The Serpent Bride

  “I do not think news can come much worse than this,” said Georgdi. “I think—”

  “News can get worse,” said a voice from the window, accompanied by a blast of cold air.

  Everyone leapt to their feet, turning to face the intruder.

  An Icarii man was balanced on the window ledge, one hand still on the shutters which he’d opened.

  “My name is BroadWing EvenBeat,” the Icarii man said. He jumped down to the floor, spreading his hands to show he was unarmed. “And I did not think I would survive to get this far.”

  “What news?” said Georgdi.

  “Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard,” said BroadWing, “has just led an army of a million men or more out of the Salamaan Pass into the Outlands. Adab has fallen. They are allied, I think, this Lister and Isaiah. And we”—he gestured, taking in everything from Hosea to the FarReach Mountains—“are all but dead, for there is nowhere to flee.”

  “How do you know this?” Georgdi said.

  “For weeks I have been looking about the FarReach Mountains, scouting for Maximilian, who entered Isembaard,” BroadWing said. “My companions and I had reached the eastern parts of the mountains when another Icarii warned us.”

  “What in the world is Maximilian doing in Isembaard?” Fulmer said.

  “I don’t think any of us have time for that story right now,” BroadWing said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Sky Peak Passes

  Malat had always thought he would not fear death when it came, but would accept it with courage and honor.

  Of course, he’d never envisioned a death like this.

  It was not just that death beckoned, or that death strode through the snow toward him, but that it was taking so damned long about it. The continuing terror, day after day, week after week, was not something Malat had ever thought to endure, and it had sapped his courage and honor and fortitude.

  They’d fled Pelemere with Georgdi. Not everyone came. At least half the population of the city had refused to believe that a sea of Skraelings seethed down toward them—and who could blame them for disbelieving? They’d stayed, despite desperate shouted warnings, and now they were dead.

  Malat remembered how, three hours after riding out of Pelemere, he’d pulled his horse to a halt and looked back.

  Pelemere should have been clearly visible—a black blot on a hill in the middle of a vast plain.

  Instead it had vanished beneath an undulating river of gray.

  Skraelings.

  Eating.

  Malat, as all those who’d pulled their horses to a halt with him and looked back, could not quite comprehend what he saw. He could not imagine that number of Skraelings; of any creature. He’d sat his horse, his mouth agape, and stared, and it was only a few minutes later, when one of his men screamed, that he’d looked to his north.

  A wave of Skraelings was less than five hundred paces away, and approaching fast.

  Thus began the nightmare. Almost three weeks of constant battling, of bunching together, of fighting, of running, running, running eastward as fast as they could. Malat estimated that between Georgdi, Fulmer, Sirus, and himself, they’d escaped Pelemere with two hundred thousand people—both soldiers and civilians. Now Malat would be surprised if there were any more than fifteen thousand left.

  Fulmer was dead, lost that first day.

  Sirus also, lost a week later when his horse stumbled and then collapsed as a score of Skraelings swarmed over it.

  The only reason any of them were still alive was because the bulk of the Skraelings were still to the west. Eating, Malat supposed; feeding through the Central Kingdoms toward Kyros.

  Sometimes, when he managed to snatch a few minutes’ rest, Malat would weep, thinking of his wife and remaining children, of all those he loved sitting in Kyros, not understanding that within days, weeks at the most, they would be eaten by these damned…damned…

  Malat wanted to die. He wanted to succumb to the Skraelings’ teeth, to their claws, their hunger.

  But always, every time they faced renewed attack, something in Malat forced him to take up the sword again, and wield it, and somehow survive.

  For another day.

  They were in the western reaches of the Sky Peak Passes now. Georgdi, still alive and somehow still in control, still hopeful, said that if they could reach a gorge he knew of a few days’ travel ahead, then they would have a chance. It had a narrow mouth, apparently, and they could defend themselves more easily there.

  Malat didn’t really care anymore. He put one foot in front of the other, or sat his horse staring sightlessly ahead as it somehow managed to put one foot ahead of the other, and he forced food and water down his throat as needed, and he wrapped himself against the increasingly bitter cold. About him, the few civilians and soldiers who survived bunched together for security and warmth and similarly trudged forward, defending themselves from never-ending attacks by groups of Skraelings, losing a few more comrades with each attack.

  Malat thought there must be a trail of blood leading back to whatever remained of Pelemere.

  That they survived at all was due to the Icarii. Not only BroadWing EvenBeat, the man who had warned them of the Isembaardian invasion into the Outlands, but several score of others who had joined him. They warned of approaching Skraelings, scouted clear routes through the territory ahead, and they were skilled bowmen and women, attacking Skraelings from above. They’d lost a few of their number, and Malat, as Georgdi, was incalculably grateful to them. They could have fled, this was not their fight, but they didn’t. They stayed, and helped, and died, and Malat, who’d never had much respect for the birdmen, now admired them immensely.

  But he still didn’t think any of them would survive.

  Winter closed in with tight, cruel fingers. Every few days heavy snowstorms enveloped them, and in those storms…

  BroadWing said ghosts lived in them. Perhaps the ghosts of Icarii long dead, he didn’t know, but they were almost as terrifying as the Skraelings, although they did not attack or maim or murder. They simply terrified with sudden appearances, their ethereal faces materializing in the snow before vanishing again, always accompanied by the barely audible beat of wings, and a constant undertone of whispering…

  Malat could not understand how any of them would survive. If, by some miracle, they outran and outfought the Skraelings, and if these snow ghosts finally left them alone, then they still had a million Isembaardians with which to cope.

  Their world was falling apart, and Malat did not think anything left within it could possibly endure.

  Alm Georgdi was the first to hear the beat of approaching wings.

  He was huddled in front of a campfire, his face haggard, his hands trembling from both weariness and cold.

  He looked up, hoping it was not bad news.

  BroadWing EvenBeat landed a few feet away, staggering a little. He was exhausted, as was everyone else.

  “Georgdi,” he said.

  Georgdi grunted. Bad news, then.

  BroadWing staggered forward, almost collapsing as he sat before the fire. His face was white with cold and fatigue.

  “Georgdi,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” Georgdi snapped.

  “The Skraelings,” BroadWing said. “The Skraelings…they have abandoned the Central Kingdoms.”

  Georgdi stared at BroadWing, not able to understand what the birdman said. Abandoned the Central Kingdoms? “They’ve returned to their frozen wastes?” he said.

  “No,” BroadWing said, “they’ve swarmed into the FarReach Mountains. Every last one of them. The mountains are covered with them.”

  “What…why?”

  “They are moving en masse into Isembaard,” BroadWing said. “For the moment we’re safe. From the Skraelings, at least.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Sky Peak Passes

  Lister stood with Eleanon, Bingaleal, and Inardle on a snowy platform high in a narrow gorge within the northern FarReach Mountains. br />
  Below them the last ten thousand or so of the Skraelings swarmed southward.

  Millions had passed by in the last day or so, desperate to reach DarkGlass Mountain. They were now moving supernaturally fast, almost flowing over the ground, pulled by Kanubai’s power. By now, Lister reckoned, the first waves of Skraelings would be seething almost to the gates of DarkGlass Mountain.

  He could hardly bear to think of what might be happening to northwestern Isembaard as the Skraeling nation swept through.

  Above them, snowflakes drifted gently down from heavy clouds, settling on rocks and clinging to crevices.

  As they settled, very slowly they transformed into ice-covered lumps.

  The Lealfast nation. Hundreds of thousands of them covering the FarReach Mountains. This was as far south as they, or Lister, would come. Isembaard might have a few more weeks, but then it would be Kanubai’s and DarkGlass Mountain’s entirely.

  Lister sighed. “It comes to pass then. The Skraelings hurry to their true lord.”

  “Pity the Isembaardians,” said Eleanon, watching the Skraelings. “They can have no idea of what is about to descend on them.”

  “Isaiah and I could not warn them,” Lister said quietly. “Isaiah did what he could to get as many of his people out of the area as possible. The Salamaan Pass will remain open for a week or so for refugees, but then…”

  “Then the Lealfast will do what they have to in order to keep these northern plains free, for as long as possible, from the armies of Kanubai,” said Eleanon.

  “Kanubai will do everything he can to get to Elcho Falling,” said Lister. “He’ll need to attack before the Lord of Elcho Falling attains his full strength.”

  “We will do everything we have to,” said Eleanon, “but we pray to all gods above, and to the Star Dance that runs through our souls, that the Lord of Elcho Falling rises soon. Without him we are all doomed.”

  “Lister!” said Inardle. “What is that?”

  At her alarmed voice, everyone looked to where she pointed.

  A black shape climbed up the steep slope of the gorge on which they all stood. From this distance it looked half bat, half spider, and it certainly moved with the speed and agility one might expect from a creature bred from those parents, but as it grew closer the figure resolved itself into that of a man wrapped in a black cloak (albeit still climbing with the speed and agility of some creature of the night), a satchel slung over his back.

  Lister laughed, and relaxed.

  “It is one of my comrades,” he said. “You have not met him, for he has been in Escator these many years past.”

  Within minutes the man had climbed to join them. Tall and spare with thick dark hair over lively eyes, the man embraced Lister, then shook the hands of the Lealfast present as Lister introduced them. “This is Vorstus,” said Lister. “He has been ‘minding’ Maximilian.”

  “I have watched the Skraelings pass by,” said Vorstus. “It is all happening, then.”

  “You seem somewhat delighted at the notion,” said Inardle.

  “You haven’t been stuck in Escator these past thirty odd years,” said Vorstus. “I’m dying for a bit of excitement.”

  Inardle gave him a strange look, then raised an eyebrow at Eleanon.

  “Maximilian will need you soon,” said Lister. “It is difficult to imagine that Isaiah has not yet broached the subject of Elcho Falling with him.”

  “Elcho Falling,” Vorstus said. “I cannot wait.”

  “As he said,” Lister remarked drily, “he’s the one who has been stuck in Escator all these years while we have had the delightful company of the cursed Skraelings.”

  “Where is Isaiah now?” said Vorstus.

  “Somewhere close to the Sky Peaks Pass,” said Lister. He rubbed his hands together, as if suddenly tired of the cold, windy vantage point they occupied. “Shall we join him, then?”

  Northwestern Isembaard, from the western banks of the Lhyl to the far western branch of the FarReach Mountains, was a roiling nightmare. Skraelings—or what had once been Skraelings—had seethed out of the FarReach Mountains and washed down over the northern plains of Isembaard like a rotting inundation of death. Many people had died under the sudden, unexpected onslaught, although some managed to escape west into the mountains, but within a day of the creatures emerging from the FarReach Mountains, northwest Isembaard was utterly lost.

  The first wave of dog-headed creatures had reached DarkGlass Mountain a week or so after they’d crossed into Isembaard. They seethed over the glass pyramid, climbing over each other in order to reach its capstone, then sliding down the far side. Within moments the entire pyramid was covered with a writhing mass of gray, partly transparent creatures, their dog muzzles slavering in excitement.

  Deep inside DarkGlass Mountain, Kanubai raised his own muzzle and howled.

  The mass of Skraelings covering the pyramid screamed at the sound echoing beneath their bodies, and they tore off thousands of the plates of glass in their desperation to find the shafts that led directly into the Infinity Chamber.

  Where waited Kanubai.

  When the first creatures arrived in the chamber, they abased themselves before Kanubai, rolling over on the floor and presenting their bellies to him, that he could suckle from them all their life’s blood.

  By morning, when Kanubai would have had the opportunity to suckle lifeless a few thousand of the creatures, a devil-sun would rise over Isembaard, and it would emerge, not from the east, but from DarkGlass Mountain.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Entrance to the Sky Peak Passes, the Outlands

  From the Salamaan Pass, Isaiah’s vast army moved inexorably north. Adab and Margalit fell with nary a murmur. Neither port nor city had been built to withstand sieges, and they had no military defense, for all the fighting men were west with Georgdi.

  No one had expected a threat from the south.

  No one, for a moment, thought to try and resist this juggernaut, sweeping through like an inexorable, unstoppable tide.

  Isaiah sent a force of some twenty thousand men into Adab, and some forty thousand into Margalit, to keep them submissive and to secure his own rear, but he did not enter either place himself. Instead he pushed north, north, and then slightly northeast, moving the column as fast as possible.

  Isaiah’s route north was accomplished with virtually no military action whatsoever. Village after village, town after town, had laid down before him without a fight. Most Outlander men were fighting with Georgdi to the west, and none who remained was stupid enough to attempt resistance.

  By the time Isaiah had reached the west of the Outlands, a day’s travel from the Sky Peak Pass, he had something like a third of the numbers that he’d led through Salamaan Pass. The rest he’d left at various locations along his winding trail northward, partly to guard his rear and to keep the Outlanders subservient, but mostly because he simply could not sustain and feed such a massive number of people himself. The Outlands would need to dig deep into their reserves of food, and no doubt their resentment would grow by the day, but very soon, Isaiah reasoned privately, they would have far more, and far worse, things to worry about.

  The remaining third of Isaiah’s column consisted of the core of his army—his best and most experienced fighting men. It also contained his five generals (irritated at the lack of fighting, but contented with the spoils in territory gained thus far), as Isaiah wanted none of them left behind to become bored and perhaps decide to embark on some military adventures of their own, as well as Axis, Maximilian and his company, and Ishbel.

  Maximilian was largely content to allow Isaiah to push north as he wished. He still had to take that final step of actually assuming the mantle of the Lord of Elcho Falling, but Maximilian did not think he needed to do that until they reached Serpent’s Nest itself. He was mildly surprised at the move to the northeast, but Isaiah had explained to him that they might meet survivors of the Skraeling terror in the Central Kingdoms at Sky Peaks Pass. Maximili
an spent his days riding either with StarDrifter or with Axis, sometimes with Isaiah, deepening his friendship with Axis and, somewhat to his surprise, with Isaiah.

  In the evenings, Maximilian generally walked the boundaries of the column’s encampment. Alone. He spent the time deep within himself, returning time and time again, in his mind, to the Twisted Tower, wondering what he was going to do about its empty spaces. Maximilian had accepted fully that his were to be the shoulders to bear the burden of Elcho Falling, but he doubted his ability to bear the weight well.

  Perhaps Serpent’s Nest held some answers, some hope.

  He saw Ishbel occasionally. Sometimes they met in the evening, as Ishbel now made her camp with StarDrifter and Salome, who shared a tent set apart from that of Maximilian, Ravenna, and Venetia. Their brief conversations were awkward, and Maximilian supposed she was as glad as he to break them off. There was no animosity between them, but there was a huge abyss of things said and done, of regret, of loss, and of that enormous weight of sadness and despair with which Ishbel claimed he would burden her life.

  Maximilian supposed they were better off apart than together. He couldn’t bear to watch her gaze turn to bitterness because of the grief he had brought into her life.

  Besides, there was the added complication of Ravenna.

  On this night Maximilian sat in his tent, one hand gently resting on the Weeper as it lay at his side, watching Ravenna and Venetia as they prepared a light evening meal. There was a tension between mother and daughter that hadn’t been there when first they’d left Narbon so many months ago. Maximilian was not sure what it was—he had avoided asking Ravenna—but he did know that Ravenna had suggested none too gently to her mother that she seek somewhere else to unroll her sleeping blankets.

  Venetia had not shifted from Maximilian’s tent, for which Maximilian was grateful. He did not particularly wish to be left alone with Ravenna, and he did not wish to cement their relationship into semiformality by having people say There stands Maximilian and Ravenna’s tent, rather than saying, as they did now, There stands Maximilian and his party’s tent.