by John Marco
‘Good?’
‘Yes, Lukien. We need to get far from them if we are to find a rass. They will not come so close to so many people.’
‘Oh, I forgot,’ Lukien drawled. ‘They’re shy.’
‘You laugh? They have enough sense to be afraid of people. And they can smell very far with their tongues. When we get near them, we must make sure to stay downwind of them.’
‘How will we know when we’re close?’
‘I will know,’ said Jahan. ‘But first we must find the river again.’
‘The river? Jahan, we just left it.’
‘No, Lukien we must be well away from the others. I saw from the boat how the river bends. That’s where we will go. At night the rass will come to the river. There will be marks in the mud where they have been.’
Lukien nodded, understanding. ‘So if we find the marks we’ll find the rass.’
‘Just so. But first we need to find a place in the river far enough away from the boat so that the rass can’t smell it.’
‘How far is that?’
Jahan grinned. ‘We have all day, do we not?’
Just before dusk, Jahan found that special place by the river.
It had taken all of the day to reach it, a sandy beach where the forest receded and water birds came to stand in the stream and peck at fish with their long beaks. A ridge of hills stood in the distance, blocking the falling sun. Near the trees, long openings had been flattened among the tall grasses, a sign to Jahan that something big had passed this way before, many times. Lukien, exhausted from the day in the forest, rested at the edge of the beach as he watched the sun go down. They had reached the serene place hours ago, taking a meal and napping while they waited for night to arrive. Confident that this was a place of rass, Jahan had shown their tracks to Lukien, a collection of fat grooves carved into the soft earth by the giant bodies of the serpents. The sight of the tracks had given Lukien a chill.
As the darkness came, he and Jahan had spoken less and less, and their voices dimmed to whispers. Jahan ignored the sunset, staring instead in the other direction, toward the tree line and the glistening beach. His eyes shone with excitement. An expectant smile stretched across his lips. He had been an expert guide and Lukien was glad to have him, yet he could hardly understand his enthusiasm. His love for the serpents was uncanny.
‘I’m going to have to kill it, you know,’ Lukien whispered.
Broken from his spell, Jahan’s smile disappeared. ‘Yes.’
They were downwind of the beach, just as Jahan had planned. Hours ago they had buried their food and washed themselves in the river. It was hard for Lukien to imagine a rass being afraid of anything, but he had done everything that Jahan had asked of him. Keeping behind the rocks, Jahan raised his head a little to peer out toward the tree line.
‘Soon.’
‘It was darker than this when we saw them in your village,’ Lukien pointed out.
‘They will come,’ said Jahan.
Lukien grimaced. ‘How big do you think?’
‘Oh, big,’ Jahan assured him. He turned and looked at his companion. ‘That’s what you wanted, Lukien. That’s what you said.’
‘Yes. Still. .’
‘You are afraid.’
‘I’d be stupid not to be.’
Jahan thought for a moment. ‘Your idea is good,’ he pronounced. ‘I have been thinking about it. There is no way for Lahkali to kill the Great Rass if she does not know how. So you will learn how, and then teach her. Yes, it is a good idea.’
Lukien wondered about that now. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘No,’ Jahan sighed. ‘It is a shame, but it is for Lahkali. It is for the good of her village.’
Lukien smiled at his quaintness. ‘I have done my best for her, you know. You think I am hard on her, but-’
‘You are hard on her, Lukien. But I understand.’ Jahan spied the beach again. ‘She cares for you.’
‘Does she?’
‘It is plain to see, Lukien.’
‘Yes,’ said Lukien, nodding. ‘She has done everything I’ve asked. I can’t fail her.’
‘And that’s why you’re here?’
The question surprised Lukien. ‘Of course.’
‘The only reason?’
‘Jahan, I don’t take your meaning.’
Jahan did not turn his attention from the tree line. ‘No more talk. Watch now.’
Lukien stiffened. ‘You see something?’
‘It is the rass that we don’t see that I am afraid of, Lukien. Keep your eyes open for me.’
They both became still as the night settled over the beach. Darkness crept over the sand as the waves curled back. Lukien began readying himself. They would come to the water; Jahan had assured him of that. After that? Lukien considered his strategy. It would be best to confront the beast on the openness of the sand, he decided. His fingers tightened around his katath.
An hour passed and the moon appeared, bathing the sand in its silvery light. Overhead, the sky cleared of rain clouds, popping with stars. The buzzing of the insects intensified. Lukien felt sweat gathering on his chest. He scratched at it, pushing aside the Eye of God as he did so. The warmth of the amulet touched his fingers. Inside, he felt the ever-present Amaraz, mutely waiting with him for the rass to arrive.
Will you keep me safe?
Lukien’s question went unanswered, and for a moment he wondered if he really wanted to be kept safe at all. Niharn’s words to him came back suddenly, like an unpleasant itch. He hadn’t found the Sword of Angels yet, or even any clue to it. And he had promised Cassandra he would see her again. He looked at Jahan, at last realizing what his friend had meant.
‘What?’ asked Jahan, feeling Lukien’s eyes on him.
‘I’m not here to die, Jahan.’
A long silence ensued. Jahan sighed. ‘As you say.’
Lukien was about to speak again, but Jahan quickly held up his hand. The village man leaned forward, peering through the darkness. Excitement tensed his body.
‘Lukien, look. .’
Lukien looked but saw nothing. ‘Where?’
‘There, all the way down the beach.’ Jahan pointed. ‘By the fallen trees. Do you see?’
The trees had collapsed and rotted into the sand. Lukien had seen them earlier, when they’d first arrived. He focused on them now, struggling to see. A movement caught his eye, a slow undulating of flesh. Colourful hides caught the moonlight. Then, a single great hood emerged, raising up from the dead trees as the rass wound toward the river.
‘Fate almighty,’ Lukien gasped. ‘Look at the size of it.’
Jahan’s face was all beaming glee. He raised his head for a better look, almost completely coming out of his hiding place. ‘He’s far away. He won’t smell us from here.’
Following his lead, Lukien emerged out of the rocks, clutching his katath and wetting his lips with his tongue. The rass moved silently, oblivious to them, its stout body pushing aside the sand. Its giant head came up, reflecting the moonlight in its glassy eyes. The tongue flicked out to taste the moist air. The coiled designs along its hood glistened blood-red against its greenish hide. And just as it lowered its head, another appeared. Lukien held his breath. Jahan let out a sound of exaltation.
‘Beautiful. .’
To Lukien, the rass were monstrous. He froze, not with fear but with revulsion, awed as the big rass led its cousin to the river.
‘Two of them,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t fight two.’
Jahan lifted himself out of the hiding place. Like a little boy chasing butterflies he inched along the sand. Lukien followed without knowing why, but then reached out to slow Jahan’s approach.
‘Wait,’ he snapped. ‘Not too close.’
‘They want water, Lukien, not us. Probably a male and female. Mates.’
‘Oh, gods, I don’t need to see that.’
The larger rass — the male — reached the river first, surveying the bank in protection of its female, whose
colourful body was only slightly smaller but speckled with spots of black and yellow. The enormous serpents at last settled to drink, slipping into the river and almost disappearing in the mud. Doubts overtook Lukien as he watched them. There was no way he could take on two of them, even with the amulet to keep him alive. And they were mates. .
‘Jahan,’ he whispered. ‘Wait.’
But Jahan still moved toward them, tip-toeing quietly along the sand. Infatuated by the creatures, he paid no heed to Lukien’s cautions, finally coming to a stop ten feet away. He turned with a smile to urge Lukien out.
‘It’s safe, Lukien,’ he assured with a wave. ‘Come.’
Shadows danced along the beach, blackening the sand. Lukien’s one eye barely saw the darkness gathering to Jahan’s side. At first he thought it merely one more tree, rising up unnaturally from the others. Lukien turned casually toward it and saw its spreading hood. He gaped, staring at it, confused even as the maw opened and the sabre-like fangs filled its reptilian face. It’s eyes seized on Jahan.
‘Lukien?’ Jahan was smiling. ‘Come with me.’
Time snapped forward. Jahan was speaking as the fangs appeared. Lukien opened his mouth to shout a warning as the rass came down, striking Jahan like a hammer with its enormous head and sending him sprawling. Lukien screamed, jumping toward him, but the rass had seen him now, using its tail to whip him back. The blow blackened Lukien’s vision. He was falling, spinning backward, dropping the katath and scrambling for footing. He looked up from the sand and saw Jahan’s frozen body, paralyzed by the poisonous strike. Dazed, Lukien staggered to his feet, ready to rush the snake. The rass ignored him, and with inhuman speed took Jahan in its mouth and slithered back into the trees.
‘No!’
Lukien sped after it, dodging tree limbs as he fought to follow the racing rass. Already he had lost it. It simply disappeared, swallowed by the darkness. Lukien kept on, screaming as he bumbled past the branches, his face struck by the sharp limbs. Moonlight sifted through the canopy, and for a moment he thought he caught a glimpse of the beast, but it was only a vine swinging in the wind. He looked around desperately, unsure which way to go. Suddenly everything looked like a serpent.
‘Jahan!’
His cry tore through the forest, unanswered.
Sick with grief, Lukien dropped slowly to his knees. Jahan was gone.
34
True to his promise, Master Niharn waited the day for Lukien and Jahan to return. Aboard the feruka, he whiled away the time talking to his old friend, Thaget, the captain of the vessel and playing card games in the hot sun. When night fell, the two old comrades spent the evening drinking and swapping tales, and by morning they were ready to sail home.
But Lukien did not return that first morning. And Niharn continued to wait. Thaget set his sailors to the many tasks of the boat, and as they day wore on the sun baked the deck and turned the beach where they were moored the colour of burnt glass. Master Niharn spied the forest, hopeful that Lukien and the quiet villager would emerge at any moment.
But they did not.
Finally, as night fell on the second day, Niharn knew he had a decision to make. Rumblings among the sailors reached his ears, but Thaget kept them in line with his sharp tongue. Still, they were right to be concerned, and when at last Thaget came to Niharn the captain looked troubled. Niharn was still at the edge of the deck, leaning contemplatively over the shallow railing as he watched the forest for movement. Except for the lizards and crabs that crept along the bank, he saw nothing. Over his shoulder, he saw Thaget’s concerned face in the lamplight. The two hadn’t talked in hours, and now there seemed little to say. Niharn struggled against his own disbelief and the enormity of what he had done, bringing Lukien to Amchan.
‘He said he couldn’t die,’ the master whispered. He realized dreadfully how silly that sounded now. ‘I believed him.’
‘He has magic,’ said Thaget optimistically. ‘We’ve all heard of it.’
‘He could not be this late. Something has happened.’
Thaget didn’t argue, because the facts were so plain. Instead the feruka captain waited for his friend’s orders.
‘We have supplies for days, and fresh water from the river. We can stay, Niharn, if that’s what you want.’
‘The Eminence will know we are gone. She will guess that we have taken Lukien away.’
‘She won’t know we’ve come here, though.’
Niharn considered this. ‘No.’
There was so much to think about, and so little that made sense. He had agreed to take Lukien to Amchan to kill a rass, and that alone seemed like madness. Lukien was a stranger, and in many ways a rival. Why then did his heart ache now?
‘Your men want to leave,’ said Niharn. ‘They are afraid.’
‘I’m their captain,’ said Thaget. ‘They will stay.’
‘And you? Do you want to leave, Thaget?’
The captain of the boat reared back indignantly. ‘I’m not afraid, Niharn. I would not have come if I were.’
‘No,’ said Niharn with a grin. ‘I know. But they are very late, and they are strangers here. They do not know the things they should to survive out here.’
‘The man from the village — he seems to know.’
‘Yes,’ Niharn agreed. ‘He’s part savage, that one. And he has not come to fight a rass. But Lukien. .’ The old man shook his head and sighed. ‘I do not think he can survive it.’
On the third night in Amchan, the rain returned.
Lukien, stripped to the waist and smeared with mud, stood outside the den of the rass, waiting with his katath, his Eye of God dangling at his naked chest. In the blackness he was invisible, smeared with earth so that his skin and hair were hidden. His eye glistened like an angry pearl. His toes dug into the loamy ground, bootless. His trousers, soaked with river water, clung to his muscled legs. Behind a single, broad-leafed fruit tree he stood, statue-still, his breathing calmly matching the wind. In the moonless night he could barely see the yawning cavern the rass called home, a craggy opening covered with slime and lichens. Lukien concentrated, summoning the power of the amulet, using its ruby light to warm himself. Though the rain fell cold, he did not shiver. His mud-caked body stood rigid.
For a day and a night he had tracked the rass, following the tell-tale drops of Jahan’s blood and studying every leaf and broken twig. The rass had moved like lightning, stealing away the dead Jahan, but its giant mass had left clues to trace. Slowly, painstakingly, Lukien had found its lair. After a dozen false starts, he came at last to the object of his vengeance.
And then he waited.
For more than a day he had gone without food, refusing to leave the lair of the beast to hunt for sustenance. Everything he had brought with him — save the katath — he had left at the beach where Jahan had been killed, not wanting anything to slow or distract him. Refusing to reveal himself, he had stripped away most of his clothes and washed away his scent in the river, doing just as Jahan had taught him to avoid the snake’s sharp senses. His coat of mud kept the insects at bay. For food, he used thoughts of vengeance. Endlessly patient, Lukien watched the lair of the rass.
The night grew deeper. The rain slackened. Inside its home of rock the serpent did not stir. Satisfied from its human meal, it had no use to hunt. But did it need water? Lukien could only guess.
I am here for you, ugly one. Soon you will have to come out, and I will be waiting.
He had seen snakes in Liiria, little ones, swallowing whole eggs without ever stopping to chew as their mouths grotesquely dislocated. He imagined that’s how Jahan had been eaten, all at once and slowly.
You will not die so horribly. It will be quick for you, but you don’t deserve such mercy.
Jahan had always tried to convince him that the rass were noble. But to Lukien, they remained the most evil of creatures.
Jahan was noble.
Would he want such revenge? To Lukien the question hardly mattered. Revenge was for the liv
ing to decide.
Near dawn the rain finally ended. Lukien fought to keep awake. Looking up into the sky he saw the twilight stars struggling through the moving clouds. The leaves and grass began to glow beneath their light. He steeled himself, disappointed that the night had fled. It would be another day at least before his quarry emerged. The strength that had kept him erect so long began to ebb, making his eyelids heavy.
They come out at night. .
His gaze dropped, and for a moment sleep edged across his mind.
No! Stay awake!
He took a breath.
But sit. Rest. .
And then at last he heard a sound. It was unlike any other he had heard during his vigil near the cavern, a small, almost imperceptible scraping that tickled his ear. His heart began to race. His gaze widened and his jaw began to tighten. Crouching, he spied the hole of the serpent, and saw to his amazement the shadowy beast start to emerge. The head appeared, big and black, its dark eyes looking lifeless as they narrowed in the starlight. The cautious tongue came out to sniff the air, hissing as its forked muscles shook. The hood spread wide and the great beast rose up, surveying its domain.
Lukien slowly released his breath. In his hand the katath trembled. He rose, stretching himself tall to confront the creature.
‘Look here,’ he commanded.
The black eyes of the serpent snapped forward, fixing on him. Half naked and muddy, his hair slicked back against his head, Lukien raised the katath over his head.
‘You’re the one,’ he said. He had only seen the rass for an instant, yet now he recognized it immediately. ‘I have come for you, monster.’
What might have been disbelief flashed across the serpent’s features. It’s huge head bobbed backward and forward as it watched Lukien, searching for him with its terrible tongue. The amulet around Lukien’s neck flared to life, flooding his features with a rush of crimson. He stood fearlessly before the rass, staring into its hypnotic gaze.
‘A friend of mine is in your belly. I have come to avenge him. Don’t think me another easy meal, beast. I am damned. Nothing can kill me, not even you.’