by Lisa Smedman
The excitement was his undoing; it broke his concentration. The cultist jerked his head aside and broke away from Arvin’s gaze then began blinking rapidly. He heaved himself into a sitting position, fingers straining between the coils of rope as he reached for Arvin, who jumped back just in time. Then the cultist’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Talona take me!” he cried. “Enfold me in your sweet embrace. Consume my flesh, my breath, my very soul!”
Though Arvin was certain the cultist was not crying, three amber tears suddenly trickled down the man’s pockmarked cheek. With each wheezing exhalation, the cultist’s lungs pumped out a terrible smell, worse than that of a charnel house stacked with decaying corpses. Arvin staggered back, afraid to breathe but unable to run. He stared in terrified fascination as the sores on the cultist’s body suddenly burst open and began to weep. Violent trembling shook the cultist and his robe was suddenly drenched in sweat. Even from two paces away, Arvin could feel the heat radiating off the man’s body. With horrid certainty, he realized what the cultist had just done—called down a magical contagion upon himself. Had Arvin been crouched just a little closer, and had the man succeeded in touching him, it would have been Arvin lying on the floor, dying.
The cultist’s body was swelling like a corpse left in the sun. In another moment his stomach would expand past the breaking point; already Arvin could hear the creak of flesh preparing to rupture ...
And he was just standing there, staring.
Arvin flung open the warehouse door. As he slammed it behind him, he heard a sound like wet cloth tearing and the splatter of something against the inside of the door. He breathed a sigh of relief at yet another narrow escape, and touched the bead at his throat.
“Nine lives,” he whispered.
He stood for a moment with his back against the door, staring at the people in the street. If the cultist’s boasting was true, their days were numbered. Did Arvin really care if they died of plague? He had hundreds of acquaintances in this city but no friends, now that Naulg was gone. He had no family, either, aside from the uncle who had consigned him to the orphanage.
The sensible thing to do was report what he’d just found out to Zelia and see if she would remove the “seed” from his mind. Whether she did or didn’t, he’d clear out of the city as quickly as possible, since staying only meant dying.
If Zelia had been bluffing, Arvin would be safe—assuming that the plague the Pox were about to unleash stayed confined within Hlondeth’s walls. Even if it didn’t, clerics would stop the spread of the disease eventually—they always had, each time plague swept the Vilhon Reach. Maybe they’d lose Hlondeth before they were able to halt the plague entirely, but that wasn’t Arvin’s problem.
Then he spotted Kolim, sitting on the curb across the street. The boy had his string looped back and forth between his outstretched fingers in the complicated pattern Arvin had taught him. He was trying—without much success and with a frown of intense concentration on his face—to free the bead “fly” from its “web.”
Arvin sighed. He couldn’t just walk away and let Kolim die.
Nor could he walk away from something that might produce orphans for generations to come. He thought of his mother, of the trip that had taken her to the area around Mussum. That city had been abandoned nine hundred years ago, but the plague that had been its ruin lingered in the lands around it still.
If Mussum’s plague had been prevented, Arvin’s mother might never have died. Had there been one man, all those centuries ago, who had held the key to the city’s survival in his hand—only to throw it away?
Arvin realized he really didn’t have a choice. If he left without doing as much as he could, and plague claimed Hlondeth, the ghosts of its people—and everyone who ventured near it and died in the years that followed this—would haunt him until the end of his days.
Including the ghost of little Kolim.
Sighing, he trudged up the street to find Zelia.
CHAPTER 6
23 Kythorn, Fullday
Arvin strode across one of the stone viaducts that arched over Hlondeth’s streets, glad he didn’t have to shoulder his way through the throng of people below. The narrow, open-sided viaduct didn’t bother him the way it did some humans. He was agile enough to feel surefooted, even when forced to squeeze to the very edge to let a yuan-ti pass.
Ahead lay the Solarium, an enormous circular building of green stone topped with a dome of thousands of triangular panes of glass in a metal frame that was reputedly strengthened by magic. The sun struck the west side of the dome, causing it to flare a brilliant orange.
The viaduct led to a round opening in the side of the Solarium. The human slave sitting on a stool just inside it rose to her feet as Arvin approached. She had curly, graying hair and wore, in her left ear, a gold earring in the shape of a serpent consuming its own tail. It helped distract the eye, a little, from the faded S brand on her cheek. She held up a plump, uncalloused hand to stop Arvin as he stepped inside the cool shade of the doorway.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.
Arvin peered past her, down the curved corridor that led to the heart of the building. Side tunnels with rounded ceilings branched off from it, leading to rooms where the yuan-ti shed their clothing. The air was drier than the sticky summer heat outdoors and was spiced with the pungent odor of snake. He was surprised to find no one but this woman watching the entrance; he’d expected at least one militiaman to keep out the rabble.
“A yuan-ti asked me to meet her here,” Arvin told the slave. “Her name is Zelia.”
The slave sniffed. “Humans aren’t allowed to use this entry. You’ll have to wait at the servant’s entrance with the others.”
Behind her, within the Solarium, a yuan-ti that was all snake save for a humanlike head slithered out of a side tunnel. It turned to stare at the humans with slit eyes, tongue flickering as it drank in their scent, then slid away down the corridor in the opposite direction, scales hissing softly against the stone.
Arvin stared down at the slave. She might be twice his age, but he was a head taller. “I’m on state business,” he told her firmly. “Zelia will want to see me at once. If you won’t let me in, then go and find her. Tell her I’m here.”
The slave returned his glare with one of her own. “The Solarium is a place of repose,” she told him. “You can’t expect me to burst in and wake our patrons from their slumber, looking for some woman who may or may not exist.”
Arvin fought down his impatience. Slave this woman might be, but she’d been at her job long enough to consider herself mistress of all who entered the doorway, be they slave or free folk.
“Zelia has red hair and green scales,” Arvin continued. “That should narrow down your search. Tell her Arvin is here to see her with an urgent message about ...” He paused. How to word it ... ? “About diseased rats in the sewers.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood firm, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere until his message was delivered.
The slave tried to stare him down, but her resolve at last wavered. She turned away and snapped her fingers. “Boy!” she shouted.
From a side tunnel came the patter of footsteps. A boy about eight or nine years old, carrying a glass decanter containing pink-tinged water, emerged in response to the doorkeeper’s call. He was barefoot and dressed only in faded gray trousers that had been hacked off at the thigh; his knees and the tops of his feet were rough, as if he’d scraped them repeatedly. His hair was damp with sweat and the S brand on his cheek was still fresh and red.
“This man claims to have been summoned here by one of our patrons,” the doorkeeper told the boy, placing emphasis on the word “summoned,” perhaps to remind Arvin that, while he might be a free man, he was ultimately at the beck and call of the yuan-ti. “Find the yuan-ti Zelia and deliver this message to her.” She relayed Arvin’s message. “Return with her reply.”
The boy ran off down the main tunnel.
Arvin waited, stepping to the side and dropping his gaze as two yuan-ti entered the Solarium and were greeted with low bows by the doorkeeper—who all the while kept one eye on Arvin, as if expecting him to dart into the Solarium at any moment. The boy came running back, this time without the decanter.
“Mistress Zelia says to bring the man to her,” the boy panted.
The doorkeeper was busy directing the yuan-ti who had just entered to one of the side rooms, but Arvin saw her eyebrows rise at the news that Zelia would see him. As the yuan-ti departed down a side corridor, she glared at the boy. “Take him to her, then,” she snapped, “and be quick about it.” She aimed a cuff at the back of the boy’s head, but the boy ducked it easily.
“This way,” he told Arvin.
Arvin followed him down the corridor. The farther along it they went, the hotter and drier—and muskier—the air became. Arvin couldn’t imagine having to spend his whole life working in this snake-stink. It was already making his temples pound. “Here,” he said, fishing a silver piece out of a pocket and holding it out to the boy. “Keep this somewhere safe, where the others won’t find it. Maybe you’ll have enough to buy your freedom, one day.”
The boy eyed the coin in Arvin’s hand suspiciously.
“Nothing is expected of you,” Arvin reassured him. “It’s just a gift.”
The boy plucked the coin from Arvin’s hand and tucked it into his own pocket then grinned. As they reached a point where sunlight flooded into the corridor from the large room beyond, he dropped to his knees, tugging on Arvin’s shirt as he did so. “We’re not allowed to stand,” he whispered.
Arvin wasn’t sure if this rule applied to free men, but he complied. Dropping into a kneel, he followed the boy into the main room of the Solarium, trouser knees scuffing against the floor.
The sunning room of the Solarium was even larger than he’d imagined. The enormous circular chamber, capped by its high dome of glass, was bathed in hot, bright sunlight. Perhaps a hundred or more yuan-ti lounged on a series of low stone platforms on the floor, while snakes of every color and size—either more yuan-ti or their pets—hung from the delicate framework of wooden arches that connected one platform to the next. Some of the yuan-ti could pass for human at a distance while others had obvious serpent tails, heads, or torsos. They lay naked in the bright sunlight, men and women together, in some cases coiled in what Arvin would have assumed were sexual unions were it not for the slow, sleepy languor that pervaded the place. Human slaves—most of them young children—moved between the platforms on their knees, offering the yuan-ti sips of blood-tinged water or thumb-sized locusts, impaled on skewers and still twitching.
The boy led Arvin toward a platform near the center of the room where Zelia lounged with three other yuan-ti who looked almost human. The boy then backed away. Zelia lay on her side, coiled in a position no human could have emulated, her torso bent sharply backward so that her head was pillowed on one calf. She had a lean, muscled body that was soft and round in just the right places. Arvin noted that her scales gave way to a soft fuzz of red hair at her groin and that her breasts were smooth and pink, quite human in appearance. He found himself imagining what it would feel like to have Zelia’s body coiled around his—to feel the contrasting textures of rough, scaly skin and smooth breasts—then realized that Zelia had lifted her head to glance sleepily at him. Arvin, still on his knees, his head level with the ledge on which Zelia lay, dropped his gaze. He concentrated on the floor and waited for her to bid him to speak. The air seemed even hotter and drier than it had been a moment ago; Arvin found himself wetting his lips, just as the yuan-ti around him were doing.
Zelia chuckled, as if at some private joke. “You’ve been hunting sewer rats?” she asked, eyes still half-hooded with sleep. Her tongue tasted the air. “Yet you smell sweet.”
“One of the rats came out of the sewers,” Arvin said. “I caught him.”
Zelia sat up swiftly, her eyes glittering. “Where is he?” The three yuan-ti behind her stirred in their repose, disturbed by her sudden motion. One of them—a man who might have been handsome, save for the hollow fangs that curved down over his lower lip—rolled over and laid an arm across Zelia’s thigh. She slid her leg out from under it.
“The rat is dead,” Arvin answered.
Zelia gave an angry hiss.
“But not by my hand,” he swiftly added. “His ... mistress claimed him. But before he died, I managed to learn what he and the others plan to—”
“Not here,” Zelia cut him off with a fierce whisper. She glanced pointedly at the three other yuan-ti who shared the platform with her. “Follow me and keep silent.”
She slid off the platform in a flowing motion and moved toward the exit—walking at an apparently unhurried pace and nodding her goodbyes to those she passed, but hissing softly under her breath as she went. Arvin followed on his knees, which were already sore despite the trousers that padded them. He wondered how the slave children could stand it, scuffing about on bare knees all day long. He supposed they got used to it, just as he’d gotten used to cramped and blistered fingers when he was a child.
When they reached the corridor, Zelia quickened her pace. Arvin leaped to his feet and trotted after her then waited while she pulled on sandals and a dress scaled with tiny, overlapping ovals of silver. After she had dressed, she led him down a ramp and out onto the street.
They walked uphill for some time past enormous mansions. Human servants and slaves hurried through the streets, intent upon their masters’ business, but parted quickly to make way for Zelia when they saw her coming. The yuan-ti who lived in this part of Hlondeth strolled leisurely along the viaducts that arched above, enjoying the view out over the city walls and the harbor.
As he jostled his way through the crowd that quickly closed in Zelia’s wake, Arvin wondered why she had chosen the street-level, more crowded route. Perhaps because she wanted to avoid having to stop and chat with other yuan-ti, or perhaps because she didn’t want any of those above getting a close look at the human who was accompanying her.
Zelia at last turned off the street and ascended a narrow ramp that spiraled up the side of a tower that was several stories tall. Arvin followed her. The roof of the tower turned out to be flat. It was surrounded by a wrought-iron railing covered in flowering vines. Bees droned lazily among tiny blue flowers. Arvin wondered if the tower was Zelia’s home—if so, she certainly came from a wealthy family. She paused at the top of the ramp to unlock a gate with a key taken from a belt purse at her hip. The gate squeaked open under her touch.
Arvin followed her through the gate into what turned out to be a rooftop garden. On the rooftop were several enormous clay pots, planted with shrubs that had been carefully clipped into shapes reminiscent of coiled serpents. The bushes had obviously been grafted together from several different plants; the colors of the flowers changed abruptly at several points along the length of each coil, mimicking the banded pattern of a snake.
At the center of the rooftop was a fountain. Its gentle splashes filled the air with a cool mist. Arvin wet his dry lips, wishing he could take a sip of the water. Perhaps that would help the headache that was still throbbing in his temples. This was probably one fountain the Pox wouldn’t be able to get to, but still. ...
Zelia closed the gate behind them. “We’ll have privacy here,” she said.
Arvin nodded uneasily as the gate’s lock clicked shut. Despite the vines that screened the railing, he’d noted the intricate pattern of its metalwork. The wrought iron formed an inscription, which, judging by the one character Arvin could make out, was written in Draconic. Arvin couldn’t read Draconic but had once painstakingly memorized a handful of its characters so that he could include them in his knotwork. It was a language well suited for sorcery. He hoped—and this hope was reinforced by Zelia’s assurance of privacy—that whatever magic the rail worked was designed to keep people out, rather than in.
Zelia turned to him and spoke without preamble
. “Tell me what happened.”
Arvin did, describing how he’d spotted the cultist in the street, and then he told her everything that had followed from there. He expected Zelia to raise her eyebrows when he told her his conclusions about what the Pox were up to—tainting Hlondeth’s water supply—but she merely nodded. If anything, she seemed slightly disappointed by what he’d just told her.
“The cultist said Talona would purge the city ‘soon,’ ” Arvin noted. “I don’t think he’d have gloated that way if they planned to taint the water supply months from now. It sounded as though they were going to put their plan into action within a tenday, at most. I hope that will give you time to—”
Zelia held up a hand, interrupting him. “Your conclusions are ... interesting,” she said. “I suppose time will prove whether they’re correct.”
Arvin frowned, not understanding Zelia’s apparent lack of concern. “Humans aren’t the only ones who drink from the public fountains,” he told her. “Not all yuan-ti live in mansions with private wells. Some are sure to quench their thirst at the fountains, and though they may be immune to poison, they can still die of plague—and spread it to others. Unless ...” He paused, as a thought suddenly occurred to him. Did Zelia know something that he didn’t? Did yuan-ti have a natural immunity to plague, as well as poison?
Even if they did, a city with ninety-five percent of its population ill or dying wouldn’t serve their interests.
When Arvin reminded her of this fact, Zelia gave him a cold smile. “I am well aware of the role humans play in Hlondeth,” she told him. “And I agree. The cultists must be stopped.”
Arvin nodded, relieved. It was out of his hands. He could step back and let Zelia—and the powerful people who backed her—deal with the crisis from here on in.
“I suppose it will be a simple matter of stationing militia at every public drinking fountain and arresting the cultists as they appear,” he said, thinking out loud. “Or are you going to try to capture them before they make their move?”
