Venom's Taste

by Lisa Smedman

  “Those thieves killed a yuan-ti—one who served the royal family,” Gonthril said. He sighed; Arvin pictured him shaking his head. “The only place he’ll let down his guard now is within the walls of his own home.”

  “It’s suicide,” the other man grumbled. “We’ll never get inside.”

  “Yes we will,” Gonthril said in a confident voice. “One sip of this and we’ll be able to slip right past the guard. They won’t suspect a thing. They’ll think we’re his little pets, out for a Middark soar. We’ll even have the right markings.”

  Suddenly a voice whispered in Arvin’s ear. “I think you’ve heard enough.”

  Had Arvin been capable of it, he would have jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. Held frozen by magic, all he could do was wonder who in the Nine Hells had crept up so silently behind him.

  He heard a whispered chant, felt momentarily dizzy, and was standing in a room—a brightly illuminated room, next to the pallet on which Kayla lay. Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell smoothly. The flush of fever was gone from her face.

  Arvin, still unable to move, could feel a hand on his shoulder—that of the person who had just teleported him. He could guess who it was. The cleric. The fellow spoke in a normal tone, no longer whispering. “That was poetic justice, don’t you think?”

  The hand fell away from Arvin’s shoulder. Suddenly able to move, Arvin whirled to face the cleric. The green eyes that stared back at him were filled with mirth.

  “What do you mean?” Arvin asked.

  The cleric tipped his head in the direction of the hallway. As he did, an earring dangling from his left ear flashed in the light; the three silver lightning bolts hanging from it tinkled together. “By unlocking that gate, you locked your own body.”

  Understanding dawned on Arvin. “There was a glyph on the gate, wasn’t there?”

  The cleric nodded.

  Arvin slid a wary glance toward the door to the room and saw that it was shut. It had no visible lock, but he was willing to bet its handle bore a glyph that was similar to the one on the gate he’d just tried. His imagination came up with unpleasant possibilities—turn the handle and have your head turned completely around. Until your neck snapped.

  “What happens now?” he asked the cleric.

  “We wait.”

  “Until …?”

  “Until Gonthril and the others have finished their night’s work,” the cleric calmly replied.

  “Where are they going?” Arvin asked.”

  To scotch the snake.”

  Arvin stared at the cleric, suddenly understanding. It wasn’t the Pox the Secession were going after, but the yuan-ti who had supplied them with the potions, Osran Extaminos. And it wasn’t just any building Gonthril had been talking about infiltrating, but the palace. The man who had been objecting to this scheme had been right. A plan to kill a prince inside the royal palace was indeed suicide. A desperate gamble. Yet it was a risk, apparently, Gonthril was willing to take. He must have been hoping that Osran’s murder would cut off the source of the potion and save the city.

  And he might just be right about that. Though Arvin couldn’t help but wonder if the old adage would prove true. Scotch the snake, and watch another two crawl out of the hole. “Backers,” Zelia had said. Plural.

  Then there was the question of the cultists and why they had hooked up with a yuan-ti. As Gonthril had pointed out, why carry fire to a volcano? The cultists were perfectly capable of creating disease on their own, as the man who had killed himself in Arvin’s warehouse had so aptly demonstrated. Why then, would they feel the need to obtain “plague” from an outside source?

  Suddenly, Arvin realized the answer. That name he’d heard one of his attackers use, just before he’d been bundled off to the sewers, wasn’t a person’s name, after all. It wasn’t “Missim” that he’d heard, but “Mussum.” The city that fell victim, nine centuries ago, to a plague so virulent that to this day it continued to claim lives.

  That was what the cultists believed was in the vials. The most potent plague in all of Faerûn—one that even they, in their most fervent prayers, would be hard-pressed to duplicate. They hoped to unleash it on Hlondeth, reducing it to a city of corpses. Instead they were being tricked into emptying a potion into its water system—one that would turn every human in Hlondeth into a yuan-ti, making it truly a “city of serpents.”

  A city of slaves.

  Realizing the cleric was standing in silence, watching him, Arvin decided to play on the man’s sympathies. “A friend of mine is in trouble,” he began. “The Pox fed him the potion that turns humans into yuan-ti. He’s the reason I was down in the sewers and”—he gestured at the sleeping Kayla—“the reason I was there to save Kayla’s life. He’s also the reason I was trying to leave, just now. I need to find him, before it’s too late.”

  “A noble endeavor,” the cleric said, nodding. “But I can’t let you go. Too many other lives are at stake.”

  “Please,” Arvin said, feeling the familiar prickle of psionic energy at the base of his skull. He gave the cleric his most pleading look. “I’m Naulg’s only hope.”

  The cleric’s expression softened. “I….” Then he shook his head, like a man suddenly awakening from a dream. A smile quirked the corner of his lips. “A psion,” he said. “That’s quite rare.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry, but the answer is still no. And don’t try to charm me again.”

  Arvin fumed. Just who in the Nine Hells did this human think he was?

  Arvin hissed then leaped forward with the speed of a striking snake, intending to sink his teeth into the man’s throat. The cleric, however, was quicker. He barked out a one-word incantation and whipped one of his scarred hands up in front of his body, palm outward. Arvin crashed face-first into a glowing wall of magical energy that rattled his teeth in their sockets.

  Suddenly sobered, he staggered away, rubbing his aching jaw. The anger that had boiled in him a moment ago was gone. Mutely, he glanced at the glove on his left hand, wondering why he hadn’t tried to summon his dagger to it.

  Of course. The mind seed. He had reacted as Zelia might have done.

  The cleric slowly lowered his hand. With a faint crackling, the magical shield around him disappeared. “Now that you’ve come to your senses, let’s pass the time like civilized men,” he told Arvin. “Gonthril told me part of your story; I’d like to hear the rest. But here’s a warning. If you try to attack me again, you’ll spend the rest of the day as a statue.”

  Arvin didn’t bother to ask whether the cleric meant that literally—whether he was threatening to turn Arvin to stone—or whether he was simply promising to reimpose the spell that had held Arvin motionless earlier. Either way, Arvin didn’t really want to find out. He spread his hands in a peace gesture.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  CHAPTER 11

  24 Kythorn, Evening

  Arvin paced back and forth like an animal in a cage. He’d been trapped in this room for ages with a man he could neither charm nor fight his way past. He wanted to be out doing something. Only two days had passed since Zelia planted the mind seed, but already Arvin was starting to lose control. If he didn’t do something soon he might make another dangerous—possibly fatal—mistake. And there was a chance, it seemed, that Naulg might still be alive. But all Arvin could do was weave his way back and forth, back and forth, across the floor.

  He and the cleric—Nicco, his name was—were alone in the room now. Kayla had awakened some time ago, as refreshed as if she’d never succumbed to fever at all. She’d been summoned from the room by Gonthril, presumably to join the suicidal raid on the royal palace. Arvin supposed that was the last he’d ever see of her.

  Arvin had passed the time by telling Nicco his story—omitting any mention of Zelia, since the news that he was gathering information for a yuan-ti was hardly going to endear him to the rebels. Thinking of her—and the mind seed—made him wonder. Hazzan’
s dispelling hadn’t broken its hold over Arvin, but perhaps clerical magic might succeed where wizardry had failed.

  “I’ve been thinking about the potion,” Arvin began. “Hazzan’s dispelling doesn’t seem to have worked. I still seem to be turning into a yuan-ti. In mind, if not in body.”

  Nicco nodded grimly. “You do seem to be under some sort of magical compulsion—from time to time. Right now, I’d say you were your own man. But when you attacked me earlier….”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Arvin repeated. “I wasn’t … in my right mind.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “You recognized me as a psion earlier,” Arvin said. “How?”

  “You cast a charm spell without using either a holy symbol or hand gestures. Some wizards and sorcerers can cast spells with stilled hands or silenced lips, but the faint ringing sound I heard when you tried to charm me confirmed my guess. You’re a psion.”

  Arvin’s hopes rose. “Not many people know what a psion is.”

  Nicco shrugged. “I’m widely traveled.”

  “Have you dispelled psionic powers before?”

  “Yes … why?”

  Arvin smiled. Maybe Nicco could help him. “I’ve been wondering if the potion I was forced to drink might have contained a component that was psionic, rather than sorcerous,” Arvin said. “If it did, Hazzan might have overlooked it. I was wondering if prayer might succeed where wizardry failed.”

  “It might,” Nicco said slowly. “If it is the Doombringer’s will.”

  “The Doombringer? Is that the name of your god?”

  “In my country he is known as Assuran, Lord of the Three Thunders, but here they call him Hoar.”

  “I … think I’ve heard of him,” Arvin said.

  “He is the righter of wrongs,” Nicco said with a grim smile. “I heard you whisper Tymora’s name earlier. Like that goddess, Hoar is a bringer of luck—bad luck, but only to those who have called it down upon themselves by their own actions. He seals their doom—and in the process, saves those who are doomed.”

  “That’s how I feel, right now,” Arvin said somberly. “Doomed.”

  “Talona’s clerics did wrong you,” Nicco agreed. “The Doombringer will surely be moved to set matters right.”

  Arvin let out a long, slow hiss of relief. The sooner Zelia’s mind seed was out of his head, the better.

  Nicco stared at him. “Hoar’s blessings come with a price.”

  Arvin gave the cleric a wry smile. “Nice of you to be up front about it. What is it?” He pictured a healthy tithe, or several tendays of fasting, self-flagellation, and prayer. The clerics who ran the orphanage had been big on flagellation.

  “You must do everything you can to bring those who have wronged you to justice. And it must be in as … appropriate a manner as you are able. ‘Blood for blood’—that is Hoar’s creed.”

  Arvin nodded. It was easy to come up with a suitable punishment for the cultists. Slipping into their water a potion that would polymorph them into sewer rats, for example. But if Nicco’s prayer succeeded in purging the mind seed, would Arvin be expected to also enact vengeance upon Zelia? What could Arvin—an untrained psion—possibly do to someone so powerful? For that matter, did he even want to take revenge on her? She’d saved his life by neutralizing the poison that had nearly killed him, after all. And she had offered to train him in psionics and ensure that the militia would never claim him, in return for information on who was backing the Pox—information Arvin now had.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he told Nicco.

  That seemed to satisfy the cleric. “Sit,” Nicco instructed. “Hold in your mind the thoughts of vengeance you just imagined.”

  Arvin did as instructed, seating himself on one of the pallets and picturing the cultists turning into rats. Nicco knelt in front of him and rested three fingertips on Arvin’s chest. Then he began to pray. “Lord of the Three Thunders, hear my plea. A great wrong has been done to this man. Set it right. Dispel the magic that is transforming him. Drive it from his body by the might of your thundering hand!”

  The cleric closed his eyes then, dropping into silent prayer. Arvin heard a crackling sound—and a tiny spark erupted from each of Nicco’s fingertips and shot through the fabric of Arvin’s shirt. Arvin jerked back as they stung his chest.

  Nicco smiled and dropped his hand. “The Doombringer has answered.”

  Arvin pulled his shirt away from his chest and saw, with relief, that his skin was still intact. He let out a long, slow hiss—then realized what he’d just done. His headache wasn’t gone either. “I don’t think your prayer worked,” he told Nicco. “I feel … the same.”

  Nicco scowled. “Impossible. You felt Hoar’s power at work. Whatever remained of the potion will be neutralized, now.”

  Arvin nodded. The potion indeed might be neutralized, but the mind seed was still in place. Zelia’s psionics must be more powerful than either Hazzan’s spells or Nicco’s prayers.

  He eyed the door, wondering when the rebels were going to return. He wanted to be well on his way before Chorl came back. Could Arvin convince Nicco that he posed no threat to the Secession, that he should be allowed to leave? Perhaps … if Nicco could be persuaded that he was an ally, a friend. But that would be difficult, without charming Nicco. Instead, Arvin would be forced to rely upon more conventional means. Conversation.

  Fortunately, there was always one sure way to get a cleric talking.

  “Tell me more about your faith,” he told Nicco. “How did you come to worship Hoar?”

  Nicco gave Arvin a searching look. Then he shrugged and sat down on a pallet next to the one on which Arvin was sitting. “In Chessenta, slaves are not branded,” he began. “The only mark of their servitude is a thread around the wrist.”

  Arvin had no idea what this had to do with Nicco’s religion, but his interest was piqued at once. “A magical thread?” he asked.

  Nicco smiled. “No. An ordinary thread.”

  “But what’s to stop the slave from breaking it?”

  “Nothing,” Nicco said.

  Arvin frowned, puzzled.

  “Slavery isn’t a cruelty, as it is here, but a retribution,” Nicco continued. “Here, innocent men and women are forced into servitude against their will and work until the day they die. In Chessenta, the term of slavery is fixed. It is imposed, following a public trial and a finding of guilt, as punishment for breaking the law. The criminal is a slave until his sentence is up then becomes a free man once more. The work slaves are set to can be hard and dangerous, but sometimes, if a slave performs well, his master may negate his sentence by breaking the thread.” He paused, and the glower returned. “Of course, that is how it is supposed to work.”

  “Ah, I understand now,” Arvin said. “You worship Hoar because you were once a judge.”

  “Not a judge,” Nicco said, “a criminal.”

  Arvin tactfully avoided asking what crime Nicco had committed. Years of dealing with the Guild had taught him the value of silence at such moments—and a sympathetic nod, which he gave Nicco now. “You were unjustly accused,” he ventured. “That’s why you turned to Hoar.”

  Nicco shook his head, causing the lightning bolts in his earring to tinkle. “I was unfairly treated,” he corrected. “I worked hard and well at the glass-blowing factory, and yet the overseer, instead of breaking my thread, falsely accused me of vandalism. Every time a piece of glassware broke due to some flaw—and there were plenty, since the iron, tin, and cobalt powders he purchased to color the glass were cheap and filled with impurities—I was punished. When I dared challenge him, he further insulted me by chaining me to my furnace, as if I were not a man of my word. So short was my chain that he shaved my head, to prevent my hair from being singed.”

  Nicco paused to toss his head angrily, setting his long braid to dancing against his back. Arvin, meanwhile, stared at the cleric’s arms, understanding now where the patchwork of scars had come from. They were old and faded.
This had happened long ago.

  “I, too, was a slave … of a sort,” Arvin said. “When I was a boy, I wound up in what was supposedly an orphanage, but was in reality a workhouse. They worked us from dawn until dusk, weaving nets and braiding ropes. Every night when I went to sleep, my hands ached. It felt as though each of my knuckles were a knot, yanked too tight.” He paused and rubbed his joints, remembering. He’d never discussed his years at the orphanage before, but telling Nicco was proving surprisingly easy.

  “My term of servitude was supposed to end when I reached ‘manhood,’” Arvin continued. “But no age was ever specified. My voice broke and began to deepen, and still I wasn’t a man. My chest broadened and hair grew at my groin, but I was still a ‘child.’” He held up his fingers, flexing them. “They weren’t going to let me go. I was too good at what I did. I knew I had to escape, instead.”

  Nicco’s eyes, which had dulled to a smolder, were blazing again. “I, too, was eventually forced to take that road,” he said. “When it was clear that my overseer would never treat me fairly, I began to pray to Assuran—to Hoar. I prayed for justice, for divine retribution. And one day, my prayers were answered.”

  “What happened?” Arvin asked, curious.

  “The overseer tripped. At least, that’s what the other slaves saw. I was the only one to see Hoar’s hand in it. Or rather, to hear it—to realize what it meant. The overseer fell headfirst into the furnace next to mine—just as thunder rumbled above. Varga, the slave working at that furnace, pulled the overseer out, but by the time he did the man’s face was burned away. Despite the intervention of a cleric, he died later that day.”

  Nicco bowed his head. “It was Hoar’s will.”

  “Did things get better after the overseer’s death?” Arvin asked.

  The scowl returned. “They became worse. Varga was accused of having pushed the overseer into the furnace. The evidence given was that Varga did not immediately help the man—that he waited until the overseer was burned beyond help. In fact, it was surprise and shock that caused Varga to stand gaping, not malice. I testified to this at his trial. And I told them the truth—that it was I who had killed the overseer.”