The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  However, out in the city, mind speech was sometimes observable. More often, and worse, with the very children playing in the public gardens, their delighted shrieks suddenly stilled as they stood together in complete dumbness, planning the next stage of their game.

  As for those Vis Chacor saw on the streets—a handful of Lans, amiable Dortharians in from the fort up the coast, Xarabian merchants, one Elyrian astrologer in a shop near the quay—even Annah’s betrothed, a mix so nearly Vis in looks it came as a jolt to hear his Vathcrian twang—they only disconcerted Chacor, put him out. There were not enough of them. It was foolish to be there at all.

  Arn Yr’s unfailing charity and humor had been evident on the ship. The vessel had got a battering and enough cargo had been lost she must go home without profit to repair, but he had not bemoaned misfortune, and once in port spent less time with his agents than in showing Chacor the city. Chacor had long since found Rehger valueless as a companion. There was an Arms Academy at Moiyah. Rising early, Rehger would be gone, to utilize the services of the gymnasium. He sold the gold on his wrists and off his belt to pay, and to recompense Arn Yr, who, with his wife, had made such a fuss of refusal it developed into a one-sided row—Chacor had scarcely any money and nothing to sell, apart from himself. But to take work in Moiyah seemed to imply remaining in Moiyah, and he did not want to do it. No one gave cash to see acrobatic street brawls, and most of the bets in Moih inclined to archery contests and Shansar horse-races. On the fifth day Arn Yr, who had shown Chacor the markets and the guild halls, the exterior of the gold-roofed Anackire temple and the race-track, led him into Moiyah’s Street of Gods.

  Chacor looked about in earnest dismay, seeing represented on every side, among the groves of yellow-flowered sintal trees, most of the foremost deities of Vis. There the temple of the Ommish fire god, cheek by jowl with his brother of Zakoris, and there the pavilion of the Xarabian Yasmis, furled with incense. Farther along, obsidian dragons marked a shrine to Dorthar’s mysterious storm gods, where two or three Dortharian soldiers were playing dice familiarly on the steps. Even Rorn, blue-bearded, loomed on a plinth.

  Chacor muttered. He asked Arn Yr, if the Lowlanders were so devout, so given to Anack, why this sacrilege under her nose. Arn Yr explained the ethics of tolerance. He himself did not neglect Zarok.

  “Then,” said Chacor, “where is Corrah?”

  Arn Yr, who had possibly been waiting for this, indicated a lane. Unconvinced the Corhlan turned into it, and soon found the house of Corrah, and the house of Cah, neighboring each other. He went in at the Corhlish entrance, and gave one of his last coins to make an offering of balm, had no comfort, wanted to ask the goddess what she was doing there.

  That evening, Rehger achieved gainful employment in Moih. The ship lord’s domicile, partial to dinner parties, had given one. Loath and uneasy you might be, but you found yourself nonetheless in yet more borrowed garments, spruce and garlanded, at a snowy-draped, belilied table with the family, and eight of its intimates. Nor were you churlish, but did your best to behave for your generous hosts. For some reason it was very bright before Chacor, the image of Arn Yr’s ship emerging from the bloody fog beyond Saardsinmey’s shore (only, quite incredibly, a month ago.) Who had Arn Yr been that day, coming toward them over the ruin of the beach, the red froth of the fouled black sea about his boots? And the blond men of his crew, shaking their heads, giving wine, going into the wreck of the city . . . returning silent in the scarlet dawn that seemed ready never to conclude— A man, Arn Yr, and other men, fellow humans in the world’s night.

  To Chacor’s left, the younger daughter, Elissi, offered a segment of candied citrus to a late arrival, an impeccable small silver monkey. Eating graciously, the monkey reviewed the table with indigo eyes.

  “Ah, the monkey-princess,” said the man seated on the left hand of Arn Yr’s wife. “I hope she is well?”

  The monkey twittered.

  The man said, “Alas. She tells me she’s had something of a cough this summer. But how is it now, my dear?”

  The monkey flirted, taking her tail in her hands and veiling with it her lower countenance.

  “She says, she supposes if she were not treated so uncaringly, she would do better.”

  There was some laughter.

  “How cruel,” said Elissi now to the princess. “To say such untruths, and before everybody, you ungrateful, furry thing. Besides, you ate the pearl out of my earring. That was the cause of your cough!”

  The man who had spoken for the monkey, previously introduced as Master Vanek, was himself a small, grizzled individual, of the Guild of Artisans and Stone-Workers. He commented now that the pearl-eater was a paragon, and outlined the vices of another of her tribe, taken to his studio on Marble Street for the purpose of being drawn, who ate her cage bars, and thereafter a bar of casting wax, some sticks of paint, and a wig from the store room.

  Then, turning eyes on Rehger, who sat opposite to him, Vanek added, “But it’s a fact, we are always in need of sound models.”

  Rehger smiled gravely.

  “I won’t boast,” said Vanek, “as the boaster always will say. But the three sons of a lesser Dortharian prince have modeled for my sculptors. It’s well known.”

  “The frieze of the warriors on the great library,” said Arn Yr. “Yes, everyone knows. They, too, boasted about it. Your studio’s reputed.”

  “My father,” said Vanek to Rehger, “was a herder on the plains under Hibrel. We do what we like here, what we’re good at. This is a virtue of Moih. Nor is any man ashamed to tell another his price.” Vanek took a grape and toyed with it. “We are about to engage on an epic venture: A Raldnor, a statue of the hero-god. It’s commissioned in Xarabiss, for the king’s own winter palace. We must not go wrong, you will agree.” Another pause, and anyone who did not guess what was up, unless it were the monkey, must be the biggest fool in the south. “Well, now, I promise to you, Rehger Am Alisaar, sixty ankars in gold, Moih-Xarabiss guild-weight, if you’ll take on the job.”

  The amount, which was impressive, caused a hush.

  Then Rehger said, presumably playfully, “Do you mean, sir, the job of sculpting it or of modeling for it?”

  The table laughed again. Vanek only looked crafty, intrigued. “To sculpt would bring rather more, but my man already has the commission. I meant, to model.”

  And then, another diversion. Rehger said, gently:

  “But I heard the face of the messiah-king Raldnor is commemorated. I’m not like him, surely.”

  “That may be a subject for debate. The likenesses we have vary, as do the likenesses of his ancestor, Rarnammon, and even of Raldnor’s son, the second Rarnammon, though he’s only dead some twenty-five years. I don’t mean to embarrass you, young man, but great handsomeness is required, of physiognomy and of body. And some endurance also, the stance and the hours are not easy. You were a gladiator in Alisaar, I believe.”

  “I was a slave there,” said Rehger.

  Vanek said, briskly now, “Moih doesn’t recognize slavery. Any slave who can gain our borders is reckoned a free man, as are all men in the sight of the goddess. Aside from that, do you accept?”

  “Yes,” said Rehger. “And my thanks.”

  “Thank me when we’re done. And now, Elissi, let me embrace the monkey-princess. I must be going, Am my friend, ladies, pardon me. You know my routine. The studio begins labor at first light, Rehger.”

  Rehger nodded. His face, as his voice, had not changed.

  • • •

  Annah and her Vis-Vathcrian were discreetly canoodling in the vine arbor, and so Chacor cut down the other garden path through the sintal trees.

  Rehger was sitting beside the water tank. The moon had risen, and the fish in the tank, by day golden as Lowland eyes, were rising to the surface to see it.

  Enclosing the garden’s stillness was the breathing lull of a
late city night. The dark beyond the walls was sparingly patched with glowing windows. Now and then a strain of music might be sounded, or mellow voices on the streets below. Sometimes even there rose the murmur of the sea. It was not an hour or a spot for altercation. And, despite any likenesses, it was not Saardsinmey.

  “So, you’re to stay here and be a Moiyan.” Rehger looked up, and another fish broke the moon on the tank, or it might have been this time one of the sintal flowers, falling down there.

  “Vanek’s proposal meets a need, I think.”

  “And was arranged beforehand, I think.”

  “Yes,” said Rehger. “As we’ve noticed, Arn Yr’s a generous man.”

  They had conversed, the Lydian and the Corhl, only rarely on the ship. It was not that Rehger pushed him off, avoided him—it was that Rehger gave him attention—yet did not seek any response in turn. There was none of the comradeship of survival that Chacor anticipated. Rehger did not confide. He listened and replied, and was often alone. And as they went away perforce to the pale shores of the foreigners’ country, Chacor missed, and wanted, something. He had, from the beginning, wanted something of Rehger. To best him, or be bested. To vaunt, to copy, the polish of abrasion. Events had made them reluctant sharers, or—she had done so.

  They had walked, each of them, behind her bier. They had taken shelter in her tomb. Together they had escaped.

  Chacor said suddenly, “Was it true?”

  Rehger did not say What do you mean? He seemed only to consider how the fish rose and the flowers fell, and the moon, breaking and reforming, shattered and born. Then: “I believed I’d killed you. That horrified me. I’d never killed in that way. You know why it happened? It occurred to me you saw.”

  “The Anack priest-trick, sword to snake.” (Something else hers, shared.)

  Chacor leaned on a tree. It no longer seemed to be anything to do with him, the death-blow, the healing. Could his indifference be sane, or wise? Better to suppose, maybe, his memory was at fault. When he spoke of it, it was as if he forced himself to do it, not in terror, but out of courtesy to some nameless element of his physical personality, or some aspect of his goddess. (He should make Corrah a decent offering. If anyone had saved him, it was Corrah.) After all, the Amanackire had died herself.

  As though there had been some clamor, now stillness returned, the living stillness of garden and night. In the vine arbor, if they spoke, it was without any words.

  “Before she died,” Rehger said, “Aztira told me I’d meet my father in Moih. When the time came due. I’ve never known my father. For several reasons, I’m curious about him.”

  Because Rehger had not said previously What do you mean? Chacor, now, did not blurt out, Oh, was that how she was called, the Lowland witch—Aztira?

  “Would she be accurate about a thing like that?”

  “I think so.”

  They had been lovers (Something not shared.)

  “I intend,” said Chacor, “to go north. Xarabiss sounds a likely venue. Or Dorthar. I gather Ommos stinks. But I regret I’m in his debt, our ship lord.”

  “I don’t imagine Arn’s much of a man for keeping tally of debts.”

  A fish, larger than the rest, leapt through the reflection of the moon. The continual breaking of the light . . . It was destroyed, it could not be destroyed.

  “Well, I’ll look for your Raldnor statue, coming into Xarabiss, on a car of gold, with trumpets,” said Chacor.

  • • •

  Walking along Amber Street half an hour later, Chacor heard a wolfish step pacing to catch up to him. You did not expect footpads in Moiyah, but that was not to say they were absent. Chacor, knife most ready, turned about and found Annan’s betrothed on his heels.

  “You handle yourself like a fighter,” said the latter. “Not ready for sleep? Listen, excuse my frankness, but do you want a girl? There’s a very appealing house I can recommend. They used to know me there, before I cast myself at Annah’s feet. Quite a few of the officers go there. The girls are mostly Xarabians; winsome. Don’t worry about money. I can cover that.”

  “Why?” said Chacor belligerently.

  Annah’s betrothed shrugged. “Why not? I’m happy tonight.”

  His proper name was Jerish. He was the captain of one hundred men of the Moiyah garrison. The curl in his accent came from his father’s being a Vathcrian, and the tongue of the other continent the first language at home. He had once observed in Chacor’s hearing that his father accused him of speaking his Vathcrian conversely in the accents of Vis.

  “You know what’s wrong with your Moiyan city?” said Chacor.

  “No, what?”

  “You give too much.”

  They began to stroll northwest, into the streets behind the race-track. Moiyah was never dark, painted all over and well-lit at night by street lamps. Where they burned closest to the sintal trees, with which every park and garden of the city seemed planted, a warm fragrance wafted out that filled the avenues.

  “My pack are starting for the fort in two days. You could travel with us if you want. Save you the chance of robbers on the border.”

  “And if I like, you’ll help me get into the army, which is always in need of fit and healthy men, regardless of race or religion.”

  “That’s true. I tell you, we still get reavers on our bit of sea. And we like to show New Alisaar fair will and a firm face.”

  “But as luck has it, you can now forget Saardsinmey.”

  They parted near the cattle market, from which a faint shifting and lowing mocked Chacor as he strode off.

  Passing back again by the race-track, he took unfriendly note of tomorrow’s races pinned up on the gate.

  • • •

  Even Anack gave.

  At noon the next day, plunged from a sleepless bed, he had put the ultimate scrap of his financial hide upon a black Shansar racer, and won twenty silver parings, Moih rate.

  Then when he reached the Corrah temple, he saw Elissi passing in under the porch and petrified, thinking he had gone mad.

  But no, there was the little maid against a pillar, rocking the pet monkey like a baby.

  Chacor stationed himself in the doorway of the shrine opposite, and waited, in a bemused fury. After perhaps the third of an hour, Elissi came out of the temple. There was a brilliant flush in the clear honey of her cheeks which, as Chacor arrived in her path, faded into pallor.

  “What were you doing in there?” said Chacor. When Elissi only stared at him, he said, “Do you go there regularly, you pious ones, to spit on the altar?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  Elissi ran suddenly from guilty shame to annoyance.

  “What do you think? To make an offering.”

  “What? The worshiper of Anack the Serpent goes to the dirt-heap of the unbeliever to offer?” (He had chosen to forget Arn and the fire god.) In her face then he saw a struggle to be serene, as when dealing with an irrational, fractious child. This caused him to burst out loudly, “And won’t the snake woman enviously strike at you for it?”

  People turned to glance their way, good-humoredly, not catching the gist, probably guessing here were two lovers quarreling.

  Elissi blushed now with embarrassment, but raising her head, faced him out, as if across a shield rim. “Anackire has no jealousy. Anackire is everything,” she told him stingingly. “Anackire is the name we give the State of Life, of existence, body and soul, earth and eternity. But you give it the name Corrah. And so I came to your Corrah, and made an offering to your Corrah, since we seldom offer to Anackire, and Anackire isn’t yours.”

  Chacor could only glare at her. Her flaming black jets of eyes glared back.

  At last, “Why?” he said again.

  “That the sympathy should pass directly to you, if able. As I’d speak where I could to a man in a
language he knew. I asked that she might give you peace of mind.”

  He missed that and grated, “But to you and yours, Corrah doesn’t exist.”

  “All things exist. Look at that pebble lying there. You might call it um and I might call it oom. Isn’t it still a pebble, and lying there?”

  An abrupt wave of relaxation swept over Chacor, stunning him. The girls of Moih were well-schooled in the means of debate. And how lovely this one was, summer-brown as a girl of Iscah, her color coming and going and her eyes on fire and her hair not like hair at all but a sheet of hot white light.

  “Respite,” said Chacor, a term he had picked up from the dueling etiquette of Alisaar. “Put down your sword, lady. You’ve won. My apologies. Your father sacrifices to Zarok, too, doesn’t he?”

  Then she laughed. And then he remembered why she had made the offering.

  Presently they were in a public garden under the yellow boughs, the princess climbing a tree, and the maid gone away to buy the juice of berries.

  They were speaking of ordinary things, not even religion, and he had not questioned her again about the offering. Elissi had become a real person. Suddenly it came to him that she loved him. Though not in the normal headlong and demanding way to which his travels among young women had accustomed him.

  He found it difficult thereafter not to flaunt himself, to make himself grand and beautiful in her eyes. But he must be cautious. There was jeopardy in this. She was not a flower of the wayside, but the protected daughter of a man who had himself lavished upon Chacor great kindnesses.

  So, he restrained himself somewhat. But even so, he did tell her his beginnings, that he was a prince, and Corhl was far behind him. He did sit there with her under the trees and speak of the end of Saardsinmey. He let her see, not meaning to, not evading, the impress that had since then been upon him, as if the death cry of a million despairing hearts had darkened his own.