Riding the Serpent's Back (70 page)

Petro nodded. “The healing has failed,” he said. “Sawnie has always protected herself so well. Even Chi cannot break through her defences to heal her.” All the time, Petro continued to fan his sister.

Leeth reached down and touched her hand gently, aware of the softness beneath the skin. The disease seemed to strike at random. Some, like Petro and Monahl, seemed to have a natural resistance; others, such as Leeth himself, were able to fight it, albeit with the help of a healer. But others, such as Sawnie, had no defence: she had been touring the camps only two days previously, apparently as fit as ever, and now she was like this.

Petro had stopped his fanning.

Leeth looked up at him, then followed his gaze: Sawnie had stopped breathing. Carefully, he put a hand to her neck but the pulse had died. Her half-open mouth was gradually filling with blood from within: if a victim endures this long, they cannot survive when the disease reaches the inner organs, breaking the membranes of the gut and the lungs.

Petro had a bead ready. He reached over and dropped it into his sister’s filling mouth. The mask-makers would be busy today.

Then Petro straightened and turned and threw himself at Red. Leeth leapt to his feet to separate them, then he saw that they were embracing, both crying.

There was no blame, only grief.

~

The ensuing weeks reminded Leeth of the time immediately before he had fled Edge City, just after the earthquake. A strange impression of patterns taking shape amongst the chaos: so many sick and panicking people, yet somehow the precarious coalition that had formed this army did not fall apart. Chi worked endlessly, healing and teaching those healers with lesser Talents than his own. Camp hospitals and healing posts were set up all along the northern fringe of the Zochi jungle and efforts were made to keep separate the three major diseases: the plague-ophidy, the brown ague and the smallpox. Yet despite the massive scale of the healing operation, the dead soon came to number in the thousands.

It would have been easier if this had been an ordinary epidemic and not a weapon of war. The task of healing was greatly complicated by the increasing numbers of raids by the Tullan forces.

One evening, Leeth was out at a camp at the village of Northway when his attention was caught by a sudden shouting from outside. Unable to heal, he had spent the time since his recovery coordinating the work of the healers, ensuring that every hospital or healing post was continually staffed. Today, he was working in a hospital tent that had been made by stretching canvas from building to building across an entire street – the best way to make a tent large enough.

The shouting was broken by gunshots and the roar of hooves on the packed-mud road and suddenly there was a rush of people entering the tent.

Leeth pushed past them and saw a band of about twenty cavalry racing around the square. Beyond them, he saw others in a pitched battle with a military watchpost, hurling spears and firing their guns. Soldiers were fighting hand-to-hand in the street.

Suddenly, a small group of horses made straight towards the hospital tent. Leeth drew his half-sword, ready to fight, then the horses veered away. The riders had hurled burning torches up onto the hospital’s canvas roof.

The flames rapidly took hold and soon there was pandemonium as the burning material collapsed. Those who were able staggered out, and Leeth spent a long time fighting through the flames to help drag the rest free.

It was a long, disheartening night.

~

Leeth was back at the main camp when Monahl’s prophecy of a second betrayal came true.

One night, Leeth was sitting at a fire with Red, Marsalo and Echtal, drinking rice wine and brooding over the way things had gone. “The attacks’re increasing,” slurred Marsalo. “They jus’ keep chippin’ away, chippin’ away.”

Marsalo was a good man, Leeth thought. They were
all
good men tonight.

“In the south, too,” Marsalo continued.

“But they haven’t made any attacks down there, now, have they?” said Echtal. “I don’t see how we can be saying the attacks are increasing down there when they haven’t actually started. Now, if—”

“But they’re
there
, though, aren’t they?” said Leeth. “Isn’t that more threatening? Evidence of movements and so on, without actual attacks.”

“We’ll be surrounded, ’fore y’know it,” said Marsalo. “Then we’re finished. Chi’s plans’ll be turned back on ’imself: instead of besieging Samhab,
it’ll
be besieging
us
.”

Leeth knew there was a widespread disenchantment with the way things had turned so suddenly against them. Those who had survived the epidemics physically, had been badly battered spiritually by the ordeal. And everyone knew how much Chi had relied on Sawnie for her military knowledge – she had been his general: how could Chi possibly counter Lachlan’s tactics without his general?

“Things must be improving, though,” said Red, suddenly. “Even Monahl spoke to me this afternoon. That’s the first time I haven’t felt she was going to stab me at the first opportunity.”

“Women,” snorted Echtal. “It’s the flows of their body-juices and the way they can affect their whole judgement. I once knew a girl who, every month, regular as regular, she used to—”

“Not now, Eckie,” said Marsalo. “There’s a time and a place for your ramblings an’ that’s usually somewhere I’m not, if I have anythin’ to do with it.”

Their semi-sober musings were broken by the sound of a horse trotting slowly past, coming down the hill. Leeth peered out into the gloom and, as his eyes adjusted from the glare of the fire, he saw that it was riderless.

He snorted, and said, “They just don’t teach knots like they did in the old days, eh?” He struggled to his feet so that he could round up the beast.

“Leave it,” said Red. “It’ll teach ’em a lesson.”

But Leeth was on his feet now. He sensed the horse’s confusion and it was then that he realised something was wrong. “Come here, then,” he said to the beast. “It’s okay.”

From by the fire he heard Red muttering. The others broke out into laughter, but Leeth ignored them.

He put a hand out and the horse nuzzled it. “I know you, don’t I?” he said, scratching behind the beast’s ear. “Now, whose are you? Someone who can’t tie you up safely, eh?”

It wasn’t so much the horse’s appearance – there were any number of black horses with a white nose-flash about – as the shape of its thoughts. There was something distinctive there, something a little different.

He looked down to see that Echtal had come to join him, shuffling over on his stumps. Immediately, the horse dropped its head to nuzzle at him.

He met Echtal’s look.

“Harken,” they both gasped together.

“Something’s up,” said Echtal, raising his arms for Leeth to pick him up. “We’d better hurry.”

Leeth grabbed the amputee and together they ran up the hill, leaving Joel’s riderless horse behind. “He’s been so depressed,” Echtal kept saying. “What’s he gone and done?”

By the time they reached the crest of the hill, Red and Marsalo had caught up with them.

There was no sign of Joel.

More cautiously, they followed the path until they could see out across the Heartlands.

In the half-light, Leeth saw a lone figure, walking across the flank of the first gentle slope. Too, small to be Joel.

Chi.

He seemed oblivious to the world, lost in thought. It must have been so hard for him recently.

Then Red gasped and pointed down the steep slope of the hill they were standing on.

A dark figure, heading down the track, a heavy wood-axe resting across his shoulder. It was Joel.

He was stalking Chi.

“Chi!” Leeth shouted, but the small figure seemed oblivious. Surely he wasn’t too far away to hear?

Joel heard. He glanced back and then began to run after the boy, axe poised ready to swing.

Suddenly, Echtal was squirming violently in Leeth’s arms. Unable to hold him, Leeth dropped the cripple onto the ground.

Echtal grunted, and got to his stumps. He shuffled forward to the top of the slope, then tucked his chin against his chest, seized his stumps with his hands and arched his entire body so that he became a human wheel.

With a fish-like wriggle of his body, Echtal set himself in motion. Slowly, at first, he trundled down the rough slope. Then faster, faster.

A few seconds later Joel seemed to sense something amiss and he looked back just in time to see a whirling human disc bearing down on him.

He tried to step aside but was too late. Echtal crashed into him and the two fell in a heap at the foot of the hill.

A short time later, Leeth, Red and Marsalo reached the two fallen men.

Leeth had been ready to throw himself at Joel and try to pin him down until help arrived, but he saw there was no need. The two men were hugging each other, both crying. “I’m sorry, master,” Echtal kept repeating. “I’m so sorry, master. I had to stop you.”

The axe lay discarded to one side.

“Where’s Chi?” said Red.

Leeth turned to survey the barren, shadowy landscape. There was no sign of the boy. “I—”

“I’m here.”

The voice came from partway up the hill. An instant later, Chi stepped out from behind a rocky outcrop, looking pale and solemn. Monahl came out behind him, with Petro leaning across her shoulders.

Joel sat up and stared at them.

“It’s over,” said Chi.

Joel continued to sob. “I wanted you dead!” he gasped eventually. “The bitch-Oriole freed me on condition I kill you, but I really
wanted
it.”

“I know,” said Chi. He picked up the axe and offered it to Joel. “Do you still want to?”

Joel turned away, choking back more tears. “You knew?”

Chi nodded. “Monahl had a dream last night. She saw the circumstances of your betrayal: the price you were willing to pay for freedom. It’s all right, Joel, we’ll look after you. I know you won’t do this again.”

“But...” said Marsalo. “How did you...?”

Chi smiled grimly and gestured at Petro. “My brother has a Talent,” he said. Now, he pointed a short distance away and a small figure appeared again, walking slowly away.

Leeth stared at Petro. The big man’s eyes were squeezed shut with the effort of casting his illusion. Chi patted him on the arm and he stopped.

“Joel had to act it out,” Chi said. “Or the need would always have been within him. He had to learn that the real price of his freedom was the pain of the knowledge of his own betrayal.”

Chi reached out a hand to help Joel up. “Will you come back with us?” he said. “It will all look different tomorrow.”

The bearded man shook his head. “I’m sorry, brother,” he said. “For it all. I need to stay out here for a time. I’ll come back later.”

~

As they walked back over the hill, leaving Joel alone in the night, Red said, “We can’t just leave him there. He’ll just run back to his mistress under cover of the darkness.”

Chi shook his head. “No,” he said. “Joel wouldn’t do that. He knows she is not the answer.”

When they came to the cluster of tents by the spring, Herold was standing in the entrance to his tent. “Have I missed all the excitement?” he said, stretching like a lazy cat. “Was anybody killed?”

They sat around the fire, nobody wanting to retire yet. There was too much to absorb.

Leeth realised this was the first time since his return that he had been with Chi for more than a passing instant. So much had been happening. He recalled his initial determination to confront Chi, but it all seemed so remote now.

Half-heartedly, he said, “You could have told me I was your brother.”

Chi nodded. “I could,” he said. “But you would not have taken it well.”

It was true: he wouldn’t. The only person he could ever have believed on the subject was his mother, Cora. “I met him,” he said.

Chi looked at him curiously. “Who?”

“Donn.”

“But...”

Leeth was surprised at the reaction of his brothers and sisters. He had taken it for granted that their suggestions that Donn was long-dead had been another part of the charade. “You really thought he was dead?” he said.

Chi nodded. “Monahl? Petro? Red? Isn’t that right?”

They all agreed: no one had known Donn was still alive.

“My mother told me,” said Leeth. “She told me where to find him. He has a palace built into a volcano that overlooks the northern sea.” Now, the memories rushed back. “He turned me away.”

He noticed Herold staring into the flames, shaking his head rapidly from side to side. “I knew it,” he said. “I just knew the old goat was still involved.”

There was something strained about Herold’s expression. Leeth suddenly realised that he was scared: scared that one day he might come up against a more powerful mage than himself.

“Donn is an old man,” said Leeth. “He sits in his home all day and watches over us in a pool of Charmed lava, but that’s all he can do. He’s frail. He complains all the time of being so tired. Even the smallest things wear him out these days.”

Herold was smiling. “Exactly,” he said. “That’s exactly what he
wanted
you to think.” His tone was shrill, he was on the verge of losing control. “Can’t you see? He’s like you, Leeth: a shape-changer. ‘Frail’ is just another guise he adopts.

“Oh, Monahl, my child. You never should have brought me here. It is just as I feared: the powers of Samhab are so tempting. The mages are creeping out from under their stones, each ready to claim a piece of the new territory. Everything will fall apart, just as I said.”

“What do you mean?” said Chi.

Herold turned his panicked eyes on the man-child. “First this Oriole creature. Now we hear Donn is involved. All of you: the children of a mage. It’s so dangerous!”

He turned back to Leeth. “You must go back to your ‘frail’ old father and persuade him to play no part in this: he will only make matters worse. He and Oriole have been orchestrating this situation since before any of you were born. He must be persuaded to leave it to his children, as he claimed he was doing. Can’t you see? You can’t let mages go interfering in all this, you just can’t!”