Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [100]
Arvin dropped his gaze back down to the cultists. They blocked his view of the far wall, but by leaning to the left and right, he was able to see the side walls. The one to the right had a door. Like the one he was peering through, it was made of thick metal, with a small panel in it at eye level. The inner surface of the door was blackened, as if by fire.
It seemed to be the only way out.
It would be suicide, however, to make a move at this point-even invisible, Arvin couldn’t hope to sneak past the cultists. The instant he opened the door, they’d be alerted to the presence of an intruder. All he could do was wait and hope that they would finish their ritual and exit through the second door.
One of the cultists stepped into the center of the circle. He was a large man with hair that grew only in patches. Arvin hissed in anger as he recognized him as the cultist who had forced him to drink the poisoned potion. As the man reached for a pouch on his belt and began untying its fastenings, Arvin held his breath, expecting to see one of the potion flasks. Instead the fellow pulled out two miniature silver daggers, each about the length of a finger and nearly black with tarnish. The tiny weapons were a type of dagger known to rogues as a “snaketooth.” Their hollow stiletto blades usually held poison.
Was this some new kind of sacrifice? As the patch-haired cultist raised the daggers above his head-one in either fist-over the kneeling man, Arvin tensed.
The chanting stopped. The patch-haired man’s arms swept down-but instead of stabbing the kneeling man, he presented the daggers to him, hilt first.
“Embrace Talona,” the patch-haired cultist droned. “Endure her. Prove yourself worthy of the all-consuming love of the Mother of Death.”
The kneeling man reached up and took the daggers. “Lady of Poison, Mistress of Disease, take me, torment me, teach me.” Then he stabbed the tiny daggers into his flesh. Once, twice, three times… over and over again, he jabbed them into his arms, chest, thighs-even into his face-leaving his body riddled with a series of tiny punctures. Meanwhile, the cultists surrounding him chanted.
“Take him… torment him… teach him. Embrace him… enfold him… endure him.”
The man continued to stab himself, though with each thrust of the daggers, he was visibly weakening. Rivulets of blood ran down his chest, arms, and face, dripping onto his wounded thighs. Even as Arvin watched, the punctures puckered and turned a sickly yellow-green. Soon the blood that ran down his body was streaked with pus. At last the man dropped the daggers and fell forward into the ash. He clutched weakly at the image of Talona for a moment then his hand fell away, leaving a smear of blood on the pitted wood.
Sickened, Arvin looked away. The kneeling man had been healthy, handsome-but after this ritual, assuming he survived it, the fellow would be as disfigured as the rest of the misguided souls who served the goddess of plague. He was ruined in body, as he must have been in mind.
Arvin was glad that he’d refused Zelia’s demand that he pose as an initiate. This would have been the result. This was why Zelia had sown the mind seed-no sane man would ever willingly go through the initiation rite Arvin had just witnessed. To infiltrate the Pox, what was needed was not just a human, but a human whose mind was not his own-a mere shell of a man, controlled by a yuan-ti who was as ruthless as she was determined. Or she could have used a man whose life was measured in days, desperate for a reprieve.
Rusted hinges squealed, breaking Arvin’s train of thought. Peering into the room, he saw that the door in the wall to the right-which was indeed the only other exit from the room-was open. The cultists filed out through it. None so much as glanced at the man who lay trembling in the ashes beside the statue of Talona. As the last of them left, the door squealed again and grated shut.
Arvin waited, his eyes firmly on the other door. When he was certain