Serpent's Blood

by Brian Stableford

  "Fraxinus wants to ask you something," she said.

  "He's poring over your new map again. He thinks that he's established our exact position with the aid of the stars whose position he was plotting last night, although he has no training in the Arts Astronomical.

  He's worried about something. "

  "He usually knows what he's talking about more or less," Andris conceded, leaning over to caress her cheek by way of farewell before he turned the mare and trotted back to the wagon.

  Fraxinus greeted him warmly, but Ereleth who had burrowed out a home-from-home in the overcrowded spaces of the larger wagon in spite of the merchant's objections, and was always lurking there like a night cloak in the lower branches of a tree was as coldly contemptuous as ever.

  "Our latitude is easy enough to determine," Carus Fraxinus told him, as he settled himself into an uncomfortably narrow niche. "The only difficulty lies in determining how far to the east or west we are. I believe, on the basis of careful observations of the stars, that we're just about here, very nearly at the place which you've marked CP. That stands, I think, for Corridors of Power."

  "That's right," Andris said,

  "Out I don't know what the name's supposed to mean. If that's where we are, there's no sign of it out there. All the drago mite mounds look pretty much like another to me.

  Mind you, if any one of them were sufficiently different to require a label, the difference would prob aMy be inside. Maybe the Corridors of Power is where the empress of all drago mite queens lives. "

  "Perhaps," Fraxinus echoed, although that was obviously not what was exercising his mind.

  "If I'm right, we seem to have made our way here with remarkable accuracy."

  "It's on a direct route across the narrowest reach of the hills,"

  Andris pointed out.

  "We had to pass by it sooner or later."

  "Not quite direct," Fraxinus pointed out.

  "Anyway, we haven't followed a straight course. We've changed direction several times to avoid approaching drago mite warriors."

  Andris met Fraxinus's eyes steadily, not quite able to take aboard the inference which the merchant seemed to be inviting 358

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  him to draw.

  "You're not suggesting that the warriors have been steering us towards this spot, are you?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Fraxinus said.

  "It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?"

  Ereleth made a noise that might have been a laugh or a snort of disgust.

  "If you're right about our position," Andris said, determinediy ignoring the old woman, 'it looks to me like good news. We can't be certain that the range of the hills is exactly the same now as it was when the map was determined, but if it's broadly similar, and this inlet of marshland still exists, we're less than two hundred kirns from the edge of the marsh provided only that we maintain a course as close to due south as possible. We'll be out of here pretty soon. "

  He carefully didn't add: Provided that we can stay out of trouble.

  Fraxinus nodded, accepting the change of tone readily enough. "We'd then be able to swing south-west towards the river," he said. "Its banks boast several sizeable towns if what the Eblans told Elema is true."

  "We might bear slightly east of south instead, to the Lake of Colourless Blood," Andris pointed out.

  "It might be interesting to find out what such a name signified and if your ultimate destination is the Navel of the World, that would be a straighter route."

  "That region's in the heart of the marshes," Fraxinus said dubiously.

  "It might well be unpopulated and the territory's certain to be difficult, perhaps impossible for the carts.. We've brought them so far that I'm reluctant to abandon them now. If there are towns along the river there'll be roads between them, and merchants who might pay a high price for metal goods. If we follow the river until it bends sharply to the west, a direct route from there to the Navel of the World would take us close to this place you've marked as Salamander's Fire. Do you have any idea what that might mean?"

  Andris had no idea what any of the names inscribed on his map might mean, but this was a phrase he had recently heard spoken, and recognised.

  "You might ask Dhalla, if she ever returns," he said uncertainly.

  "That dark lander boy who's always hanging around with Jacom Cerri told Merel that Dhalla claimed to have Salamander's fire burning in her heart."

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  Fraxinus turned^ to Ereleth, who was watching them impassively.

  "She win return," the witch-queen said, for all the world as if there could not be an atom of doubt about it.

  "Do you know what the phrase might mean, majesty?" Fraxinus asked, with scrupulous politeness. Andris had not been witness to many conversations between Fraxinus and Ereleth but it was common knowledge in the camp that their inevitable differences of opinion regarding the future of the expedition and its members had ripened into a profound mutual dislike.

  "It's a metaphor," Ereleth said, in a patron ising and faintly insulting manner.

  "It refers to courage and strength of will, in much the same way that one might say that a person with an inborn talent for witchcraft had Serpent's blood."

  "In this particular context," Fraxinus observed, 'it must refer to something concrete. "

  "Your map is full of metaphors," Ereleth pointed out in her turn.

  "Who knows what secrets and mysteries they might conceal? Perhaps the whole thing is the prank of some ancient lo remaster or a pretty folly." The way she said it implied that if anyone knew the truth it would be a witch-queen, but that she had no intention whatsoever of sharing her sec Bets with lesser mortals although she had allowed Andris to draw a new map for Fraxinus once they had crossed the river in the fofrest. Andris doubted that she was serious in suggesting that the lore of the forefathers might be corrupted to the extent that it, entertained pranks and follies, but he still had cause to regret the low esteem in which most Xandrians held his art and the jibe stung.

  "Does the map's reference to the Corridors of Power imply that people had explored the Dragomite Hills before the map was designed?" Andris asked, in the hope of reducing the tension by raising the discussion to a safely theoretical level.

  "Why else should a single location within such a vast swathe of territory be marked for special attention? Perhaps there were people living in association with the drago mites even then, and the Corridors of Power are the nests which humans and drago mites share."

  "Perhaps that's so," admitted Fraxinus.

  "Although the dark- landers didn't know for certain that there were humans in the hills until very recently, their legends told them it was true."

  "I don't understand how or why people should ever have entered 360

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  into such

  an association," Andris said.

  "Were they captured as nest-slaves, do you think, or did they set out with the intention of domesticating the drago mites

  "One way or another, people seem to get everywhere," Fraxinus said.

  Those fungus-forests which grow on the slopes of the drago mite mounds are unearthly, but as you saw in the Forest of Absolute Night, humans can live quite adequately on a diet of unearthly food, and much that's unearthly is useful in other ways. Aulakh could probably list half a hundred unearthly items of medicinal value- and half a hundred poisons too. Perhaps drago mites can be tamed. Perhaps the secret of taming them was known to the forefathers, even though we have forgotten it. "

  "If you've calculated our position accurately," Andris said, looking down at the map uneasily, drawn back to dangerous speculativ
e ground in spite of his earlier intentions, 'we're as close now to the Corridors of Power as we ever will be. Practically on their doorstep, in fact. If the people who captured Princess Lucrezia were allied with drago mites they might be bringing her here. She might be here already though I can't imagine how we could begin to look for her. "

  He didn't look at Ereleth while he said this, although he was well aware that his words were likely to be of more interest to her than to the merchant.

  "That's pure speculation," Fraxinus said dismissively.

  "I'm sure, on reflection, that our position is mere coincidence. Tomorrow .

  . ."

  "Tomorrow will come soon enough, Carus Fraxinus," Ereleth said, in her irritatingly knowing fashion.

  "So will trouble, if it has the inclination. There is a destiny which overhangs us all, whether or not you have the wit to see it. You think that you are master here, but the hand of fate has made a pawn of you."

  It was obvious to Andris that Fraxinus thought this speech a fine farrago of nonsense, designed to irritate him, but the merchant only sighed, with a slight smile about his face.

  "I dare say that you're right, majesty," he said.

  "We common men are not party to your witch-lore, let alone to the secret commandments which guide you. We can only stumble blindly towards our own destinations, guided by delusive dreams and half-remembered myths. You must find us very amusing when we pore over our enigmatic maps and try to fit their seductive labels to the little lore 361

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  we know, and to thffew

  fragments of the Apocrypha of Genesys we have gleaned along the way."

  The queen's eyes darkened at the mention of secret commandments, but she knew that she was being teased.

  "A merchant's eyes are never blind," she said calmly.

  "It's merely that they find it difficult to focus on anything but wine, coin and finery."

  Fraxinus laughed. Andris didn't.

  Fraxinus was quick to make a better reply, saying: "We are all traders here, except yourself, majesty. Even Checuti understands the value of information and the price of loyalty, and knows that there comes a time when bargaining has to cease so that trust and friendship may begin. Perhaps it's true that I look at the map with a trader's eyes, whereas a queen of witches might find it easier to decipher- but I'm no less anxious to know the truth behind its every detail, and I must make what efforts I can to divine that truth. I'd be grateful for any help you cared to give me, whether your motive were to aid my efforts on Xandria's behalf, or merely to mock my ignorance."

  "I would be glad to help you," Ereleth said, making it sound more like a threat than an offer, 'if I could be certain of your loyalty. "

  We are all traders here, Ahdris echoed in the privacy of his thoughts, and your majesty is clearly no exception- but Fraxinus won't rise to that kind of bait. He won't place his expedition under your command, nor divert it to your whim by so much as a sim. When he spoke, however, it was to make yet another attempt to steer the conversation away from conflict. '1'fear that the lore in which this map is based is very old," he said to Fraxinus.

  "Perhaps the meaning of the labels was clear enough in those days, although we have lost the sense of them. On the other hand, it may be that the things to which the labels refer no longer exist, and it would be no help to us to know what they once meant."

  "Perhaps," said Fraxinus.

  "But not all the labels are unhelpful or unknown. I've never heard of the Pillars of Silence or the Silver Thorns, but people still speak of the Crystal City as an actual site in the south of the Spangled Desert. It's not an actual city, but it is a place. Serpents' Lair is probably straightforwardly descriptive, and it may be significant that Serpents were rumoured to be in the forest as well as drago mite-riders. Perhaps they too have found a route across where none existed before. Similarly, Salamander's 362

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  Fire may mean no more than a region where Salamanders live." He paused to glance at Ereleth, but she made no comment.

  "Chimera's Cradle and the Navel of the World are known to us from the Lore of Genesys," he went on, 'in connection with the Pool of Life and the garden of Idun. Although these are not among the labels on the map we might expect to find them- or the place where they once were- in this same region. The phrase Nest of the Phoenix is suggestive of some kind of regeneration, and I am tempted to link it with the Pool of Life, from which the Lore of Genesys promises that the incorruptible stone might one day be born . . . "

  '. . . nourished by milk and blood," Andris quoted, remembering, 'but not colour less blood, I presume. How does the next passage go?"

  "When that day comes you must seize and use the stone, and turn the evil of corrosion to the good of inscription," Fraxinus said promptly.

  Had Ereleth not been there Andris might have asked him whether that was the ultimate aim of the expedition, but he was wary of embarking on such a flight of fancy while the old woman's acid tongue threatened corrosions of its own.

  Fraxinus must have sensed his reluctance, because he went on in a different tone.

  "Perhaps I'm a fool to interest myself in such things," he said lightly.

  "The kind of fool who thinks that there are things in the world more valuable than newly minted coin. The kind of fool who seeks for treasure in dreams, and takes Goran the Forefather too seriously by far when he tells his remotest descendants that there is no sin but forgetfulness. In Xandria, I fear, we have committed that sin a thousand times over. We know that we lost the art of making maps because the Slithery Sea defied the maps we made- but how much more must we have lost along with the memory that we once had it?

  Such things as this were not invented and shaped without reason. Although the vast chain of tellings and retellings might have altered them and distorted them to some degree, they still retain shadows of their original meanings. I'm the kind of fool who believes that we must respect the reasons our forefathers had for asking us to remember these things."

  Still Ereleth said nothing, although she must have been tempted.

  Andris wanted to reply, to say that if a man like that might be 363

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  reckoned

  a fool, then he would be one too, but he was distracted by an uncomfortable sensation in his guts, which was probably the ordinary legacy of a slightly spoiled meal.

  All this is futile, he thought, though he was ashamed to say so in front of Carus Fraxinus. In the end, it will come to nothing. I am a pawn in the hand of fate, as Ereleth says, and I have no choice but to go to the destiny which she appoints. I can't afford to care about badly coloured maps and merchants' dreams, no matter how sincerely I might wish that I could.

  The flap of cloth which screened them from the driver of the cart was pulled aside then, and the driver poked his head through the gap. It was one ofJacom Cerri's men, Kristoforo.

  "Rider comin' up to the column from the right-hand side, sir," he reported laconically.

  "All alone looks like the giant."

  Andris could not help meeting Ereleth's triumphant gaze.

  "Now," she said, 'we shall know what there is to know. Then we must do what there is to do- merchants, soldiers, thieves and princes all alike. "

  Andris discovered, somewhat to his distress, that he felt suddenly and horribly certain that the caravan had been steered to where it now was, and that the Corridors of Power- whatever they might be- had not as yet been utterly destroyed by the blight which had cut such a swathe of desolation through the enigmatic hills. I 364

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AM]

  6 mossassor and its fellows had been

  running for some time before they found Hyry Keshvara, and their pursuers had almost caught up with them while she was a burden to them. Once she could walk they began to draw ahead again, but the dark landers who were following them did not give up. Hyry supposed that they thought correctly that a party of three Serpents in the company of a single injured golden might be far the easiest prey on offer in the southern reaches of the forest, while still constituting a conquest of which they could boast to their drago mite-chasing fellows.

  Three times Hyry suggested to Mossassor that she should go to meet the dark landers and do what she could to persuade them to abandon the chase, but Mossassor would not hear of it. She got the impression that its two companions especially the one named Ssifuss - would have been glad to see her put to some practical use, but Mossassor evidently believed that she was a valuable addition to their party.

  "Musst not try to sspeak to ssem," it told her sternly.

  "Ssey have dartss, put you to ssleep. Sshoot firs st assk quesstionss mussh later. Too late for uss. Reassh hiliss ssoon. Ssey give up ssen.

  Sscared. "

  Until they reached the hills, however, the Serpents maintained a relentless pace, rarely sleeping. She got the impression that they might not have stopped to sleep at all had she not been with them, although they certainly were not free of the need to sleep. She realised after a while that the seemingly hostile and disdainful attitude of the two Serpents who rarely spoke to her was due at least in part to their weariness. Much of the time they seemed to be in an almost trance-like state, semiconscious at best.

  Hyry didn't find it easy to get Mossassor to redeem its promise 365

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  to tell

  her stories by^ way of recompense for the one she had told it, and didn't like to press the matter too closely while it was in a distressed state, but she did gather that its own people had myths which referred to the ship which had supposedly brought humans to the world, and to the things that the forefathers had built when they first disembarked from their marvelous craft.