Vanity's Brood

by Lisa Smedman

  Allowing his body to go limp—playing dead—Arvin pictured the demon in his mind. The face was easy to visualize. It had seared itself into Arvin’s memory on that terrible day that Karrell had been drawn into the Abyss. Sulfur-yellow hair framing an angular face with wide lips and a V-shaped frown, the hair whipping about in an invisible current. The body, female from the waist up, but with six arms. Below the waist, a writhing serpent’s tail covered in green scales that shimmered as though they had been dipped in oil.

  As Arvin made contact, he saw the marilith whirl, a hiss on its lips. Its mouth silently framed a word: “You!”

  Sibyl is about to kill Karrell, Arvin sent. Teleport to Karrell. Now!

  The demon didn’t bother making a reply; its image simply vanished from Arvin’s mind. A heartbeat later, he heard a whoosh of displaced air that announced its arrival. He was already busy manifesting a power. His face felt cool where ectoplasm coated it. Blurry images filtered in through the skin of his forehead and cheeks as they became sensitive to light. Two towering shapes, confronting one another.

  Suddenly he could see again.

  The marilith cuffed Sibyl away from Karrell and screeched something at it in Draconic. Sibyl hissed angrily and snaked her tail toward Karrell. The marilith flung out all six hands, and swords appeared in them.

  Arvin smiled. Drawing air deep into his lungs, he charged his breath with psionic energy, then he blew the scents of saffron and ginger, first at the marilith, then at Sibyl, linking their fates.

  The shouting was dying down and the marilith was lowering her swords. Time to stir the pot a little. Arvin manifested a second power, insinuating himself inside the demon’s mind. It was an ugly mind, volatile and irrational, filled with violent fantasies that centered on what it would do to the worthless dretches—the creatures that were its minions—who had clearly shirked their duties. It bubbled with loathing over the fact that Sibyl—an insignificant half-demon—possessed the one necessary quality that would allow her to become Sseth’s avatar: a mortal soul. But the anger that had boiled like lava through the marilith just an instant before was already cooling. Sibyl had agreed to deal with Ubtao’s worm later, after she became Sseth’s avatar. Once the chains that bound the human’s fate with the marilith’s had been severed, the impudent cleric and her squirming, loathsome spawn could be safely crushed. The marilith, Sibyl had just promised, had nothing to fear.

  Fear, Arvin thought. He seized the emotion and braided it together with the marilith’s frustration and her ideas of how minions should be treated to form a new memory: Sibyl telling the demon that it had better learn to obey her, and that the demon—worthless dretch!—had better learn that its needs were insignificant, that Sibyl was Sseth’s chosen one, that she would deal with Ubtao’s cleric when it suited her, and if that time had already come, and if that meant the marilith’s miserable life would end, well then—

  A scream of utter fury ripped through the demon’s mind. Ungrateful spawn! I should never have agreed to—

  A sword slashed down. Connected. Blood sprayed as one of Sibyl’s forearms was sliced open from elbow to wrist. Marilith and abomination screamed as one. The demon stared at the identical wound on its own arm. Arvin felt a shadow of the demon’s pain and gasped. He clung grimly to its mind. Swift as thought, he added a new memory: Sibyl, grabbing the demon’s arm as the sword descended and deliberately twisting it so the blade struck Karrell, instead—causing a wound to spring up magically on the marilith’s arm—then Sibyl somehow being wounded in the arm herself by the sword as the demon yanked it away from her again.

  It was a crude image, one the demon would have recognized for false in an instant just by glancing down at Karrell, but its blood was up, anger frothing through its mind. Screaming, it launched itself at Sibyl, all six blades flashing.

  The demon was lightning-fast, but Sibyl moved even more swiftly. Serpent body writhing, she avoided the slashes. Twin streaks of red shot from Sibyl’s eyes. They plunged into the demon’s chest, punching hot red holes. Identical wounds appeared on Sibyl’s chest. She reeled back, glanced down at them—then at Arvin. Her tail twitched toward him, but before she could blast him with another lightning bolt, the marilith lopped off the tip of Sibyl’s tail. Sibyl screamed at it in Draconic, but the demon was in full fury and did not notice that its own tail had been severed as well.

  Sibyl, however, had learned something from the exchange. Instead of fighting back, a dark shimmer pulsed from her body: magical fear. It slowed but didn’t stop the marilith’s attacks. Jungle vines whipped around the demon’s body. It sliced them apart and kept coming. In the distance, Arvin could hear wings flapping—another demon, summoned by the marilith to join in the fray?

  The vines holding Arvin had loosened somewhat, and he strained against them, trying to get free. Sibyl and the demon were in the way, and he couldn’t see Karrell. Had she breathed in the dust and fallen victim to the musk creeper’s compulsion?

  He caught a glimpse of Karrell crawling toward the net. She reached out, grasped it with both hands, drew it closer to her.

  “No!” Arvin shouted.

  Karrell staggered to her feet, drawing the net still closer to her. Tendrils reached eagerly for her head.

  Arvin tore at the vines. If those tendrils rooted in her scalp….

  Sibyl flicked her tail, smearing blood across the marilith as it slapped home, and shouted something in Draconic. The demon was transformed. One moment, it was a massive creature with six arms and a serpent’s tail; the next, an ordinary human with six swords lying at her feet—a human who gaped down at the smoking holes in her chest, the blood draining from her lacerated arm, and the abbreviated stump of her left foot … then collapsed.

  Arvin ripped free of the vines at last and raced for Karrell. “The net!” he screamed at her. “Throw it at Sibyl!”

  She did. The net sailed out of her arms—and missed its target. It landed on the now-human demon, enveloping it.

  Karrell’s face went white. Then another contraction staggered her. Grunting, she sank back into a crouch.

  Sibyl whipped around, hissing, her red eyes furious. Her tail lashed forward, catching Arvin around the chest, trapping his arms against his sides. It squeezed …

  “Karrell,” Arvin cried. “I—”

  The squeezing forced the air out of his lungs, preventing him from saying more. Then, abruptly, it stopped.

  Arvin tore his eyes away from Karrell and looked up at Sibyl. The abomination stared over his head, a vacant look on her face. Like a suddenly loosened cloak, her coils fell away from Arvin. He stepped out of them and saw, behind Sibyl, the marilith demon. Still in the human form Sibyl had transformed it into, it lay, draped by the net, its eyes empty. Strands of yellow musk creeper had rooted in its scalp and wormed their way in through its ears, nose, and mouth. They pulsed as they drained the last vestiges of its mind. Already it had been rendered an empty husk.

  Sibyl, linked to it by Arvin’s psionics, had suffered the same fate. The abomination’s chest still rose and fell, but her mind was a gaping ruin. She was as good as dead.

  Arvin ran past both abomination and demon and lifted Karrell in his arms. He felt tears streaming down his cheeks. “The net,” he said. “I thought …”

  “Ubtao,” Karrell whispered—though whether it was an explanation or a plea, Arvin couldn’t tell. She groaned—deep and long—and her body shuddered.

  Arvin glanced up at the sky. The circle of red was still open, and the wingbeats he’d heard a moment before had grown closer.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, knowing even as he spoke that there was no hope of escape.

  A shadow fell across them. Arvin reached for the dregs of energy that remained in his almost depleted muladhara, then glanced up.

  “Ts’ikil!”

  The couatl landed gracefully, despite its injured wing. Her condition had improved. New feathers had sprouted in several of the bare patches and her wings were less tattere
d. Ts’ikil trilled softly as she stared at Karrell, then touched her with a wingtip.

  Arvin stared up at the couatl. “How …?”

  Your sending.

  “But I didn’t …”

  Ts’ikil smiled. Yes, you did. You called out to me, asking me for aid—then very unflatteringly compared me to a demon.

  “I did?”

  Karrell groaned, reminding Arvin of more urgent concerns. “Can you fly Karrell out of here?” he asked. “Quickly, before she—”

  I can do better than that, now that the door is open, the couatl said, pointing up at the hole in the sky. She extended her other wingtip to Arvin. I can take her home. Take her hand, and touch me. We will step between the planes.

  Arvin scrambled across hot, black stone to the spot where he’d thrown the Circled Serpent. The trip to Karrell’s village had taken less time than a heartbeat. They’d spent only enough time there to explain what was going on to Karrell’s startled clan and see her safely into a hut. Then Ts’ikil and Arvin raced back to the crater again. The gate to Smaragd had already started to close; a thin crust of wrinkled, almost-hard stone covered the opening. It crackled and steamed, releasing hot gases that stung Arvin’s eyes.

  He blinked, clearing them, and spotted the Circled Serpent lying near the edge of the cooling lava.

  “There it is,” he told Ts’ikil.

  He started to pick it up, then yanked his hand back. The silver didn’t look hot, but it had burned his fingers. He blew on them, then manifested a power that lifted the Circled Serpent into the air.

  Ts’ikil hovered above, her wings fanning away the worst of the heat. Arvin moved the Circled Serpent toward her, but the couatl shook her head.

  You should be the one to destroy it, she said. You have earned the right.

  Arvin nodded. He enlarged the invisible psionic hand he had created, then squeezed, forcing the tail of the Circled Serpent into its mouth. He felt a sudden tug, and the artifact yanked itself free. A hissing filled the air—louder than the crackling of the cooling lava—as the Circled Serpent spun in mid-air. Arvin backed away, one hand raised to shield his face. Faster and faster the Circled Serpent spun, the head following the tail, until it was a blur of silver in the air. Then it disappeared.

  The volcano gave a shuddering rumble. Then all was quiet. Arvin lowered his arm and looked down, and saw that what had been crusted lava a moment ago was cold, solid stone. A breeze blew across the peak of the volcano, cooling the sweat on Arvin’s face.

  He glanced at Ts’ikil. “That’s it?” he asked. He had expected something more.

  The couatl smiled, then nodded. It is done.

  “Then let’s go. I want to see my children.”

  Arvin leaned back against the wall of the hut, his infant son cradled in his arms. The boy was quiet, but earlier he had been competing with his sister in a crying contest. The twins were small—the combined effects of sharing the same womb and the lean nourishment Karrell had found in Smaragd—but they seemed strong enough, and they had powerful lungs.

  The boy had brown eyes, like Arvin, a fuzz of brown hair, and a pattern on his smooth skin that might one day become scales. The girl had Karrell’s high cheekbones, darker hair, and a slightly forked tongue. Both had human arms and legs, but what was most important was that both had survived.

  So had Karrell, though the labor had been hard on her. She lay in a hammock, nursing their daughter. Arvin watched as two women of the Chex’en clan fussed over the new mother, fanning her and offering sips of cool water. They looked like Karrell—close enough in appearance to have been her mother and sister, though Karrell had said they were only the clan midwife and her apprentice, both distant cousins. Each of them had Karrell’s long black hair and dusky skin.

  It had been some time since Arvin had slept, even though three days had passed since Ts’ikil had spirited them out of Smaragd. The birthing had taken the remainder of that first night, and the days and nights since then had slipped past in a blur. Arvin hovered somewhere between dozing and wakefulness. The heat of the jungle didn’t help, nor did the fact that he kept slipping, in his drowsy state, into the minds of his son and daughter. The link with them came so easily it was like breathing. One moment his thoughts were his own—the next, his mind was overflowing with simple sensation: the sweet slide of milk down his throat, the gentle touch of a warm body against his, the blur of his mother’s or father’s face as they stared down at him with adoration.

  It was easy to let his mind drift. The worst was over. Sibyl and the marilith were as good as dead, their minds empty shells. Sseth was securely contained within his domain, bound and brooding. Pakal had recovered from his shadow wounds and gone back to his people, and Ts’ikil had also fully healed.

  Yet …

  The younger woman came to Arvin and said something to him in her own language, then gently lifted his son from his arms. It was time for Karrell to feed him. Arvin reluctantly relinquished his son. He had been enjoying the feel of the infant’s soft breathing against his bare chest. He stood and straightened the loincloth one of the Tabaxi men had given him, then crossed the hut to Karrell’s hammock. As he brushed his lips against her forehead, she gave him an exhausted smile.

  “We did it,” she whispered. “We stopped Sibyl. It’s over now.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Yet …

  He needed to think, to shake the lethargy from his mind. He stroked his daughter’s head, and his son’s, then squeezed Karrell’s hand.

  “I’ll be outside,” he told her.

  The hut was circular, made of saplings that had been bound together. The roof was a rough dome covered with broad leaves, laid in a pattern like shingles. It was one of perhaps a dozen huts occupying an oval clearing that had been hacked from the jungle. At one end of the clearing stood a pitted chunk of black volcanic stone, studded with “thunder lizard” claws—an altar sacred to both Ubtao and Thard Harr. One of the wild dwarves who also made their home in that part of the jungle was prostrated in front of it, his hands extended toward the stone, fingers curled like claws. The clan’s meeting house was at the opposite end of the clearing. In the distance behind it, smoke rose from the trees. That was where the rest of the clan was, clearing new land for crops. Arvin could just hear the faint thudding of their axes. Lulled by the sound, Arvin stood, staring at the jungle.

  A woman’s shrill cry from inside the hut jerked him out of his half-doze. He raced inside, nearly colliding with the midwife. She shouted something at him in her own language, pointed at her assistant, who knelt on the ground next to Karrell. The assistant lifted one of the twins—their son—and blew air into his open mouth in short, rapid puffs. Arvin’s entire body went cold at the sight.

  “What’s wrong?” he cried.

  Karrell didn’t answer. Her lips were moving rapidly as she bent over their daughter. She gave Arvin a quick, terrified glance as she whispered a prayer. Arvin clenched his fists. Something had gone wrong. Both twins had stopped breathing, but Karrell’s magic would save their children. It had to.

  Then Karrell exhaled, as sharply and violently as if she had vomited the air from her lungs. She clutched at her chest and struggled to inhale.

  “What’s wrong?” Arvin shouted.

  Karrell shook her head. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. She made a frantic gesture at their daughter. The girl’s lips were starting to turn blue. Arvin scooped the girl up, only to have her wrenched from his hands by the midwife. The elderly woman began blowing air into the infant’s lungs.

  Karrell swayed, still trying to gasp air into her lungs. Her eyelids fluttered.

  Magic. It had to be, but why?

  No, not magic. A memory hovered dimly at the back of Arvin’s mind. Of himself gloating as he manifested that very same power.

  No, not himself.

  Zelia.

  A droning hum filled the air as Arvin manifested a power. Silver sparkled from his eyes; a thread of it led out the door. He raced af
ter it across the clearing. It led where he’d half expected it to: to the dwarf who stood, a smirk on his face, next to the holy stone.

  One of Zelia’s seeds.

  Arvin hurled a manifestation at the dwarf-seed as he ran. Droning filled the air around him as he tried to batter his way through the seed’s defenses, to crush his opponent’s mind to dust, but the seed was ready. His mind slithered away from Arvin, leaving him grasping emptiness. Then the seed attacked. A fist of mental energy punched its way through Arvin’s defenses then coiled around his mind. Too late, Arvin tried to throw up a shield against it. He could feel strands of energy moving this way and that inside his mind, weaving a net that held him fast. There was a quick, sharp tug—and the net closed, trapping his consciousness inside. Arvin could feel himself standing, was aware of his chest rapidly rising and falling, of his heart pounding in his ears—but the will that normally controlled his actions was tightly confined. He could imagine himself manifesting a power, but his muladhara seemed far away. His mind couldn’t reach out to it from behind the net that had trapped it. Made stupid by a lack of sleep and the urgency of stopping the attack on Karrell and the children, he’d done just what the seed wanted—rushed blindly into psionic combat.

  The dwarf-seed smiled, as if reading his thoughts. For all Arvin knew, it was.

  “Arvin,” the seed said in a husky voice that was unsettlingly similar to Pakal’s, except for its smirking tone. “How obliging of you to run right into my coils.”

  Arvin tried to talk. All he could manage was a low moan. He felt drool trickle from the edge of his mouth.

  The seed smiled. “Where is Dmetrio? Where is the Circled Serpent?” Silver flashed from his eyes as he spoke.

  Arvin tried to resist the awareness that slid deep into his mind but couldn’t. In another moment, the seed would learn that Dmetrio was dead and the Circled Serpent destroyed. The worst of it was that Arvin knew exactly how the seed would react—with rage at the fact that Zelia’s plans had been thwarted—and with gleeful satisfaction at having caused Arvin the greatest anguish possible by killing the children and Karrell.