Vanity's Brood

by Lisa Smedman

  Bulges pulsed along the bodies of the hair-thin snakes like mice passing through a serpent’s gullet: individual thoughts flowing through Arvin’s mind. With deep, even breaths, he slowed them, putting his mind ever more at peace. He was distantly aware of his body sinking into a state much like sleep. His breathing and heartbeat slowed, and despite the fierce jungle heat, his body cooled slightly. His arms, however, remained rigid, supporting the asana.

  Dreamlike images began to crowd into the darkness behind his closed eyelids. Fragments of memory floated by. Karrell’s face and her voice, the word in her language for kiss: tsu. The warehouse and workshop Arvin had been forced to abandon a year ago, after the militia discovered the plague-riddled body of the cultist who had died there. And memories from farther back. Of the day he’d learned that Naulg had escaped from the orphanage, and the sorrow Arvin had felt at his friend not saying good-bye. Of his mother’s face, the day she’d departed on what was to be her last job as a guide, and the tight hug she’d given him after placing around his neck the bead that enclosed the crystal he wore ever since.

  He was distantly aware of his body, of a tear trickling down his cheek. It vanished quickly in the intense jungle heat.

  He waited, watching the shifting images, drifting. Eventually, they began to blend in the way that dreams will. He was lying in a bed with Karrell, tenderly stroking her cheek, not in the room they’d shared in Ormpetarr but at the orphanage. The bed was small and narrow and hard, its straw-filled mattress scratchy. One of the clerics stood over them, frowning. The gray robe held out his hands, and Arvin saw that they were bound not with the traditional red cord, but with a serpent whose body was a tube of molten lava.

  The smell of burned flesh and hair was thick in the room, coming from a lump of osssra that burned in a brazier in the corner. The brazier fell over, spilling a wave of lava across the floor. The osssra lay in the middle of it—a severed snake head. Its tongue flickered out of its mouth and wrapped around Arvin’s wrist. He yanked it free but found himself trapped in the embrace of a six-armed creature—Sibyl, with Karrell’s face.

  Her stomach bulged like a dead body rotting in the sun. Tiny human hands erupted from it, the fingers seeding themselves like tendrils in his own stomach. He could feel them growing into him, burning their way up his veins toward his heart, which Karrell held in her hand. It pulsed, then lay quivering, then pulsed, then quivered again. She bit into it like an apple, blood-juice running down her chin and throat. Then she laughed with Sibyl’s voice, a gurgling hiss like water bubbling through a sewer.

  Stink surrounded Arvin, the stench of his own rotting flesh. The plague had found him. It had crept, disguised as his mother, into his bed, and rushed into his nostrils. Deep in his lungs, it festered. Inside his stomach, it grew, forming child-sized tumors that would burst and spread their seeds.

  A scream echoed in his ears: his own. Dimly, he could sense Ts’ikil bending over him, touching his shoulder with a wingtip. That steadied him. The nightmare had left his arms trembling, his heart pounding faster than a rattler’s shaking tail, his body drenched in sweat. In the momentary reprieve granted by Ts’ikil, he was aware of the ache in his left hand, the crusted blood on his right shoulder.

  Then he plunged back into nightmare.

  It was as horrible as what had come before: twisted images of Karrell blended with Zelia, Naulg was swallowed whole by Sibyl, a silver snake coiled around Arvin’s neck and tightened, slowly and remorselessly. In his dream, he saw his body convulse, his back wrenching backward in agony like a serpent’s, until he was staring at his feet.

  The image was unmistakable: the Circled Serpent, but was it a message from Sseth or just his own feverish imagination?

  A heartbeat later, it was gone, replaced by scenes of infants impaled on fang-shaped stakes, a priest yanking Arvin’s head back and forcing him to consume raw sewage while reciting his prayers at the same time, and Karrell—except that when Arvin tried to embrace her, she turned to shadow-stuff.

  Nowhere, in any of the imagery, did he see a door.

  It was getting increasingly difficult to continue. Had it been a normal dream, he would have woken up screaming long ago. Only the discipline imposed by a year’s practice at meditation allowed him to continue for so long. That, and the lingering traces of Zelia’s credo.

  Control, he told himself savagely. If you want to see Karrell again, you’ve got to persevere.

  The small portion of his mind that remained detached from his nightmares wondered what images Zelia’s seed was experiencing. What would his nightmares be like? He doubted there was anyone Zelia cared for, save for herself. Certainly no one she loved. If Zelia herself was sleeping at that moment, she would probably be dreaming about her seeds turning on her.

  The thought made Arvin smile. It gave him the strength to carry on.

  The images swept relentlessly past. Arvin waded through a river of blood in which screaming human heads bobbed, suddenly found himself a winged snake stripped of his wings and plunging to his death, and saw a boil of pestilence rise on his stomach. He scratched it and a marilith erupted from the wounds his fingers clawed. He realized, suddenly and viscerally, how terrible a place sleep would be if Dendar did not feed on nightmares.

  He had no idea how much time was passing. A tiny corner of his mind told him the sun still beat down on his prone body but with less intensity. There was a distant pang of hunger in his stomach and a full sensation that told him he would need to urinate soon. He fought a battle, however, and such things were trivial. The Dmetrio-seed had osssra on his side. Arvin had only his own will.

  The nightmare images pummeled him, weakened him, wearing down his resolve. His body could endure the strain he was putting it under by holding the bhujang asana for so long, but his mind would soon snap. Already he could see the ropes that made up his mental net starting to fray. The sun’s heat was making him lightheaded, and he would need to drink soon or he would faint.

  A feather brushed his lips, bringing with it a trickle of water—Ts’ikil, lifting water to his mouth. Arvin sucked it greedily down—and saw, in his nightmare, himself suckling at Karrell’s breast, only to find his head impaled by cold flat steel as the marilith shoved one of her swords through Karrell’s back.

  No! In his nightmare, he wrenched his head away. His eyes fluttered open, too-bright sunlight and the riotous colors of Ts’ikil’s feathers swam before him, and his arms trembled. He collapsed, slamming his chest down onto hot, rough stone. For a moment, full wakefulness claimed him; he squeezed his eyes shut and straightened his arms, forcing himself back into the asana, forcing his mind back into the realm of nightmare.

  Then he was aware of something that he hadn’t noticed before. His forehead tingled. Either the iron cobra was closing in, or …

  Or someone else was scrying on him and trying to communicate with him.

  Sseth.

  With a croaked whisper, Arvin activated the lapis lazuli. He pictured Sseth as the god had been depicted in the Temple of Emerald Scales in Hlondeth—an enormous winged serpent with green and bronze scales looming over his worshipers. Distantly, he felt his mouth form silent words.

  “Sseth. I am one of …” he hesitated, fearful of telling an outright lie to a god, “one of your people. Tell me how to reach you.”

  The mental image Arvin had formed suddenly shifted. The statue he had pictured became flesh, and the face of a sleeping serpent filled his mind. Thick vegetation covered it: a tangle of leafy vines, bulging white rootlets, and interwoven tree branches and roots. Arvin’s breathing faltered as he realized he was looking at the face of a god.

  The eye opened. A slit pupil swiveled to stare at Arvin through the constricting lace of foliage. Arvin gasped as his awareness tumbled into it.

  Into Sseth’s own nightmares.

  Sseth lay in his jungle domain, basking under a brooding purple sky, surrounded by his minions—the souls of his yuan-ti priests. His merest whim should have produced fervent,
fawning service, but they had turned their backs on him. Without a word—ignoring even his commands—they slithered away. As they did, the jungle around Sseth came to life. Tree trunks glowed red then turned into tubes of lava. Vines became streamers of molten rock. These flowed over Sseth, burning him. The immense heat curled his scales like dead leaves. Then they crystallized, trapping him in solid stone. Trapped like an insect in amber—him! A god! He tried to open his mouth, but it would not move. The petrified vines had bound it shut.

  He stared in mute fury as a dog-headed giant wearing a starched white kilt and golden sandals strode toward him, each of his steps crunching the petrified vegetation underfoot. Around the usurpur’s head was the symbol of his power: a golden diadem of a rearing cobra.

  The awareness that was Arvin had no idea who the dog-headed giant was, save that he was reminiscent of the dog-man who had followed Arvin all the way from Hlondeth. The awareness that was Sseth, however, understood that the head was not that of a dog, but of a jackal, a scavenger of the desert. It conveyed to Arvin the full extent of what that meant. It was no giant who strode toward him with an evil leer on his lips but a rival god, Set, Lord of Carrion, brother to jackals and serpents, King of Malice and Lord of Evil, slayer of his own kin.

  Sseth raged. An angry hiss slipped between his clenched jaws.

  Set grabbed his mouth in his massive hands and forced it open. He placed a golden sandal on Sseth’s forked tongue, stilling it. Then he stepped inside.

  Sseth tried to thrash away, but to no avail; the petrified vegetation held him fast. He felt Set force his way down his gullet. For a heartbeat, all was still. Then came a tearing sensation. To Arvin, it felt as though the skin were being flayed from his body. To Sseth, who had a deeper understanding, it was recognized as skin sloughing free. Never before, however, had the shedding of his skin been so painful.

  When it was done, Set stood before him, clad in Sseth’s own green-and-bronze skin. A serpent head cloaked his own; through its gaping jaws Set’s jackal grin could be seen. Then the rival god vanished.

  Sseth tried to follow but could not move. His jaw, however, was still open. He snapped it shut, only to feel a tooth break against one of the petrified vines that bound him. Looking down, he saw that the tooth was embedded in the ground. It stood upright, like a miniature volcano, blood flowing from the broken tip like lava. Then the molten rock crystalized. Sseth stared at it, focusing his entire attention upon the tooth. Upon the crater at its tip. Thisss …

  A sudden clarity came to Arvin’s mind. He recognized that shape. The tooth had the exact contours of the volcano he’d viewed from the air while trying to get his bearings after coming through the portal. The broken top of the tooth had the same jagged edges as the crater at the volcano’s peak. Sseth’s message was clear: the door was inside that crater.

  Yes, Sseth hissed. Yesss.

  “How do I open it?” Arvin asked.

  Too late. The sending was over. Blackness descended.

  When consciousness returned, Arvin found himself lying face down on the ground. He must have collapsed a second time. Blood trickled from his upper lip where a tooth had torn it. The tooth felt loose in his mouth when he worried it with his tongue.

  Ts’ikil bent over him, her expression anxious. Did you learn where the door is?

  Arvin rose, shaking, to his feet. “You weren’t listening to my thoughts?”

  Sseth might not have spoken if I had.

  The sun was low enough in the west that shadows from the cliff across the river had started to creep across the ledge on which they stood. Arvin turned and looked north. Peeking above the treetops was the distant mountain he had seen in Sseth’s dreams. Inside its crater lay the door to Smaragd—the door that led to Karrell.

  Ts’ikil turned in that direction. Her awareness slid into Arvin’s mind. After a moment, she spoke. Have you enough magic left to fly?

  Arvin had just been worrying about that. He’d taken the time to replenish his muladhara at the beginning of his meditation, but the numerous manifestations the metamorphosis power would require to carry him such a distance would certainly deplete it again. If he was going to do battle with the Dmetrio-seed, he’d need to conserve his power.

  Ts’ikil extended her good wing. Only one of her flight feathers remained intact and unbent; she nodded at it. Take it.

  Arvin started. “You want me to pull your feather out?”

  It will allow you to reach the volcano without wasting your power.

  Arvin grasped it then hesitated. Was it some sort of trick? Would him having the feather somehow allow Ts’ikil to come along for the ride? To reach the door and prevent him from opening it?

  No.

  “Then why help me?”

  Ts’ikil nodded at Pakal. The dwarf lay on the stone, the patches on his legs only slightly more insubstantial than the shadows that crept toward him. Then she stared at Arvin. I help you because, even though I know what is in your heart, there is still a chance—-her lips quirked—albeit only a coin’s toss chance, that you will choose the correct path through the labyrinth that lies ahead.

  Arvin nodded. He grasped the feather and pulled. It slid cleanly from Ts’ikil’s wing. He felt his feet drift away from the ground. He was flying.

  Gripping the feather tightly, he took a deep breath. “I’ll make the right choice,” he promised Ts’ikil.

  Though whether right for himself and Karrell—or for the world—remained to be seen.

  CHAPTER 11

  Arvin approached the volcanic crater warily. He had morphed his body into that of a flying snake as soon as he drew close enough to the volcano for a single manifestation to carry him the rest of the distance. The couatl feather was tucked inside his pack.

  The lower slopes of the mountain were covered in thick jungle that gave way near its peak to bare black rock where nothing grew. Ancient lava flows had overlapped one another, leaving rounded puddles of frozen stone that looked like layered scales. The peak itself was a crater perhaps fifty paces across with a floor that looked like ropy, wrinkled black skin. Wisps of white vapor hissed from cracks in the rock, tingeing the air with a rotten-egg smell. The walls of the crater appeared thin and fragile. In several places, chunks of stone had broken away and fallen down the mountainside, giving the peak its jagged, broken appearance.

  There was no sign of the Dmetrio-seed. Nor was there any indication of exactly where the door might be. Arvin had expected to see something like the portal he and Pakal had used or the circular dais in Sibyl’s lair, but the crater appeared wholly natural.

  He probed the area for any sign of psionic manifestations. There were none. Nor could he detect any thoughts.

  He landed in a spot away from the venting gas, on hot black stone. Folding his wings against his body, he shifted the color of his scales from greenish brown to glossy black. He waited, one finger of his awareness touching his muladhara, ready at an instant’s notice to manifest a power should the Dmetrio-seed arrive. As shadows crept across the crater’s floor, he kept an eye on the sky.

  After a time, he felt the tingling in his body that meant his metamorphosis was about to end. Still there was no sign of the Dmetrio-seed. He waited until his body had shifted back into human form before he scrambled to the lip of the crater. It would have been a difficult climb without his magical bracelet, for the rock was indeed as fragile as it appeared. He took a look around but saw nothing that might have been a flying carpet. No matter which direction he peered in, the sky was empty.

  Perhaps the seed hadn’t received Sseth’s message.

  Arvin laughed at the irony—that he, the last person who would ever embrace the serpent god, had been the only one to understand Sseth’s plea.

  He was growing impatient. Gods only knew what was happening to Karrell. She’d put on a brave front when Arvin had used Zelia’s power stone to speak with her, but he had seen the toll that mere survival had taken on her. That had been days ago. Anything might have happened in the me
antime. Karrell might be …

  He couldn’t bring himself to contemplate it. Not there, not when he was so close. If only the Dmetrio-seed would show up, Arvin could get on with it. The waiting was the hardest part. When would the Dmetrio-seed figure out Sseth’s message?

  Another possiblity occurred to Arvin. Maybe the seed had figured it out. Maybe he’d decided not to betray Zelia but to convey the Circled Serpent to her as ordered. When Arvin had probed the seed’s thoughts, a final decision had yet to be made. For all he knew, the Dmetrio-seed had decided to obey Zelia after all. The seed might be making his way back to Hlondeth even then …

  Arvin rubbed the scar on his forehead. There was one way to find out.

  The scents of saffron and ginger mingled with the rotten-egg smell of the volcano as Arvin manifested a metamorphosis. Ectoplasm slimed his skin, adding to the discomfort of assuming a form even more distasteful than that of a flying snake. His body became slender, developing curves and breasts. His face took on a serpentine appearance. Even without a mirror to guide him, he could easily visualize his hair turning red as it lengthened, his tongue developing a bluish tinge as it forked. The scales that blossomed on his hands and face were the exact shade of green he remembered. He fought the urge to scratch his itching skin, venting his discomfort instead in a soft, feminine hiss.

  Then he manifested his sending.

  The Dmetrio-seed’s face took several moments to coalesce in Arvin’s mind. Eventually, it came into focus: dark hair that swept back from a high forehead, narrow nose and thin lips. His face was dappled in leaf-shaped shadow; he was somewhere outdoors. Eyelids drooped low over slit-pupiled eyes, and it looked as though the seed had just wakened. He lay on the ground, his body coiled around something that gave off smoke that caused his body to blur then become clear again, probably a brazier filled with burning osssra. That surprised Arvin. Perhaps the seed had decided to find the door and use it himself.