by Lisa Smedman
"An accident," he concluded. He held up his grossly swollen hand. "Juz'la's viper bit me. I bumped into the brazier, and it toppled. The oil spilled out, and Juz'la was burned."
Realizing he should feign some concern, he moved to where Juz'la lay. The sudden motion, combined with his dizziness, made him reel. He turned the motion into a less-than-graceful squat, ignoring the tiny flames that licked at his boots, and pretended to be feeling for a pulse. As he did, he slipped the dagger
up his sleeve. It was a clumsy palming, but if the half- lizard noticed anything, he made no comment. "She's dead," Arvin concluded.
He started to stand, then noticed something that lay beside the body in the flaming oil: a tiny vial that must have been secreted somewhere inside Juz'la's dress. The dark liquid inside it bubbled from the heat, the cork that sealed the vial starting to char. Arvin picked up the vial before it burst and he blew on it, trying to cool it.
The half-lizard puffed out his throat, clearly agitated. He shifted uneasily on bowed legs, looking as though he'd like nothing better than to scurry away. "Master," he croaked. "What-"
Arvin stood, fought off another wave of dizziness. He stared down at the half-lizard. "Your name's Porvar, isn't it?" he asked.
The half-lizard nodded. There was fear in his eyes but also intelligence. He wasn't as far gone as the slave who had met Arvin upon his arrival.
Arvin smiled and manifested a charm. "I'd like to help you, Porvar."
The half-lizard blinked rapidly. His posture became a little less subservient.
"The Jennestaa forced you to drink a potion, didn't they?"
The half-lizard's throat puffed out in alarm.
"A good friend of mine was forced to drink a similar potion," Arvin said.
Porvar looked doubtful.
"It's all right," Arvin assured him. "You can trust me. I'm not yuan-ti. I'm human."
Porvar glanced down at Arvin's swollen hand. The flesh around the punctures was purple. "When vipers bite, humans die."
"Not this human," Arvin assured him, and it was true.
The dizziness ebbed, leaving him more certain on his feet. His left hand was in agony, though. He tried to flex his fingers and nearly cried out from the pain.
"There's a statue," Arvin said. "Dmetrio Extaminos brought it with him when he came to Ss'yin'tia'saminass. Take me to it, and I'll help you escape."
The half-lizard laughed. "Where to? The jungle extends to the horizon."
"Better free in the jungle than a slave here," Arvin countered.
The half-lizard blinked. Once. Twice. "Why do you want the statue?"
Arvin smiled. "I plan on smashing it."
The half-lizard considered this. "And the others?" he asked.
"There's more than one statue?" Arvin asked.
Porvar shook his head. "The ones in the pit. The halfings who are still… whole. Will you help them, too?"
"I'll do what I can," Arvin promised.
Porvar's lips twitched. He turned. "Come. I will show you where Juz'la moved it to."
The corridor was only chest-high; Arvin had to walk bent over to follow. While the half-lizard's back was turned, he shook the dagger out of his sleeve and sheathed it and placed the vial in a pocket. Then he looped the wine-soaked cloth around his neck as an improvised sling for his swollen hand. He wished, belatedly, that he'd gotten Tanju to teach him one of the powers that stabilized and helped heal the body. Instead, he'd focused, those past six months, on powers he thought he might need in his battle
with Sybyl. He hadn't expected to live long enough to require healing.
to require healing.
It soon became too dark to see, so Arvin followed Porvar with one hand on the half-lizard's shoulder.
The corridor they followed ran in sinuous curves for some distance, and Arvin was certain they were no longer under the pyramid. Every so often, they passed through another of the circular, multi-exited chambers. Most of them were filled with rubble, Arvin discovered after painfully stubbing his toe on a piece of broken stone.
Eventually, they drew near an illuminated chamber filled with yuan-ti. Arvin let go of Porvar and assumed a sliding, more fluid gait. He filled the minds of the yuan-ti with the illusion of scales on his body and slit-pupilled eyes. He wet his lips with his tongue, adding a serpent's forked flicker. Porvar glanced back at him, perhaps wondering why Arvin shuffled his feet, but the illusion wasn't directed at the half-lizard's mind. Arvin gave him an encouraging nod and gestured for him to lead on.
Soon Arvin smelled earth and mold and saw a dim light up ahead. Porvar halted a few moments later at the entrance to an enormous circular chamber. Easily fifty paces across, it was illuminated by moonlight that shone in through a portion of the ceiling that had collapsed. The moldy smell probably came from the rotted timbers that had tumbled into the room. Vines trailed in through the hole, brushing the spot where they'd fallen. Arvin noted the leaves, shaped vaguely like human hands, and the berries that were clustered in bunches like grapes. Assassin vine.
The chamber was crowded with pieces of weathered statuary that had, presumably, been scavenged from the ruins above. Stone snake heads with jagged, broken necks lay here and there on the floor. Some were no larger than Arvin's own head; others were chest-high. All had once been painted in bright colors, but the paint was flaked from them like shedding skin. Empty eye sockets had probably once held gems.
There were also a number of broken slabs of squared-off stone: stelae, covered with inscriptions in Draconic. The chamber also included a more-orless intact statue that Arvin recognized from Zelia's childhood memories: the World Serpent, progenitor of all the reptile races. Lizard folk, yuan-ti, nagas, and a host of other scaly folk stared up at her from below, paying the goddess homage. They stood on the bent backs of humans and other two-legged races who crouched, like slaves, in perpetual submission.
Sounds drifted down the corridor behind them. Somewhere in the distance, a yuan-ti voice shouted. That couldn't be good.
"Whero is the statue Prince Dmetrio brought with him from Hlondeth?" Arvin asked.
Porvar pointed at the far side of the room. "There."
Arvin sighted along the pointing finger. The statue stood against the far wall. It was small, no more than knee-high, with a gray-green body and wings that were covered in gilt. Pale yellow gems glittered in its eye sockets: yellow sapphires. Its hands were raised above its head, forming the circle that symbolized birth. Sseth reborn-the perfect hiding place for the Circled Serpent.
Arvin took a step forward but Porvan caught his arm, preventing him from entering the chamber. He nodded at the vines that trailed in through the ceiling.
"Stranglevine," he whispered, as if afraid his voice might awaken it.
Arvin smiled. "I know. I've worked with the stuff often enough."
Silver sparkled from his forehead, lengthening into a long, thin rope. Quick as thought, it wound itself around the assassin vines, binding them together. The plant, sensing it was under attack, began writhing like a snake. Arvin wrapped the far
end of the shimmering rope around one of the larger serpent heads, stretching the assassin vine as tight as a lyre string.
"Wait here," he told Porvar.
He jogged over to the statue. A quick glance noted a slight discoloration; a sniff told Arvin that it was contact poison. He slipped off his improvised sling, wound it around his good hand, and lifted the statue with that. He didn't feel or hear anything shifting inside the statue when he picked it up. That worried him-Juz'la might already have removed its contents, and if she'd hidden Dmetrio's half of the Circled Serpent somewhere else, he might never find it.
Fortunately there was an easy way to find out if there was anything inside. Raising the statue above his head, Arvin slammed it down onto the floor.
Out of the shattered remains fell the lower half of the Circled Serpent. It glinted silver in the moonlight, the tiny scales carved onto its surface made a netlike pattern on the gleaming metal.
One thing worried him, however. Dmetrio hadn't kept the lead-lined box the Circled Serpent had been found in, which meant that something else had been hiding it from divination magic. The gray-green glaze on the ceramic statue must have had lead in it-but Arvin had smashed the statue, so that protection was no longer in place.
Arvin wished he still had his magical glove; vanished inside it, the Circled Serpent would probably escape detection. Without it, all Sibyl had to do was cast a location spell to find it.
A rustling noise behind him warned him that the ectoplasm that bound the assassin vine was starting to fade. He renewed it with a fresh manifestation,
tying several loops into the rope he bound it with. Then he scooped up the Circled Serpent and tucked it inside his shirt, using his sling to tie it in place. He turned and motioned Porvar forward.
"Come on," he said, placing a foot in the lowermost loop of his improvised ladder. "Let's get out of here."
The half-lizard glanced nervously at the vine.
Arvin nodded toward the corridor. The shouting he'd heard grew louder. "We may have been found out," he said. "Do you really want to go back the way we came?"
Porvar shook his head.
"Then climb," Arvin instructed. "Follow me."
The climb wasn't an easy one for Arvin, despite his magical bracelet. He could use only one hand, and Porvar, below him, kept jostling the rope. Halfway up, Arvin's feet slipped and he nearly fell. Feet flailing, he clung to the vine with his good hand, trying to twist himself back around. As his feet found the vine again, something tickled the small of his back-a tendril of assassin vine, worming its way up inside his shirt. Cursing, he fumbled at it with his injured hand, but the vine curled around his waist and spiraled its way up his body. Within heartbeats, it tightened around his throat. Arvin hooked his arm around the vine and tried to pull the tendril off with his good hand but couldn't get his fingers under it. He traded arms, hooking the left one around the rope, and reached for his knife. The tendril tightened.
The vine jerked as Porvar shifted below. Arvin tried to shout at him to back off but the vine had already cut off his breath. He felt hands grasping his ankles, then his legs-what was the half-lizard trying to do, climb past him and escape? He tried to kick Porvar off, but the half-lizard gripped his legs too tightly.
"No!" Porvar hissed.
Arvin heard a chewing noise. Porvar grunted then wrenched his head to one side. The pressure on Arvin's throat eased. Glancing down, Arvin saw Porvar spit out a length of tendril. The half-lizard grinned up at him.
"You can stop kicking me now."
Unwinding the limp tendril from his throat, Arvin breathed his thanks.
The rest of the climb went smoothly. Getting out of the hole was tricky, but Porvar gave Arvin a boost from below Arvin scrambled out and secured the Circled Serpent inside his shirt again. That done, he extended his good hand to Porvar, helping him clamber out. He backed Porvar away from the hole. When the ectoplasmic bonds evaporated, the entire assassin vine would come snaking up out of it.
They had emerged into dense jungle. The weathered remains of stone buildings loomed nearby, smothered in a thick layer of leafy vegetation. A few paces away, an enormous stone snake head stared with sightless eyes into the jungle. Trees stood like living pillars, their branches forming a dark canopy overhead.
Off in the distance to their right, something crashed through the jungle-several things, judging by the sound of it. From the opposite direction-the center of the ruined city-came yet more shouting. One of the creatures moving through the jungle was headed their way. The ground trembled as it drew closer. Arvin heard the crack of branches and saw trees moving. As it broke through the trees, he dragged Porvar into the shadow of the serpent head. An enormous reptile like the one he'd seen earlier lumbered past, a yuan-ti perched on a saddle on its back. The yuan-ti brandished a spear in each fist, and a feathered cape fluttered out behind him.
"The Se'sehen," Porvar breathed. "Ss'yin'tia'saminass is under attack."
"That's good," Arvin said. "In the confusion, you can escape."
Porvar gave him a level stare. "Not without my son."
"He's in the pit, isn't he?"
Porvar nodded.
Arvin struggled with his conscience. He'd retrieved the second half of the Circled Serpent-the only sane thing to do was shift into the form of a flying snake and get out. Now Karrell was counting on him. Arvin's own children would die if he failed to save them. Porvar was a stranger, trying to hold Arvin to a promise he couldn't afford to keep.
"Please," Porvar begged.
His whisper was all but lost in the crashing that surrounded them. Dozens of the giant lizards were thundering through the jungle toward the center of Ss'yin'tia'saminass.
Arvin sighed. "Which way is the pit?"
Porvar grinned, revealing a jagged set of teeth. "This way."
They hurried through the jungle, moving at right angles to the attack. More than once they had to stop and hide from other Se'sehen, also mounted on lizards. Eventually, the jungle opened up, and Arvin could see the cistern just ahead. He heard cries coming from inside it: the halflings. One of them was dead, impaled on the needle-like spikes. His face, level with the rim of the cistern, had turned a faint blue and was so swollen it was impossible to see his eyes.
Porvar stared, transfixed, at the corpse. "Poison," he croaked.
"Is your son good at climbing?" Arvin asked. The half-lizard startled, then nodded.
"Tell the halflings to bo ready to catch a rope."
Without wasting any more words, Arvin uncoiled
the braided leather cord he'd fastened around his
waist and began to climb a nearby bee. When he was high enough to look down into the pit, he tied one end of the cord to a tree branch and tossed the other down into the cistern, shouting its command word as he did so. The trollgut rope expanded, more than doubling in length. One of the halflings caught the other end.
"Is there something you can tie it to?" Arvin shouted.
The halflings looked around then shook their heads. The floor of the cistern was rough with broken stone, but none of the chunks was large enough to serve as an anchor for the rope. Arvin was just about to break the unpleasant news that one of them would have to hold it while the others climbed out when another of the enormous lizards hurtled toward them through the jungle. It smashed through the trees mere paces away from Arvin, sending the tree he was in whipping back and forth, and skirted the cistern, the yuan-ti on its back clinging grimly to its saddle. Arvin clung equally grimly to a branch with his one good hand.
As the giant lizard thundered away, Arvin heard a cheer go up from the halflings below. Glancing down, he saw that the lizard had knocked over a tree, which had fallen into the pit. Its trunk formed a ramp up to the rim. Already the halflings were scrambling up, Porvar's son in the lead. The half-lizard moved forward to embrace him, but the boy shrank back, frightened. Then, visibly screwing up his courage, he hugged his father. Porvar looked up at Arvin, waved his thanks, then hurried away with the others into the jungle.
"Nine lives," Arvin whispered.
He added a silent prayer that Tymora keep sending the halflings luck. To escape in the middle of a full-scale assault, they would need it.
Arvin, fortunately, would be out of there as soon as he could morph into a flying snake.
He cut the new growth from his trollgut rope and looped what remained over his shoulder. Then he started to draw energy up through his navel and into his chest. Only then did he think to touch his chest and make certain the lower half of the Circled Serpent was still there.
It wasn't. It must have fallen when the lizard brushed the tree.
A chill ran through him. His heart stopped racing a moment later, however, when he spotted it on the ground near the base of the tree. Aborting his man
ifestation, he scrambled down to grab it. He secured the Circled Serpent back inside his shirt and resumed his manifestation.
He tried to draw energy up through his navel, but all that came was a trickle. Only the tiniest amount of energy remained in his muladhara. He'd been spending it wantonly, neglecting to check how much remained. There wasn't enough to morph himself into a flying snake.
He'd have to walk out of Ss'yin'tia'saminass on foot.
He turned, trying to figure out which way the river was. It was somewhere to the east, but under the trees, in moonlight, it was impossible to figure out which way that might be. He decided to find a place to hole up, sleep, and replenish his muladhara.
He walked for some time through the ruins of Ss'yin, leaving the sounds of battle farther and farther behind. Enormous stone snake heads and low mounds that had once been buildings loomed out of the darkness on either side. He paused under a tree, looking for a sheltered place to perform his meditations. After a moment, he found a good spot: a circle of darkness in the side of a ruined building that was overgrown with vines-a doorway.
Dagger in hand, he pulled aside the vines and crawled into a corridor. He was taking a risk. Something else might have already claimed it as its lair. The corridor, however, ended in a pile of collapsed rubble only two or three paces into the building. It smelled of mold, and its floor was littered with dead leaves and other debris but it was otherwise empty.
Arvin collapsed, exhausted. He would sleep only a short time, he told himself; just long enough to refresh his mind so that he could perform his meditations.
He lay down, pillowing his head on his arms. No more than a quick nap, and…
A rustling noise snapped Arvin awake. He sat up, dagger already in hand. He'd slept for longer than he'd intended. Outside his hiding place, twilight was already filtering through the jungle. The air was steamy and hot.
The swelling in his left hand had gone down; he was able to move it again. The twin punctures on the back of it were still an angry red, but the agony had ebbed. The hand just felt stiff and sore.
He paused, listening carefully, and heard monkeys chatter to each other over the rasping caw-caw-caw of a jungle bird. The rustling noise had probably been the monkeys, swinging through the trees. Other than that, the jungle was quiet. Whatever the outcome of the Se'sehen attack on Ss'yin, the battle was over.