Shadow of the Serpent

by Shannah Jay

  'I haven't seen you here before, fellow. I'd surely have noticed a big strong lad like you.'

  'I've come in from one of the outer settlements, honoured Servant. Never been here before. But I heard that a man can really satisfy himself in Tenebrak and I though I'd try it. Then I met this woman here an' she was right willing.' Benjan smirked and nudged the man next to him, a nudge that sent him careering into the Servant.

  As the man fell backwards into the draperies, Benjan followed, saying loudly, 'Hey, I'm sorry, sir! Did I hurt you?' Hidden from the queue by the folds of draperies, he seized the Servant by the front of his black robe and said quietly, 'If you make one sound, you're dead.'

  The Servant goggled at him, opened and shut his mouth a few times, then sucked in breath for a yell.

  Benjan's female companion poked him in the throat and the yell gurgled to nothing before it could be released. Hidden by the draperies, Benjan banged the man's head against the wall and the Servant sagged limply, held up only by Benjan's strong hands.

  'Yes, sir. I see, sir. Of course I'll come with you.' Benjan continued to act as though he was conversing with the Servant, but it was the work of a moment for them to pull his unconscious body right behind the drapery into one of the many recesses from which the Servants observed those coming to make sacrifice. Even in the shrine itself, the black robes trusted no one.

  The woman helped strip the Servant's clothes, and bind and gag him with the strips of material they carried in their belt pouches. 'It's a waste not to kill him while we're at it,' she grumbled, tying the last knot really tightly. 'He'll be twice as vicious when he recovers and it's the women who come here who'll suffer for it.'

  'Our Brother doesn’t approve of killing, and nor do I. If you want to kill wantonly, join the First Rank, Gallian.' He donned the Servant's robes, stooping a little to try to hide how short they were on him. 'Now, try to look as if you're afraid of me.'

  She gave him a quick grin, then shrank back and acted as if she were trying to pull away from him.

  He seized her by the shoulder and began pushing her forward, saying loudly, 'Foolish women, do you dare to question our dread lord's Servant? You shall repent that under the whip.'

  The people in the line looked carefully elsewhere, at their feet, at the walls, at the back of the person in front, all seeming terrified of catching the attention of an angry Servant. Benjan hustled his companion past them as quickly as he could.

  When they were behind the great black altar, another Servant came forward to meet them, his face alight with evil intent. 'Good! She looks nice and strong. We're using the metal-tipped whip today. We need all the power we can call up tonight.'

  Benjan let go of Gallian and chopped the Servant neatly in the neck. Very efficiently, they pulled him into the nearest vacant cubicle and tied him up. Gallian peeped into the adjoining cubicle and saw a terrified woman lying bound and naked on the floor. 'Just a minute, big fellow,' she whispered, and went to slit the woman's bonds. She grabbed a robe that had been tossed into the corner and gave the woman a push. 'Put this on and get out while you can, dear. Best to leave openly and stumble, as if you've just been whipped. No one will question you then.'

  The woman was gone before Gallian had finished speaking.

  Working as a team, in the smooth way that was instinct to them after the years of training, the assault group of Hashites captured and bound eight Servants of the Shrine, stacking them in one of the side cubicles.

  Several narrow escapes from discovery were avoided by the same teamwork. The captives were then stripped naked and shoved into the wheeled baskets every large shrine possessed for the removal of dead bodies. No one wanted to take the blood-stained robes with them.

  Before they left, however, the Hashites set fires in remote corners where they could burn unnoticed until they really caught hold. Then the baskets were pushed out openly through the side doorway.

  'The Serpent's been hungry tonight,' Benjan said to anyone who looked askance at him. These were few.

  Most people avoided eye contact and moved away as fast as they safely could. No one tried to stop them. And thanks to their efforts, there were not now as many Servants left to walk around the shrine.

  When the eight unconscious bodies had been loaded into a cart and covered with rags, the driver winked at Benjan and clicked to the draft nerids to move off. The Hashites scattered without another word, to make their way unobtrusively to the Guild House as planned.

  'Did you get them?' Viran asked when Benjan reported back.

  'Yes. Eight. That now makes four of them for each of ours they killed, as our Council agreed. And we set fires in the shrine. Let's see how the Serpent deals with that.' He was too sickened by what he’d seen in that dark place to take pleasure in his success. 'I just hope people get out safely.'

  'You're growing very tender-hearted, Benjan. And you still insist that we shouldn’t kill these vermin?'

  Benjan folded his arms and shook his head. 'I wouldn't have let you kill the others if I'd known what you were planning. You struck swiftly there.'

  'The First Rank planned it. You know what some of those assassins are like, really enjoy their job. And we did need to give our Lord Claimant a very sharp lesson about how he treats us Hashites. We left all the bodies in very prominent places.'

  'We of the Third Rank do not and should not kill.'

  'We of the Third Rank were deliberately left out of the first retributions.' Viran shook his head. 'But if I'd been consulted, I'd have agreed this time.'

  'You'd have been wrong. Our Brother doesn’t approve of needless killing. Besides, if we cleanse them of the Serpent taint and then turn them loose, they'll wish they were dead. It'll be far more of a punishment than killing them quickly. And it'll terrify Those of the Serpent. Far worse, to them, to see Servants of the Shrine brought back to sanity.'

  'You still think you can cure them?'

  'With the help of the Sisters. That's why I've sent the prisoners to Silverhill.' He half turned and then came back to clasp Viran's hand very tightly. 'I think we shall not meet again in this life, Craftmaster. May your next life be full of joy.'

  'You can tell that?'

  'I sense it as a strong possibility, yes. When we've finished dealing with those offscourings of a cesspit, I must leave Tenebron, you see, and I can't tell when I'll return.'

  'You still believe the Sisters' Quest will succeed?'

  'The Kindred's Quest,' Benjan corrected. 'And yes, I hope for it, but I think it'll be a desperate struggle. It's one thing to attack Those of the Serpent in small groups. We Hashites can win such encounters. It's quite another to clear the Serpent from the whole land when the Lord Claimants’ guards are supporting them. And a creature in its death throes is at its most dangerous.'

  'May our Brother go with you, then.'

  'And with all of you here. I shall return to Tenebrak when I'm able. Doubt it not. Until then you and your deputy can rule the Third Rank.' Full of emotion, for he’d sensed Viran's death as more than a possibility, Benjan turned on his heel and left.

  * * *

  At Silverhill, the eight Servants lay chained naked in the cellars. They’d recovered enough to spit abuse at their captors and call loudly upon the Serpent to save them. One of the men guarding them was so terrified by their threats he went to fetch Aharri. After listening to them for a short time, his face went rigid with loathing and he ordered that the prisoners be gagged.

  'At times like this, I come close to forgetting all my Merryan taught me, all she lived and died for,' he said to his daughter when he went back upstairs to share a meal with his guests.

  That night three Sister Healers slipped into Silverhill by three different routes. Carryn gave a cry of joy as the first of them was brought to her chamber. 'Resha! Oh, Resha! You're still alive.'

  The two women hugged and sat down to share their news.

  When Benjan joined them, the Sisters donned their blue robes and it was a precious moment of joy i
n the darkness of the times that the five of them were able to share a proper Gathering, a thing none of them had been able to do for a long time.

  After that, while the loving energy still hummed through them, they healed Evren of the slow poison, leaving him weak but clean again, with Shilla fussing over him.

  Then they all descended to the largest of the cellars. The first of the Servants of the Shrine was brought in and laid on the floor in the centre of the now grim-faced circle. He lay there, terror warring with hatred in his face, then as they blended into a healing circle around him, he began to thrash about violently. The viciousness left his eyes like water draining from a pool and suddenly he gave a loud cry and collapsed into unconsciousness.

  'He’s returned to himself,' said Resha, laying her hand upon his forehead.

  After a short time, the man opened his eyes again, stared around him and began to sob. 'What have I done? What have I done? Why did you not kill me? I don't deserve to live.'

  'You deserve time to expiate your crimes,' said Resha severely. 'Go out and do some good, for a change.

  There are enough fugitives in the wildwoods. Join a band of them and fight against the Serpent.'

  'Will I - will I be able to stay clear of the taint?'

  'As long as you avoid the shrines and that filthy incense of theirs.'

  Four of the men were saved; four were too far gone in evil. When they were placed in the circle, a darkness seemed to settle around them, and a shadow writhed briefly on their foreheads. No healing power could reach through that darkness and as the Kindred warred desperately with the shadow to save these men, death rattled in their lungs and throat and they shrivelled into tortured bundles of limbs.

  'We killed them,' said Resha sombrely when they had finished.

  'Their souls were already dead, sucked dry of their humanity,' said Benjan.

  'We couldn’t have left them sunk in villainy,' said another of the Sisters, putting her arm round Resha. 'We were remiss in the past, but now, with danger all around us, we can’t afford to be weak. We tried our hardest to save these men. No one can succeed in everything.'

  Resha nodded. 'I know that, and yet I still feel like a murderer.'

  'I doubt even Herra could have done more,' Benjan said, gathering her to him to hug her shaking body close to his solid warmth. 'I can feel the strength of healing in you, Resha. You have a great Gift.'

  She nodded, already regaining control of her emotions. 'Our Brother has blessed me,' she agreed softly.

  'The path ahead won’t be easy,' he added, kissing each of her cheeks in a brother's gentle salute, 'but if we don't save our world, think how many others will lose their souls.'

  She laid a hand on his arm. 'Thank you, little brother. You offer me precious comfort.'

  * * *

  The following evening, as they were eating their meal, Aharri looked at his daughter. 'Shall you stay here with me now, Carryn?'

  She shook her head. 'I can't, father. I'm called by our Brother. The Quest must continue.'

  'I knew it, really. But it's hard to lose you again, daughter.'

  'You have your tasks and I have mine.'

  'And Lerina?'

  'She's part of the Quest, and already showing our Brother's Gifts.'

  Aharri looked across at Benjan. 'I don't need to ask you to guard them carefully. I've seen how you and my daughter look at one another since her return from Tenebrak. Can I ask where you're going?'

  'To the High Alder,' said Carryn. 'To Danak, where Katia was born. We shall meet the others there.'

  'If they survive,' said Benjan sombrely.

  'They'll survive to meet us there,' Carryn said serenely, her face shining with that other light that sometimes filled the Kindred when the God was whispering in their ears. Then her face crumpled into tears. 'But we shan’t all survive the day of confrontation. Oh Benjan!' She clung to him.

  'Who will not survive?' He couldn’t help asking, though he wished the words unsaid a second later.

  'It’ll depend on what we do - on what our enemies do. Not even our Brother can tell that. We must be ready, all of us, to give our lives, if necessary.'

  Benjan laid his hand upon hers. 'There's a price to be paid for everything.'

  Next to them Lerina nodded. 'The price of wisdom.' The words were spoken softly, but they seemed to echo in the room for a moment.

  CHAPTER 17 THE SEABLOWN COAST

  The last link in the chain of people working with Herra against the Serpent was Soo. When she came down to the planet, she found refuge with a family of traders and she soon realised how lucky she was to have found them. They saved her from falling foul of Those of the Serpent and then, because she looked so different to them physically, they pretended she was the wife of Ivo, the youngest son. When they continued their travels, they took her with them without hesitation. She had no way of finding Mak, but at least she was safe with them, and was learning to manage on the planet.

  On the day Benjan walked into the city of Tenebrak to meet Viran, the five traders' wagons were rolling across Fen-Halani, heading for the capital, Fenlanik. Ivo's wagon was leading the group, because that was how the deleff had started off that morning, much to Giff's annoyance. Giff preferred his wagon to lead the family group and usually the deleff did this automatically.

  Soo and Ivo were sitting under the colourful new awning on their wagon, which had been bought second-hand. Giff had a nose for such things, and he’d found this one in storage in a farmer's barn. It had been restored and outfitted at the family's expense. Sadly, in these troubled times, abandoned wagons could be found occasionally in the towns or villages where their owners had either been killed or had gone over to the Serpent. In either case, the deleff usually left immediately. In the old days, traders' wagons had passed from one family member to another down the generations, or had been commissioned new. No one had ever seen them lying about like this.

  The raas pads used for springing on the wagons softened the worst of the bumping on this ill-maintained stretch of track, but still, it was better to hold on to something. Soo shivered as she clutched the awning frame. It was a cool day and the sun seemed to have lost its warmth. It was well into autumn, and Giff said it was time to think about where they would travel during the winter this year, for they dared not return to the family farms because the Servants of the nearby local shrine had become rather too active for comfort.

  Staying in one place was dangerous nowadays. The Initiates of the nearest shrine were apt to seize you and force you to make sacrifice, or punish you for not being able to.

  They would head towards the south, Giff decided, and find somewhere warmer to trade through the winter, a place where you didn't get damp winds like these sucking the heat from your flesh. He never admitted he was growing older, let alone that his joints were stiffening and had begun to ache in damp weather. They might, he said, go to Jan-Halani. Not Tenebron this year. The Serpent was too firmly entrenched in Tenebron. And not Setheron, either, for that was even worse.

  Soo looked sideways at Ivo as the big wagon jolted in and out of the ruts, wondering whether to suggest that they roll back the awning to get the warmth from the sun on their shoulders and faces. She was still not used to the diurnal cycles of planetary life, with their sharp changes in temperature. She’d spent most of her life indoors, in climate-controlled structures, and the last few years she’d been living on the satellite circling the planet. But if she asked about the awning, the wagons would all have to stop while she and Ivo rolled it back, so in the end she decided to say nothing. Giff didn't appreciate being slowed down.

  The Sisters managed things best, Soo thought, sighing. They were able to control their body temperatures so that the climate had a minimal effect on their personal comfort. Even Davred was now able to control his body quite well, he’d told her just before she fled down to the planet. Of course, Robler had scoffed at that, as he scoffed any time people said something positive about Sunrise. She knew Robler had hidden th
e readings from Davred's body monitor, even from Mak, the satellite's physician, but she didn't need to see them. If Davred said he could do something, then Soo believed him.

  'What's the city of Fenlanik like, Ivo?' she asked idly. She and Ivo had grown comfortable together now, and in many ways appeared to outsiders like the husband and wife they were pretending to be. But he wasn’t Mak, and sometimes, when she thought about her husband, she had to turn away from Ivo to wipe the tears from her eyes and regain control of her emotions. She didn't even know if Mak were dead or alive, though something inside her always insisted he was alive. The transcaps were strong, for all their simplicity of structure. It wasn't likely that he’d been killed, even though he’d crashed. She had only broken her arm, after all.

  Ivo pulled a face as he thought out a response to Soo's question. 'Fenlanik's a low-lying swampy sort of place. I don't know why any Lord Claimant would want to make it his capital city. The Shambles there get flooded every few years, and the houses of the rich, too, in the bad times. And as for the food - yeuch! It's awful. Fish and seafood most of the time. They actually eat boiled seaweed, would you believe? Slimy stinking stuff! Though they make pretty good cheese in the uplands of Fen-Halani.' Cheese was Ivo's favourite food.

  'Why do you go there, then, if it's such a swampy place?'

  'Because we always have done. Pa likes to follow tradition. He says the family's been travelling on this circuit for centuries and that proves it's a good thing to do. You can't tell him any different - you know what he's like once he's got an idea fixed in his mind.'

  Soo smiled. Giff Bel-Nathryn was a type she’d not met before, full of bombast and hot air, yet brave enough to try to open her transcap after he’d seen it crash into a lake. He was absolutely fascinated by anything new. He was kind, too, though he’d scorn the idea. But he hadn’t hesitated to take her into his family and look after her, and she’d seen him give trade goods to the poorfolk sometimes, or invite them to his camp for a good meal. Of course he always had a good reason to explain that, but she’d seen Nyris hide a smile at his explanations more than once.