Venom’s Taste

CHAPTER 5

23 Kythorn, Fullday

Arvin pulled open the front door of the warehouse and stepped out into the humid summer heat. He glanced anxiously back and forth but saw no sign of Zelia, in either yuan-ti or serpent form. The street was filled with people, most of them human. One of the Learned, his ability to read and write proudly displayed by the two red dots on his forehead, swept past in a silken cloak, nose in the air. A stonemason, hammer and chisel hanging at the belt of his leather trousers, shouted at a brace of four slaves yoked to a rumbling cart bearing a snake-headed statue carved from cream-colored alabaster-one of the many statues that had been carved for the restoration of the oldest part of the city. Women returning from the public fountain in the plaza just down the street to Arvin’s right swayed across the cobblestones, pots of water balanced on their heads, while children lugged smaller vessels along beside them.

Across the street, young Kolim, the seven-year-old son of the woman who owned the bakery up the road, was pressing his palm against the stonework of the building opposite. When he removed it, the stone’s magical glow, triggered by the momentary darkness, was revealed. Spotting Arvin, Kolim hurried across the street, pulling from his pocket a loop of string with a bead on it.

“Hey, Arvin!” he called, threading it over his fingers as he ran. “I can do that string puzzle you showed me. Hey, Arvin, watch!”

“Later, Kolim,” Arvin told the boy, gently patting him on the head. “I’m a little busy just now.”

The section of city the yuan-ti preferred to live in lay to the left, uphill from the harbor. Arvin closed the door behind him and strode in that direction. He spotted a woman with green scales coming toward him and, for a heartbeat or two, thought it was Zelia returning to the warehouse, but it turned out to be another yuan-ti, this one with darker hair and a snakelike tail emerging through a slit in the back of her skirt. Wrapped around her neck like a piece of living jewelry was a tiny bronze-and-black-banded serpent with leathery wings, one of the flying snakes imported from the jungle lands far to the south. As if sensing Arvin staring at it, the winged snake flapped its wings and hissed as its mistress walked by.

Zelia was nowhere in sight-she’d probably maintained her serpent form and slithered away. Either that or she’d gone in the opposite direction. Sighing, Arvin slowed his pace.

He was just turning to go back to the warehouse when he heard a man standing in a nearby doorway give a low, phlegmy cough. Arvin glanced in the fellow’s direction, expecting to see someone aged, but the man who had just cleared his throat was even younger than he. And not a human, either, but a yuan-ti-albeit one with a fair amount of human blood in him. The fellow had olive skin, black hair, and a heavy growth of beard that nearly hid his mouth. Arvin could see the small patches of silver-gray scales dotting his forehead, arms, and hands. He wore black trousers and a white silk shirt with lace around the cuffs and neckline. Arvin walked past him, automatically lowering his eyes in the yuan-ti’s presence-and suddenly caught a whiff of something he recognized: a sour, sick odor.

The smell that lingered on the skin of members of the Pox.

Arvin had worked among rogues long enough to instantly stifle his startle. He continued walking past the “yuan-ti,” deliberately not looking at him. Arvin’s escape of the night before had not gone unnoticed. The Pox were looking for him. And they’d found him.

“Lady Luck, favor me just one more time,” Arvin whispered under his breath. “I’ll fill your cup to the brim, I promise.” He continued to walk steadily down the street toward the front door of his warehouse, shoulders crawling as he imagined the cultist behind him, about to reach out and touch his shoulder with filthy, plague-ridden hands…

As Arvin approached the door, he suddenly realized something. The cultist wasn’t behind him. Risking a glance back, he saw that the man was still lounging in the doorway down the street. He wasn’t even looking at Arvin. Instead his attention seemed to be focused on the women who were drawing water from the public fountain.

Arvin paused, considering. Was the cultist’s presence outside the warehouse mere coincidence?

He decided not to take any chances.

Arvin stepped inside the warehouse and scooped up a coil of rope. Then, with the rope looped over his left forearm, he walked up the street toward the cultist. The man paid no attention to Arvin’s approach. Either the cultist’s presence here truly was coincidence-or he was as good at hiding his emotions as any rogue. He glanced at Arvin only at the last moment, as Arvin stepped into the doorway with him.

“Hello, Shev,” Arvin said in a hearty voice, greeting the fellow with what was a common name among the yuan-ti of Hlondeth. “So good to see you! The thousandweight of rope you ordered has just come in with the shipment from shivis.”

As Arvin spoke the glove’s command word, the dagger appeared in his hand. He jabbed the point of the weapon into the man’s side and let the rope looped over his forearm slide down to hide it. “Let’s go to the warehouse,” Arvin continued in his falsely hearty voice. “I’ll show it to you.”

The cultist startled then flinched in realization that Arvin meant business. He allowed himself to be marched down the street, toward the warehouse door. Not until he’d stepped inside did he suddenly spring away. Arvin, however, had been expecting something similar. He had, accordingly, steered the cultist slightly to the left as he marched him through the door. As the man jumped, he barked out a command word. A coil of what appeared to be ordinary hemp rope lashed out toward the cultist, spiraling around him like a constricting snake. Confined in its coils, the cultist toppled like a felled tree and landed in a patch of sunlight that slanted in from one of the barred windows above. He immediately opened his mouth to cry out for help; in response Arvin threw his dagger at the man. The blade sliced open the cultist’s ear and thudded into the wooden flooring behind him; at a whispered command, it flew back to Arvin’s hand again.

“Be silent,” Arvin growled as he closed the door behind him. “And I might let you live.”

The cultist did a credible job of imitating a yuan-ti. “Release me,” he spat arrogantly, glaring as he blinked away the blood that was trickling into his right eye. “And I might let you live.”

Arvin chuckled. “I know what you are,” he told the man. “You might as well drop your disguise. I can see-and smell-Talona’s foul touch all over you.”

The cultist hissed in anger, still trying to convince Arvin that he was really a yuan-ti then gave up. The magical disguise in which he’d cloaked himself dissipated, revealing a young man whose mouth was so disfigured by scars that his lips would not close. A faded gray-green robe with frayed cuffs and a torn neck covered all but his hands and feet, which were covered in pockmarks. Arvin made a mental note not to touch the magical rope that entangled the fellow; perhaps even to burn it, despite the expense that had gone into its manufacture. He bent over a burlap sack and carefully wiped the cultist’s blood from his dagger.

The cultist strained against the rope for a moment but only succeeded in causing it to constrict further. He glared up at Arvin. “What do you want?” he said in a slurred voice.

“I’ll ask the questions,” Arvin countered. “For starters, why were you watching me?”

“Watching you?” The cultist seemed genuinely puzzled. He tried to purse his disfigured lips together, but they formed an uneven, ragged line. Staring down at the fellow, Arvin suddenly felt sorry for him. This man had been handsome, once, but those lips would never again know the soft caress of a woman’s kiss.

Surprisingly, the cultist laughed. “You pity me?” he slurred. “Don’t. I sought the embrace of the goddess.”

Arvin felt a chill run through him. “You did that to yourself deliberately?” he asked. He’d given little thought to the motivations of the Pox. He’d assumed they were driven to worship Talona after illness claimed them in the hope that she would free them from their afflictions. He’d never dreamed that anyone would afflict himself with plague on purpose. Yet that was what this fellow seemed to be saying.

He thought of the liquid they’d forced him to drink. “The liquid in the metal flasks,” he said, thinking out loud as he stared at the terrible pockmarks on the cultist’s skin. “Is this what it’s supposed to do to people? Make their skin… like that?” He resisted the urge to touch his own skin to make sure it was still smooth.

The cultist started to speak then gave another of his phlegmy coughs. He glanced around as if about to spit. Without intending to, Arvin backed up a pace.

The cultist gave him a penetrating look. “You’ve seen something, haven’t you? Something you shouldn’t have.” He paused for a moment, and his expression turned smug. “It doesn’t matter. Cry all the warnings you like-it won’t help you. Talona will soon purge this city, sweeping it clean for the faithful. We will rise from the ashes to claim it.”

Arvin shivered, suddenly realizing what the Pox must be up to. Last night’s ritual hadn’t been an isolated sacrifice. Thinking back to the rash of disappearances that had taken place in recent tendays around the waterfront, Arvin realized that he and Naulg weren’t the first to be subjected to the Pox’s vile ministrations. Nor would they be the last. The Pox meant to spread plague throughout the entire city.

But if that was their goal, why hadn’t their victims been turned out into the streets, where they would spread their contagion to others? Perhaps, Arvin thought, because they had all died. But if they had, why weren’t the cultists dumping their bodies in the streets instead?

Maybe the cultists were saving them up, intending to scatter them throughout the city like seeds when they had enough of them.

As Arvin stood, these dark thoughts tumbling through his mind, he became dimly aware of noises from the street outside-the chatter of voices, the rumble-squeak of carts, the voices of women returning from the fountain.

The public fountain, one of dozens from which Hlondeth’s citizens drew their daily drinking water.

The one the cultist had been watching when Arvin spotted him.

Arvin suddenly realized the answer. If the Pox wanted to spread contagion, what better way to do it than by tainting the city’s water supply? All they had to do was carry to each fountain a little of whatever was in the flasks and tip it into the fountain under the pretense of filling their vessels. But would this work-or would the volume of water in the fountain dilute the plague, rendering it ineffective? How much did a person have to ingest for it to kill?

Perhaps that was what the Pox were trying to find out.

As Arvin stared down at the cultist, his expression hardened. If the Pox had their way, forty-five thousand people would die-perhaps more, if plague spread beyond Hlondeth into the rest of the Vilhon Reach. The gods had just placed what might be the key to preventing these people’s deaths in Arvin’s hands. All he had to do was find out where the Pox were and report that to Zelia. She would take care of the rest.

“Where are the other cultists?” he asked. “Where do you meet?”

The man gave a phlegmy laugh. “In the Ninth Hell.”

Arvin hefted his dagger, wondering if pain would prompt the truth. Probably not. Anyone who deliberately disfigured himself like this had little consideration for his own flesh.

The cultist’s disfigured mouth twisted into a lopsided grimace. “Go ahead,” he countered. “Cut me again with your fancy dagger. Perhaps a little of the blood will spray on you, this time, and you’ll know Talona’s embrace. Throw!”

As the cultist mocked him, Arvin’s mind exploded with rage. He whipped up his dagger and nearly threw it, only stopping himself at the last moment. His temper suddenly cooled, and he realized what the cultist had just attempted. He’d cast a spell on Arvin, compelling him to throw his dagger. Only by force of will had Arvin been able to avoid fulfilling the cultist’s wish to be silenced.

Slowly he lowered the dagger. That had been a narrow escape, but it reminded him of something. Perhaps there was another way, other than threats, to get the man to talk-by charming him.

Arvin had felt the first sputters of this power-which, until his conversation with Zelia a short time ago, he hadn’t admitted was psionic-back when he was a boy. Back when his mother was still alive. She’d discovered him cutting one of her maps into parchment animals and had raised her hand to strike him. Frightened, he’d summoned up a false smile and pleaded in the most winsome voice a five-year-old could summon-and had felt the strange sensation prickle across the base of his scalp for the first time. His mother’s expression had suddenly softened, and she’d lowered her hand. Then she’d blinked and shaken her head. She’d tousled Arvin’s hair and told him he’d very nearly charmed himself out of a punishment-that he showed “great promise.” Then she’d taken his favorite wooden soldier and tossed it into the fireplace, to teach him how bad it felt when another person damaged something that was yours.

He hadn’t been able to manifest that power again until he reached puberty. He’d charmed people in the years since then, but his talent was unreliable. Sometimes it worked… sometimes it didn’t. But that time with his mother, it had arisen spontaneously.

Why?

Suddenly, Arvin realized the answer. Strong emotion. Like a rising tide, it had forced his psionic talent to bubble to the surface.

Standing over his captive, Arvin tried to summon up an emotion equally as strong as the one he’d felt that day. Then, he’d been motivated by fear; this time, he let frustration carry him almost to the edge. He embraced the emotion and combined its rawness with the urge to get the man to talk to him. Why couldn’t he get the cultist to speak? The fellow was his friend. He should trust Arvin. The prickling began at the base of his scalp, encouraging him.

Arvin squatted on the floor next to the man. Deliberately he let his frown smooth and his voice soften. “Listen, friend,” he told the cultist. “You can trust me. I drank from the flask and survived. Like you, I am blessed by the goddess. But I don’t know how to find the others. I need to find them, to talk to them, to understand. I yearn to feel Talona’s…” He nearly lost his concentration as he spoke the goddess’s name then found his calm center again. “I need to feel Talona’s embrace again. Help me. Tell me where I can find the others. Please?”

When Arvin began his plea, the cultist’s eyes had been filled with scorn and derision. As his expression softened, a thrill of excitement rushed through Arvin. Untrained he might be, but he was doing it! He was using psionics to mold this man to his will!

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.