The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  That thing which had happened in the stadium arena—the wild rumors—these were a three-day wonder and would have run themselves out by now. Nevertheless, it was the right moment, maybe, for the rover to be on his way. Corrah showed the path by different means. He had kept enough to buy passage on some roughish ship. Destination was not so important. He would take the fortune of the draw.

  Best get round to the harbor, then. Before allnight shut down and the cutthroats came out to pluck the price of supper.

  As Chacor started toward the market fork, a woman screamed piercingly not far ahead.

  Yells of various sorts were not so uncommon, particularly here. But then, out of the gathering dark, the screamer pelted up the lane toward him. Chacor immediately suspected some thief’s trick. He braced himself, but the woman, hair and cloak flapping, rushed past him and was gone. Her eyes had looked properly scared. That established, Chacor now stepped back against a windowless house wall that here fenced in the lane. He expected a gang of men or women to be in pursuit of the first runner. What came, however, was not human.

  Initially, he thought it was some evening revel, carrying lamps. But in fact, the lamp was alone, and carried itself.

  A pale blue sun, transparent, yet glimmering so fiercely it colored the house wall, and the hand Chacor involuntarily raised to mark himself for Corrah’s protection. The ghost-sun drifted up the lane, after the running woman. He watched it come level and go by, and when it had done so put his hand to the knife in his belt. But a knife was no use.

  He had been witness to a supernatural thing. For sure. What had that woman done, to have such bane hounding her?

  Bemused, unsettled, Chacor resumed his walk down to the harbor, wondering what to make of this omen. His reflections sent him inward. He did not know, therefore, until he was fairly in the thick of it, that the evening was full of mischief and the waterfront in uproar.

  On certain nights, if there had been a great catch, the market lit its torches and stayed open, but the fish by then was singing high. Added to this, now, was the smell of fear, and an electric crackle that made the fires spit. The night was very bright; Chacor thought absently of clear skies for tomorrow’s passage out—

  But men were running about, and one barged into him.

  “What’s up?” said Chacor.

  “Got no eyes?”

  Then Chacor did take notice. The clarity of the night was not due to torches or stars. He thought, The moon’s up early. No, it was not the moon— It must be a ship on fire down in the basin.

  So he went along with the shoving, shouting crowd, to see.

  The market ran to a palisade above the harbor wall. Here it was possible to look out at the bay, the beaches shelved away into it, and the curve of the harbor rimmed with watch-turrets. Leftward, a quarter of a mile off under the wall, the smaller craft rocked in their huddles, behind those a wood of spars, galleys, merchantmen and red-eyed towers, at anchor in the basin of Saardsinmey. The activity of the docks seemed also in suspension, or disarray. In one of the huge careening bays, Chacor’s keen sight made out men standing on the sides of a landed ship, pointing, or seeming to wrestle with each other in fear. Something was decidedly burning, but it was not a vessel. It was the sea itself.

  (You heard, blue fire sometimes lit on the southwestern oceans. At sea, on the passage to the Second Continent, the phenomenon was often spotted. They called it Rorn’s Borderings, the fringes of his mantle, harmless, auspicious even.)

  But if this was anything of Rorn’s it was not convivial to see.

  It began just outside the harbor, inside the mouth of the bay, band on band of searing, restless flame, where there should have been only liquid. Now and then, out of the flame, a streamer or ray shot into the sky. This happened as Chacor elbowed a place at the palisade. There were cries of dismay. A big fat man nearby, well-dressed, and with a flower he had forgotten to hold to his nose, said, “I tell you, it’s an oil-spillage. Some skimmer’s messed on the sea, and it’s caught a spark.” But no one agreed with him, nor did he seemed convinced.

  Then there was another cry. “Look! There it comes again!”

  And all the crowd put round its collective head, Chacor’s with it. After a moment, he made out two more of the ghostly fireballs flowing across the market. One burst with a sudden implosion, the other vanished into an alleyway.

  Thunder rumbled over the sea. Annoyed at the water’s antics, heaven was brewing a tempest. The sea began to shine upward on to heaving masses in the air. Lightning, blue or reddish, speared through, broke like an egg, and sizzled down the clouds.

  A man beside Chacor said to him, brother in unease, “I know what I think. That Amanackire woman. She or her kind, they’ve sent it, a threat of revenge. Well, it stands to reason. They hate us and we hate them, with their white skins and their stinking snakes. Whoever killed her, no one’s sorry. She won’t rest quiet till—”

  “The Amanackire,” said Chacor. “Did you say—?”

  “—And they’ll bury her tonight. Have to be quick in this heat. But that won’t help any.”

  “You said she died?”

  But the man was moving off with his message of doom. The whole crowd, wanting to get away now from the evil spectacle in the bay, to seek advice or consolation, was pushing itself in all directions. A pale red moon stood vaguely gleaming on the horizon, but the moon had not risen yet.

  Chacor had a vision of a girl’s white face, veiled in silver hair. A silver hand that lay on his shoulder. He was stirring amid some dark that seemed to be inside him. Like a great clock, the essence was dripping out of him, the water level sinking down, and when the weights grounded, the time he would tell would be his death. But the silver hand sent through him a rush of light, and the machinery of life shuddered. The levels gaped wide, and refilled themselves. He rose on the tide, as if the hand drew him, blood drumming, pulses racing—even his loins had answered—and his eyes, from which tears had coursed.

  Chacor fell against the palisade. The air flickered and needled. He was not the only one on the verge of fainting—

  He knew, now. And knowing, could not return to ignorance.

  He had been as close to death as his fingers were to the wooden post he gripped. But she had healed him. The Amanackire. Ah—did they not worship the goddess, too, if wrongly? From the chasm of darkness, she had led him forth. And, while he lay on the girls of the whore-house, proving his life, his guide had herself been cast into the pit of endless night. Poisoned, it seemed, for others were talking of it now, murder and Lowland vengeance.

  Chacor worked the iron spike atop the post into his palm, until the pain pulled him together.

  As he straightened, the phantom moon went out over the blazing sea.

  • • •

  The Shalian temple stood below Tomb Street, in a grove of cibba trees. Its doors were made of cibba, too, highly polished and inlaid with gilded bronze. The rest was stone, dark, after the habit of Lowland temples, but faced with tawny and white marbles. Though not large it was a costly building, nor easy of entry. Even the colored glass in the high altar-window had a frame of black iron. It showed a bloody cumulus roped and tied by a golden serpent, on a purple base, a motif similar to one of the Lowlander-Dortharian sigils, after Raldnor’s sons had come to power.

  In the beginning there had been several Shalian fanes in the city, to cater to the several Shansarians. Once Alisaar divided and the south became New, and Vis, only this one place remained, getting its sustenance from Sh’alis, now and then with a slogan scrawled on its marble overnight.

  No one was scrawling any now. The discreet convoy sent by the Guardian had come earlier, ten crack guards armed to the ears, a captain, the body in a closed long-litter of the sort awarded the sick, or pregnant women. Thereafter the temple glowed with lights. The birds who nested in the cibba trees might have been forgiven for thinking dawn had
come back, but it was the strange glare from the sea which had disturbed them. They had shrieked rather than chirruped, and lifted in a swarm. Most of the birds in Saardsinmey had behaved likewise, it was said. While the populace itself had gone down to the docks to inspect the show. Some were pleased with it. Generally they sought their own altars, where they were now offering and praying.

  It was possible to observe the ocean from Tomb Street itself, but not the bay, which the spired bulk of the city hid from view. Along with the glare of mirrored incendiaries, the storm was raging there. No rain fell. And hardly any noise of thunder reached the temple. The air itself seemed dense as water. Only lightnings cleaved through it.

  The thoroughbred the guard captain had ridden was restless. The zeebas of his men kicked and shied. The men themselves scratched, sneezed, shuffled.

  The Shalian priests, not one of them a Shansarian but all mixes, seemed impervious to the electric tension of the night, and the affair at hand. They saw to the body in a back room. The written instructions she had left had been specific. She had requested only to be tidied. Though refusing fire, she wanted, naturally, no Vis embalming, no sprinkling or perfumes of flowers. No costume save the dress in which she had died. Death would see to her. It was the will of Anackire. And by those words, if by nothing else, she ensured cooperation.

  The burial was also to be discreet. One hour before sunrise. The men the Guardian had conscripted to attend, provision against trouble, expected no one but themselves and the priests to wait on her.

  They were therefore somewhat put out, just past midnight, to behold a man walking up through the grove. They did not know it, but later, they would be put out a second time.

  • • •

  Chacor Am Corhl discovered he would be in company with the Lydian after he had paced a little less than three hours in the side court of the temple. He had not wished to be in the fane itself. He disliked the form of Ashara, as he did the form of Anackire—fish or snake, she appalled him, offended him. Though he had had an instant of thinking her some perversion of the Truth, that was not enough to be able to endure proximity. Besides, he had called her names.

  Firstly the soldiers had been at him. They frisked him for materials of desecration, and questioned him erratically as to why he was there. Their tempers were short but their tongues were long, and he heard all the story, and all the jumble of suppositions, in exchange for his stubborn: “It’s only decent somebody should walk behind the bier.” “Well, we know you didn’t have her,” they said. “Not with the competition.” The captain came over and said, “You’re the Corhlan. The racer. The one who nearly died. Only that’s a lie. Look at you. Some slight wound. I’ve seen that before. All blood, and no bother. She healed you, didn’t she, the witch?” “Yes,” he said, and he shook. “Well,” said the captain, “you lost a third time, didn’t you, if you wanted to thank her Zastis-style?”

  They had been asking why he was there, and Chacor did not know, himself. Shaking, angry, he had not grasped now what was meant. (He had misunderstood the laments elsewhere, too, somehow even missed the name. Perhaps not desirous of learning.)

  However, lies and slight wound and no bother or not, the guardsmen seemed to become chary of him all at once and let him go on into the temple. Chacor found a priest—Shansarians held to a masculine order, unlike the Lowland sect, which was mingled, female and male, and the priestesses of some significance. This priest was a brown mix.

  Chacor only inquired for the time of burying. Then again, what else had there been to ask? He could not have gone near her body, even if they had let him. Alive, had he ever properly seen her? That skull-whiteness, the touch of the hand of light—

  There was a small shrine in the court, but delightfully lacking any image, only a flame burned there in glass. It rose very upright, very still. It was Chacor who moved about. Then he sat on a bench, and fell asleep. Some noise from the soldiers outside woke him. Then he got up and paced again.

  When someone entered the court behind him he thought a priest had come to warn him they were setting out, or even to go away and wait in the grove. He turned with a snarl ready, his nerves primed high, and saw the Lydian between two pillars, looking at him, stock-still as the watch-flame.

  In that instant, each seemed to fathom, and to its depths, why the other was there. Neither spoke. Neither challenged the other on his rights.

  The Lydian nodded, as if to a man he knew from some supper they had both been at, where they had bartered a few phrases of no import.

  Then he crossed to a bench, and seated himself. He sat in perfect cohesion, expressionless, gracious, like some carving poured with gold and then for some reason clad in a good plain mantle.

  That man killed me, Chacor thought, and in there lies the corpse of the one who brought me back. He laughed aloud. Which was, in Corhl, unlawful at a burial. Then recalled that, and laughed harder. And, He doesn’t care for the Shalian goddess, either, our hero.

  And Chacor went out, after all, to wait in the cibba grove, a selected distance from the soldiers.

  • • •

  The statue of Ashara had claimed Rehger’s concentration only a handful of moments. He had seen god-images often, in the city temples. Rorn maned with black sea-waves, Zarduk with his belly of fire, and Daigoth in the stadium precinct, the warrior, sword in hand and triumph on his forehead. Occasionally you would also come across tiny effigies of Ashara-Anack, in the bazaar. He knew her shape, and here it was, only a foot or so taller than he. Though her skin was white it did not look like skin. Her hair was yellowgold, her eyes discs of citrine. Eight-armed, which made the shoulders unwieldy and unreal; the fish-tail of Shansar, yet patterned like snake-scales, and heavily jeweled. . . . She must be worth some sacks of money. She was not, in her way, unbeautiful. But she had for Rehger no look of Being, which the icons of his own race, modeled from men, or women, always had.

  Ashara-Anack was not remotely like Aztira.

  She had not informed him when her burial was to be. So he had walked up through the city to the Shalian temple and inquired. That done, those miles of time still washing about him, he had returned to the stadium, to pet and feed the team of hiddrax, to toil in the practice court alone. His arm was healing excellently. The wound had entirely sealed itself, and had the healthy dark, ridged color of ten days’ renewal. Rehger had not taken it to the surgeon, who would see everything was happening too quickly. Instead, a reliable man on Sword Street removed the stitching only this morning, with no interrogation.

  Possessing her had been enough, it seemed. Her loveliness, her love. Unlike the Corhlan’s injury, this would leave its scar, seemly, decided. To remember her by.

  Finding Chacor in the temple court Rehger had, it seemed to him, understood the cause for being there. Unlike the boy, Rehger did not reveal surprise at unwanted company.

  When the Corhl laughed, Rehger, recollecting the chariot race, thought only, He does that when he’s sure of something in the heart of doubt. What has he discovered to be sure op (The Corhl had seen the sword become a serpent, in the arena. Had he forgotten? Remembered? Was he laughing at that?)

  They had been saying, all along the upper streets, that the sea was burning in the bay. Groups were setting out to look, some with wine-flasks and baskets of food, going to make a night of it on the wall or the beach. Others coming from there looked less happy. Rehger did not pay much attention, having noted the over-radiance of the sky, which obscured even Zastis, and the storm which did not come inland.

  When the Corhl had gone, Rehger stood up again. He went to the empty shrine and regarded the flame.

  Aztira had presumably worshiped the snake goddess. He touched the flat of the shrine. He said, to the silence: “Be for her what she needs the most. Tomorrow, I’ll bring you something, lady. Whatever they give you here. I’ll ask, and bring you something fine.”

  He could not have said it to the st
atue in the temple. Yet for a second, without the unreality of the image in the way, he did suppose She heard him.

  As he turned, a priest appeared between the pillars, and motioned him to follow. It was time.

  • • •

  Across the hill-slopes above the city, the Street of Tombs had gradually wound its way through the years. Richer Saardsins, taking up their abode on it, left orders for paving to be laid and kept in repair. Shade trees and aromatic shrubs were planted, and, between the sepulchers themselves, quantities of which were ornate to the point of jollity, stood altars, statues, and monuments. Meanwhile, on the lower southwestern side, astrologers, diviners, mages, and the practitioners of obscure cults, pitched their tents and cobbled up their mud-brick huts. Death Town throve.

  Tomb Street properly began just above the cibba groves. As the funeral ascended on to it, there came the unavoidable impression of entering some benighted aristocratic avenue, mysteriously silent, but not always lightless. Very many of the mausoleums were large, and here and there a lantern shone out from a tall porch, or in some marble hand, for the Street watchmen were paid to effect this service.

  The storm had faded at sea. Now and then, seen between trees and stones, lightning fluttered noiselessly far off. The city itself was mostly in deep shadow at last, slipping in her sleep toward the expected sunrise. Zastis had set. A spangling of lamps along the waterfront and docks gave their usual tokens. An isolated window or two, torches on the Zarduk temple roof, were yellowed pearls shaken out on the dark. At the old capital, Saardos, the beacon fires had burned each and every night, to warn shipping on the western ocean to put in for port before Aarl sucked it away. But Aarl was a legend now, or a condition of the soul.