Riding the Serpent's Back (72 page)

She shook her head and turned away from the soldiers. She stared out of the window as the train edged away from the station.

It was all just as she had expected. Just as she had seen it two nights previously as she had sat naked on the crag.

Just as she had seen it in her vision.

As soon as Leeth had gone, Red was reminded of how out of place he was. He was not a soldier, or a military leader, he was not a healer or a seer.

He was a boy from the Hangings of Totenang, with a facility for language and a knack for organising appropriate entertainments for visiting dignitaries. He gave a decent blow-job too, but that was about the limit of his talents.

Chi tried to include him in things, always seeking out his supposed inside information about enemy thinking and forces. But Red was sure all he told them was either out of date or merely duplicated what they would already know from spies and reconnaissance trips.

And then, one day, Herold and Monahl barged into a meeting in Shiels and the mage selected Red as his assistant.

At last, someone actually wanted him!

Herold had clearly recognised something latent in Red’s nature, some deeply hidden spark of Talent. As Herold’s words echoed around his head, he remembered sensing the hum of the energy of the First City. He had assumed everyone felt it that way, not just him. He hadn’t even known that he was special.

But even as Herold chose him, Red sensed an undercurrent. The mage’s choice of words as he led up to his offer were so precisely chosen, they could only imply that Monahl was to be his assistant. She was the obvious choice, with her priestly earth-tuning Talent and her intimate knowledge of Herold and his ways.

The look of shock and hatred on Monahl’s face would be imprinted on Red’s memory forever. Herold had so clearly set her up just so he could knock her back down again.

The old mage had
enjoyed
hurting his great-granddaughter.

But still, he had chosen Red.

~

They rode out that afternoon, before Red had a chance to find Monahl and attempt to smooth things over. It wouldn’t have helped matters, he knew, but at least he would have tried. He knew himself well enough to admit that his own conscience could be so easily satisfied.

The dying sun flooded the Heartlands with its fiery glow. “So,” said Red, choosing a light, matey sort of tone. “We go to smash the pact, eh? You going to tell me how? Any little special areas of expertise you want me to cover?”

Slowly, Herold turned to look at him. He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t have to.

Red fell quiet. The man’s not a conversationalist, he told himself. Don’t let him get under your skin.

Even when it was dark they kept going.

“Er...” said Red, tentatively. “What if we get lost? We wouldn’t want to ride right into Samhab, now would we?”

At last, Herold spoke. “We won’t get lost,” he said. “I can feel where we are going. Are you not aware of the energy? The pulses and waves, spreading out from the First City?”

Red hesitated.

He could sense it, he realised. A buzz. A tingling in his bones.

He nodded.

If Herold thought he could navigate by the feel of the energy, Red wasn’t going to disagree.

Some time later, when the moon had appeared and passed a quarter of the way across the sky, Herold stopped.

They had come to a hollow in the undulating landscape of the Heartlands. Red looked around at the dark shapes of the ground and saw that they had been riding into a low valley for some time, and now they were close to its centre.

He heard a slight sound from ahead. When he turned back, he saw that a man had appeared in front of them.

The man was wearing a long pale smock and he had a spear poised ready to throw.

Red glanced at Herold and saw that the mage was looking off to the side. Following his look, Red saw two more figures standing with spears at the ready.

To the other side there were three more, and all were aiming their spears at Red.

“At peace,” said Herold, in a tongue Red recognised from his stay in the village of Atrac to the north. These people were nomads, then. “I come tonight with a foreigner,” Herold continued. “He is at peace with me, and therefore at peace with you, my brothers.”

Red swallowed, then decided to speak up. In the language he had learnt in Atrac, he said, “May the good lord Samna bless my presence among your gracious families with peace.”

Herold turned and stared at him. He was smiling, but Red could see that the mage had been put off his stride by his assistant’s knowledge of the language. He smiled back at Herold. He noted that the nomads had lowered their weapons and so now he said to the mage, “Shall we continue?”

~

Red was shown into a yurt where he was to spend the night. He unrolled his sleep mat, trying to ignore the smell of rotten meat emanating from the stretched-skin covering of the native tent.

He lay there but couldn’t sleep, aware of Herold seated outside in the darkness. He had left the mage there, eyes staring off into some private distance.

Red woke at dawn. The sunlight was seeping in through the seams of the yurt and for a time he lay, half awake, staring up in fascination at the once-living mosaic of skins.

Herold came for him and watched as he ate a porridge of goats’ milk and cactus fibres.

When Red had finished, the mage stood and walked away, accompanied by a wizened old woman Red took to be Ahjab, the priest Herold had mentioned the day before.

He scrambled to his feet and followed them immediately. They headed out through the springy sub-desert scrub, away from the encampment, ignoring him completely. He was getting the familiar feeling again that he was here under sufferance, that Herold had only ever wanted to use him to hurt Monahl and with that accomplished he had no further part to play.

He was so preoccupied he almost fell into the crevasse.

Herold and Ahjab had paused a short distance ahead and he hurried after them, determined not to be left out.

“Stop!” barked Herold.

Red froze, then looked down. The toe of his left boot was jutting out into mid-air and he had been just about to step into a gaping crack in the ground. The hole had been obscured by a fringe of ground-scrub that hung over the edge. The crack was only about two paces across. He followed the far wall as it plunged down, the red rock becoming darker and darker, until the bottom of the crevasse was lost in blackness.

Red looked at his two companions.

Herold leaned towards Ahjab and said, “At least it is obedient.” The priest chuckled and Red turned away, cross and frustrated.

He picked up a pebble and dropped it, listening to its click-click-click descent as it bounced from wall to wall. The sound faded away and was lost, giving no hint of the crack’s depth.

This strange gash in the earth’s surface seemed important, but he did not know why. And he certainly was not going to ask.

Ahjab and Herold were talking in low voices, so Red chose to ignore them. He walked along the crevasse until he found the place where its two walls drew closer together, then joined. He returned along the far side of the crevasse until, finally, he found its other end. It must be a leap or more long, he estimated.

Now, as he ambled back to where he had left Ahjab and Herold he saw that they had been joined by a group of men and they were all busy with a contraption made of wood and ropes.

As he approached, they turned to look at him.

The ropes were attached to a set of three heavy stakes which had been driven into the ground. Slowly, Red worked out what they were for. He looked at the nomads, and then at Herold. “Why are you sending them down there?” he asked. “Is this the place?”

Herold muttered a translation to Ahjab, and then the two of them laughed.

“My people will not go down that...that
hole
,” said the nomads’ priest. Only a fool with no respect for the gods and even less for his own safety would go down into that seemingly bottomless pit, her look told him. Only a fool like
you
.

Red looked at Herold and saw confirmation in the mage’s look.

“It is quite safe,” said Herold. “Don’t you trust me?” Then he added, in the sharp manner Red was rapidly learning was the norm, “In any case, do you really think I would want to lose my trained monkey so soon?”

~

On the second day he found the cave. It was an oval opening with a small ledge at its base, at precisely the depth Herold had expected.

“Yes,” he called up.

Immediately, Herold’s voice boomed back down. “Don’t touch anything, Red. Do you hear me? Touch nothing.”

Red had no intention of touching anything. He climbed back up, out of the crevasse. By the time he reached daylight, Herold had already secured a rope ladder around the triple set of stakes. He stepped past Red, then paused and clapped him on the arm. Then he leaned over and dropped the ladder down into the cleft.

Red watched him as he prepared to climb down. “Are you sure you...?”

Herold nodded, then started his descent.

~

Late that afternoon, Herold allowed Red to join him in the cave.

Red climbed down the ladder, his heart pounding. He had no idea what to expect. He knew that this was the site where, thousands of years ago, some long-forgotten mage had sealed the Charmed Pact of Samhab.

He knew it was a magical site.

But Herold would tell him so little about their mission.

Now, a dim light emanated from the oval entrance to the cave. He continued downwards until he could stand on the ledge and see inside.

It was a rounded chamber, about twenty paces deep and five across. Herold had wedged candles here and there so that they could see.

Red stepped inside. When he looked closely at the cave’s walls he saw golden veins running through the rock, but otherwise the cavern was apparently featureless.

It was only a cave, after all.

Then he saw the triumphant smile on Herold’s face.

When the mage saw that he was looking, he stepped aside to reveal a protruding column of rock, which came up to his thighs. He waved a hand at it. “Come, Red,” he said. “Come and worship at the altar cast from the bones of Tezchamna.”

Red approached the altar cautiously, heart racing again.

He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

He saw that his initial impression of a smooth column of rock had been mistaken: there were outlines on the thing, shapes. Then he saw that the markings revealed the form of bones set in the rock, ribs, two hands, the unmistakable impression of a skull staring out at them.

As a boy in Totenang, Red’s adoptive parents had sent him out to the beaches to gather ancient rocks imprinted with the forms of fish and spiralling snails. These fossils could be sold to tourists for a few pennies.

Now, Red stared at the large fossil before him. The bones of a man, cast in stone.

Then Herold’s words sank in: the bones of a
god
.

He looked sharply at the mage. He seemed sincere.

Red fell to his knees and prayed seriously for the first time since childhood.

“What do we do?” he asked, eventually.

Herold was unrolling a piece of cloth he had been carrying in his backpack. It held jewels, more candles, an ornate, long-bladed knife. “There are rituals,” the mage said. “Holy words and symbols.” He turned to Red, making no effort to conceal his fear. “And we pray,” he continued. “We pray as we have never prayed before.”

~

They stayed in the cave throughout the night, continually replacing burnt-out candles with fresh ones. “We must keep the flames alive,” Herold insisted. “We are here now. We have started.”

Herold marked out the cave with chalk and instructed Red to fill in the shapes with blocks of colour. When he had finished, Herold said, “And now you.”

Red stripped naked and allowed the mage to paint him. When he was finished, the mage, in turn, stripped and held the paints out towards Red. “When you are quite ready,” he said.

Red painted him, following Herold’s instructions minutely.

When faint light started to seep into the cavern, Red glanced at the candles but Herold shook his head. “We keep them burning,” he said. “We must remain here as long as it takes.”

Across the blocks of colour they had daubed on the walls and floor, Herold began to scratch and chisel sentences and words into the rock’s surface, often lingering interminably over a single letter.

Red could only watch this process. He did not have the calligraphic skills to be of assistance.

He tried to read the end results, but although some were clearly recognisable phrases from the cyclical texts, many of the words appeared to him no more than random arrangements of letters, mystical words that belonged to no language Red knew. He recognised some of the script as belonging to a more ancient hieroglyphic form of writing, but others were just shapes cut in the rock.

Herold hated to be watched, but there was little else Red could do. “Well
pray
then!” shrieked Herold at one point. The mage rose and pushed Red violently across the cavern so that he collided with the sacred altar and came to rest on the floor, staring up at the ancient skull embedded in the rock.

“Pray!” yelled Herold after him.

Red closed his eyes and prayed.

~

It went on for days, Herold growing more and more obsessed, more and more violent. Red was only a slight man, but he could have beaten Herold easily in a straight fight. He resisted though, determined not to rise to the mage’s provocation.

He teased him instead. “You know I won’t retaliate,” he said one time, from a safe distance. “I know you’re only scared because you don’t think you can do what Chi asks.”

Herold stared up at him, halfway through a flowing F. “Oh yes?” he sneered. “You think I care what that freak wants?” He lowered his head and continued his chiselling.

That was the starting point of Red’s suspicions.

In his long hours of enforced idleness, he started to dwell on all the things he had heard and seen.

He recalled how unsettled Herold had been upon realising Red understood the nomads’ language: there could be no secrets, he had realised. Which implied, of course, that the mage had secrets to keep.