Vanity's brood hos-3

by Lisa Smedman

  Was Arvin, indeed, as cold-blooded and dispassionate as any full-blooded yuan-ti?

  No, he told himself sternly. He wasn't. There was Karrell. He loved her. The need to rescue her burned in him, not just to rescue her, but to save the children he'd fathered. They mattered to him.

  The fact remained that he was part yuan-ti. He couldn't deny it any longer, even to himself. It explained so much: why it felt so natural to morph into a flying snake, why his psionics were so powerful. Yuan-ti had a number of inborn magical abilities that mimicked psionic powers. Their ability to charm humans, for example. That was one of the first powers Arvin had learned. It had just come naturally to him.

  Because he had yuan-ti blood.

  He squared his shoulders. So what, he told himself. It doesn't change anything. I'm still the person I've always been. I just understand myself a little better now.

  He turned, saw Ts'ikil watching him. "Were you listening to my thoughts?"

  No.

  "Thank you." He stood. "Tell me about the Circled Serpent. If I'm going after the Dmetrio-seed, I'll need to know as much about it as he does."

  It is ancient-it was made at the height of the Mhairshaulk Empire. It was one of several keys, the rest of which have been lost in the intervening millennia. The sarrukh, creators of the yuan-ti and other reptilian races, erected a series of gates to other planes of existence. The keys could be used to open any of them.

  "How?"

  Ts'ikil ignored the question. You think you can survive in Smaragd.

  "Karrell has for six months, pregnant and alone." Not alone. Karrell is one of the k'aaxlaat. Ubtao watches over her.

  "Even in Smaragd?"

  Even there. Ts'ikil's eyes bored into Arvin's. You, on the other hand, have yet to choose a god.

  Arvin touched the crystal at his throat. "I worship Tymora."

  When it suits you.

  "That's as much as most mortals can say."

  That is true, but the fact remains: you are not a cleric. You will have no protection in Smaragd.

  It took Arvin a moment to realize what Ts'ikil had just said. Hope surged through him. "You… you're going to let me do it, aren't you? Enter Smaragd." He tilted his head. "What changed your mind?"

  I have not changed my mind. The Circled Serpent must be destroyed. A key that can release Dendar-that can bring about the destruction of this world-can not be permitted to remain in existence. She lifted her unbroken wing. Feathers hung from it in tatters. I am injured; my part in this has diminished.

  She lowered her wing. Fortunately, so has Sibyl's. She was equally weakened by ourbattle, and she does not know thal Zelia's seed has the key.

  It has come down to a race between yourself and the Dmelrio-seed. If he reaches the door first and opens it, I fully expect that you will follow him inside. You must, if you are to save Karrell's life.

  "That much is obvious," Arvin said.

  Yes, but the course of action you must pursue is not. You will be tempted to rush to find Karrell first. Don't. Once the seed enters Smaragd, he will hurry to Sseth's side. You must concentrate on stopping him from reaching the god instead. If he succeeds in freeing Sseth, Karrell will be the first to die. She

  immediately-where she is within his realm. With a thought, he will destroy her.

  Despite the sticky heat, Arvin shivered. "What if

  I manage to take the Circled Serpent from the seed and open the door with it?"

  If you did, you would open a way for any who wished to follow.

  "Couldn't I close the door behind me?" Arvin asked.

  Not from inside Smaragd. The door can only be opened-or closed-from this plane.

  Arvin thought for a moment. "I could leave the Circled Serpent outside with someone else, someone who could close the door behind me and open it again once I've gotten Karrell."

  The couatl's laughter trilled softly through his mind. With me, perhaps? Assumi ng I let you use the door and closed it after you, how would you let me know when it is time to open it?

  Arvin opened his mouth then closed it again. He already knew his lapis lazuli wasn't capable of penetrating Smaragd. It probably wouldn't allow him to do a sending from within that layer of the Abyss, either. Once inside, he'd be on his own.

  "Can the key be carried into Smaragd then out again?"

  To Arvin's surprise, the couatl answered. It can, but if it is lost there, we would lose the opportunity to destroy it, and the gate would remain open. Ts'ikil paused-long enough for Arvin to silently acknowledge what she meant by "lost." His death. One of Sseth's faithful would eventually free him, and the key would fall into Sseth's coils. The god of serpents will be sorely tempted to release Dendar. The Night Serpent would readily agree to feed on the faithful of othergods until only Sseth's worshipers remain.

  Without worshipers to sustain them, the gods themselves would fade, Ts'ikil continued. Only Sseth would remain. She paused. Is the life of one woman-however precious that life might be-worth such a risk?

  Arvin squeezed his eyes shut. It was-to him-but who was he to make that decision? He shook his head at the irony. He had hoped to persuade Ts'ikil into supporting a rescue attempt. Instead she was coming close to talking him into abandoning it and without, as far as he could tell, the use of so much as a simple charm spell.

  "What if Sseth's faithful can't free him?" Arvin asked. "I'm no cleric, but I do know that only a god is powerful enough to bind another god. That binding is going to be hard to break."

  That is true, but one of Sseth's mortal worshipers could accomplish it, if his faith was strong enough.

  Arvin brightened at that. "Zelia's only a lay worshiper; she's no cleric," he told Ts'ikil. "If her seed's faith isn't strong enough to do the job, there's little danger in letting him open the door."

  What if it is strong enough? Are you really willing to take so large a gamble, when it is souls that you are wagering with?

  Arvin hesitated. The soul that mattered most to him was Karrell's.

  Her future is assured, continued the couatl She is one of Ubtao's faithful, and hersoul will be lifted to his domain from the Fugue Plain after she dies. Knowing that, you must ask yourself if rescuing the body that holds that soul is an act of love… or selfishness.

  "And our children?" Arvin said. "Would Ubtao accept their souls as well? Or would they be condemned to the torments of the Fugue Plain forever?"

  The couatl said nothing for several moments. It was answer enough. She stared at Arvin's crystal.

  Their fate is in Tymora's hands, she said at last, because, in the end, it will all come down to a toss of hercoin-to whether the Dmetrio-seed reaches the door before you. If it is open when you arrive, and you can

  stop him from freeing Sseth, you will get an opportunity to rescue Karrell. She held up a cautioning wingtip. Before you start praying to Tymora, you had better weigh the dangers and decide ifone woman's life is worth the terrible consequences should you fail.

  Arvin closed his eyes. His heart tipped the balance heavily in one direction, his head another. Logic warred with emotion. He wasn't sure which would triumph-the human passion that surged in him whenever he thought about Karrell and the chlldren he had fathered with her, or the cold, hard logic of the serpent that coiled around his family tree.

  Only one thing was clear: he needed to find out where the door was. One way to do that would be to sleep, dream, and hope that one of his nightmares might contain a message from Sseth. He was so worked up by his conversation with Ts'ikil, however, he was pacing. Sleep would be almost impossible. He thought of the dog-man and his ability to render others unconscious and halted abruptly.

  "Can you do that?" he asked Ts'ikil. "Put me to sleep with magic?"

  The couatl gave him a sad smile. I could, but your sleep would be deep and dreamless.

  Arvin paused. "I just realized something. If the Dmetrio-seed uses osssra-"

  Ts'ikil looked grim. He will entera dream state more swiftly, and his dreams will be clear
er than yours.

  "I don't suppose you're carrying any osssra. by any chance?" Arvin asked.

  The couatl shook her head. I came unprepared. Unlike you, I am not a psion.

  That made Arvin pause. Ts'ikil had used the right word-most people called him a "mind merge"-but had made the usual incorrect assumption. Not all psions could see the future. Arvin could catch glimpses, in a limited fashion. From Tanju, he had learned how to

  choose the better of two possible courses of action-to gain a psionic inkling of the immediate future, events no more than a heartbeat or two distant.

  Ts'ikil had reminded him of one thing, however- his meditations. By using them, he could still h is mind and force it into a state between waking and sleep. He could listen to his dreams, perhaps even seek out the ones Sseth was sending.

  "You know," he said aloud. "That just might work."

  Without explaining-the couatl could continue to read his mind, if she wanted to know what he was doing-Arvin lay down on his stomach on the ledge. Its stone was rough, so hot it felt as though it would burn right through the fabric of his trousers, but he paid it no heed. He was used to meditating in worse conditions, and had long since learned to block such trivial discomforts from his mind. He assumed the bhujang asana, arching his upper torso and head back like a rearing cobra. In a small corner of his mind, he smiled. No wonder he'd preferred that asana to the cross-legged position his mother used for meditation. He, unlike her, had serpent blood flowing in his veins.

  And he was about to find out if it was enough to hear what Sseth had to say.

  Arvin went deep. Deeper than his usual meditations, deeper even than he'd gone while under Tanju's instruction a year before in the abandoned quarry. He viewed his mind as he'd seen it then, as an intricately knotted net of memories and thoughts. But he viewed the strands as if through a magnifying lens. He could see not only the cords that were braided into each rope, but the individual thought fibers that made up each cord. A handful were a pale yellow-tan, mottled with irregular spots of black: hair-thin serpents with

  unblinking eyes and flickering tongues. Though he was reminded of the tendrils that Zelia's mind seed had insinuated, the sight of those serpents didn't stir up any unpleasant emotions. They were the legacy of his father's yuan-ti blood. Judging by the triangular shape of the head, Salim's ancestors had been pythons in their serpent form.

  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 triokling 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.

&n
bsp; 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 sunllght 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 oyes 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.