The Serpent Mage (21 page)

"I fought. We all sinned."

"But you took away the souls of the Sidhe."

"And it was not enough. I would have destroyed them utterly if I could have."

"Why?"

"Because they chose to destroy my people. I was a mage, and I was sworn to protect my people."

"Then evil breeds evil."

"Around you is the result. Conflict. Confusion. Horror. And also…"

Michael waited, but the Serpent's voice had simply trailed off. It did not continue.

"Beauty," Michael finished for it.

The Serpent growled. "I have listened and watched for so long that I am beyond weariness or astonishment. I have lived far too long, but I cannot die. If you succeed, then perhaps I can be released."

"But you still haven't told me all that a mage does."

"A mage cares for his people. He — or she, for some mages have been female, though not many — smooths the path. A mage must understand his people. Do you understand yours? Humans, I mean."

Michael shook his head.

"Now think deeply, don't answer quickly. Do you know the character of humans?"

"They surprise me all the time. How can I know them?"

"Then you already understand that humans are surprising. Sidhe rarely are. Sidhe are deliberate. How else do humans and Sidhe differ?"

"Humans don't have magic/' Michael said.

"But some can work magic, no?"

"Breeds."

"Michael, you are mostly human; what Sidhe there is in you is not enough, by itself, to convey magic if magic was the talent of the Sidhe alone."

"Then I was lied to."

"If you do not believe you can work magic, then you cannot work magic. Simple and effective; another link in the chain the Sidhe forged thousands of years ago. Adonna taught humans that even if magic can be worked, it is evil, a sin. How have humans compensated?"

"By working with matter. Science and technology."

The Serpent seemed to purr deep in its throat. "Yes. A surprise. Using the wild fruits of the untended garden. Adapting to a universe, rather than tailoring a universe to fit them. Listening to the echo of the long, complicated song the world has become and accepting it, not circumventing it. A novel idea. The Sidhe have not done it; they have worked their magic, but in a way, magic is a denial of reality, not an acceptance.

"So humans are makers of tools, forgers of iron, builders of metal wings and artists of plants and animal flesh. Such work seemed a crude and futile quest to the Sidhe, thousands of years ago; they were much more worried about your artists and musicians. They did not discourage your scientists. They could not understand them. Now, the quest of human science has been so successful, it is often more powerful than its masters. And in the twentieth century, it has become more powerful than the Sidhe."

"But scientists can't make universes."

"Not yet," the Serpent said. "Given another hundred years or so — a very small amount of time — and they will. If it is necessary. It may be necessary. But they will not do it through magic. And really, even the Sidhe can no longer create successful worlds. Adonna was the best, and his Realm is failing even as we speak. But we have gotten away from my question. What are humans?"

"Humans are animals," Michael said. "They think they aren't, but they are."

"True, but not in the way you mean. Humans are like animals, because many animals — even cockroaches, Michael! — were once people, long ago. The Sidhe forced me to turn my own kind into animals. And they transformed all their past enemies. You know of the Cledar and of the Spryggla. Their descendants are the birds and the mammals of the sea."

"I mean, so few humans can think beyond their immediate concerns."

"That may lead to tragedy, but could they have survived with any other attitude? The universe is no longer kind and nurturing."

"But some of them are cruel."

"And some Sidhe are cruel. How are they different?''

Michael was confused. "I don't understand what you want me to say."

"Do you detect similarities between humans and Sidhe, at the very bottom? Similar capacities for evil?"

"Yes," Michael said.

"Our kind, and the Sidhe and the others were all one, once. Have you thought about the origins of those who lived in the original tailored worlds?"

He hadn't. "Where did they come from?"

"They had no beginning. They were never created."

Michael wrinkled his nose. "That doesn't make sense."

"We are eternal. We change, we die, we return, and the combinations and permutations go on forever and ever. And slowly, we progress. Ever higher and higher. I imagine that long ago, we were simple vibrations in nothingness, small songs, each individual differing only in subtleties. How long the simple songs lasted, who can say? But they became more complex and more involved with each other. The songs joined and withdrew. Again and again they found patterns together, and the patterns broke down to make new patterns. New collections of songs, new styles, new addings and takings away. At times, what might seem setbacks — even disasters — happened, but across the greatest spans of time, there was progress. You must draw back before you can leap.

"And finally, that progress has come down to us. But there was no beginning. There shall be no end. Only variations on a theme, never repeating, always improving.."

"Sidhe and humans were once one species?" Michael asked, still incredulous.

"It must have been so, once. One comes before many. And there are similarities."

"Yes…"

"Deep similarities. Though thousands of millennia have passed, the descendants of the original Sidhe can still mate with re-evolved humans. The songs even now beckon to each other."

"Why all the fuss, then?" Michael asked.

The Serpent growled quite loudly and rolled back and forth on the rocks. Michael backed away in some alarm.

"Why all the fuss, indeed! Do you imagine I have all the answers?" it finally said when it could control its laughter.

"You should," Michael said resentfully. "You're old enough."

"I should indeed. But my life as a serpent has not been an unbroken and rational continuity. As I said, I've spent much of that time being little more than a senseless sea monster, loving shadows and deeps, only rarely stumbling back into something like sanity. Fortunately, this season I am reasonably lucid. But… not entirely. Once I knew much more than I do now. Perhaps even the answer to the profound question, 'Why all the fuss?'"

"Maybe I shouldn't ask any more questions," Michael said, disgruntled.

"Not at all. Continue. There is much more to talk about… But I should warn you. Even the answers I have given to you —
they are not certain
. They may not be entirely true. I am too old by far to be sure what the truth is. My own fantasies and dreams… They could be more real to me than memories."

They continued talking until morning light suffused the mist The Serpent withdrew into the water for a time, leaving Michael alone on the shore while it made a circuit of the loch. Then it asked him to swim, and Michael stripped down and waded into the murky water. Not once did he touch the Serpent but simply treaded water while it slithered in wide circles around him, head breaking the surface like the end of a weather-smoothed log.

Every few hours, the Serpent would illuminate itself with some fabulous design — lines of jewel-like swellings along its body, large and ornate fins, shimmering scales. But usually it was black or mud-colored, dimpled and ugly, ageless.

With the sun high, directly overhead, and the mist burned away, the dreary landscape around the loch took on a bright, desolate beauty. Michael lay on the rocks and sand to dry himself. The water had tasted sharp, like weak tea.

The Serpent crawled half its length up on the shore and rolled on its back, revealing a pale blue stripe running the length of its belly. A series of rune-like symbols were carved in the stripe. Michael crawled closer to the Serpent to examine the symbols. "What are those?"

"The terms of my imprisonment. The list of my crimes."

"I thought the Sidhe abhorred writing."

"They abhor the casual use of writing. They abhor bookkeeping or the pinning down of history. For poetry, or for magic, writing is sometimes essential. These symbols are my prison."

"What do they say?"

"I don't know," the Serpent replied. "I can't see them. If I knew, I could free myself. And no one can reveal them to me."

They lay silent in the sun for minutes.

"Who was the last human you spoke to?" Michael asked.

The Serpent became a volcanic line of glowing red and then darkened into dying embers. "I haven't conversed with a human, face to face, for almost two thousand years," he said. "It is not pleasant to discuss."

"Why?"

"Because the last human candidate was deluded into thinking of our conversation as a temptation. He was extraordinary. He could have been a mage of the highest order, but he had attracted Adonna's attention as a youth. He had something else within him… something that went beyond the limits Adonna had set for him. Something above and beyond all these conflicts, very beautiful, without hatred, without greed. Still, he carried Adonna's mark…

"When his philosophy touched people on a large scale, it perverted and destroyed as much as it comforted and enlightened. There have been others like him since, but not nearly as strong. » have spoken with none of them."

Michael was tempted to ask more, but the tone of the Serpent's voice dissuaded him. After a while, when his clothes were dry, he stood and stretched. "I don't have much time," he said. "I have to find Kristine."

"We have wandered far with words, haven't we?" the Serpent asked. "How much have you learned?"

"Some. Not a great deal," Michael said.

"Then you know that what must be learned cannot be taught with words."

Michael felt a chill.

"You must sacrifice yourself now."

"I don't understand."

"You pride yourself in your individuality, your personal memories and accomplishments. But if you were to place all you have thought and been and done on top of what I contain, your mere two decades on my millions of years, you would be lost."

"Yes. Probably."

The Serpent growled softly. "That is what you must do."

Michael stared. "Why?"

"You cannot be a mage as you are now. You must have experience. You must learn."

"I don't want to be a mage," Michael said softly, shivering again.

"Do you have a choice?" the Serpent asked.

"Is this what you offered the last man you spoke to?" Michael asked. The Serpent did not answer. "Is it?"

"Yes."

"And he refused?"

"He had the mark of Adonna."

"Do I have the mark of Adonna?"

"You do not," the Serpent said. "You shed the mark in the Realm."

"And you want me to carry your mark?"

Again the Serpent burned lava-red, and the water around his submerged length bubbled and steamed. "You must combine worlds. You must create new worlds. You must unite the races."

"Yes, yes, somebody has to do that! I know."

"And you are a candidate. Perhaps the best candidate."

"But why must I submerge myself in… in you?"

"I have the experience. The memories. I cannot use them. You can."

"You have something else," Michael said, hardly believing what he was feeling, what he was about to say. A voice inside him fairly screamed that he was being childish and stupid. Who was he to challenge the oldest living human? But another, stronger voice compelled him. Both voices were purely his own. This choice was his. "You carry the horrors of the past. If I absorb you, and lose myself, then I
become
you. And you were as evil and willful as Adonna."

"I have contemplated my excesses," the Serpent reiterated, its length obsidian-black.

"But would you commit those excesses again… to save your people?" Michael put on his clothes again.

The Serpent withdrew a few yards into the water. "If I were given no choice, I would."

"When you tried to destroy the Sidhe, did you really have no other choice? Or did you hate them?"

"I hated them," the Serpent admitted.

"And you would try again?"

"They are weak now."

"Would you try to destroy them?" Michael felt a surge of defiant horror. "You could, now that they're weak. You could finish what you started."

Only the last three yards of the Serpent's trunk and head protruded onto the shore now. "I hope I would not do that."

"But you might… anyway."

"I might," the Serpent conceded.

"I can't become you," Michael said, crying out again. "I can't be the kind of mage you were. If I can be any sort of mage at all…"

"You are very young."

"I wish there was a way I could learn from you, learn what is necessary, without the risk. If that is possible…"

But the Serpent withdrew into the loch without another word. The ripples stilled along the shore, and Michael was alone. He turned toward the tree trunk where the Breed female attendant had faded away.

She stood there again, her white hair dazzling in the sun, her baggy black suit and starchy white shirt and narrow black tie just as he remembered them.

"Follow me," she said. She tore away a part of the landscape beyond the tree trunk and stepped into inky darkness. Michael crawled through the hole after her.

And returned to the eleventh floor of the Tippett Hotel.

The Breed woman was a translucent shadow ahead of him, halfway down the hall. "You have failed," she said, her voice as weak as her image. "You are no longer a candidate. Go home and weep for your people and your world."

Chapter Twenty-Two

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Michael stood in the hallway, alone and angry and as still as the marred plaster walls around him.
Why did I do that
? he asked himself, relaxing his clenched fists and arm muscles.
Because I am a coward? Afraid to submit to a higher personality
?

"No," he said. He felt his strength returning — that strength which had been growing, unaided, since he had returned from the Realm, since he had dropped out of the complex picture of machinations between the Sidhe and Waltiri and Clarkham. The strength returned, but not his confidence. The talk with the Serpent Mage had been so
interesting
— and for it to come to such an unexpected and painful end, because of his own rebellion, was agonizing.

In a way, he had been waiting for just such a conference for months.

"I'm a renegade," he said. If he was out of the picture completely, with no hope of returning, then he was free to act as he chose…

Which was what he seemed to be doing anyway.

He turned to look at the rectangle of darkness. When he had first passed through, following the old Breed female, he had felt the nature of the region beyond as a kind of tingling against his palms. He could feel that same tingling now. The unspecific gate led to
nowhere in particular
— it was an open exit with no fixed destination. To someone with no training whatsoever — the soldiers and police in the streets below, for example — it would be simply a blank wall, darkened as if by a polarized filter. For someone with inadequate training, it could be very dangerous. It could put Michael into a between-world as complex and delusive as a nightmare… Or it could take him where he wished to go.

To the Realm.

To seek out Tonn's wife, the skull-snail, if she was still alive.

Toh kelih ondulya, med not ondulya trasn spoon not kod…

So Eleuth had told him in the Realm, before bringing back a beetle from Earth. "All is waves, with nothing waving across no distance at all."

"
The Sidhe part of a Breed
," she had explained, "
knows instinctively that any world is just a song of addings and takings away. To do grand magic, you must be completely in tune with the world
—
adding when the world adds, taking away when the world takes away
."

Did he feel that instinct clearly? When he had last stood on the top of the Tippett Hotel, looking out over the city, he had felt in touch with the inhabitants of the Earth for miles around — and he had felt even more in touch later, lying in bed in the Waltiri house. But the inhabitants were not the world itself. He needed to make that final link.

It was certain no one else would do it for him. He was working alone now, without support from any faction or quarter. He had to lift himself up by his bootstraps.

For an instant, he felt a sense of despair and defeat that left him dizzy. How inadequate he was, how ill-trained and ignorant…

And yet…

And yet
, he was capable. He had the means to do what needed to be done. Clarkham, the Serpent Mage, Adonna, Tarax, even Waltiri aside, Michael felt the strength within him. The product of a long year's discipline.

For a moment, the hallway ahead of him seemed to vanish, and he saw nothing but waves of darkness shimmering against each other. Addings and takings away — risings and fallings. Peaks and valleys. He felt the hum in his palms, the singing of all reality, and closed his eyes to tune himself to that.

With Tarax's suggestion, he had broken free of Clarkham's weak trap-world.

Now —

He turned to the dark rectangle. He remembered the
tune
and
timbre
of the Realm. He made the distinction between Earth and the Realm. Their wave-trains separated, and he could feel the distinct hummings. He reached out with one hand, feeling the buzzing in his palm, and pressed against the darkness.

Adding.

Taking away.

The darkness became potential. For a moment, he felt a hideous between-world beyond his fingers, and he wanted to pull back, but he held himself there and tuned an interval higher. Closer. Another interval.

His index finger drew a gash in the darkness, and sunlight beamed through onto his feet. He clawed the opening wider and felt it resist him, trying to close again.

The Realm was distinct and real beyond the darkness, but hardly stable. The tune and timbre were in fact fluctuating even as he tried to break through. He ad-libbed a tremolo to the song. The darkness faded.

He stepped through.

And stood on a grassy dell, with thick, green forest beyond. Overhead, in the dusk of a failing day, stars were twirling like fireflies on short leashes, and the moon was cutting a trail of crescents in a pearly band across the sky.

The Realm.

For the first few hours, Michael reveled in the clean, cold sensation of air that had blown across scattered patches of snow and through miles of uninterrupted forest. He reached out to the auras of any within his range and found only a few lone Arborals — and a hint of others in the direction of the setting sun. He then settled into a cold evening, warmed by his
hyloka
.

Wherever his probe extended, it met an undertone of disruption. In one direction, he actually felt a cutting-off of the Realm — an edge, beyond which lay something distastefully like the Blasted Plain that had surrounded the Pact Lands. As the evening lengthened, he felt more such edges. The Realm was now cut through by swaths of decay. He did not know whether he could cross such a discontinuity or whether the Realm would last long enough for him to find Tonn's wife, but he felt a nervous contentment nonetheless. He was actually doing something to locate Kristine. For the time being, it was all he could do.

Until, of course, Tarax came forth to present his daughter. When — and if — that happened, Michael would change his plans accordingly. But the thought of waiting for Tarax's move had eaten away at him. This was much better, if no more certain.

Michael had never suspected himself to be such a rebel. He had trained under the Crane Women with a bare minimum of argument, accepting the situation and the necessity of their discipline. Now he was ignoring Tarax, who was almost certainly more powerful, and he had defied the Serpent Mage, who was beyond doubt wiser.

But tainted
. If the wisdom of the past came with all the patterns and mistakes of the past built in, then surely there was another and better way.

He ruminated on these thoughts until dawn, which came much sooner than he had expected, even given the Realm's erratic time scales. Everything was shifting.

Then he set out in the direction of the murmuring crowd of auras, more certain with each mile he ran and walked that there were humans among that group — a great many humans. This gave him another hope, that he could rescue the humans he had left behind in the Realm. That was something he had never felt right about. However weak he was, he should have tried to help them… But he had not been his own individual then. He had been carrying out somebody else's mission.

And what if that's what you're doing now, and you don't even know it
? The nagging doubt was his own; it came from no outside source. He was of so little importance now, so rejected and ignored, that nobody in all the Realm felt it necessary to cloud his mind with messages.

Not even Adonna, who might be dead… though that was hard to believe. What could kill a god-like Sidhe? Nothing, perhaps, but the end of his greatest creation. If Adonna had fashioned the Realm out of himself, then the Realm's death would be his own.

Within two of the irregular days and nights, he stood on the inner edge of the forest that had once surrounded the Blasted Plain. Nearby, the river still flowed, and the bitter, corrupted circle of the Blasted Plain itself still stuck out like a festering sore. But where the Pact Lands had been, where the villages of Euterpe and Halftown had stood and the house that had once belonged to Clarkham, there was desolate emptiness. The Blasted Plain had half-heartedly moved in to fill the emptiness.

There were no humans, no Breeds, and certainly no Sidhe nearby… with one exception. Michael probed cautiously, unwilling to intersect with the minds of the Children, if any still existed.

But the Children were gone, too They had been expunged by the Sidhe who had carried away the humans and Breeds and resettled them, perhaps in the direction in which Michael sensed a large group of humans.

He thought of Lamia, the last inhabitant of Clarkham's house. The house and the decaying field of vine stumps behind it, on a bank above the sluggish river, were gone.

Michael blanked his thoughts of all cross-connections and associations, searching for the trace of one aura: Tonn's wife, transformed into the skull-snail.

He found nothing. Concentrating, reaching out again, he refined his sweep. Again nothing — and still no sign of the Children or anything else alive — or quasi-living — in the Blasted Plain.

And then he came across a wavering pinpoint of awareness, almost too weak to be perceived.

Without hesitation, he stepped from the forest into the Blasted Plain, his feet raising puffs of bitter dust.

Within an hour, he came upon the hulk of the skull-snail, its hideous shell stuck fast between two leaning pillars of rock the color and texture of clotted blood. In the orange light of the dusty sky, he walked around the hulk, examining the desiccated remains of the beast within the shell. The skin had hardened to tough leather on the trunk and tentacles: the lantern-like protrusions at the ends of the arms were dim and opaque.

Yet Tonn's wife was not dead. He reached deep into the hulk, touching the weak aura directly.

Sun. He kills me finally.

— I've returned, Michael signaled.

The boy… Seeking now?

— You said you knew where I could find Kristine.
You did not even know who Kristine was then
.

— No, I hadn't met her. How did you know7

A mage's wife has many skills. I taught Tonn a great deal. Magic is transferred through the female.

Michael wondered about that but decided to let it pass. He did not think Tonn's wife would live much longer,

— Where is she?

/
knew then. I knew where she would be . . But you have changed things. The answer is less clear now
.

— How did I change things?

You did not concentrate on Clarkham. You thought he was defeated forever, when he was only removed from the immediate concerns of the Sidhe. What I saw was that Tarax held her, to force you to train his daughter as the Crane Women would have. But Clarkham may also have taken her now. The picture is not clear.

The leathery appendage emerging from the "nose" of the skull-shell twitched and slid a few feet in his direction. Michael did not move to avoid it. She had no power to harm him.

Please. You must call the Arbor ah. I am dying.

— There are none close now. The Realm is being evacuated.

Then it is over. I will be released even from memories.

— If Clarkham has her, where would he keep her?

Practicing. Mock-ups, dreams, failed attempts to be a mage.

— He would keep her in another incomplete world, as he kept me?

There was no answer.

— Which world? Please — describe the song, the timbre.

A world built to contain his evil. A slippery, hardsided world, a trap for all, even him. She does not know.

— How will I find it?

By teaching Tarax's daughter. Or by… you are strong now, much stronger.

The hulk shifted between the rocks.

If the Arborals cannot come, then I will not wait
. The last pinpoint of awareness winked out, suddenly and finally. The hulk was empty and useless to him.

Michael stood for a few moments .by the remains, filled with an emotion between pity and indignation. From what he had felt in his probe, he could tell that Tonn's wife — he didn't even know her name! — had once been nearly as noble a Sidhe as the Ban of Hours. So what had she done to deserve such punishment? What had Lamia and Tristesse done? He could understand the action taken against the Serpent Mage, but why so much undirected and senseless cruelty?

As he recrossed the border of the Blasted Plain, Michael saw the sky and the sun slew to one side, then spin. He fell to the ground and crept toward a tree. The shadows of the forest recessed wildly, then steadied. He looked up, eyes wide, then got to his knees. All the directions had changed.

His skin itched, and his hair stood on end. Fundamentals in the construction of the Realm were decaying, that much was clear.

But which direction would he take now? He couldn't follow the sun — it seemed to have been smeared into a constant glowing haze above the land. He walked into a clearing and shaded his eyes against the warmth and glare of the entire sky. He would have to travel rapidly. There was very little time left.

Calling upon all his discipline, he took several deep breaths and began to run through the forest and across the open fields, following now the much weaker and confused beacon of that mass of human minds. He did not run far.

The land ahead had abruptly separated, leaving a chasm several miles wide. Michael slowed to a walk, frustrated and more than a little frightened. He had never seen such a feature in the Realm before; it was new, and it looked very dangerous, certainly uncrossable without aid. The edges of the chasm were crumbling away, the clumps falling off into nothingness with majestic slowness.

Michael came as close to the edge as he dared, crawling out on a lip of solid rock, fingers seeking any sign of tremors or instability. Far below, he saw the foundation of Adonna's creation roiling and rainbowing in opalescent mist. And nothing else.