Riding the Serpent's Back (29 page)

It was a common feature of the months Monahl spent with her brother, roaming through the settlements of the Serpent’s Back. They never stayed in any one place for long: Chi always managed to antagonise people, mixing with local criminals and black marketeers, challenging the authority of just about anyone he chose. It was as if he went looking for trouble, tempting his fate to catch him up.

That day, they rode hard to get away from Qebahl. Chi led a small party of eight at that time, although the numbers would change frequently as they gained and lost members for various reasons.

They stopped for the night in the heart of the thick forest that covered most of this end of the Serpent’s Back – the climax of natural growth, Chi told her. Near to the continent’s birthplace, where new land was continually spewed out of the Michtlan Ridge, only a few plants could take hold, their roots speeding the process of breaking the new rock to form soil, trapping ash and dust from the air. As the land matured, the soil thickened and grasslands formed, then scrub, and finally this thick luxuriant forest which lasted until the land crumbled away into the Burn Plain.

Monahl travelled widely with Chi, over a period of a few weeks. Through all the towns of the Serpent’s Back, it seemed. In that time she discovered many things.

The cold, dark nights of the interior were a revelation: no fiery illumination from the Burn Plain, none of its all-pervasive heat.

Open, unmanaged space was another. On Zigané there was not a single plot of land that was neither built upon nor cultivated; indeed, many were both built upon
and
cultivated, with pots and containers lining the roofs, tubs of fruit trees flanking pavements, vines creeping up out of the tiniest gaps in the paving. On the Serpent’s Back she discovered forest and open, scrubby plain. When there was nowhere to trade for supplies, she learnt to scavenge fruit and roots from the wild, to find the natural condensation traps in the limbs of trees or in rocky hollows.

Also, she learnt to calm her mind. Chi was a great help in this respect. He used his healing powers to probe her brain, teasing out her problems. “You have a gift,” he said. “But there’s an instability in your mind, too. Both are intertwined.”

“Heal me,” she begged him, when he told her this.

“Only you can do that,” he said. “You have to learn to manage on your own – if you have to rely on others to manage your weakness then you’ll never be truly healed. Don’t be frightened. I’ll be here to help you.”

~

All afternoon, Captain Ulphat’s barge followed a course along the glowing channels between the rock floes broken off from the island continent. Such a lot depended on his skills of navigation: not once did they have to turn back because a channel grew too narrow or came to a dead end.

Thirteen years had passed since Monahl had last passed through this region. It looked just the same: the larger islands, interspersed with smaller crags and lumps of rock, some tipped over onto their sides, others completely up-ended.

Then, as she watched the passing landscape, she saw a sight that took her instantly back. Perched on a low, wide rock floe, was a five-sided pyramid. The painted images had faded now, and the stucco on its flanks was heavily cracked – great chunks of it had crumbled away to reveal the dull brown basalt beneath. But still, it was unmistakable.

As all of old Qebahl had been removed, only the pyramid remained untouched. It would have been impractical to move and also, many said, an insult to the gods to pull it apart. And so it had been left, given back to the Burn Plain.

Monahl stared at it as they went on past. She wondered how long it would survive on its raft of rock. Perhaps the long-accumulated blessings of generations of worshippers would preserve it against the ravages of the molten sea and it would endure forever, becoming a legend: pilgrims would travel the Burn Plain seeking it out to pray and lay sacrifices and tributes in the temple on its flattened peak. Or, perhaps more likely, the looters would get there first and strip it of anything remotely of value: stealing the painted images and the reliefs, the stelae and the intricately carved statuettes and gargoyles set into niches in the pyramid’s walls.

When the barge came within sight of the port of Qebahl the sun was no more than a ruddy glow ahead of them in the overcast sky, sinking somewhere beyond the Serpent’s Back. Monahl stared at the rising hump of land ahead and eventually she saw that it was no mere rock floe, it was the eastern end of the continent. Beyond it were the humpy shadows of new Qebahl itself, now crowding right up to the docks.

And then she understood what it was that was wrong about the skyline of the town. When she had left Qebahl, the relocation of the town had largely been completed, yet now many of the buildings seemed only half-built.

Or rather, half
un
built.

Now that the Burn Plain had eaten this far into the continent, the town was in retreat again: no doubt on some escarpment another dozen or so leaps inland, a new set of docks had been marked out, a new set of slums already clustered nearby; two hundred leaps farther inland the Guardians and their rich friends would live in their palaces, as another New Qebahl grew up around them.

She remembered the old adage, inspired by the conveyor belt nature of the Serpent’s Back: you have to keep moving, just to stay in the same place. It was certainly true of Qebahl. Stagnate, become too complacent, and a fiery awakening could be guaranteed.

The docks were crowded, just as Monahl remembered. The whole scene was illuminated by the fiery glow of the molten rock so that shadows leapt and danced in the half-light.

At least a dozen other barges were tied up, loading and unloading their cargo. Dockers swarmed over these vessels, and over the wharf at their side; they worked teams of mokes or hauled heavy crates out of the holds with towering, skeletal, steam-driven cranes which ran along tracks set into the stone structure of the quay. Vendors and hawkers had set up their carts and trolleys all around the harbour, filling the smoky air with the smells of food and spices; others threaded their way through the crowds, screeching their sales pitch above the general cacophony of voices and the groans of continental stress.

Now Monahl recalled one of the more disturbing features of life on the Serpent’s Back: the continual grinding and cracking sounds emanating from the ground. Zigané, with its Charmed passage across the Burn Plain, was relatively silent as it ground through the embryonic crust or ploughed through the sea of magma. But the Serpent’s Back was different: here, the land was never at peace.

When the barge was tied up, Monahl made her farewells to Captain Ulphat and his crew. Before she left she asked him about the boy, Angelo. “He went already,” said Ulphat. “He said you’d be okay alone.” Monahl nodded, then turned and climbed out onto the dock.

She passed slowly through the crowds and the people stepped dutifully aside to let her through. A vendor gave her a vanilla pastry filled with honey – Monahl thought he would expect payment but he just bowed his head and backed away. She touched lips, chin, nose and brow in blessing, and went on her way.

She pulled her clothes more tightly around herself, accustomed to the heat of the Burn Plain. It was strange to be on land again.

She decided she would find another barge immediately: she had no reason to linger in Qebahl. She stopped and looked around, and then she spotted Angelo hanging onto the coat of a stranger.

The boy’s companion was a stocky man, with a thick grey beard and long hair tied up into a big headscarf. His heavy boots and dusty, faded clothes combined with leathery skin to give the impression of a man accustomed to the outdoor life.

Angelo spotted her and tugged at the man to get his attention. He turned and saw Monahl and in that instant she recognised his lined face – he looked so much older now – and saw that the headscarf was twitching, as if its contents were alive. The man with the Charmed rats’ tails woven into his hair!
Jaryd
.

The man watched as she approached him. “You’re here to meet me?” she said.

He nodded. He had always been so self-assured, yet now he was clearly wary of her.

“It’s all right,” Monahl said. “I don’t hold grudges.”

Jaryd shook his head. “I know,” he said. “Come on. We’d better get away from here – the police are everywhere today.”

Monahl had misunderstood the cause of Jaryd’s discomfort: it wasn’t their shared history, it was a more basic fear of arrest. She hadn’t noticed before, but now, when she looked around, she saw the green uniforms and little tin hats affected by the police in these parts.

Jaryd was right: they were everywhere.

He swung Angelo up onto his shoulders and took Monahl by the arm. “We’re Thomas and Archemi,” he said. “And Angelo’s our son. If you’re asked, you try to bluff a bit, then you admit that your devotee’s get-up is a scam you use to collect money from travellers. You admit something like that and the police will let me buy them off. You say you’re who you really are then it’ll be Governor Melved who decides how you leave the Serpent’s Back: either drugged into a coma for transport to the north, or quietly dumped in the Burn Plain. You understand?”

“Of course, darling.” She reached up and smoothed Angelo’s hair. “I’ve told you before about brushing your hair, dear.” The boy jerked his head away from her touch, making a sound deep in his throat which was more animal than human.

They left the docks without confrontation and soon they were passing through the partly dismembered remains of the old New Qebahl. Although Monahl had never been here before, she recognised many of the buildings from the old town. Now they were being dismantled once again.

They passed through a maze of streets before eventually they came to stand before a plain wooden door.

Jaryd knocked twice, paused, then twice again. From inside a dog barked.

Jaryd turned to Monahl, the first time he had met her look since they had been reunited at the docks. “I’ll come for you either tonight or the next night,” he said. “You mustn’t leave the house otherwise, do you understand? You’ve seen how heavily they police this town: your colouring is bound to draw attention – they’d stop you just for the sport. You’ll be safe if you stay indoors – they swept this part of town eight days ago, so they won’t search again unless there’s a tip-off. You’ll be okay here.”

He turned away, as more sounds came from within.

“Thanks,” said Monahl. “’Bye, Angelo.”

The boy looked down at her from Jaryd’s shoulders and gave a brief nod. Then the two of them retreated into the shadows.

Monahl watched as the door edged open, then it swung wide. Momentarily, she was dazzled by the lantern-light from within, then her eyes adjusted and she was staring into the face of Kartaki Te.

She rushed inside and hugged him hard. “I didn’t dare hope...” she said. “I...”

Her host from years before had put on weight in the interim. As Monahl held him, he pushed the door shut with a foot, closing out the prying world. She looked up at him, then turned to take in the room: the dogs and birds...then she saw Roubel sitting in a chair smiling up at her.

“I can’t get up,” the old Habnathi woman said.

Monahl crouched beside her and took her hands in her own. She looked into the woman’s gaunt face, then at her legs, tightly bound in the traditional manner of the crippled. “What happened?” she asked. Roubel had always been such a strong woman.

“I was ill,” said Roubel. “Poliomyelitis.”

“Couldn’t you get to a healer?” asked Monahl.

A look passed between the two Habnathis. “It is forbidden,” said Kartaki. “Healers are only allowed to treat followers of the Embodied Church. But still,” he continued brightly, “she has the use of her arms, which is surely a blessing: many victims of polio are not so lucky – better paralysed legs than paralysed lungs...Roubel has learnt many new skills. Later, I must show you the batiks she has learnt to produce.”

“Why did Jaryd not come in?” asked his wife.

“It’s my fault,” said Monahl. “I make him uncomfortable. You see, once, a long time ago, he stood by as someone mended my broken mind and then broke it again.”

~

That time, thirteen years before, when Monahl had learned so much about herself and about the world, one of the things she learnt was that her brother could not be relied upon to keep a promise. Barely a month after vowing to be with her to help her through her problems, he was gone.

One night they set up camp in a clearing where a friendly Habnathi family had carved out a small farmstead in the forest. Between them they drank lots that evening, far too much.

As was her habit, Monahl slept apart from the others in the corner of a small outbuilding. Her vision of the god Qez returned for the first time in weeks to haunt her dreams, but now it was a mystical, magical experience, not the terrifying ordeal she had felt it to be in the depths of her fever. She sat on the clifftop and watched as Qez came in on his raft of snakes. He looked up and raised a hand and then he stepped off the raft onto a knob of rock that rose from the magma. Without taking his eyes from Monahl he walked surefootedly across the uneven rocks until he stood directly below where she sat.

Suddenly, the dream lurched, and they were standing together surrounded by dark trees. “I’ve come for you, my love,” he said, and then he leaned down and kissed her. His tongue twisted in her mouth, filled it, explored it. It was a snake, seeking out its prey, pressing and probing and nearly making her retch with its fevered attentions. She felt his hands on her body, caressing and pressing, finding openings in her clothes, bare flesh against his palms. She pulled at his clothes, then stepped back and pulled her simple smock clear of her head.

She watched him undress, studying the sinuous movements of his body in the dim light of the forest. He slid his trousers down over his thighs and his stiff member sprang out. Another snake, seeking its prey. She reached out and took it in her hands, felt its strange, twitching life, its cool, scaly coat.

She knelt before it and studied the thing. Its dark head was shiny and suddenly a black tongue flicked out, tasting the air. She gasped, then laughed, and then lowered herself back on a thick bed of moss, never letting go of her prize. “You’ve found me,” she said, as he lowered himself and she guided the snake-god’s ophidian member inside her. “At last you’ve found me.”