Venom’s Taste

“The theft was real enough,” Tanju said grimly. “And they weren’t rebels. I know that much already.”

The militiaman frowned. “But how does this man fit in?”

“I don’t,” Arvin interrupted, exasperated by their endless speculations about rogues and rebels and stormlords-whoever they were. “I’m here because I need Tanju’s help. I need him to negate a psionic power that’s been manifested on me.”

Tanju tilted his head. “Why should I do this for you?”

“I can pay,” Arvin continued. “Look in my backpack and you’ll find a magical rope. It’s yours, if you’ll help.”

The militiaman began to pick up Arvin’s backpack, but Tanju held up a hand, cautioning him. Then Tanju waved his hand over the backpack and a faintly sweet smell filled the air. The scent was a little like the burnsticks Arvin’s mother had burned when she was meditating-flower-sweet, with sharp undertones of resin.

Tanju lowered his hand. “You can open it now,” he told the militiaman.

The militiaman undid the buckles on the backpack and tipped it open. Arvin’s clothes, extra pair of boots, blanket, and food spilled out, together with a neat coil of rope. Tanju stared at them, his eyes sparkling with multicolored fire a second time.

“It’s braided from trollgut,” Arvin explained. “I made it myself. A command word causes it to expand. The extra fifty paces worth of rope will eventually rot away, but it can be grown back over and over again. The rope is quite valuable; you can sell it for three thousand gold pieces or more to the right buyer.” He paused then, when the tingle arose at the base of his scalp, used his most persuasive voice. “Will you do it? Will you use your psionics to negate the power that’s been manifested on me? If you do, I’ll tell you the command word; the rope is useless without it.”

Tanju fingered the rope, squeezing its rubbery strands between his fingers. He cocked his head as if listening to a distant sound-the secondary display of the charm Arvin was manifesting. When he turned back toward Arvin, he was smiling. Arvin peered at the psion, uncertain whether his charm had worked on the man or not. “Well, friend?” he ventured. “Will you help me?”

“I need to know what power has been manifested,” Tanju said.

Arvin wet his lips. “A mind seed.”

Tanju’s eyes widened. He placed his hands on his knees then nodded. “That explains the aura.”

“What aura?”

“The one that surrounds you. It was a strange mix. Dominated by yang-male energy-but streaked with yin. Mostly good but tainted with evil. It contained elements of both power and weakness, human and reptile. I assumed you were trying to alter your own aura… and not quite succeeding. But I see now that it must be the mind seed.”

“Can you negate it?” Arvin asked.

“Excise it, you mean,” Tanju said. He shook his head. “You really are a novice, aren’t you? Despite the fact that you used a sending to contact me, you didn’t mount even the simplest of defenses against my mind thrusts.”

Arvin glanced down at the ectoplasm that held him. “If I’m so harmless, how about releasing me?”

Tanju considered Arvin for a moment, as if weighing the danger he posed. He took a deep breath then blew it out like a man extinguishing a lamp. The tendrils of ectoplasm vanished.

Arvin sat up, working the kinks out of his muscles. He ignored the militiaman, who had scooped up his crossbow and was aiming it at him. Pretending to stretch, he saw with satisfaction that his glove was still on his left hand, his braided leather bracelet still on his right wrist. So far, so good. The slick wetness the tendrils had left disappeared rapidly in the warm night air. Within the space of a few heartbeats, Arvin’s hair and clothes were dry. He turned to Tanju. “I know the name of the power, but not much about it. Tell me what a mind seed is.”

“It’s a psionic power that can be manifested only by the most powerful telepaths,” Tanju answered. “It inserts a sliver of the psion’s mental and spiritual essence in the mind of another-a seed. As it germinates, it slowly replaces the victim’s own mind with that of the psion who manifested the seed. When it at last blooms, the victim is no longer himself, but an exact duplicate of the psion. In mind, but not in body. His thoughts, his emotions, his dreams-”

“I get the point,” Arvin said, shuddering. He massaged his temples, which were throbbing again. “How do I get rid of it?”

“Your head aches?” Tanju asked. “That’s to be expected. It’s the seed, setting in roots. The pain will get worse each day, as the roots expand and-”

“Gods curse you!” Arvin shouted, shaking his fist at Tanju. This human was toying with him, being coy. Gloating as he withheld the very thing Arvin most needed. “I haven’t got much time. Don’t just sit there- excise it, you stupid, insolent-”

The click-whiz of a weighted wire from the crossbow cut off the rest of Arvin’s shout. One of the paired lead weights slammed into his cheek, making him gasp with pain as the other yanked the wire tight, pinning his wrist against his neck. Almost unable to breathe with the wire around his throat, Arvin felt the amulet his mother had given him pressing into his throat. “Nine lives,” he whispered to himself-a plea, this time. He raised his free hand, palm out, in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t mean to-”

“I could see that,” Tanju said, rising to a kneeling position. He carefully began to unwind the wire from Arvin’s neck and wrist. He spoke over his shoulder to the militiaman. “That was unnecessary. Please wait outside.”

The militiaman grumbled but did as he was told, flipping aside the blanket that served as the shelter’s door and stalking out into the night. Tanju, meanwhile, coiled the weighted wire into a tight ball and placed it in a pocket. He must have realized it would make an ideal garrote.

“Who planted the mind seed?” Tanju asked.

Arvin hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m curious,” Tanju answered. “Judging by your mannerisms-and your aura-it was a yuan-ti. I didn’t know that any of them were trained in psionics.”

Arvin stared at Tanju; the tracker’s curiosity seemed to be genuine. Arvin decided that he might as well answer. “Her name’s Zelia.”

Tanju’s expression didn’t change. Either he didn’t know Zelia-or he was a master at hiding his emotions.

“Will you help me?” Arvin asked.

“To excise a mind seed, one must know how to perform psychic chirurgery,” Tanju said. “Unfortunately, that is a power I have yet to acquire.” He paused. “You asked if I could negate it. There is a chance-a very slim one, mind you-that a negation might work. I’ll attempt it now, if only for my own peace of mind while we speak further. Sit quietly, and look into my eyes.”

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.