Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [122]
Arvin, still treading water, was as surprised as Zelia by the result. Had he really felled a powerful psion with so simple a manifestation as a Far Hand? Quickly, he scrambled up the seawall. He stood, dripping, over Zelia, hardly daring to believe his eyes. Her chest still rose and fell, but she was definitely unconscious. Already a large red welt was swelling at one side of her forehead.
Arvin flicked his sodden hair back out of his eyes and shook his head. “You shouldn’t have taught me that power,” he told her. Then, seeing the curious onlookers who were starting to collect-including a militiaman who was striding briskly up the seawall-he knelt beside Zelia and pretended to pat her cheek, as if trying to revive her.
The militiaman shoved his way through the spectators and glared down at Arvin through the slit-eyed visor of his cobra-hooded helmet, his crossbow leveled at Arvin’s chest. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.
Arvin glanced up at the militiaman. “Thieves,” he said quickly. “They shoved me off the seawall and knocked my mistress unconscious. They stole her coin pouch.” He felt the familiar tingle of energy at the base of his scalp.
The militiaman cocked his head, as if listening to a distant sound, succumbing to the charm. But Zelia was beginning to stir. Arvin prayed she wasn’t going to regain consciousness just yet.
“I’m a healer,” Arvin continued. “I just have to lay hands on my mistress, and she’ll be all right. We don’t need your help. Why don’t you try to catch the thieves, instead? There was a bald man and a little guy.” He pointed. “They went that way.”
The militiaman nodded and jogged away. Arvin, meanwhile, flourished his hands then laid them on Zelia’s forehead. He linked with his power stone. Seizing one of the two remaining “stars” in its sky, he delved deep into Zelia’s mind. It was as he’d visualized it when he’d first explored the mind seed under Tanju’s guidance-a twisted nest of snakes. Her powers lay within this writhing mass. They looked, to Arvin, like a cluster of glowing eggs, some large, some small. He hefted them one by one, getting a sense of what each one was. The largest proved to be the one he was looking for. Lifting it from the nest, he crushed it.
Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a faint cry. Ignoring it, he linked with his power stone once more and manifested its final power, the one that would allow him to tailor memories. Reaching out with mental fingers, he began rearranging the snakelike strands of thought, braiding them into lines of his choosing.
Zelia’s eyes fluttered open. Someone was touching her temple-Arvin! He had just manifested a psionic power on her, had reached deep into her mind and removed something that had taken her nearly a year to learn-the mind seed power. He was still rummaging around inside her head, manifesting a second power on her. Immediately, before he could throw up a defense, she attacked. A loud hissing filled the air as she manifested a power. An instant later it was joined by a sharp exhalation as the air was forced from Arvin’s lungs.
Wisely, the other humans fled.
Arvin attempted a gasp, but was unable to inhale; Zelia’s power had squeezed his lungs shut. She rose to her feet as he crumpled to his knees and watched, smiling, as his face turned first red, then purple. His eyes were wide, pleading-she would have loved to have heard him beg for his life, but the crisis of breath he was experiencing prevented that. Instead, she leaned forward and let her lips brush his ear as she whispered into it.
“Which was worse,” she asked. “The mind seed… or this?”
It took all of her self-control to resist sinking her teeth into his throat. Instead, she stepped back and watched him fall to the seawall. He twitched for a time, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. Eventually, he lay still.
Zelia placed a foot against his back and shoved. Arvin’s body flopped over