The Serpent Bride

  “—and it is so very, very hungry. It will eat everything in its path, Jelial. Everything. I suggest you return the way you came, and spread the news.”

  Then he was gone, and Jelial and his men were left sitting their horses in the cold wasteland, looking at the great mass of Skraelings heaving and swelling over what was once their home.

  And their families.

  Lister, Eleanon, and Inardle stood to one side of the pigpens, cloaked from the vision of Jelial and his party, watching as, eventually, they turned their horses’ heads away from Hornridge.

  “Thank the gods,” Eleanon said. “I thought they might have actually tried to enter Hornridge.”

  “Grief is a strange beast,” said Lister, watching the group as they rode away, “and when coupled with shock it can make men do foolish things.”

  “I wish we could have saved Hornridge,” Inardle said. “No one deserved to die as those people did.”

  They fell silent, remembering the horror as the Skraelings overwhelmed the castle and town, tearing terrified men and women to shreds.

  No one had escaped.

  “The entire world is going to be destroyed in far more horrific circumstances,” Lister said eventually, “if we cannot manage the impossible.”

  “Do you think the southerners will listen to Jelial?” said Eleanon. “Do you think they will heed your warning?”

  “I hope so,” said Lister, “for there is little else I can do to save them. It is not as if I have ever controlled the Skraelings, is it?” He gave a bitter little laugh. “My title of Lord of the Skraelings is completely useless, although I suppose it has served me well to this point. But, oh, gods, how glad I shall be when I can slough it off my shoulders, and leave these disgusting creatures far behind me, and assume my true face.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Dependency of En-Dor, the Tyranny of Isembaard

  Maximilian’s party emerged from the FarReach Mountains into the very northern reaches of the Dependency of En-Dor. Here Maximilian and StarDrifter and the rest of their group farewelled BroadWing and the other three Icarii. It was an emotional good-bye, particularly for Maximilian and StarDrifter, but everyone had come to like the Icarii and would miss them.

  It was too dangerous for the Icarii to remain with the rest of the party. No one knew what kind of reaction they would elicit in Isembaard, and neither Maximilian nor StarDrifter wanted to risk it, no matter how useful the Icarii would have been.

  “We will go north,” BroadWing said, embracing first StarDrifter, then Maximilian, “and wait for news. Be safe, and snatch back that bride of yours, Maxel. Stars, she will be making you a father soon!”

  Then he had grinned at StarDrifter and Salome. “And hide those growing hunchbacks of yours under cloaks. The next time I see you, I expect it to be among the clouds.”

  Travel through En-Dor was easier than anyone had expected. Maximilian had not exactly known quite what to expect—Isembaard was such an unknown quantity—but the northern parts of the dependency were sparsely populated (indeed, many villages were completely deserted)—and those very few occupied small homesteads they did happen across were relatively friendly.

  Language was not a problem. Like the kingdoms north of the FarReach Mountains, the Isembaardians spoke a version of the ancient common trading tongue. They spoke a different dialect, and their intonation was very different, but neither presented an obstacle to understanding.

  When they did meet with Isembaardians, Maximilian let Venetia and, to a lesser extent, Serge do the talking. Both were fairly dark, and both had come into contact with Isembaardians in the past: Venetia from her conversations with Isembaardian witch-women she’d met in the borderlands of the Land of Dreams, and Serge in his younger and wilder days, when he’d been an assassin for hire, and had spent time in Isembaard.

  Whenever their party neared a homestead, Maximilian sent Venetia and Serge in to buy or barter for food, while the rest of them hung back. Maximilian supposed Venetia used a little of her witch-woman skills in order to obtain the cooperation of the villagers, but he did not inquire too closely, and was grateful for whatever food and information Venetia and Serge brought back with them.

  One day, a week after they’d farewelled BroadWing and his companions, Venetia and Serge came back with some disturbing news.

  “Isembaard is gearing up for war,” Serge said, sitting down cross-legged at the fire while Venetia, Ravenna, and Salome, who was feeling far less fatigued than she had in the mountains, handed about fresh bread and goat’s cheese. “The tyrant, Isaiah, is marshaling his forces at Sakkuth for a push through the Salamaan Pass into the Outlands. And we’ve learned the reason why this land is so deserted. Apparently Isaiah wants the people from these parts of his land to resettle in the Outlands. The settlers are gathering with the army near Sakkuth. Isaiah himself is even now, apparently, moving up the Lhyl from his palace in the south toward Sakkuth and is expected there within days.”

  Serge paused at that point, and Maximilian looked at him keenly.

  “What else have you heard?” Maximilian said. He wondered who this Isaiah was truly. Kanubai? Already preparing for his push on Elcho Falling? No, surely not…surely not…

  Serge and Venetia exchanged a glance, then Serge continued. “Maximilian, the rumor among the Isembaardians, started by soldiers who were recently in this area, is that Isaiah of Isembaard plans to meet with an army of Skraelings that are in the process of swarming south. An army of millions of Skraelings, heading into the Central Kingdoms.”

  Everyone stared at Serge, StarDrifter muttering a shocked obscenity.

  “No…” Maximilian whispered. “Oh, gods!” To hear this now, when they no longer had the winged Icarii among them who might have been able to warn the Central Kingdoms.

  Skraelings? Millions? Maximilian ran a hand over his eyes, aghast.

  How?

  He did not need to answer that. Kanubai.

  Would Escator be safe? Maximilian didn’t know, and he felt physically sick.

  “There is yet more news,” Venetia said, very softly, looking at Maximilian.

  “Any worse than this I have just heard?” Maximilian said, and Venetia shrugged a little.

  “The homesteaders passed on some more gossip they’d heard from Isaiah’s troops,” she said.

  “And?” said Maximilian.

  “Isaiah has abandoned and forsaken all his eighty-odd former wives,” said Serge, “for a new and Favored Wife, as she is styled. A new bride. Ishbel, former Queen of Escator.”

  There was a complete silence about the campfire as everyone fought not to look at Maximilian.

  “Then this Isaiah has good taste,” said Maximilian, his voice now very tight, “and poor judgment, to think Ishbel’s Escatorian husband so willing to abandon her.”

  “I am sure that Ishbel wouldn’t—” Ravenna began.

  “I don’t think any of us can count on what Ishbel would or wouldn’t do,” said Maximilian, very quietly, “or where her loyalties lie. I just want her and our child. I have not come this far to turn back now.”

  No one said anything.

  “But, by gods,” Maximilian said, “I cannot wait to quit this land and get back home. Skraelings! Ah…Serge, do you know how far distant Sakkuth is? And in what direction?”

  Serge gave a nod. “It will take us a week to travel there. East, and slightly south. But we will be traveling into a war zone, Maximilian, and life will not be easy for us once we approach Sakkuth…not the least because, according to the villagers, Isaiah has at least half a million men gathering in and about Sakkuth. And then more, for many of them have their wives and families. Perhaps close to a million people, all to move north.”

  Maximilian opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was too much to assimilate all at once: invasion, Skraelings, Ishbel now Isaiah’s “Favored Wife,” and now this.

  “Sakkuth it is then,” he said after a moment. “We free Ishbel, then we head home as fast as we may. R
avenna, Venetia, we will need your skills, as well as my penchant for the shadows, to get us close to this Isaiah.”

  He paused. “And then to get us out again.”

  Maximilian found it difficult to accept this much abysmal news. He set aside the terrifying news of the Skraeling invasion, and even that of the forces that Isaiah mustered, for at the moment he could do nothing about either.

  Instead he thought about Ishbel.

  He sat apart from the others for a while, the Weeper in his lap, his fingers gently stroking its cool surface. He hoped that it might say something to him, impart some understanding, but there was nothing. Maximilian had once or twice asked his Persimius ring what it knew of the Weeper, and the ring had only replied that the Weeper was very old and very sad and entirely lost without his employment. That last confused Maximilian even more, and the ring steadfastly evaded any attempt to get it to explain itself.

  Ishbel. This Isaiah’s Favored Wife.

  Maximilian hoped that she’d been taken unwillingly, and that the relationship was purely theater and not actuality. What else? Ishbel was now virtually full-term in her pregnancy and could surely not be sharing her body with this man.

  Isaiah…

  Maximilian still had the sense that people were being drawn together, all being drawn toward Elcho Falling. Even though he was now desperate to get home to Escator, Maximilian had the powerful sense that he must get to Ishbel first. Perhaps she would know more of what was happening.

  Perhaps she might even be prepared, now, to share some truths with him.

  A week and he would have more answers.

  A week, and perhaps he would have his wife and maybe even a child.

  A week, and then he could take his family home to Escator.

  “Maxel?” Ravenna sat down next to him in his solitary spot a little distant from the fire. “Such bad news we have heard this day, and poor news regarding Ishbel indeed. I am sorry for the hurt it has caused you.”

  Maximilian made a gesture with his hand, not truly wanting to discuss Ishbel with Ravenna.

  “Perhaps she is not such a good wife for you, Maxel.”

  Maximilian sighed. He set the Weeper to one side and began to strip off his outer coat, then his shirt, meaning to change into something fresher, and hoping that perhaps Ravenna would take the hint and move away. As much as he liked Ravenna, for the moment he just wanted to be alone.

  “Maxel, what will you do if she has gone to Isaiah willingly?”

  “Ravenna, we will know soon enough. I really do not feel like roaming into conjecture here and now. I just want to get Ishbel and our child, and go home.”

  “Of course, Maxel. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried.” Ravenna started to rise, then halted, staring at Maximilian’s right biceps.

  “Maxel?”

  “What is it?”

  Ravenna had laid a hand on his shoulder, and Maximilian felt his flesh quiver at its warmth and pressure.

  “Your mark…the Manteceros.”

  Maximilian twisted his head to look at the bright blue tattoo of the Manteceros, the supernatural creature that was both symbol and protector of Escator, that had been engraved into his skin as a baby.

  It had faded into almost nonexistence.

  Maximilian went cold. He was being prepared for a greater throne indeed—Escator was literally fading from his grasp.

  Perhaps he would never return to Escator…

  “What is going on?” Ravenna hissed. “What sorcery erases this mark?”

  Maximilian studied her. She both looked and sounded angry, almost affronted. The Manteceros, in his true guise as Drava, Lord of Dreams, had been Ravenna’s lover for many years, and Maximilian supposed that she saw this fading as an affront to Drava himself.

  I wonder where your true loyalties lie, my lady, he thought. Are you here for me, or to watch me on behalf of your supernatural lover?

  “The world is turning upside down, Ravenna,” he said, shrugging off her hand and pulling on a fresh shirt. “Perhaps the mark of the Manteceros is being lost in the confusion.”

  After she’d left Maximilian, Ravenna went for a walk into the darkness. She was disturbed deeply by the fading of Maximilian’s mark. Everything had gone wrong in Maximilian’s life, and it had all gone wrong from the moment he’d met this woman, Ishbel.

  “I do not think I like you, Ishbel,” Ravenna whispered, “but I think you are going to play right into my hands.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sakkuth, Isembaard

  In the end it took Maximilian and his party a mere six days to get to Sakkuth, and that accomplished only with effort, physical as well as magical. For the first two days they traveled relatively unhindered, but then, having crossed the River Lhyl, they entered the territory just to the west of Sakkuth.

  It was here that Isaiah’s army gathered, together with the settlers from the northwest of the Tyranny.

  Maximilian, Serge, and Doyle stood together on a small hillock at dawn on the day they encountered the gathering army, hidden by a small stand of trees and some of Maximilian’s ability to meld with the shadows, and stared eastward.

  “That is not an army,” Doyle said softly. “That is a nation.”

  “An ocean,” said Serge, “gathering for a storm.”

  “When did you two become so poetical?” Maximilian said, but any humor in his voice was overwhelmed by the shock of the sight before him.

  Thousands, no…hundreds of thousands…of men gathered in encampments spreading as far as the eye could see. The original rumor of a million men, Maximilian decided, was wrong. There were far more, particularly when the numbers were engorged by settlers.

  “The north will fall within weeks,” said Serge. “Days.”

  “Thank you for your revised estimate,” Maximilian said, then he paused. “Shit! I cannot believe this!”

  Serge and Doyle looked at Maximilian with some surprise—the man rarely swore.

  “Can we get around them?” Serge said.

  “We have no time,” Maximilian said. “Getting ‘around’ them will take weeks, and weeks we don’t have.”

  “Through them, then?” Doyle said, his voice soft.

  “That is our only option,” Maximilian said. “Venetia, Ravenna, and I have some skill in the arts of disguise…we will need all of that and then some luck, but we shall have to manage it.”

  “You don’t want to announce yourself to the nearest senior officer and demand to be taken to Isaiah in the style of a king?” Serge said.

  Maximilian gave a soft laugh, and indicated his grubby clothing, far the worse for the wear and tear of his journey through the mountains and northern Isembaard.

  “Who would believe this?” he said. “No. We do this secretively, and we do it as fast as possible. Come.”

  Manage it they did, but only at the cost of exhaustion for Maximilian, Venetia, and Ravenna, as well as the drain of nervous energy on the rest of the party. StarDrifter and Salome also battled continuing fatigue from the development of their wings—now large, twin raised ridges hunching out almost four handbreadths from either side of their spines.

  They managed it only with the aid of the Weeper. When one or more among Maximilian, Venetia, or Ravenna began to flag while moving the group quietly through the ranks of the army, then the Weeper began to hum, and bolstered not only the concealing shadowy cloak that the two marsh witches and Maximilian had constructed, but its constructors’ strength as well.

  The days spent creeping through the ranks of what everyone had come to refer to as the gathering storm drained emotional energy as well as physical and magical.

  Everyone was appalled at the enormity of what Isaiah would throw at the north. No one had ever seen anything like it, nor heard of it.

  At night, when they crouched in whatever shelter they could find, relying on the Weeper by that stage of the day to conceal them, they talked in low tones about what they had passed through.

  “StarDrifter,” Serge asked o
ne night, “did you ever see the like during the wars you witnessed in Tencendor?”

  StarDrifter took some time to answer that, dredging up the memories of the wars with considerable reluctance. “No,” he said eventually. “I saw seething Skraeling armies—and to think that such are gathering again, to bolster Isaiah’s forces!—but nothing like this. No one in Tencendor could have managed such sheer numbers of soldiers.” He shook his head slightly. “It is inconceivable.”

  “Salome?” Maximilian said. “Did Coroleas ever raise such a force?”

  Salome gave a cynical laugh. “No, Maximilian. Coroleans practice war by stealth. The single, highly paid assassin, with a dagger in a crowd of frivolity. A drugged glass of wine. Or drugs administered by other means.” She sent a single dark glance at StarDrifter. “But not armies. No. Never. We were far too indolent.”

  “I wish BroadWing and his companions were with us still,” Maximilian said, “if only so I could use their wings to report this nightmare. I am sure my fellow princes are still engaged in a futile struggle with each other. Not looking south.”

  “Or north toward the Skraeling homelands,” Doyle muttered. He turned to his friend and fellow former assassin. “What do you think of the Isembaardians’ weapons, my friend?”

  Serge thought a few minutes, every eye in the group on him.

  “They’re not intending much close hand-to-hand fighting,” he said. “Spears and arrows predominate. I imagine Isaiah plans to send a storm of metal raining down upon the forces opposing him, decimating them within an hour at most. Then, if needed, Isaiah could send in a few swordsmen to finish off those still left alive.”

  “If they could get through the bristling crop of spears and arrows littering the corpses on the ground,” said Venetia. “Why do you men do this? Why propagate such vile death?”

  “It is not us,” Maximilian said sharply. “All I want is my bride and child returned to me.”

  “I apologize, Maxel,” Venetia said. “The question was rhetorical only, and born of my fright and fatigue more than anything.” She looked at her daughter. “Methinks you should have remained with the Lord of Dreams, Ravenna. I am sure that this”—she gestured vaguely at the encampment of soldiers not fifty paces distant—“was not something to which you wanted to return.”