Venom's Taste

by Lisa Smedman

  Smiling, Arvin slipped into the shadow of a ramp then touched the flat of the stone to his forehead. “Atmiya,” he said, speaking its command word out loud.

  The stone grew warm against his skin. His forehead tickled as if tiny stitches were being sewn into his flesh, securing the lapis lazuli in place. He tried picking at the edge of the stone with a fingernail but could find no edge; it was embedded in his forehead. Suddenly worried, he thought the command word. Instantly the tickling sensation was gone. The stone fell from his forehead and he caught it in his hand. He rubbed his forehead, expecting to find a hole, but his skin was smooth, not even dented.

  Once his heart had stopped racing, he returned the stone to his forehead and repeated the command word, locking it in place. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated, calling to mind Tanju’s face. Gray hair, strangely slanted eyes—

  After a few moments, he felt a familiar prickling of psionic energy at the base of his scalp. The image of Tanju he held in his mind seemed to solidify; it was almost as if Arvin were staring at him in the flesh. The tracker lay on his side with eyes closed and head cradled on one arm, his face bathed in the dim glow of either a lantern or a low-burning fire. Tanju, Arvin thought. As he gave mental voice to his words, the lapis lazuli began to vibrate softly against the skin of his forehead. It was as if the stone were a fingertip, rapidly tapping the head of a drum. This is Gonthril. I’m in Hlondeth. I want to meet with you. Tell me where to find you.

  Tanju sat up, a startled look on his face. Surprise muted into a thoughtful expression, and he mumbled something—to someone else, since Arvin couldn’t hear what was said. Fortunately, Tanju was equally unable to hear Arvin’s chuckle. Arvin had baited his sending with something the tracker found irresistible: “Gonthril.” And Tanju had just swallowed the hook.

  I’m on the road to Mount Ugruth, Tanju answered. Camped at the top of the first pass. I’ll wait until Evening for you, but no longer.

  The vibrations faded as the sending ended.

  Arvin smiled. Perfect. Even allowing for a brief nap—which he badly needed—he could reach the pass by Sunset. That would still give him four full days until the mind seed took over. He started to speak the command word that would cause the lapis lazuli to drop from his forehead when he realized something. Zelia had told him that the stone could be used to manifest a sending just once a day, but this was only partially true. The stone could be used several times per day—if a different person was contacted each time. If Naulg was still alive….

  Arvin summoned the familiar prickle of psionic energy back to the base of his scalp. Then he concentrated on Naulg’s face: his easy grin, his dark hair, his distinctive eyebrows—

  Just as the image of Tanju had done, the mental picture of Naulg suddenly solidified in Arvin’s mind. It was as if Arvin were staring at the rogue from a point somewhere behind Naulg. He was sitting, arms wrapped around his drawn-up legs, his head hanging down dejectedly, chin on chest.

  Alive! Naulg was still alive!

  Elated, Arvin tried to see more, hoping for some clue as to Naulg’s whereabouts. But it was no use. All he could see was Naulg himself.

  Naulg, he thought urgently. It’s Arvin. Answer me. Tell me where you are so I can rescue you.

  Abruptly, Naulg’s head lifted. He whirled around, still in a seated position, searching for the source of the voice he’d just heard. Arvin, still linked by the sending, gasped as he saw the rogue’s face. Naulg’s cheeks were as sunken as those of a corpse, and his eyes were hollow pits under a scalp that was dotted with bald patches. Horrified by the change in his friend’s appearance, Arvin nearly lost the connection. Then Naulg’s reply came whispering back at him.

  I am … unclean, he answered, his eyes gleaming with madness. A shiver passed through his body, and he wrapped his arms around his legs once more. My body must … burn.

  “Unclean?” Arvin echoed. He wet his lips nervously.

  Naulg, as if mimicking Arvin, wet his own lips. Arvin felt his face pale as he saw Naulg’s tongue. The tip of it was forked, just like a yuan-ti’s.

  The rogue was still speaking telepathically to Arvin, still linked to him by the sending. He shook his head violently, and his eyes seemed to clear for just a moment. Arvin? he asked. You escaped?

  “Yes, Naulg, I escaped. Where are you?” Arvin spoke out loud, despite the fact that Naulg wouldn’t hear him. That was how a sending worked: the psion sent a brief message, and received one in return. Then it ended.

  Fortunately, Naulg was still answering—though his eyes had resumed a wild, darting look. The walls…. It’s hot. They’re burning. The rogue paused, and his eyes cleared a little—though they were glazed with pain. It hurts. Oh gods, my stomach feels like it’s—

  Abruptly, the sending ended.

  Arvin stood, shaken by what he’d just seen and heard. His friend was in the grip of a hideous transformation that seemed to be sapping both his strength and his sanity. And he was counting on Arvin to rescue him.

  Arvin spoke the command word and the lapis lazuli fell from his forehead. As he tucked it back inside the false seam of his shirt pocket, he debated what to do. Tanju was well to the north of the city—it would take Arvin a full day to reach him and another to get back to the city. Could Naulg wait that long for rescue?

  If Naulg had been able to say where he was, Arvin wouldn’t be asking that question. But his reply to the sending had been baffling. Burning walls? The Pox could be hiding inside an foundry, or a pottery factory … or next to a building that was being cleansed of plague.

  With a sinking heart, Arvin decided that Naulg would have to come second. Tanju would only wait one day for Arvin; Arvin couldn’t let his only chance at dislodging the mind seed just walk away.

  “Hang on, Naulg,” Arvin whispered. “I’ll come for you. Just hang on.”

  CHAPTER 13

  25 Kythorn, Sunset

  Arvin trudged onward, weary and footsore after a full day of walking in the hot sun along the road that wound its way into the foothills north of Hlondeth. Built centuries ago when the aqueduct was constructed, the road was little more than a track, its flagstones all but lost among the weeds. The aqueduct itself was still sound; Arvin could hear water gurgling through the enormous stone troughs overhead. Here and there water spurted out through a crack where two of the troughs joined, providing a cooling shower for the travelers trudging below.

  Arvin had expected to be the only one on the road; summer was a grueling time to be undertaking a climb into the mountains north of the city. He was surprised by the number of people who were heading in the same direction that he was. They turned out to be devotees of Talos the Destroyer, on their way to Mount Ugruth to view the most recent venting of the volcano. Every so often—whenever they caught sight of the plume of smoke rising from the peak of the mountain—the pilgrims would fall to their knees, tear their shirts, and claw at the earth until their fingers bled. A few even went so far as to claw at their faces, opening bloody wounds they displayed proudly to one another, bragging that this would speed the flow of lava down the mountain’s sides and the destruction of all in its path.

  Arvin, reminded of the excesses of the priests who had run the orphanage, kept well away from these fanatics. What point was there in worshiping a god who offered only death and destruction as rewards for faithful service? Surely that was madness.

  Yet it was madness that offered the perfect cover. As he drew nearer to the top of the first pass, Arvin stepped into the trees, out of sight from the road. When he emerged again, his shirt hung in tatters, his trouser knees were dirty and his hair and face were streaked with blood from a cut he’d opened on one finger. Raising his hands to the distant volcano, he continued up the road.

  Up ahead on the left was a blocky cliff that had been cut into the forested hillside—one of the quarries that had provided the stone used to build the aqueduct. Chunks of partially squared stone littered the ground; travelers in years gone by had used these to cr
eate rough, unmortared shelters. Their crude walls were roofed with tree branches, hacked from the nearby forest. Many of the shelters had fallen to pieces, but at least two or three were currently in use, judging by the thin wavers of smoke that rose from them into the summer sky.

  Arvin entered the old quarry and began going from one shelter to the next, mumbling nonsense about death and ashes under his breath. But every shelter that he looked inside held only pilgrims. They beamed at Arvin, waving him inside, then shrugged as he turned and stumbled away.

  After peering inside the last of the shelters, Arvin slowed. Had Tanju already gone? The tracker had promised to wait until Evening, but perhaps Sunset had marked the end of his patience.

  Arvin turned and stared back in the direction from which he’d come. Hlondeth lay far below, a dark spot at the edge of the vast expanse of blue that was the Vilhon Reach. Far away across the water, Arvin could just make out the opposite shore, where the Barony of Sespech lay. Clouds were gathering above the Reach, indicating that the muggy heat would soon break.

  Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve, Arvin wet his lips. He certainly could use a drink of water. Then again, he was equally drawn by the heat he could feel rising from the sun-warmed stone on which he stood. Exhausted after a full day of walking, he yearned to curl up on it and soak up the last few rays of the setting sun. Perhaps if he drowsed, the headache that had been plaguing him would finally ebb. Tilting his face up to the sun, he closed his eyes and stretched ….

  He heard a faint tinkling, like the sound of chimes being stirred by the wind. An instant later pain lanced through his skull, staggering him. Gasping, he clutched his head. The pain was unbearable; it pierced his skull from temple to temple. He heard the familiar thunk of a crossbow shot. Something wrapped itself around his ankles, lashing them together. In that same instant, a second mental agony was added to the first. This time it slammed into the spot between his eyes and out through the base of his skull. Arvin would have screamed, but found himself unable to force a sound out through his gritted teeth. Opening his eyes seemed equally impossible, as was anything other than toppling over onto his side. A third bolt of agony pierced the crown of his head as he fell. This one seemed to explode within his mind, sparking out in all directions like a shattered coal and burning everything in its path. As it sizzled inside his skull, Arvin felt his mind dulling. Coherent thought was a struggle, and yet somehow a part of what remained of his consciousness—the part that held the mind seed—recognized the attack for what it was. A series of crippling mental thrusts.

  Tanju was still at the quarry, after all.

  He … dares … attack … me? thought the part of Arvin’s mind that had been seeded.

  Then he crumpled to the ground.

  25 Kythorn, Evening

  Arvin came to his senses suddenly, sputtering from the cold water that had just been dashed on his face. Blinking it out of his eyes, he saw that he was inside one of the crude shelters in the old quarry. Moonlight shone in through the loose lacing of branches that constituted the roof, revealing a shadowed form sitting cross-legged on the opposite side of the shelter: Tanju. The tracker stared silently at Arvin, his hands raised above his head and palms pressed together, his hairless chest visible through rips in his shirt. His eyes were filled with shifting points of colored light; it was as if hundreds of tiny candle flames of differing hues were flickering in their depths.

  Standing next to Tanju was a young man with pale, close-cropped hair who held a dripping leather bucket in one hand. His shirt was also torn like those of the pilgrims; through the rents in his sleeve Arvin could see three chevrons on his left forearm. That, and the peculiarly rigged crossbow that hung from his belt, marked him as a militiaman. Arvin’s backpack lay near his feet.

  Arvin tried to rise but found that he was unable to move. Cool, wet tendrils of what looked like white mist encased his body from head to foot, leaving only his eyes and nose uncovered. They shifted back and forth across his body like drifting clouds, but though they left a damp film on Arvin’s hair and skin, he was unable to slip out of them. When he strained against them, they held firm, as solid as any rope. The knowledge of what they were came to him out of one of Zelia’s memories. They were strands of ectoplasm, drawn from the astral plane by force of will and twined around the victim with a quick twist of thought. The resulting “ectoplasmic cocoon” was almost impossible to escape. If cut, the strands would just regenerate.

  Much like a length of trollgut, Arvin thought, his mind still groggy.

  The flickering points of light disappeared from Tanju’s eyes. He lowered his hands. “This isn’t Gonthril,” he told the other man. “His aura is wrong. Very wrong.”

  The militiaman frowned. “He looks like Gonthril.”

  “Gonthril wouldn’t have allowed himself to be captured like this.”

  Arvin tried to speak, but the strands of ectoplasm pressed against his lips and held his jaw firmly shut. All he could manage was a muffled exhalation that sounded like a hiss.

  Tanju waved a hand in front of Arvin’s face, as if fanning a candle flame, and the strands shifted away from Arvin’s mouth. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Arvin wet his lips nervously. “My name’s Arvin,” he said. “I’m a rope maker from Hlondeth. Unfortunately, I look like this Gonthril fellow you’re searching for. You mistook me for him in the Mortal Coil two mornings ago.”

  “That was you?” Tanju asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you flee?”

  Arvin tried to gesture with his head, but could not. “Take a look at my left forearm,” he suggested. “The militia were rounding up men for a galley. The thought of four years of pulling an oar didn’t appeal to me.”

  “I see,” Tanju said. He didn’t bother to inspect Arvin’s arm. “How do you know Gonthril’s name?”

  “I overheard one of the militia mention it when I was hiding in the pottery factory,” Arvin said. “There’s a ten thousand gold piece bounty coming to the man who captures Gonthril,’ he said. I figured that was the name of the person you were looking for.”

  “Why did you claim to be him?” Tanju asked.

  “I didn’t think you’d agree to meet with me otherwise.” Arvin was uncomfortable inside the cocoon of ectoplasm. The slippery feel of the strands reminded him of the unpleasant cling of sewer muck. His clothes and hair were growing damper by the moment. At least the ectoplasm was odorless, the gods be thanked for small mercies.

  The militiaman standing beside Tanju snorted as he placed the bucket back on the ground. “It’s a trick, Tanju,” he said. “The stormlord is trying to stall us—and we fell for it. We’ve already lost an entire day.”

  Tanju gave the militiaman a sharp look, as if the other man had just said something he shouldn’t have. “Our quarry knows nothing about the rebels, least of all what their leader looks like.”

  “What if we were wrong?” the militiaman suggested. “Maybe the rogues were, in fact, rebels and the theft nothing more than a plot to draw you out of the city.”

  “The theft was real enough,” Tanju said grimly. “And they weren’t rebels. I know that much already.”

  The militiaman frowned. “But how does this man fit in?”

  “I don’t,” Arvin interrupted, exasperated by their endless speculations about rogues and rebels and stormlords—whoever they were. “I’m here because I need Tanju’s help. I need him to negate a psionic power that’s been manifested on me.”

  Tanju tilted his head. “Why should I do this for you?”

  “I can pay,” Arvin continued. “Look in my backpack and you’ll find a magical rope. It’s yours, if you’ll help.”

  The militiaman began to pick up Arvin’s backpack, but Tanju held up a hand, cautioning him. Then Tanju waved his hand over the backpack and a faintly sweet smell filled the air. The scent was a little like the burnsticks Arvin’s mother had burned when she was meditating—flower-sweet, with sharp underto
nes of resin.

  Tanju lowered his hand. “You can open it now,” he told the militiaman.

  The militiaman undid the buckles on the backpack and tipped it open. Arvin’s clothes, extra pair of boots, blanket, and food spilled out, together with a neat coil of rope. Tanju stared at them, his eyes sparkling with multicolored fire a second time.

  “It’s braided from trollgut,” Arvin explained. “I made it myself. A command word causes it to expand. The extra fifty paces worth of rope will eventually rot away, but it can be grown back over and over again. The rope is quite valuable; you can sell it for three thousand gold pieces or more to the right buyer.” He paused then, when the tingle arose at the base of his scalp, used his most persuasive voice. “Will you do it? Will you use your psionics to negate the power that’s been manifested on me? If you do, I’ll tell you the command word; the rope is useless without it.”

  Tanju fingered the rope, squeezing its rubbery strands between his fingers. He cocked his head as if listening to a distant sound—the secondary display of the charm Arvin was manifesting. When he turned back toward Arvin, he was smiling. Arvin peered at the psion, uncertain whether his charm had worked on the man or not. “Well, friend?” he ventured. “Will you help me?”

  “I need to know what power has been manifested,” Tanju said.

  Arvin wet his lips. “A mind seed.”

  Tanju’s eyes widened. He placed his hands on his knees then nodded. “That explains the aura.”

  “What aura?”

  “The one that surrounds you. It was a strange mix. Dominated by yang—male energy—but streaked with yin. Mostly good but tainted with evil. It contained elements of both power and weakness, human and reptile. I assumed you were trying to alter your own aura … and not quite succeeding. But I see now that it must be the mind seed.”

  “Can you negate it?” Arvin asked.