Venom's Taste

by Lisa Smedman

  “Excise it, you mean,” Tanju said. He shook his head. “You really are a novice, aren’t you? Despite the fact that you used a sending to contact me, you didn’t mount even the simplest of defenses against my mind thrusts.”

  Arvin glanced down at the ectoplasm that held him. “If I’m so harmless, how about releasing me?”

  Tanju considered Arvin for a moment, as if weighing the danger he posed. He took a deep breath then blew it out like a man extinguishing a lamp. The tendrils of ectoplasm vanished.

  Arvin sat up, working the kinks out of his muscles. He ignored the militiaman, who had scooped up his crossbow and was aiming it at him. Pretending to stretch, he saw with satisfaction that his glove was still on his left hand, his braided leather bracelet still on his right wrist. So far, so good. The slick wetness the tendrils had left disappeared rapidly in the warm night air. Within the space of a few heartbeats, Arvin’s hair and clothes were dry. He turned to Tanju. “I know the name of the power, but not much about it. Tell me what a mind seed is.”

  “It’s a psionic power that can be manifested only by the most powerful telepaths,” Tanju answered. “It inserts a sliver of the psion’s mental and spiritual essence in the mind of another—a seed. As it germinates, it slowly replaces the victim’s own mind with that of the psion who manifested the seed. When it at last blooms, the victim is no longer himself, but an exact duplicate of the psion. In mind, but not in body. His thoughts, his emotions, his dreams—”

  “I get the point,” Arvin said, shuddering. He massaged his temples, which were throbbing again. “How do I get rid of it?”

  “Your head aches?” Tanju asked. “That’s to be expected. It’s the seed, setting in roots. The pain will get worse each day, as the roots expand and—”

  “Gods curse you!” Arvin shouted, shaking his fist at Tanju. This human was toying with him, being coy. Gloating as he withheld the very thing Arvin most needed. “I haven’t got much time. Don’t just sit there—excise it, you stupid, insolent—”

  The click-whiz of a weighted wire from the crossbow cut off the rest of Arvin’s shout. One of the paired lead weights slammed into his cheek, making him gasp with pain as the other yanked the wire tight, pinning his wrist against his neck. Almost unable to breathe with the wire around his throat, Arvin felt the amulet his mother had given him pressing into his throat. “Nine lives,” he whispered to himself—a plea, this time. He raised his free hand, palm out, in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t mean to….”

  “I could see that,” Tanju said, rising to a kneeling position. He carefully began to unwind the wire from Arvin’s neck and wrist. He spoke over his shoulder to the militiaman. “That was unnecessary. Please wait outside.”

  The militiaman grumbled but did as he was told, flipping aside the blanket that served as the shelter’s door and stalking out into the night. Tanju, meanwhile, coiled the weighted wire into a tight ball and placed it in a pocket. He must have realized it would make an ideal garrote.

  “Who planted the mind seed?” Tanju asked.

  Arvin hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m curious,” Tanju answered. “Judging by your mannerisms—and your aura—it was a yuan-ti. I didn’t know that any of them were trained in psionics.”

  Arvin stared at Tanju; the tracker’s curiosity seemed to be genuine. Arvin decided that he might as well answer. “Her name’s Zelia.”

  Tanju’s expression didn’t change. Either he didn’t know Zelia—or he was a master at hiding his emotions.

  “Will you help me?” Arvin asked.

  “To excise a mind seed, one must know how to perform psychic chirurgery,” Tanju said. “Unfortunately, that is a power I have yet to acquire.” He paused. “You asked if I could negate it. There is a chance—a very slim one, mind you—that a negation might work. I’ll attempt it now, if only for my own peace of mind while we speak further. Sit quietly, and look into my eyes.”

  Arvin did as instructed. Tanju stared intently at him, his eyes once more glinting with sparks of multicolored light. An unusual secondary display, a part of Arvin’s mind noted—the part that had access to Zelia’s memories. Tanju must have trained in the East….

  The motes of color suddenly erupted out of Tanju’s eyes like sparks leaping from a fire. They shot into the spot between Arvin’s eyes, penetrating his third eye and spinning there for a brief instant, then rushed through the rest of his body, leaving swirls of tingles at the base of his scalp, his throat, his chest, and his naval. The tingling coiled for a moment around the base of his spine then erupted out through his arms and legs, leaving his fingers and toes numb.

  “Did it work?” Arvin asked, flexing his fingers.

  “Try to think of a question that you don’t know the answer to—something only Zelia would be able to answer,” Tanju suggested.

  Arvin stared at the rough walls of the shelter. Zelia seemed to know a lot about gems and stones. Presumably, she would know what type of stone had gone into the making of these rough walls. It was a reddish color, the same as the stone used in the oldest buildings in Hlondeth….

  Marble. Rosy marble, a crystalline rock capable of taking a high polish. Useful in the creation of power stones that conveyed the power to dream travel.

  Arvin hissed in alarm. “It didn’t work,” he told Tanju in a tense voice.

  Tanju sighed. “I didn’t think it would. The mind seed is too powerful a manifestation. I can’t uproot it.” He gestured at Arvin’s backpack. “You can keep your rope.”

  Arvin felt panic rise in his chest. “Is there nothing else you can try?”

  Tanju shook his head.

  “The mind seed was planted around Middark on the twenty-second of Kythorn,” Arvin said, wetting his lips. “If it blooms after seven days, that means I’ve only got four days left—until Middark of the twenty-ninth.”

  “Possibly.”

  Arvin caught his breath. “What do you mean?”

  “It could bloom sooner than Middark,” Tanju said. “Any time on the twenty-ninth, in fact.”

  “But Zelia said it would take seven days to—”

  “A mind seed is not like an hourglass,” Tanju said. “It doesn’t keep precise time. The seven-day period is somewhat … arbitrary.”

  Arvin swallowed nervously. “So I’ve really only got three days,” he muttered. He shook his head. “Will I … be myself until then?”

  “As much as you are now,” Tanju said. “Not that this is much comfort to you, I’m sure.”

  “When will I be able to start manifesting the powers that Zelia knows?”

  Tanju shook his head. “You won’t. Not until it’s her mind, not yours, in your body. If it worked any other way, the victim would be able to use the psion’s talents against him.”

  “Is there nothing that can be done to stop it?” Arvin moaned.

  “Nothing. Unless….”

  Arvin tensed. “Unless what?”

  Tanju shrugged. “There is a prayer that I once saw a cleric use to cure a woman who had been driven insane by a wizard’s spell. He called it a ‘restorative blessing.’ I asked him if it was a divine form of psychic chirurgery. He had never heard the term before, but his answer confirmed that the prayer was indeed similar. He said a restorative blessing could cure all forms of insanity, confusion, and similar mental ailments—that it could dispel the effects of any spell that affected the mind, whether the source of the spell was clerical magic or wizardry. Presumably, that included psionic powers, as well. If you could find a cleric with such a spell, perhaps he could—”

  “I don’t know any clerics,” Arvin said in exasperation. “At least, I don’t know any that would—” Here he paused. Nicco. Did Nicco know such a prayer? He’d known what a psion was. Perhaps he knew more about “mind magic” than he’d let on. But if Nicco did know the restorative prayer, would he agree to use it?

  Thinking of Nicco put Arvin in mind of the promise he
’d made to the cleric: to attempt vengeance upon Zelia. If Arvin actually succeeded—if he was somehow able to defeat Zelia—perhaps she could be forced to remove the mind seed. The only trouble was she was a powerful psion, and he, a mere novice.

  But a master was sitting just across the room from him.

  Zelia had taught Arvin, in a single evening, to uncoil the energy in his muladhara and reach out with it to snatch his glove from the air. Perhaps there was something that Tanju could teach him, too. Some power that would help him confront Zelia—or at the very least, to defend himself against whatever else she might throw at him.

  “That ‘mind thrust’ you used on me when I first arrived,” Arvin said. “Could you teach it to me?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know it already,” Tanju said. “The five attack forms—and their defenses—are among the first things a psion learns. What lamasery did you train at?”

  “I didn’t,” Arvin said. “My mother was going to send me to the one she trained at—the Shou-zin Lamasery in Kara Tur. Unfortunately, she didn’t live long enough to—”

  Tanju’s eyebrows lifted. “Your mother trained at Shou-zin?”

  Arvin paused. “You’ve heard of it?”

  Tanju chuckled. “I spent six years there.”

  Arvin’s mouth dropped open. “Did you know my mother? Her name was Sassan. She was a seer.”

  Tanju shook his head. “She must have trained there after my time.” He paused. “How old were you when she died?”

  “Six,” Arvin said, dropping his gaze to the floor. He didn’t want to discuss the orphanage, or what had followed.

  Tanju seemed to sense that. “And those who cared for you after her death never thought to send you to a lamasery,” he said. He pressed his palms together and touched his fingertips to his forehead then lowered his hands again. “Yet you know how to manifest a charm.”

  Alvin’s cheeks flushed. “It didn’t work, did it?”

  Tanju shook his head.

  “Did it anger you?”

  “No.”

  Arvin glanced up eagerly. “Will you teach me the attacks and defenses?” As he spoke, he stifled a yawn. The long walk had left him weary and exhausted; he was barely able to keep his eyes open.

  “Tonight?” Tanju chuckled. “It’s late—and I’m as tired as you are. And I have an … assignment I need to attend to. Perhaps in a tenday, when I return to Hlondeth.”

  Arvin hissed in frustration. “I haven’t got that much time. The mind seed—”

  “Ah, yes,” Tanju said, his expression serious again, “the mind seed.”

  “I’ll pay you,” Arvin said. “The trollgut rope is yours, regardless of whether I learn anything or not.”

  Tanju stared at the rope. “For what you ask, it is hardly enough. The secrets of Shou-zin are living treasures and do not come cheaply.”

  “I know how to make other magical ropes. If you wanted one that could—”

  “Your ropes are of less interest to me than your eyes,” Tanju said. “You’re Guild, aren’t you?”

  Arvin hesitated. “What if I am?”

  “I may need a pair of eyes within that organization, some day,” Tanju said. “If I agree to help you, can I call upon you for a favor in the future?”

  Arvin paused. If he agreed, Tanju would be yet another person to whom he’d be beholden. Then again, in four days’ time the promise might not matter, anyway. At last he nodded. “Agreed.”

  Tanju smiled. “Then in honor of your mother—may the gods send peace to her soul—I’ll teach you what little I can. But not until tomorrow morning, when you’re rested and your mind is clear.”

  “In the morning? But—”

  Tanju folded his arms across his chest.

  Grudgingly, Arvin nodded. He’d hoped to begin his walk back to the city at dawn’s light. But Naulg had survived this long. An additional morning probably wouldn’t make much difference. “All right. In the morning, then.”

  Tanju turned toward the doorway.

  “Where are you going?” Arvin asked.

  “To join my companion,” Tanju answered. He paused, his palm against the blanket that was the shelter’s doorway. “I’m reluctant to sleep in here with you. The mind seed….” He shrugged.

  Arvin hissed in frustration, but held his temper.

  “Sleep well,” Tanju said. He stepped out into the night, letting the blanket fall shut behind him.

  CHAPTER 14

  26 Kythorn, Sunrise

  In his dream, Arvin gasped as the mental blast slammed against the shield he had thrown up, shattering it. The shield exploded into a bright nova of individual motes of thought, which swiftly vanished. Immediately, before he could manifest a fresh shield, a second mental blast slammed into him. The psionic attack targeted his mind, rather than his body, but even so it sent him staggering backward. The backs of his legs struck something—the low wall around the fountain—and he flailed backward into its pond.

  Leaping to his feet, he was dimly aware of water streaming from his hair and the sodden fabric of his dress clinging to his breasts and thighs. But the vast majority of his awareness—which had lessened, thanks to that last blast of energy, which had stripped away several layers of his painstakingly constructed self-control—was focused on his attack. Summoning energy up from his muladhara, he formed it into a long, thin, deadly whip of thought and sent this lashing out at his opponent.

  He heard a low thrumming noise—a sound like an enormous, low-timbral drum still vibrating long after it has been struck—and cursed, knowing his master had raised a defense just in time. Arvin’s mental whip struck harmlessly against a barrier then vanished.

  His master, standing several paces away, his bare feet hidden by the flowering bush he’d stumbled into, shook his bald head. His face was deeply lined, almost haggard looking. He’d aged—greatly—during the years in which he’d served as Arvin’s tutor.

  In one dark hand he held two thumb-sized crystals, bound together with silver wire, his capacitor. The golden glow that once blazed brightly in it was dimmer than it had been a moment ago, almost gone.

  “Enough!” the master cried. “You’ve proved your point. You surpass me.”

  Arvin hissed with satisfaction, but sweet as his master’s admission of defeat was, there was something more Arvin wanted. His tongue flickered out of his mouth, tasting defeat in the wind.

  Then power surged, coiling and furious, into the spot at the base of his skull. Arvin lashed out with it, wrapping it tightly around his master’s will. But in that same instant, his master’s eyes flared, emitting a bright green light as pale as a new-grown leaf. One final blast of energy crashed into Arvin, shredding his confidence like a once-proud flag frayed by the wind. A shred of his mental fabric, however, held. Control, Arvin told himself, repeating the favorite motto of his master—this human who had been foolish enough to share his secrets.

  His psychic crush held.

  Arvin squeezed with it—and his master crumpled. First his face, which sagged into a look of utter despair, then his shoulders and his torso. His legs buckled under him and he folded to the ground. The crystal capacitor, drained by his last, feeble attempt at defense, fell to the ground beside him, darkened, drained of energy.

  Swiftly, Arvin manifested one of his favorite powers—one that locked away the victim’s higher mind, leaving him paralyzed and unable to react. As the flash of silver light died away from Arvin’s vision, he saw that his manifestation had been successful. From the crown of his bald head to the pink soles of his feet, his master was covered in a thin sheen of ectoplasmic slime.

  As the human lay there, unable to move, Arvin strode across the garden. He bent low over his defeated opponent and tasted the sweat on the man’s brow. “Surpassing you wasn’t enough,” he whispered in his master’s ear. “But this will be.”

  He reared back, opening his mouth wide, and sank his teeth into the old man’s throat….

  Arvin gasped and sat up, heart p
ounding, horrified by what he’d just done. He’d just killed a man. By biting him. And the taste of the old man’s blood had been so sweet.

  For several moments all he could do was look wildly around. Where was he? Still in the garden of his family compound?

  With an effort, he shook off the dream-memory. He saw that he was inside one of the crude huts in the ancient quarry. Early-morning sunlight was streaming in through its open doorway. He stared at it for several moments before realizing that the blanket that had served as its door was gone.

  Tanju! Had the psion crept away in the night?

  Leaping to his feet, Arvin scrambled outside, only to nearly run into the psion as he was coming in through the doorway.

  Tanju chuckled. “Eager to begin, I see. Good. Once you’ve relieved yourself and washed, we can start.”

  A short time later, Arvin sat cross-legged in the crude stone shelter, hands resting on his knees and eyes closed, in the position he’d seen his mother adopt each morning at Sunrise. He’d always assumed her morning meditations to be a form of dozing, but now he understood what she’d really been doing. The mental exercises Tanju was putting him through were every bit as strenuous as the asanas Zelia performed. They were not a flexing of muscle, though, but a flexing of mind.

  Following Tanju’s instructions, he relaxed his body, concentrating on letting his muscles loosen, starting with his forehead, his eyes, his jaw—and thus on down through his entire body. That done, he concentrated on his breathing, drawing air in through his nose, out through his mouth, in through his nose, out through his mouth….

  He was supposed to be aware only of his breathing—to clear his mind of all other thoughts—but this was a much more difficult task than it sounded. Like a small child running zigzags across an open field, spiting its parents’ attempts to make it stand in one place and be still, Arvin’s mind kept darting this way and that. To Zelia and the mind seed—if Tanju didn’t help, whatever was Arvin going to do next? To the rebels—were Gonthril and the others still alive, or had they died in the assassination attempt? To the horrible rotted-flesh thing, and Kayla, and the sewers, and the Pox, and the flasks shaped like snake rattles, and the—