Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [82]
Arvin did as instructed. Tanju stared intently at him, his eyes once more glinting with sparks of multicolored light. An unusual secondary display, a part of Arvin’s mind noted-the part that had access to Zelia’s memories. Tanju must have trained in the East…
The motes of color suddenly erupted out of Tanju’s eyes like sparks leaping from a fire. They shot into the spot between Arvin’s eyes, penetrating his third eye and spinning there for a brief instant, then rushed through the rest of his body, leaving swirls of tingles at the base of his scalp, his throat, his chest, and his naval. The tingling coiled for a moment around the base of his spine then erupted out through his arms and legs, leaving his fingers and toes numb.
“Did it work?” Arvin asked, flexing his fingers.
“Try to think of a question that you don’t know the answer to-something only Zelia would be able to answer,” Tanju suggested.
Arvin stared at the rough walls of the shelter. Zelia seemed to know a lot about gems and stones. Presumably, she would know what type of stone had gone into the making of these rough walls. It was a reddish color, the same as the stone used in the oldest buildings in Hlondeth…
Marble. Rosy marble, a crystalline rock capable of taking a high polish. Useful in the creation of power stones that conveyed the power to dream travel.
Arvin hissed in alarm. “It didn’t work,” he told Tanju in a tense voice.
Tanju sighed. “I didn’t think it would. The mind seed is too powerful a manifestation. I can’t uproot it.” He gestured at Arvin’s backpack. “You can keep your rope.”
Arvin felt panic rise in his chest. “Is there nothing else you can try?”
Tanju shook his head.
“The mind seed was planted around Middark on the twenty-second of Kythorn,” Arvin said, wetting his lips. “If it blooms after seven days, that means I’ve only got four days left-until Middark of the twenty-ninth.”
“Possibly.”
Arvin caught his breath. “What do you mean?”
“It could bloom sooner than Middark,” Tanju said. “Any time on the twenty-ninth, in fact.”
“But Zelia said it would take seven days to-”
“A mind seed is not like an hourglass,” Tanju said. “It doesn’t keep precise time. The seven-day period is somewhat… arbitrary.”
Arvin swallowed nervously. “So I’ve really only got three days,” he muttered. He shook his head. “Will I… be myself until then?”
“As much as you are now,” Tanju said. “Not that this is much comfort to you, I’m sure.”
“When will I be able to start manifesting the powers that Zelia knows?”
Tanju shook his head. “You won’t. Not until it’s her mind, not yours, in your body. If it worked any other way, the victim would be able to use the psion’s talents against him.”
“Is there nothing that can be done to stop it?” Arvin moaned.
“Nothing. Unless…”
Arvin tensed. “Unless what?”
Tanju shrugged. “There is a prayer that I once saw a cleric use to cure a woman who had been driven insane by a wizard’s spell. He called it a ‘restorative blessing.’ I asked him if it was a divine form of psychic chirurgery. He had never heard the term before, but his answer confirmed that the prayer was indeed similar. He said a restorative blessing could cure all forms of insanity, confusion, and similar mental ailments-that it could dispel the effects of any spell that affected the mind, whether the source of the spell was clerical magic or wizardry. Presumably, that included psionic powers, as well. If you could find a cleric with such a spell, perhaps he could-”
“I don’t know any clerics,” Arvin said in exasperation. “At least, I don’t know any that would-” Here he paused. Nicco. Did Nicco know such a prayer? He’d known what a psion was. Perhaps he knew more about “mind magic” than he’d let on. But if Nicco did know the restorative prayer, would he agree to use it?
Thinking of Nicco put Arvin in mind of the promise he’d made to the cleric: to attempt vengeance upon Zelia. If Arvin actually succeeded-if he was somehow able to defeat Zelia-perhaps she could be forced to remove the mind seed. The only trouble was she was a powerful psion, and he, a mere novice.