Riding the Serpent's Back (15 page)

“I closed my eyes and sent out my healing touch into Echtal’s body, to seek out what damage had been caused. His skull was cracked from its impact with the road and that single swipe of Fever’s fist had smashed one of the boy’s vertebrae.”

“You’re a healer?” asked Leeth, surprised.

Joel nodded. “All of Donn’s children have inherited some of his Talents – Chichéne and I are both healers. Anton has travelled with me ever since that day – the repair of his broken back is my greatest feat of healing. Since that day in Two Torrents his fate has been intertwined with my own.”

“Have you ever tried to heal yourself?” asked Chi’s small voice. Leeth had assumed the boy was asleep, but he had merely been focusing his last reserves of energy on staying awake. “Oriole’s curse – can’t you simply part the flesh between you and the horse? Can’t you heal yourself?”

“I can’t do it,” said Joel. “The bond is too powerful. My mere Talent is nothing against the work of a mage. Maybe you could try – if you really are my dead brother then perhaps the fuller degree of Donn’s healing Talent has gone to you.”

“I’ll try,” said Chi, yawning. “Tomorrow, though.”

“It’s not really so bad,” said Joel. “Believe me. Before this happened I had never appreciated so much the sheer magnificent beauty of a mare’s rear quarters.” He paused, as if savouring the thought. “You should see my foals, too.”

~

When Chi had gone to bed, Joel made them tell him about the boy.

Cotoche told him about how Chi had rescued her from Consul Melved and how this had led to Lachlan Pas discovering that his father’s death had been faked all those years ago. She told him of Chi’s manipulation of their seed, and how she had never believed him when he assured her that the baby was merely a contingency plan, that they would live to raise their child together. “He had death in his eyes,” she said, sadly. “I think he fooled himself more readily than he did me.”

Leeth told Joel of his time on the Serpent’s Back and, in particular, of Chi’s death in the new lands close to the Michtlan Ridge. “It took me a long time to work it all out,” he said. “I don’t think I really did until I came here and I saw the small boy with feathers in his hair.”

“You tell a good story,” said Joel, eventually. “But if what you say is true then I don’t think there’s a healer anywhere in the Rift who can match his Talent. To grow again in another body is more than mere healing.”

“But he did it with Lachlan,” Leeth reminded him.

“Lachlan is his second son,” said Joel. “There is no proof that he is the first Lachlan reborn – they merely share a name.”

Cotoche had been quiet since telling her part of Chi’s story. Now, she said to Joel, “You referred to Donn’s children a little earlier – how many brothers and sisters does Chi have?”

“Donn – if he still lives – is an old man,” said Joel. “He’s been old for longer than any of us have been alive. He has been the guiding influence behind the development of civilised society in the Rift for much of this Great Era – when he realised his time was drawing to a close, he decided that the Talents he possessed were too great to die with him. So the old goat set about ensuring his legacy survived – each of his children should inherit a part of his Talent, and between us we possess them all. I often think that if I have acquired anything other than a little healing, it must be the old man’s powers of seduction. You, Leeth – would you be interested in me?”

Leeth blushed, but he couldn’t turn away from Joel. “No,” he said. “Never.”

Joel shrugged. “Given time,” he said, “I’d give myself a fifty-fifty chance with you. Cotoche, here, is cool to me, I can tell, but I’d still fancy my chances if I caught her at a vulnerable time. I’m not boasting. Even in his declining years Donn could seduce with the merest glance. He used that skill to ensure that his Talents would be spread through the next generation.”

“How many of you are there?” asked Leeth.

“Myself, Red Simeni, Monahl of Camptore, Kester Etheram, Sawnie Lo, Petra Tez. The real Chichéne. Who knows how many others there are?”

Cotoche was shaking her head. “He never told me any of this.”

Joel leaned forward. “Maybe he hadn’t researched that part of the story.”

“But he knew you instantly,” said Leeth.

Joel didn’t pursue the argument.

“How do you know Chi?” Leeth asked, eventually. “You’re half-brothers, yet you grew up apart.”

“True,” said Joel. “I knew for a long time that my father was not my real father. He knew it too and in the privacy of our home he was quite open about it. He was a healer, as well, in his own small way. Instead of reaching into someone’s animus as one with the Talent would do, he used the herbs of the woodland to do his work. We were a family of True Blood, although our lines were hardly the most noble and in Broor, where we lived, there were many with far more significant lineages than our own. I think my father was proud to have in his household a child whose blood came from the greatest mage of our time. He forgave my mother readily, for who was she to resist the Charms of one so powerful?

“In adolescence it became fairly clear that I would squander what Talents I possessed and my parents became less forgiving. My sisters inherited the gift of the herb and, I concentrated on the art of seduction. When my second cousin Ada fell pregnant her father insisted that we marry and in the way of so many True marriages we soon fell to arguing and fighting whenever we were in the same room together.

“And that is the simple story of how I became a nomadic adventurer. We could entitle it, The Man Who Is A Wanderer Only Because His Wife And Child Cannot Bear His Company.”

“Chichéne?” prompted Cotoche.

“Before I left, my mother told me that if I could find no peace with my own family, then perhaps I should seek out someone whose nature I shared more closely. Donn had told her of Chichéne after the old mage had seduced her for the first time: ‘If you bear a child as fine as my son, Chichéne,’ he told her, ‘then I will die at peace.’ I’ve always taken it as a personal slight that he felt the need to go on and father at least three others after making that statement.

“I was seventeen when I found Chichéne, and he was twenty-five, already with a wife and a small boy. That was where the similarities ended. Where I was a waster with no purpose to my wanderings, always getting into scrapes and fights, Chichéne had already been a Senator at Tule for more than a year. He was intelligent, articulate, and at the time appeared to have little Talent other than a charismatic ability to convince people of his authority. After a time in his company I saw that much of this was a facade and I did what I could to encourage the exuberant side of his nature. I spent a year in Tule, doing what I could to provoke him into life, but he never deviated from his steady progress through the hierarchy. Whenever I challenged him, he said that he was merely pursuing his duty – Donn’s children had been born to guide the peoples of the Rift into a new era of stability. Eventually, I realised that instead of me changing him, Chichéne was gradually moulding me. I told him that if he ever found out what my role was to be then he should send me a message, but he never did.

“Then, many years later, I heard about the man-child of Edge City who claimed to be my long-dead half-brother. Whilst I had no time for his claims to be Chichéne, it was clear from the accounts I heard that he was an unusual child. So here I am: I’ve come to take a look at the young interloper.”

~

Ten days after Joel’s arrival in Edge City, the horseman still refused to accept Chi as his brother. Leeth tried again to persuade him as they headed for the mudbaths with the soldiers, Marsalo, Luther and Cadez, and the amputee, Anton Echtal.

Chi had been away all morning giving his final instructions to a number of his Raggy messengers. Tonight, they would be sent out to travel the length and breadth of the Rift, carrying messages for Chi’s siblings and his old political allies. The boy had decided to spread the word of his existence in an attempt to win support for the conflict with Lachlan he insisted was inevitable.

Indeed, they had seen little of Chi in the last few days.

At first the boy had tried hard to heal the horseman, to separate his animus from its entanglement with Harken, the horse, and so physically separate the two. Leeth suspected that his failure to do this, coupled with his persistent failure to convince Joel that he was his brother, explained the boy’s long absences in recent days. He was sure one of the reasons Chi was sending out his messengers was to convince Joel that he was genuine: would an impostor send invitations out to those people most likely to expose him as a fraud?

The mudbaths had formed where a chain of hot springs rose through boggy sediment, near to one of the lesser rivers that emerged from the jungle to the north. Leeth walked the standard leap out from Edge City, refusing Joel’s offer of a ride, still bothered by the horseman’s claims about his powers of seduction.

When they arrived at the steaming pools they searched the wallowing crowds for Chi but he was not there. Marsalo spotted a corner of one pool which was relatively empty and the group headed towards it.

Joel got there first and with a huge leap he landed in the mud. Sulphurous ooze sprayed up in all directions and he squealed with childish delight. The horse lowered itself onto its side and then rolled about in the hot mud, twisting and writhing until both it and Joel were completely plastered in the dirty ochre stuff.

By the time Leeth, Anton and the others had stripped off and joined Joel, the other bathers had moved a good distance away.

The small group lazed in the mud and the soldiers talked about their travels through the Rift and their adventures. They laughed as Anton did his trick of standing on his stumps in the shallow mud, fooling newcomers into assuming the mud was far deeper than it was.

Eventually, Chi arrived.

He stood on a dry patch of ground by the pool where they had left their clothes and said to Joel, “You always were the lazy one.”

Joel slapped mud onto his chest impatiently. “Drop the old familiarity routine, will you?” he said, irritably. “It gets wearing. You don’t need to convince me, I’ve told you. I don’t care who you are, if you’re against Lachlan Pas then you have my backing.” They had learnt recently that Lachlan had become the fifth Principal of Tule – that, more than anything, had drawn Joel and the boy closer.

Chi narrowed his eyes in the way Leeth had learnt was a good indicator of his sullen moods. Then he shrugged and turned away to pull at his trousers and shirt. “I’ve finished for now,” he said. “I’ve time to be lazy too.”

When the boy turned back, ready to wade out into the mud, Leeth first thought it was merely a fleeting shadow that he saw. When he looked more closely, he saw that he was mistaken.

“What are you looking at?” demanded Chi, stopping ankle-deep in the ooze.

“You,” said Leeth, uncomfortably. The boy had a thin fuzz of pubic hair gathered around his genitals, yet his body was not yet four years old.

Chi looked down at his own crotch, in response to Leeth’s pointed stare. “So what?” he said. “I’m sixty-one years old, after all.”

Now Leeth saw that a number of changes had subtly transformed the boy’s appearance: the pubic hair, the little-boy genitals surely larger than before, the downy growth on his upper lip to which Leeth had given little thought when he first noticed it a few days earlier. As he looked, he saw that the general shape of Chi’s body had been altered: the boyish chubbiness was diminished and now the muscles were more clearly delineated on his shoulders and chest, his legs and buttocks more slim and compact.

Chi threw himself into the mud and rolled about for a few minutes. When he stopped and sat up, Leeth was still staring.

“You suggested it,” said the boy, defensively. “You asked why I couldn’t just change what I didn’t like. You said I should try to direct my healing powers inwards so that I should stop hating the body I occupy. Heal myself of childhood. I’ve tried and tried, but whatever I do I can’t affect the underlying physical structures: I’m no Ehna – I can’t shift shape and magically become the man I once was. But what I can do is make my adult juices flow again. You were right, Leeth: I really feel like a man again!”

Leeth didn’t know what to think. The changes in the boy disturbed him greatly and he was not sure why that was until Marsalo poked his head up from below the mud and asked, “What does the woman think of it, hmm? What does Cotoche say?”

Chi laughed lasciviously. He grabbed at his penis, which engorged rapidly at the touch, and said, “She likes this a lot better, I can tell you!”

Leeth rolled over so that he could make a pretence of rubbing mud into his back. Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but where he was.

~

Leeth found it increasingly difficult to remain in the small lean-to with Chi and Cotoche. The place had always been cramped, yet until now they had managed to live together as the closest of families, Leeth sleeping on the floor with one end of the place screened off for Cotoche and the boy.

One night, not long after Leeth had arrived in Edge City, he had awoken to sounds of passion. He had lain still for some time, frightened and repelled, then he had forced himself to stand and creep over to the suspended sackcloth sheet that divided the floor space. He pulled it aside and saw the boy sleeping curled up alone, Cotoche lying in a twist of blanket, limbs and face twitching as she dreamed. He had made himself turn away, not daring to consider who she made love to in her dreams.

Now, when he woke to such sounds they were interspersed with boyish grunts and chatter, and he had to stay quiet and still, his head filled with nightmare images of what was happening only a few paces from where he lay.

Two or three weeks after the onset of his changes, Chi was no longer a man-child: he was a miniature man. His beard grew thick, his body strong and angular, dark hair sprouting from groin and armpit and spreading across chest, belly, legs and arms.

The militarisation of Edge City continued to gather momentum. The squads of adults and raggies soon gave up any pretence of a civilian policing role. They were soldiers, waiting for orders. Now, whenever parties of northern soldiers ventured away from the Junction, they came armed and nervous, wary of the eyes that followed them, always.