Riding the Serpent's Back (18 page)

Side by side, they walked in silence.

Monahl knew her feelings of guilt were misplaced, just as she knew that ultimately it must be her fault that Freya could show such blatant disregard for her own great Talents.

She had pushed her too hard, she knew. She wanted so much for her daughter to make the best of her gifts, to do the right thing. But, always, Freya resisted the pressure.

Monahl’s own Talents were well-regarded enough, but they hardly lived up to the heritage of her breeding. Yet she had managed to overcome that: with the help of Sister Cheri, she had learnt how to find an inner focus and capitalise on her full potential. Freya was at the other pole. So abundantly blessed with potential, yet so lazy, so easily led by the arguments and challenges of her friends.

~

Zigané’s central hill had once been the cone of a volcano and at its peak there was still a small crater lake. In the middle of the lake was the Guardian’s Island, home of the Order of Devotees of the Church of the Preserving Hand.

A stone bridge crossed the lake to the island. All along its flanks men and women hung fishing lines, baited with bread and blessed by prayer. On Zigané’s floating home, there was little space for the production of food: small plots were heavily cultivated, the thin compost fed by minerals from the Burn Plain and, again, by repeated blessing and prayer; the lake was heavily stocked and equally heavily fished outside the fallow season. But still, most of the city’s food was imported from the Serpent’s Back. This alone cast doubt on the old stories of Zigané’s independence from the mainland: if the city had survived the barren times between the end of the old Era and the beginning of the new, then it must have paid heavily in famine and material hardship.

When they reached the island-within-an-island Monahl and Freya removed the sandals from their feet and entered the Order’s shrine.

The heady scent of beeswax and perfume from the ranks of burning candles was almost overpowering. Monahl stood, dizzily, but her daughter advanced without hesitation, her head bowed low. She pressed a forefinger to her lips, then touched her chin, nose and brow. She came to the niche dedicated to Samna, their saviour. A gold statuette of the big-nosed god smiled beneficently out, enfolded by a glittering, semi-circular screen.

Freya kneeled before the niche.

Monahl watched, almost dispassionately.

She could see from the hunch of the girl’s shoulders that she was crying again. That might be a sign that her penance was genuine, but it could equally be a mere token to placate her mother.

She stared at the girl’s long, dark hair. She would dearly love to know where she had gone wrong, although perhaps such a truth would be too painful to bear.

Slowly, Monahl moved deeper into the shrine, aware of the aches settling into her body and the blisters where the heat had burned her during the day. Silently, she knelt beside her daughter, touched lips, chin, nose and brow, and closed her eyes in prayer.

~

Brother Amathyr greeted her with a big hug. He was a large and serious man, one of the kindest Monahl knew, and for a few pleasant seconds she allowed him to hold her, losing her face in the tickling peppery curtain of his beard.

“Tell me what you saw today, Monahl,” he said, when she stood back from him.

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. He asked her the same question every time – she was their visionary, he always said, although he had far more faith in her ability than she had ever had. There was a hazy line between holy sight and the delusions of an unbalanced mind and Monahl had never been sure on which side her rare hallucinatory experiences passed. She had always been convinced that, but for her parentage, the Order would have taken her into their protection and care and not, as they had, directly into their ranks.

Just for a moment, Monahl had been tempted to tell him she had seen the Maggot Man walking through the streets of the city. But to do so would have been to play the same game she had chastised her daughter for earlier. Also, she knew Amathyr would have taken her at her word until the ‘joke’ had been explained.

She took his hand and led him to a bench by the fire. “I’ve told you before,” she said. “I don’t see much these days. As I’ve concentrated on other Talents, the Vision has diminished.”

They sat together. Amathyr would have made a good surrogate father for Freya if Monahl had ever asked. He would have done his utmost to fill the void in both of their lives. But it would have been unfair of her: she would have been abusing his generous nature. Perhaps if they had ever been lovers it would have worked, but that, she knew, had never been a serious possibility.

“Don’t disparage your gifts,” Amathyr said, innocently parroting Monahl’s earlier criticism of her daughter. “It was you who told us Herold would leave Zigané. He’s been gone for more than a year now.”

Monahl smiled. Many people had been worried when the city’s Guardian had left, but the mage had assured the citizens that the Pact he had made and which had stood for more than a hundred years would be good for a long time yet, and his words had proved true. “Herold
told
me he was going,” she said. “That was how I knew.”

Amathyr shook his head. “No,” he said. “Years earlier – five? six years ago? – when you were in a trance for three days and even Cheri began to doubt you could be pulled back. You said many things, but I remember distinctly – and it’s written in the records – you kept telling us our Guardian would depart and Zigané would endure. You used precisely the words Herold used in his farewell address from the docks.”

Monahl couldn’t remember and she was certainly not going to scour the records to disprove her friend’s claims. She remembered long times when she would lose herself in trances, gripped by nightmare visions and nonsense-imagery. She had babbled in the voices of the gods, and dreamed of destruction and mayhem. Anyone else would have been declared insane.

“I’m just an ordinary person with ordinary Talents,” she said. “My gifts are the hollowest shadow of my parents’ gifts. Please believe me.”

Amathyr nodded and Monahl wanted to punch him in the middle of his fat, hairy face. He didn’t believe her: he was just being kind.

~

Where Freya was the Talented daughter of the ordinary, Monahl had long resigned herself to being no more than the ordinary daughter of two very special individuals.

Monahl’s mother, Sister Camptore of Felicia, was the granddaughter of Jobahl, long-fabled for her part in the Pact which had confirmed the city’s preservation through to the present day. At the culmination of a year of prayer and ritual, the young and newly established Guardian Herold had consigned his lover, Jobahl, to a fiery burial in the heart of the city’s volcano home. Herold had planned to sacrifice himself but Jobahl had persuaded him that her blood was True enough and that it was her right to die for her people when he was still regarded by many as an outsider: she would die at his side if he refused her the chance to die alone.

Herold had healed his grieving heart by devoting himself to the upbringing of his and Jobahl’s daughter. In this way he had kept alive the memory of his lover and, in doing so, perpetuated the line which brought Monahl, and then Freya, into the world.

For that alone, Monahl would have automatically had a valued place in the Order. She was the great granddaughter of the city’s Guardian mage. But her father was an even greater mage: her father was the legendary Donn, a figure many regarded as a god himself, or at least one heavily blessed to do the earthly works of the gods. All legend and exaggerations stripped aside, Donn was probably the most powerful mage the fifth Era of humankind had known.

When Donn made his last visit to the city of Zigané it was as an old man.

He travelled in a Charmed barge he had commandeered from one of the city’s trading families. The vessel was big enough to house him and his entourage in palatial comfort and most of Zigané’s population had turned out to welcome him when word spread of his approach.

There was an immediate antagonism between Donn and Herold: the old mage and the young, jockeying for position, unsure of each other’s strengths or allegiance. Herold gave up his place in the Guardian’s palace, which took up three-quarters of the crater-lake island, so that Donn could stay in comfort; the younger mage moved in with the Order, in its far more modest dormitories and workrooms clustered around the end of Preservers’ Bridge. He even donned the devotee’s smock and sandals in deference to the elder mage’s visit.

As soon as Donn took up residence the feasting and celebrations began, but it was clear that there was tension in the air. On the first day, Donn called Herold into his home for consultations. On the second day, Herold took Sister Camptore to see the old mage. She was Herold’s favourite: his granddaughter, the best Charmer of the earth the Order had.

When the younger mage returned to the Order that evening, he returned alone. Cheri of Amasanth, never a respecter of rank, demanded to know what the Guardian had done with her friend.

Herold looked at her, a pained expression on his face. “They are becoming acquainted,” he said. “They eat together tonight. I have been assured of the elder’s good intentions. Sister Camptore has been appointed her own bed-chambers and there is a young lady waiting upon her to ensure her protection. The elder wishes to take my granddaughter as his lover, but he will do nothing against her wish, and he would do nothing to taint the good name of the Order.”

“But he’s a mage!” cried Cheri, fearing for her friend’s safety, and for her mind. “He’ll get whatever he wants. He’ll enchant her and she’ll do anything he tells her to!”

“I have his word.”

“And you believed him?”

“I did,” said Herold. “If he attempts to enchant her then I will recognise the signs. Elder Donn knows that he must win her by fair means alone. And that, Sister Cheri, is what I fear most of all.”

On the third day, Camptore came alone to the Order. “Tonight the Elder Donn and his company will join us for dinner,” she said. “We must make our preparations.”

Cheri rushed to her friend and embraced her. “You’re all right?” she asked. “He hasn’t done anything to you?”

Camptore laughed and insisted she was fine. “Cheri,” she said, holding her friend’s face in her hands. “Trust my judgement. Everything is fine. We must prepare for the banquet.”

Cheri looked at her for several long seconds. Her friend seemed well enough, there was happiness in her clear grey eyes. She took Camptore’s hands from her face and turned away. “Come on,” she said. “Will we help in the kitchens, or will we see to the decorations?”

Camptore resisted Cheri’s pull. “Not us,” she said, and Cheri turned back towards her. “We have other preparations to make.”

~

In the dormitory Camptore shared with Cheri and two others, Camptore pulled the smock over her head and then started to unbutton her underwear.

“You’re sure this is what you want?” asked Cheri again. Her friend had explained her agreement with Donn on the way up to the dormitory.

Camptore stood naked before Cheri. She nodded her head. “He is one of the most engaging men I have ever met,” she said. “He is clever and entertaining. He has lived so long and seen so much. And as I spent time with him, I came to realise that although his body is old and frail and his features faded, he is still a very attractive man.” Then she shook her head. “But I am not a soppy teenager. He will be gone within the week and I know I’ll soon mean little to him, if anything at all. I’m not taking him for his love,” Camptore said. “I want him for his child.”

“You’re sure you’ve thought through all the consequences?”

“Yes I have,” said Camptore. “I’ve made my decision: Donn is at the end of his life and he wants to pass on his legacy to a new generation – he’s chosen me to have his child, but he hasn’t forced it on me. He hasn’t even offered any commitment to the future: when the baby is born I am on my own. Cheri, support me, please.”

They moved together and embraced and Cheri rubbed at her friend’s tightly knotted shoulders. Camptore had rehearsed the arguments, but she was still clearly stressed by the speed with which change had overtaken her life.

Cheri kissed her tenderly on the mouth, then reached down and put an arm under Camptore’s buttocks so that she could lift her clear of the ground. Camptore sagged back as Cheri carried her across to a sleeping pallet and lowered her onto the coarse knit of the blanket. “Prepare me,” she said in a soft sigh.

Cheri kneeled on the cold stone floor. She put a hand on Camptore’s brow and started to soothe away the tensions. She expected her friend to sleep, but her eyes remained half-open, watching Cheri’s every move.

She rubbed at her shoulders. Gently at first, then harder so that the bones ground in their sockets. She rubbed at the muscles in Camptore’s arms, then her feet and legs.

When she came to Camptore’s belly she stopped and lowered her face until it was pressed against the smooth golden skin. A muscle twitched, somewhere deep in Camptore’s groin and Cheri smiled. Her friend’s animus was so clear to her, a twisting mass of energy, drawing shapes and patterns throughout Camptore’s body.

Cheri lifted her head slightly and placed the flat of her hand so that it covered her friend’s gingery mat of pubic hair. She applied a little pressure, and then placed her other hand a little higher.

Within the animus of her friend, she found a cluster of tiny sparks.

She began to massage Camptore’s abdomen more firmly now. “Come on,” she muttered. Eventually, one spark separated from the rest and Camptore twitched again.

She lost it.

Struggling, she reached out with her mind and relocated that tiny spark. “Come
on
,” she said.

Again, the little pulse began to move and, with all her concentration, Cheri teased the egg into place in the neck of Camptore’s left fallopian tube.

“It’s done,” Cheri said finally.

She sat back, her clothes soaked in sweat. “You’re prepared: tonight – if the mage’s seed is up to it – you will become pregnant.”

~