Shadow of the Serpent

by Shannah Jay

  Lerina was bursting with questions, but Carryn refused to answer them, saying only, 'Not now, child. Wait until we're alone.' Suddenly she felt like a mother - protective, older and stronger, as if she’d left her own girlhood far behind. That thought amused her. Left her girlhood behind! She was sixteen.

  But she felt older, so much older.

  Savnith chuckled at her words. 'You'll not be left alone again, lady, not if Lord Benner intends to wed you.'

  He saw the horror on her face and added with relish, 'Never, not for one minute, will you ever be alone again.

  He trusts no one, least of all his own wife. He'll make sure you get no chance to cuckold him.' He looked at Lerina and back at Carryn. 'She has a look of him, though. I will say that. And if he accepts her, she must be his. He can sense the truth.'

  Lerina looked across at him. 'You're an evil man. I can feel the evil in you. Dark and twisted, like your face.

  And Lord Benner is evil, too, whether he's my father or not. I don't like him.'

  'Shh!' warned Carryn. 'Best not to talk of the Lord Claimant like that, child.'

  She glanced quickly at Savnith, who was scowling at Lerina after that frank utterance. He was surely the most ugly man she’d ever met, with a badly broken nose skewing the symmetry of a plump coarse-skinned face and dark heavy features. Your eyes slid uneasily away from him, not wanting to linger. Even to sit in the same wagon as a man like him was unpleasant, for his eyes never left her and Lerina, not even for one minute.

  And the eyes were, indeed, full of evil, as were the bunching fists that lay loosely across Savnith's belly. Those fists looked ready to strike out at any minute.

  Carryn felt only relief when the wagon drew up a few hours later at Dalbrak. The journey seemed to have been going on for ever.

  'Side entrance, you fools!' yelled Savnith, as if he could see outside. The wagon moved slowly forward again and turned a corner.

  When one canvas side was unbuckled and held back, Savnith got out first, hand on dagger hilt, eyes darting quick suspicious glances around. What he saw must have reassured him, because he nodded and turned back to gesture to the two young women. 'Come on! Let's get you inside.'

  As she jumped down, Carryn tried to linger and stare around her, but Savnith pushed her through the dark yawning doorway. As she stumbled through it, someone lit lamps ahead of them inside the building, showing a broad, stone-walled passageway with a narrow curving staircase at the far end. In the shadows at the sides of the hallway stood two servants in Benner's livery. They were looking straight ahead, and their eyes didn’t even flicker towards the newcomers. It was as if they knew better than to be caught staring at their lord's visitors.

  Savnith stopped in front of one of them. 'Did you receive the message to get the tower rooms ready?'

  'Yes, sir. All ready. And the new Hashite bodyguards have arrived.'

  'Good.' Savnith gestured to Carryn and Lerina to follow him. At the end of the hallway, he stopped. 'Your new servants.' With a flourish of his hand, he indicated a group of burly females waiting in the shadows.

  Hashites. Two of them stepped forward to lead the way upstairs and two others fell into place behind Carryn and Lerina.

  Never, not for one minute, will you be left alone again. Savnith's taunt echoed in Carryn's head and she shuddered as she started climbing the stone stairs.

  There was a barred iron grill on the level above the entrance, guarded by two men, though whether they were castle guards or members of the Carrion Corps, it wasn’t possible to tell in the dimness. They wore Benner's livery of unrelieved black with the red hawk insignia on the right shoulder. As they opened the grill, they gestured to the group to pass through, but neither of them did more than glance at the women. Like the servants below, they were minding their own business most assiduously.

  At the end of the passageway, the small party moved to the right. Carryn jumped in shock as a voice said,

  'Give you greeting, ladies.' Lerina clutched her mother's arm. A young man stood just inside a doorway, leaning against the wall. It was several years since Carryn had seen him riding through Tenebrak, but there could be no doubt about his identity. Evren, Claimant Elect, son of Benner, was very like his father. So must Benner have looked in his youth, she thought, before evil set its foul mark upon him. Tall and well made, with lean handsome features.

  'Well, well, whom have you brought to visit me now, Savnith?' he asked. 'I heard the bustle below. It's not often my father sends me company, is it?'

  Savnith inclined his head in a parody of an obeisance. 'Perhaps we could go inside your quarters, Lord Evren, and then I'll introduce you. Your father particularly wishes you to be introduced to your fellow guests.'

  Evren stared at Carryn, then at Lerina. 'If you're his creatures, I'd rather not bother.'

  'We're not his creatures,' said Carryn. 'We're as much prisoners here as you are.'

  His eyes searched her face, and then he nodded. 'Yes. You're telling the truth.' He stepped back and swept them a bow. 'Come in, then, and welcome. We can commiserate with one another.'

  Just inside the room two men in Hashite livery lounged against the wall. Their casual stance was deceptive, for they could have jumped into action at a second's notice. They were not quite as big as Benjan, but they were very large men and well muscled.

  Evren ignored them and led the way across to the window embrasure, the brightest part of the shadowy room. The dark stone walls of his chamber bore no hangings and the floor wasn’t softened by rugs. In fact, there was a minimum of furniture and that plain and unadorned. This was a strange sort of chamber for a Claimant Elect, a chill depressing place.

  'Won't you take a seat, ladies?' Savnith said, in a tone that matched the sneer on his face.

  When the two women were sitting on a low-backed settle, Evren hesitated, then threw himself into a chair opposite. His voice was gentle and courteous as he spoke, a deep voice for one of his years. 'You know who I am. May I know who you are, ladies?'

  Before Carryn could do more than open her mouth, Savnith answered. He’d positioned himself between the two young women and Evren, so that he could keep an eye on them and his master's ungrateful whelp of a son at the same time. The two Hashites were out of earshot if people spoke softly, as Savnith did now.

  'Your father said to tell you, and only you, that these are your half-sister and your stepmother-elect.'

  Evren jerked upright in shock and Savnith grinned openly, enjoying the moment. 'I thought that would surprise you.'

  Benner's son opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut again and stared at the two women. 'I find it hard to believe,' he said at last. 'If I had a half-sister that old, my father would have boasted of it before now, if only to keep me in my place. As he’s boasted of his other get upon Dalbrak's peasant women.'

  'Your father only learned of Lerina's existence today,' said Carryn, her voice calm. Sister's tones, her mother would have said. It was how her mother had always spoken, even at the end. Sisters kept control of themselves and their emotions. Carryn was striving desperately for that same self-control.

  Evren continued to stare openly at the two women. 'You resemble one another.'

  Carryn smiled. 'Well, Lerina is my daughter.'

  'She can't be. You're too young.'

  'She is my daughter, I promise you. Perhaps you could send for refreshments while we tell you the tale? We haven't eaten today.'

  Savnith nodded his agreement and even went across to the door himself to give the order. The four women hired to guard Lerina and Carryn were waiting patiently outside, but he shut the door in their faces without a word of apology. He paused next to Evren's two guards before he returned to the window embrasure. 'My master doesn’t wish any tales to be spread about these visitors.' They nodded.

  'So, Lord Evren, all shall be revealed,' he sneered as he sat down again. The title was spoken with mockery and the hatred between the two men was as tangible as the stones in the walls.


  Carryn told once more the tale of their adventures. And she noticed that Savnith sat there listening avidly, frowning at times, as if he found it hard to believe, but not interrupting.

  When she’d finished, Evren leaned forward, stretching out as if to pat her hand in sympathy, but Savnith intervened. 'No one to touch her.'

  'Then I can only offer you my sympathy in words,' Evren said. 'My father doesn’t make a pleasant jailer.

  He’ll make a worse husband, the very worst. I saw what he did to my mother.'

  Lerina blinked and turned her head, as if listening to someone speaking. 'He will never become my mother's husband. Our Brother won’t allow it.'

  Savnith's hand shot out to grasp her arm. 'Do not,' he said, shaking her hard, 'use that name here. And never use it in front of your father.' He pushed Carryn away when she would have intervened.

  When he let go of her arm, Lerina ignored the red marks his fingers had made. 'How can I not refer to our Brother when he is ever with me?' She seemed totally unaware of Savnith's growl of anger and clenched fists.

  'I'm warning you,' he said. 'Your father will be displeased and will punish you if you name that name in his presence.' He’d still not said the word himself.

  Lerina only stared at him, as one would stare at a creeping scavenger insect that had scuttled out into the light to nibble at something rotten.

  There was a knock on the door and a servant brought in a tray of food. He set it down on a small table, caught Savnith's eye and bowed himself out. Savnith waved a hand towards the tray and the two women studied the food offered to them. Neither made any attempt to eat.

  'Not to your taste?' he sneered. 'It looks dainty enough to me.'

  'We need to be careful. The last food we ate was drugged.' Carryn picked up a piece of bread, shook her head and set it down again.

  Savnith pushed the tray towards her. 'This food has been prepared most carefully. There's nothing in it that shouldn’t be there.'

  Evren, who had been watching them with an expression of sympathy on his face, snorted in disgust. 'That only means there are no drugs in it which my father hasn’t authorised. My food is always poisoned, and my father doles out the antidote every day. If I flee from him again, I shall die. He'll probably serve you the same trick. He trusts no one.'

  Lerina stared at him in horror. Benner was her father, too, a thing which horrified her.

  'We shan’t eat drugged food.' Carryn pushed the tray away.

  Savnith chuckled. 'You will when you get hungry enough. Or when the Lord Benner feeds you titbits personally while his other hand toys with a whip.'

  Carryn said nothing. But she still took no food from the platters.

  Lerina picked up a piece of fruit and studied it. 'This is untouched.' Then she studied the other food offered and shook her head. 'But that has been tampered with. Would you like to share this fruit with me, Mother?'

  Savnith snatched it from her and hurled it into the hearth.

  Lerina sat back and yawned. 'I'm tired. Are we allowed to sleep now, if we cannot eat? The slumberbane hasn’t fully left my body yet.'

  'How do you know we were fed slumberbane?' Carryn asked.

  'I just know. As I shall know from now on if the food is drugged.'

  'Know or not, you'll have to eat one day soon,' Savnith mocked.

  The two women shrugged and sat quietly waiting for permission to retire. Their very calmness seemed to irritate him. In the end, he stood up, pushing the table aside. 'Very well. Come to your own quarters. You'll have to eat sooner or later. Hunger's an excellent sauce.' As the three of them left the room, Evren raised one hand in farewell then turned to the male Hashite bodyguards. 'Shall we throw some dice?'

  The female bodyguards formed an escort for the two prisoners. Carryn followed Savnith with her head held high and, she hoped, a calm expression on her face, but despair was flowing through her. If Benner was deliberately poisoning his own son, what would he not do to her and Lerina if they defied him? She must find a way to escape, or at least, a way for her daughter to escape.

  The suite of rooms to which the women were shown was luxurious in the extreme, but as in Evren's rooms there were no hangings on the walls.

  Savnith saw Carryn frowning in puzzlement at the bare stone and condescended to explain. 'Our Lord doesn't want anyone creeping behind a hanging to murder him.'

  'What a way to live, never feeling secure!'

  'A Lord Claimant can never feel secure,' Savnith stated. 'There must always be folk who envy him and want to take his place.'

  Carryn didn’t try to argue with him. You might pity Benner, she thought, if he hadn’t brought it upon himself. She paced slowly round the rest of the room. Spacious, but unwelcoming, though the floor was covered with rugs, and the furniture richly inlaid and upholstered in bright jewel-coloured velvets. There seemed to be a chill emanating from the stones of this castle, and a sense of danger and creeping evil hovering in the air.

  As Savnith had predicted, two women servants were waiting in a corner of the room. When Carryn nodded to them, they dropped curtsies and addressed her as 'M'lady.' She indicated that she and Lerina wished to retire to bed, and they fussed around, pouring out water, laying out night clothes, turning down the sheets.

  Then, at a nod from Savnith, they left. They’d worked in complete silence and they left in the same silence, eyes downcast as they bobbed curtsies. Fear hung about them like a miasma.

  Carryn looked pointedly at the door.

  Savnith gave her a taunting smile. 'The lady wishes to retire! I shall leave you to disrobe, but I shall not be far away.' He turned to the bodyguards. 'See that you guard the ladies' sleep well.'

  They nodded and two of them moved across to stand beside Carryn, while the others remained near the door.

  Savnith took hold of Lerina's arm when she would have moved towards her mother. 'She is to sleep in the next chamber,' he said to Carryn, as if Lerina couldn’t understand plain words.

  Lerina twisted away from him. 'Don't touch me! Don't ever lay your blood-stained hands on me again!

  You reek of violence and pain.'

  The veins in his forehead swelled as he strove to master his rage at this sudden attack. 'Take her away!' he ordered, nodding to the Hashite bodyguards. The two of them escorted Lerina out, but neither made any attempt to touch her.

  At the door she turned. 'Good night, mother. May our Brother watch over you tonight.'

  'Get her out of my sight before I forget myself and give her the whipping she deserves!' roared Savnith.

  Lerina smiled as she was led away.

  Savnith looked across at Carryn. 'Tell her to be more careful what she says in future, if you value her life.'

  Then he slammed the door behind him.

  When Carryn had washed and donned the fine nightgown, the lamps were turned down a little, but not extinguished. 'We're here purely to protect you, lady,' one of the bodyguards told her. 'We mean you no harm, but our orders are to stay with you at all times during the night.'

  'If you really were protecting me, you'd get me out of here and back to my father, Aharri Bel-Ashkaron,'

  she retorted.

  'We were hired by the Lord Benner,' one said and her voice hinted at regret. 'We gave him our word.'

  'Could you not even help my daughter?'

  'We've given our word on her as well.'

  Carryn sighed. When Hashites gave their word, they would keep it, though it cost them their lives. She climbed listlessly into the high soft bed. She could see no chance at all of escaping from here. She was hungry and, she admitted at last as she lay down, afraid. Sorely afraid of what Benner might do. But she wouldn’t give in to her fear this time. And she wouldn’t become Benner's creature. Not even to save her daughter.

  CHAPTER 15 EVREN'S REVENGE

  In the morning Carryn wasn’t allowed to rejoin her daughter. A meal was brought in to her on carved wooden platters, each of which was a work of art in its own right. She lo
oked at the food longingly, but could sense the taint, so shook her head. When the women tried to persuade her, pushing titbits at her lips, she threw the platter across the room. She wouldn’t willingly eat drugged food. Even the fruit juice seemed wrong, so she continued to thirst and did her best to adjust her body accordingly.

  The Hashite bodyguards were replaced by others, who nodded to her, then stood watchfully at opposite sides of the room.

  She dressed in the robe the women offered her, a beautiful garment made of a lustrous pink material with silver embroidery at neck and hem. They’d taken her own clothes away with them and she preferred not to receive Savnith in a state of undress.

  He scowled when he came in to see her. 'I’ve sent to inform my lord of your foolishness in refusing to eat.

  He'll no doubt insist that you be force-fed, and I shall take pleasure in doing that myself. Your present suffering is quite in vain, lady. You might just as well eat now.'

  'You may be able to force me, but I shall never eat drugged food willingly.'

  He sat down on a hard stool by the door. 'I have orders to watch you myself and report to my lord on your moods and behaviour.'

  'Watch, then.' Carryn walked across to a chair on the other side of the room and sat with her back to her motley group of attendants. Closing her eyes, she began to meditate. She was missing the morning gatherings and longed for the inner strength they gave her. As she cleared her mind and sank into tranquillity, it seemed, it really did seem, as if her Brother's hand was upon her shoulder, gently encouraging.

  There was an oath and someone shook her roughly. Savnith's contorted face was so close to hers she could see every pore in the coarse flesh. There was a suggestion of a dark shadow on his forehead, like a smear of dirt. 'You can just stop doing that, lady!'

  'Stop what? I was merely closing my eyes. Lacking food and drink, I'm feeling tired.'

  He didn’t move away. 'You were calling upon your weakling of a god.' His voice was harsher than usual and he seemed to be fighting back rage. 'I have orders to prevent that. You're destined for the Serpent.' He paused, gave her a very knowing look and added softly, 'One way or another. I had you myself last time, you know.'