Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [106]
The yuan-ti picked up the flask with one of its snake hands then turned its unblinking stare on Arvin. “You must be tired-why don’t you sleep?” it hissed. “I have no reason to harm you. I need you. Sleep.”
Arvin felt his eyelids begin to close. He mounted the only defense he could think of-the Empty Mind Tanju had taught him-pouring his awareness out in a flood. But it was no use. The suggestion felt as though it came from deep within; it wasn’t something that grasped the mind from without. What the yuan-ti was saying just seemed so reasonable. Arvin was safe enough; the yuan-ti wasn’t finished with him yet. And Arvin was exhausted, after all…
His heavy eyelids closed as the last shred of his resistance fluttered away like a snake’s discarded skin.
27 Kythorn, Fullday
In his dream, Arvin slithered across the floor of the cathedral between its forest of columns, each of which was carved into the form of two vipers twining around each other, one with its head up, the other with its head down. The columns supported an enormous domed ceiling of translucent green stone through which sunlight slanted, bathing everything in a cool light reminiscent of a shaded jungle. Water from the fountain that topped the cathedral dripped through holes in the roof, pattering onto the floor like rain.
Just ahead was one of the Stations of the Serpent-an enormous bronze statue of the god in winged serpent form, his body banded with glittering emeralds and his mouth open wide to reveal curved fangs of solid gold. The base of the statue was wreathed in writhing jets of orange-red fire, symbolic of Sseth’s descent into the Peaks of Flame.
One day, Sseth would rise from them again.
A dozen other yuan-ti were weaving in prayer before the station, mesmerized from by the slit eyes of Sseth. Arvin slithered closer, welcoming the warmth of the oil-fueled fire on his scales. Twisting himself into a coil, he raised his upper body and swayed before the statue then opened his mouth wide in a silent hiss. Feeling a drop of venom bead at the tip of each of his fangs, he lashed forward in a mock strike, spitting the venom forward onto the tray that stood just in front of the statue. The venom landed on the fire-warmed bronze and immediately sizzled as it boiled away.
Hearing the hiss of scales against stone behind him, Arvin turned and saw the priest he had come here to meet. The priest’s serpent form was long and slender and narrow-nosed, with black and white and red stripes running the length of his body. The part of Arvin’s mind that was his own-the part that was observing the dream from a distance, like a spectator watching a dance and unable to resist swaying in time with the music-recognized the priest as the one he-no Zelia-would eventually reduce to a broken-minded heap. But that memory was months in the future.
The priest flickered a tongue in greeting and gestured with a weaving motion. “This way,” he hissed.
Arvin followed him down a side corridor. The priest led him to one of the binding rooms. Inside it, on a low slab of stone, lay the body of a young man-a yuan-ti half blood. The head was that of a snake, with yellow-green scales and slit eyes, and each of the legs ended in snakelike tails, rather than feet. The body was naked. Arvin could see that a number of its bones were broken; one jagged bit of white protruded through the skin just below the shoulder. The left side of the face was crushed, caved in like a broken egg.
Two yuan-ti were working on the corpse, binding it in strips of linen. Both were male and both wore tunics that bore the Extaminos crest. They appeared human at first glance, save for slit eyes and brown scales that speckled their arms and legs. They worked quietly and efficiently-but carefully, giving the corpse the respect it was due as they wound the linen around it. When finished, the binding would be egg-shaped, a symbol