Song of the Serpent

by Hugh Matthews

  There did not seem any useful answer Krunzle could make to this. He remained silent but contrived an expression that conveyed his interest in anything further the wizard might wish to say.

  Mordach said, "The tale you told, of caravans and such, has lost much of its savor."

  Again, the thief said nothing. The tale had, after all, been Chirk's; he did not feel a need to defend it. Besides, he was waiting to see if the snake would offer anything in its place. But though he waited, nothing came. Nonetheless, he felt a presence in the back pastures of his mind, and he had now become familiar enough with the relationship between himself and his keeper to recognize that he was not on his own in this encounter. He had the impression that Chirk was listening to what the wizard had to say—indeed, that he was waiting to hear something.

  Mordach approached. More accurately, Krunzle would have said he loomed; he did not so much come closer as grow larger. "In this place," the mage said, one bony hand circling to indicate the space within the mist, "I need not fear the fate of Chenax—"

  Krunzle felt the presence of Chirk grow stronger, and words came to him that he spoke aloud: "Still, you would do well not to touch."

  Mordach's face showed a weighing of options, then he said, "At this point, you are probably correct. I think I am beginning to gain some idea as to what I'm dealing with. And, with your boots and sword under restraint, you are not likely to try to leave town. As well, without them I believe you are not much of a threat."

  Nothing came to Krunzle. The snake was back to listening. Now the wizard, too, seemed to be waiting to see if the captive would make a response. The silence grew. Finally, the traveler shrugged—it was not as eloquent a gesture with his hands bound behind him—and said, "Well, if that's all, I've had a long day ..."

  "Do you know," Mordach said, "that every region, indeed every era, of the recondite arts has its own...shall we say, odor?"

  "It is not the kind of information in which I usually take an interest," Krunzle said.

  "Really?" said the mage. "It's one that has always been of interest to me."

  Mordach interlaced his fingers, all except the two index, whose tips he brought together then touched reflectively to the groove above his upper lip. After a moment he withdrew them and said, "I cannot closely inspect your serpentine torc, but I am conscious of its scent. It is different from that of your boots and sword—garden-variety Tian, by the way." The wizard paused as if expecting a reply. Again, silence took charge of the interval. Finally, he said, "I confess, I do not recognize the smell that emanates from the snake—and that, in and of itself, is highly interesting."

  "As I told you," Krunzle said, "such is not within my competence."

  Mordach brushed this aside. "The most interesting thing, however, is that I have scented the same odor on someone else's goods." He fixed the traveler with a serious gaze, but Krunzle had the strong impression that Mordach was trying to look through his eyes to something deeper within the thief's being. "And quite recently."

  Krunzle was suddenly aware that Chirk was fully alert. Words now came from the back of his mind. "Really?" he said. "And what does this coincidence tell you?"

  Now there was a kind of amusement in the wizard's thin-lipped smile. "Ah," he said. "It speaks." He waited for a response, watching Krunzle closely, and when Chirk offered nothing more, he said, "I would like to offer you a partnership—at least an association—once I have separated you from this"—he indicated Krunzle—"beast of burden."

  Still, Chirk had nothing to say. Krunzle thought it was time he joined the conversation. "I don't know what you're talking about—"

  "Silence, you!" said the mage, and in this strange place, his voice carried an almost physical force. "I am not talking to the dancing bear, but to the one who plays the tune!"

  "Where is the other object?" said Krunzle, though the words came from the back of his mind. "And the person who carries it?"

  "He was at the hotel," said Mordach. "He checked in this afternoon—Room Eight—with a woman. Though by now she should be moved to Room Thirteen." He frowned again. "It was on her that I scented the unrecognizable odor, but she did not possess the object that is its source. Unfortunately, he who carries it made an arrangement with Ulm, before he consulted me, and now the man has left town. He did so, however, on a horse bought here. My isinglass, tuned to that steed, can tell me where he goes."

  "Interesting, indeed," Chirk said, through Krunzle.

  "Then a partnership? I am better able to take you to the man than your present carrier," said the mage.

  Krunzle would have welcomed the chance to be free of the snake around his neck, assuming Mordach could remove it. But Chirk had a different appreciation of the situation. "I need to weigh some competing aspects," he found himself saying, on behalf of the snake. "Let us talk about this tomorrow night."

  Mordach shook his skull-like head. "That may be too late. The man may separate himself from the horse. Tomorrow morning."

  Chirk had Krunzle say, "Too soon. I need to consult—" then checked himself, as if he had said too much.

  A real smile, though not a pleasant one, now showed on the mage's lean face. "Ah," he said, "something to think about."

  "In the afternoon," Krunzle suggested. "I could use an early conclusion of the workday."

  "Very well," said Mordach.

  "Then we're agreed."

  The skeletal mage seemed to move back—either that or he grew smaller—then the mists disappeared, and they were back in the third-floor room. Mordach made a vague shooing motion, then crossed to the table where an open book lay. He lit a lamp and stood reading whatever he found there, his brows compressed in thought. After a moment, he looked up, as if surprised to see the thief still there. "We are done," he said. "Begone!"

  Krunzle shrugged again and turned to descend the spiral staircase, wishing he had a hand free to grasp the railing. The thing in the cage hissed at him again as he passed the second floor, and when he reached ground level, the door unlocked itself and swung wide. Brundelaf was waiting outside. The Ulfen checked his bonds and pushed him back along the way they had come.

  In the partial privacy of his head, Krunzle said, What was all that about? He got no answer. Gyllana is at the hotel? Berbackian is riding south? Again, no response. We were supposed to follow them. Instead we got here first. Silence in his head. He thought about it, not caring if the snake could see his thoughts fitting themselves together—and fit together they did, into a shape he did not find pleasing. None of this was an accident! he said. You planned it. You wanted me to be taken up by Boss Ulm and put to hard labor. I hate labor of any kind, and hard labor most of all! And that wizard wants to feed me to ants or dissolve me in acid!

  Chirk said nothing. Krunzle considered his options. What if he told Brundelaf to take him back to Mordach's right now? What if he told what he knew, little though it was? He waited to see if the bronze circle around his neck would constrict and choke him.

  It did something else instead. Krunzle had many a time heard the expression "every bone in his body ached." Now he knew what it felt like. For only a couple of seconds, every bone in his body screamed, reporting that it was being stressed to a point just short of snapping. He stopped, all his muscles rigid, then collapsed to the ground, limp as boiled asparagus.

  Oh, he said to the snake in his mind, in that case, we'll go with your plan.

  Good, came the response.

  "What's the matter with you?" Brundelaf said.

  "A sudden pain in the neck," he told the Ulfen.

  "You're just not used to hard work."

  "I'm sure that's the explanation. Would you help me up?"

  The redbeard's assistance consisted of kicking the captive in the buttocks with a hard-toed boot. The technique was surprisingly effective, and the thief was shortly back on track to the lockup.

  In the morning, rock chips flew as Skanderbrog alternately chiseled and smashed. Krunzle raked and said nothing, but he saw the troll watch
ing him again from the corner of his eye. A couple of times, he also noticed the creature heft the hammer in a different grip, swinging it in an upward motion before returning to the regular stroke. Once, too, the troll took the chisel in his right hand and made a tentative throwing motion. Then he went back to work, his low brow wrinkled.

  As they neared noon, Krunzle paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes and said, "Well?"

  The troll looked at him sideways. "I have been thinking about it. You may be right, but ..." He gestured to the scorched line that ran across the ledge. "I tried to cross that once. It burned me. Inside."

  Krunzle could sympathize. Magically induced pain was worse than the ordinary. But Chirk had its own agenda. The words formed in the traveler's mind and he spoke them. "I have heard that some spells do not last beyond the caster's life."

  "I don't know about magic. My mother said I should avoid it."

  "Good advice," said the thief. "Still, that's what I've heard."

  The troll continued working, but his brow wrinkled again with unaccustomed mental effort. "So the fire line dies when Mordach dies?"

  Krunzle listened for Chirk's answer, then said, "So it seems."

  The troll smashed rock and Krunzle raked. "And the leg chains?"

  "The chisel and hammer should take care of them."

  "Hmm," Skanderbrog said, and chiseled another boulder-sized fragment out of the cliff. He smashed it to pieces and set the chisel against a crack. "But he watches me. He has other spells at his fingertips, and I am not fast."

  "Suppose," Krunzle said, "something distracted him?"

  Skanderbrog drove the hammer forward. "What kind of something?"

  "Any kind of something, just when he was about to renew the boundary spell." The troll labored on, but his brow was now profoundly wrinkled. "And suppose," the traveler said, "you were ready when that moment came."

  Skanderbrog stopped work, looked at the tools in his hand, then switched the chisel to his right and hefted it like a spear.

  "There you go," said the thief.

  The creature's brow cleared. He repositioned the tools and drove the chisel into the rock face again. They worked in silence for a while. Then Skanderbrog said, "Why do you want to help me? My mother said not to trust men." He gestured with the hammer to indicate his circumstances. "She was right."

  "By helping you, I help myself," said Krunzle, and did not need Chirk's prompting to extend the argument. "If you are not smashing rock, I do not need to be raking it."

  The troll took that in and after a while moved his tusked head up and down.

  "Mordach always comes to renew the spell during lunch?" the traveler asked.

  Again the troll nodded.

  "Well, then," said Krunzle, and went back to raking.

  They were up on the wooden platform, eating gruel. Mordach and his torchmen came down from the town to descend the scaffold's steps to where the troll squatted on the ledge, chewing on a leg that was left over from breakfast—two goldbug partners had gotten into an altercation over the details of their claim, and one had decided that if words couldn't settle the issue, a pickaxe would. His partner, however, had served for years as a mercenary before being struck by gold fever; he had undercut the pickaxe argument with their camp's bread knife.

  As Mordach and his party crossed the platform, the wizard threw Krunzle a knowing smile that the thief took as a sign of the man's confidence that all was working out as it should. The traveler returned him a gesture freighted with a recognition that loss was an unwelcome but frequent element of existence. Mordach's smile broadened and he went down the steps after his torchbearers. Krunzle drifted over to the edge of the platform to watch.

  He found himself above and a little behind Mordach and lowered himself to sit on the edge of the platform, his gruel bowl in his hands. The bowls came in several shapes and different types of wood, and today Krunzle had chosen a large specimen, carved from a heavy hardwood. As the torchmen ranged themselves in two ranks and Mordach stepped up behind them, the traveler drained the last of his gruel and wiped the inner surface clean with a finger, which he then put in his mouth.

  Skanderbrog had finished with the leg bone and laid it down beside him, next to the long, iron chisel. He watched the wizard as Mordach raised his arms, opened his mouth, and prepared to utter the first word of the incantation. Then events moved quickly: instead of an ancient and arcane syllable, the mage emitted a loud, "Ow!" and clasped both hands to his pate, which had just received a ringing blow from a heavy wooden bowl flung from above.

  Even before the impact, the young troll had closed his hand around the long spike of iron, and as the bowl struck Mordach's head he was rising to his feet, drawing back his arm. He took one step forward and let fly. He did not have a clear target, the torchmen being in the way, but he compensated for the lack by putting sufficient force behind the missile to drive it clear through the man in front and into the wizard.

  The boundary spell tried to do its best as the iron hurtled through it, charging the chisel with the last burst of energy from its morning casting. The missile thus shone white hot as it burned its way through the torchman and was still a deep red when it transfixed Mordach. It entered the wizard at a downward angle and burst through his back. Gore hissed and steamed from the still fiery metal.

  Now Skanderbrog moved forward, cautiously at first, his left hand extended until the claws on its fingertips touched the air above the line. Nothing happened. A smile drew back the troll's black lips. His right hand reached down and closed around the haft of the great hammer, and he lifted it and drove it down so that the head's forward edge struck the links of iron that connected his ankle fetters. The chain parted like soft cheese.

  The torchbearers had already turned and rushed for the steps, crowding and jostling each other. One plunged screaming into the gorge below. Skanderbrog came after them, pausing at the wizard's body to retrieve the chisel, which had turned cold again. He transferred the chisel to the same hand that held the hammer, giving himself a free hand so that he could reach down and twist Mordach's head from his body. This he tossed into his mouth and, chewing happily, he pushed his way up the steps, scattering the least agile of the torchmen to their deaths.

  The scaffolding creaked under the troll's weight but he came up onto the platform, a weapon in each hand. He looked about him. The slaves and overseers were fleeing into the town, fighting each other for precedence in the narrow alley that led to the main street. Skanderbrog watched them go, then his head moved from side to side, eyes going here and there among the buildings.

  "You're looking for Boss Ulm, aren't you?" said Krunzle. He didn't need the snake to tell him that. Raimeau was hiding behind him, ready to run if the troll turned out to be as ungrateful as their kind often were.

  "Yes. Which house is his?"

  "I can show you, if you'll do me a favor first."

  "Will it take long?"

  "A matter," said the thief, "of moments."

  And so it turned out to be. They pressed up the narrow alley to the main street, then crossed over to another passageway that ran between the hotel and Boss Ulm's saloon. "See that barred window up there?" the thief said. "If you would just reach up and yank the bars out for me ..." The troll reached and the iron grill clattered to the ground. "Thank you," said Krunzle, as a terrified scream came from Room Thirteen, "and now, as for Boss Ulm—"

  The screaming from above continued as the thief turned toward a noise that came from the other side of the alley. He saw that a door had opened, the one that Ulm's bullyboys had come through the night their employer had sent them to bring Krunzle for interrogation. Now out of the door came a head. A head that bore a huge nose. A nose that bore a huge wart. "Well," Krunzle said, "speak of the—"

  Skanderbrog growled—not the frustrated growl of a juvenile held prisoner and forced to work, but the full-throated, belly-deep rumble of an angry, free troll who is just about to take his long-contemplated revenge. Boss Ulm's face paled, s
o that the wart stood out like a housefly landed on a linen tablecloth, and he ducked back inside, slamming the door after him.

  The troll did not bother with the door—it would never have accommodated him—but raised his hammer and brought it down with a splintering crash against the planks of the saloon's outer wall. A wide gap appeared and he stepped through, his voice booming, "Ulm!"

  Now the screaming from above was counterpointed by even more from the saloon. Krunzle took a moment to peek through the opening. Skanderbrog was smashing his way through room after room, breaching walls and scattering tables, Ulm fleeing before him but being slowed down by the need to open doors, and by the terrified patrons, many of whom tried to flee in contradictory directions. The saloon's main room was ringed by a balcony behind which stood the smaller, private upper rooms. Their doors were now flying open, disgorging a sudden flood of partially clad persons of both sexes, who quickly sized up the situation and departed by whatever routes would take them away from Skanderbrog.

  The troll continued on his single-minded pursuit of the saloon's proprietor, wielding his hammer and chisel to sweep any and all from his way, finally jabbing the spike through the shoulder of the town's boss, pinning Ulm to a window frame just as he had thrown up the sash and was about to escape.

  Skanderbrog dropped the hammer and picked up Ulm by one ankle, held him dangling, squirming and pleading. An oil lamp had broken in one corner, igniting a fire. Displaying a fortitude unusual for his kind—as most trolls' fear of fire usually overcame their desire for cooked meat—Skanderbrog carried his former captor over to the pool of flames, kicking some broken chairs and tables toward it to build up the blaze.

  He hunkered down beside the fire and pulled the long chisel from Ulm's shoulder. He regarded the tool and the man for a moment, then made his decision. Carefully and slowly, he inserted the length of iron into his captive. Ulm's screams went on for a surprisingly long time. When they finished, Skanderbrog suspended the spitted corpse over the fire. Ulm's clothes and hair caught fire, and the troll fanned with one huge hand to waft away the fumes as he moved safely back out of reach of the flickering flames, watching intently as his former master popped and crackled in the worst death a troll could imagine.