The Serpent Gift

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  A hiss escaped me. He had tossed it back in! As if it didn’t matter, as if it was worthless. As if it hadn’t cost anything.

  “The real value lies not in the reward, but in the test itself,” he said, as if he could hear my thoughts. “That is your lesson for today.” Then he nodded at the guards. “Fish out the other one.”

  The dock rocked beneath their weight as they moved toward the edge. One of them went down on one knee. And stayed there for some moments.

  “Master,” he finally said, in a funny hollow voice, “he isn’t there.”

  They took out the boat and searched for more than an hour, until the Wyrm appeared and scared them back into the cavern. They poked and prodded with long stakes in the depths of the cavern pool and dragged hooks through the water, but they found nothing.

  “Wyrm ate him,” said one of the unfortunate guards. “Or he drowned. Can’t have made it out of here alive.”

  “I see,” said Master Vardo acidly. “And is that a point of view you would like to report to the Prince?”

  The guard flushed and muttered something almost inaudible that ended in a “no, Master.”

  Nevertheless, Master Vardo himself offered more or less the same opinion a little later, in the council chamber.

  “I regret deeply, My Lord Prince, but the young Lord Ravens is lost to us and must be regarded as dead. Whether he drowned or perished in the jaws of the Wyrm makes no practical difference.”

  Prince Arthos sat in his high-backed chair, regarding the Educator with his head slightly tilted to one side. His hard, egg-smooth face did not look inclined to lenience.

  “A dead Ravens. A dead Ravens whose unfortunate fate may be laid at my door. Is it the Educator’s opinion that I should thank him for this day’s work?”

  “No, My Lord Prince. The error is mine.” Master Vardo bowed his head.

  “Hmm. Yes. I might, of course, have my Master Educator executed to show my public wrath at this misdeed.”

  Vardo’s face remained smooth. I couldn’t tell whether the threat scared him or not.

  “My Prince has that right,” he said.

  “Indeed, I do. However, I am not convinced that Ravens’s followers will grasp the finer points. It will hardly diminish their anger against me or my bastard grandson.”

  “Probably not, My Lord Prince.”

  “Hmm. We acquired an unexpected pawn, Master Educator. But we played it badly. Go. I have other things to think of.”

  “Thank you, My Lord Prince.” Master Vardo bowed. “Does My Prince wish for the teaching of Davin Tonerre to continue?”

  It was as if Prince Arthos saw me for the first time. They had put leg irons on me again, as if it was somehow my fault that Nico had slipped his tether. A guard stood on either side of me, but they weren’t bothering to hold on to me anymore. It was as if they knew that I was so broken and harmless now that they hardly needed to guard me. I was still wet and cold all over, and chilled to my soul.

  “Is he making any progress?”

  “More than young Lord Ravens did. But it may take a few more weeks before we have him fully trained.”

  Trained. What did that mean? Was it when there was no longer any trace of the Davin I once thought I was? When I was no longer my mother’s son, or Dina’s brother, or Nico’s friend, but only a tame dog of the Prince’s? Or even worse. His executioner.

  For one short, wild moment I didn’t care about the Whisperers, didn’t care about Vardo and his threats. I saw it all clearly. This one moment was all I had. If I wanted to be myself, for however long they let me live, I had to do something here and now.

  I spun toward one guard, jerked his sword from its sheath, and flung it at the Prince with every last ounce of my strength. It turned in the air like a throwing knife and buried itself in the back of his chair. It stuck there, quivering, for a second, before clattering onto the marble tiles. A single scarlet drop of blood fell from the earlobe of the Prince onto his white lace collar, dyeing the edge of it red.

  For a moment, everyone stood frozen. Then the Prince’s bodyguard leaped on me, hammering me to the floor. Everything darkened, and I couldn’t see anymore, but I could still hear. Hear the voice of the Prince.

  “I want him whipped,” he said coldly. “Tomorrow morning, in the main courtyard, so that everyone will see it. And when there is no skin left on his back, he can follow Ravens into the belly of the Wyrm.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  They dragged me back to the Gullet, but not this time to Mascha and the old gang. Instead they opened another of the iron gates.

  “Hey, Davin,” called Mascha, “what’s goin’ on?”

  I couldn’t talk, but one of the guards answered for me.

  “He’ll spend the night in the stone coffin. And tomorrow you will see him again, at the whipping post.”

  “What did he do?”

  This time, Master Vardo answered.

  “He attacked and offended the Prince’s person. And tomorrow you will all see what happens to someone who spills royal blood.”

  A murmur spread through the Gullet, and not just from Mascha’s gang.

  “You mean, he wounded him? Davin, did you stick him?”

  “Shut up, dog,” snarled a guard. “You just mind your own business!”

  Another murmur ran around the cellar. And this time, a different sound followed. A firm, rhythmic pounding: clang, clang, clang. It was Mascha, hammering at the grille of the gate with his chain.

  “Stop that!” roared the guard.

  But Mascha didn’t stop. And now he wasn’t the only one. Clang, clang, clang. Scores of prisoners were pounding away, pounding the bars, or the floor, or whatever they could reach that would make a noise. The sound rose and rose, an infernal racket that wouldn’t go away no matter how much the guards yelled and threatened.

  “Get him out of here,” said the guard captain. “Or they’ll never stop.”

  They half dragged, half carried me along a long dark cellar passage. But behind us, the noise kept on, like when people clap and cheer a juggler or a tightrope dancer, and simply won’t stop again.

  They dropped me into a small cold hole that wasn’t even long enough for me to stretch my legs. This, it would seem, was the stone coffin.

  Master Vardo stood at the edge of the hole looking down at me. I couldn’t see what he was thinking. His black figure was just black, and the pale smooth face was as stony as ever. If I had hit him with the sword, would he even have been able to bleed?

  But there was silence in my head now. Blessed silence. The Whisperers were gone. And far away, faint but still audible, I could still hear the prisoners pounding away, strongly and firmly.

  “I won,” I told the stone face. “You lost, and I won.”

  He didn’t answer. He turned on his heel and left, and the guards dropped the grille on top of the hole and locked me away in the dark.

  DINA

  Master and Shadow

  There was no one on the mountain road except us. No one met us, no one passed us. And all day long, we saw not a single house. Late in the afternoon Sezuan succeeded in catching one of the big red-brown lizards and killed it with a stone.

  “Can you eat that?” I asked dubiously.

  “You can try,” he said, gutting it. “At least they are not venomous.”

  We made a small fire and boiled a little water. We had no real tea anymore, but I had picked a little valerian and sweet cicely along the way. There wasn’t any nourishment in it, but it soothed the stomach and made me feel that at least we had something. Sezuan wrapped the lizard in some leaves and put it in the embers to cook. I looked unhappily at the small green package as it began to steam and blacken. Was it really something you could eat?

  Shadow tossed away his mug so that hot valerian tea spattered across the rocks. “Taste bad,” he whined.

  I eyed him irritably. He sat there scratching at his chest with one hand, like a dog with fleas. Having hung across the donkey’s back for most of the
day, he had come to his senses late in the afternoon and had walked on his own for a little while. It had been a relief to be able to tie some of our bundles to the donkey instead of carrying everything ourselves, but I would have been quite happy for Shadow to dream on. The last hour he’d done nothing except whine and complain and get in the way. It was like having a giant three-year-old along. He was worse than Melli had ever been. Ten times worse.

  He crabbed his way toward me without getting up. The sour smell of him made my poor stomach turn so that I nearly brought the valerian tea back up.

  “Shadow is hungry,” he said, leaning toward me. “Shadow is really hungry.”

  I couldn’t stand it. I pushed him away and got up, but he caught at my ankle with one filthy, scaly hand.

  “One can eat children,” he said. “They taste better than lizard!”

  “Let go of me!” I kicked my foot to free it, but he was stronger than you would think, considering how gaunt he was.

  “Leave her alone,” snapped Sezuan.

  Shadow let go of me, but he scowled meanly. “The Day of Vengeance will come,” he hissed. “Shadow will be Master, and Master will be Shadow, and on that day, Death will eat his fill of little girls!”

  I backed away from him until my back met the donkey’s warm flank. My skin crawled all over, as if I had slept someplace with lice in the bedding. He didn’t mean it, the part about eating children. Did he? No, it was just something he said to scare me. And yet there was something about his eyes, about—about all of him, the bony hands, the scaly skin, the smell. If anyone ate human flesh it might be someone like Shadow. Someone who sneaked around in the shadows smelling as if he ate whatever he could get hold of, dead or living, fresh or decayed. A vulture without wings. And Sezuan wanted me to share a camp with this creature?

  “This is probably about as done as it will ever be,” said my father, rolling the black leaf bundle out of the embers. He cut it open and split the steaming lizard meat into three portions.

  Shadow gulped down his in four quick mouthfuls. I looked more dubiously at my share. The meat was pale, almost like chicken. I put a little in my mouth. There was no particular taste to it, no bitterness or sweetness, just a hint of charred wood. I ate the rest. There wasn’t much, and my belly rumbled desultorily. I almost wished we had another lizard.

  “Go ahead. Sleep,” said Sezuan. “You must be tired.”

  Tired, yes. To my bones. But did I dare? I glanced at Shadow. Would I be able to sleep at all, with him only a few arm’s lengths away?

  “Sleep,” said my father again, and I knew this meant that he would watch over me. He would stay awake and make sure Shadow didn’t hurt me. I lay down and fell asleep almost before I had pulled up the blanket, despite my unease, and despite a stomach that had been fed nothing except one third of a lizard and a cup of valerian tea.

  I was dreaming. I knew it was a dream, because I knew this darkness, this underground chill. The dungeon. But where were the snakes? The last time I had been here, there had been snakes. And where was Davin?

  He is not here.

  It sounded like a whisper, but no one had spoken. I shivered, both from cold and fear. If Davin wasn’t here, where was he? I could see almost nothing. A tiny bit of light filtered down from above, pale and bluish like moonlight. I touched the wall. It was slimy and uneven and damp like the skin of a slug. Where was Davin?

  I took a tentative step forward. My heel sank into soft earth. Earth? I had expected stone floors, hard and cold. Where was I? What kind of a place was this? Like a badger’s lair, only much bigger.

  “Davin?” I called out cautiously, not too loud. No one answered, and the sound of my voice died away at once, with no trace of an echo.

  Then my foot sank even deeper into the ground, and I pitched forward into the darkness. The smell of earth and dampness washed over me, the smell of things that were rotting and turning into loam. And my hands touched something that was neither earth nor stone.

  Clothes. A body.

  “Davin?” I fumbled in the darkness, scraping dirt away with my hands, seizing and lifting…

  The pale light fell on his face. Dark, damp earth clung to his mouth and nose. His eyes were closed, but not because he was asleep.

  He is not here.

  No. He wasn’t. Not anymore. This was no dungeon, and no badger’s lair.

  This was a tomb.

  I was crying. I could feel the hot trace of tears on my cold cheeks. It was a dream. It was only a dream. I knew it, and still I was so terrified and miserable that I couldn’t stop crying. It could be true. I had no way of knowing whether Davin was even alive anymore. What if he was in some dark place now, dead and half buried? I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  “Ssshh.” Something touched me. Touched my cheek. A gentle, tentative finger.

  Sezuan. Perhaps he would sing to me again? I wished he would. I would have liked to lie here and listen while my father sang to me and chased away the nightmares.

  “Ssshh,” he said, once more.

  I opened my eyes. And screamed to the high heavens. Because it wasn’t Sezuan. It wasn’t my father. It was Shadow who had hushed me, Shadow’s scaly finger that had touched my tears.

  “Leave her alone!” Sezuan lurched to his feet. His eyes were dark and confused with sleep, but he grabbed Shadow’s arm and practically threw him away from me. “I told you to stay away from her!”

  Shadow spat like a cat. “The girl was crying,” he said. “Shadow didn’t do anything. Shadow was soothing her!”

  He looked like a little boy accused of something he didn’t do. I felt a pang of compassion. How well I knew it, that helpless anger at being unjustly suspected. Every time people called Mama or me witches, every time they whispered behind our backs and made the witch sign, every time something like that happened, I felt exactly like Shadow was feeling now. Or at least I thought so. Who knew exactly what Shadow was feeling?

  Sezuan stared at the ground. He was so tired that he was swaying as he stood.

  “Forgive me,” he murmured. “I thought I could stay awake, but I have to sleep, even if only for a little while.” He raised his head and looked at Shadow. “Come here,” he said.

  “Why?” Shadow looked suspicious. “What does Master want with Shadow?”

  Sezuan touched the flute deliberately, with one hand. “Come here, I said.”

  Shadow’s eyes were glued to the flute. “May Shadow have another dream?”

  “Come on. Lie down over here.” With a neat twitch, Sezuan sliced off one end of the donkey tether.

  “Shadow doesn’t want rope. Shadow doesn’t want to be tied up!”

  “Do as I say,” snapped Sezuan, short-temperedly. “Or you have had your last dream, I promise.”

  Shadow’s lip was quivering. His whole body was trembling. “Master is mean. Master is mean to Shadow!” But he did lie down and suffered Sezuan to tie his hands together and tether him to the same thorny bush that anchored the donkey’s line.

  I felt as if I ought to defend him. Tell Sezuan that he had only hushed me and touched my cheek. But the mere thought that he had touched me… If he was left free, he might do it again. While I was sleeping. I bit my lip and said nothing.

  Shadow, on the other hand, had a lot to say. Curses and reproachful moans about “mean Master” came from him in a steady torrent. When he ran out of words, he just whined, a long, drawn-out aaaaaaah sound, like a worn-out baby or a wounded animal. Sezuan tried to hush him up, but that only made him whine even louder.

  “Come on, Dina,” said my father. “We’ll move a little farther away. Behind those rocks, I think. Once he can’t see us, he’ll stop. Sooner or later.”

  But he didn’t. The wordless whine rose to a keening as soon as we were out of sight. The whole valley could hear him. If there really were robbers somewhere around, they would be in no doubt where to find us.

  “If this keeps up, we won’t get any sleep,” I said morosely. “Can’t you just gi
ve him a dream?”

  Sezuan rubbed his forehead with a not particularly clean hand. Filthy, to be exact. Unsavory. His shirt was blotched and stained with sweat and road dust, and the shadows lay heavily beneath his tired eyes. He didn’t look much like the immaculate and self-assured gentleman who had arranged our dinner at the Golden Swan.

  “It makes him worse,” he said. “I think each dream makes him slightly more insane. And it is not easy for me either. It takes effort.”

  “Was it Shadow who killed Beastie?”

  Sezuan nodded. “Yes. I… please believe me, I never meant to hurt you. I just wanted to see my daughter. Get to know you a little bit. I couldn’t know that your mother would… that everything would happen the way it did.”

  I looked at him, trying to gauge what was going on inside him. I didn’t like it that he tried to avoid taking the blame. And particularly that he almost seemed to blame my mother. The moon was nearly full, and the moonlight made the rocks around us look pale as bones. It glittered in his eyes and caught the silver serpent in his ear. On the other side of the ridge I could hear Shadow moaning about his “mean Master.”

  “So it’s not your fault? You’ve done nothing wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault. Is that the way of it?”

  I knew it was me saying it, but I could barely recognize my own voice. So harsh, so cutting. He jerked as if I had stuck a needle in his flesh.

  “I didn’t kill your dog! And I—I punished him for it.”

  “How?”

  “I gave him a nightmare instead of a dream. And I told him I never wanted to see him again.” Sezuan looked away. “But that might not have been wise. After that he—After that he couldn’t be among people anymore. And he still followed me. He was jealous of you, he felt it was you who had driven us apart. That time with the coppertail, he nearly killed you, Dina! And when he attacked that little girl… it was because of him that the villagers chased you away.”

  “All Shadow’s fault, then. Not yours? You have nothing to be ashamed of?”