Hlondeth had been a human city in those days. In the centuries since, the yuan-ti had become dominant, and the yuan-ti worshiped the serpent god Sseth. Shrines like the one to Saint Aganna were all but forgotten, known only to the handful of humans who still worshiped the Crying God. Arvin, placed under the care of those priests in an orphanage, had been taken, years ago, to visit Saint Aganna's shrine as a "reward" for having knotted the most nets in a month. The sight of shriveled fingers on a platter, however, had terrified him, as had the faint rotten-egg smell that lingered within the shrine-an odor he had been certain was the lingering taint of plague. The priest, however, had explained to the near-panicked boy that the smell came from the shrine's cellar, which the yuan-ti had tunneled into and turned into a brood chamber. When Arvin had worried about the yuan-ti bursting out of the cellar to defend their eggs, the priest had chuckled. The
cellar had been abandoned, he explained, many years ago. The yuan-ti no longer defiled it.
Arvin thanked Tymora, goddess of luck, for having woven that vital piece of information into his lifepath.
For the past six months, since returning from Sespech, Arvin had been gathering information about the ancient temple in which Sibyl had made her lair. He knew it had been built to honor the beast lord Varae, an aspect of Sseth, and that it lay somewhere beneath the city at the heart of an even older network of catacombs. Abandoned long before Hlondeth was even built, the temple had been rediscovered by the Extaminos family in the sixth century and used for several years as a place of worship by that House. It had been abandoned a second time after the Cathedral of Emerald Scales was completed. Over the intervening three and a half centuries, it had largely been forgotten. Nobody in Hlondeth-save for Sibyl's followers-knew exactly where it was or how to get to it.
There was a text, however-one of several obtained by Arvin at great expense through his guild connections-that described a way in. It had been written by a man named Villim. Extaminos in the late sixth century DR. In it, Villim had made a veiled reference to a trap door that led directly to the temple catacombs-a door that could only be opened by "the lady without fingers."
Saint Aganna. The entrance to the shrine's "cellar" was probably behind the icon.
The altar, Arvin saw, had sunk into the floor in the eighteen years since his visit with the priest; any offerings placed on it today would slide off its steeply canted surface. He climbed onto it and stood, studying the icon. It was even more faded than he remembered. He could barely make out the white, wormlike fingers on the platter Saint Aganna held.
Arvin grasped one edge of the icon and gently tugged. As he'd expected, the painting was mounted on the wall with hinges-hinges that tore free, leaving Arvin with the heavy wooden panel in his arms. He staggered back and nearly fell from the altar. Once he'd recovered his balance, he lowered the icon to the floor and studied the portion of the wall it had concealed. A close inspection revealed five faint circular marks-slight depressions in the stone. Pushing them in the wrong order might spring a trap. A poisoned needle, perhaps. or a sprung blade that would sever a finger.
Arvin wrenched a splinter of wood from the top of the icon and used it to push each of the depressions in turn. He tried several sequences-left to right, right to left, every other depression-but nothing worked. Frustrated, he stared at them, thinking. They were arranged, he saw, in a slight arc. As if…
He lifted a hand, fingers splayed, then smiled. One depression lay under the tip of each finger and thumb. The solution, he realized, was to push all of them at once.
He did.
He felt movement under his forefinger and little finger-each sank into the stone up to the first joint. Then they abruptly stopped. Flakes of red drifted out of the holes when he pulled his fingers out.
The mechanism was rusted solid.
Arvin braced a shoulder against the wall and shoved, but nothing happened. He shoved again-then gasped as the altar teetered with a grinding of stone on stone. Realizing his weight was about to send it crashing into the chamber below, he leaped off.
"Nine lives," he whispered, touching the crystal that hung from a leather thong around his neck. Then he smiled. The secret door behind the icon wasn't the only way into the catacombs.
Placing his hands on the lower end of the altar,
he shoved. The slab of stone moved downward-then slipped and fell. As it tumbled into the chamber below, Arvin manifested a power, wrapping the block of stone in a muffle of psionic energy. Though the crash of the altar against the floor below sent a tremble through the shrine, the only sound was a soft rustle, no louder than a silk scarf landing gently on the floor.
Dust rose through the opening as Arvin peered down into it. Sunlight slanting through the hole dimly illuminated the chamber below. The floor was littered with what looked like deflated leather balls: the remains of yuan-ti eggs. All had hatched long ago; what remained was brown and withered. The walls bore some sort of plaster work, done in relief-knobby sculptural elements that Arvin couldn't make out from above.
He pulled a rope from his pack and laid it out on the floor, doubling the rope back on itself to form a T-shape. He tied a knot, then stretched the short bar of the T from one edge of the hole to the other, letting the longer piece dangle down inside.
"Saxum," he whispered. The rope turned to stone. He slid down what had become a pole, then whispered a second command word: "Restis." The rope returned to its original form and slithered down into his hands.
He looked around as he untied the knot and stowed the rope away. The walls and ceiling of the chamber were decorated not with plaster reliefs but with human bones. On one wall, individual vertebrae and ribs had been arranged in floral patterns around a skull flanked by two shoulder blades that gave the appearance of wings. On another, leg and arm bones by the hundreds formed borders around still more skulls, arranged in circular rosettes. On the ceiling, thousands of finger bones were arranged in a starlike motif. A chandelier made from curved
ribs and yet more vertebrae, wired together, creaked as it rocked slowly back and forth, disturbed by the fall of the altar.
On yet another wall was a gruesome parody of a sundial, arm bones dividing a circle of tiny skulls into the four quarters of morning, fullday, evening and darkmorning. Arvin's mouth twisted in disgust as he realized the skulls were from human infants. Stepping closer, he saw that the skulls were cracked, in some cases smashed in on one side; they must have been sacrificial victims. He touched one of the tiny skulls and it crumbled under the slight pressure of his fingertip, the fragments sifting down onto the floor like ash. The skulls were a poignant contrast with the hatched eggs that littered the floor-death and birth. The ones who had done the dying, of course, were human.
So were the ones who had done the killing. The Temple of Varae-and the catacombs-had been built long before the yuan-ti came to the Vilhon Reach.
There was one exit from the chamber, a doorway whose arch was framed in bones. It led to a flight of stairs that descended into darkness.
Arvin pulled a glass vial out of his pocket, pulled out its cork stopper, and drank the potion it contained. The liquid slid down his throat, leaving a honey-sweet aftertaste of night-blooming flowers and loam. The inky blackness that filled the staircase lightened as walls, stairs, and ceiling resolved into shades of gray and black.