dead-ended in a massive stone, carved in the shape of a snarling, bestial face, that filled the corridor like a plug.
'It's here,' Pakal said, 'behind this door.'
'How do we open it?' Arvin asked.
'With a spell, but first…'
Whispering a prayer, Pakal moved his hands over the face, his palms not quite touching the stone. The mouth began to glow a dull red. For a terrible
moment, Arvin thought the dwarf had activated a magical trap, but Pakal merely nodded.
'Trapped, as I suspected,' he said. He stepped back and whispered a prayer, raking the air with curved fingers. Then his shoulders slumped. 'The magic is too strong,' he said as the glow faded. 'I can not dispel it.' He turned to Arvin. 'I can still open the door, but without knowing what the trap does, it will be risky.'
'I might be able to help,' Arvin said.
Turning his palm in the direction of the massive stone face, he tapped the energy that swirled around his navel, drawing it up into his throat. A low droning filled the air and a thin sheen of ectoplasm glistened on the stone face as his power manifested. A psychic echo of the past flowed into his mind: a vision of a yuan-ti in old-fashioned clothing, carrying a lantern, who approached the face and cast a spell. The mouth yawned open, giving a brief glimpse of a chamber beyond, and the yuan-ti bent to slither through. As he entered, rubbery black tentacles erupted from the mouth, filling it like a nest of snakes. They lashed out at the intruder, wrapping around his arms, legs, and neck. Then they yanked, each in a different direction. The yuan-ti was literally torn to pieces; his limbs and head wrenched from his body with wet tearing noises. The tentacles released what remained of him and retreated. Then the mouth slammed shut.
Arvin shuddered as the vision ended.
'I know how the trap works,' he told Pakal. 'The doorway is the mouth. The trap is inside.' He described what he'd just seen. 'I have a rope that might be able to entangle those tentacles long enough for us to get through.'
Pakal shook his head. 'I have a better idea. Even tentacles cannot grasp the wind.' He glanced up
at Arvin. 'With your permission, I will turn your body to air. When the mouth opens, float through it. I will make you solid again once we are safely inside.'
Arvin hesitated. 'What about my pack?' he asked. 'And the things inside it?'
'They will become air also,' Pakal assured him, 'and will return to solid form after.'
'All right,' Arvin said. 'Do it.'
The dwarf uttered a prayer, moving his hands in a fluttering pattern. He started at Arvin's feet and moved up his body, standing on tiptoe to finish. Arvin felt a prickling numbness spread upward as Pakal cast the spell. Looking down, he saw his feet, legs, hips, and hands dissolve into individual motes of matter, then disappear. His body did not fall to the floor but remained standing upright. His heart lurched, however, as his arms and torso became fully gaseous. He felt a moment of panic as he realized he could no longer feel his heart beating. His breathing, too, had halted. Then his head became insubstantial as well. He floated, a detached awareness inside a swirl of air, somehow still able to see and hear but unable to feel. The only time he had ever come close to such a sensation was when he was deep in meditation-so deep, he feared he would lose his sense of self.
Beside him, Pakal cast another spell. He raised a fist and rapped once, smartly, on the stone face, then stepped quickly back. As the mouth groaned open, he rendered himself gaseous as well.
Follow me, a voice whispered.
Arvin felt the air next to him shift. It flowed toward the gaping mouth, leaving a swirling void where Pakal had been a moment ago. Arvin strained to follow it, but his legs wouldn't move-and he remembered he no longer had legs. Fighting down
his fear, he concentrated on where he wanted to go-through the mouth-and felt himself drift in that direction.
Pakal hovered next to him, a swirl of coherency that Arvin could sense but not touch. They entered the mouth one after the other. As they did, the trap sprang to life. Tontacles uncoiled violently and lashed out at them, thrashing through the space that Arvin and Pakal occupied. Arvin instinctively recoiled as ono of the tentacles whipped around his face, but the tentacle passed right through his gaseous form. His thoughts spun crazily as the gas that was his head swirled in its wake, then became coherent again. He concentrated on his objective-the chamber beyond- and drifted in that direction.
Once inside, his body solidified the same way that it had become gaseous: from the feet up. Blood rushed through his veins, sending a fierce tingle through his body from feet to head. He gasped and fought to keep his balance. As soon as the dizziness cleared, he reached over his shoulder to touch his pack. It was still there, the net inside it still weighing it down. Arvin heaved a sigh of relief.
The chamber was circular, its walls carved in the by-now familiar scale pattern. Against one wall lay the skeleton of an enormous snake, coiled in a neat loop where it had died.
'More bones,' Arvin muttered.
He nudged the tail of the long-dead guardian with his foot, but the skeleton didn't react.
A simple wooden box sat on the floor; its hinged lid didn't appear to have a lock. Pakal materialized beside it-his feet, legs, torso, then head coalescing from air-then squatted to study the box. He pointed forked fingers at it, whispered something under his breath, and said, 'The Circled Serpent is inside.'
He reached for the lid.
'Careful,' Arvin warned. 'It's certain to be trapped.'
'I sense no traps,' Pakal said. He lifted the lid. Arvin winced, but nothing happened.
The box was lined with black velvet. Inside was a silver tube twice the thickness of Arvin's thumb, bent in a half-circle. At one end of the half circle was a snake's head, its fanged mouth open wide and its eyes set with gems. The other end was tapered slightly; that would be where the other half of the Circled Serpent would join with it. Arvin held his breath, waiting for something to happen-for the mouth-door to close, for an alarm to sound, even for the snake skeleton to suddenly rear up and attack. Nothing did.
Pakal looked up at Arvin, a concerned expression on his face. 'Only half? We thought that Sibyl had both pieces.'
'Perhaps she does,' Arvin said, thinking of Dmetrio's disappearance. 'Perhaps that's why she decided that leaving this half in an easy-to-find location would be worth the risk; whoever found it would be tempted to waste time searching for the other half. Sibyl knows there's a spy in her lair; this is obviously part of a trap to catch that spy.' He shrugged the backpack off his shoulders and began unfastening the straps that held it shut. He nodded at the door; the writhing tentacles that had filled the mouth were gone, but the mouth was still open. 'Odd, don't you think, that the door hasn't shut yet.'
Pakal tapped the half-circle of silver with a fingernail, making the metal ring faintly-probably making sure it was real and not an illusion-then closed the lid. He picked up the box and rose to his feet. 'The other half of the Circled Serpent-'
'Will still be inside its lead-lined box, where your
magic can't locate it,' Arvin said. He rose to his feet as well, holding his pack, ready to toss the net inside it at the door the moment Sibyl came through it. A musky floral smell rose from its fibres. 'Go,' he told Pakal, 'while you still can. You've got half of the Circled Serpent; be content with that.'
'You are not-?'
'No,' Arvin said. 'I'm staying. Sibyl's bound to arrive soon.'
Pakal nodded and said, 'May Thard Harr guide your-'
The dwarf grunted and staggered forward, crashing into Arvin. Tho box tumbled from his hands as he fell, spilling Sibyl's half of the Circled Serpent onto the floor. Arvin heard a rattling noise: the sound of bones moving swiftly across the floor.
He swore and leaped backward. The skeleton- animated after all-reared up with its mouth open, ready to strike again. It had already bitten Pakal, and the back of the dwarf's left arm leaked blood. Empty eye sockets stared at Arvin across the dwarf's rigid body. Then the serpent began to sway.
Arvin dropped his pack and flung his hands outward toward the skeleton. Silver sparkles danced in the air between them as long strands of glistening ectoplasm shot from Arvin's fingers, coiling themselves about the undead snake. They looped through the ribs, and with a twist of his fingers Arvin knotted them there. Another yank
