Vanity's Brood - Lisa Smedman [111]
A woman's shrill cry from inside the but jerked him out of his half-doze. He raced inside, nearly colliding with the midwife. She shouted something at him in her own language, pointed at her assistant, who knelt on the ground next to Karrell. The assistant lifted one of the twins-their son-and blew air into his open mouth in short, rapid puffs. Arvin's entire body went cold at the sight.
"What's wrong?" he cried.
Karrell didn't answer. Her lips were moving rapidly as she bent over their daughter. She gave Arvin a quick, terrified glance as she whispered a prayer. Arvin clenched his fists. Something had gone wrong. Both twins had stopped breathing, but Karrell's magic would save their children. It had to.
Then Karrell exhaled, as sharply and violently as if she had vomited the air from her lungs. She clutched at her chest and struggled to inhale.
"What's wrong?" Arvin shouted.
Karrell shook her head. She tried to speak, but couldn't. She made a frantic gesture at their daughter. The girl's lips were starting to turn blue. Arvin scooped the girl up, only to have her wrenched from his hands by the midwife. The elderly woman began blowing air into the infant's lungs.
Karrell swayed, still trying to gasp air into her lungs. Her eyelids fluttered.
Magic. It had to be, but why?
No, not magic. A memory hovered dimly at the back of Arvin's mind. Of himself gloating as he manifested that very same power.
No, not himself.
Zelia.
A droning hum filled the air as Arvin manifested a power. Silver sparkled from his eyes; a thread of it led out the door. He raced after it across the clearing. It led where he'd half expected it to: to the dwarf who stood, a smirk on his face, next to the holy stone.
One of Zelia's seeds.
Arvin hurled a manifestation at the dwarf-seed as he ran. Droning filled the air around him as he tried to batter his way through the seed's defenses, to crush his opponent's mind to dust, but the seed was ready. His mind slithered away from Arvin, leaving him grasping emptiness. Then the seed attacked. A fist of mental energy punched its way through Arvin's defenses then coiled around his mind. Too late, Arvin tried to throw up a shield against it. He could feel strands of energy moving this way and that inside his mind, weaving a net that held him fast. There was a quick, sharp tug- and the net closed, trapping his consciousness inside. Arvin could feel himself standing, was aware of his chest rapidly rising and falling, of his heart pounding in his ears-but the will that normally controlled his actions was tightly confined. He could imagine himself manifesting a power, but his muladhara seemed far away. His mind couldn't reach out to it from behind the net that had trapped it. Made stupid by a lack of sleep and the urgency of stopping the attack on Karrell and the children, he'd done just what the seed wanted-rushed blindly into psionic combat.
The dwarf-seed smiled, as if reading his thoughts. For all Arvin knew, it was.
"Arvin," the seed said in a husky voice that was unsettlingly similar to Pakal's, except for its smirking tone. "How obliging of you to run right into my coils."
Arvin tried to talk. All he could manage was a low moan. He felt drool trickle from the edge of his mouth.
The seed smiled. "Where is Dmetrio? Where is the Circled Serpent?" Silver flashed from his eyes as he spoke.
Arvin tried to resist the awareness that slid deep into his mind but couldn't. In another moment, the seed would learn that Dmetrio was dead and the Circled Serpent destroyed. The worst of it was that Arvin knew exactly how the seed would react-with rage at the fact that Zelia's plans had been thwarted-and with gleeful satisfaction at having caused Arvin the greatest anguish possible by killing the children and Karrell.
Then it would kill him.
If Arvin could have closed his eyes, he would have. He didn't want to see the dwarf-seed gloating.
What he did see surprised him. The seed suddenly jerked and his eyes widened. He whirled, and as his back came into