Riding the Serpent's Back (42 page)

Leeth was determined not to be thrown. “I didn’t know you were aware of Gudrun’s proposal,” he said. “He claimed he hadn’t told you.”

She looked at him pityingly. “Leethy,
darling
. If I waited to be
told
I’d never know a thing around here.” She leaned towards him, trapping him as the sheet was drawn hard across his thighs. “What if he asked now then? Do you fancy me now, man of the world?”

He stared at her pouting lips, and for a moment he wondered how she would react if he was to call her bluff and make a pass. As she leaned towards him he could see the first creamy bulge of her breasts hanging down. “You’re very attractive,” he said, cautiously.

She laughed, and leaned back. “I am aware of that,” she said.

He shook his head. “But no,” he continued. “I could never marry you, Ellen. At the moment you’re merely an irritation, but if you were my wife I would learn quite quickly to hate you and I wouldn’t want to do that.” He hadn’t meant it to sound so harsh, but she didn’t seem put out by his choice of words.

Suddenly, she flopped back against the wall again and started picking at her toe-nails, no longer caring how much she exposed. “Pity,” she said lightly. “I had hoped you had come back for my hand.”

“You don’t seem too concerned.”

“Phah!” she snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, darling. All I wanted was to turn you down.”

Leeth smiled, pleased that underneath her teenage glamour, he had found the same old Ellen. “It’s nice to see you again,” he said, but she didn’t deign to reply. He pulled the sheet back and climbed out of bed, then went over to his pile of clothes. All the time, he was aware of Ellen’s eyes following him about the room. He didn’t care. He knew he looked good. When he had brought his shifting crisis under control he had settled on a decent enough body for himself. He just wished he knew how he had been able to do it: it seemed such an inconsistent and untamable Talent.

Ibby came into the room a short time later. She must have heard him moving about, or heard them talking. She glanced at Ellen, sprawled across the bed, and rolled her eyes.

She turned to Leeth and said, “You’ll be wantin’ some breakfast, or lunch, perhaps?”

He shook his head. In his time away, he had learnt that a large appetite was often a traveller’s enemy and now he rarely ate more than one good meal in a day.

Ibby tutted, but didn’t try to force him.

“Where is everybody?” he asked her.

“Mister Gudrun is visiting Poulench and intends on bein’ back this evenin’.” Poulench was a small port on the northern shore of the Lai: the family had another set of offices there to deal with trade to the Rim.

“And Cora?”

“She’s worshippin’,” said Ibby, ignoring a snort from Ellen. “She’s been very religious since you left for college.”

Leeth suddenly suspected that nobody had bothered to inform Ibby that he had failed even to complete a term at the Embodied College in Khalaham. Did she think he had been studying all this time? “Where will I find her?” he asked.

Ellen replied before Ibby had the chance. “She’ll be on the Island of Ten Thousand Columns, won’t she, Ib? You’d think she lived there.”

~

There was a continual flow of pilgrims passing to and fro across the long bridge to Ten Thousand. Many had painted their faces in the Sun God’s mask, and most wore vibrant oranges and yellows to show their devotion to the deity most central to their city’s endurance.

Leeth felt quite exposed in the black trousers and jacket he had pulled on this morning.

The bridge stretched for four standard leaps across the lake, in a series of elegant arches suspended between columns driven down to the lake-floor. Every surface of the stonework was engraved with runes and holy symbols, and every pillar in the balustrades was carved into the shape of an eagle or a jaguar, two of Tezchamna’s earthly forms.

After nearly an hour, Leeth came to the end of the bridge. A pair of Charmed fountains twisted across the road here and, copying the actions of those before him, Leeth took two coins from his pouch, touched them to his forehead, then tossed one into each pool. He bought an orange paper bib from a stall and tied it around his neck, then went back and bought a fingerful of orange dye which he smeared across his cheeks.

Rubbing his hands down his clothes, leaving a bright stain in their wake, he felt less conspicuous now. He had always hated to stand out. The thought occurred to him that if he stayed here long enough, his skin might naturally shift to the orange colouring favoured by the crowd.

He went past the stalls and entered the island proper.

Ten Thousand was little more than a flattened slab of rock jutting a few paces above the mean level of the lake and no more than two or three hundred paces across. True to its name, the entire island was strewn with stone columns spaced at irregular intervals of between one and five paces apart. In places, the columns were joined at the top by lintels and heavy stone blocks; in others they stood free, while in yet more cases, a block of columns would be entirely roofed over with stone or wood.

Leeth walked among them, often pausing to let a group of worshippers pass by. He was struck, as always, by the vast effort it must have taken to construct this monument to the sun god.

It was a disorientating place to be. Either standing still or walking, the continual movement of the other visitors and the peacocks that lived ferally here, and the visual distortions of the irregularly arranged columns, all conspired to give the impression that the island itself was moving. You could glance away and have the utter conviction that everything had been rearranged while you had been distracted. Sounds, too, were always misleading on the Island of Ten Thousand Columns: a voice that sounded near could easily have been echoed and relayed around the columns from a whispered prayer some distance away. Conversely, when a peacock gave its harsh cry nearby it might appear that the sound was snatched away from its beak almost before it had emerged.

Leeth walked, quite at peace, for the first time since his return. There was something about the air of Ten Thousand, he decided: the briny lake breezes moderated by the irregular screen of columns.

He knew the apparent randomness of their arrangement was an illusion yet, perversely, the island’s hidden design was only evident from the air. It had even been suggested that if its true nature was only visible to a caste of fliers who were almost exclusively not True, then the island must have been built as a shrine for the masses and so the True should not come here at all.

He remembered quite clearly the first time he had flown Sky over the island. The arrangement of columns, lintels and roofing, when seen from above, suddenly became clear as a vast representation of Tezchamna’s face: the rounded features, with blinded, full-sun eyes and lips curled back to reveal a snarling set of jaguar teeth.

He passed under a band of stone roofing which he knew formed the rim of one of Tezchamna’s great eyes and then he was in a circular opening. He had expected to find her here and he was right: at the centre of the sun god’s eye, his mother was kneeling in prayer.

Her body was completely submerged in a dazzling yellow gown made of some material so stiff it spread out about her like a cone. He should have expected her to dress to stand out, even on an island where people dressed so gaudily. It had always been her way.

He approached her cautiously, observing how still she held herself. Her neck and face were painted the same bright shade as her dress so that the join between flesh and linen was disguised. She almost looked like a statue until suddenly her eyes flashed open, startlingly white and blue against their golden backdrop.

She smiled cautiously, and again Leeth was aware of how uncertain she was in his presence, as if he was some kind of challenge or threat.

“Ellen said you’d be here,” he said, trying to keep his tone light.

Cora smiled, a sudden flash of warmth. “Ellen does not approve of my devotion,” she said. “She says I should worship at the House of Lahsam with Gudrun. She thinks my non-standard beliefs might reflect badly on the business.”

Leeth nodded, suddenly understanding Ellen’s hostility: with him away, she must have been groomed to take over the merchantry business. No wonder she didn’t want him back.

“I think she gets teased about it by her friends,” continued Cora. “Poor Ellen always was so easily swayed.”

They smiled, then Leeth said, “I think she tried to seduce me this morning.” He caught Cora’s eye and suddenly they both burst out laughing.

“Foolish girl,” said Cora, sighing. “She’s led such a protected existence – she has little idea of the effect she has on other people.”

“Other than to irritate them, you mean?”

Cora smiled again, but now she had resumed her initial wariness. She studied Leeth’s face for a long time before saying, “You’ve started, haven’t you? That’s why you came back.”

Leeth nodded. “It took me over when I returned to Khalaham recently. I lost all control of what I was. You should have warned me so that I could be prepared – I was lucky I had friends to nurse me through.” It was Leeth’s turn to study his mother’s carefully constructed expression: she seemed so swamped with emotions she had determined to show none at all. “Why didn’t you tell me grandfather was a shape-changer? Why didn’t you prepare me?”

She stared at him, and her mouth opened a crack. “Grandfather?” she said, eventually. “You mean my father?”

Leeth nodded. “His madness,” he said. “I never understood why no-one spoke of it until I confronted the same madness myself. I don’t want to lose control and end up like him. I...”

He stopped, suddenly aware of the sad look on his mother’s face.

She shook her head. “Oh no,” she said. “My father’s dementia only came in old age. Leeth, your Talents don’t come from my father: they come from
your
father.”

Leeth was startled. Not once had Gudrun ever betrayed any sign of True Talent – he was always so measured and disciplined. Then Leeth realised that must explain why he had concealed his ability so effectively: only one with such extreme self-control could cover up such a trait.

But Cora was still looking at him, studying him with the same, somewhat sad, expression.

Slowly, the implication of her look – her whole attitude ever since his return! – became clear to him. She wasn’t referring to Gudrun at all.

“You mean...” Leeth hesitated, hating the words he was about to speak. “My father? Gudrun is not my father?”

Now he understood her attitude, her wariness. She must have thought he had discovered her sordid secret, that he had returned to confront her and, with his revelations, threaten her precious lifestyle, her marriage, her reputation.

“Then who?” he asked, not sure that he really wanted an answer.

Cora moistened her lips, then said, “Donn. Your father is Donn.”

~

She reached out towards him but he refused to take her hand. His rejection was not intended to hurt – although he saw that it did – it was simply a result of his confusion and shock.

“My brother,” he said. “My brother is Chichéne Pas – all the time I was with him, yet he didn’t tell me...even though Donn had told him the names of all his children.”

He stared at his mother. The tears were welling up in her eyes – she had always cried so readily, but now he knew it was for real.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked her. “Why didn’t you prepare me for what I went through in Khalaham?”

For a moment, they were distracted by a small group of orange-cloaked worshippers passing through Tezchamna’s eye.

When they had gone, Cora said, “I would have told you everything, darling, but Donn insisted you should find out for yourself. He said you would have to be man enough to cope, and when you did you would emerge a better person.” She shrugged, then continued. “And you have. I can see that. You have such a solid core, I almost feel I could reach out and hold it. You only have to recognise that for yourself.”

“You should have told me.”

“Would it have made things better for you? The shifting looming ahead of you, the knowledge that the man who loved you as his son is a cuckold? You would never truly have understood until you had been through the change for yourself. What was I to do?”

“Please don’t come over all helpless,” Leeth snapped angrily. “The only person in this who has that right is
me
. I’m the one who was kept in the dark. I’m the one who had to learn things the hard way.”

“The hard way can be best,” said Cora. “If you survive it.”

“Why did it happen?” asked Leeth.

“Love,” said Cora simply. “And responsibility. Although the order should probably be reversed.”

~

Cora Hamera had just established herself in her new life when she began to notice the old man who had moved into a small house just up the hill.

He would pass her in the street and always made an effort to be polite and make conversation in passing. She thought little of it at first. She had been married for only a month, and was still awash with the changes it had wrought on her life.

She had never expected to marry so well. Although her family was True on both sides, the lines became unclear after only a handful of generations.

As a girl she had traded her Charmed sculptures with the bargees at the docks. She knew that when they were taken to Tule or Totenang they achieved probably two or three times the price she received, but there are worse ways for a girl to be exploited and it was a reasonable living.

After meeting her briefly at a party, Gudrun had fallen passionately in love and although she was always quite open about her background, he would not be deterred. He was a successful merchant and would soon become a Senator, she kept reminding him – he should have a wife who would help him, not hinder him. “No,” he always insisted. “I want a wife with magic in her eyes and a heart that beats true. I want you, Cora, and I will settle for no less.”

She loved him so much she tried hard to refuse him, but his pressure made her yield in the end. And when she yielded, she was determined to do his persistence justice. She abandoned her trade and studied business practice so that she would understand him when he talked about his work. She did her best to cultivate friendships amongst Gudrun’s business partners and clients. It was the sort of good wife role she had always despised, and one she hoped to transcend rapidly, foreseeing the time when she could help Gudrun as an equal, rather than merely playing her part.