The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  Their women poured babies as their dogs sloughed pups. Too many mouths to feed. And it was easy enough to get more. Then again, sometimes there was an outcry. They yelled about the seed of their loins and set the hounds on you.

  Not now, he thought. No.

  “Sell you the boy?” said the sly-eyed man. “For what?”

  “What do you think? I take for the slave-yards of Alisaar. Not rubbish. Girls for pleasure or show, boys to fight. They live well and sometimes get rich. I don’t lie. But it’s up to you. How old’s this son?”

  “Eh? He’s—four years.”

  That was fine, it tallied with the information

  “The mother,” said Katemval, “where is she?” It was always best to see the sire and dam, too. You learned a lot from that, the sort of clay that had made the child. This man, the father, looked sound enough. The woman was likely healthy—both mother and babe had survived. But then the man said, still hesitating, “She—she’s dead.”

  The funeral—that had been coming from this direction. Hers?

  “Then you’ll be glad to get the boy off your hands. Bring him out and let me see.”

  Abruptly the second man at the back started to make low whimperings. The other rounded on him, and said something rapidly in the guttural gobbling dialect of the region. Alisaarian, accented in its own fashion, was crystal beside this, which had the smear of Zakoris all over it. Only in the Iscaian lowlands could they halfway speak, the Alisaarian thought.

  But for stamina and looks—the city slums were bred out. Here, on these random dungheaps, among the stillbirths and boobies, sudden wild orchids were started.

  The first man was now conducting the simpleton roughly inside the hovel, calling over his shoulder: “Wait. I’ll bring him.”

  So Katemval, the slave-taker, waited.

  • • •

  The old woman had died at some moment during the day, while life went on about her. Her quietus was utterly silent. It was this which had alerted them. She had made noises almost constantly, if senselessly, in her final years. Yet, when Tibo lifted the bony antique body, its sphincters relaxing, the corpse had defiantly wet the chair for the very last time.

  A woman’s burying was woman’s business. Men were not obliged to attend, and male children actively forbidden.

  Tibo had not wanted to leave her son, but there was no choice.

  Tibo met female neighbors she had not seen for half a year or more, trudging to the nearest farm, a day’s traveling, with all her chores either side the trek. In turn, these women informed others. Life was cheap, but death an occasion. After six days, the women arrived at the house. They brought sorrow-gifts for Orhn and Orbin, cakes and beer, and a cask of botched wood for the cadaver—each plank or bit of branch was hammered to another by a different woman. There must be enough women at a funeral to have knocked in each part separately.

  There was a burial field just outside Ly Village, and to this the remains of all deceased males of the area were taken, where at all possible.

  For the females there was another method.

  It moved, the procession, sounding its funeral gongs, through the snow, watching all along the uneven dangerous slopes for an appropriate omen. It might be almost anything, vast or minute.

  Tibo, moving in unison, watching, sounding the small gong with her hand, thought of her son. Over and over she thought of him. She had not wanted to leave him. But there was no choice.

  For almost four years, he had been scarcely from her sight. He slept in the marriage bed, Orhn had not minded. Indeed, Orhn had liked him from the beginning, playing with him, careful of him. And Orbin for Cah’s sake could do nothing, though he set the boy labors almost as soon as he could walk. Orbin had crowed over him, “You’ll be a fine lout, won’t you? You’ll fetch and carry. You’ll earn your keep.” The child was nimble and quick. He did not resist, nor make any mistakes. Orbin only smote him lightly, and not often. Why damage such a potential treasure? The easterner father had not repaid the farm. His bastard should.

  During the second year of the child’s life, Zastis came early. In russet moonlight, Orbin pinned Tibo against the wall of the hut-larder. Pulling up her skirt, he rammed himself into her, working and twisting, shaking the flimsy building with his efforts. When he was done, he said to Tibo, “Whenever I want you now I can have you. If you tell tales, so can I. If you get fat in the belly with my boy, well then it’s Orhn’s business again, isn’t it?” Tibo straightened her clothes, saying nothing. The next time, it was the same. But Orbin, having made his point, having satisfied himself, and finding even in this way he could not get a response from his brother’s wife, raped her infrequently and only then in the months of the Star. Tibo did not conceive. He found, too, in the third year, his member became sore and inflamed after he had been with her. He was afraid the easterner had given her some dormant disease, and when the irritation subsided, left her alone. He had forgotten, or did not associate his condition, with her knowledge of herbs.

  Tibo had sinned with a lover. But to sin with Orbin was neither lawful nor the wish of Cah. Orbin did not offer delight, and his seed was impotent.

  But the child—

  She had called him, not by a king’s title, or a hero’s, but an old name of the uplands, which dialectically she rendered as Raier.

  At five, he would become one with the men’s side, in the temple. They would mark him in blood. Other things would happen, of which Tibo did not know. She shunned the thought of this fifth year, and welcomed it.

  But at the end of his third year she had come on him, free of Orbin for the moment, forming from the rain-wet mud of the pasture slender figurines. Tibo paused, staring, for she had never seen a child do such a thing. The figures were lopsided and bizarre, yet recognizably human or animal, there a pig, and there a woman with breasts and long hair. Humbly, for he was her son, a man, and—she now saw—clever, Tibo collected and brought him tinted stones, to employ as eyes or ornaments. He received them from her patiently, and put them by. He did not need them.

  Later Orbin came, struck Raier, stamped on the figures and kicked them over.

  The child, like his mother in demeanor as well as looks, walked simply away, and began to clean the yard, unasked.

  Oh, the child—

  He did resemble her, it was true. But his father more so. Even by the end of his first six months, the length of his legs gave promise of above average height. His hair came and grew silken-thick and black. His eyes, kohled with dark lashes, would rise up like flowers opening.

  And he made figures from mud. He sang in a thin bird’s voice as he toiled for Orbin, melodies from some place beyond the sky—for he had never heard any song but those his mother had sung him at the breast. Once she saw him, riding on amenable Blackness, through the valley. Something in Tibo’s perspective shifted. She beheld a tall man with leaden-blue light on his hair, riding a black beast, a spear in his hand that had been a thistle-stem, and the wind rushed in the mountains like the voice of a colossal crowd.

  —She should not have had to leave him.

  There were riders on the track, who, apparently understanding custom, removed themselves from the funeral’s path. The mounts they rode were zeebas— once or twice Tibo had seen such things at Ly, if never anything like the other beast, coal black, its strange slim head brightly bridled.

  But neither Tibo nor the other women looked aside to dwell on the riders and their mounts. For the omen had occurred. The riders were the omen. It might have been a hare, a ray of sun or gust of snow, a tumbled boulder—something in the way, animate or not.

  Having found it, they need only proceed to the next steep place, where the rock plunged to some habitationless cold ravine. Familiar with the terrain, each woman was aware they would come to such a prescribed spot in less than an hour, by climbing up a fraction, half a mile off the track. So Cah had been generous
, sending the men to make the omen, allowing the rite to conclude so swiftly.

  It was still, windless, bitter when they came to it, the ridge above the depth.

  The gongs were dumb. The women bore the wooden box to the edge of the slope, and, laying it down, every hand was put to it, every hand that had nailed it up, all but the hand of the kinswoman, Tibo.

  Pushed to the brink, then over it, the coffin dropped out into the air, and fell into the frozen channel below. Down and down it went, touching against nothing, until, far beneath, it struck a ledge and shattered away into the exploding snow.

  The women stood up, and looked at Tibo. Now she must mourn her loss.

  Tibo flung back her head, and howled, to the blanched, flat sky. The women observed her, braced to wait, for it should be a prolonged lament; the dead was Tibo’s husband’s mother.

  And after this, the long route home.

  No choice, none.

  What, in her absence, would Orbin do?

  • • •

  It was an orchid, then, this time. More, it was a lion-cub.

  Somehow, as it had been more often ten years ago, Katemval’s instinct had drawn him to his goal at the exact and proper moment. A find.

  Yes, he would dismount for this one.

  The Alisaarian swung out of his saddle and walked, stiff from the riding, toward the child. Standing apart from his oaf father, the boy looked only at the men, the zeebas, the thoroughbred. As he had been shoved from the hovel, he had set his fingers briefly, friendly, on the flank of the dark bitch-dog, taller than he was. He showed no fear, and no curiosity either. Yet the black and liquid eyes were intelligent and pure.

  “Well, my dear,” said Katemval, lowering himself to gaze into them. He put his hands gently on the boy and felt him over. He was whole and straight. Even the feet, when Katemval investigated them through the sloppy little boots. There was a thread-thin pale ring of scar on his left wrist, but, whatever had caused it, clean-healed, and the sinew and muscle unaffected. “Do you have all your teeth?” The boy nodded, and permitted Katemval to peer into his mouth. The teeth were healthy and very white. “Tell me,” said Katemval, “the farthest thing you can see.” The boy eyed him, then the eyes turned away, across the valley. “The mountains,” he said. Katemval followed the dialect assiduously. “Something smaller,” said Katemval. The boy said, “A bird, on the tree.” Katemval glanced over his shoulder. His own sight was keen. He saw the bird, far along the valley on a dead seedling cibba ribbed with snow. “Good,” said Katemval. “What’s your name?”

  “Raier,” said the boy. Katemval lifted his brows, and rose. “He’s acceptable,” said Katemval. He gestured to one of the riders to bring him the money bags.

  “Just a minute,” said the oaf-father. “I didn’t—can’t be sure—”

  “Seven silver draks, I said,” said Katemval.

  The oaf licked his lips. “Nine.”

  “No.”

  The boy, low to the earth, watched them bickering over his head, his destiny weightless as a leaf between them.

  “Eight,” said the oaf. “Give me eight.”

  “I will give you seven, as I previously explained. Here.” Katemval, undoing the strings, shook seven triangular coins into his palm. New-minted, their edges hard, they glittered in the white light, beautiful and absolute. The man’s arm had come out, the hand automatically grasping. Katemval said, “I’ve registered my dealings with your priesthood at Ly. You comprehend me? This is a legal transaction. Now the child’s mine.”

  The man suddenly grinned. “He owes me,” he said. “If I worked the guts out of him, he’d never bring in this amount.”

  Katemval lost interest in the man. He looked down at the boy again. “You’re coming with me. We’re going on a journey. I’m taking you across the sea, to a proud land with cities of stone. An adventure. You don’t need anything. Is there anything you want to bring with you?” Not an unkind man, Katemval, sentimental maybe.

  But the child only gazed up at him. Did he realize what was going on?

  Katemval lifted him suddenly and carried him over to the thoroughbred, setting him on the saddle, swinging up again behind him. The child did not seem unnerved, not frightened of the animal or the zeebas, as he had seemed unafraid of the farm dogs.

  The oaf was adding up his silver, again and again. He did not or would not oversee their departure. But the dark bitch-hound began to bark, and all at once the boy writhed about and stared back at her, and suddenly, as Katemval put spur to his mount and it broke into a rapid trot, the boy stretched out his arm toward the dog, yearning and desperate, and without a word or a sound, he wept.

  “Shh, little lion, The gods love you. You’re going to a better life than starvation in a sty. Trust Katemval. He knows. Glory days, the power of what you are. Don’t waste it. Live it. You will.”

  But something made Katemval hope, for all that, they would not encounter the eerie funeral party on its way back up the slope. He did not know the women had taken a higher track to the ravine, and had as well as hour’s keening to accomplish yet.

  • • •

  The twilight was sinking down as Tibo, having parted from the last of the other mourners, came home alone. There had been no chat between the women, it was not seemly, and anyway might delay them. Each of the differing homeward paths was long, and there were dearth and drudgery and hungry fractious men at all their ends.

  A wind came with the dark, pummeling against the crags all around, drumming in Tibo’s ears. So she did not hear the dog howling until she was very close.

  Tibo checked. This was a sound of lament, like the howl she herself constantly had had to give above the ravine, until her throat was incapable of giving more. Yet the dog had not mourned for the old woman.

  Tibo ran. Across the jagged rocks, through the soft snow, the shadows, and came to the stone-cold yard, and faltered again. The howling shook the dog-shed, the outcry of Blackness.

  Tibo opened the door of the hovel-house.

  The room was drenched warm with firelight, Orhn asleep one side of the hearth, the other, Orbin, in the chair that had been his mother’s. Warm, but not secure. Things altered. And there, and there, and there—where Raier would be after the coming of night, a vacant space.

  “Hoh, Tibo,” said Orbin, softly. “While you were out yammering with those women, I got to worrying about this farm. There’s no money in it, I thought. But then a man came riding by. Oh, you’d have liked him. A foreigner. You’d have wanted to invite him in. But he wasn’t looking for a whore. He was looking for something else to buy. With Alisaarian silver. Look. Shall I tell you, Tibo, what he wanted in exchange?”

  • • •

  The cold months were very hard that year. A period of deadly freezing nothingness. Beasts had died even in their byres. Men had died merely from falling a few yards outside their doors. When the breaking rains began, the snow fell on, mingling in the water, as if they should never be rid of it. But many sought the way into Ly, to sacrifice to Cah for a better year, a chance to abide. Orbin, seeing Orhn had lost two of his cows to the winter, set out on the course as usual, a silver coin in his pocket, leaving the idiot and the slut behind.

  The route was doubly unpleasant now, sludge and ice combining, and the snowy downpour pelting over all. Here, with careering descents at regular intervals on either hand, Orbin went slowly, but undeterred. There was the solace of religion, the quick flicker of lust, and some prolonged drinking before him. He might even, rich as he temporarily was, remain the night on a wine-shop pallet. He might even make a special offering to Cah, to appease her, in case appeasement was necessary. He did not think so, really. He had been within his entitlement to sell off an illegal child, as Orhn would have been able to sell his own offspring, or Orbin’s, come to that. The slut stayed quiet enough about it. Not a word all winter. Not that one had been anticipated
. She knew she had no redress and no say, and that anyway it was her fault. If she had been any use about the place, or any use to Orbin—she did not even know how to enjoy a man—he might have acted differently. Serve her right. Still, he was glad she had spread her legs for the easterner. He liked the silver, and liked telling her what he had done about the brat. Although he had been slightly uncomfortable before and after, wondering how she would take the news. As if she could object, or mattered.

  On the viscous track behind him, Orbin detected a noise, and turned to see what it was. Something quivered grayly in the milky rain—and he thought of demons, banaliks— When he did see, his heart steadying, he was not well-pleased.

  “You stupid sow—what’re you doing here?”

  Tibo did not answer, she only came nearer, her hands extended before her, so he assumed she meant to show him something, and looked at them. But that was not actually her purpose.

  He was still berating her and looking to see what she held out to him, when Tibo pushed him with all her force. Orbin was not a small man, but the blow caught him unprepared by the habits of a lifetime, and besides, there was ice underfoot. For a second or so he slithered and scrabbled, yelling, flailing with his arms. Then, as elsewhere and four months earlier his mother’s corpse had done, he pitched sidelong off the track and down a rocky little precipice below. Unlike his mother, Orbin screamed as he fell. But not for a great while.

  • • •

  The only problem with a child so handsome was to keep him out of the clutches of brothels. Katemval was well-practiced at eluding them, both the wealthy importunate and the kidnapping scavenger. Nevertheless, it cost him a few pains extra this time, not least in the rat-runs of Ly Dis, and all the other towns, through and including the Iscaian capital, to the port. Altogether, his hunch to delve the uplands, paying off one way in that one child, proved a stumbling block another. Delays and vile weather led to further delays and further, viler weather, culminating at the capital in the words of Katemval’s agent: “They say they never had such a sea for tempests. There’s not a captain on this coast will put out till the spring.”