believe it. A year ago, he'd felled Zelia with a similar trick, using a simple psychokinetic power to levitate a knot of rope and knock her unconscious. Shaking his head in wonder, he touched the crystal at his throat.
'Nine-'
A hiss of laughter sounded behind him. Whirling, Arvin saw a second Zelia enter the garden.
'Surely you didn't think it would be that easy?' she said, closing the gate behind her.
She cocked a finger at him, as if inviting him to try something. Arvin heard a sound like the tinkling of tiny bells.
He stomped his foot. Zelia staggered but did not fail, nor, strangely, did she hurl an attack back at him. Arvin used the respite to yank ectoplasm from the Astral and braid it into the massive construct he hoped would overpower Zelia.
As he did, he felt a curious, hollow sensation at the base of his spine. The construct was taking far longer to manifest than it should have-and was drawing power at an incredible rate from his muladhara.
Arvin tried cutting the manifestation short in mid-flow but couldn't. Energy spiraled out of his muladhara at a faster and faster rate, spilling into the air around him like water from a torn wineskin. He tried fighting it, tried sending his awareness deep into his muladhara, only to have his consciousness nearly shredded by the violent whirlpool he found there. A moment later, the last of his psionic energies spilled out and were gone.
Zelia smiled. 'I see you've learned a thing or two since we last met,' she said, 'so have I.'
Terrified, Arvin whipped a hand around his back. Before he could draw his dagger, Zelia's eyes flashed silver as if reflecting the moonlight. Her hand shot out and slapped his cheek. Arvin stumbled backward, unbalanced. His forearm was stuck to the small of his back. When he tried to wrench it free, it felt as if the skin was ripping. His free hand brushed against his hip-and stuck there, the cloth of his pants melting away as flesh fused with flesh. He stumbled, one knee knocking against the other. They stuck fast as well.
Completely unbalanced, he crashed to the floor. Clothing melted away from his body like paper in the rain as his calves were forced up against his thighs, his arms stuck to his sides, and his chin to his chest, the flesh fusing together like clay being smoothed by an invisible hand. He crumpled down into a fetal ball. As he blinked, his eyelids tried to fuse shut. With an immense effort, he managed to tear one of them open again. Even as he did, his ears closed over, blocking out the sound of his own ragged breathing.
Terror gripped him. He prayed to Tymora, to Hoar, to Ilmater-to any god or goddess who would listen. He could feel the crystal his mother had given him pressing into his throat. The flesh had grown over it, sealing it inside.
He watched with his one open eye-not daring to
blink, lest the eyelid seal itself shut-as Zelia stepped out of view behind him. The dagger at the small of his back had likewise been buried inside folds of fused flesh-or rather, its sheath had. Arvin felt the blade slide out of the sheath as Zelia drew it. His heart beat with faint hope. Was she going to end his suffering? Would she truly show mercy?
She stepped in front of him again, holding the dagger. She jabbed its point into first one ear, then the other, cutting the flaps of skin that had grown over them. Then she sliced open his lips. Arvin gasped at the pain and began to choke on the blood he'd inhaled. When he was able to speak again, he told Zelia what she wanted to hear.
'You've beaten me,' he said, blood dribbling from his lips onto the floor. He stared up at her with his one good eye. 'What now?'
Instead of answering, she stepped over to the first Zelia-the one that lay either unconscious or dead. She laid a hand gently on that Zelia's neck, as though checking for a life pulse. Instead of continuing to rest gently on the neck, however, her fingers sank deep into it, as if into soft dough. Then the first Zelia began to shrink. Head and legs and arms shriveled into the torso, and the torso itself collapsed around the second Zelia's hand.
Zelia closed her hand around the last vestiges of the body it as it flowed into her palm and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She shivered and her head lolled back-arid groaned in pleasure. Her fist fell open, empty. She opened her eyes and bent down to pick up Naneth's ring.
'How did you come to have this?' she asked.
Arvin stared defiantly up at her. Maybe she wasn't going to seed him after all. His lips were raw with pain, and he spat out the blood that had puddled in his mouth.
'Abyss take you,' he swore.
Zelia swayed closer, tossing her long red hair. 'You will tell me,' she said, 'one way or the other. When you've finished telling me, I'll end your suffering.' She smirked. 'Perhaps by compelling you to kill yourself.'
Her eyes flashed and a soft tinkling filled the air as she manifested another power. Arvin felt it brush against his mind as softly as a cobweb-then tear apart, as if it were equally fragile.
Zelia frowned, then grabbed his hair and used it to roll his body back and forth like a ball as she examined him. Her eyes flashed a second time and a soft hissing filled the air as she concentrated on her manifestation. Her hand paused briefly over the braided leather bracelet on his right wrist, and hesitated a second time over the lump that had been Arvin's left hand. She probed with her fingers.
Arvin realized she had found Karrell's ring.
With quick, deft slices that sent fresh spasms of pain lancing through his hand and up his arm, Zelia cut Arvin's little finger apart from the rest, then yanked the ring from it. She held the ring in the fountain until the blood was gone from it, then gave it an appraising look.
A tear welled in Arvin's open eye. He said nothing, however. Zelia would have enjoyed listening to him plead for Karrell's ring. He stared at the backpack, lying no more than a pace away. He'd never be able to kill Sibyl. Zelia would no doubt claim the net inside it, as well…
His breath caught as he realized there might be a way out. If he could trick Zelia into speaking the net's command word while still holding it, the magical net would kill her. Arvin would be free once the manifestation she'd used to fuse his flesh together ended.
Assuming it ever did end.
Zelia's eyes flashed silver a third time as she manifested the power that would allow her to listen in on Arvin's thoughts. Without Karrell's ring or his own psionics to counter it, he had only his own raw will to defend himself with-and Zelia tore through that like a knife through cloth. Arvin pretended to panic, filling his mind with thoughts of his backpack. He prayed-falsely-to Tymora that his luck would hold, that Zelia wouldn't take the net inside it, that she wouldn't speak its command word-pullulios-and toss it on him. That would inflict a terrible agony, one that would cause him to crumple and succumb to whatever she wanted.
Arvin felt Zelia push deeper into his mind. She chuckled. 'Try that trick on someone who's going to fall for it.' Then she continued to sift through his thoughts.
Arvin's mind reeled as his thoughts were peeled back, layer by layer. Memories flashed before his eyes, terrible memories of confronting the marilith and watching in horror as the fate link he'd manifested yanked Karrell into the Abyss with it when the demon was banished. And wonderful memories of making love to Karrell-just a flash of that, and a long sequence, replayed more slowly, of the conversation they'd had just before.
Zelia rifled through his memories of everything Karrell had told him about the Circled Serpent, then through more recent memories of sneaking into the temple and getting close-but not quite close enough-to exact his revenge on Sibyl. She saw him meet Pakal, get past the tentacled mouth and undead snake to claim half of the Circled Serpent, confront the Naneth-seed and defeat it, and she saw them found by Sibyl then teleporting to the rooftop…
'The Circled Serpent was here?' Zelia hissed,
releasing his mind at last. She glanced around, wary, then kicked Arvin. 'Where did the dwarf go?'
Arvin slumped, exhausted in both mind and body. 'I don't know,' he answered at last. He stared, unseeing, at the fountain. He'd been violated. Used.
Zelia swore under her breath. She sputtered for several moments, hor fangs bared, then got control of herself again. She turned back to Arvin.
'You are certain the Naneth-seed is dead?'
Arvin supposed she would kill him for that, especially since she'd learned all that his memories could tell her. He tried to nod, but his fused body just rocked back and forth on the floor.
'She's dead,' he answered.
Zelia gave a false-sounding chuckle. 'Just as well. I was growing tired of her. Mind seeds can be so…
