Serpents Rising (Eve of Redemption Book 3)

by Joe Jackson

  “You promise?” Uldriana repeated, and her eyes wandered as she seemed to try to place exactly what the word meant. “An oath?” Kari nodded, and Uldriana spoke to her mother soothingly in their language once again. Her mother still seemed to take little comfort in those words, and after another couple of minutes of holding her daughter, she turned and spat on Kari. She barked something angrily in their language and then disappeared into their teepee.

  It had been a long time since anyone spat on Kari, aside from the venomous spit of a sylinth in combat. She walled up her anger well and refused to retaliate. She told herself that if the situation was reversed, she might have done the same. It was hard for her to assign any value to the life of a demon, but that Uldriana was loved by her mother was undeniable. Only once in all the times Kari had hunted and killed underworld demons had she ever thought about their families and what their mothers might think: in her previous hunt, after she killed Turillia. To see the relationship between Uldriana and her mother gave Kari pause, and reminded her of what Erik had said about Makauric during their mission on Tsalbrin. He’d been afraid to befriend the brys: afraid that liking the brys would’ve made him hesitant to do his job properly. Now Kari understood exactly what he’d meant.

  Sonja and Danilynn emerged from the tent, and they watched Kari wipe the spit from her face and breastplate curiously. Kari took her pack from Sonja and slung it over her shoulder, and she ignored their questioning glances while Uldriana went inside the tent. Kari looked around the village, and found that none of the mallasti people would even look at her. Never had she felt ashamed to be a demonhunter; she didn’t now, but there was something in the pit of her stomach she couldn’t explain. How had demons made her feel like the bad guy?

  Uldriana emerged after a couple of minutes dressed in a light tan traveling robe. It was obviously hand-made by her people, and it had belts and straps and pouches here and there for gathering things on a journey. It was also an appropriate color for traveling the golden grassy lands of her home realm: it would help her camouflage a little better. She carried no obvious weapons on her person, but Kari stared at the mallasti woman and reminded herself that between the claws, those powerful jaws, and the arcane power that flowed through her blood, Uldriana was far from defenseless, armed or not.

  The last farewell of her people was brief, but when they left the village and Kari looked back over her shoulder, she could see the people were all watching them depart. Kari found she didn’t care that they were demons on this matter: they were fearful for their daughter and friend, and Kari felt for them. Uldriana didn’t seem particularly happy to be leaving her people, but her expression was that neutral, almost disinterested one that was so common in the village. She seemed to sense eyes on her, and she turned to look at Kari while they walked.

  Distraction seemed a good course of action. “What are these totem poles for?” Kari asked, and she gestured to the decoratively carved pieces as they passed the outer boundary of the village.

  “It is the sign of our people,” Uldriana answered, no trace of impatience or sarcasm in her words or voice. She paused and gestured toward the nearest of the totem poles. “Note there are four distinct animals carved into the wood: the bear, the elk, the snake, and the hawk. The hawk sits atop the pole because he is our…how to say it…he is the symbol of our village. We are the ‘People of the Hawk.’ The three other animals represent our neighboring villages: the People of the Bear, the People of the Elk, and the People of the Snake.”

  Kari found that interesting, but she didn’t press their guide further about it. Instead, the demonhunter turned and looked at Sonja over her shoulder. “When are you going to put up your masking spell?” she asked.

  “Already done,” Sonja said, glancing to the north.

  “This masking enchantment of yours…how does it work?” Uldriana asked, and she slowed in her walk so Sonja caught up and walked side by side with her.

  “From a distance, it will make us transparent,” the scarlet-haired woman explained. “It doesn’t cover the other signs of our passing like the grass moving or any tracks we leave, but it’ll still be hard to spot them from a distance. I also have it dampening the sound of our voices, so only those who get close will be able to hear us, even here on the plains.”

  Uldriana nodded. “And now you have done this without the aid of your book or the arcane strands around us,” she said. “Your confidence grows as you unlock the arcane power in your blood; this is good.”

  “I still don’t understand why I was able to do some things and not others, even when I was using my book,” Sonja said. “I mean, you said that it was because I was doing twice the work needed to produce the effects, but why did some things like wards and shields work, but others didn’t?”

  The mallasti girl stopped and turned to face Sonja, and placed her hand over the larger woman’s heart. “This is where your strength lies,” she said. “You are very intelligent, but there is a strength and a purity in your heart we do not often see. Your heart seeks first to love and to defend, and the arcane power in your blood responds to your call in those situations because your heart is stronger than your mind. Unlike your hunter companion, whose heart and mind have been trained only to kill.”

  Kari bristled at that, but Sonja answered the challenge before she could. “That’s not true,” her sister-in-law said. “Kari’s spent her entire life defending others, whether from your kind, or my forebears, or whoever. You’re wrong about her; she has a purer heart than I do.”

  “Is that so?” Uldriana asked.

  Kari paused before rising to the challenge. The girl was staring at her with that impassive expression, and in light of that, the question sounded less like a challenge than an honest desire for confirmation. “I know my kind are called demonhunters,” Kari said, “but we hunt problems, we don’t go out looking to cause them.”

  “How many of my kind have you killed, hunter?” the girl pressed, folding her arms over her chest sternly.

  “Six,” Kari answered. “I’ve only ever fought and killed six of your kind, and every time it was because they came to Citaria to kill my people. It’s not like your kings send your people to my world to look at the scenery, Uldriana. You can get upset with me if you want, but those six of your people that I killed…they killed a lot more of my people before I got rid of them.”

  The mallasti girl looked back and forth between Sonja and Kari a couple of times. “So you, too, are a defender?” she asked Kari, though she did not wait for an answer. “I find this strange; there is a more dangerous air about you, much more so than your companion.”

  Kari considered what she could or should tell the mallasti girl. She thought perhaps if she was completely honest, Uldriana would return that courtesy, and perhaps tell Kari a lot of things before they even rescued Se’sasha. “I’m the highest ranking hunter in my Order,” she admitted quietly. “I’ve been at this a long time, but that hasn’t changed why I do what I do.”

  Uldriana shook her head. “Still, I do not get the same sense from you that I do from your companion; there is something dangerous and vengeful within you, so much so that I can sense it just standing before you. We shall see if what your companion says is true,” she said, and then she turned to Danilynn. “This one I understand: she is a priestess, and she carries the strength and the convictions of her deity with her. She, too, seems dangerous, and perhaps even vengeful, but there is a serenity to her sense of purpose that pervades her, more so than you, hunter.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Kari said, drawing Uldriana’s gaze back to her own. “While I’m on your world, just call me Kari. I’m not a hunter while I’m here; I’m just a traveler and, hopefully, a negotiator.”

  “Yes, you are correct,” the mallasti girl returned with a deferential bow of her head. “Let us not dally; it will be some distance we must cross to reach the city of Saristor, on the border of Tess’Vorg and Sorelizar.”

  Morning transitioned into afternoon, and
Kari found the terrain of Pataria beautiful but quite a pain to cross while sore and pregnant. It was hilly terrain, and half the time was spent ascending. The downhill portions were no less strenuous on Kari’s back or legs. The sun was strong and the air was warm, but there was a persistent breeze that kept things bearable. Kari had no idea how the mallasti tolerated the heat with their heavy coats, but Uldriana was too embroiled in her lessons with Sonja for Kari to be able to ask about it.

  The demonhunter spent a lot of time speaking with Danilynn, and asked the priestess what had occupied her time since the Great War’s end. As Kari had expected when she first learned of the relationship between Eli and Danilynn, it turned out that Danilynn had traveled to the holy city of Sarchelete after the War’s end, where she took up working in the temple. She explained that she had been waiting for years for Eli to come find her, and had all but given up when Kari showed up with him at the temple that fateful afternoon. Above all, Danilynn said that it was good to be out and seeing the world again instead of serving in one place.

  Kari wondered what it was like to live and work in a temple. Even Grakin and Kyrie lived outside their temple in a house, so the concept of priests and priestesses who not only worked in a temple, but also lived in it, seemed foreign. Did they go out after their prayers and meditations to socialize with others in the city? Were they barred from romance with their fellow priests and priestesses, or were they expected to find mates among their own priesthoods? Kari supposed it had to be nice, on the one hand, to never have to worry about finding a “job,” or about feeding, clothing, or housing one’s self, but on the other hand, she wondered how sheltered the priests ended up on account of it.

  Danilynn seemed a pretty worldly woman, but then she hadn’t lived her whole life in the temple, just the few years it’d been since the Great War’s end. She’d been an adventurer before then, one who ended up embroiled in a plot to bring a demon king to Citaria. She’d no doubt gone through a lot in foiling that plan, and Kari wondered how much Danilynn might be willing to talk about it when Eli wasn’t around. More to the point, Kari wondered how much Danilynn might be willing to talk about Tor, and his relationship with Emma. As she glanced at Uldriana, though, Kari recognized this was neither the time nor the place for such topics.

  “So how are things between you and Eli?” she asked the priestess while they walked.

  Danilynn smiled, but her gaze stayed out over the grassy hills. “He seems more mature than I remember him,” she said quietly. “I’ve gotten older, but he’s grown up in that same time. He seems less concerned with his lineage than when we traveled together, and having helped you in Barcon apparently reawakened that old, adventurous flame in him again.”

  “Do you think you two will become mates?” Kari prodded, perhaps a bit too personally.

  The priestess shrugged. “I think we will, in time. Right now there’s so much to consider, and I’m a little hesitant to think about settling down with the weight of everything that’s come up in the last couple of weeks.” She glanced at Sonja and Uldriana, who were engrossed in their lesson. “We had a rather lengthy discussion about…making love, and what he expects, and what I expect. I assume you had a similar conversation with Grakin when the two of you became involved?”

  Kari nodded. “Yes. At first, I didn’t think I would be receptive to his advances all the time, either, but I think you’ll find that if Eli treats you well, and you really love being with him, your body will adjust. I know serilian-rir are supposed to be different than us, but I’ve found that’s not really the case. Not for me and Grakin, anyway.”

  The priestess smiled again. “Thank you, that’s something to think about,” Danilynn said. “You and Grakin share a special bond; I could see that even in the short time I’ve seen you two together. Even when he is angry with you, it’s tempered by his love and his respect for you, and that says a lot about both of you, and the two of you as a couple.”

  “The best advice I can give you is to be honest about everything,” Kari said. “No matter what the issue: how often you have sex, how he speaks to you, who makes the decisions, whether or not you want children. Always make sure he knows where you stand, because I think half of the arguments I’ve seen other couples have come from neither knowing where the other stands on the issues between them.”

  “That’s very insightful,” Danilynn said, looking off into the distance again. “He is very eager to make love, but I’ve told him that’s not going to happen until I’m sure it’s what I want – what we both want, that is. So in sharing a bed with him in your mother-in-law’s home, I found that I can trust him absolutely.”

  “So why the hesitation?” Kari prodded. “It’s not because he’s half-corlyps, right?”

  The priestess shook her head. “Not exactly. I suppose it is, in a way. It’s the issue of how long he’ll live, and the fact that he’ll still be young when I’m old and gray and dying. I’m still a little uncomfortable putting either of us in that position.”

  “It won’t matter,” Kari said, her thoughts turning to her erestram friend, Trigonh. “If he loves you, he’ll always be there, and a part of you will stay with him for all of his days, even if he finds another love.”

  Danilynn looked at Kari sideways and chuckled. “I forget sometimes that you’ve died and been resurrected,” she said quietly, hoping Uldriana wouldn’t overhear and ask questions. “It gives even more credibility to your words when you speak of these things.”

  Kari smiled and patted her friend’s shoulder. “Do you think you two will get married?” she asked. “Grakin and I never really talked about that step; being mated has been good enough for us, but I’ve always appreciated the ceremony when I’ve seen the humans or the elves perform one. Now that I’ve been granted a noble title, it’s something we’ll be discussing more, at the very least. I know Eli doesn’t have any family, but if you’re from the Tenari Kingdom like I suspect, you might be able to invite your family to the ceremony to meet your new husband.”

  “Something else to think about,” Danilynn said with a nod. “It has been some time since I’ve seen my family.”

  Kari watched the sun retreating toward the horizon, and realized it would be blocked off by the distant hills until they ascended another. “Uldriana, I think we should make camp soon,” she commented, hoping she didn’t interrupt the mallasti girl’s lesson with Sonja. The mallasti glanced over and nodded, then went back to her conversation without complaint, so Kari turned back to Danilynn. “So what drove you away from home, anyway? Askies Island is a long way from the Tenari Kingdom.”

  “Wanderlust,” Danilynn answered, as if expecting Kari would suggest it was trouble at home. “Garra Ktarra is the god of explorers, so it seemed I would learn and embrace little of his teachings if I stayed home and served there. So I thought to take in a bit of the world, and it was by blind luck that I met Tor, Jori-an, Rhiannon, and the others.”

  “Not Eli?” Kari asked curiously.

  The priestess shook her head. “No, he joined our group after a year or so,” she answered. “Anyway, I felt to deny the calling of exploration would be to deny the calling of Garra Ktarra, so I left home and came to Askies. I keep in contact with my family when possible, but they understand: a priestess cannot deny the calling she receives from her deity, and she must have faith to follow that wherever it leads, even if it is away from family. She must always trust that her deity leads her to where she needs to be.”

  Kari chewed on that for a minute, and tried to put her mother-in-law’s past into that perspective. Kari didn’t understand why Kaelariel would’ve called Kyrie away from her family just to move from one large city to another – and not even the holy city, at that. Kari trusted Zalkar, but she didn’t think her faith would be strong enough to walk away from Grakin and Little Gray if that was what he demanded of her. She just didn’t understand if that was what Kaelariel had done at all, and why he might have done so. She resolved to try to find out as unobtrusively as she
could when she returned home; Kyrie’s mate was still a demonhunter, and now under Kari’s command.

  The conversation trailed off but Kari met Danilynn’s eyes and the two smiled to each other as if to say we’ll talk more later. They paused halfway up a hillside, and Kari pointed out that it was a good spot to make a camp, sheltered on all sides by other hills, with no apparent signs of civilization anywhere near. Even with Sonja’s masking spell, it was better to keep their camp as hidden as possible. They set up their bedrolls and dug out a fire pit so Uldriana could cook some meat she brought with her.

  They shared a quiet but mostly cheery dinner, and Kari found she had a lot of things on her mind. Foremost, naturally, was the fact that she was pregnant. She hadn’t told Grakin that she was going to stop taking the herb that served as a contraceptive for rir females, but after their efforts had yielded nothing for over a year, she had given up hope that they would be able to conceive again. When she was a young woman, Dracon’s Bane had destroyed her ability to have children before she’d ever matured, so to find that Grakin had been able to sire children at all had been a miracle. Now, if what Uldriana said was accurate, they had conceived again not long before Kari went to Barcon, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the dreams of having a little girl had been somewhat prophetic. Either way, it was another miracle.

  Kari lay back on her bedroll when she finished eating and laid her hand on her lower belly. She was pretty sure the gesture wouldn’t be lost on any of her companions. A strange thought entered her mind as she relaxed, and a smile curled her draconic lips as she passed along her mirth silently. You’re going to be a grandfather again, Sakkrass, she thought happily.

  *****