Serpent's Blood

by Brian Stableford

  "You just said he wasn't one of your men," he pointed out.

  "He isn't," Checuti said.

  "I've just been having a chat with him, about matters of mutual interest.

  But he is here, and if you're determined to take someone away with you, I'd rather it was him than me."

  "I don't want him," Jacom said.

  "I should have turned him loose myself instead of trying to stop you getting him out and I'm not going to make the same mistake again. If you can't hand over the princess, then it has to be you, Checuti, alone or with everyone else. I can't settle for anything less- not without a fight." Jacom stiffened as a second figure appeared in the hallway behind Checuti.

  It was a very big man, and for a moment he assumed that it must be the amber-but then he saw that the man a?

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  captain," Checuti said, in a voice that was gently derisive without being openly insulting.

  "It might be brave, and it might even qualify as dutiful, but it's not sensible. People could get killed- including you. How would Belin get his daughter back then? Carus Fraxinus won't turn back once he's in the forest no matter what problems might drop into his lap. Your first priority is to find Lucrezia -- isn't that what you said? Go find her, then. Don't waste time with stupid heroics. It isn't worth the risk."

  "It's a matter of duty," Jacom informed him again, wishing that his voice didn't sound quite so doleful.

  "And a matter of personal pride, too. It was my men your dark landers felled, my men you lured away using the amber as a diversion. Did you arrange for him to be captured in the first place? He was working with you all along, wasn't he?"

  "No," the thief master said.

  "He was just an innocent man you arrested, and you didn't let out even when you discovered that he didn't cripple your guardsman. His release was just an extra twist I added to my little plot, for purely aesthetic reasons. You laid the groundwork yourself for the trap which you fell into, captain you and you alone."

  That accusation stung, by virtue of its accuracy. Jacom had been the officer in command; he had jailed the amber and then laid an ambush to stop him getting out of jail. If he had only been in the courtyard outside the Inner Sanctum and not high on the wall, perhaps the princess would never have been captured. He could have run to intercept her, to save her from A fate worse than . . . but this was no time for flights of idle fancy.

  "If you don't come out peacefully," Jacom said stubbornly, 'we'll have to come in after you. " He heard Purkin's words echoing in his mind: Ambush is safer, sir . . . Lie low and wait. . . Always best. Why did the patron ising swine always have to be right?

  "The world would be a far better place if all would-be heroes were strangled at birth," the thief master opined with a heavy sigh - but he was quick to add, in a more confidential tone: "If you're playing this scene for the benefit of your men, forget it. They don't want to risk their lives any more than you want to risk yours. I've told you how to find the princess- that's reward enough for a night's work."

  The trouble was, Jacom thought, as he examined his options, file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Brian%20Stableford%20-%20Serpents%20Blood.TXT (231 of 495) [11/1/2004 12:26:21 AM]

  that Checuti was

  very probably right. He began to wish ~ perversely, he knew- that he had not initiated this conversation. Checuti was right to argue that no reasonable man would start a fight in which half his company could end up dead unless he had no choice- but on the other hand, wouldn't it make a mockery of everything he was supposed to stand for as an officer in the king's guard if he simply walked away from the man who'd stolen the contents of the king's treasury on the day before Thanksgiving? In a romance, of course, he would have challenged Checuti to single combat, but he knew full well that if he were to suggest anything along those lines the only response he could sensibly expect would be loud and mocking laughter.

  "I have to take you with me," Jacom said, desperately casting about for a face-saving move.

  "If you come out now, the rest of your men can go free. I promise that you won't be harmed."

  "My men wouldn't like that," Checuti said.

  "They'd lose faith in me if they thought I was the sort of fool who'd hand himself over on the strength of a promise like that. To tell you the truth, captain, they're a lot more enthusiastic to fight than I am. My dark landers are very edgy- trouble at home, you see and the others are prepared to fight to the death rather than lose all the lovely bright coin they worked so hard to earn. What I can do, though- as it happens is give you the big amber.

  You could take him back to Khalorn with you, and hand him over to the governor."

  Jacom was startled by this offer.

  "You just said he wasn't one of your men," he pointed out.

  "He isn't," Checuti said.

  "I've just been having a chat with him, about matters of mutual interest.

  But he is here, and if you're determined to take someone away with you, I'd rather it was him than me."

  "I don't want him," Jacom said.

  "I should have turned him loose myself instead of trying to stop you getting him out and I'm not going to make the same mistake again. If you can't hand over the princess, then it has to be you, Checuti, alone or with everyone else. I can't settle for anything less not without a fight."

  Jacom stiffened as a second figure appeared in the hallway behind Checuti.

  It was a very big man, and for a moment he assumed that it must be the amber but then he saw that the man a?

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  was too dark, and guessed that it must be Burdam Thrid. Thrid whispered sometMrftg in Checuti's ear.

  Checuti suddenly burst out laughing.

  "Ten men!" he called out to Jacom.

  "You're running this bluff with ten men You're a man after my own heart, captain but with only ten men you can't even catch us, let alone fight us.

  Next time, bring an army."

  As he stepped back, leaving the door open, Checuti casually flicked his right foot sideways. The lantern fell over, the tall glass shattering as it hit the wall. Oil spilled out of the reservoir, igniting as it flowed. The hallway filled up with blazing liquid and smoke billowed out of the doorway.

  Checuti and Thrid had moved back along the corridor; they were no longer in view.

  Purkin was already coming forward at a run, with the other two men close behind, but Jacom knew that Checuti was right. Ten men had little or no chance of intercepting and capturing the people running out of the farmhouse especially if their exact disposition was known, as it had to be if they had been so accurately counted.

  A mad cacophony of sound burst forth as the geese, startled by the fire and smoke, gave voice again.

  "Get Checuti!" Jacom shouted as he ran forward.

  "Never mind the rest of them just get Checuti."

  He had no doubt that his men would do their very best to obey the order, but no confidence that they would be able to do it. While he was drawing his sword Purkin raced past him, and made as if to jump the moat of blazing oil that was now (sealing the doorway, but changed his mind. Jacom didn't blame him for falling back-it would have been a stupid thing to do.

  Purkin bawled at the men with him to go left and right, to cover the windows as well as the doors. When the sergeant chose to go to the left Jacom immediately went to the right, but he was already possessed by the cold certainty that it would all be for nothing.

  Cleverness had indeed been needed to win the day, and he had not found enough of it. Yet again he had proved himself inadequate.

  As he ran, he held his sword high, ready and eager to cut at anyone he met.

  He was, however, able to curb the impulse when he finally did run into someone which was perhaps as well, given that it was on
ly poor Herriman, limping painfully because some callous brute had kicked him very hard on his bad leg.

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  Fortunately, that was the only significant injury Jacom's party sustained.

  Unfortunately, it was the only significant injury anyone sustained- although it took a long time to ascertain the fact because it was not until several hours had elapsed that the last of the men trudged back to the governor's manse in Khalorn to report that their miscellaneous pursuits had all ended in ignominious failure.

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  l ucrezia soon decided that the Forest of Absolute Night was even more beautiful by night than it was by day. By day, the sunlit canopy was like a huge ornamental ceiling in which greys, greens, blues and purples extended infinitely in a mad but fairly consistent pattern, while the amazingly intricate peripheral flora which each of the vastly thick boles supported presented the appearance of a vast shock of wiry hair which had gone almost completely grey. By night, however, the canopy became a vast mysterious vault of not-quite-darkness, in which there were millions of tiny moving lights fireflies, glow-worms, and the light-lures deployed by angler-anemones while the parasitic communities dressing each tree-trunk came. strangely alive, each one revealed by its luminous web work as a miniature forest in its own right.

  The princess realised for the first time that

  "Absolute Night' had never been intended to signify

  "Absolute Darkness', but rather to imply shades of meaning too delicate for ordinary patterns of expectation. It was easy to think that this was, indeed, true night: night lit entirely by courtesy of living things both earthly and unearthly and not by virtue of distant suns. .

  All these night-time illuminations were very pale indeed, far less bright than the starlight of an open and cloudless sky, but such was the architecture of the forest with extensive 'highways' of flat bare ground between the root-discs which extended for three or four mets from every hole that travel was by no means impossible. Nor, according to Hyry Keshvara, was it overly dangerous. Hyry had taken great care to prepare Lucrezia for this part of their journey even before they reached the forest proper.

  "There aren't so very many dangers, if you're careful," Hyry had explained.

  "Even at night, when the forest fauna is at its most active, it's reasonably safe if we can carry lanterns as we go. The

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  lanterns won't light enough of

  the forest floor to let us see our way, but their yellow glow is unusual enough to make most of the night hunters steer well clear.

  "The monkeys are mostly harmless, although they can give you a nasty bite if they're frightened. They live way up in the canopy, but they're curious as well as omnivorous, and every bit as active by day as by night. They occasionally come down to the forest floor to forage, and they sometimes come into a camp when people are sleeping.

  If you don't panic, they won't.

  "The smaller panthers are much more discreet, being stealth hunters with more sense than to stalk humans, but the big ones can be nasty.

  The biggest ones of all are the nightdoaks; they're the ones whose favourite trick is to lie on the lower boughs and drop down on passing prey. They're usually after chevrotain and pigs, but they take the dark landers goats whenever they get the chance, and a horse or a donkey looks to them like a feast and a half. If ever one should drop on you when you're riding don't waste time wrestling, just do whatever you can to get clear the night cloak will always stay with the horse.

  "Not all flower worms are dangerous, but only dark landers can tell the poisonous ones from the harmless ones. I dare say you've got three or four kinds of flower worm venom in that belt of yours, and the relevant antidotes too, but don't think that makes you an expert on the live creatures. Play safe and avoid the lot. The same applies to whip snakes but if you do get bitten, don't get hysterical. People usually recover, even without treatment.

  "If you run across wild pigs, don't annoy the males- they can be very bad-tempered. The same applies to tame pigs- don't think that they'll be as docile with you as they are with the dark landers who own them. Come to think of it, the same applies to the dark landers themselves the males can be very touchy when they're on home ground, and it's annoyingly easy to offend against their multitudinous taboos quite by accident.

  "In general, if you see anything you don't recognise as safe, steer clear.

  You'll accumulate the usual motley of bites and stings, but you've already had your ration on those, and some of those healing salves you have are at least as good as anything Aulakh Phar uses. I know I'm the one who's been selling them to Ereleth for years years and more."

  '31

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  The last item in this catalogue of advice had been imparted less than politely, butdcrezia was glad of every admission that the instruments of her Art really were of some value. Privately, Lucrezia thought that the manner in which she'd coped with the attack three nights before had demonstrated that fact beyond a shadow of doubt, but Hyry had not been impressed, even when she had seen the bodies and measured the exact extent of their accelerated corruption.

  "It's too slow," Hyry had said.

  "Look at you all bruises. If they'd been fighting men instead of country bumpkins they'd have killed and butchered you long before they keeled over.

  Anyhow, poison is too indiscriminate, even if you put it on a knife instead of your fingernails it poses too much of a danger to its user. Having the antidote on your person is no guarantee that you'll have time to use it."

  The princess had contented herself with replying that what she'd done had been necessary. That was true, and Hyry knew it was true.

  "I'm no knife fighter," Lucrezia had pointed out, 'and had I not done my part, you certainly couldn't have killed all four of them, even though they were mere farmhands. "

  After that initial exchahge, whose sharpness had been accentuated by a keen awareness of how lucky they had been to avoid death or serious injury; they had both avoided the subject but Lucrezia still felt a fierce desire to prove to Hyry that she was, in fact, a useful companion to have. Now, as they stopped for what was scheduled to be a longer than usual midnight rest, Lucrezia thought that it might be both safe and sensible to advertise her wares a little.

  "I know more than you might think about the forest and its produce,"

  she told Hyry.

  "Witch-lore inevitably touches on the unearthly, and the forest is the best-known haunt of unearthly life-forms around the empire's borders. The lore handed down to me contains a good deal of information about flower worms and the like."

  "I know that," Hyry said.

  "It was because I trade in this region, with the dark landers that Ereleth became a valuable customer. I may not be an initiate into all of Ereleth's mysteries, but I know more than you might suppose about your potions and pastes more, perhaps, than Aulakh Phar. Not being a woman, he's at a file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Brian%20Stableford%20-%20Serpents%20Blood.TXT (237 of 495) [11/1/2004 12:26:21 AM]

  disadvantage. Among the dark landers it's the women who are the healers and herbalists, and they won't discuss such matters with their own men, let alone golden men. That's probably why kings of Xandria traditionally wed witch-wives instead of appointing male ministers of witchery. The eccentricities of dark lander folkways have effects which extend as far as the citadel of Xandria -- you might remember that when we run into the dark landers

  "I'm surprised we haven't seen any of them yet," Lucrezia said, while she pondered the implications of these comm
ents.

  "It's a very big forest," Hyry said.

  "The dark landers are nomadic herdsmen, moving with their pigs and goats in small family groups.

  They have big festivals occasionally, at which times they come together in large numbers, but they have to disperse again fairly quickly or their animals would graze all the way to the bark of the neighbouring trees.

  Although ninety per cent of that white fuzz is purely parasitic its presence actually protects the trees against various nasty blights which would otherwise never allow them to grow so big. The dark landers have to be careful to limit the damage their animals do1 suppose that's the sensible basis of their system of taboos, although random additions have elaborated it into a mad riot of mostly arbitrary commandments. "

  "Ereleth's actually been here," Lucrezia said.

  "A long time ago when she was an apprentice herself. None of her royal apprentices ever came south, but there's a lot I could learn hereabouts, if I had Ereleth or some other witch to teach me."

  "I'd like to help, highness," Hyry said insincerely, 'but I'm no custodian of that kind of lore. I just happen to have picked up a little useful knowledge here and there while doing business. I don't have an armoury like yours.

  How did you come to be wearing it when you fell into Checuti's cart? "

  "I'm a practitioner of the Art," Lucrezia said, rather stiffly.

  "A

  true Artist is never without her resources. I never went to bed naked, even in the privacy of the Inner Sanctum. "

  "No wonder they said . . ." Hyry stopped abruptly, and opened her mouth again as if to say something else instead.

  Lucrezia was quick to intervene.

  "What did they say whoever they might be?"

  "Nothing," the trader said.

  "The one thing that was never said within the walls of the tower 233

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  was

  nothing," Lucrezia observed contemptuously.

  "Everyone had an opinion about ^yerything, and the gossip doubtless spread to every corner of the citadel before spilling out into the streets and harbours of the city. Did they say that even my father was afraid of me, and couldn't wait to export me to some godforsaken isle three-quarters of the way across the Slithery Sea? Did they say that Lucrezia the pupil had outstripped her teacher Ereleth, in zeal if not in expertise? That much was true, I believe but if they said that I'm mad, or dangerously foolish, they were wrong. I'm a witch, but witchery is just one more aspect of the lore, like mathematics or mapmaking but more useful."