Vanity's Brood

by Lisa Smedman

  Was Sibyl really the avatar of a god?

  No, he told himself. Magical fear was something any yuan-ti could produce with a mere thought. Sibyl’s was just more potent than the rest, potent enough to leave him gasping.

  As the fear of those assembled in the chamber subsided to a subservient hiss, they slowly rose to their feet. Arvin rose with them. Sibyl stared with glowing red eyes down at her followers then smiled, revealing the tips of her fangs.

  “Nobles of Se’sehen,” she hissed in a voice that echoed throughout the chamber. “Welcome.”

  A lengthy speech followed: praise for the worthy and the faithful and a promise that they would soon reap their reward in Hlondeth as well as threats of swift and terrible vengeance against the unfaithful and unworthy. Arvin concentrated on calming his rapidly beating heart, on trying not to show his nervousness. The cleric who had led him there motioned for Arvin to give him the pack. Arvin nodded and started to slip it off his shoulders. The high serphidian obviously planned to present its contents to Sibyl himself—another of Tymora’s blessings, since Sibyl was more likely to take it from the hands of someone she recognized. As long as Arvin was close enough when the pack was opened, he would be able to speak the net’s command word and direct its attack. Doing so would instantly give him away, of course, but that was something he’d planned for. As soon as the net struck and began its deadly work, he would bite his own arm, injecting a deadly dose of yuan-ti venom, then end his metamorphosis. The instant he returned to human form, he would die and be forever beyond Sibyl’s coils.

  He touched the crystal at his throat. The last of his “nine lives” was about to end. In another moment, his soul would be joining Karrell’s on the Plain of the Dead. He only hoped she would still be there to greet him—that her god hadn’t already summoned her up to his domain.

  Sibyl was still talking to the assembled yuan-ti, praising their efforts and making promises to the Se’sehen. Arvin didn’t bother listening. In a few moments, it wouldn’t matter anyway. He passed the pack to the cleric, wary of a sudden bite to the hand. He didn’t want to die quite yet.

  The cleric grasped the pack—equally cautiously. As he did, a loud rattling boomed out from the altar. The cleric and Arvin turned in that direction, both still holding the pack. The sound came from the pillars on either side of the altar. Their tails shook violently, filling the chamber with a noise that vibrated the floor beneath Arvin’s feet.

  When it stopped, a face appeared inside the crystal ball: one of the high serphidians. “Mistress,” he hissed in alarm, “a spy has been detected within your sanctum.”

  Heart pounding, Arvin realized the scribe must have noticed the gap in her memories, realized that the burn on Arvin’s shoulder was of her own making, and come to the correct conclusion, which meant that Arvin could no longer afford to wait for the cleric who had led him there to present the pack to Sibyl. Wrenching it out of his hands with a curt, “I’ll present it to her myself,” Arvin started to force his way to the front of the crowd.

  Sibyl, meanwhile, hissed an angry rebuke at the crystal ball. The cleric inside it gave an urgent reply—“No, Mistress, within the temple itself!”

  Sibyl’s eyes blazed. She pointed at Medusanna. “Seal the temple. Find the spy.”

  Arvin elbowed the Se’sehen nobles aside as he desperately struggled to reach the altar, the cleric following in his wake.

  “Mistress!” Arvin called out. “I found the—”

  Before he could complete the sentence, Sibyl thrust herself backward with a mighty beat of her wings. The darkness closed like a curtain around her.

  “No!” Arvin groaned, his voice lost in the murmur of confusion that swept through the chamber.

  Rage and despair filled him in equal measure. He’d prepared for six months—had come up with the perfect weapon with which to kill Sibyl and been ready to sacrifice his own life, only to have the opportunity snatched away at the last instant.

  His body tingled, and started to lose its shape. In another moment, his metamorphosis would end. He could restore it a heartbeat later—but not before the dozens of yuan-ti closest to him saw his human form. He couldn’t alter that many memories.

  If he was going to survive long enough to get a second chance to kill Sibyl, he needed to think of something else. And fast.

  CHAPTER 2

  Arvin withdrew his awareness deep into himself. Plunging it deep into his muladhara, he imagined the color leaching from his body, imagined his body fading, then disappearing altogether. At the same time he leaped to the side, vacating the spot he’d just occupied.

  I was never there, he broadcast to the yuan-ti around him. You did not see me. You do not see me now.

  He knew the manifestation was successful when one of the Se’sehen nearly walked into him. The power had clouded the senses of those in the altar room. Though Arvin could see and hear himself, he was invisible to them, impossible to detect even by sound or scent, and just in time. Looking down at his arms, he saw that the black scales were gone. His metamorphosis had ended. Putting his pack back on, he glanced around.

  The altar room was in turmoil. The Se’sehen babbled at each other in their own language while the nobles from Hlondeth milled about in confusion. Clerics ran for the doors, shouting orders. The high serphidian who had led Arvin through the temple stood with hands on hips, searching the room—his gaze passed over Arvin without stopping—and began elbowing his way through the crowd toward Medusanna.

  Arvin started toward the exit that led back to the portal room, then remembered the snakes that surrounded the portal. Several were venomous, and he no longer had the yuan-ti’s natural resistance to poison he’d gained by assuming yuan-ti form. He could manifest another metamorphosis, but the concentration necessary to reshape his body would result in the loss of his invisibility.

  Whispering an oath under his breath, Arvin looked for another way out. The altar room had ten other exits: the five arched corridors along each side wall, between the statues of Varae, but which to choose?

  Even as he tried to decide, Medusanna cast a spell, her arms moving in sinuous gestures as she prayed. Malevolent glyphs sprang into view at the top of each exit and the corridors beyond filled with a swirling mist. A whiff of it drifted out to where Arvin stood and stung his nose: acid.

  His heart pounded. There was no escape. Then he laughed at himself; escape had never been part of his plan. Killing Sibyl had been, and Sibyl had disappeared into the dark cloud that still hung above the altar like a curtain—a curtain that Arvin’s potion-enhanced vision allowed him to see through. Barely.

  Through it, he saw the dim outline of the large corridor down which Sibyl must have flown. That it was also warded he had no doubt. The spells those wards contained would be fatal, he was certain, but he had to try and soon. Medusanna was casting another spell.

  Swiftly, Arvin manifested one of his powers he’d only recently learned—a power that summoned ectoplasm from the Astral Plane. It was a risky choice. Psionic energy concentrated itself above and between his eyes then burst from his forehead in a spray of tiny silver sparkles that threatened to give his position away. The yuan-ti closest to him—all Se’sehen—were too busy to notice, talking together in slightly indignant voices. One of the them, a male with green scales and fingers that ended in snake heads, was close enough that Arvin’s secondary display drifted down onto him like falling snow—fortunately, onto his back. The Se’sehen didn’t notice them; he was intent upon some spell, holding the first two fingers out in a V and slowly turning.

  Arvin’s heart lurched as he realized the yuan-ti was casting a detection spell.

  He sidestepped behind the snake-fingered yuan-ti as the fellow rotated, avoiding those splayed fingers. As he did, he completed his manifestation. He shaped the translucent, gooey ectoplasm he’d drawn into a vaguely human form and sent it running toward the portal room, roughly shouldering yuan-ti out of its way.

  Medusanna took the bait, casting a spel
l at the construct. The spell had no visible effect, and Medusanna hissed in anger.

  The snake-fingered yuan-ti, meanwhile, completed his spell and stared at the altar. He glanced over his shoulder—directly at Arvin—as he whispered something. For a terrible moment, Arvin thought he had been detected, but the Se’sehen’s eyes were focused on something well behind Arvin in the rear corner of the chamber, something that, an instant later, made a loud, groaning noise.

  Arvin turned just in time to see one of the statues of Varae tear itself away from the wall. With great, lumbering strides the beast-headed statue thumped forward, its heavy feet sending tremors through the stone floor. The vibrations rattled a sword loose from the ceiling, and the rusted blade clattered down amid the yuan-ti. One or two threw themselves to the floor, prostrating themselves before the statue. It strode right over them, crushing them to a bloody pulp.

  Medusanna continued to direct her attacks at Arvin’s construct. Whipping a hand forward, she sent a snakelike stream of energy toward it. The crackling line of force looped around the running figure like a constricting snake, but the construct passed right through it.

  The statue lumbered forward, its body shedding chunks of stone as its joints ground against one another. Behind it, more stone fell from the ceiling above the spot it had just torn itself out of. Then one of the corridors next to where it had stood collapsed with a thunderous crash.

  Arvin didn’t wait to watch the rest. Making the most of the distraction, he hurried toward the altar. So did the snake-fingered yuan-ti. The Se’sehen was fast; he clambered up onto the altar a heartbeat or two ahead of Arvin, heading for the corridor at the rear of it. As Arvin followed, he realized that the Se’sehen might have been the one who had been detected; he was certainly acting like a spy. He’d animated the statue that was wreaking havoc at the back of the chamber, and praise Tymora, it looked as though he was going to clear a path to Sibyl.

  Arvin touched the crystal at his throat and grinned.

  Snake-fingers stepped into the darkness that shrouded the back of the altar. To Arvin, his vision still enhanced by the darkvision potion, it seemed as though the yuan-ti shifted from color to shades of black and gray. He watched as Snake-fingers took a deep breath and blew into the corridor. Inside it, on one wall, something glowed a faint blue. As soon as it did, the yuan-ti hurried into the corridor.

  Arvin followed close on his heels. He tensed as he passed the blue glow—a symbol in Draconic that set his teeth on edge and made his eyes ache, even though he only saw it in his peripheral vision. Then he was beyond it.

  The walls of the corridor were carved in a scale pattern, so he knew he was still within the ancient temple. It was enormous, with a rounded ceiling, easily large enough for Sibyl to have flown through it. After a short distance, the corridor forked. Snake-fingers hesitated and extended the first two fingers of each hand then pointed each down a different fork. A moment later, he continued up the left corridor. Arvin followed. As he did, he heard a thunderous crash from the altar room. Dust rushed up the corridor and the floor trembled. Glancing back, Arvin saw that the tunnel was blocked. The ceiling of the altar room had collapsed.

  Snake-fingers glanced back and grunted in satisfaction then continued up the corridor, which grew steadily darker. Arvin followed, silent as a ghost, his psionics keeping him hidden. Soon he was relying entirely on his magical darkvision. The Se’sehen also seemed able to see in the dark, since he moved forward without hesitation.

  Arvin wondered what the spy was up to. It would be the height of irony, indeed, if Snake-fingers had also come to kill Sibyl and had been given away by Arvin’s blunder with the scribe. Curious to know if that was the case, Arvin tried to skim the spy’s surface thoughts. He was surprised to receive nothing at all—not the faintest whisper of a thought. The Se’sehen didn’t react at all; it was as if Arvin had never manifested the power. Snake-fingers must have had an amazingly strong will. Either that, or …

  Arvin touched the ring on his left little finger—Karrell’s ring. Was the Se’sehen protected by a similar device or by some spell?

  The corridor forked a second time. Once again, the Se’sehen used magic to choose his course—and to reveal a nasty looking symbol positioned just inside the left fork. The Se’sehen disarmed it as he had the first, by pursing his lips and blowing. Arvin was close enough to hear the incantation he used. It didn’t sound anything like Karrell’s language, but perhaps that was because the yuan-ti’s voice was lower, almost guttural—and strangely devoid of a hiss, which made Arvin wonder if all was as it seemed.

  Once they were both beyond the symbol, Arvin risked another manifestation. Silver sparkles erupted from his forehead and his vision momentarily shimmered. When it cleared, he saw the person he’d been following for what he truly was.

  He wasn’t a yuan-ti at all.

  He was a dwarf—but unlike any Arvin had seen before. His skin was so brown it was almost black, and his long, wiry black hair fell in what looked like matted braids across his shoulders. He was barefoot and wore only a loincloth made from a spotted animal pelt and two pieces of jewelry: a necklace of mismatched teeth and claws, and a band of gold set with a turquoise stone on his upper right arm. Faint white tattoos covered his body: the snarling faces of stylized animals. A small pouch hung from his belt. Next to it, tucked into the belt, was a hollow reed that might have been a wand. Aside from that, he seemed to be unarmed.

  Arvin’s secondary manifestation didn’t go unnoticed. The dwarf whirled, blinked in surprise, then cast a spell of his own. Arvin felt no appreciable difference but could tell by the dwarf’s widening eyes—and the way the shorter man glanced up to meet his eye—that he was no longer invisible. In that same instant, Arvin’s manifestation ended. The dwarf’s illusion returned, cloaking him in the image of a snake-fingered yuan-ti.

  The dwarf raised his hands and snarled. A pulsing nimbus of red surrounded his body, washing out Arvin’s darkvision.

  “Wait!” Arvin said. “I’m a friend—an enemy of Sibyl.”

  Frantically, he tried to manifest a charm. Before he could, the illusion-cloaked dwarf launched his attack. Arvin twisted aside, but it was hard to tell where the dwarf’s limbs really were. Arvin’s attempt to parry passed through empty air. Something that felt like a hooked dagger—or a claw—caught at Arvin’s belt and raked across his hip, opening a painful gash.

  Dancing backward, Arvin reached for the dagger sheathed at the small of his back. He drew it but didn’t use it. Instead he manifested another power, stamping his foot down on the floor.

  More sparkles erupted from Arvin’s forehead, and a low droning filled the air as the stomp sent the dwarf staggering sideways. He caught himself against the wall. His illusionary fingers looked like snakes but scritched against the stone. Claws?

  Wincing against the pain of the wound in his hip—the slash was deep, soaking his pants with blood—Arvin at last was able to manifest his charm. He was thankful to see the dwarf frown as if listening to a distant, half-heard sound. The fellow could hear the power’s secondary display.

  “I’m an enemy of Sibyl,” Arvin continued, backing away and still holding his dagger out to the side. “I came here to kill her.”

  The dwarf looked at him with a blank expression.

  “Friend,” Arvin repeated, tapping his chest. He was worried the dwarf didn’t seem to speak his language. His charm wouldn’t be any help if the dwarf couldn’t understand him. Arvin spoke slowly, raising his dagger to make a violent cutting motion. “I want to kill Sibyl. Kill.” With his free hand, he mimed a wing flapping, then a snake, as he repeated the cutting gestures, pretending to stab his own hand.

  The dwarf shook his head like a dog throwing off water. His long, ropy hair whipped back and forth across his face. Then he charged.

  Arvin dodged, still not using his dagger. He stared at the nimbus of red that continued to surround the dwarf, flickering like an angry flame. By concentrating, he could see where it was mos
t prominent: around the smaller shape that was the dwarf’s actual body. Arvin pretended to stumble, and as the dwarf leaped forward, caught him by the hair. Arvin touched the point of the dagger to the dwarf’s throat, held it there for a heartbeat, then leaped away. Backstepping again, holding his left hand in a “wait” gesture, he returned the dagger to its sheath.

  “Friend,” he said again, in as loud a voice as he dared. He prayed that Sibyl wasn’t just down the corridor, close enough to hear.

  The dwarf halted, frowning. He said something in his own language and pointed at Arvin’s extended hand.

  Arvin spread his hands and shrugged. “I don’t understand you.”

  The dwarf whispered something, raising his hands to his lips. Arvin tensed, but the spell produced no harmful effect. Instead the dwarf’s words became intelligible. His illusion vanished—but the nimbus of red that had surrounded him didn’t.

  He grabbed Arvin’s left hand and asked, “Where did you get this ring?”

  “It belonged to a woman named Karrell.”

  The dwarf’s grip on his hand tightened, and his claws pricked Arvin’s flesh. “Where is she now?”

  “She’s—” the word stuck in Arvin’s throat—“dead.”

  The dwarf’s eyes blazed. In them, Arvin saw a mirror of his own grief.

  “You knew her?” Arvin asked, incredulous. He thought quickly back over what Karrell had told him of her past—and her affiliations. “Are you one of the K’aaxlaat?”

  The dwarf’s eyes shifted at the question—answer enough. “Do you know what the ring does?”

  Arvin nodded. “It shields thoughts.”

  The dwarf stared a challenge at him. “Take it off. Then tell me how you know Karrell—and how she died.”