Riding the Serpent's Back (31 page)

They talked about the situation instead. Monahl knew little of the position in the north – only what she had heard from traders – but she told them of the climate of fear she had encountered on the Serpent’s Back.

“The Burn Plain trade has become vital to the north,” she said. “When I was there thirteen years ago—” she glanced at Chi, but his expression betrayed nothing “—it was frontier country. The trade was there, but it was more freely based: the people worked the fields and the mines and their employers traded the surplus with the north. The only kind of enforcement was through disorganised private police gangs.

“I’ve just come from there today and now there are soldiers and police everywhere. Every so often they raid the homes of the poor, searching for the slightest ‘evidence’ of opposition. Their victims are routinely dumped in the Burn Plain. If I’d been identified I would have been seized simply for being Chi’s sister.”

“Will we get support from Zigané?” asked Sawnie. “Could we disrupt the trade in that way?”

Monahl shook her head. “The Embodied Senate of Tule sent a delegation several months ago. They wanted to forge an alliance with Zigané to ensure that their lines of supply were preserved. With hindsight, it’s pretty clear they also wanted to forestall any possibility of rebellion.”

“So Lachlan has a treaty with Zigané,” said Kester, shaking her head.

“Not quite,” said Monahl. “Zigané has never made political pacts – the delegation was sent packing. But that would be precisely what they expected: their appeal only hardened the city’s tradition of independence. By making Zigané refuse a pact with Tule, they’ve made it a certainty that the city will not deal with any rebels, either. Do you see? In effect, the delegation won an unwritten pact that trade will continue as before, with no disturbance.”

“But if an appeal was made from one of Zigané’s own?” said Petro.

Monahl shook her head. “I’m a devotee-priest,” she said. “I have no influence in matters of policy. Zigané has never taken an interest in Rift politics. It’s too remote. Even if you dragged every Senator on a guided tour of the worst atrocities of the north, the majority would simply agree that it was all too terrible and then scurry back to their sanctuary.”

Later, she learnt that it was not simply the brutality of his regime that had turned these people against Lachlan, nor his personal vendetta against Chi, although that was what had triggered it.

“They’re rebuilding Samhab,” said Kester.

“But they can’t,” said Monahl. “They don’t know where it was. They could never replicate it.”

“They claim to have located the ancient site,” said Kester. “We had reports only yesterday that the first excavations exposed the fallen columns of what they are convinced is the Temple of Inscriptions. From the position of the relics they have confirmed the accuracy of their initial plans.”

Monahl was more horrified than she revealed. Through the history of this Era a number of Charmed Pacts had been made between the gods and various mages. Such pacts were a binding guarantee of a particular site’s stability and magic: the lake city of Laisan had grown up on the protected remains of a volcanic island; her own city of Zigané was protected by a Pact that had lasted for as long as the histories could tell, although its most recent renewal had been made only a century ago.

But most powerful of all was the Pact which protected the first city, Samhab.

Its location was said to be at the geographical heart of all the habitable regions – the northern Rim, the great Rift valley which led from the northern sea down to the Burn Plain, the Serpent’s Back and beyond. But the method of calculating the fabled city’s location had been long lost with the continual shifting of the boundaries of civilisation: since ancient times the population had migrated widely across the scattered islands of the Burn Plain; increasing areas of the Rim had been colonised; communities had repeatedly spread and retreated in the hostile regions to the west and east of the Rift as they were occasionally made marginally habitable by a periodic shift in the climate.

Monahl had thought the secret knowledge of Samhab’s location was as long lost as the city itself.

Samhab was at the heart of everything: its creation had been the result of the greatest bond there had ever been between humankind and the gods. The Pact which protected it and gave it its magic must have weakened over the generations of neglect, but if Lachlan and his followers could reawaken the beat of that heart...if by reconstructing its temples and palaces to the ancient plan they could restore even a fraction of that long-lost earth magic, then there might be no controlling the powers they released. Worse: if the powers thus released
could
be controlled, then those powers would be in the hands of Lachlan and his priests.

As Monahl worked through the implications of this new knowledge, she felt herself starting to lose her grip on the world. She felt the beat of her heart as if it was rising up from the rocky ground on which she sat.

It rose through her body and echoed around her skull.

Suddenly, she was in tune with the earth in a way she had never been before, in all her long vigils, Charming the ancient bedrock of the wandering city.

For a dizzying moment, she had a nightmare vision of Samhab: the temples and spires, the pyramids, the columned and roofed walks. Fine people paraded along the marble streets, their clothes woven from pure gold thread. Minstrels played and monkeys danced to entertain the lords and ladies. Every surface was decorated with etchings and friezes, inlaid with jewels, gold and silver.

“What is it?” Chi’s voice penetrated her delirium, dragging her back to the world.

“A vision,” she said. “A nightmare.” She told them how she had seen the city. “There was one statue in particular,” she added, after a slight pause. “A gravity-defying thing standing in a garden of its own. A king sits cross-legged at its peak, one hand raised casually above his head. Supporting the king is a tier of richly dressed favourites. Below them, a layer of priests and military commanders, and below them a layer of slightly lesser dignitaries. Each level descends lower through the hierarchy, and the expressions on the faces of the people become first quizzical, then more and more desperate as they struggle to bear their load. The lowest levels are so compressed by the great weight from above that they’re barely recognisable as human: you only deduce what they are by seeing what is above. Below them is a layer that is almost solid: all you can see are the vague outlines of skulls and bones.”

“I don’t understand,” said Petro. “You described this ghastly thing as ‘gravity-defying’.”

“It is,” said Monahl. “The whole thing is suspended in mid-air. All that supports it above its marble plinth is a hand rising as if from nowhere, one finger raised to support the mass – the king’s hand. It’s perverse. The whole thing acknowledges that the majority of the human race must suffer awful extremes so that the king and his favourites can live in luxury, yet that one raised finger supporting it all says to the onlooker, ‘This is how it is, and how it must be’. The king is supported in his luxury by mass suffering, because he is so all-powerful that all their effort is equivalent to that of his solitary raised finger. It’s the work of an ego-maniac, a madman. Or the work of someone who has tamed the power of the first city.”

Chi reached out a hand, and then paused.

“It’s a nightmare,” she said, shaking with pent up emotion. “I don’t know if it will be true or not. But we must never allow it to happen. What can we do?” she asked. “How are we ever going to stop him?”

Chi smiled. “You arrived just in time,” he said. “At first light we take the Junction.”

~

Monahl watched the warship drift down the Hamadryad. They must have seen it by now.

“You’re nearly there,” she said in a hushed tone.

By her side, Petro sat with his back against a tree. He didn’t acknowledge her words. She looked at him, at the sweat forming greasy streaks down his purple face. When she had first met him, she had taken his unassuming manner to mean that he had inherited little Talent of his own. Today he was showing just how wrong she had been.

If anyone was of no use today, it was Monahl. Chi had asked her specially to stay here and do what she could to help Petro. She knew she was being kept out of the way. She was only a devotee-priest, after all.

The trade barges were pulling away into the central channel of the river now. The Junction was preparing for battle.

With the aid of Petro’s spy-glass, Monahl watched his petal-covered warship draw closer. It seemed to take forever. She looked down to where Chi was sitting, mounted in front of Joel. Spread through the folds and dips of the landscape around the Junction were perhaps a thousand soldiers of Chi’s ramshackle army, yet most were hidden even from Monahl’s vantage point.

A split second after Monahl looked at him, Chi twisted and waved.

“Now,” said Monahl.

Down on the river, the skinned Huipo-figure suspended from the ship’s bow turned its head slowly. When its bulging eyes were looking directly at the Junction, it raised an arm, the sheer slowness of its actions conveying the intense pain of every move. Then the arm dropped and the body slumped.

Instantly, a puff of smoke spat out from one of the ironclad’s cannons. Seconds later, the sound of its explosion reached Monahl’s ears, along with the crackling of gunfire and light artillery as the town’s defenders opened up at the approaching vessel.

The warship’s cannons fired again.

At a slight sound, Monahl turned. Petro’s eyes were open now. “I can’t...not for much longer, I...”

When she looked again, the ironclad seemed to be losing its solidity. She could see the water through it, the waves of the river.

And then it was gone, and Petro slumped exhausted to one side.

Her half-brother’s illusion had served its purpose, though. The town’s defences had been drawn to the docks to fight off the illusory barge. Now, Chi, Joel, Kester and Sawnie were leading a full-blooded onslaught from three different angles of approach.

Within minutes they had taken several blocks of warehouses and dormitory-blocks, as labourers cowered within and the town’s military reorganised themselves. Sheer mass of numbers weighed heavily in the attackers’ favour, but despite all Chi’s preparations they were not the trained soldiers of the Junction.

The day ground on, and all Monahl could do was sit with Petro, surveying the battle. The railway line to the Authority Docks by the Burn Plain – always difficult to defend – was taken early, and soon great sections of track were being dismantled. The Junction itself was a different proposition. The attackers were armed with clubs and swords and the traditional atlats, with which they hurled short spears with great accuracy. The defenders were similarly armed, but also they had a few cannon and some muskets. The firepower of the defenders was mostly ineffective, but their din clearly had an intimidating effect on the assailants.

By mid-afternoon, a few more blocks had been captured, and Monahl could see a little of what was happening. “It’s going to reach a stalemate,” she said. “When its dark, they’ll start to counter-attack. We may have greater numbers than them, but it’s all children and amateurs. Oh, Petro: it’s going to be a slaughter!”

But he shook his head. Recovered, now, from his exertions, he had been studying the Junction through his spy-glass. He passed it to Monahl. “I suggest you take a look at the docks,” he said.

She put the glass to her eye and squinted through it. From where they watched, they could see a good section of the docks, and she saw three of the largest paddle-steamers tied up. A swarm of labourers moved about them as if oblivious to the battle that had been sporadically raging since dawn.

“They’re moving out,” said Petro. “They have decided to make a strategic withdrawal.”

Monahl didn’t dare believe him, but as she watched she saw that it was true. A short time later, the three barges edged out into the central channel of the river, where a number of other vessels had been cowering since the morning.

“Listen,” said Petro.

She did. There was silence.

~

It was still light when Monahl walked with Petro into the captured Junction. She saw that Kester and Marsalo had been directing gangs to clear up the debris of the fighting. Edge City police squads were quizzing the long lines of captured labourers one by one in an effort to weed out any guards hiding amongst the innocent.

One warehouse had been burning since midday, and now was little more than a blackened skeleton. A towering heap of crates was still ablaze and this was being supervised by a gang of firefighters.

Another warehouse had been taken over by Joel and a group of healers from Edge City. Here, the injured were gathered for their wounds to be tended. The air was filled with groans and sobbing and the impassioned chanted prayers of the healers.

Corpses were being taken to the docks, where already a gang of craftspeople was working on the construction of a funerary barge on which the dead would be sent out into the Hamadryad for the short journey to the Falls and annihilation on the Burn Plain.

“How many did we lose?” asked Monahl, when she found Chi and Sawnie standing by the docks.

“Fifty-eight,” said Chi. “Against twelve guards and five innocent labourers. And it was all wasted.”

“What do you mean?” asked Monahl.

It was Sawnie who answered. “It was too easy,” she said. “They were ready for us and when it became clear that it would be a hard fight they simply packed up and left. They must have some contingency plan. Somehow the Junction can’t be as important to them as we had hoped.”

“A counter-attack?”

Sawnie shook her head. “It would have been easier for them to defend the Junction than to try to take it back. No, our mistake must be more fundamental.”

~

Their mistake had been to confuse the Junction with its location. All that was needed for trade to continue was a site on the Hamadryad with water deep enough to berth the large paddle-steamers and load them up. The river was between three and four leaps wide this close to the Burn Plain – more a moving lake than a river – and throughout its convoluted shoreline there were several such sites. By the next day it was clear that the flow of trade upriver had barely been affected by the takeover of the Junction.