Scales of the Serpent

by Richard A. Knaak

  That still did not satisfy Uldyssian, but he knew better than to argue with her. Signaling the others to keep moving, he stood firm where he was. “I’ll be right here. I won’t go anywhere.”

  Again, Cyrus’s daughter smiled. Uldyssian found he liked when she smiled at him.

  Serenthia rushed off. A few of the others wanted to stay with Uldyssian, but he politely refused their company. Despite the shifting greenery and the shadows caused by the thick foliage, Uldyssian did the best he could to keep some part of her in sight at all times. As she had said, the stream was right beside them; in fact, others had used it before Serenthia. There was really no reason to be concerned…

  But then, that was not the first time that he had thought that…and been proven horribly wrong.

  Serenthia bent down, for the first time vanishing from his field of vision. Uldyssian held his breath…then exhaled as she rose again.

  She glanced over her shoulder and with a wave of her hand, commanded him to look away. Despite his trepidation, he finally obeyed.

  There was a rustling of leaves, then silence. It occurred to Uldyssian that he could use his powers to check on her location, but suspected that Serenthia would, with her own, notice him doing just that. However, considering her present circumstances, the former farmer shied away from doing so.

  There was a muffled sound from Serenthia’s direction. Uldyssian peered around for her. With relief, the dark-haired woman’s head reappeared. Seconds later, Serenthia slipped back to join him.

  “I was worried…for a moment,” he admitted.

  Much to his surprise, her eyes brightened at this comment. Serenthia put a hand to his cheek. She smiled almost shyly.

  “I like that,” the merchant’s daughter finally murmured.

  Then, her face reddening, Serenthia rushed on, briefly leaving a befuddled Uldyssian to try to understand just what the incident meant, if anything. Then, forcing such dangerous thoughts from the forefront, he hurried after the rest of the party.

  They did not head toward the capital, as some thought, but rather, farther south, toward where the main temple lay. It was not what Uldyssian would have chosen, but Lilith had forced his hand. Despite her acting as if she wanted him to destroy the Triune, he somehow felt that if he went directly for their supreme headquarters, it would be more than the demoness expected. Uldyssian hoped in that manner to throw her off guard.

  Unfortunately, he also suspected that he was still playing into her hands.

  The makeshift army paused near a river that, according to the Torajians, flowed between the southern gates of the city and the lands owned by the Triune. Uldyssian saw the river as the perfect guide for the rest of their journey. Romus and some of the others located the best area for the camp and the nephalem started to settle down for the night.

  Recalling the river reptiles that Achilios had caught, Uldyssian made certain that not only did his followers steer clear of sleeping too close to the water, but that no one went alone to it for any reason. Even then, those small groups who did head to the river were to alert other people of the fact first.

  “We should be able to fear nothing,” he remarked sarcastically to Mendeln. The two sat alone near one of the many fires. “That’s what these powers should mean, but look at us…”

  “They are learning rapidly, Uldyssian. Have you not noticed that the more converts you gain, the more of your followers increase their abilities and quicker?”

  “They need to! I’m marching them into a war with demons and magic and who knows what else!” He buried his head in his hands. “Will they be ready for that, Mendeln? You saw how it was in Toraja…”

  “The lesson of Toraja is burned into all of us, brother. The next time will be different.”

  Uldyssian looked up, his eyes narrowing. “The next time. What did the Torajians call the place?”

  “Hashir. It is smaller than Toraja.”

  “But somehow I doubt it’ll be any easier.”

  Shrugging, Mendeln replied, “What will be will be.”

  The younger brother stood up, and with a pat on Uldyssian’s shoulder, walked off. Uldyssian sat there, watching the flames and recalling the ones engulfing the temple and parts of Toraja. Would it be like that all over again? How many would perish this time? He had felt so determined after Lucion’s destruction, but Toraja had taken much of that from him, not that he let anyone other than Mendeln truly know that.

  “You shouldn’t fret so, Uldyssian. It’s not good for you or for those who follow you.”

  He looked up to see Serenthia step into the light of the fire like some night spirit. Her hair flowed loose and Uldyssian was surprised at just how long and lush it had gotten.

  “I thought you were asleep,” he replied.

  “Sleep…” Brushing back some hair, she sat down next to him. “I don’t sleep as much as some think, Uldyssian.”

  That was something that he could understand, often suffering it himself, but to hear that Serenthia shared the problem worried him. “You should have said something…”

  Her eyes glistened in the light of the fire. “To you? How could I bother you, when you’ve got so much with which to deal?”

  As she spoke, she leaned against him. Her nearness both stirred him and added to his guilt.

  “I always have time for you,” he heard himself say.

  Serenthia touched the back of his hand. “If there was anyone I’d turned to, you know that it would be you, Uldyssian. And you know that I would be there for you, also. I’ve always been there for you…”

  He remembered all the years that she had followed him around, waiting for the farmer to notice the young girl who had become a woman. Uldyssian had, but unlike most of the other men in Seram, not in the manner in which Serenthia had hoped.

  But now, at a time when he least wanted to, he was noticing her as she had once dreamed.

  She leaned closer…too close. “Uldyssian—”

  Caught between desire and loyalty to a lost comrade, Uldyssian tried not to look directly into her eyes—

  And, in doing so, saw something all but shadowed by the nighttime jungle.

  With a gasp, he leapt to his feet.

  “Uldyssian! What is it?”

  He instinctively looked down at her, then quickly returned his gaze to the wilderness. However, all that met his eyes were darkened trees and vines. Nothing else. Nothing remotely resembling a human shape.

  Nothing, certainly, resembling a figure with a pale face draped by blond hair, a figure whom he had taken for someone long dead.

  “Achilios…” Uldyssian whispered. Without thinking, he took a step toward the jungle.

  “What did you say?” asked Serenthia, suddenly standing in his path. “Did you see something out there?”

  “No…nothing…” He could not tell her that he had just seen a ghost, a dead man walking. After all it had only been his own guilt that had manifested the vision. They had left Achilios buried far, far behind them…

  To his further dismay, Serenthia put her palms on his chest. She looked up at him. “Uldyssian—”

  “It’s late,” he interrupted, backing up from her. “We should do the best we can to sleep, Serry.” He purposely used the other name this time, hoping it would douse the volatile situation.

  She frowned, then nodded. “As you say.”

  Uldyssian expected her to say more, but she suddenly turned and headed deeper into the encampment. He watched her vanish among the others, then sat down by the fire again.

  Staring at the jungle, Uldyssian suddenly probed the shadows. There was nothing, though, and he had not thought that there would be. It had been his own regrets, nothing more.

  Achilios was dead…and for that reason alone, Uldyssian could never allow things to grow between Serenthia and him.

  Mendeln jolted to a sitting position, the sensation of something awry filling him. He hated when that particular sensation occurred, for it usually presaged imminent disaster for all. Quickly pe
ering around, he saw no reason for his concern, but that did not assuage him in the least. His brother and he dealt with far too many dangers that kept themselves hidden until ready to spring upon the pair.

  Moving silently, Mendeln rose from his blanket. Unlike most of the others, he did not sleep near the fires, preferring somehow the quiet dark of night over the protective light of the flames. Another change from the young boy who had always huddled closest whenever the last glimmer of day had passed.

  His first concern was Uldyssian. With catlike movements, he stepped among the sleeping edyrem—as they were now apparently to be called—until he located his brother. Uldyssian slept fitfully and alone, Serenthia nowhere in sight. Mendeln felt mildly disappointed about the last. With Achilios dead, he had hoped that the two would find one another. Certainly, they deserved a little bit of happiness. Of course, his brother likely still felt too much at fault over the hunter and Serenthia had long ago given up trying to catch Uldyssian’s eye.

  Would that my concerns would all revolve around something so mundane as love, Mendeln finally thought. Matters would be so much more simple.

  But if it was not any imminent danger to Uldyssian, then what troubled Mendeln so? As he wended his way back to his sleeping place, he considered the event again. No dream of significance came to him. No sound had touched his ears. By rights, he should still be fast asleep.

  Mendeln looked about and only then noticed that the area was devoid of his own companions. There was always a ghost around, some shade who could not immediately detach itself from his presence. The party had left Toraja not only with new converts, but also several dozen specters who, for the most part, had perished in the struggle. Many had disappeared along the way, but a few new ones had joined during the day’s march. Most of those had been unlucky hunters or travelers who had fallen victim to the dangers of the jungle. Like the rest, they appeared to be wanting something from Mendeln, but when it became clear that he would not give it to them, gradually faded away once more.

  But rarely did all of them disappear.

  Curious, Mendeln headed to the edge of camp. He could see far better than anyone else in the dark, but still all he noted was more and more shadows.

  And yet…was there a slight movement well to his right?

  “Come to me…” he whispered. The first time he had spoken such words, it had summoned the ghosts even closer to him. Normally, Mendeln kept from summoning them, but if this specter had significance to him and his brother, it behooved him to find out.

  But the shape did not drift forward, and in fact, the more Mendeln eyed it, the less certain he was that he had seen correctly. Now it did resemble some fern or other plant, not a man…

  But the sensation continued to press at his mind. Exhaling in exasperation, Mendeln entered the jungle. He knew that he took some risk, for while the insects that plagued most of the others stayed clear of him, he did not know if the same held true for the huge carnivores of whom the Torajians spoke.

  In his eyes, the jungle at night was lovelier, like a beautiful, mysterious woman. The dangers hidden by the dark made that woman only more thrilling. As he forayed deeper, Mendeln marveled that such imagery would occur to him. Yes, he was definitely no longer the frightened child he had been even after growing up.

  The shape Mendeln had noticed had to be near, but now nothing he saw even remotely resembled it. Had it been, after all, his imagination or had whoever he had seen retreated once discovered?

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  He spun about…and found nobody behind him.

  “Who are you?” Mendeln whispered.

  The jungle remained steadfastly silent. Too silent, in fact, for a place where the calls of the daylight were often but a murmur compared to those beginning once the sun was gone. The jungle held more life in it than a thousand Serams, yet none of that was apparent now. From the smallest to the largest, the fauna was conspicuously absent.

  But no sooner had Mendeln thought that when the leaves to his left rustled…and a form moving on two legs slipped by at the edge of his vision.

  “Spare me your tricks and games!” he growled. “Show yourself or else!” Mendeln had no idea exactly what “or else” might be. In past circumstances of danger, he had suddenly spouted words in an ancient tongue he had never known, words of power that had saved him more than once. However, whether those words would protect him from the lurker, he was not so certain.

  It moved again, this time to his right. Mendeln automatically spouted a word—and a brief, gray glow filled the immediate vicinity.

  But what he saw was not at all what he expected.

  “No…” Uldyssian’s brother rasped, refusing to accept what that momentary glow had revealed. “No…”

  It had to be a delusion…or a trick, he thought. Yes, that made sense and hardened his resolve. Mendeln could think of only one being who would do such an obscene thing.

  “Lilith…” And here he was alone, a fool overconfident in his feeble abilities. No doubt the demoness was readying the fatal blow. How would it come? Mendeln would perish in some monstrous manner, naturally, his death drawn out.

  Oddly, death itself did not disturb him. It was the part just before that which Mendeln wished to avoid.

  He would not show her any fear. If somehow he could use his demise to help or at least warn Uldyssian, then that was something. “Very well, Lilith. You have me. Come and do what you wish.”

  Words formed on his tongue. His hopes rose slightly. He knew that the words’ power would give him some chance to at least stave off the inevitable…

  Something whizzed past his ear. There was a grotesque, bestial howl, followed by a dull thunk, as if something had collided with one of the many trees.

  Mendeln peered in the direction of the howl and saw something sinister standing against one of the thick trunks. When he saw that the thing did not move, he finally approached it.

  It was a morlu…a morlu with an arrow through the throat just where the helmet and breastplate left only half an inch of space. Mendeln started to reach for the arrow, its presence stirring another nightmare—

  The morlu lifted his head, the black pits staring at Mendeln. The warrior grasped for Uldyssian’s brother.

  The same words that he had earlier used on one of these fiends in the house of Master Ethon spilled from Mendeln. As they did, the morlu’s grasping hands twitched wildly. A gurgle escaped the pale lips.

  The morlu slumped again, only the arrow pinning him to the tree keeping the bestial figure from falling at Mendeln’s feet.

  Without hesitation, Mendeln put a hand over the monstrous warrior’s chest. Other words, again first used in Partha, sprang easily from the lips of Uldyssian’s brother.

  Most would have been unable to see the small, black cloud that rose from the morlu. It hovered over Mendeln’s palm. He stared at the foulness for a moment, then snapped shut his hand.

  The cloud vanished.

  “No more will you be raised to do evil.” Whatever darkness animated a morlu, gave it semblance of true life, would not be able to resurrect this particular corpse. Mendeln had made certain of that.

  But there still remained whatever had initially rescued him from the Triune’s servant. Mendeln finally touched the arrow, noting with mild dismay that there was dirt all over the shaft. Just like the arrow that had slain one of the Peace Warders.

  “It cannot be…he is dead…”

  But life is only a robe which all wear but fleeting…

  Though the thought flowed through his mind, Mendeln by no stretch of the imagination believed it his own. He had felt that other presence in his head before. It had always guided him, yet, now what it said only made Mendeln more anxious.

  “No!” he growled at the darkness. “He is dead! To think otherwise is evil! He is buried! I was there! I chose the spot! I chose—”

  He had chosen to bury the body very near an ancient structure bearing the same sort of markings as the stone near Sera
m. Mendeln gaped at his own naivety. Why did he think that he had chosen that very location? Something had urged him to do it and he had blithefully acquiesced.

  Shaking his head, Mendeln backed up—

  And collided with another form.

  Uldyssian’s brother spun around…and stared into the pale, dirty face of Achilios.

  Six

  Astrogha was a demon of ambitions. He had sat near the taloned hand of Diablo, the greatest of the Prime Evils, and had learned well. It had always chafed him to be subservient to Lucion, but then Lucion had actually been the son of Mephisto so there had been little he could do about it.

  But Lucion acted strange of late. In his persona of the Primus, the archdemon had always done things in a certain manner, but since his return from some mysterious foray, that had changed. Had Astrogha not known better, he would have sworn that it was no longer the son of Mephisto who sat upon the Primus’s throne. That was impossible, surely, for who could ever masquerade as Lucion?

  The demon shifted in his shadowed web, located now in one of the high towers of the Triune’s supreme temple. Astrogha had chosen the one dedicated to Dialon, naturally, that being the spirit who was, in fact, his master, Diablo. Around the brooding demon crawled his “children,” sinister black spiders of every size, some as big as a man’s head.

  Astrogha was a demon of many incarnations, many shapes. For this moment, he wore a form both arachnid and human, a macabre mix of the two. He now had eight limbs, broader and thicker than any spider, which could be used as arms or legs, depending on circumstance. All ended in clawed digits perfect for rending soft flesh, the better to stuff it into a maw with not only fangs, but jagged teeth that looked as if they had been filed. Astrogha’s torso was generally humanoid in design, but rounder and broader at the shoulder. He could make it otherwise, should the mood suit him.

  Atop his head were eight more smaller limbs, each ending in human hands. They were good for dragging prey closer to his mouth and for plucking tiny vermin from his black-furred body for the occasional snack in between.