Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [114]
Arvin pulled off his boots and fastened the sandals to his feet then crawled out from under the ramp. The three silver pieces lay on the street, next to a smear of blood. He left them where they’d fallen. Picking up the empty bucket, he walked toward the tower.
The magical sandals proved surprisingly easy to use. Arvin merely visualized himself rising and up he went. The tower was six stories high, but fortunately, he had no fear of heights. He stared, unconcerned, as the ground seemed to fall away below him. He landed easily on the rooftop, which was bare aside from a single tap whose pipe rose out of the ceiling like an erect snake.
A trapdoor at the center was closed with a padlock. Using the picks in his belt buckle, Arvin quickly opened it. He lifted the trapdoor and saw a stone staircase that spiraled down. Sunlight slanted into it through holes that gave access to the niches in which the flying snakes nested. The air in the narrow stairway was dry, dusty, and hot-and stank of snake.
Arvin stepped down into the stairway then sat and pulled off the sandals. They were valuable, and he might need them to get out of the tower, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want them on his feet a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He placed them, together with the padlock, inside the bucket and set it aside. Then he closed the trapdoor and tiptoed down the stairs, barefoot.
The stairs seemed to spiral down endlessly. After a while the air grew cooler as Arvin descended below the last of the beams of sunlight-and below ground level. At last, after several more turnings, they ended. The light at the bottom of the stairs was extremely poor, but Arvin had a sense that the staircase opened onto a large room. A new odor filled the air-rodent droppings. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Arvin saw that the walls of the room were lined with cages. Rats scrabbled within them, filling the air with their soft scurrying. Remembering the rat that had burst into flames, Arvin shuddered. But at the same time he wet his lips in anticipation and strained forward, half expecting to sense the rat’s body warmth through the pits in his-
No. He was thinking like Zelia again. The rats were not food.
Not for him, at any rate.
He made a circuit of the room, inspecting the floor in front of the cages. Had he gone to all this trouble-even killed a man-for nothing? Then he spotted something that gave him hope-faint scrapes in the layer of grime that covered the floor. The cages had been moved recently. Peering at the wall behind them, he saw a faint line: a hidden doorway. Warily, he grasped the top cage and began to move it aside.
Pain exploded in his head as something smacked into the back of it. Staggered by the blow-and the jolt of magical energy it unleashed-Arvin fell against the cages, which crashed down on top of him. The rats inside them squealed furiously and nipped at his hands as he scrambled to knock the cages aside, to see who had attacked him.
“Wait!” Arvin gasped, flailing under the cages. “I’m a friend. I’m-”
“Arvin!” a harsh voice said, completing the sentence for him.
Chorl stood looking down at him. The balding rebel must have been invisible until his attack. He held the end of his staff level with Arvin’s chest, ready to thrust it at him. Its tip crackled with magical energy, filling Arvin’s nostrils with a sharp, burnt odor. With a sinking feeling, Arvin saw that it was poised over his heart. All that was holding Chorl back was righteous anger-and the need to tell Arvin off. “You dare come back here, you scaly bastard?” he spat. “This time, I’ll see to it that-”
“Get Nicco,” Arvin said. “He’ll vouch for me.”
“Nicco’s busy.”
Relief washed through Arvin. “He escaped?” He started to let out a slow hiss but abruptly covered it with a whispered prayer. “Tymora be praised. Tell him I’ve learned more about what the