The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  A lighted tower, its walkway bunched with watchers, jumped from the blackness, bawled for the Lydian, and vanished.

  Fireflies unraveled to tiny threads of gold—the lamps above—the ships below.

  Yet the Shansar at his back, his white shadow.

  Then a white beating wing.

  Then on the road, just wide enough, in a speed like stasis, they were side by side.

  The Lydian, in his dream of power, turned and stared and saw the face of the Shansar stare back at him, also locked into the magic of the dream. In that split second they were brothers, and like brothers they might kill each other for a birthright.

  The Shansar had gained the inside position, against the rising terraces of the land. His onset had been perfectly gauged, and risked, coinciding with those instants when the unevenness of the road had pushed the Lydian’s chariot to the outer edge— Now only stumbling rock, the open yawn of night and water walled him in. If the Shansar was treacherous to match his cunning and finesse, here would be the place for it.

  As if to illustrate this scenario, there came a sickening noise out of the lost shelves of darkness behind them. The screech of iron on bronze, the clangor of collision and a rippling rush of stones which fell; the dreadful girl-like cries of hiddraxi—it seemed, to tell by the answering crescendo along the watch-posts of the suburbs above, that one of the vehicles had gone to its death over the low cliffs into the bay. And, from the tone of the lament, too, that it was the chariot of Alisaarian Kandis which had been lost.

  But that was in another country. In this landscape now, only two chariots existed, the game was only for them.

  Neither man now looked at the other. Neither attempted, by ways deft or malign, to shift the other off the road. They raced, and still they were team to team, torched prow to prow, shoulder by shoulder. And when the whips rose now to claw the air high above the animal’s necks, they cracked as one. Some god had spoken, Daigoth, Rorn, or the blond man’s scale-tailed lady, to link their cars together. Each striving now, thrusting, coaxing, to bring on the last orgasm of pure speed, the severing that would dash the other from him, and mean victory.

  The road began to turn with the cliff, swimming to the right, to the northwest. In three minutes, or less, the blocks and walls of the city would gulp them in again. The home stretch then, north and uphill, on the wide byways, all neatly cleared for it, ablaze with smoke and heat and the lather-spume of the animals, between the booming crowds, through on to the outer circle under the stadium’s bank, around to the south gate once again, in upon the stadium sand where a third of Saardsinmey would be waiting—

  Deep in the night, another voice, not of the sea, not from any mortal throat, spoke out.

  The animals shrilled in terror. Even as they shrilled, unflagging, they ran.

  Each man, the blond Shansar, the dark Vis, turned, irresistibly, and looked away into the pit of black starswarmed nothing—

  And the voice spoke again.

  It was not of, and yet it came from, the ocean, yet also from the vault of atmosphere above, and from the rock beneath their chariot wheels.

  A century or more ago, the annals of Alisaar recorded, Rorn himself had stalked these waters. It had been a time of unrest and war. In that era, any great happening was possible. Rorn, striding the waves, touching heaven with his brow, that had been possible—

  Aaaurouuu, the voice insisted, a droning, whistling, miaowing howl, parting the night.

  Then the earth, like the chariots, began to run.

  Before, the road had seemed discarded under the hoofs and wheels, but now it pleated itself together, heaved upward, smote them, trying to throw them off.

  Rehger heard the Shansar call out, another language, the tongue of his homeland, but the name of the Ashara goddess was decipherable.

  The chariots were no longer airborne. They were earthly things of wood and metal, struggling to keep a purchase. The teams of hiddrax, squealing, bloody foam issuing from their mouths, ran out of rhythm, striking each other with their sides, aliens and teammates alike.

  The night was full of roaring, like the ten-thousandfold throat of the stadium.

  A faint hot lightning washed through the sky above the sea, and sudden thunder belled after it, and the other sounds ended, snapped out into silence as if some mighty creature had died there.

  The ground shivered and lay down flat. The shock was done. Only stones littered down the slopes, a few trickling off into the air, harmlessly passing as they sought the sea. Somewhere above, in the slanting field by someone’s fine house, a dropped lamp had set the trees on fire. This added brightness painted in the deathly face of the Shansar. His dream was over.

  Speed-broken, both chariots. Though they still ran, they lumbered.

  The Lydian’s whip curled out across the sway of necks, not catching them, correcting only with harsh music.

  To this accompaniment, Rehger sang to the hiddraxi love words, a litany of pleasures to come.

  Overseen by the throng in the burning orchard above, the team skewed, rollicked. Then melted to order like a blessing. He had slept in their stalls, fed them from his hands, gifted them and caressed them.

  “Go, my soul—”

  Above, orchard unheeded, the watchers cheered and stamped.

  The Shansar, somehow blundering yet at his side, damned him.

  The Lydian, feeling the great surge of speed come back, strong and profound as sex, into the reins, the animals, the vehicle, the world, laughed at him. “Tell them in Shansar-over-the-ocean,” he shouted, “Rorn was angry!”

  And then they pulled away, as if drawn on a rope of riven fire. And slicing northward quite alone, sprang back into the city, to take the last two miles in a downpour of petals and screaming, the stadium gate in an ovation, triumph, gold and glory, within the hour.

  It was a sign of Saardsinmey’s sporting fervor that the earthquake, the first to be felt in coastal Alisaar for eighty years, was almost discounted in the closing outburst of the race. The shock had been a slender one, and later, when the tales came in from the watchtowers and the vineyards above the sea, of the Shansar chariot speed-smashing at terror of Alisaarian Rorn’s war horns under the water, even that phenomenon of fear was incorporated in the rejoicing.

  The Lydian, winning for Saardsinmey, received the rich prize, the twenty bars of gold. He scarcely needed it, since to the Swordsmen of Daigoth everything in the city came always, in any case, gratis.

  Wreathed like a young god in flowers, by firelight in the stadium, the crowd itself became his team and dragged his chariot one whole lap, then bore him on their shoulders. Their love was tangible. And presently, the Saardsin aristocrats, his willing hosts and companions since he began to fight and win before them, trooped to admire him, hang their jewels on him, and their bodies, if he would have them.

  The man from Kandis was dead. The had fished him from the bay. The fly silly Ott would never ride the chariots again, nor be much use among the ledgers either, blinded, battered. The Zakorian had been fined for his conduct, and the crowds of the city, getting hold of him, partly stoned him, pinned a notice on his skin that read MURDERER OF KANDS, and sent him toward Free Zakoris tied upside down on a zeeba. The Shansar, coming in second, was hooted, and retired from public view. The Corhlan had the third place, and the rewards youth, bravery and looks might get him at a time of goodwill. The second Shalian was fourth, and had nothing.

  But that night the Lydian went to dine and drink in the house of a nobleman on Sword Street, a mansion with which Rehger was quite familiar. The first wine, the first spiced food for days. And after it, the first woman for a month. It was the custom to visit, before a stadium event, some inn you cared for, and take one token sip of liquor. So that, should you perish, they might say ever after there, He drank the last sweet cup of his life with us.

  But the girl who lay in his arms that
night, and coiled him with strands of rubies red as Zastis, silken hair and limbs, was a princess of the old royal line, and she said to him, “And if you’d died, I might have boasted, might I not, here he took also a last sweetness. Do you believe me, I stayed celibate as you did, my beloved? I’m glad you’re alive.”

  • • •

  Katemval, however, coming from the stone temple where he had filed the tablet of his promised offering to Daigoth, learned he also had received a gift.

  Delivered at his house, in his absence, by unseen porters, a plain cibba-wood casket.

  Opened by his slave, Katemval found it contained the strangely-embalmed bodies of two birds. A hawk, a shard of flint lodged in its breast, and from whose talons hung a pigeon.

  A sheet of reed paper lay beneath them. Which said:

  Victory is transient. Since he is, tonight, your city, tell him this.

  5. Alisaarian Night

  “THEN, WHAT IS IT?” Rehger said. He lay on a marble slab of the stadium bathhouse, as the slave kneaded his body with warmed oils. Previously, all day since sunrise, he had been in the courts at exercise with sword, spear and knife, or among the slings and bars of the acrobat’s yard. Before that, for two nights and a day, he had been under a nobleman’s roof, in bed with a princess.

  “Some means to warn you, or more likely threaten you. Go carefully.”

  “Carefully? This to a winner of the Fire Ride,” said Rehger, turning on his back, closing his eyes.

  Katemval nodded at the ironic absurdity. His professional gaze—both of slave-taker and of gambling connoisseur—lingered on the young man’s nakedness. There was nothing sexual in Katemval’s optic possessiveness, possibly not even anything sensual. It was the reverence of life’s animal expression, it was the pride of his race, and, even now, of having discovered such a paragon of these things.

  Two healed fire-kisses from the chariot-torch temporarily marked Rehger’s jaw and throat. There were few scars on his body, nothing to mar it or infer a weakness. No scars on the mind. Rehger had kept his clarity, his primal innocence. I did that for him. But don’t preen, Katemval thought. The gods did it first.

  And he remembered the images Rehger had been used to fashion as a child, even into his seventh year. The training of the stadium had already begun for him—it began in certain ways from the very start. Yet in spare moments, the child, allowed clay, had formed these figures, miniature lizards, orynx, little teams of hiddrax—once he had glimpsed them—with tiny men in the tiny, intricate chariots. They had been, his creations, coming to a fineness, perhaps on the verge of beauty—and at that time, all at once, he stopped. Rehger had ceased making external icons and gone to work on himself.

  The masseur was finished. Rehger nodded and the man moved away. In the oval bath beyond the arch, other Swordsmen splashed and swam.

  Ought one to say more? Katemval considered. But the box of dead birds, the ominous, elegantly-penned script, seemed irrelevant now. Daigoth had taken his offering. The race was won, there would soon be the demands of other events. And Zastis in the sky before this month was through.

  Katemval saw that Rehger had fallen asleep. The high arch of the ribs, the flat belly plated by smooth muscle, rose and sank evenly. Unimpeded, clear, his breathing was silent.

  That secure in the arms of Mother Alisaar. Well, then. Let it go.

  • • •

  The fire dancer was black as a Zakor leopard, true Zakoris, but of an elder or younger strain, for her lips were full as flowers, her face was sweet.

  She stepped between the long tables of the feast, on to the open mosaic of the floor.

  Her arms were ringed by bracelets of white bone. Aside from these, she was covered, neck to ankles, by an opaque and many-colored tide of gauze.

  The lamps had been dimmed, the room was hushed.

  The dancer extended her hands, with a half-contemptuous flick of the wrists, and waited for the two flaming brands to be given her by a steward. She looked at none of them, the assembly of nobles, their guests and servants. She looked away into some mysterious inner space, to her gods and her art.

  The torches, also braceleted in holders of bone, were set in her grasp gently, respectfully. Her fingers closed on them. The steward stepped away. The girl tossed her head. Her hair was fastened up on it in a little tower of gold, and let free again from the top like the tail of a jet-black mare.

  Music welled out of the shadows, double pipes, shell harps and drums.

  The dancer moved. She became fluid. She flowed and coiled, reshaping herself to the pulse of the music. And the right-hand torch slid down her body—

  The gauze, treated with perfumes, lipped by fire, sent out its incense, the aroma seeming to brim the room. The girl lifted the torch away, her throat curved backward and her hair streamed to the floor. She held the torch toward a ceiling-heaven, rather as they did before the Fire Ride, then stroked the brand again downward, to touch her length with flame.

  The gauze that covered her sparkled, smoked—a layer of the fabric dissolved in fire, vanished, then another and another smoldered away to nothing. In black moonrise, one bare exquisite night-shade breast was revealed, tipped with a star of diamond.

  The dinner party murmured its susurration of approval.

  The dancer neither saw nor heard.

  The left-hand torch was gliding about her now, at her shoulder, her hip. The undulations of her torso came more quickly, as if to flirt with the fire, or to seduce it. The floating gauzes lit for a second, now here, now there, flared, charred, magically disappeared, each panel of color expending itself into another, and the perfume coming and going. The drum galloped, the pipe ran up and down. Fire fastened its teeth into all her veils, and for a moment she seemed to catch wholly alight, and some of the watchers, startled, cried aloud—but the flame, judged to a hair’s breadth, scattered from her like burning blossoms. She was bare to her pelvis now, but for diamonds. Her anointed skin itself smoldered from the brush of torches. A gem like a dying coal crackled in her navel. The love affair with fire began, as if reluctantly, to languish. . . . The dancer was lethargic, the music altered at her mood, the drums heavy. . . . She leaned to the fire, swooned away from it. She drooped, folded herself, lay on the mosaic and took the ivory fire-spikes from her own hands, gripping them with her feet. Limpid and slow as black molasses, she stood upright on her palms. Her strong legs and narrow feet plied the two fires in the air, then lowered them teasingly along her spine. And suddenly she blazed, became a fireball—there was only fire—out of which there catapulted a somersaulting wheel of wild lights. It spun and came down and turned to stone and was a woman.

  The dancer stood scatheless before them, diamond-breasted, diamonds woven at her loins, a garnet in her belly, clothed otherwise only in faint smoke. The torches were held outward stiffly from her sides. She was still as a statue, seeing nothing and no one, as the music ended.

  Acclaim rang through the room. She did not note the noise, nor stoop for the jewels that were laid—not thrown—at her feet. Three princes came in turn and gathered them up on her behalf, while her own slave approached to drape the dancer in a cloak of silk.

  “Panduv, I never saw you better. You were embracing the Star itself.” The Alisaarian aristocrat bowed to the dancer. Such was the code of Saardsinmey, which revered equally an aristocracy of talent. “Will you come back to my dinner when you’ve dressed? Say you will.”

  “I will not,” said Panduv, regarding him for the first, and smiling.

  “You desolate us.”

  “I’m expected elsewhere.”

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Perhaps.”

  In the well-lit salon prepared for her convenience, Panduv cleansed her skin and donned her expensive garments. She drew a half-mask of thin hammered gold on to her lower face. It was an affectation, for all the city knew her, or of her, and besides, h
er covered carriage was always recognizable, Zakorian black, with the Double Moon and Dragon device of the Old Kingdom, once the sigil exclusively of rebels and pirates.

  The slave-girl had collected the dancer’s fee. As in the case of all the city’s entertainer-elite, this was virtually superfluous. Her Swordsmen and charioteers were kings, and her acrobat dancers queens, welcomed and honored everywhere. It was well-documented, and might be seen anyway, any day on Tomb Street, that this fraternity died so rich their burial houses rivaled the sarcophagi of Dorthar’s Storm Lords.

  Even so, Panduv had not yet reached the pinnacle—to be accorded publicly the name of her birthplace, Hanassor. This recognition—which others, such as the Lydian, had gained—she had sworn to have, on the altar of Zakorian Zarduk, the fire god.

  By the gate, the unmistakable carriage stood ready. Panduv entered it, and beheld another was before her.

  A woman, mantled and hooded, who surely must have bribed the driver some vast amount, and be besides of high birth. It was almost Zastis. Such things did happen. The Zakorian was not necessarily averse, depending on what was offered when the wrappings came off.

  “Good evening, lady,” said Panduv, through her own mask. “I’ve contracted to be at the Guardian’s palace before moonset. I can grant you a few minutes.”

  “Hanassor,” said the other woman, softly. “You know nothing of it. Did they never tell you, for example, that the dancer’s craft which brings your celebrity here, was reckoned of small worth, there? In the taverns of your Zakorian capital, women burnt their rags from them for a few coppers. It was a commonplace, not especially skilled. The clumsy were frequently scarred. Every such dancer was treated as a harlot. Go to Free Zakoris now, and see the value of a woman.”

  Panduv held her breath. Her hand slipped to her breast, to the dagger she wore there in a sheath of nacre. The intruder was a telepath. And one who could breach even a Vis mind having itself no such knack.

  “Yes,” said the hooded woman. “I can speak within. And read you quite well.”