Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [45]
Like the sewage tunnels, the secret corridor beyond the door curved; Arvin could see only a few paces inside it. The floor just inside the corridor was smeared with sludge; someone with sewage on his clothes had entered it recently. Arvin paused, clinging to the wall next to the door. Was this corridor where the groan had originated?
He climbed into it, making as little noise as he could. Once on his hands and knees, he drew his dagger. Weapon in hand, he crept up to the bend-and hissed in alarm as he came face to face with a body.
The man lay on his side, unmoving, eyes closed. He was older, with tarred hair pulled back in a tight bun and a face that was vaguely familiar. Only as Arvin reached out to touch the man’s stubbled cheek-which was still warm-did he remember where he’d seen the fellow before. He’d been one of the five captives the Pox had taken last night. Like Arvin, he’d been forced to drink from one of the flasks.
Arvin jerked his fingers away from the corpse. Had the old sailor died of plague? Arvin’s heart raced at the thought of sharing this narrow tunnel with a diseased corpse. He was breathing the same air the man had just groaned from his lungs-breathing in disease and death and…
Control, he told himself sternly. Where is your control?
The self-admonishment steadied him, that and Zelia’s reassurances that he was immune to the plague in the flasks, his body having already fought it off once. Or had it? His headache had dulled, a little, but it still nagged at him. Perhaps it wasn’t the mind seed after all but the start of a fever. And he did feel a little light-headed-though that might have been due to the sewer stench.
Forcing himself to touch his amulet with the fingers that had just touched the dead man’s cheek, he uttered the words that had always given him courage in the past: “Nine lives.”
Then he noticed something-a smear of blood on the floor of the tunnel, just beyond the corpse. Curious, Arvin shifted position so he could see the sailor’s back and spotted the fletched end of a crossbow bolt protruding from a spot just below the right shoulder. Had the old man tried to escape and the cultists shot him in the back?
Oddly enough, the thought fueled Arvin’s hopes. If the old sailor had remained alive for this long-and had felt well enough to attempt escape-perhaps Naulg was still alive, too.
Arvin had just started to crawl past the body when he heard a groan issue from the man’s lips. He froze, halfway over the sailor, as the man’s eyes flickered open.
“It hurts,” the sailor whispered.
Arvin’s eyes flickered to the crossbow bolt. “You’ve been shot,” he told the old man. “I don’t think-” He didn’t have the heart to say the rest-that he doubted the fellow would live much longer.
The old man stared at the wall, not seeing Arvin. “My stomach. It hurts,” he whispered again in a voice as faint as death. “Gods curse them… for doing this to me. I just want… the pain… to end.”
“It will, old man. It will.” Arvin wanted to pat the shoulder of the sailor, to console him, but was afraid to.
The old man was whispering again-fainter, this time, than before. “Silvanus forgive me for…”
Arvin could have leaned closer and heard the rest, but he was fearful of getting too close to the man’s plague-tainted breath. Instead he drew back, holding his own breath.
A moment later, he realized the old man had also stopped breathing.
From somewhere up ahead, Arvin heard the metallic hiss of a sword being drawn from its sheath. Worried that Naulg might be the next to die, he crawled past the corpse and on up the corridor as quickly as he could.
CHAPTER 8
24 Kythorn, Darkmorning
As Arvin hurried down the corridor on his hands and knees, the stench increased. It wasn’t just the odor of the sewers that was clogging his nostrils, but something far worse-the reek of putrefying flesh, vomit, and sweat. Bile rose in his throat. He fought it down. He hurried on, blinking away a drop of sweat that had trickled into one eye. It wasn’t just the exertion of crawling rapidly through a low-ceilinged corridor