Vor'gath lay unconscious in the palace's eastern wing, and the poisoning's source was the wine that the celebration had provided.
The eldest shaman's body, sustained by sixty years of shamanic practice and the Seventh Circle's autonomous life-support functions, breathed in the shallow rhythm that the body's minimal function produced when the body's conscious systems had been disabled by the specific toxin that the wine contained. The toxin was not barbarian. The toxin was not natural. The toxin was the specific compound that the Threian intelligence service's covert operations division maintained in the capital's secure storage for the specific purpose that the compound served: the incapacitation of high-value targets through the contamination of consumables that the targets' celebrations would include.
