Venom's Taste

by Lisa Smedman

  “The psion must hail it,” Tanju said. “He must send his mind deep into the stone, address it by name, and link with it. Only then will the stone give up its secrets.”

  “But how—”

  Tanju held up a hand. “I’ve taught you enough for this morning,” he said. “And I must go. I’ve already tarried here too long. Look me up again, when I get back to Hlondeth, and I’ll tell you more.” He paused. “Unless….”

  “Yes,” Arvin said softly. “The mind seed.”

  “Tymora’s luck to you,” Tanju said. “I hope you find a cleric who can help.”

  26 Kythorn, Highsun

  Arvin stood and watched the psion and the militiaman trudge up the road, wondering if he’d see Tanju again. The pilgrims had departed from the quarry at dawn; Arvin would be the last to leave the crude stone huts baking under the intense, midday sun. Stepping back inside the hut in which he’d spent the night, Arvin touched a hand to his breast pocket, reassuring himself that the lapis lazuli was still there. He’d already decided what he’d do next. He would use it to send a message to Nicco, to ask the cleric if he did indeed know the restorative prayer that Tanju had mentioned. But first Arvin wanted to try something. If the lapis lazuli really was a power stone, perhaps it might hold other, even more useful powers.

  Arvin pulled the lapis lazuli out of his pocket and stared at it, trying to penetrate its gold-flecked surface. Meanwhile, the morning grew hotter. Arvin hooked a finger under the collar of his shirt, fanning himself with it. For just an instant, his mind brushed against something cool and smooth—and multifaceted, like a crystal. But though he tried for some time to connect with it, he was unable to get beyond this point. Eventually, thirst—and the knowledge that time was sliding past—made him put an end to the experiment.

  He touched the lapis lazuli to his forehead. Atmiya, he thought, and felt it adhere. Then he imagined Nicco’s face. It took even less time to contact the cleric than it had to contact Naulg or Tanju—within heartbeats, Arvin felt a tingle of psionic energy at the base of his scalp as his visualization of Nicco solidified. Arvin was surprised to see the cleric’s face twisted in a mixture of grief and barely controlled rage. Nicco was staring at something Arvin couldn’t see. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be an opportune time for Arvin to be asking a favor. Quickly, he amended the message he’d been about to send.

  Nicco, it’s Arvin. I’m a day’s journey from Hlondeth. I need to meet with you—tonight. Where will you be at Sunset? And … what’s wrong?

  Nicco startled. A moment later, however, his reply came back—terse and angry. You want to meet? Then be at the execution pits at Sunset—if you dare.

  Abruptly, the connection was broken.

  “Atmiya” Arvin whispered. The lapis lazuli fell into his palm.

  The execution pits? Arvin shuddered. That was what Nicco had been staring at with such a look of grief and loathing on his face. Someone was being publicly executed—and Arvin could guess who.

  CHAPTER 15

  26 Kythorn, Fullday

  Hot, footsore, and thirsty, Arvin hurried through the city. Hlondeth lay under a muggy torpor; the storm clouds that were gathering over the Reach had yet to break. The public fountains he passed tempted him with their cool, splashing water, but he passed them by, wary of drinking from them. Instead he wiped the sweat from his brow and trudged on.

  Though Arvin had returned to the city as quickly as he could, it was almost Sunset. But before he met Nicco, there were two stops Arvin had to make. The first was the bakery up the street from his warehouse.

  As he drew near the warehouse, he noticed a half-dozen militia standing guard outside. At first, he thought they were looking for him—then he saw the yellow hand painted on the door. Someone had finally reported the stench of the dead cultist. A crowd of people stood across the street from the warehouse, murmuring fearfully to each other in low voices. From inside the building came the sound of a chanted prayer. Arvin found himself making an undulating motion with his right hand—the sign of Sseth. He jerked his hand back and thrust it in his pocket.

  He circled around the block to the bakery. Kolim stood on the sidewalk, crumbling a stale loaf of bread for a cluster of tiny brown birds at his feet. They took flight as Arvin approached. The boy looked up, and a wary expression came over his face. He tossed the bread aside and backed up a pace.

  “Hi, Kolim,” Arvin said, halting a short distance from the boy. “What’s wrong?”

  “They found a dead guy in your warehouse.”

  “Really?” Arvin asked, rubbing his aching forehead.

  “They say he died of plague.”

  Arvin looked suitably grim and glanced up the street. “That’s bad. That means I can’t go back to my warehouse. I wonder what he was doing in there.” His breath caught as the militia turned in his direction. When they glanced away again, he hissed in relief.

  Kolim stared up at him. “Why are you breathing funny?”

  “It’s nothing,” Arvin hissed angrily. Then, seeing Kolim flinch, he hurriedly added, “I’m fine, Kolim, really. I’m just having trouble catching my breath. I’ve been walking all day. I’m hot and tired—and I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

  Kolim nodded, uncertain. “There’s a cleric inside your warehouse,” he continued. “They say everything in it has got to be burned.”

  Arvin nodded. He’d expected that. Fortunately he had cached his valuables well away from the warehouse—one of them, at this bakery. “Kolim, remember the ‘monkey fist’ I asked you to keep for me?”

  Kolim nodded.

  “I need it. Can you go and—”

  “Kolim!” a shrill voice cried from within the bakery. “Get inside this instant!”

  Kolim’s mother, a dark-haired woman with a chin as sharp as a knife blade, stepped out of the bakery and grabbed Kolim by the ear, yanking him inside. Then she rounded on Arvin. “How dare you come here? Get away from my son.” She glanced up the street and waved, trying to catch the eye of the militia.

  Arvin took a step forward, wetting his lips. “I knew nothing about the dead man until just now, when Kolim told me about him,” he said, holding up his hands. “I haven’t been inside my warehouse in days. There’s no danger of—”

  Kolim’s mother didn’t wait to hear the rest. Abruptly stepping back inside the bakery, she slammed the door shut. A moment later, however, Arvin heard a noise from one of the windows above as a shutter opened. Kolim leaned out of the window, waved, and dropped a ball-shaped knot attached to a short length of twine. Arvin caught the monkey’s fist and signed his thanks to Kolim in finger speech.

  Easy going, Kolim signed back. The sound of his mother’s harangue came from somewhere behind the boy, and Kolim ducked back inside.

  Arvin hefted the monkey’s fist. It looked identical to a nonmagical monkey’s fist—a round knot, trailing a short length of line, used to weight the end of a ship’s heaving line. But instead of having a lead ball at its center, this monkey’s fist contained a surprise—a compressed ball of powder taken from the gland of a gloomwing. To release it, the correct command word had to be spoken as the monkey’s fist was thrown. When it landed, the knot would immediately unravel, releasing the gloomwing’s powerful scent.

  Arvin tucked the monkey’s fist into his pocket and glanced up at the sun, which was slowly sinking behind Hlondeth’s towers. There was one more stop he had to make before meeting Nicco. Fortunately, Lorin’s workshop was on the way to the execution pits. He hurried in that direction.

  As he approached the locksmith’s workshop, he heard the sound of a file rasping against metal. Entering the shop, he found Lorin hunched over a bench, filing the pin mechanism of a brass padlock. The locksmith was a tall, skinny man with a wide forehead from which his short dark hair was combed straight back. The hair was tarred flat against his scalp, like that of a sailor, to keep it out of his eyes. Faded chevrons marked Lorin’s left forearm; he’d done his time in the militia years ago, serving as a gua
rd in Hlondeth’s prisons. Rumor had it that he’d been working for the Guild even then, slipping lockpicks to prisoners the Guild wanted freed.

  Lorin looked up as Arvin entered the workshop. He immediately set the file aside and rose, but held up a warning hand as Arvin strode forward. “Stop right there,” he said. “I heard about your warehouse. I’d rather not take any chances.”

  Arvin halted. “Word travels fast. Did you have a chance to look at the key?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?” Arvin pulled ten gold pieces from his pocket and set them on the end of the workbench. Lorin made no move to pick them up.

  “It was very interesting … but I don’t appreciate objects tainted with plague being brought to my workshop.”

  Arvin placed ten more gold pieces on the bench. “Interesting in what way?”

  “When I tossed it into the fire to cleanse the plague from it, an inscription appeared on the key.” He folded his arms across his chest and eyed the coins Arvin had set out, waiting.

  “I didn’t know you could read,” Arvin said.

  “I can’t. But there’s those in the Guild who can. And their services cost. The lorekeeper I consulted was equally as expensive.”

  Arvin pulled his last eight gold pieces from his pocket and placed them with the others. “That’s all the coin I have—aside from three silver pieces.”

  “It’ll do,” Lorin said. “With a consideration: a discount on the next thief catcher I buy from you of fifty gold pieces.”

  Arvin hissed in frustration. “That’s an expensive rope,” he protested. “Cave fisher filament isn’t easy to come by—or to work with—and I go through at least a gallon of brandy stripping the stickiness from the ends. Then there’s the spell that has to be cast on the middle third of the rope, to hide the sticky residue—”

  “Do you want to know what the inscription on the key said, or not?” Lorin asked.

  Arvin sighed. “You’ll get your discount. But with my warehouse currently being … cleansed I’m not sure when I’ll be back in business.”

  Lorin waved the protest aside. “You’ll manage.” Left unspoken was an implied threat. If Arvin didn’t supply a thief catcher in a reasonable amount of time, something unpleasant would happen. The Guild took a dim view of tardy deliveries.

  Lorin turned and picked up a wooden tray that was slotted into several compartments, each holding a key. He pulled out the key Arvin had found in the cultist’s pocket and laid it on the workbench then wiped soot from his fingers. “What’s interesting is that you found this in the pocket of someone who died of plague,” he began. “The inscription on it reads ‘Keepers of the Flame.’ That’s a religious order—one that was active during the plague of ’17.”

  “What god did they worship?” Arvin asked, certain the answer would be Talona.

  Lorin laughed. “What god didn’t they worship? They were clerics of Chauntea, of Ilmater, of Helm, even of Talos….”

  “So the key would have belonged to one of those clerics?”

  Lorin nodded. “One of the duties the Keepers of the Flame were charged with was collecting and disposing of the corpses of those who died in the plague. They set up crematoriums all over the Reach.”

  Arvin smiled grimly. It all fit. The cultists were attracted to places associated with disease—their use of the slaughterhouse and sewers were prime examples. Naulg had said he was in a building with burning walls, and the cultist had bragged about Talona’s faithful “rising from the ashes”—a boast he’d meant literally. No wonder he’d been smug. A crematorium, intended to put a stop to one plague, would serve as the starting point for another.

  “Was one of those crematoriums in Hlondeth?” Arvin asked.

  “Yes—and anyone who was living in the city in ‘17 can tell you where it is. But that key is probably for a crematorium in another city. The one in Hlondeth had walls of solid stone, without a door or window anywhere in them.”

  “Why would they build it like that?”

  Lorin shook his head. “Nobody knows for sure, but the loremaster I consulted heard that the building contained a gate that opened onto the Plane of Fire. I suppose the clerics didn’t want anyone messing with that.”

  “How did the clerics get inside?”

  “They teleported—together with the corpses they were going to burn.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. It eliminated the problem of having to haul bodies through the city in carts—and spreading the disease.”

  Arvin frowned at the key. The Hlondeth crematorium must have had a door—possibly one cloaked in illusion. That no one had sought this door in fifty-six years was no surprise. Only a madman would want to break into a building in which plague victims had been housed, however briefly.

  A madman—or someone with a mind seed in his head.

  Lorin nodded at the key. “If I were you, I wouldn’t use it.”

  Arvin picked up the key and slipped it into his pocket. “Don’t worry,” he told Lorin. “If I do enter the crematorium, I’ll be sure to take a cleric along.”

  26 Kythorn, Sunset

  The Plaza of Justice was a wide, cobblestoned expanse, large enough to accommodate several thousand people and encircled by a viaduct supported by serpent-shaped columns. From his vantage point on a rooftop just above the viaduct, Arvin could see down into the execution pits—two circular holes, each as wide as a large building. Inside each pit was an enormous serpent, its body so thick that a man would barely be able to encircle it with his arms. One was an adder, its venomous fangs capable of imparting a swift death. To this serpent were thrown the condemned deemed worthy of “mercy.” The other was a yellowish green constrictor, which squeezed the life out of its victims slowly. On rare occasions, it would skip this step and swallow its victims while they were still alive and thrashing.

  Arching over each of the pits was a short stone ramp. Up these, the condemned were forced to march. Their final step was off the end of the ramp and into the pit below.

  Both of the snakes had eaten recently. Arvin counted one bulge inside the adder, three inside the constrictor. He shuddered, wondering which of the rebels they were. Only one of the rebels had been shown “mercy,” which made Arvin’s choice easier. Nicco would show no mercy, either. He’d choose the punishment the majority of the Secession’s raiders had suffered.

  Slaves were still sweeping up the litter dropped by the crowd who had come to watch this morning’s executions. The yuan-ti spectators were long gone from the viaduct that encircled the plaza, but a couple of dozen humans still lingered below—those who had been mesmerized by the serpents. They stood, staring into the pits and swaying slightly, as mindless as grass blown by a malodorous wind. The slaves swept around them.

  One man stood, alone and rigid as an oak, at the western edge of the plaza. Nicco. He stared at the pits, scowling, arms folded across his chest. His shadow was a long column of black that slowly crept toward the pits as the sun sank. So unmoving and determined did he appear that Arvin wondered for a moment if Nicco had stood there since morning, plotting divine vengeance against the executioners.

  And against Arvin.

  Arvin waited, watching the cleric. Nicco finally turned and glanced at the setting sun, as if gauging the time of day, then stared out toward the Reach and the clouds that were building there. While he was thus occupied, Arvin rose to his knees and whirled the monkey’s fist in a tight circle over his head. He spoke its command word as he let it fly—and hissed in satisfaction as it landed inside the constrictor’s pit. The enormous snake didn’t react to the sudden movement. Eating three condemned people in a single day must have sated it.

  As Nicco returned his attention to the pits, Arvin climbed down onto the viaduct. He strode around it to the spot where Nicco stood. Only when he was directly above the cleric did Nicco look up. Nicco squinted and raised a gloved hand to shield his eyes from the sun; Arvin had the sun behind his back and would be no more than a silhouette. Then Nicco pointed an accusing fi
nger. “Four people died this morning,” he rumbled in a voice as low and threatening as thunder. “Their blood is on your lips. You betrayed them.”

  Arvin shook his head in protest. “I didn’t say anything that—”

  “You must have! How else do you explain the yuan-ti who surprised them just outside Osran’s door—a yuan-ti with powers far beyond those normally manifested by her race—a psion. Deny that you serve her, if you dare!”

  “I don’t serve her. Not willingly. She—”

  Nicco jerked his hand. A bolt of lightning erupted from his fingertip. It blasted into the viaduct at Arvin’s feet, sending splinters of stone flying into the air. Several of them stung Arvin’s legs. The edge of the viaduct abruptly crumbled and Arvin found himself falling. He managed to land on his feet and immediately let his knees buckle to turn the landing into a roll, but scraped his ungloved hand badly in the process. Blood began to seep from it as he stood, and from the numerous nicks in his legs that had been caused by the flying stone.

  As the startled slaves fled the plaza—together with those spectators whose trances had been broken by the thunderclap—Arvin turned to face Nicco. Arvin was careful not to make any threatening moves. The cleric was angry enough already.

  But at least he was still talking. All Arvin had to do was get him to listen—and to believe him.

  “I didn’t tell the yuan-ti psion anything,” Arvin protested. “If I had, your geas would have killed me. She reached into my mind—she violated it—and plucked out Osran’s name.”

  “You gave it to her willingly,” Nicco accused. “That’s why you fled the city. You feared Hoar’s wrath.”

  “Then why would I have come back? Why would I seek you out? I needed help—I left the city to find it. But the person who tried to negate what Zelia had done to me wasn’t able to—”

  “Zelia.” Nicco’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s the name of your master.”