The White Serpent

  “The Plains?” The visitor was surprised. “A long way surely from home? You’re from Dorthar, are you not?”

  Rehger had seen the second man, in the doorway.

  Rehger said, “I’ve some Dortharian blood.”

  “Yes, by all means be quick to claim the High Race of Vis. Where else, then?”

  “Alisaar. Anyone who knows me will tell you.”

  “Saardsinmey.”

  Rehger said nothing.

  “Killing men,” said Galutiyh, “it was good commerce? And now you’ve found your father, too. What exciting days you’re having. Would you care to cap the adventure and go journeying?”

  “Why?”

  “Why indeed. Because I say you must. That’s how I earn my fame. My unerring sense of the quarry.”

  There was a bellow of thunder directly overhead. It shook the partitions of the room, and past the window rain broke like a thousand necklaces from a cloudless sky.

  In the moment of inattention, Yennef came across the cluttered space, picking up one of the razor-edged tools left lying there. He took Galutiyh around the body from behind, squeezing him close, and laid the flat of the chisel against his throat.

  • • •

  “Unfortunately,” said Yennef, to Rehger, “this one means what he says. But if you’re swift and stop for nothing, you should be away before his rat-pack dig up the body.”

  Galutiyh had relaxed against Yennef.

  “My body, eh?”

  Yennef sensed the slight shift of tendons and said, kindly, “Don’t. After all, if you don’t force me to do it now, I might relent and spare you, later.”

  “But he,” said Galutiyh, “isn’t running like you told him to.”

  “Now,” said Yennef. “Rehger. Go. Get on a ship, or get out of Moih at least.”

  “Shall I explain?” said Galutiyh. “You see,” he said to Rehger, “the white Lowlanders, the Shadowless, the pure Amanackire—the allied lands believe they are hoping to war with us again. And your special white lady has some part in it, being one of that kind.”

  Something in Rehger altered.

  Yennef said, “Don’t listen to his crazy spewings. There’s a story out of Shansarian Alisaar that a white Amanackire was killed in Saardsinmey—and rose from the dead. Her lover was a Vis Swordsman. She saved his life by sheltering him in her tomb above the city. To this mathematical cobbler here, if you’re a Saardsin Sword and have survived, then you must be a lover of the Amanackire woman. He’ll gather his pack and hound you to Dorthar or some Shansar or Vardish holding, and put you to the question. The Shansars call this process the Ordeals. Make your own decision on what that means. Go on, get out. I’ll kill this leech. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Your father loves you,” said Galutiyh. “He knows our masters will punish him in due course if he does any of that.”

  Rehger came around the table. He said, to Galutiyh, “I’ll take the chisel from him.” And with a movement like flight, almost invisible, sheered the chisel from Yennef’s grip and undid the Dortharian from his arm.

  Yennef stood amazed and cursing. Galutiyh, spun aside, sneered at them both.

  “I won’t forget your charity, Rehger Am Ly Dis. Nor yours, Yennef, you cat-sput.” He flung lightly through the door and away down the stair.

  “You deserve all he can do then, you bloody fool.”

  “Perhaps, Yennef. It’s not a story, the tomb I sheltered in. Go and ask Chacor, if you like. He was there.”

  “And no story dead women come back to life?”

  “She could heal the dead. No, it may be nothing more than a fact. But I’d like to hear what they say in Shansar Alisaar, for myself.”

  “You will. On the rack. Over the fires. The yellow Shansarians—Vardath, Vathcri—are as frightened as the Vis, now, of what Lowlanders can do. We’ve been trying to weed out the opinions of the south, these merchants, because the Storm Lord, who has the peerless blood of the goddess himself, wets his drawers whenever you say Anackire. They don’t fight with weapons and men, the Lowland magicians. But with earthquakes and storms and tidal waves and cracking volcanoes. They can fly in chariots up to the stars, and murder with a flame from the eye or the fingers. And you played thread-the-needle with one of these. Anack help you. You should have let me kill him.”

  “He didn’t owe his death to me, or to you,” said Rehger, absently.

  “Lowlander talk. Repayments for past lives? Debts for future ones?”

  “Yennef, in the arena sometimes, I’ve recognized the men who came to me for death.”

  “She taught you the philosophy in bed?”

  “Or it was blood-lust then. Whatever, I’ve killed sufficiently. You’d better be on your way before your Dortharian returns.”

  “Yes, he won’t forget, as he said.”

  “I regret that. Don’t think I don’t thank you, Yennef. You shouldn’t have risked yourself.”

  “You’re my son,” said Yennef. He grew calm and said again, slowly, “My son. My first-born, so far as I know.”

  17. The Dark, The Light

  “WE’RE LOOKING FOR AN ALISAARIAN.”

  “I have a message here, which he entrusted to me.”

  Vanek, standing composed and alone in the studio, offered the five mix cutthroats a square of reed paper. “To Galutiyh Am Dorthar, or his captains: I shall await you at the fourth hour of afternoon, in the square before the Artisans Guild Hall. No other will be with me. I am, in readiness to accompany you, Rehger Am Ly Dis.”

  Could they read? One, apparently. He repeated the sentences to the others. Then, “He’s a trained fighter, what about that?”

  The most unsightly of his friends remarked coarsely, “There’ll be ten or so of us. Let’s see him try.”

  Another objected, “Who’s to say he’ll do what he says?”

  “We’ll get him sooner or later.”

  Nevertheless they wished to search the studio and Vanek allowed it, having earlier sent every additional person off the premises. Subtly controlled by the aura of helpful aloof uninterest which Vanek exuded, Galutiyh’s search party did not make much mess, and soon went off again, into the city, whose streets steamed still from their slake of rain.

  Rehger’s slightly longer letter to Vanek had rendered apology, and enclosed a sum of money (which annoyed, it was the full compensation for terminated apprenticeship.) “If I can ever redeem this, I will do it.” But he had seemed to imagine the imperative summons which now called him away might not allow of return. He thanked Vanek, and declared thanks, as apology, were inadequate. “If I might stay, I believe you know I would do so. It’s impossible.”

  Vanek, hazarding between the lines, his latent telepathy questing, arrived at that strange nexus of the random psychic, sensitive of everything without even a phrase to describe it or a shred of proof. Therefore he emptied his studio, and awaited those Rehger regretted might be visited upon him.

  There had been a third paper for the Corhl. Vanek, not scrupling, slit the wax and read favorable wishes to Chacor, a farewell, a suggestion that Chacor might be wary of telling anyone the real details of past escapes in Alisaar: It seemed the white Lowlanders were coming to be mistrusted.

  The onslaught of rain had unsettled the city. Out on the avenues, the voices were still complaining, and awnings being shaken.

  Vanek, having bolted and barred the studio doors, went up the stair.

  The unfinished marble was in its accustomed position, and veiled in its cloth as Rehger always left it. More than a year, Vanek’s Lydian apprentice had worked on the stone, constantly refining and smoothing, only sometimes prizing a little of the material away. He had selected the piece himself, and split it off under Mur’s instruction—not to gain dominion over the stone—but rather to liberate some psyche trapped within.

  Vanek, rather as he had slit the wa
x on the third letter, now raised the veil.

  From the door, the marble’s progress was not visible. But coming around the slender block, you found the mystery had begun. A face, an exquisite throat, a fountain of hair, had been assisted from their chrysalis.

  The silver maidens cast at Sheep Lane had had something of this. Yet they were beings in loveliest slumber. Frozen in her marble, this creature was at the threshold of wakening. A beautiful unhuman girl, drawn from hibernation in the melting snow, all whiteness, skin and hair and eyes, like a woman of the Amanackire, the Shadowless Ones, resurrected out of the winter ground.

  • • •

  The whiteness of Hamos—Yennef had pictured it extensively that afternoon before the fourth hour.

  It was a black city, built of local stone; white marble came from the north, and they did not use it, there. The whiteness was in furnishings, the jewels, the garments, the albino pigment of the citizens. It was uncommon to see any Lowlander about in Hamos now darker than the palest blond. More often, you saw the golden eyes, but not so often as the eyes of ice. Snakes, too, abounded in Hamos. They were carved on pillars and lintels, worn in enamel on necks and limbs and waists. Or, they were living. They eddied from crevices in the walls and paving to sun themselves. There was a penalty at Hamos for any Vis killing a snake. The amputation of a finger from the offending hand. (This was a witticism. The hero Raldnor had been missing a finger.)

  You saw Vis in Hamos, but they were always traveling. There were only a handful of inns that would shelter them, and only particular sections of the city where they might go. For those who wished to worship Anackire, the temples had an outer court and slab without a statue. It was the rumor there were no icons of the goddess any more in Hamos, and her sister sanctums. They formed the image by power of will, out of the fires they burned before the altars.

  The Plains generally did not seem pledged to the fears, now rife elsewhere, of Amanackire militance, and even Hamos did not. Hamos was not of the world. Though there were said to be occult colleges, they were concealed, and if sorcery was positively practiced they gave no sign. Even the Shansar magics and the Vathcrian magics current in the goddess temples of all the Middle Lands, and of Var-Zakoris, Karmiss Lanelyr—were lacking.

  Having written three letters, Rehger went directly to his lodging. Yennef walked beside him. They had agreed, unspoken, to end the discussion of alarms and tortures. Yennef had plans to avoid Galutiyh, but did not speak of those either. Rehger had other arrangements to make before departure.

  In the succeeding hour then, they exchanged geographies, and a few insights of their separate lives, which was more than had been managed at the first meeting. It no longer seemed stilted to them to remain together, but neither was it natural.

  “The artisan’s wristlet will be handy to hide the snake mark. They still curse Amrek in the north.”

  Yennef had drifted into the service of the Council of Dorthar. He had done so many things, none of which had left any milestone. Long lost was the excursion among the mountains above Ly Dis. He had picked up the tale which sent him there in several forms, and repetition more than credence had driven him after it.

  “It was suggested an Amanackire flying chariot had crashed there, on some upland valley. You’d even hear this from Vardish soldiers over the border, when they were drunk enough. I know, I served with them. It was a hoary old fable and had got itself adopted. A magician’s chariot of the skies, mind you. Winged, maybe. Dorthar has something of that sort, too. The dragons who carried the Vis to earth and made them kings. Well, it wasn’t that I believed in it, but it seemed the tree of falsehood might just have a root. I wanted to make my fortune, chance on some treasure trove. Months I went up and down those gods-forsaken crags. Then I found the treasure. Tibo. But never any chariot.”

  No milestone but one, Yennef thought then. Flesh and blood. All the wandering and the deeds had been self-defeating. Years like dice thrown away. And now the milestone itself—Rehger—would throw in his own game. Because he had fancied a Lowlander girl, once, and so been snared in yet another legend, leaky as a sieve.

  But they had been through all that. Yennef did not protest again. (His own father had been full of experienced admonitions, on the rare occasions when they spoke.)

  The Lan made his exit from the apartment house an hour before the Lydian did so. At parting, each man grasped the other’s hand. It was a mockery of gesture, but they could not sustain any other. At least they had done that much. And his mother’s dead. I won’t have to account for him to her. Yennef thought wryly: To no one, for anyone.

  • • •

  Rehger seated himself on a bench before the Artisans Guild Hall.

  After the rain, the afternoon had redoubled itself and blazed on Moiyah. The sky seemed blasted of color, and white slices of heat and blackest shadow checkered the square.

  There was the same feeling of similarity, or reenactment, which had come on him at Vanek’s studio, when the Dortharian pranced into the upper room.

  As the brass bell of the guild rang for the fourth hour, Rehger saw a lone figure walking toward him in slow easy strides, and whistling.

  But no, the steps were feline, and over there, under an arch, ten or so of Galutiyh’s riff-raff were waiting with zeebas.

  “Rehger,” said Galutiyh, in astonished delight. “Rehger of Ly Dis.”

  Rehger stood up, and diminished him.

  But Galutiyh, having gone about with Yennef, would be used to that.

  • • •

  There was a coast road northward, to the fort and the border. The soldiers used it, you could see both ways for miles.

  The mendicant pot-seller therefore, on his skewbald zeeba, did not himself attempt the road until Moiyah’s gates were being shut for the evening.

  Yennef, who had tossed clues to his fake purposes all over the city, had no idea of trotting over a skyline and smack into the Dortharian’s arms. A little before midnight, however, from a coronet of brush and thorn, he did have the charm of seeing the campfire only three hundred paces away at the roadside.

  “Honey dreams,” said Yennef to the twisted soul of Galutiyh asleep. And felt two decades slip from him, as if he could go back.

  But there was only forward, up the mountain and down, and it was a shame that Tibo had grown slack and dry, had wasted and died, in Iscah.

  When the dark came, Vanek woke. He had fallen asleep in the chair he had brought in, across from the unfinished marble. It did not seem so very late. Bright windows shone beyond the window of the workroom, the noises of the nocturnal city had a soothing constancy. A night like any other.

  But the white stone glimmered on the dark, tantalizing him. Having seated himself to ponder it, he had slept.

  Vanek put himself out of the chair (seducer, not even comfortable), and lit the glass-topped lamp in the alcove. Bearing it back with him, he let the light and shade play upon her, the white girl in the ice. But the murmur of inner things was gone. He had slept, and not kept hold of it. How simply the body could divert the intellect.

  And now, only a speck of fire fluttered like a bee on a marble face.

  Vanek drew up the veil again, as Rehger had done, to protect his work from how much dust now, and how long a neglect?

  The light in the lamp dipped, steadied.

  Vanek thought of a nursery rhyme of Moih:

  Blow out the lamp,

  Where is the flame?

  Light the lamp,

  There is the flame.

  Flame, flame,

  How is it so—

  Where do you come from?

  Where do you go?

  Elissi would teach that to her children, no doubt. He had seen her, nine dusks before her wedding, going with a willing Chacor into the Anackire temple, to offer.

  Flame, flame, how is it so?

  Each life buddin
g forth, withering away. But always, always, struck into another spark, to burn up again inside a lamp.

  Flame, flame—

  Knowing his stair, and all the house, miserly, not needing any light, Vanek blew out the lamp.

  Book Five

  Var-Zakoris To Thaddra

  18. Bargains

  ON A DARKENING BACKDROP, Zaddath was closing the brass-bound doors of her Blue Gate, to the sound of horns. The procedure was carried on at every sunset. Sunrise saw the gate opened with the same ceremony. It was a Vardian way of doing things, for Zaddath, the New Capital of Old Zakoris, was a Vardish city. Now a Guardian sufficed to rule here; the kings had gone home across the seas. The gate, however, stayed a monument to the conqueror, its uprights garnished by mighty fifty-foot Ashkars (the Vardish Anackire), and the surface of the wall torchlit for two miles either side, and faced with tiles of violet glaze.

  Missing getting in the gate was not too serious an affair. The suburbs had long since overrun the city, taking in as they went the villas, temples and taverns strewn along the Zaddath South Road. The swamps, too, had been drained, but still the proliferating forest encroached continually on this island of building. Even in the paved streets, whippy tentacles of verdure endlessly emerged, to be hacked and hauled, their roots gouged out with fire. Any house left untended on the outskirts was filled by the jungle and ruined in ten days or less. In the gravid nights of the hot months, in the depths of walled stone Zaddath, frogs chirped and crickets made their sing-song, and large insects dashed themselves against gauze bed-curtains and died there like smoldering jewels.

  The riders, who had just missed the gate, showed no inclination to retreat to a handy inn.

  Progressing into the gate mouth, the foremost man seized the chain of a bronze bell hanging there and clanged it.

  Two soldiers appeared on the walk above.

  “You, what d’you think you’re at?”

  “Inviting you to let me in.”

  “Flit over the wall. Or wait till morning. Lay your hand on that bell again, and it’ll be a flogging.”