He grinned as the bolt sprang open. He tried to open the gate…

He couldn’t move.

Not a muscle. His eyes continued to blink and his chest rose and fell-albeit only in short, shallow breaths-and his heart thudded in his chest. But the rest of his body was as still as a statue. Realizing he must have fallen victim to a spell, he strained against it until sweat blossomed on his temples and trickled down his cheeks, but still he couldn’t move.

Stupid. He’d been stupid to think they’d simply let him walk away. He should have paid attention to the warning voice that had told him it was all too easy.

Meanwhile, the voices continued from behind the door. It sounded as though Gonthril was wrapping up the meeting. At any moment, the door would open-and Chorl would have all the excuse he needed to kill Arvin.

Arvin could hear Chorl’s voice coming from behind the door. “I’m in favor,” Chorl growled. “It will send a message to that scaly bitch-that she’s not safe anywhere.”

Another voice-one Arvin didn’t recognize-raised an objection. “I still think we should ambush him in the street.”

“He’ll be on his guard there,” Gonthril answered. “Especially after what happened to the overseer.”

“That was just thieves, trying to steal whatever it was the work crews found in the old tower,” someone else protested.

“Those thieves killed a yuan-ti-one who served the royal family,” Gonthril said. He sighed; Arvin pictured him shaking his head. “The only place he’ll let down his guard now is within the walls of his own home.”

“It’s suicide,” the other man grumbled. “We’ll never get inside.”

“Yes we will,” Gonthril said in a confident voice. “One sip of this and we’ll be able to slip right past the guard. They won’t suspect a thing. They’ll think we’re his little pets, out for a Middark soar. We’ll even have the right markings.”

Suddenly a voice whispered in Arvin’s ear. “I think you’ve heard enough.”

Had Arvin been capable of it, he would have jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. Held frozen by magic, all he could do was wonder who in the Nine Hells had crept up so silently behind him.

He heard a whispered chant, felt momentarily dizzy, and was standing in a room-a brightly illuminated room, next to the pallet on which Kayla lay. Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell smoothly. The flush of fever was gone from her face.

Arvin, still unable to move, could feel a hand on his shoulder-that of the person who had just teleported him. He could guess who it was. The cleric. The fellow spoke in a normal tone, no longer whispering. “That was poetic justice, don’t you think?”

The hand fell away from Arvin’s shoulder. Suddenly able to move, Arvin whirled to face the cleric. The green eyes that stared back at him were filled with mirth.

“What do you mean?” Arvin asked.

The cleric tipped his head in the direction of the hallway. As he did, an earring dangling from his left ear flashed in the light; the three silver lightning bolts hanging from it tinkled together. “By unlocking that gate, you locked your own body.”

Understanding dawned on Arvin. “There was a glyph on the gate, wasn’t there?”

The cleric nodded.

Arvin slid a wary glance toward the door to the room and saw that it was shut. It had no visible lock, but he was willing to bet its handle bore a glyph that was similar to the one on the gate he’d just tried. His imagination came up with unpleasant possibilities-turn the handle and have your head turned completely around. Until your neck snapped.

“What happens now?” he asked the cleric.

“We wait.”

“Until…?”

“Until Gonthril and the others have finished their night’s work,” the cleric calmly replied.

“Where are they going?” Arvin asked.

“To scotch the snake.”

Arvin stared at the cleric, suddenly understanding. It wasn’t the Pox the Secession were going after, but the yuan-ti who had supplied them with the potions, Osran Extaminos. And it wasn’t just any building Gonthril had been talking about infiltrating, but the palace. The man who had been objecting to this scheme had been right. A plan to kill a prince inside the royal palace was indeed suicide. A desperate gamble. Yet it was a risk, apparently, Gonthril was willing to take. He must have been hoping that Osran’s murder would cut off the source of the potion and save the city.

And he might just be right about that. Though Arvin couldn’t help but wonder if the old adage would prove true. Scotch the snake, and watch another two crawl out of the hole. “Backers,” Zelia had said. Plural.

Then there was the question of the cultists and why they had hooked up with a yuan-ti. As Gonthril had pointed out, why carry fire to a volcano? The cultists were perfectly capable of creating disease on their own, as the man who had killed himself in Arvin’s warehouse had so aptly demonstrated. Why then, would they feel the need to obtain “plague” from an outside source?

Suddenly, Arvin realized the answer. That name he’d heard one of his attackers use, just before he’d been bundled off to the sewers, wasn’t a person’s name, after all. It wasn’t “Missim” that he’d heard, but “Mussum.” The city that fell victim, nine centuries ago, to a plague so virulent that to this day it continued to claim lives.

That was what the cultists believed was in the vials. The most potent plague in all of Faerun-one that even they, in their most fervent prayers, would be hard-pressed to duplicate. They hoped to unleash it on Hlondeth, reducing it to a city of corpses. Instead they were being tricked into emptying a potion into its water system-one that would turn every human in Hlondeth into a yuan-ti, making it truly a “city of serpents.”

A city of slaves.

Realizing the cleric was standing in silence, watching him, Arvin decided to play on the man’s sympathies. “A friend of mine is in trouble,” he began. “The Pox fed him the potion that turns humans into yuan-ti. He’s the reason I was down in the sewers and”-he gestured at the sleeping Kayla-“the reason I was there to save Kayla’s life. He’s also the reason I was trying to leave, just now. I need to find him, before it’s too late.”

“A noble endeavor,” the cleric said, nodding. “But I can’t let you go. Too many other lives are at stake.”

“Please,” Arvin said, feeling the familiar prickle of psionic energy at the base of his skull. He gave the cleric his most pleading look. “I’m Naulg’s only hope.”

The cleric’s expression softened. “I…” Then he shook his head, like a man suddenly awakening from a dream. A smile quirked the corner of his lips. “A psion,” he said. “That’s quite rare.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry, but the answer is still no. And don’t try to charm me again.”

Arvin fumed. Just who in the Nine Hells did this human think he was?

Arvin hissed then leaped forward with the speed of a striking snake, intending to sink his teeth into the man’s throat. The cleric, however, was quicker. He barked out a one-word incantation and whipped one of his scarred hands up in front of his body, palm outward. Arvin crashed face-first into a glowing wall of magical energy that rattled his teeth in their sockets.

Suddenly sobered, he staggered away, rubbing his aching jaw. The anger that had boiled in him a moment ago was gone. Mutely, he glanced at the glove on his left hand, wondering why he hadn’t tried to summon his dagger to it.

Of course. The mind seed. He had reacted as Zelia might have done.

The cleric slowly lowered his hand. With a faint crackling, the magical shield around him disappeared. “Now that you’ve come to your senses, let’s pass the time like civilized men,” he told Arvin. “Gonthril told me part of your story; I’d like to hear the rest. But here’s a warning. If you try to attack me again, you’ll spend the rest of the day as a statue.”