Vanity's brood

CHAPTER 1

Arvin stared down into the bowl of water that served as his makeshift mirror, concentrating. Energy prickled through two of his body's five power points; he could feel it swirling in tight circles around his navel and flowing outward in ripples that concentrated again at the center of his chest. The air filled with the scents of ginger and saffron, the smells growing stronger with each long, slow exhalation.

A sheen of ectoplasm blossomed on his skin like glistening sweat as he manifested his power. Studying his reflection, he watched as snake scales erupted on his skin. With a thought he turned them from flesh-pink to black, banded with thin stripes of gray. His collar-length, dark brown hair also turned

black and melded itself against his head, as did his ears, giving him a more serpentine appearance. Hornlike ridges of scale appeared above each eye-the distinctive trait of the adder he was impersonating. His mouth widened; opening his loosely hinged jaw, he watched as his eye teeth elongated into curved fangs. Bulges formed below each ear: poison glands. A gleaming drop of venom beaded at the tip of one fang. He flicked it away with a tongue that tingled fiercely; as he concentrated, his tongue lengthened, its tip splitting into a fork.

He turned his head, searching for any hint of the human he had been a moment ago. His sandals and clothes remained unchanged, though the loose cotton shirt and pants he wore caught slightly on his rough scales. Karrell's ring-a wide gold band, set with a large turquoise stone-was still on the little finger of his left hand. Seeing it there, he blinked away a sudden sting of tears. Then he concentrated on that finger, which had been severed, years ago, at the joint closest to its tip. Flesh tingled as the finger elongated and sprouted a new fingernail. It felt odd, having a little finger that was whole again. Odder still to see a layer of small black scales on his hands and forearms and on his face. The musky odor of snake rose from his skin.

He curled his lip at the smell.

His body had slimmed as it morphed, the belt around his waist loosening. He lifted his shirt and tightened it and felt his dagger sheath snug up against the small of his back. Then he raised a hand to his cheek and scratched the still-tingling skin. The scales were as itchy and rough as a new beard.

Satisfied that no one would recognize him, he bent and picked up his pack. His body felt loose, supple, and he swayed into the motion as if he had been born a yuan-ti. A satisfied hiss slid from his lips. It was the perfect disguise.

It wouldn't last long, and before it ended, he had a score to settle.

That very night, Sibyl would die.

He stepped out of the but he'd ducked into to undergo his metamorphosis-one of the huts the city slaves stored their tools in-and walked up a narrow street hemmed in by high walls, a section of Hlondeth that was one of the oldest parts of the city. Several of its buildings were made of dull red stone, instead of the glowing green marble that had later become the city's trademark. Most were noble residences-coiling towers and domed mansions that mimicked the city's most famous landmark, the Cathedral of Emerald Scales. Behind the walls lay private gardens; Arvin could hear the fountains in them gurgling. He wet dry lips. It had been another sweltering summer day, one that left him feeling drained. Even though the sun was setting, the air was still sticky-hot. He'd love a drink of cool water but couldn't stop to slake his thirst.

The streets were narrow and shadowed, mere paths between the high, curved walls. They were used primarily by human slaves. Their masters-the yuan-ti-slithered along the viaducts that arched gracefully overhead.

As Arvin started to turn into a side street, he heard something behind him. A premonition of danger came to him. He whirled, fangs bared, ready to defend himself-only to see a small, scruffy-looking dog with golden fur. It stood about knee-high and had large, upright ears that gave it a foxlike appearance. It stared at Arvin, tongue lolling, probably hoping for a handout. Arvin hissed, and it scampered away.

The street dead-ended after a dozen paces at a simple, one-room shrine whose roof had long since fallen in. The walls on either side of the building pressed against it, squeezing it like the coils of a serpent. The door was gone, as if burst from its hinges under the strain.

The shrine had been built nearly thirteen centuries ago, shortly after the first great plague swept the city. It commemorated Saint Aganna, a cleric and healer who had lost her fingers to the rot caused by what came to be known as the clinging death. An icon of the saint was attached to the rear wall of the shrine, above the altar stone, its oils almost faded to the color of the wood it had been painted on. It showed the saint offering up her fingers on a platter to Ilmater. Despite the loss of her fingers, Saint Aganna had remained in the city, using her prayers to heal the sick. The clinging death had eventually taken her, but until it did she labored without pause, tending the sick until she was too weak to heal herself. Those whose lives she had saved kept her memory alive by building the shrine.

Hlondeth had been a human city in those days. In the centuries since, the yuan-ti had become dominant, and the yuan-ti worshiped the serpent god Sseth. Shrines like the one to Saint Aganna were all but forgotten, known only to the handful of humans who still worshiped the Crying God. Arvin, placed under the care of those priests in an orphanage, had been taken, years ago, to visit Saint Aganna's shrine as a "reward" for having knotted the most nets in a month. The sight of shriveled fingers on a platter, however, had terrified him, as had the faint rotten-egg smell that lingered within the shrine-an odor he had been certain was the lingering taint of plague. The priest, however, had explained to the near-panicked boy that the smell came from the shrine's cellar, which the yuan-ti had tunneled into and turned into a brood chamber. When Arvin had worried about the yuan-ti bursting out of the cellar to defend their eggs, the priest had chuckled. The

cellar had been abandoned, he explained, many years ago. The yuan-ti no longer defiled it.

Arvin thanked Tymora, goddess of luck, for having woven that vital piece of information into his lifepath.

For the past six months, since returning from Sespech, Arvin had been gathering information about the ancient temple in which Sibyl had made her lair. He knew it had been built to honor the beast lord Varae, an aspect of Sseth, and that it lay somewhere beneath the city at the heart of an even older network of catacombs. Abandoned long before Hlondeth was even built, the temple had been rediscovered by the Extaminos family in the sixth century and used for several years as a place of worship by that House. It had been abandoned a second time after the Cathedral of Emerald Scales was completed. Over the intervening three and a half centuries, it had largely been forgotten. Nobody in Hlondeth-save for Sibyl's followers-knew exactly where it was or how to get to it.

There was a text, however-one of several obtained by Arvin at great expense through his guild connections-that described a way in. It had been written by a man named Villim. Extaminos in the late sixth century DR. In it, Villim had made a veiled reference to a trap door that led directly to the temple catacombs-a door that could only be opened by "the lady without fingers."

Saint Aganna. The entrance to the shrine's "cellar" was probably behind the icon.

The altar, Arvin saw, had sunk into the floor in the eighteen years since his visit with the priest; any offerings placed on it today would slide off its steeply canted surface. He climbed onto it and stood, studying the icon. It was even more faded than he remembered. He could barely make out the white, wormlike fingers on the platter Saint Aganna held.

Arvin grasped one edge of the icon and gently tugged. As he'd expected, the painting was mounted on the wall with hinges-hinges that tore free, leaving Arvin with the heavy wooden panel in his arms. He staggered back and nearly fell from the altar. Once he'd recovered his balance, he lowered the icon to the floor and studied the portion of the wall it had concealed. A close inspection revealed five faint circular marks-slight depressions in the stone. Pushing them in the wrong order might spring a trap. A poisoned needle, perhaps. or a sprung blade that would sever a finger.

Arvin wrenched a splinter of wood from the top of the icon and used it to push each of the depressions in turn. He tried several sequences-left to right, right to left, every other depression-but nothing worked. Frustrated, he stared at them, thinking. They were arranged, he saw, in a slight arc. As if…

He lifted a hand, fingers splayed, then smiled. One depression lay under the tip of each finger and thumb. The solution, he realized, was to push all of them at once.

He did.

He felt movement under his forefinger and little finger-each sank into the stone up to the first joint. Then they abruptly stopped. Flakes of red drifted out of the holes when he pulled his fingers out.

The mechanism was rusted solid.

Arvin braced a shoulder against the wall and shoved, but nothing happened. He shoved again-then gasped as the altar teetered with a grinding of stone on stone. Realizing his weight was about to send it crashing into the chamber below, he leaped off.

"Nine lives," he whispered, touching the crystal that hung from a leather thong around his neck. Then he smiled. The secret door behind the icon wasn't the only way into the catacombs.

Placing his hands on the lower end of the altar,

he shoved. The slab of stone moved downward-then slipped and fell. As it tumbled into the chamber below, Arvin manifested a power, wrapping the block of stone in a muffle of psionic energy. Though the crash of the altar against the floor below sent a tremble through the shrine, the only sound was a soft rustle, no louder than a silk scarf landing gently on the floor.

Dust rose through the opening as Arvin peered down into it. Sunlight slanting through the hole dimly illuminated the chamber below. The floor was littered with what looked like deflated leather balls: the remains of yuan-ti eggs. All had hatched long ago; what remained was brown and withered. The walls bore some sort of plaster work, done in relief-knobby sculptural elements that Arvin couldn't make out from above.

He pulled a rope from his pack and laid it out on the floor, doubling the rope back on itself to form a T-shape. He tied a knot, then stretched the short bar of the T from one edge of the hole to the other, letting the longer piece dangle down inside.

"Saxum," he whispered. The rope turned to stone. He slid down what had become a pole, then whispered a second command word: "Restis." The rope returned to its original form and slithered down into his hands.

He looked around as he untied the knot and stowed the rope away. The walls and ceiling of the chamber were decorated not with plaster reliefs but with human bones. On one wall, individual vertebrae and ribs had been arranged in floral patterns around a skull flanked by two shoulder blades that gave the appearance of wings. On another, leg and arm bones by the hundreds formed borders around still more skulls, arranged in circular rosettes. On the ceiling, thousands of finger bones were arranged in a starlike motif. A chandelier made from curved

ribs and yet more vertebrae, wired together, creaked as it rocked slowly back and forth, disturbed by the fall of the altar.

On yet another wall was a gruesome parody of a sundial, arm bones dividing a circle of tiny skulls into the four quarters of morning, fullday, evening and darkmorning. Arvin's mouth twisted in disgust as he realized the skulls were from human infants. Stepping closer, he saw that the skulls were cracked, in some cases smashed in on one side; they must have been sacrificial victims. He touched one of the tiny skulls and it crumbled under the slight pressure of his fingertip, the fragments sifting down onto the floor like ash. The skulls were a poignant contrast with the hatched eggs that littered the floor-death and birth. The ones who had done the dying, of course, were human.

So were the ones who had done the killing. The Temple of Varae-and the catacombs-had been built long before the yuan-ti came to the Vilhon Reach.

There was one exit from the chamber, a doorway whose arch was framed in bones. It led to a flight of stairs that descended into darkness.

Arvin pulled a glass vial out of his pocket, pulled out its cork stopper, and drank the potion it contained. The liquid slid down his throat, leaving a honey-sweet aftertaste of night-blooming flowers and loam. The inky blackness that filled the staircase lightened as walls, stairs, and ceiling resolved into shades of gray and black.

He walked cautiously down the stairs, at several points having to duck to avoid decorative elements in the rounded ceiling where bones had been used to create mock arches. They gave the staircase an unnerving similarity to the gullet of a snake-something Villim had commented on in his text. Arvin shivered as a dangling finger bone

brushed against the top of his head and clattered to the ground. He tensed, expecting one of Sibyl's followers to appear at any moment.

None did.

The air was cool and clammy, like cold sweat. He found himself missing the stifling heat he'd left behind.

The staircase should have ended in a hallway that led, according to Villim's text, to the temple. Instead, it ended in a jumble of fallen stone. In the eight centuries since Villim had penned his text, the ceiling must have collapsed.

Arvin swore softly and kicked at a loose stone. It rolled-farther than it should have. Bending down, he discovered a narrow gap, beyond which lay a wider passage. Clearing away the rubble that blocked it, Arvin realized it must be the tunnel the yuan-ti had used to reach the chamber in which they'd laid their eggs. It was too low to crawl through with a backpack on; he'd have to drag the pack behind him. He tied it by a short length of rope to one ankle then lay prone and wormed his way into the tunnel.

The narrow passage wound its way through the collapsed masonry, up and over sharp bits of stone that scraped Arvin's arms and legs and under jutting blocks that he would have banged his head against, had he not been able to see in the dark. Being in yuan-ti form helped. His increased flexibility enabled him to slither around corners a human would have been unable to negotiate.

At one point the tunnel constricted, forcing him to wriggle forward on his belly with arms extended in front of him. Claustrophobia gripped him a moment later when his pack got caught in the narrow section, jerking him to a halt like an anchor. He was trapped! He would lie there, entombed with Varae's victims, until he starved to death. He scraped at the

rope around his ankle with his other foot, trying to free himself from it-then realized what he was doing. If he left the pack behind, he'd lose his chance to settle his score with Sibyl-the abomination who had killed both his best friend and the woman he loved.

"Control," he whispered.

He blinked away the sweat that trickled down into his eyes and licked his lips with a long, forked tongue. The sweat tasted slightly acidic, reminding him that he was in yuan-ti form. The serpent folk had wriggled through that narrow spot to reach their brood chamber, and Arvin should be able to do the same. It was just a matter of freeing his pack.

He worked it back and forth, prodding it with a foot, then jerked against the rope tied to it. Eventually the pack came free. Relieved, he crawled on.

The tunnel ended a short distance ahead, opening into a chamber illuminated with flickering red light that washed out Arvin's darkvision. A hissing noise filled the chamber: the soft, slow exhalations of serpents.

Dozens of them.

Arvin sent his mind deep into his muladhara, the source of psionic energy that lay at the base of his spine, then summoned energy up through the base of his scalp and into his forehead. He sent his awareness down the tunnel ahead of him, into the chamber beyond. The thoughts of the yuan-ti inside it, however, were not what he'd expected. He'd been prepared for guards, alert and suspicious. The thoughts of these yuan-ti were languid, jumbled, confused. As if… yes, that was it; they were dreaming. The mind of one was filled with images of a jungle, of a tree whose snake-headed branches had become tangled in a hopeless knot. Another dreamed that the viaducts that arched over Hlondeth were growing together, forming a stone lattice overhead.

A third dreamed she was basking on a stone that had suddenly grown unbearably hot, but someone held her tail, preventing her from slithering away. Others dreamed of gardens that had become choked with weeds, of hatchlings that struggled to tear open the leathery eggs that enclosed them, and of ropes that turned into snakes and slithered into a mating ball that could not be untangled. All of the dreams were different, yet all had one thing in common: a restlessness-a need to do something-and a frustrating inability to grasp what that something might be.

Arvin withdrew his awareness from the dreamers, wondering what to do next. He'd planned to pass himself off as one of Sibyl's worshipers, bearing tribute for the avatar. He'd spent months studying the practices of Sseth's faithful, learning the gestures of propitiation and the hisses of praise. Sunset was one of the chief times of worship, the time when the yuan-ti ended the day's heat-induced lethargy with feasting and praise.

He hadn't expected to find Sibyl's worshipers deep in slumber.

He couldn't wait for them to awaken, however. His metamorphosis would wear off soon. He crawled forward, determined to either find someone who was awake or to find Sibyl on his own.

As Arvin drew nearer to the chamber, a wisp of amber-colored smoke curled down the tunnel toward him, bearing an odor he recognized: a combination of mint, burning moss, and sap. Osssra!The flickering light, he saw, came from flames dancing across a bowl of the burning oil-the same oil whose fumes had nearly poisoned him when he'd forced his way into an audience with Dmetrio Extaminos, royal prince of Hlondeth. In morphed form, Arvin would be immune to the worst of its toxic effects-but that didn't mean he wouldn't wind up drowsy and dreaming, like the yuan-ti in the chamber, if he inhaled it. Worried, he crawled out of the tunnel and untied his pack from his ankle. If he moved quickly, he might make his way through the chamber before he breathed in too much of the smoke.

The yuan-ti were sprawled together in loose- limbed heaps on the floor around the burning bowls of osssra, heads lolling in slumber. Breathing as shallowly as he could, Arvin stepped quickly across them, making for the chamber's only door. This chamber, like the previous one, was decorated with human bones. Here, however, complete skeletons had been used. They were wired together and attached to the walls inside arches made of vertebrae. One of the skeletons, just to the right of the door, was that of a woman, the tiny skeleton of an unborn child arranged within her pelvic bones.

A wave of nausea swept over Arvin. Karrell had been pregnant when she died, pregnant with his children. Eyes stinging, he reached for the handle of the door, but before he could open it, something twined around his ankle. Startled, he gasped-then realized he'd inhaled a deep lungful of smoke.

Looking down, he saw the snake-headed arm of one of the sleepers, coiled around his leg. "Stay," it hissed while the rest of the yuan-ti's body slept. "Dream with us."

Made drowsy by the smoke, Arvin yawned, inadvertently drawing in another lungful of it. He shook his head, but it couldn't dislodge the cobwebs of dream that clung to the edges of his thoughts. In that dream, he ran through a jungle, trying to escape from a slit-pupilled eye the size of the sun. It stared down at him from above, then suddenly became a mouth, which opened, drooling blood. Out of it fluttered a brown, withered egg shell. It landed on the ground next to him, staring up at him with Karrell's face. Long black hair splayed around her severed head like the rays of an extinguished sun. Her eyes were flat and dead in the wrinkled brown face. The jade earring in her left ear wriggled free, and the small green frog opened its mouth and gave a squeaking croak-a baby's shrill cry of need.

Arvin shook his head, purging the nightmare from his mind by sheer force of will. Shaking the snake-arm off his leg, he wrenched open the door and stumbled into a brightly lit hallway. He slammed the door behind him and took in several deep lungsful of cool, clean air. How long had he been standing there, lost in the dream? However long it had been, it had cost him precious time. His body was already starting to tingle. His metamorphosis would end soon.

"Well?" a soft voice beside him asked.

A yuan-ti holding a parchment and quill sat a short distance away, her limbless lower body coiled on a bench against one wall. Long red hair framed an angular face, and for a moment Arvin was reminded of Zelia, the woman who had become his nemesis, but this yuan-ti had red scales, instead of green. She raised her quill, an expectant look on her face.

"Your dreams?" she hissed-softly, as if not wanting to break the tenuous thread that connected dreaming and wakefulness.

Arvin wet his lips-a gesture that sent his long forked tongue flicking out toward her, sending a drop of spittle onto the parchment she held. Her upper lip twitched, baring the tips of her fangs-a gesture that often preceded a bite.

Arvin started to flinch, then remembered that he was supposed to be a yuan-ti. No, he was yuanti, at least for the duration of his metamorphosis. Drawing himself up imperiously-yuan-ti never apologized, even to another yuan-ti-he bared the

tips of his own fangs. He and the scribe locked eyes for a moment-and the scribe was the first to look away. As she did, Arvin manifested the power that would allow him to listen in on her thoughts. She swayed slightly, tipping her head as if listening to a distant sound, and her thoughts tumbled into Arvin's mind.

She was annoyed at him-how dare he threaten her! The mistress had given her a sacred task to fulfill, and she would not let a petty annoyance get in the way. Later, perhaps, she might exact her revenge, but for now, the important thing was to record whatever dreams the osssra had induced.

Arvin decided to get that part over with, then ask where Sibyl was.

"In my dream, I was in a jungle," he told the scribe.

She dipped her quill in the pot of ink that sat on the bench beside her and started scribbling. The script was narrow and flowing, a series of lines that looked like elaborately looped scratch marks, punctuated by blots of ink. Draconic.

Wary that his own nightmare might reveal some hidden human quality, Arvin repeated a dream Karrell had related to him just before she was killed: of being a mouse, struggling within the grip of a serpent. His voice cracked a little on the final words. He remembered how vulnerable Karrell had looked as she lay on the bench in Helm's chapel, her expression pinched and her fingers twitching as she fought, in her dream, to free herself. Seeing that, he'd been worried that Zelia had seeded her-that Zelia had used her psionics to plant, deep within Karrell's mind, a tiny seed of psionic energy that would eventually grow, choking out Karrell's own consciousness like a weed and replacing it with a copy of Zelia.

That hadn't been the case. The dream Karrell had been having was just a simple nightmare, rather

than a dream-taste of Zelia's thoughts.

The real nightmare had come later, when Karrell was yanked into the Abyss by a marilith.

Arvin's awareness was still hooked deep inside the scribe's mind. She was disappointed by what he'd told her; it offered nothing new.

"That wasn't very helpful, was it?" Arvin asked.

"No," she agreed, blowing on the parchment to dry the ink. "It wasn't." Certainly not worth bothering Mistress Sibyl with, her thoughts silently added, especially in the middle of the welcoming ceremony.

Arvin's heart quickened. The scribe knew where Sibyl was. He needed to convince her that he must be conveyed to her mistress at once, but how?

He thought quickly. Slumber-and dream-were important parts of Sseth's worshlp. In midwinter, a select few of the serpent god's priests underwent the Sagacious Slumber, a month-long hibernation during which they communed with their god, gaining new spells, but that didn't seem to be what was going on here. It sounded as thought Sibyl was looking for something in the dreams of her worshipers.

Arvin had an idea what it might be: a clue to the whereabouts of the Circled Serpent, an artifact Dmetrio Extaminos had found during his restoration of the Scaled Tower one year ago. Sibyl's minions had managed to get their hands on half of the Circled Serpent, but the other half was still in Dmetrio's possession. He'd hidden it so well, even Karrell hadn't been able to find it.

If Arvin's guess was right, he would be conveyed directly to Sibyl, welcoming ceremony or not. If not

He decided he'd take the risk. He stared up at the ceiling as if lost in thought. "There was more," he told the scribe, "a second part to my dream."

"Yes?" she said, dipping her quill in the pot of ink that sat on the bench next to her. She gave a soft, hissing sigh. Her thoughts-which Arvin was still reading-held a note of bored indulgence. He was attracted to her-most males were-and he wanted to keep talking. He was probably making the second part up, she decided.

"There was a serpent," Arvin continued. "A silver serpent. Its body was coiled back upon itself in a circle." He sketched a circle in the air with his hands. "It was swallowing its own tail."

Arvin fought to contain his smile as he listened to the scribe's thoughts race. She scribbled furiously. It was exactly what she'd been waiting to hear. Mistress Sibyl had instructed her-personally instructed her! — to pay close attention to any mention of circled serpents.

"Go on," she prompted.

"A man was holding the silver serpent-a yuanti," Arvin continued, "a man with a high forehead, narrow nose, and dark, swept-back hair."

The scribe frowned as she wrote that down. Arvin had neglected to mention scale color and pattern, the first thing a yuan-ti typically mentioned, when describing another of his race.

"Oh yes," Arvin said, as if suddenly remembering. "There was something odd about him. He didn't have any scales. His skin was almost… human."

He managed to inject a shudder of disgust into the word that satisfied the scribe. "Did you recognize him?" she asked.

"I think it was Dmetrio Extaminos," Arvin answered.

While she recognized the name, it didn't trigger the sudden rush of excitement Arvin had expected. The scribe, he decided, had been told only so much.

"Where was he?" she asked. "In your dream."

"He was in…" Arvin said that much then deliberately halted.

He didn't know where the royal prince was. Nobody else in the city did either-at least, nobody the guild had been able to question. After being recalled from Sespech six months ago, Hlondeth's former ambassador had made a brief appearance at the palace then simply disappeared. Arvin had tried to contact Dmetrio with a sending, but it had met with the same lack of success as his attempts to contact Karrell. Dmetrio was either dead or shielded by powerful magic.

"Yes?" the scribe prompted.

Arvin drew himself up in a stiff pose and looked down his nose at her. "That, I think, is something for the ears of our mistress alone, hatchling." He used the diminutive term, despite the fact that he had assumed an appearance that wasn't much older than the scribe.

She hissed softly at the verbal bite. How dare he, she thought. She, a ssethssar of the temple, and he a mere lay worshiper! She started to bare her fangs then remembered the task she had been charged with. The mistress would be displeased, indeed, if this impertinent male died before his dream was recorded.

"Mistress Sibyl is too busy to meet with you," she began. "Tell me your dream. I will ensure-"

"Yes, yes, I know," Arvin said, waving a hand. It was tingling fiercely, the scales on it starting to shrink. Already the belt around his waist felt tighter. "The welcoming ceremony. I was supposed to be part of it but chose to dream instead. Take me to Sibyl-immediately."

That made her blink. He dared address the mistress by name alone? Perhaps she'd misjudged him. A few of the high serphidians had attended Dreamings in the past, but he wasn't one she recognized. She took careful note of his face-then blinked as she noticed it was changing. The black-and-gray scales were melting away into human flesh…

A spy! her mind shrieked. I mustThe scribe raised her hands to cast a spell. As she began reciting her prayer, Arvin manifested a power. He was already inside her mind, which made it easier, but in order for his deception to work he needed to manifest two powers at once.

He peeled back her layers of memory, starting with the sound she was currently hearing: the tinkling noise that was his power's secondary manifestation. Working backward from there, he erased the moment of realization that he was a not yuan-ti, but human-a spy-and the memory of his scales disappearing and human features emerging. At the same time, he remanifested his metamorphosis, restoring his body to serpent form.

In the middle of his mental labors. the scribe's spell went off and a snakelike whip of glowing red energy lashed out from her hand. It slapped across his shoulder, burning through the fabric of his shirt and sending a hot wave of pain through the flesh below. Arvin gasped, fighting to maintain his concentration. For a moment, it almost slipped away-scales stopped blossoming on his body, and the scribe managed to lay down another layer of memory: an image of Arvin as he shuddered under her mystic lash.

Then he regained control. He stripped this memory away, together with several others, peeling her memories down to the point just before his metamorphosis had ended, leaving her with the memory of him ordering her to take him to Sibyl. At the same time, he completed his transformation, forcing his body back into yuan-ti form.

When it was over, he was no longer listening to

her thoughts, but he could guess what they were. She would wonder why he was suddenly panting and sweaty, why he was turning his shoulder away from her, as if hiding something.

"You're… unwell?" she asked, her voice uncertain.

"Uneasy," he corrected. "The dream left me… uneasy. It is sure to unsettle Si-Mistress Sibyl-as well. The sooner I describe it to her, the better." He waved a hand, as if dismissing her. "Take me to her now. I will follow."

"Yes, High Serphidian," she said.

Laying down her quill and parchment, she slid off the bench and slithered up the hallway. Arvin followed, shifting the strap of his backpack to cover the bright red stripe of burned flesh on his shoulder.

She led him for some distance through the catacombs along a route so convoluted Arvin became lost. He doubted he'd be able to find the dreaming chamber again, then laughed grimly as he realized that it probably wouldn't matter. He'd accepted the fact that killing Sibyl would probably be the last thing he ever did. With Karrell gone, his own life no longer mattered. What he needed to focus on was making sure the attack was successful.

After a while, the bone decorations were replaced by bare stone walls that had been carved in a pattern that resembled scales. Arvin's heart quickened as he realized they were approaching Sibyl's lair. Villim's text had described Varae's temple as having walls like these. Several times the scribe led Arvin through arches that had arcane symbols graven into their stonework. Arvin's skin tingled as he passed through their magical fields. Though his heart raced each time he felt the wash of magical energy, no alarm sounded. Karrell's ring protected him, shielding his thoughts and suppressing any

auras that might have given him away as an enemy of Sibyl.

The ancient temple, a veritable stronghold, was crowded with yuan-ti. The scribe led Arvin past an egg-filled brood chamber that was warmed by crackling braziers and a great hall in which dozens of yuan-ti feasted on an enormous millipede whose head and tail had been staked to either end of a long dining table. The diners tore out chunks of the still-wriggling insect, and washed it down with blood-tinged wine.

Along the way, they passed several guards: grotesque, hulking blends of human and reptile that bore an unsettling resemblance to the hideous creature Arvin's best friend Naulg had become, after being forced to drink the Pox's transformative poison. Arvin gave a mental shudder as he passed them and had to work hard to keep his expression neutral.

Eventually they came to a chapel in which clerics coiled in reverent prayer before a statue, carved from gold-veined black marble, of a winged serpent with four arms and enormous rubies for eyes.

A statue of Sibyl.

One of the clerics turned to watch Arvin and the scribe as they passed-then hurried out of the chapel to clap a hand on Arvin's shoulder-his burned shoulder. With an effort, Arvin prevented himself from wincing. A sheen of acidic sweat broke out on his face.

"Where are you going?" the cleric hissed.

The cobra hood that surrounded his otherwise human looking face flared as he spoke. A forked red tongue flickered out of his mouth, tasting the air next to Arvin's cheek.

Arvin knew that his morphed body would smell as yuan-ti as the real thing, yet he was hard-pressed to damp down the unease he felt. The yuan-ti was a

cleric, a serphidian of Sseth, and a powerful one, judging by the elaborate cape he wore. The scales sewn onto the garment had been fashioned of fingernail- thin slivers of precious gems, which glittered in the lanternlight that filled the corridor. The cleric would know dozens of spells, perhaps one powerful enough to strip Arvin of his disguise.

"We are going to the altar room," the scribe answered. "This one dreamed of the Circled Serpent. I am taking him to the mistress."

"The Se'sehen are arriving," the cleric said. "The mistress is busy welcoming them." He turned to Arvin. "Your dream can wait."

"That's true," Arvin said, shrugging his backpack off his shoulders, "but this can't."

As he spoke, he manifested a power that would allow him to falsify one of the cleric's senses-in this case, the sense of sight. The cleric was a difficult subject. Arvin had to force his way into the man's mind with a mental shove that he worried might give him away. The cleric shook his head, as if trying to clear his ears of an annoying ringing.

As Arvin opened his pack, allowing the cleric to inspect its contents, he shaped what the other man saw. The pack actually held a net Arvin had spent the past three months weaving from yellow musk creeper vines-a net ensorcelled with the ability to entangle its victim upon a spoken command-but what the cleric "saw" as he opened the pack was something entirely different:

A gleaming half-circle of silver.

Half of the Circled Serpent.

Arvin closed the pack and withdrew from the man's mind. When he looked up, the high serphidian had an eager look on his face.

Arvin could guess what the man was thinking- that he, rather than a lowly scribe, should be the one

to deliver the Circled Serpent half to Sibyl. He was probably also weighing his chances of overpowering Arvin and taking the backpack from him. The cleric glanced at the distinctive ridges above Arvin's eyes then looked away, obviously deciding not to take on an opponent whose venom was more potent than his own.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Sithis," Arvin answered, giving a common yuanti name-one that was much more pronounceable with a forked tongue. "I'm one of Ssarmn's men," he added.

He waited, tense, wondering if his ploy would work. Ssarmn was the slaver from Skullport who had supplied Sibyl with the potion that would have turned the humans of Hlondeth into her slaves, had Arvin not thwarted her plan. That had been a year ago, but with luck-Arvin resisted the urge to touch the crystal at his neck-Ssarmn was still involved in Sibyl's operation.

"Ah," the high serphidian hissed. He waved the scribe away. "You may leave," he ordered. "Return to the dreaming chamber."

"But-"

The protest died on her lips at the look the high serphidian gave her. Cowed, she turned back the way she had come, but not without taking a good, long. quizzical look at Arvin's burned shoulder, revealed since he'd removed his pack. Arvin tried to manifest the power that would erase that glimpse from her memory, but before he could she had slithered out of range.

Motioning for Arvin to follow, the cleric led Arvin to a corridor that curved downward. The inside wall of the spiraling ramp was punctuated with vertical slits, and through these Arvin heard a sound like the hissing of waves on a beach. Glancing through

one of the slits, he caught sight of a circular room, far below, bathed in lanternlight. Its floor was covered in thousands of snakes of every size and color imaginable. They slithered in a steady flow around a raised dais of glossy black obsidian.

Several times during their descent toward that room, Arvin heard a popping noise over the hissing of the snakes. He saw what was causing the sound when they reached the bottom of the ramplike corridor. One moment, the dais was bare; the next, a yuan-ti materialized on it. The dais must have been a portal, linked with some distant place.

The yuan-ti who had appeared on the portal was dressed in a white loincloth, high laced sandals, and a cape made from the pelt-complete with head-of a jungle cat whose golden fur was spotted with black. A necklace of heavy gold beads hung against his scaled chest, and on his head was perched an elaborate headdress decorated with circles of jade.

Arvin winced at the irony. The noble was from the Se'sehen tribe-Karrell's tribe-the people she'd come north in an effort to save.

Even though they were allies of Sibyl.

A cobra rose from the slithering mass and obediently presented its flared hood for use as a stepping stone. The noble stepped onto it. Other cobras did the same. Moving from one head to the next, the yuanti crossed the tangle of serpents that surrounded the dais, making his way toward a doorway whose frame was the gaping mouth of the beast lord's face. Tho cleric, meanwhile, led Arvin around the edge of the room-the snakes parted to clear a path for them-toward the same exit.

"Remain silent," he hissed. "I will announce you."

Arvin followed, tense with the knowledge that he was so close to his goal. Acidic-smelling sweat

trickled down his temple, and he brushed it away. Ahead-down the curved corridor that connected the portal room to the one beyond-he could hear murmuring voices. Not one but dozens of Se'sehen must have come through the portal. In the chamber ahead, Arvin could see a large cluster of similarly garbed nobles. Moving among them were gem-caped high serphidians like the one Arvin followed, as well as a handful of yuan-ti in finery common to the Vilhon Reach: nobles from Hlondeth.

One of the high clerics, a woman, had hair that consisted of dozens of tiny, intertwined serpents. He knew her by reputation-everyone who lived in Hlondeth did-but had never expected to meet her face to face. She was Medusanna of House Mhairdaul, elder serpent of the Cathedral of Emerald Scales, high cleric of Hlondeth's most prominent temple, a yuan-ti abomination who was rumored to be able to petrify with a mere glance.

As the cleric led Arvin into the chamber, Medusanna turned to stare at them. She had been talking in the language of the Se'sehen with one of the nobles. Arvin's heart lurched as he heard a word he recognized-one that Karrell had taught him. Kiich pan. Beautiful. Swallowing his emotion, Arvin met Medusanna's eyes with a steady look and silently prayed that his disguise would hold-and that the rumors were wrong.

It did, and they were.

Instead of resuming her conversation, Medusanna continued to stare at Arvin as the cleric led him deeper into the gathering.

The chamber in which the Se'sehen and clerics had assembled had a ceiling whose stonework was set with a profusion of metal blades that hung, point down, giving the appearance of fangs. All were rusted and some had fallen out like rotten teeth,

leaving holes behind. The walls to the right and left were carved with depictions of the beast lord in his various animal forms, each with a serpent draped around its shoulders and whispering in his ear. Between them were arched corridors that led off into darkness, five on either wall.

At the far end of the room stood a broad stone altar, carved to resemble a serpent coiled upon a clutch of eggs and flanked by two stone pillars-the twin tails of the serpent. Between these swirled a cloud of darkness that even Arvin's potion-enhanced vision didn't quite penetrate. Just in front of the altar, a rusted iron serpent statue held an enormous sphere of crystal in its jaws. Arvin swallowed, worried. If Sibyl appeared to her followers inside the crystal ball, instead of in person, all his efforts of the past six months would have boen for nothing.

The darkness between the pillars began to swirl, as if an invisible fan stirred it. As it did, the yuanti assembled in the chamber fell silent. Then they began to chant. "Ssssi-byl. Ssssi-byl. Ssssi-byl." Arvin found himself swaying ln time with the others. With an effort, he wrenched his mind away. Filling it with the memory of Karrell being yanked into the Abyss helped.

An enormous abomination burst out of the darkness. Ink black and nearly three times the height of a human, she hovered above the altar, lazily flapping her leathery wings. Two of her clawed hands held a spiked chain that glowed red as burning coal; the other two were empty. They rose into the air, drawing out the hissing adulation-then swept down.

A wave of shimmering energy swept from those hands, fanning out in front of her as it struck the floor. Arvin heard the nobles and clerics in front of him cry out in terror as it swept past them, saw them writhe and roll their eyes-and the magical

fear crashed over him like an icy surf. Screaming, he sank to his knees, fighting for control and dimly noticing that others around him were doing the same. Even Medusanna had been driven to her knees, the snakes that made up her hair thrashing and spitting.

"Control," he whispered.

He threw up a psionic barrier, pressing with mental hands against the waves of magical fear emanating from the altar. The need to scream, to grovel, lessened a little, enough for him to glance in the direction of the altar where Sibyl sat coiled. Hatred helped him focus, but still a tiny part of his mind whimpered in fear.

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.