The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  One of the clay lamps guttered suddenly and turned red.

  As if at some signal, the Shansarian seated himself upon the floor opposite to Rehger.

  “Now I’ll reveal the second story. There’s a marvelous city in Thaddra. Or beyond Thaddra, in the forests farthest to the west. Too far, too lost a land even for the Free Zakors to covet. The Amanackire have built the place. Partly by witchcraft, also by the labor of Vis slaves.”

  “And who has visited this city?”

  “None, maybe. Whispers wend along the rivers. Dorthar says: a makebelieve. Rarnammon’s son is a coward and a libertine. For his personal blazon he has a dragon embracing or struggling with a snake. He will sire geese. Still, he pays hounds like Galut to snuff about. But Galut finds the Vis can only vie with each other for crumbs, and the Lowlands are kept blind, or they hide their eyes. No one has seen the city of the Amanackire—save they themselves.”

  “She traveled westward?”

  “It’s said so. She was gone like a white smoke. Yet all Var-Zakoris has the tale now, of a resurrected sorceress. In some of the Zakor villages, out in the woods, you come on shrines to her. There’s a new plan. To send men to the west, a doomed mission. The forests are impenetrable. The heart of Thaddra is the land of losings. Even gods and heroes vanish into it forever. The westernmost jungles are deeper than the deepest seas. Who enters needs wings. But then, the Amanackire fly,” Kuzarl said. “Did she inform you?”

  The weak lamp faded. The other also, but with no preface, went out.

  In the dark, the Shansarian said, “Spirits are eavesdropping. Or else you have Power. Yes, I credit you do. In the race on the cliff, I felt that.”

  “The chariots have their own life. Any professional racer would tell you.”

  “That’s Power. But you Vis send it always outward. Your gods are sorry but dangerous things, you put such being into them.” Kuzarl leaned forward. His voice was a murmur. “The Vardians might kill you. Such is their fright.”

  “I was warned of it.”

  “Yet came here? Then she’s called you. At liberty, would you go now to the city—the perhaps-city, in the west?”

  Rehger said, after a moment, “If a sorceress called me, presumably I’d have no choice.” Then he said, “But what shall I owe you?”

  There came the sound of Kuzarl rising, notified by the clink of the jewelry on his wrists and belt.

  “There was a second, when we raced the chariots together. Did you think: Brothers who duel for their birthright.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have the mind-speech, too. Only a touch. Not enough to send your Vis brain mad. We’re dealing now in the dark. Don’t haggle, Rehger Am Ly Dis. Some things must be. Sorbel’s in a lather up above. But the Warden I’ll persuade. You and I. We’ll journey west.”

  The second lamp, which had died, quivered and gave up a hiss of light.

  As Kuzarl smote the cell door and was let out, this lamp was again brightly burning.

  • • •

  “He was questioned at great length, and answered openly. The scribes have written down these accounts. But he’s Vis. How can he be thought an accomplice of Amanackire?”

  Sorbel stood blocking out the dawn in the Warden’s high window.

  “Not questioned, my lord, under any pressure.”

  “I’ve never before known you longing to torture a man.”

  “We’re at war, my lord. You know it. At war with magicians. In the beginning we thought ourselves part of the select, friends to the white race, white as they were. But the Amanackire are albinos, and adopt the sigil of the white serpent. Even their own parent people, the Lowlanders, have been made alien by the Shadowless. So, we discover ourselves at risk along with the dark men of Dorthar and Alisaar, and as little able to protect ourselves.”

  “I’m lessoned in these things, Sorbel.”

  “They can attack us when and how they choose. They will attack us, because theirs is an inimical and haughty people, possessed of Power. On our side, can the smallest grain of sand be left unsifted?”

  “As this Rehger pointed out, you also, Sorbel, would be deemed a sorcerer, south and east and in the Middle Lands.”

  “And Kuzarl is a Shansar, and mad as they always are.”

  The Warden laughed a little. He was very tired and wanted the simple comforts of breakfast and sleep.

  “Yes, Kuzarl is a Shansar.”

  “All we know of him otherwise, my lord, is that he’s a wealthy adventurer. This berserk pouncing of his on the idea of a city in the west—”

  “It may exist. He may find it. That may in some sort be advantageous.”

  “Find with the assistance of Rehger the Lydian.”

  The Warden said, “Consider, Sorbel. If the man Rehger was her lover, beloved enough that she saved his life—it seems she did—perhaps her kind wish him returned to them, and perhaps our permitting him, unhindered, to reach them, will steady the supernatural balance. You, Sorbel, are aware of the worth of such bargains.”

  “I dream constantly,” said Sorbel. “My wife tells me I call out, till she wakes me. I lie in her arms like an infant, shaken with terrors. I can’t ever remember why, where I have been or what I have looked at.”

  “Kuzarl will go on his journey whatever the Zaddath council decrees. We shall send the Lydian with him. They will never come out of the forests. Nothing may come out of them. In ten years we may still be debating the matter. Perhaps our fears of the Amanackire are only an evil dream. The goddess will wake us, we’ll lie in her arms.”

  Sorbel turned from the window. The gathering sunrise streamed around him. His back to the light, he said, “When they speak to me in the council of these rumors, that there are sorcerers now who can rise from the dead, I dismiss the silly talk. But here, in private, I tell you I believe it. It’s as if someone whispered in my ear, at night in the darkness. Against a superior enemy who hates us, and can never die—all struggle supposedly is futile. Isn’t it?”

  “Struggle,” said the Warden, “is frequently useless. And hope, they say, a viper, which entices in order to bite the more viciously. Even so, there is some other state, not despair, not hope, and not struggle. Some belief or knowledge, nameless yet definite. Cling to that, Sorbel. Or, let it fasten on you and bear you up.”

  • • •

  The Dortharian agent Galutiyh rejoined his men at the hostelry with a malign flourish, flinging some gold on the table and, as they cursed and scuffled for it, announcing: “Underpaid. The bastards docked our wages.”

  Galutiyh virtuously resented the mantle of secrecy in which the conclave of allies at Zaddath had gone to earth. Though he had found out, via byways, that Rehger was imprisoned. This did not distress Galutiyh. Now, philosophically, the Dortharian Thaddrian with the phantasmal Lowland granddaddy, switched his vision elsewhere.

  He told his company they might make merry in Zaddath tonight. Tomorrow they would be returning along the road to Ilva. There he expected to be meeting someone. This was Yennef. Galutiyh had realized, by the time they made the sea crossing from Xarabiss, that it was Yennef who came after. Yennef had probably reckoned they would go directly to Dorthar, since Dorthar had hired them both. Galutiyh faked his clues accordingly. He had also, wanting something in reserve, left a message for Yennef farther north, in case Yennef did not eventually tumble to the realities. Galutiyh had made sure that in the end Yennef would grope his way into the Vardian west, where the laws of Dorthar would be less helpful and less protective. Galutiyh had not forgotten the Lan’s grip and the razor-edged metal at his throat.

  While his men whored and got drunk, he made an offering to Anackire-Ashkar in a temple. It was a blood offering, which was permissible here. He asked the goddess to give him his rights and his revenge. This did not seem incongruous to him. Of her eight uplifted arms—each of ivory in Zaddath, with amber b
angles, fingers of gold, a topaz in each palm—he gazed on the arm which signified retribution.

  She seemed, through the smoke, to smile down at him.

  He adored and honored her; she was his god and he gave her what she liked. She would not leave him wanting.

  19. Fire, Water, and Steel

  FORTY MILES WEST OF ZADDATH, all the roads ended. Thereafter, there was only forest, and those things which the forest contained, or let be. Above, sky, sometimes barely seen for days where the canopy had meshed to closure. Southward, from high terraces of ground, once the canopy broke again, mountains were visible, their shoulders half-transparent, their crowns melting into air. In the glades, pools of inky water lay motionless in a mist of gnats and dragonflies. Occasionally a village had hewn a niche for itself. Some had not lasted; their bones showed dimly among the creepers and roots which had eaten them. There were tracks and trails through the trees, the footpaths of men and animals. Along these avenues, where light came in, the summer fires of flowers burned on the earth and dozens of feet up in the boughs. By night the forest was strummed like a harp. Sudden storms hammered the foliage and lizards came down with the rain. This country of the jungle was eternally Vis. It had obtained long before the Vardians, long before men. Treasures might be dug out of it, shafts of ivory, crude masks of deformed gold from Zarduk rites centuries out of date, or the gemmed teeth of travelers. Kuzarl’s men, mostly Vardianized Zakors, had not brought maps, or charms for dowsing, and did not grub after such articles.

  Along with the ten Var-Zakors were two Shansarians, servants of Kuzarl’s household, and a cook from Karmiss. Every man had sworn an oath Shansarian fashion, of loyalty and secrecy, over a sword standing in heated coals. In the old days, they would have had to grasp the metal in the left fist, the subsequent blisters a mark of their intention, a reminder of their faith. Kuzarl had twittingly mentioned this, before requesting the modified version. Rehger he did not ask for the oath. “You’re already bound,” Kuzarl had said.

  There was no time in the forests, except for each day and each night, and, when the going was exceedingly rough, each hour. It was not possible to take pack-beasts through the inner jungles. Each man carried a quantity of what was needful. Sometimes they must also hack their way, every one of the fifteen men, pausing only when exhausted.

  Conversation, so often the solace of inactivity, was lacking among them. About the cook-fire by night, the Karmian, who had a fine voice, would sometimes lament his birthland, the Var-Zakors would bet with painted Vardian dice. Kuzarl was given to isolated and thoughtful monologues, concerning Shansar-over-the-ocean, the mythic Lowland war, the gods, Anackire. Into these philosophic examinations he beckoned Rehger, but Rehger never spoke at any length. “Tell me more of Saardsinmey,” said Kuzarl one evening. “It was destroyed,” said Rehger.

  One sunup, two of the Zakors were missing. Their remains were soon found. A huge snake, which had left evidence of its passage through the undergrowth, had crushed them, and devoured one, leaving only his metal ornaments and boots. On the other, birds and reptiles were feeding. Where blood had run into the flowers, they had lowered their calyxes thirstily.

  Some of the men were very afraid. The notion of a serpent now was not only physically but psychically threatening.

  “Return then,” said Kuzarl, straddling the serpent’s trail with princely defiance. “Know the way? By Ashkar, I supposed not. Come on, then.”

  That night Kuzarl said to Rehger, “The Lowlanders burn their dead. This custom is upheld as an acceptance that flesh has been doffed, the spirit flown away. But I detect another origin. They use flames to prevent resurrection.”

  Kuzarl’s band now numbered thirteen. They mounted a strict watch by night.

  The Shansarian servants obviously found the dripping molten heat oppressive. Kuzarl, reared, he said, in Sh’alis, was rather more enduring. Maybe a month and a half was gone, since they had left Zaddath.

  They crossed a swamp by a Zakorian bridge, partly unsafe. Thrown out on the edge was a massive skeleton, a palutorvus, or some thing even older. Fever stalked the camp, taking up both of Kuzarl’s Shansars, three of the Var-Zakors with mix blood. They lay up a day or two. The fevers went down and the oaths held.

  • • •

  Rehger opened his eyes.

  “What?”

  “Not,” said Kuzarl, “more snakes. But I’ll show you.”

  Aside from the dutiful watchman, the rest of the camp slept, not yet troubled by flies. The dawn was starting, back the way they had come.

  Kuzarl plucked through the ferns and creepers under a ribcage of trees. At the end, as they had suspected the previous night, was another of the deserted villages. Rather than antique, however, it was quite recent and had not entirely submerged. The huts had become bushes, but a stone pillar-oven, of the oldest type of the shrines of the fire god, braced itself on a step of baked clay. Kuzarl pointed to the foot of the step, where he had previously pulled the creepers aside. A sort of wooden pin had been sunk in the soil, and daubed white. It had something of a face and a veil or mane of bleached human hair.

  “A shrine to Zarduk, and a shrine to Aztira,” said Kuzarl. “Do you see where the underside of the clay is marked? They were making sacrifice to her. Burnt meats.”

  The sunrise poured past Rehger’s body, into the lost village. He looked at the daubed pin Aztira. The night of her burial, he had stood before the altar of the Shalian temple, and promised an offering to the snakefish goddess, for Aztira’s peace. He had never made this offering. Instead, all Saardsinmey had made it, consumed on the altar, flushed by the lustral of the sea.

  A slow storm of hatred moved in him. He was now accustomed to this. It had commenced on the ship of Arn Yr, and in the studio of Vanek it had dulled down, aching only now and then, as the scar on his arm never did. But that third life at Moiyah, that had been sundered also, the life of the artisan. As he came west, again the hate burgeoned, deepened, and had by now perhaps possessed him.

  “She passed them by here, then,” Rehger said.

  “Seemingly. These primitives could never have heard of her otherwise.”

  For myself, I loved you, from the moment I saw you I believe.

  The picture returned to him, through the present image of the wooden pin, the image he himself had been forming from marble; and the image of her lovely deadness on the couch, as if she slept.

  The hatred engorged him, like desire.

  Kuzarl said, “Be wary, Rehger. I told you, the mind-speech isn’t quite unknown to you. Your brain thunders, and deafens me.”

  “And the words?”

  “No words. Does a screaming baby have words?”

  Rehger lifted his eyes and looked off through the smothering village.

  “When asked so surprisingly in Zaddath, if you were of the line of Raldnor,” said Kuzarl, “you replied, pedantically, that you took them to mean the line of his sons. Evasion?”

  “Mind-read it,” said Rehger. “If you’re able.”

  “No need. I put together two blatant themes. You have the appearance of the line of the first Rarnammon, the Dortharian Storm Lords. You are not Raldnor’s. You descend then from the seed of his half-brother. Amrek’s get.”

  Rehger turned from the village.

  “She told me so.”

  He had been repelled by her at the beginning. That whiteness. He would harm no woman. But she was not human. He had cut her from the marble, wrung her neck in the wax.

  Rehger said to Kuzarl, “A Moiyan sculptor used me as the model for a statue of Raldnor. Taken into Xarabiss an accident befell the stone. All trace of the features was splintered from the countenance.”

  Sword into snake. Snake into woman. A serpent, which sloughed its skin and crawled out from the black hole under the boulder . . . something so beautiful—

  Rehger leaned down and wrenched the daubed peg f
rom the earth. He cast it away over the village.

  There was a normalcy of sound growing behind them, in the camp. The cook clattered his pots and sang.

  Kuzarl said, “Tradition dictates, Rehger Am Amrek, we’re enemies. You knew it, and have spoken it.”

  “A combat then, Shansarian. As and when you wish.”

  “The goddess will demonstrate the time and place.”

  “Your goddess is a demon of the air. Your wanting it will make the time and place.”

  Kuzarl bowed, a hint of the codes of Karmiss despite everything.

  Not a bird or insect made its noises in the foliage about them.

  They want back easily to the camp, pacted, as if nothing at all had happened.

  • • •

  The first wilderness ended in the towns and villages, the cleared and fertile marshes and flax-sumps of the Var-Zakorian west. There were now consistent vistas, on one of which the mountains marched away over the southern horizon.

  There had been no route to the Great Sea-Lake in the days of Old Zakoris. Corhl and Ott had used this enclosed sprat of an ocean for fishing trade and piracy upon each other. But now a couple of Vardish roads rambled to the shore.

  Kuzarl’s party, again, had been depleted by this juncture. Five Var-Zakors, despite the desperate oath, had vanished at the first town beyond the forest. “Tested in fire,” remarked Kuzarl, “the flawed metal breaks. Such vermin we shan’t be saddled with in the depths of Thaddra.”

  At a fishing port on the rim of the Lake, one of Kuzarl’s servants found out an Ottish captain, due to take his twenty-oared galley across to Ottamet and Put. Kuzarl drew a map in the sandy soil with his dagger. “There and here, the Ott-towns, and here, or here, a river which runs off through the mountains northwest, where we are going.” So it was settled.

  The water of the Sea-Lake gleamed like glass under a high sun, and far out fish were leaping.

  The Ottish captain and his men took that for some favorable omen, and trotted instantly to the galley. Kuzarl and Rehger went aboard, but the rest, dawdling in the port, were almost left behind. The Karmian cook railed against the Otts as savages. But their ears were thick with their own dialect and they chose to ignore the faces he pulled, smiling and chattering and nodding in reply.