Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [103]
Arvin might have lost the lapis lazuli, but he still had his power stone. He thrust a hand into his pocket, trying to decide whether he should teleport Naulg out of here. The rogue was obviously unstable; if Arvin tried to sneak him out, he’d probably give them both away. But brain burn wasn’t something Arvin was willing to risk, not with a yuan-ti just outside the door.
Naulg’s voice rose to a thin childlike wail. “It hurts. Help me, Ar… vin. Please?”
Arvin winced. Naulg’s plea reminded him of how he’d felt during those long months in the orphanage before he’d finally found a friend: lost and alone-and frightened. He pressed a hand against the rogue’s lips. “Quiet, Naulg,” he whispered. “I’m going to get you out of here, but you have to be-”
The clicking of the lock’s bolt was Arvin’s only warning. He whirled as the door opened, whipping up his dagger. As the patch-haired cultist leaned in through the door with an oil lamp, flooding the room with light, Arvin hurled his dagger. The weapon whistled through the air and buried itself in the cultist’s throat. The cultist fell, gurgling and clutching at his bloody neck, his lamp shattering on the floor. Arvin spoke the dagger’s command word and his dagger flew back to his hand. He caught it easily, despite Naulg tugging on his sleeve.
“Why?” Naulg wailed. “Why did they-”
Arvin shook him off. “Not now!” From the hallway came the female cultist’s voice, raised in rapid prayer. Arvin sprang toward the doorway, trying to line up a throw at her, but the yuan-ti whose voice Arvin had heard a moment ago stepped into the doorway, blocking it. He was a half blood with a human body and head, but with a snake growing out of each shoulder where his arms should have been. The lamp wick-still burning, feeding off the puddle of spilled oil-threw shadows that obscured the yuan-ti’s face, but Arvin could see his snake arms clearly. They were banded with red, white, and black. The snake heads that were his hands were hissing, their fangs dripping venom. If either of them succeeded in striking Arvin, he’d be lucky to feel the sting of the puncture; a banded snake’s venom was that swift.
Arvin took a quick step back. The yuan-ti followed him, his head weaving back and forth, his snake arms thrashing and hissing. Arvin wet his lips. Hitting a vital spot with his dagger was going to be difficult.
“Ar… vin!” Naulg wailed.
Arvin elbowed the rogue aside.
In that instant, the yuan-ti attacked-not with his venomous hands but with magic. A wave of fear as chilling as ice water crashed into Arvin’s mind and sent shivers through his entire body. Gasping, Arvin staggered backward. Irrational fear gripped him, made him fling away his dagger, turn his back to the yuan-ti and scrabble at the wall like a rat. The yuan-ti was too powerful; Arvin would never defeat it. Crumpling to his knees, he began to sob.
A small portion of his mind, however, remembered the pouch he’d stuffed into his pocket-the one that held the assassin vine he’d sold to Naulg-and realized that this could be a weapon. But the main part of Arvin’s mind was consumed with the magical fear that engulfed him as water does a drowning man.
Hissing, slit eyes gleaming, the yuan-ti walked slowly and deliberately toward him.
The fear increased, making it difficult even to sob. Arvin was going to die-he knew it. He… could… never-
Control. The word echoed faintly in Arvin’s mind: a thin, distant cry. Then again, louder this time, a shout that throbbed through his mind, pounding like a fist against the fear. Control! Master the fear. Move!
Arvin screamed then-a scream of defiance, rather