Serpent's Silver (7 page)

“Bite your tongue, Brother Wart!” Kelvin said in the manner of their so-recent youth. “You walked with me into dragon country, you helped fight Rud’s war, you reached the palace ahead of the troops, you rescued me from the magician, and you got yourself almost drained of your last drop of blood. What more could a man enjoy.”

“I did all that disguised as a boy,” she reminded him. “And when you treat me as an equal you always call me Brother Wart! What kind of equality is that?”

“All right.
Sister
Wart.”

St. Helens slapped his meaty thigh where it bulged from the borrowed saddle. He laughed, making it almost a roar. “Brothers and sisters are the same on Earth. Mabel, my sister, and I used to tease each other all the time. She talked Women’s Liberation, too, and I always made fun of it. It’s not that I don’t think women should be equal to men, it’s just that most aren’t.”

“Oh, is that so!” Jon said, clearly enjoying this. “Well, I tell you, St. Volcano, it isn’t easy being female!” She had learned that his name derived from that of a volcano back on his home world of Earth, and made much of it. She did not seem to share the dislike Kelvin and Heln had for the man. “I wanted to be a boy until I met Lester! Do you think I would have gone around disguised as a boy if I hadn’t had to?”

“Hah, hah,” said St. Helens, turning red in the face. “Hah, hah, hah.”

“Well, it’s the truth.”

Lester was returning with the blue-and-green ducphant swinging from his saddle. “Good news—we eat. Jon, Heln, get the fire started and the bird plucked. Your menfolk want a feast!”

“Chauvinist!” Jon spat, but the edge was gone. She and Heln did as they were bidden, and the bird, even in minute portions, was delicious, as only the food cooked outdoors could be.

*

The next day of travel St. Helens got on his political horse, lecturing one and all on and on about one world and the necessity of having one. “Now, Aratex just isn’t right. It’s too much the way Rud was before the revolution. Oh, they don’t have slavery or the Boy Mart and Girl Mart, but they’ve got tax collectors who are just as bad as Rud’s used to be, and soldiers as uncouth and discourteous. People aren’t satisfied with their boy king, nor should they be. The truth is that it’s that old witch Melbah who rules. It’s time for a change. Once the witch is out and the country has a good, strong man in charge, Aratex can unite with Rud just as it says in the prophecy.”

The astonishing thing to Kelvin was that the others seemed increasingly to buy it. True, he had always known the prophecy would get him into additional trouble sometime, but he had hoped to put it off, just as he had hoped to put off this rescue. Just listening to St. Helens’ enthusiasm was getting to the others even if not to him. Thus the sight of the burned-out ruins of the old palace in the morning mist was in every way a relief.

“You say we’ll need a boat?” St. Helens asked. “Well, seems to me there’s a river above ground and people have boats along it. Why not get one ready-made instead of making one?”

“Those stairs aren’t in good repair,” Kelvin reminded them. “It might be easier to carry down the material for a raft and then—”

“Nonsense!” St. Helens insisted. “You’re the Roundear of Prophecy and I’m your good right-hand man. No raft for us—it wouldn’t be fitting.”

And so it was that Jon again spoke to the river man who was Tommy Yokes’ grandfather. He had been the one to row her across the river and help her with her disguise before she rescued Tommy and went on to the palace to rescue her brother. The old man smiled to see her and they embraced as though they were long-lost kin.

“My, you don’t look like a boy any longer.”

“Nor do I want to. But thank you for helping me before, and now in renting us your boat.”

“No rental. Glad to lend it to you. You did a mighty good turn for Tommy, and your brother ended slavery permanently. Things are better now for everyone, even old duffers who live by fishing and feeding a few goats. But I know some people who are going to want to see you just to shake your hand. Don’t worry about getting the boat down those stairs—there are plenty who will be proud to help.”

Thus did they spend an enjoyable day chatting until finally, assisted by a dozen pairs of willing hands, Kelvin and St. Helens were at last properly launched and on their way on the river. The water was aglow with the lichen’s eerie luminescence. Kelvin only hoped that this strangeness did not foreshadow the nature of their mission.

Chapter 7

Flopear Magic

“I understand,” Kian said over lunch with his host and the girl who so resembled the girl he now longed to wed. Funny that it had taken this otherworld twin with round ears to make him realize this.

“You understand flopears,” Jac said, chewing thoughtfully on a leg bone of a desert fowl. “But do you really? From what you say, there is nothing like them in your world.”

“Only legends,” Kian said. “Old legends—stories, really. We heard them as children. The small immortal people who once lived in the mountains and invented gold smelting. They were supposed to have gathered up the scales the dragons shed. No one really believed it, but they were nice stories for children. We all got those tales along with stories of knights and dragons and magicians and castles. Some of those last were true.”

“Hmm. But here we have the serpents. Acid flows in their mouths. Their teeth crush rocks. They tunnel constantly, only coming to the surface to shed their skins and collect their yearly sacrifice. Flopears collect the skins, and have from time immemorial. Our government has always traded with them, though they live as a race apart.”

“Intermarriages?” Kian mused.

“Unheard of. It may be possible, but then again it may not. The flopears seem much like the serpents in that they’re somehow of a different, more magical nature. I can’t imagine any normal human wanting to unite with a flopear. But the objects they make from the silver are beautiful. They never do art objects picturing themselves. Another name we have for them is serpent people.”

“The ear flaps keep little serpents out,” Matt Biscuit said. “If there’s one death more horrible than being devoured by a giant serpent, it’s having one of those little ones tunneling away, little by little, into your head. A man with one of them in his brain lives for a long time, but he doesn’t live sane.”

“Little ones? I’ve never heard of little dragons. I mean, of course when they first hatch they’re smaller, but even so they wouldn’t tunnel into a head, they would snap the head up entire.”

“Well, the serpents may be different. It’s believed they take many centuries to grow big and that if the big ones keep growing they will eventually be the size of hills.”

Kian shuddered. “Has anyone—”

“In legend, of course. But that one you described is as big as is known. That was gigantic, and I don’t see how you survived.”

“It was—” Kian hesitated, not wanting to reveal too much about the gauntlets. “Luck.”

“More than that, I’d say,” Jac said. “You should have seen this man. He ran right up the serpent’s back and grabbed the spear and worked it in deep into the eye. Blood and poison spat all over, but he jammed the point right on into the brain before he let go. Then I pulled him out before the dying convulsions crushed him. We outlaws have slain serpents from time to time; we rope them and drive our spears in both eyes. But we never tackled anything even half the size of that one. It was big!”

The others were gazing on Kian with new respect. This embarrassed him. “Will the flopears follow us into the Barrens?” he asked, trying to divert their interest.

“They never have. Probably they can’t take the sun. Once we’re in the Barrens we’re safe.”

“Don’t the soldiers of the king come after you?”

“Not often. The Barrens, as you may have noticed, isn’t a particularly inviting place.”

Heeto, the misshapen dwarf, ran to the fire carrying a bright silver vase. Unasked, he carried it to Kian and held it out to him.

Kian looked at his host. “What?”

“Flopear work,” said Jac. “But flopear art of a special kind. He wants you to look at the figures.”

Kian took the vase and held it to the firelight. Rotating it, he made out the figures of a knight in armor and a woman who might have been a princess. The road and the castle were in the background, and the knight and the lady appeared to have come from there.

“I don’t see—”

“Look close,” Jac advised. “At the people.”

He did, and saw nothing other than perfect execution. Real artists had made this; the figures appeared almost alive.

“Here,” Jac said in exasperation. His finger reached out and stroked—and immediately knight and lady turned, arm in arm, and strode back to the castle, disappearing at last through the gate.

Kian blinked.

“Now to make them come out, do this.” Jac’s finger pressed the gate. Immediately it opened and the two strolled arm in arm to their former place.

Kian drew up his fallen jaw. “I’ve never—never—”

“It’s flopear art. We don’t understand it, so we say it’s magic. From what you say, there are few objects in your world as strange.”

“Very few,” Kian agreed weakly. “But in my father’s world—”

“The match of this?”

Kian told of the box his father had described, with the pictures of real people moving and speaking inside. Now he was finding that less unbelievable.

“Amazing,” Jac said. “So his world has magic even more wondrous.”

“He always said it was science,” Kian said. “He always said science has cause and effect, while magic just happens.”

“To me they seem the same.”

“And to me also. After all, magic does have cause and effect if you understand it. Flopears caused this vase to have a magic effect. How and why, I have no way of knowing.”

“Nor I,” Jac agreed.

“Perhaps,” Heeto said suddenly in a piping voice at Kian’s elbow, “it’s to remind. Flopears can and do command magic.”

“Of that,” Kian said, turning the vase around in his hands, “there can be no doubt.”

*

Morning, and Jac woke him with a gentle shake.

“Well, Kian, you ready for another trip?”

Kian looked up at Jac looming over him and tried to decide. He could plead that it was too soon, that he might die if he tried another astral trip. But then he thought of his father lying there in that bed, and shame for his hesitancy overwhelmed him. He had, after all, eaten and slept. Heln might not have taken journeys so close together, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He did, however, feel excessively weak.

He got up, dressed, and meekly followed Jac to his own tent. At the flap he looked back and saw Lonny. She was staring after him with achingly blue eyes, fingers to her lips, her face pale. The foolish girl probably didn’t even know what was going on, and yet she sensed that he was endangering himself. She had listened to everything Jac had said, to everything Kian had said, and she had made no comment. Possibly she was starting to realize that many of the things she had rejected as nonsense were actually fact.

In the tent he lay down again on the bearver hide. He took out a berry from the pouch, held it between thumb and forefinger, and popped it into his mouth. This time it slid down easily, and though a taste rose to fill his mouth, he did not feel quite the same need to retch. Could he be acquiring a taste for this?

He lay back, looked up at Jac, then focused on the ceiling of the tent. When that grew closer, as it had before, he would be out of his body and into his astral state.

He started counting his heartbeats. One, two… three… four…

That was the sky overhead. He had drifted up through the tent ceiling without realizing it. Definitely the astral state. He felt relaxed to an extent he had never experienced in the body. He really could get to enjoy this. Possibly he should have taken two dragonberries, so as not to be rushed. But his supply was limited, and he didn’t know his tolerance for them, so one at a time seemed best.

A bird flew by, and he realized it was far below him, as were the distant objects that must be the tents. He had to will himself down or he’d be leaving the planet and would drift above the moon and around the stars. At another time he might do that, just to satisfy his curiosity, but now was no time to drift.

He concentrated on his father’s face and the room he had been in. Then he was down near the Barrens, above the hills, above the mountains, moving across and then into and then through the connected valleys. He watched the bright flashes as the serpents in the serpent valley squirmed about and shed their skins. There were several large serpents, though none as big as the one he had slain. Among them were two boys. Two flopear boys armed only with pink and blue flowers in their hands. These boys ran to the serpents, spoke to them, patted them, and picked up their cast-off skins.

Kian felt distracted. What he was seeing was new and strange, though evidently routine in this frame. He needed to hear what was being said. He willed himself close.

“Hissta, sizzletack,” one of the boys was saying. “Nice serpent, nice giver of silver. Thank you for your gifts, revered ancestors. Someday we will join you and be one with you and live forever and be great.”

He shouldn’t have snooped, Kian thought. But somehow he just had to hear it. This was, after all, something few if any humans had witnessed.

The great serpents, easily of a size to swallow the boys, allowed their snouts to be petted and their nostrils to be touched with the blossoms. They did not purr in the manner of houcats, but he could readily imagine it from their actions. Obviously the boys and serpents had no natural fear or distrust of each other. It was as though the serpents were pets—or actually the boys’ ancestors. That was a disturbing notion.

Well, enough of this. He didn’t have all day, much as he might like to. He kicked himself, mentally, for swallowing only the one berry. The risk entailed seemed slight, compared with what he might gain by making a full study of the interaction between the flopears and the silver serpents.

He had to think of his father and go to him while there was time. He had to discover something worthwhile on this trip that might enable Jac and his band to rescue John Knight.

He thought of his father, wanting to be where his father was. Without any obvious transition, he was back in the room where he had seen his father stretched out in a bed.

The bed was still there. So was his father. The flopear girl was there, too, now feeding John Knight from a bowl.

The flopear girl dipped a spoon into the bowl and brought out what appeared to be a chunk of well-soaked bread. There were pieces of vegetables and bits of what might be meat in the bowl. This was obviously broth.

“Here, nourishment,” the girl said. With tender care she positioned the spoon before John Knight’s lax mouth.

Slowly, as though controlled by forces outside himself, John Knight took in the spoon and the broth-soaked bread. He chewed, swallowed, and waited for more. He gave little other indication that he was alive.

“Good, good, Mortal! Soon you be well! Soon your mind and body whole again. Gerta cure. Gerta would like to keep always, but Gerta not boss. Herzig want to trade you to mortal king of Hud. Make Gerta sad, but Gerta not say. Gerta like mortals too much. That why Gerta not really serpent person. Gerta’s mother lay with mortal father, and that why Gerta not all good.”

Lord, Kian thought.
What I’m overhearing!
But aside from Gerta’s belief that she had a mortal father, there was information here. Kian’s father was to be made well and traded to the king of Hud. If the king had any sense, he would not simply kill him. The flopears might know he was from another world or they might not. Having magic, they probably would.

Gerta fed John Knight until the bowl was empty, then blotted his mouth with a cloth. Kian watched his father close his now lusterless eyes and ease back onto the pillow. Gerta left the bedside and carried the bowl into another room.

Kian considered. Gerta believed herself to be part mortal and she was as tender a nurse as he had ever witnessed. Perhaps while he was here he might risk speaking to her again. This time not accidentally, and not just to placate her. He’d try to tell her what he had wanted to tell her before. If she knew he was a disembodied spirit and was not evil, then perhaps the mortal strain in her would be required to help. If his father was to be traded, there might not be any problem anyway, but he trusted the king of Hud less than he would care to trust a serpent.

He willed himself into the kitchen, where the flopear girl was washing the bowl. “Gerta, please don’t be frightened,” he said.

Her eyes widened and she looked frantically around the room. “Spirit! You returned! That not wise! That not good!”

“I mean you no harm, Gerta. I mean none of your people harm. I’m here because of my father—the mortal for whom you are caring.”

“He not well.”

“I know. But you are making him well, aren’t you, Gerta?”

“Y—yes.” A little hesitantly.

“Then listen to me, Gerta, because I may not have much time. I’m here because I swallowed a dragonberry. My body lies back in the Barrens, and I will need to return to it. I’m mortal, like your father and like mine.”

“Like my father?”

“Yes, just like your own father. And I’ve learned something, Gerta. I’ve learned that the Hud king wants to involve your people in wars with other mortals. Your people must not agree to it, Gerta. It would mean disaster for the mortal people, and for the serpent people as well.”

“Spirit,” Gerta said craftily, “I can help you.”

“You can?” Hope filled him as it hadn’t for some time. “How?”

“I show you.” Opening a cabinet, she reached in and brought out one of the silver serpentskin chimes. She held it by its top and ran a finger along the inside of the spiral. The spiral vibrated to her touch and gave off a clear, musical note.

Kian listened to the note of the chime. He felt himself moved by it, and he vibrated as it did. He was part of the note. He was the chime!

“Now, spirit, are you there?”

“Yes, Gerta,” Kian said, and the words vibrated out of him, out of the silver. The note was silver, purest silver, and he was the chime.

“Now,” Gerta said, “you prisoner. You not go back to Barrens. You told me what you are. You evil being, evil mortal, like Gerta’s father.”

Lord,
Kian thought.
What did I say?
“Please,” he chimed. “I only want to leave now. I only want to go back.”

“No!” Gerta said sternly. “You should not have come where it is forbidden mortals come. Herzig will decide. He may leave you as you are and hang you in a tree to guard against our enemies. Or he may put you in a serpent.”