“A dream,” he said gruffly. “Show us where the donkey is, and I’ll give you a dream.”
The donkey was tethered to a thorn bush half a mile farther down the track. The saddlebags were there, too, but they were empty. Shadow had torn them apart, and all our belongings were scattered over what looked like half the valley. Everything that could be opened had been opened, and everything that could be torn apart had been torn apart. The flatbreads were nothing more than dirty crumbs in the dust, and what looked like a powdering of snow on the rocks was probably the contents of Sezuan’s little bag of salt. I crouched down and stared at the devastation with a sense of hopelessness.
“Why did he do that?” I whispered to Sezuan. I was so afraid of Shadow that I was almost too nervous to look at him. The idea of talking to him was too scary to contemplate.
Sezuan didn’t answer me.
“I haven’t got any,” he snapped at Shadow. “You could have saved yourself the effort.”
Haven’t got any what? I thought.
“Master promised Shadow a dream,” said Shadow sulkily. “Shadow found the donkey for Master, and now he wants his dream!”
“You didn’t find it, you stole it,” said Sezuan.
“Master promised!”
“Yes,” said Sezuan softly. “So I did.” He looked at me. “Dina, take a walk.”
Take a walk? When we had been doing nothing but walk for days and days? But I understood him well enough. He wanted me out of the way while he gave Shadow his dream. Reluctantly, I got up.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Take the water skin. I think there may be water down there by the willows.” He pointed farther down into the valley, to some crippled-looking saplings that didn’t look as if they would ever be trees.
I didn’t want to go trudging down there on my own. I suppose I was curious, too. What was it that Sezuan didn’t want me to see? But at the same time there was something about the way Sezuan was acting, and Shadow, too, that made me wish I was anywhere but here.
“Go,” said Sezuan. His eyes were deep and dark green like bog water.
I went. The empty water skin hung across my shoulder, limp like a drowned kitten. Had Shadow drunk the water or just poured it out on the ground? At least he hadn’t ripped it apart, the way he had with the saddlebags. Behind me, I heard the flute now, soft and kittenish. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears, because the notes seemed almost to stick to the skin, sweet and somehow rotten at the same time, like syrup gone bad. Unhealthy. Wrong.
There was water by the willows, a thin trickle barely deep enough for me to fill the skin. I dipped both hands in it and rubbed my face and neck, trying not to hear the flute. Not until the notes stopped did I dare return to Sezuan, Shadow, and the donkey.
Sezuan looked strangely absent-minded. Shadow, on the other hand, was stretched out on the ground with his arms flung wide like he was waiting to embrace somebody. His eyes were only half shut, but even though his pupils were visible, huge and dark under the heavy lids, it was obvious that he didn’t see anything. A thin thread of spittle seeped from the corner of his mouth.
I shuddered. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“He is dreaming.”
“I dream almost every night, but I don’t look like that while I’m doing it!”
“Some dreams are dangerous. If you don’t know how to control them.”
“Control them? Who does? I can’t decide what to dream.”
Sezuan silently held out his hand for the water skin. I passed it to him, and he poured a little water into his palm, drank most of it, and wiped his face with his wet hand.
“Someday, you may,” he said. “It’s possible to learn.”
“For people who have the serpent gift?”
“Not just for us. But it makes it easier.”
I shut my mouth and didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t like the way he had said us, as if he and I were the same. But all of a sudden, Sezuan seemed only too willing to talk.
“You asked me why he did this,” he said, nodding at the ripped-up saddlebags.
“He was mad. Or mad at us, at any rate.”
“No. He was looking for something.”
“What?” I couldn’t hold back the question, even though I had decided I really didn’t want to know any more about this.
“We call it dream powder. It’s made from a particular kind of nut that grows down south. Some Blackmasters use it when they are training an apprentice, so that the apprentice may learn to understand the nature of dreams better. It takes a long time to learn how to control dreams, your own and those of others. The dream powder is a sort of shortcut. But it is a hazardous shortcut. One you should avoid.” He looked at me seriously, but I didn’t quite see the point of these warnings. I wanted nothing to do with his serpent arts, with or without dream powder.
He looked as if he expected an answer, but I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. In the end, he just sighed, drank more deeply from the water skin, and gave it back to me.
“You drink, too,” he said. “Or you’ll give yourself a headache.”
I drank obediently. I looked sideways at Shadow, still on his back staring straight up at the sun. Wouldn’t that harm him? I almost wanted to put something over his face, but at the same time I was scared of touching him.
“Is that why he looks like that? Because you gave him dream powder?”
Sezuan shook his head. “No. I told you I didn’t have any. And a Blackmaster who is strong enough does not need the powder. But that was how it started for Shadow. When everything began to go wrong. Today he is a slave of the dreams, not their master. And that is… not good.”
I looked at Shadow’s empty eyes and gaping mouth. Not good. No, he could say that again.
Sezuan picked up Shadow’s stick and looked at it for a moment. Then he flung it as far away as he could. It whirled through the air in a lazy curve to land in a cluster of goatleaf farther down the hill.
“We have to move on,” he said. “Help me get him onto the donkey.”
I wished we could just leave him. But an animal might come, perhaps even a wolf. And the way he was now, he couldn’t even defend himself against an ant. He moved not a muscle to help or hinder when Sezuan hauled him up and tried to push him across the donkey’s back.
“You will have to help,” said my father. “Take hold of his wrists and pull when I lift.”
I looked resentfully at Shadow. I didn’t want to touch him. He smelled—a sour, unwashed smell. Worse than the donkey, which after all only smelled the way donkeys ought to smell. But I did take hold of his arms and pulled, the way I had been told. There was something wrong with his skin—small flakes of it came off and stuck to my fingers after I had touched him. I rubbed my palms against my skirt and then wished I had chosen something else to wipe them on. The thought of having tiny bits of Shadow stuck to me was sickening.
The donkey moved in an irritated manner, and Shadow’s limp body nearly slid right off again.
“Hold him,” ordered Sezuan. “I have to find something I can tie him with.”
Reluctantly, I took hold again, although this time so far up that I didn’t have to touch his bare, skinny wrists. Sezuan took the tethering rope and managed to secure the awkward burden on the donkey’s back. It was almost as if Shadow had stopped being human and had been turned into a cumbersome bit of baggage.
“There,” said Sezuan, tightening the last knot. “That ought to hold him.”
The donkey tipped back its ears and looked extremely unenthusiastic. And now that it had enough to do carrying Shadow, we still had to carry everything else ourselves. Everything, that is, that Shadow hadn’t made completely unusable. But at least we had the water skin now.
The sun was so harsh the rocks looked nearly white. A reddish brown lizard stared at us with bulging eyes. Apart from that, the valley seemed deserted.
“Come on,” said Sezuan. “There must be people somewhere.”
<
br /> My belly, which had had nothing but water, rumbled hungrily. People. Bread. Maybe even a bit of goat’s cheese? But what were we going to do about Shadow? No peasants would welcome him under their roofs, no matter how charmingly Sezuan played to them.
And even that was getting ahead of ourselves. First, we would have to find a peasant.
I clicked my tongue at the donkey, and we began to walk again. Slowly, because Shadow was a heavy burden for a small donkey like ours. Shanks’s mare will get you anywhere in time, Mama used to say. But the Sagisburg was still a long way off, and right now it felt as if we would never get there.
DAVIN
The Wyrm
Quietly, the boat slid through the dark waters. The oars broke the surface softly and carefully, and the creaking of the rowlocks was the only constant sound. No one spoke. In the bow, two men armed with long spears were gazing warily into the waters of the lake. They had been standing like that for more than an hour now. I wondered what the spears were for—fish, perhaps? We weren’t short of supplies. Two newly butchered lambs lay in the shadow of the bow.
A thin haze covered the lake. Each time an oar dipped into it, the veil was swept away for a brief moment so that we could see the black mirror surface. The waters ran deep here. If anyone was to drop something over the side, they would never get it back.
I squirmed, trying to find a position that would make my ribs hurt a little less. My motion caused the chains to rattle, and one of the guards turned around angrily.
“Quiet!” he said. “Or we might use you instead.”
“For what?” I asked, although I knew that that would probably make him even angrier.
“For the Wyrm,” he said. “So you’d better not tempt me!”
Worm? What worm? I looked questioningly at Nico, but he shook his head faintly. He didn’t know either.
Around us, the cliffs rose like the walls around a fortress. The sun had disappeared behind the mountain ridge, and now there were only a few golden streaks left to show that it hadn’t quite set. Other people, elsewhere, could still see it. It was only here in the shadow of the Sagisburg that night had already fallen.
Mira began to whimper with fear and homesickness and huddled against Nico, even though he couldn’t hold her properly with his hands chained the way they were. It didn’t exactly improve matters when one of the guards hissed at her to “shut her silly gob.”
“Leave the child alone,” said Nico. “It isn’t her fault.”
Even though he said it very softly, one of the guards rapped the back of his neck with his spear butt and told him to shut up, and then, of course, Mira started crying for real. Her high, clear girl’s voice rose like a seagull’s cry, echoing across the still waters of the lake.
Something was moving down there. Something big. Hidden forces caught at the boat like a current, turning it sideways. The oarsmen fought to right it, then backpaddled as if our lives depended on it. And no wonder.
In front of us, less than three oars’ lengths from the bow, rose a…
Waterspout? Giant fish?
No.
It was a head. A scaly gray head longer than Mira’s entire body. It rose above us and kept rising, on a neck like a… a tree. Or something bigger still. A cloud column. The neck of a tornado. Something too big to be alive.
But it was alive, the Wyrm. Black eyes stared down at us, lightless like the eye-holes in a skull. Mira screamed, a thin, hoarse cry of terror, and hid her face against Nico’s shoulder.
“The lamb,” called one of the spearmen. “Toss her the lamb, now!”
His partner seized one lamb and heaved it across the gunwale, as far away from the boat as he could. The Wyrm didn’t seem to care. It—she?—she kept staring down at the boat with those eyes of hers, dark and deep like mountain caves. A single mouthful, I thought. She could snap the boat into halves with a single bite. She opened her maw a little, and a stench of dead water plants, ooze, and rotting fish poured over us.
One spearman panicked. He drew back his arm, preparing to throw.
“No,” hissed the other, knocking the spear from his hand. “That’s no good against the likes of her. Save it for the smaller ones. Toss the other lamb!”
Splash. The other dead lamb dropped into the lake a good distance from the boat.
Slowly, the Wyrm turned her head. She snorted, spraying us with droplets of lake water and wyrm drool. Then she sank back into the waters. Staring down, I could make out the darkness that was her body, huge and massive like a reef. To her, we were no larger than fleas in a dog’s pelt.
“Row on,” barked the man still holding his spear. “Let’s get docked before she returns.”
The oarsmen dug in with a will. The boat shot across the waters, and soon an opening appeared among the cliffs.
“Now, that was the Wyrm,” said the spearman. “She is the biggest of them all. She has quite a few children, though. Just thought I’d mention it, in case anyone was thinking of swimming out of here.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The opening turned out to be the entrance to a cavern. Jagged spears of rock jabbed out at us from above and below, like the fangs of some giant monster. It took a great deal of skill and caution to maneuver past the entrance reefs without getting the hull ripped open, but once we were in, the boat glided smoothly over a black and unrippling surface toward the landing, where a small group of men awaited us.
Some were obviously castle guards, in leather armor reinforced with iron bosses, and with the double dragon of the Draconis family painted on their chest-plates. The last two were… well, they had to be Educators, I supposed, though they didn’t look anything like I had imagined.
Dressed in black, yes. I knew that. Even their hands were covered by black gloves. But the most striking thing about them was their faces.
It was almost impossible to tell the two of them apart. Black hoods clung closely to head and neck and left only their faces free, and those faces were…
Not old. Not young. Beardless. Hairless. Not even a trace of eyebrows. It was as if everything that might have made them slightly human had been covered or removed. So that was what an Educator looked like. Like something hatched from an egg, rather than born. They looked as if they had never been children.
Mira literally squeaked with fear and began to cry once more. After meeting the Wyrm, I didn’t see how she could be frightened by two men, no matter how black-clad they were. But then, I wasn’t six years old and far away from home for the first time in my life.
One of the city guards climbed out of the boat and onto the floating dock to give a roll of parchment to one of the Educators, who took it and began to read from it.
“Mira, daughter of citizen Anton Aurelius. Graylings Davin and Nicolas.” He gazed at us in a measuring way, like a farmer would look at livestock he was thinking of buying. “Some are brought to the Sagisburg to learn, others for punishment. But I say to you, there is no punishment that is not also a lesson. And whosoever receives his tutoring with an open mind and heart may walk away from it unbent and unblinded, like a true Prince’s man. But he who closes his heart and will not receive his lesson, he shall abide in darkness forever.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. What did he mean that a punishment was a lesson? What exactly was I supposed to learn from having my hands chained and my ribs kicked in? But perhaps that was just the way Educators talked.
“Mira Aurelius,” he continued, “follow Master Aidan into the House of Teaching.”
Mira clung to Nico and wouldn’t let go. Nico whispered something into her fair hair, but it didn’t make her any calmer that I could see, and in the end one of the castle guards lost his patience. He grabbed her hand so that she lost her grip on Nico’s shirt, lifted her onto the dock, and gave her a push toward the Educators.
I held my breath. Mira’s flashpoint was low at the best of times, and if she began to scream and kick Master Aidan’s shin the way she had done with Master Rubens, I didn’t like to
think what might happen.
But Mira was too scared to act in her normal manner. She just stood there, tears streaming down her cheeks. And when Master Aidan took her hand, she followed him unresistingly, stiff and silent like a small wooden doll.
“What about the graylings?” asked one of the castle guards.
The other Educator looked down at the parchment in his gloved hand. Probably every horrible crime that Nico and I were supposed to have committed was outlined there in detail.
“Send them to Mascha,” he said. “He knows how to rid a body of the rebellious spirit.”
DAVIN
Blank-back
A long, long staircase wound its way up from the docking cave. Some of it was hewn from the rock itself, some was brick, some wood, a spindly column winding its way through caverns and shafts and tunnels inside the mountain. Squeaking bats darted this way and that, rapid fluttering shadows on their way to this night’s insect hunts. I envied them their wings. We trudged upward, step by step—hundreds of them—and my ribs hurt me worse for every one of them.
The stairs ended in a narrow yard, surrounded by tall buildings. Above us rose the crenellated walls of the Sagisburg, with parapets and turrets and embrasures. A little ahead of us I could see Mira and Master Aidan the Educator. They were headed for a large black door, a door so tall it made even Master Aidan look like a child. Mira looked more like a very reluctant ant. Above the door a sign had been carved, in huge sharp letters: IN EVERY THING A LESSON, it said, so it was probably the entrance to the House of Teaching. Ant-Mira cast a last, desperate look over her shoulder, and Nico raised his hands in a sort of wave. He intended it as a comfort, probably, but the chains made it a sorry-looking gesture.
One of the guards shoved me none too gently in the back.
The Serpent Gift Page 19