The yuan-ti cocked his head as if listening to something then gave a thin-lipped smile. Arvin’s hopes rose. His charm must have worked. Then he realized the yuan-ti had heard footsteps in the hall. Arvin heard a rustling in the doorway and turned his head. Slowly-he didn’t want to give the snake-hand an excuse to bite him.

The female cultist who had fled earlier entered the room. She held a flask in one hand. It was metal, and shaped like the rattle of a snake. She started to remove the cork that sealed it then glanced at the yuan-ti, as if seeking his permission.

Arvin wet his lips nervously. “The Pox have already made me drink from one of those flasks,” he told the yuan-ti. “The potion didn’t work on me. As you can see, I wasn’t transformed into a-”

“Silence!” the yuan-ti hissed.

The cultist lowered the flask, a puzzled expression on her face. Seeing it, Arvin realized that the Pox still believed the flasks to contain poison or plague-and he had just come within a word of destroying that fiction. Had he just proved himself too dangerous to be allowed to live? He wet his lips nervously. His dagger was still inside his glove. There was a chance-a very slim chance-that he could kill the yuan-ti before the snake-hand sank its venomous teeth into Arvin’s throat.

The yuan-ti nodded at Arvin. “This man is dangerous,” he hissed. “Why don’t you let me feed him the plague, instead?” He held up his free hand, the jaws of its snake-head open, imploring.

The cultist hesitated. “It should be a cleric who…” Then her eyes softened, and she held out the flask.

Quicker than the blink of an eye, the yuan-ti’s free hand shot out. The cultist gasped as fangs sank into her hand then she immediately stiffened. Unable to breathe, she purpled. Then she toppled sideways, crashing onto the floor like a felled free.

The yuan-ti picked up the flask with one of its snake hands then turned its unblinking stare on Arvin. “You must be tired-why don’t you sleep?” it hissed. “I have no reason to harm you. I need you. Sleep.”

Arvin felt his eyelids begin to close. He mounted the only defense he could think of-the Empty Mind Tanju had taught him-pouring his awareness out in a flood. But it was no use. The suggestion felt as though it came from deep within; it wasn’t something that grasped the mind from without. What the yuan-ti was saying just seemed so reasonable. Arvin was safe enough; the yuan-ti wasn’t finished with him yet. And Arvin was exhausted, after all…

His heavy eyelids closed as the last shred of his resistance fluttered away like a snake’s discarded skin.

27 Kythorn, Fullday

In his dream, Arvin slithered across the floor of the cathedral between its forest of columns, each of which was carved into the form of two vipers twining around each other, one with its head up, the other with its head down. The columns supported an enormous domed ceiling of translucent green stone through which sunlight slanted, bathing everything in a cool light reminiscent of a shaded jungle. Water from the fountain that topped the cathedral dripped through holes in the roof, pattering onto the floor like rain.

Just ahead was one of the Stations of the Serpent-an enormous bronze statue of the god in winged serpent form, his body banded with glittering emeralds and his mouth open wide to reveal curved fangs of solid gold. The base of the statue was wreathed in writhing jets of orange-red fire, symbolic of Sseth’s descent into the Peaks of Flame.

One day, Sseth would rise from them again.

A dozen other yuan-ti were weaving in prayer before the station, mesmerized from by the slit eyes of Sseth. Arvin slithered closer, welcoming the warmth of the oil-fueled fire on his scales. Twisting himself into a coil, he raised his upper body and swayed before the statue then opened his mouth wide in a silent hiss. Feeling a drop of venom bead at the tip of each of his fangs, he lashed forward in a mock strike, spitting the venom forward onto the tray that stood just in front of the statue. The venom landed on the fire-warmed bronze and immediately sizzled as it boiled away.

Hearing the hiss of scales against stone behind him, Arvin turned and saw the priest he had come here to meet. The priest’s serpent form was long and slender and narrow-nosed, with black and white and red stripes running the length of his body. The part of Arvin’s mind that was his own-the part that was observing the dream from a distance, like a spectator watching a dance and unable to resist swaying in time with the music-recognized the priest as the one he-no Zelia-would eventually reduce to a broken-minded heap. But that memory was months in the future.

The priest flickered a tongue in greeting and gestured with a weaving motion. “This way,” he hissed.

Arvin followed him down a side corridor. The priest led him to one of the binding rooms. Inside it, on a low slab of stone, lay the body of a young man-a yuan-ti half blood. The head was that of a snake, with yellow-green scales and slit eyes, and each of the legs ended in snakelike tails, rather than feet. The body was naked. Arvin could see that a number of its bones were broken; one jagged bit of white protruded through the skin just below the shoulder. The left side of the face was crushed, caved in like a broken egg.

Two yuan-ti were working on the corpse, binding it in strips of linen. Both were male and both wore tunics that bore the Extaminos crest. They appeared human at first glance, save for slit eyes and brown scales that speckled their arms and legs. They worked quietly and efficiently-but carefully, giving the corpse the respect it was due as they wound the linen around it. When finished, the binding would be egg-shaped, a symbol of the spirit’s return to the cloaca of the World Serpent.

“Leave us,” the priest said. The two servants exited the room, bowing.

The priest slithered up to the corpse and raised himself above it. Arvin slid around to the other side of the slab. He didn’t recognize the dead man, but he knew who he was-a younger cousin of Lady Dediana. Arvin let his eyes range over the body. The corpse reminded him of prey that had been constricted then rejected as unfit to swallow.

“Keep your questions simple,” the priest said. “The dead are easily confused. And remember, you may ask only a limited number of questions. No more than five.”

Arvin nodded. The information he wanted was very specific. Five questions should do nicely.

The priest swayed above the body in a complicated pattern, tongue flickering in and out of his mouth as he hissed a prayer in Draconic. As the prayer concluded, the mouth of the corpse parted slightly, like that of a man about to speak. “Ask your questions,” the priest told Arvin.

Arvin addressed the body. “Urshas Extaminos, how did you die?”

“I fell from a great height.” Urshas’s voice was a creaking echo, his words sounding as if they were rising out of a dark, distant tomb. Broken bones grated as his smashed jaw opened and closed.

Interesting. Urshas’s body had been found late last night, lying on a road near the House Gestin compound. The tallest of the viaducts that spanned that road was only two stories above street level-and was three buildings distant from the spot where the body lay. “How did you reach that height?” Arvin asked.

“Sseth’s avatar carried me. We flew.”

The priest gave a surprised hiss. “How do you know it was Sseth’s avatar?” he asked.

Arvin’s head snapped around angrily. “I am asking the questions.”

Urshas, however, was compelled to answer: “She told me so.”

“She?” Arvin said aloud-then realized his error. His inflection had turned the word into a question.

“Sibyl,” Urshas answered.

“Sibyl who?” Arvin asked.

“She has no house name,” Urshas croaked. “She is just… Sibyl.”

“Sibyl,” a different voice-one that wasn’t part of his dream-hissed from somewhere close at hand.