Serpent Mage

by Margaret Weis

  “And our people were skilled in magic, most of them,” Delu added quietly, “if only on the lowest levels. We found evidence that they had attempted to use their magic in their defense. Magic, too, failed them.”

  “But surely the Council of Magi could do something?” suggested Eliason. “Or perhaps magical elven weapons, such as we used to manufacture in times gone by, might work where others failed—no disparagement to your wizards,” he added, politely.

  Delu looked at her husband, apparently seeking his agreement in imparting further bad news. He nodded his head.

  The wizardess was a tall woman, equaling her husband in height. Her graying hair, worn in a coif at the back of the neck, provided an attractive contrast to her dark complexion. Seven bands of color in her feathered cape marked her status as a wizardess of the Seventh House, the highest rank a human can attain in the use of magic. She stared down at her clasped hands, clasped fast to keep from trembling.

  “One member of the Council, the village shamus, was in the village at the time of the attack. We found her body. Her death had been most cruel.” Delu shivered, drew a deep breath, steeling herself to go on. “Around her dismembered corpse lay the tools of her magic, spread about her as if in mockery.”

  “One against many …” Eliason began.

  “Argana was a powerful wizardess,” Delu cried, and her shout made me jump. “Her magic could have heated the sea water to boiling! She could have raised a typhoon with a wave of her hand. The ground would have opened at a word from her and swallowed her enemies whole! All this, we had evidence that she had done! And still she died. Still they all died!”

  Dumaka laid a soothing hand upon his wife's shoulder. “Be calm, my dear. Eliason meant only that the entire Council, gathered together, might be able to work such powerful magic that these serpents could not withstand it.”

  “Forgive me. I'm sorry I lost my temper.” Delu gave the elf a wan smile. “But, like Yngvar, I have seen with my own eyes the terrible destruction these creatures brought upon my people.”

  She sighed. “Our magic is powerless in the presence of these creatures, even when they are not in sight. Perhaps the cause is due to the foul ooze they leave on anything they touch. We don't know. All we know is that when we magi entered the village, we each of us felt our power began to drain away. We couldn't even use our magic to start the fires to burn the bodies of the dead.”

  Eliason looked around the grim, unhappy group. “And so what are we to do?”

  As an elf his natural inclination must have been to do nothing, wait, and see what time brought. But, according to my father, Eliason was an intelligent ruler, one of the more realistic and practical of his race. He knew, though he would have liked to ignore the fact, that his people's days on their seamoon were numbered. A decision had to be made, therefore, but he was quite content to let others make it.

  “We have one hundred cycles left until the full effects of the wandering of the seasun will begin to be felt,” stated Dumaka. “Time to build more sun-chasers.”

  “the serpents let us,” said my father ominously. “Which I much doubt. And what did they mean by payment? What could they possibly want?”

  All were silent, thinking.

  “Let us look at this logically,” Eliason said finally. “Why do people fight? Why did our races fight each other, generations ago? Through fear, misunderstanding. When we came together and discussed our differences, we found ways to deal with them and we have lived in peace ever since. Perhaps these serpents, powerful as they seem, are, in reality, afraid of us. They see us as a threat. If we tried to talk to them, reassure them that we mean them no harm, that we want only to leave and travel to this new seamoon, then perhaps”

  A clamor interrupted him.

  The noise had come from the part of the terrace attached to the palace—a part hidden from my view—being short, it was difficult for me to see out the window.

  “What's going on?” I demanded impatiently.

  “I don't know …” Sabia was trying to see without being seen.

  Alake actually poked her head out the opening. Fortunately, our parents were paying no attention to us.

  “A messenger of some sort,” she reported.

  “Interrupting a royal conference?” Sabia was shocked.

  I dragged over a footstool and climbed up on it. I could now see the white-faced footman who had, against all rules of protocol, actually run onto the terrace. The footman, seeming nearly about to faint, leaned to whisper something in Eliason's ear. The elven king listened, frowning.

  “Bring him here,” he said at last.

  The footman hastened off.

  Eliason looked gravely at his friends. “One of the message riders was attacked on the road and is, apparently, grievously wounded. He bears a message, he says, which is to be delivered to us, to all of us gathered here this day. I have ordered them to bring him here.”

  “Who attacked him?” asked Dumaka.

  Eliason was silent a moment, then said, “Serpents.”

  “A message 'to all of us gathered here,' “ repeated my father dourly. “I was right. They are watching us.”

  “Payment,” said my mother, the first word she'd spoken since the conference began.

  “I don't understand.” Eliason sounded frustrated. “What can they possibly want?”

  “I'll wager we are about to find out.”

  They said nothing further, but sat waiting, unwilling to look at each other, finding no comfort in seeing the reflection of their own dazed bewilderment on the faces of their friends.

  “We shouldn't be here. We shouldn't be doing this,” said Sabia suddenly. Her face was very pale; her lips trembled.

  Alake and I looked at her, looked at each other, looked down at the floor in shame. Sabia was right. This spying on our parents had always been a game to us, something we could giggle over in the night after they'd sent us to our beds. Now it was a game no longer. I don't know how the other two felt, but I found it frightening to see my parents, who had always seemed so strong and wise, in such confusion, such distress.

  “We should leave, now,” Sabia urged, and I knew she was right, but I could no more have climbed down off that footstool than I could have flown out the window.

  “Just a moment more,” said Alake.

  The sound of slippered feet, moving slowly, shuffling as if bearing a burden, came to us. Our parents drew themselves upright, standing straight and tall, disquiet replaced by stern gravity. My father smoothed his beard. Dumaka folded his arms across his chest. Delu drew a stone from a pouch she wore at her side and rubbed it in her hand, her lips moving.

  Six elven men entered, bearing a litter between them. They moved slowly, carefully, in order to prevent jostling the wounded elf. At a gesture from their king, they gently placed the litter on the ground before him.

  Accompanying them was an elven physician, skilled in the healing arts of his people. On entering, I saw him glance askance at Delu; perhaps fearing interference. Elven and human healing techniques are considerably different, the former relying on extensive study of anatomy combined with alchemy, the latter treating hurts by means of sympathetic magic, chants to drive out evil humors, certain stones laid on vital body parts. We dwarves rely on the One and our own common sense.

  Seeing that Delu made no move toward his patient, the elven physician relaxed. Or it may have been that he suddenly realized it would make no difference if the human wizardess attempted to work her magic. It was obvious to us and to everyone present that nothing in this world would help the dying elf.

  “Don't look, Sabia,” Alake warned, drawing back and attempting to hide the gruesome sight from her friend.

  But it was too late. I heard Sabia's breath catch in her throat and I knew she'd seen.

  The young elf's clothes were torn and soaked in blood. Cracked and splintered ends of bones protruded through the purple flesh of his legs. His eyes were missing, they'd been gouged out. The blind head turned this
way and that, the mouth opened and closed, repeating some words that I couldn't hear in a fevered sort of chant.

  “He was found this morning outside the city gates, Your Majesty,” one of the elves said. “We heard his screams.”

  “Who brought him?” Eliason asked, voice stern to mask his horror.

  “We saw no one, Your Majesty. But a trail of foul ooze led from the body back to the sea.”

  “Thank you. You may go now. Wait outside.”

  The elves who had brought the litter bowed and left.

  Once they were gone, our parents could give way to their feelings. Eliason cast his mantle over his head and averted his face, an elven response to grief. Dumaka turned away, strong body trembling in rage and pity. His wife rose and came to stand by his side, her hand on his arm. My father gathered his beard in great handfuls and pulled on it, bringing tears to his eyes. My mother yanked on her side whiskers.

  I did the same. Alake was comforting Sabia, who had nearly passed out.

  “We should take her to her room,” I said.

  “No. I won't go.” Sabia lifted her chin. “Someday I will be queen, and I must know how to handle situations like this.”

  I looked at her with surprise and new respect. Alake and I had always considered Sabia weak and delicate. I'd seen her turn pale at the sight of blood running from a piece of undercooked meat. But, faced with a crisis, she was coming through it like a dwarven soldier. I was proud of her. Breeding will tell, they say.

  We peeped cautiously out the window.

  The physician was speaking to the king.

  “Your Majesty, this messenger has refused all easeful medicine in order that he may deliver his message. I beg you listen to him.”

  Eliason removed his mantle at once and knelt beside the dying elf.

  “You are in the presence of your king,” said Eliason, keeping his voice calm and level. He took hold of the man's hand that was clutching feebly at the air. “Deliver your message, then go with all honor to the One and find rest.”

  The elf's bloody eye sockets turned in the direction of the voice. His words came forth slowly, with many pauses to draw pain-filled breaths.

  “The Masters of the Sea bid me say thus: We will allow you to build the boats to carry your people to safety provided you give us in payment the eldest girl-child from each royal household. If you agree to our demand, place your daughters in a boat and cast them forth upon the Goodsea. If you do not, what we have done to this elf and to the human fisherman and to the dwarven shipbuilders is only a foretaste of the destruction we will bring upon your people. We give you two cycles to make your decision.'”

  “But why? Why our daughters?” Eliason cried, grasping the wounded man by the shoulders and almost shaking him.

  “I … do not know,” the elf gasped, and died.

  Alake drew away from the window. Sabia shrank back against the wall. I climbed down off the footstool before I fell.

  “We shouldn't have heard that,” Alake said in a hollow voice.

  “No,” I agreed. I was cold and hot at the same time and I couldn't stop shaking.

  “Us? They want us?” Sabia whispered, as if she couldn't believe it.

  We stared at each other, helpless, wondering what to do.

  “The window,” I warned, and Alake closed it up with her magic.

  “Our parents will never agree to such a thing,” she said briskly. “We mustn't let them know we know. It would grieve them terribly. We'll go back to Sabia's room and act like nothing's happened.”

  I cast a dubious glance at Sabia, who was as white as curdled milk, and who seemed about to collapse on the spot.

  “I can't lie!” she protested. “I've never lied to my father.”

  “You don't have to lie,” Alake snapped, her fear making her sharp-edged and brittle. “You don't have to say anything. Just keep quiet.”

  She yanked poor Sabia out of her corner and, together, she and I helped the elven maid down the shimmering coral corridors. After a few false turns, we made it to Sabia's room. None of us spoke on the way.

  All of us were thinking of the elf we'd seen, of the torture he'd endured. My insides clenched in fear; a horrid taste came into my mouth. I didn't know why I was so frightened. As Alake had said, my parents would never permit the serpents to take me.

  It was, I know now, the voice of the One speaking to me, but I was refusing to listen.

  We entered Sabia's room—thankfully, no servants were about—and shut the door behind us. Sabia sank down on the edge of her bed, twisting her hands together. Alake stood glaring angrily out a window, as if she'd like to go and hit someone.

  In the silence, I could no longer avoid hearing the One. And I knew, looking at their faces, that the One was talking to Alake and Sabia, as well. It was left to me, to the dwarf, to speak the bitter words aloud.

  “Alake's right. Our parents won't send us. They won't even tell us about this. They'll keep it a secret from our people. And our people will die, never knowing that there was a chance they might have been spared.”

  Sabia whispered, “I wish we'd never heard! If only we hadn't gone up there!”

  “We were meant to hear,” I said gruffly.

  “You're right, Grundle,” said Alake, turning to face us. “The One wanted us to hear. We have been given the chance to save our people. The One has left it up to us to make the decision, not our parents. We are the ones who must be strong now.”

  As she talked, I could see she was getting caught up in it all: the romance of martyrdom, of sacrifice. Humans set great store in such things, something we dwarves can never understand. Almost all human heroes are those who die young, untimely, giving up their brief lives for some noble cause. Not so dwarves. Our heroes are the Elders, those who live a just life through ages of strife and work and hardship.

  I couldn't help but think of the broken elf with his eyes plucked out of his head.

  What nobility is there in dying like that? I wanted to ask her.

  But, for once, I held my tongue. Let her find comfort where she could. I must find it in my duty. As for Sabia, she had truly meant what she said about being a queen, “But I was to have been married,” she said.

  The elven maid wasn't arguing or whining. She knew what we had to do. It was her one protest against her terrible fate, and it was very gentle.

  Alake has just come in for the second time to tell me that I must sleep. We must “conserve our strength.”

  Bah! But I'll humor her. It's best that I stop here anyhow. The rest that I must write—the story of Devon and Sabia— is both painful and sweet. The memory will comfort me as I lie awake, trying to keep fear as far away as possible, in the lonely darkness.

  1Dwarves use the more appropriate term sinking rather than sailing to describe travel in a submersible. Humans and elves prefer the ancient terminology.

  2Humans were the first to communicate with the dolphins and learn their language. Elves think dolphins amusing gossips, entertaining conversationalists, fun to have at parties. Dwarves, who learned how to talk to the dolphins from the humans, use dolphins mainly as a source of information on navigation. Dwarves—being naturally suspicious of anyone or anything that is not a dwarf—do not trust the dolphins, however.

  3Humans and elves claim that the dolphin is not a fish, but a species similar to themselves, because dolphins give birth to their young the same way they do. Dwarves have no use for such a nonsensical notion. Anything that swims like a fish is a fish, according to dwarves.

  CONSCIOUSNESS FORCED ITSELF ON HAPLO.

  He awoke to searing pain, yet, in the same instant, he knew himself to be whole once more, and pain-free. The circle of his being was joined again. The agony he'd felt was the tail end of that circle being seized by the mouth.

  But the circle wasn't strong. It was wobbly, tenuous. Lifting his hand was an effort almost beyond his strength, but he managed it and placed the fingers on his naked breast. Starting with the rune over his heart, slowly
and haltingly, he began to trace, began to reconnect and strengthen, every sigil written upon his skin.

  He started with the name rune, the first sigil that is tattooed over the heart of the squirming, screaming babe almost the moment it is forced from the mother's womb. The babe's mother performs the rite, or another female tribe member if the mother dies. The name is chosen by the father, if he lives or is still among the tribe.1 If not, by the tribal headman.

  The name rune does not offer the babe much magical protection. Most of that comes from the tit, as the saying goes, from drawing on the magic of either mother or wet nurse. And yet the name rune is the most important sigil on the body, since every other sigil added later traces its origin back to it first—the beginning of the circle.9

  Haplo moved his fingers over the name rune, redrawing its intricate design from memory.

  Memory took him back to the time of his childhood, to one of the rare, precious moments of peace and rest, to a boy reciting his name and learning how to shape the runes….

  … “Haplo: 'single, alone.' That is your name and your destiny,” said his father, his finger rough and hard on Haplo's chest. “Your mother and I have defeated the odds thrown for us already. Every Gate we pass from now on is a wink at fate. But the time will come when the Labyrinth will claim us, as it claims all except the lucky and the strong. And the lucky and the strong are generally the lonely. Repeat your name.”

  Haplo did so, solemnly running his own grimy finger over his thin chest.

  His father nodded. “And now the runes of protection and healing.”

  Haplo laboriously went over each of those, beginning with the ones touching the name rune, spreading out over the breast, the vital organs of his abdominal region, the sensitive groin area, and around the back to protect the spine. Haplo recited these, as he'd recited them countless times in his brief life. He'd done it so often, he could let his mind wander to the rabbit snares he'd laid out that day, wondered if he might be able to surprise his mother with dinner.

  “No! Wrong! Begin again!”

  A sharp blow, delivered impersonally by his father with what was known as the naming stick, across the unprotected, rune-free palm of the hand, focused Haplo's mind on his lesson. The blow brought tears to his eyes, but he was quick to blink them away, for his father was watching him closely. The ability to endure pain was as much a part of this rough schooling as the recitation and the drawing of the sigla.