inviting him to try something. Arvin heard a sound like the tinkling of tiny bells.

  He stomped his foot. Zelia staggered but did not fall, nor, strangely, did she hurl an attack back at him. Arvin used the respite to yank ectoplasm from the Astral and braid it into the massive construct he hoped would overpower Zelia.

  As he did, he felt a curious, hollow sensation at the base of his spine. The construct was taking far longer to manifest than it should have—and was drawing power at an incredible rate from his muladhara. Arvin tried cutting the manifestation short in mid-flow but couldn’t. Energy spiraled out of his muladhara at a faster and faster rate, spilling into the air around him like water from a torn wineskin. He tried fighting it, tried sending his awareness deep into his muladhara, only to have his consciousness nearly shredded by the violent whirlpool he found there. A moment later, the last of his psionic energies spilled out and were gone.

  Zelia smiled. “I see you’ve learned a thing or two since we last met,” she said, “so have I.”

  Terrified, Arvin whipped a hand around his back. Before he could draw his dagger, Zelia’s eyes flashed silver as if reflecting the moonlight. Her hand shot out and slapped his cheek. Arvin stumbled backward, unbalanced. His forearm was stuck to the small of his back. When he tried to wrench it free, it felt as if the skin was ripping. His free hand brushed against his hip—and stuck there, the cloth of his pants melting away as flesh fused with flesh. He stumbled, one knee knocking against the other. They stuck fast as well.

  Completely unbalanced, he crashed to the floor. Clothing melted away from his body like paper in the rain as his calves were forced up against his thighs, his arms stuck to his sides, and his chin to his chest, the flesh fusing together like clay being smoothed by an invisible hand. He crumpled down into a fetal ball. As he blinked, his eyelids tried to fuse shut. With an immense effort, he managed to tear one of them open again. Even as he did, his ears closed over, blocking out the sound of his own ragged breathing.

  Terror gripped him. He prayed to Tymora, to Hoar, to Ilmater—to any god or goddess who would listen. He could feel the crystal his mother had given him pressing into his throat. The flesh had grown over it, sealing it inside.

  He watched with his one open eye—not daring to blink, lest the eyelid seal itself shut—as Zelia stepped out of view behind him. The dagger at the small of his back had likewise been buried inside folds of fused flesh—or rather, its sheath had. Arvin felt the blade slide out of the sheath as Zelia drew it. His heart beat with faint hope. Was she going to end his suffering? Would she truly show mercy?

  She stepped in front of him again, holding the dagger. She jabbed its point into first one ear, then the other, cutting the flaps of skin that had grown over them. Then she sliced open his lips. Arvin gasped at the pain and began to choke on the blood he’d inhaled. When he was able to speak again, he told Zelia what she wanted to hear.

  “You’ve beaten me,” he said, blood dribbling from his lips onto the floor. He stared up at her with his one good eye. “What now?”

  Instead of answering, she stepped over to the first Zelia—the one that lay either unconscious or dead. She laid a hand gently on that Zelia’s neck, as though checking for a life pulse. Instead of continuing to rest gently on the neck, however, her fingers sank deep into it, as if into soft dough. Then the first Zelia began to shrink. Head and legs and arms shriveled into the torso, and the torso itself collapsed around the second Zelia’s hand.

  Zelia closed her hand around the last vestiges of the body it as it flowed into her palm and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She shivered and her head lolled back—and groaned in pleasure. Her fist fell open, empty. She opened her eyes and bent down to pick up Naneth’s ring.

  “How did you come to have this?” she asked.

  Arvin stared defiantly up at her. Maybe she wasn’t going to seed him after all. His lips were raw with pain, and he spat out the blood that had puddled in his mouth.r />
  “Abyss take you,” he swore.

  Zelia swayed closer, tossing her long red hair. “You will tell me,” she said, “one way or the other. When you’ve finished telling me, I’ll end your suffering.” She smirked. “Perhaps by compelling you to kill yourself.”

  Her eyes flashed and a soft tinkling filled the air as she manifested another power. Arvin felt it brush against his mind as softly as a cobweb—then tear apart, as if it were equally fragile.

  Zelia frowned, then grabbed his hair and used it to roll his body back and forth like a ball as she examined him. Her eyes flashed a second time and a soft hissing filled the air as she concentrated on her manifestation. Her hand paused briefly over the braided leather bracelet on his right wrist, and hesitated a second time over the lump that had been Arvin’s left hand. She probed with her fingers.

  Arvin realized she had found Karrell’s ring.

  With quick, deft slices that sent fresh spasms of pain lancing through his hand and up his arm, Zelia cut Arvin’s little finger apart from the rest, then yanked the ring from it. She held the ring in the fountain until the blood was gone from it, then gave it an appraising look.

  A tear welled in Arvin’s open eye. He said nothing, however. Zelia would have enjoyed listening to him plead for Karrell’s ring. He stared at the backpack, lying no more than a pace away. He’d never be able to kill Sibyl. Zelia would no doubt claim the net inside it, as well …

  His breath caught as he realized there might be a way out. If he could trick Zelia into speaking the net’s command word while still holding it, the magical net would kill her. Arvin would be free once the manifestation she’d used to fuse his flesh together ended.

  Assuming it ever did end.

  Zelia’s eyes flashed silver a third time as she manifested the power that would allow her to listen in on Arvin’s thoughts. Without Karrell’s ring or his own psionics to counter it, he had only his own raw will to defend himself with—and Zelia tore through that like a knife through cloth. Arvin pretended to panic, filling his mind with thoughts of his backpack. He prayed—falsely—to Tymora that his luck would hold, that Zelia wouldn’t take the net inside it, that she wouldn’t speak its command word—pullulios—and toss it on him. That would inflict a terrible agony, one that would cause him to crumple and succumb to whatever she wanted.