Shadow of the Serpent

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Shadow of the Serpent Page 13

by Shannah Jay

He couldn’t help smiling, for all his weakness. Trust Cheral to start ordering him around the minute she regained consciousness. She was a great one for telling people what to do, the Novice Mistress was. It made everything seem almost normal to have her chivvying him again. Very cautiously, because his head felt as if someone had been using it for a temple gong, he eased himself into a sitting position.

  'I've managed to sit up!' he called when the world stopped spinning around him.

  'I told you to lie still!'

  'I'd rather find out where we are, Cheral. We might still be in danger, for all we know.'

  'Hmm. You may be right, for once. Well, move slowly then, Jonner.' Cheral's voice was still breathy and blurred, as if she had drunk too much festival ale the night before. 'How do you feel?'

  'My head hurts.'

  'So does mine. I don't know what'll happen to us next. Our Brother is leading us along some very strange paths.'

  He heard a long sigh, then there was silence. Poor old Cheral! She really hated all this travelling around.

  She was over a hundred and sixty years old and even with the Gifts the Sisters had for prolonging life, she must feel her age some days. 'How's Narla?'

  'She's unconscious. No, she's just started to move her head. Lie still, Narla. Wait until your head stops spinning before you try to sit up.'

  Jonner heaved himself to his feet and stood there swaying. The dizziness was passing now. 'I've stood up,'

  he called out. He didn't like the silence around them, he didn't like it at all. He kept getting the urge to yell and shout, to fill the great empty landscape with noise.

  Cheral's head poked out of the rear of the wagon and she blinked at the brightness of the sunlight. 'You really should be resting, Jonner, giving your body time to recover.' She dragged herself into a sitting position near the tailpiece of the wagon and leaned her head back against the canvas bunched around the awning pole.

  'Rest,' she murmured. She sounded very tired.

  But Jonner couldn’t rest. He walked slowly up and down, shaking his hands about until they felt as if they belonged to him again. He needed to be sure that he could use his knives if they were attacked. But there was no sign of attackers, no sign of life at all, just the rocky area around them, from which the ground sloped downwards into an endless expanse of grass. He stared at the grass. It was a faded colour, more beige than green. Here and there it was dotted with patches of colour - flowers, probably - and it was tall enough to wave around in a light breeze. If he half-closed his eyes it looked like water, a sea of grass. 'What's happened to us, Cheral? And where do you think we are?'

  She clambered down from the wagon. Jonner could see that she was beginning to recover now because she was moving lightly and gracefully, as Sisters normally did. She’d grown very thin during their journey across the lands of the deleff, but during their stay in Outpost she’d regained a little weight and her face had started to look happy again. He remembered suddenly how she’d bustled around the small settlement from morning to night, bossing people about and teaching the young, as if they were a group of novices in Temple Tenebrak. She’d been happy then; now her face looked pinched and unhappy. Funny. He had never before thought to feel sorry for the formidable former Novice Mistress of Temple Tenebrak.

  'It was Quequere, wasn't it?' he asked, watching as she started to limber up with the Sisters’ flowing dance-like movements. Bodies in balance, health in order, Cheral often said, and indeed, Jonner himself had felt better physically since she’d taken him in hand. Not that he was going to admit it to her. 'I heard Herra call out to Quequere just before we entered the portal. I didn't know he could make portals, did you, Cheral?'

  'No. No one knew he could do that. And it wasn't a fixed portal, like the deleff use. This one was created specially for us, to save us.' She stood looking thoughtful. 'And it doesn't seem to have affected us as badly as the deleff's portals do, either.'

  'Good for Quequere, then. I thought we were lost when those snake-lovers started chanting and coming towards us.' Jonner shuddered at the memory of that darkness filled with flickering torches and the ring of enemies moving inexorably forward one step at a time, with their knives ready in their hands and bloodlust gleaming in their eyes.

  'So did I.' She shook her head. 'And Those of the Serpent weren't as affected by Herra's Compulsions as they should have been. They've found some way to resist us. That's terrifying, Jonner. They must be growing stronger.'

  'Herra will think of a way to deal with them.'

  'Herra!' she snapped, eyes sparkling with sudden anger. 'You all expect Herra to work magic!'

  'It does seems like magic at times.'

  'Well, it isn't. We of the Sisterhood - I mean, the Kindred - use the Gifts we were born with, the Gifts our Brother gave us. If you'd seen how long some novices took to develop their skills, you'd not talk about 'magic'

  like that! Magic, indeed!' It was an old grievance with Cheral, who knew just how hard it was to train the young women who had been chosen to join the Sisterhood, and how many years it took to develop their Gifts. It would no doubt be the same with the young men who would in future be chosen to join the Kindred.

  Jonner knew when to back away from an argument. 'Sorry. I wasn't thinking.'

  She nodded, breathed deeply for a moment, then continued her exercises, tossing over her shoulder, 'Some gentle walking up and down would be good for your body, Jonner.'

  He walked away from the wagon, keeping his thoughts to himself. You could grow very tired of Cheral ordering you around. Still, it did make sense to get his body functioning properly again. The worst thing about Cheral was that she was usually right. No one should be right so often.

  As he walked back to rejoin her, he noticed what he should have seen straight away. 'Hey, where have the deleff gone?'

  There was no answer, but he heard Cheral's voice talking soothingly to someone inside the wagon. Narla must be awake again. He made a complete circuit of the wagons, walked slowly and carefully, looking for signs of the deleff. But he found none. 'They can't just have vanished!' he muttered in irritation. 'Not even deleff can vanish into thin air. They must have left some tracks! Why can I not find them?'

  He stood very still as he realised why. 'They can't have come through the portal with us, then. Brother, what's happened to them? I hope they escaped all right. Surely even those devils can’t kill deleff!' Further cold trickles slid down his spine as he realised something else. 'If we don't have any deleff, how are we going to go anywhere? Draught nerids can't pull traders' wagons. Even with a light load, they're too heavy.'

  He waited until Cheral had helped Narla down from the wagon and set her to doing some gentle exercises, then he cleared his throat to get her attention. 'Er, Cheral, we have a small problem.'

  'Are you sure you've exercised your body enough, Jonner? Is everything working properly?'

  'Yes, Sister, but there's another problem.'

  'What?' She was peering into the wagon, muttering to herself, not really listening, so he tugged at her dark robe. 'Cheral, listen to me, will you? It's important.'

  She turned round. 'What is it, then?

  'The deleff. They can't have come through the portal with us.' Aha! Now he had her full attention! 'There are no tracks here. Deleff always leave tracks. They're great heavy beasts and they don't just float through the air; they thump their feet down on the ground.' He demonstrated. 'K-thump, K-thump,' All traders' children grew up with that noise and played games to its rhythms. 'And there aren't any tracks at all. I know the ground's rocky near the wagon, but they'd have left some signs if they'd come through the portal with us, and they'd have made very noticeable tracks through the grass beyond this outcrop.'

  She walked round the wagons with him, examining the ground, then she stopped and stared into the distance. For once, her voice was soft. 'I hope those deleff are safe.'

  He swallowed. 'So do I. They were a nice pair, those two, a bit young, but hard-working and interes
ted in everything.' He hesitated. 'There's another thing.'

  'What?'

  'We can't move on until we get some more deleff.'

  'Yes. I'd realised that.'

  'Is something wrong?' Narla had approached while they were talking. 'Where do you think the deleff have gone?'

  'Who knows?' asked Jonner gloomily.

  The two women were silent for a moment, then, 'Do you have any idea where we are, Jonner?' Narla asked. 'I've never seen anywhere like this, nothing but grass for as far as you can see.'

  'We're probably somewhere on the Plains of Garshlian, from the looks of it. I wonder which way the river is.' He bent to examine the grass and scraped up a handful of the topsoil. 'Yes, it must be the Plains of Garshlian. The soil is paler there than anywhere else in the Twelve Claims. Almost like sand. It never looks like it'll grow anything, but it does. It grows this grass, and all sorts of herbs and flowers. That's why they herd wool nerids on the plains. They'll eat anything, those wool nerids will. They're nearly as bad as mountain nerids. Meat nerids are much more fussy.'

  'We don't need a lecture on the habits of nerids, thank you, Jonner!'

  He shut his mouth and concentrated on not getting angry. It never did any good to get angry at Cheral.

  She could always produce several reasons why she was right and you were wrong.

  'I can't see any sign of life.' Narla shivered and clutched Jonner's arm. When he put the arm round her shoulders, she leaned against him.

  Cheral pursed her lips. 'This is not the time to get amorous. Is there some way of calling deleff to us, Jonner?'

  He didn't take his arm away from Narla's shoulders. 'Not that I know of. All we can do is sit around and wait until some turn up.'

  Cheral frowned. 'Hmm. Well, I hope they turn up quickly, then.' From then on, she made no more comments about the way the two of them spent their time together. In truth, they were acting more like an old married couple than people whose lusts had been aroused. They seemed comfortable together, right somehow. Brother, you must have some purpose in this,' she murmured, as she watched them.

  For some reason, she suddenly remembered the brief decade and a half of her own marriage, how much she’d enjoyed managing her home, how comforting it had been to have her husband's arms around her sometimes. But the marriage hadn’t lasted. She’d made it clear to Warral that she couldn’t spend her life with him. They’d just taken what time they could together, savouring every moment. And afterwards, she had left him with their children, knowing he’d raise them with love and tender care. Three sons, two daughters. They would probably be dead by now. Unless any of her daughters had been chosen to serve the God. She hoped one of them had.

  After a few years of marriage, she had known one day that she must return to the temple, and from there, they’d sent her to Tenebrak, where the old Novice Mistress was failing. Barinna had passed on her skills and later Cheral had taken her place in Tenebrak. She had no Gift for choosing, so she didn’t go out on the festival circuit, but she found the work in the temple satisfying enough. But she’d missed her husband and children dreadfully at first.

  Sisters gave up a great deal to serve the God their Brother, but it would be worth it if they could - no, when, she corrected herself quickly, when they defeated Those of the Serpent and restored order to the land.

  A thought occurred to her: if they were now to remain a Kindred, then perhaps Sisters wouldn’t have to give up their husbands and families any more, perhaps they would all be able to live together in harmony, men and women, as they had when the Sisterhood was first founded by Karialla and her husband Deverith.

  Strangely enough, they’d called it the Kindred of the God then, as well. Few people nowadays knew how great a part the strange man called Deverith had played in the founding of their order. He it was who had preserved and passed on the healing skills during and after the first Age of Discord. He it was who’d learnt to heal with his own body's energies. The Illustrious Deverith, his contemporaries called him, first Manifestation of the God. And they wrote of him with great love.

  But they’d had to change to a Sisterhood later, when there had been trouble between the men and women in the Kindred. It was all carefully documented. Niam, first Keeper of the Archives, had seen to that. Cheral had spent a lot of time in the archives of Temple Tenebrak over the years, reading about the ancient days, and wondering what Karialla and Deverith had been like. There were sketches of the two of them and of course the statue of the Manifestations of the God had the figure of Deverith in the forefront, but that didn’t tell you what they were like. She’d always liked their story more than the other tales about the various Manifestations of the God, their story and that of Terraccalliss, the beloved second Manifestation.

  For the next four days, Cheral grew steadily quieter, sitting working on the herbs and plants Jonner had encouraged them to gather along the way, once they left Outpost. They sewed little fabric bags to sell the herbs in, crumbling or powdering the dried leaves as suitable, and they decanted the glowberry juice they’d collected under Jonner's supervision, to get rid of the lees. The man knew his herbs, Cheral had to grant him that, and was a neat tidy worker. To fill the time, she also continued Jonner and Narla's lessons in the basic skills of the Sisterhood. It seemed appropriate, somehow.

  At the end of the four days, all the work they could find to do was completed, so Cheral continued to teach her two involuntary students new skills, to stop them from worrying. She went through the testing repertoire with Jonner and found, to her surprise, that he carried some of the Gifts, even though he hadn’t been chosen to serve their Brother.

  Did that mean, she wondered, that the Gifted Lines were so well assimilated now that ordinary people were inheriting their Brother's Gifts. She found that thought very comforting. When peace came, she must investigate such matters. They should have tested for it more carefully before now, and might have done if they’d not been so busy dealing with Those of the Serpent.

  'What if the deleff never come?' asked Jonner, as they sat watching the sunrise seven days after their arrival in this inhospitable place. 'We've only got water for another few days. We could die out here if we just sit and do nothing.'

  'What do you suggest we do?'

  'I don't know. I thought you might have an idea, Cheral.'

  'Well, I don't.'

  'Oh.'

  On the eighth day, Jonner spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon. 'Look!' he yelled, pointing to it. 'Look!

  Deleff.'

  'You can't possibly know that it's deleff at this distance,' said Cheral. 'It might be other traders. It might even be Those of the Serpent.'

  His face fell. 'Oh. You're right.' He sighed and sat staring at the cloud of dust, then, as it moved slowly in their direction, he clapped his hands together. 'I'm not thinking properly! Look, if it's Those of the Serpent coming, we'd better have our tale ready. In fact, we'd better have a tale ready anyway.' He looked hopefully at Cheral.

  'What do you suggest?'

  'Surely you - '

  'Jonner, I'm a Sister. I've spent the greater part of my life in Temple Tenebrak, training the novices. You are the one experienced in the ways of the world. What do you suggest? I'll follow your advice.'

  He opened and shut his mouth, stared at her in resentment, then shrugged and sat there thinking. 'We've got to look like real traders,' he said slowly. 'Like a family.' He studied the two women. 'Er - a trader would usually have a wife.'

  Cheral's lips pressed tightly together.

  'Narla looks about the right age to be my wife,' he offered, letting out a breath of relief when Cheral nodded. The thought of pretending that Cheral was his wife made cold terror trickle down his spine. Cheral might look ageless, as Herra did, but something about her eyes was very old and daunting. The mere idea of putting his arm round her shoulders made him gulp.

  Narla smiled at him, her expression as sweet as ever. 'I don't mind pretending to be your wife, Jonner.'

  Th
en she too frowned. 'Unless you have a wife already?'

  'Not me! I've kept well away from marriage. I'm not really a marrying sort.'

  'So you've had no children?' Narla asked in her soft voice. She had borne six children in Dsheresh Kashal, each to a different father, a custom enforced there by the town council to avoid inbreeding. She rarely spoke of her children, but when she did it was with affection and sadness that she wouldn’t see them grow up.

  Jonner swallowed. It was hard to tell a lie to a Sister, or to a woman you'd grown fond of. 'Well - I do have a son or two.'

  'A son or two?' Cheral's tone was disapproving. 'And you not married? Surely you didn't just abandon them?'

  Jonner wriggled uncomfortably. 'Of course I didn't abandon them! What do you think I am?' Cheral was waiting for an explanation, with that look on her face, so he added reluctantly, 'There's a woman in Fenlanik, Mella, she's called. I've known her for years. We've had a couple of sons. Her husband couldn't father any, you see. He's old now.' He saw the anger on Cheral's face and said hastily, 'He doesn't mind. In fact, he was the one who asked me to do it. He wanted a son to carry on his business.'

  Cheral's lips curled in disapproval.

  'We were very discreet about it,' Jonner added. 'And Mella was quite happy about me going my own way.'

  'What are they like, your sons?' Narla asked.

  Jonner shrugged. 'They look like me, I suppose. I had to stop visiting them when I was in Fenlanik, or people would have talked. That was why I changed my trade routes in the end.' He debated whether to continue, then caught Cheral's eye and admitted, 'I've a daughter who lives near Tarrianak as well, in the far west of Beldrian. Well, she used to live there, but her mother's moved out to one of the new settlements now.

  Nice little lass she seemed, the one time I saw her. I didn't even know I'd fathered her until a few years later.

  Well, I don't often go on the Beldrian circuit. I've always dealt mainly in jewellery and fine artwork, and they have funny tastes up in Beldrian. Carved wooden beads and feather braids. Not much profit to be gained from those. Not as I reckon profit, anyway. I always did better on the Tenebron - Setheron - Jan-Halani route.

 

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