Vanity's Brood - Lisa Smedman [22]
Something stepped through the doorway- something that looked like the silhouette of a woman. In the blink of an eye, it expanded, becoming three-dimensional. The woman was a heavyset human with a double chin and brown hair with a streak of gray at one temple. Arvin's mouth dropped open as he recognized her. Naneth-the sorceress who had summoned the demon that had killod Karrell.
Or rather, he amended as he saw the sway in her body as she found her feet again and stared down at Pakal, a mind seed. The mind in that body was no longer Naneth's. It was Zelia's.
Arvin manifested the power that would cloud her mind, hiding him from her, and not a moment too soon. The wary Naneth-seed looked around the room then chuckled as her eyes fell upon the upper half of the Circled Serpent, lying next to Pakal's body. She bent to pick it up.
Knowing he was unlikely to surprise her with psionics-his secondary display would give her the instant's warning she needed to retaliate in kind-Arvin resorted to cruder methods. While she was distracted, he hurled his dagger. It struck home, burying itself between her shoulders. The blade would have killed someone with less fat padding her body, but the Naneth-seed merely grunted with pain.
She whirled around, her small eyes searching the room. Arvin gasped aloud as pain shot through his own back. It felt as though a dagger was embedded there. Something wet oozed down his back: not blood, but ectoplasm. The Naneth-seed must have manifested a power that transferred the pain of her wound to him.
The pain shattered Arvin's concentration, giving the Naneth-seed a brief glimpse of him. Her second psionic attack followed the first, swift as thought. Arvin tried to throw up a shield against it but wasn't quick enough.
Air exploded from his lungs in a rush as an invisible band of psionic energy looped around his chest then tightened. His own psionic power faltered as he fought for breath-and failed. He was visible.
"You again," the Naneth-seed said, the hissing of her secondary display overlapping her words.
Arvin struggled to draw a breath. He tried raising a mental fortress, but the Naneth-seed beat it down. He started to form a construct out of ectoplasm to attack her, but before it was fully shaped she usurped control of it and ran it headlong into a wall, splattering ectoplasm everywhere. He would have tried charming her, but there was no breath left in his lungs. He couldn't speak, couldn't even beg. He did manage the most tenuous of links with her mind and found a faint source of hope: she was debating ending the power that was preventing him from breathing and replacing it with one that would force him to take his own life. That would draw out his death, allowing her to savor it.
Then she changed her mind. No, she would end Arvin's life more quickly. Returning with the upper half of the Circled Serpent was more important, especially since Sibyl had been alerted.
When the Naneth-seed finally noticed Arvin listening in on her thoughts, she gave a brutal mental shove, propelling him from her mind. Then she squeezed harder.
Arvin sagged to his knees as darkness clouded the edges of his vision. He blinked furiously, trying to find the force of will to resist the Naneth-seed's manifestation. As he struggled, he thought he saw Pakal's arm move. A moment later, despite the dark spots that clouded his vision and the roaring in his ears, he was certain of it. The paralysis the skeleton had inflicted was wearing off.
Pakal's eyes fluttered, then opened to stare at the Naneth-seed. One hand crept toward his hollow reed while the other fumbled open the pouch at his belt.
The reed scraped against the floor. The Naneth seed turned toward the sound.
With the last bit of his consciousness, Arvin manifested a power-one of the first he'd ever learned.