Serpent Mage

13

Alfred spent many pleasant hours walking the streets of Surunan. Like its inhabitants, the city had awakened from its long, enforced slumber and returned swiftly to life. There were far more people than Alfred had first supposed. He must have discovered only one of many Sleeping chambers. Guided by the Council, the Sartan worked to restore their city to its original beauty. Sartan magic made dead plants green, repaired crumbling buildings, wiped away all traces of destruction. Their city restored to beauty, harmony, peace, and order, the Sartan began to discuss how to do the same to the other three worlds.

Alfred reveled in the tranquility, the beauty his soul remembered. He delighted in the Sartan conversation, the multiplicity of wonderous images created by the magic of the rune language. He heard the music of the runes and wondered, his eyes moist with pleasure, how he could have ever forgotten such beauty. He basked in the friendly smiles of his brothers and sisters.

“I could live here and be happy,” he said to Orla. They were walking through the city, on their way to a meeting of the Council of Seven. The dog, who had not left Alfred’s side since the night before, accompanied them. The beauty of Surunan was food to Alfred’s soul, which, he realized now, had nearly withered up and died of starvation. He could, he noted wistfully, actually walk the streets without falling over his feet or anyone else’s.

“I understand how you feel,” said Orla, looking about with pleasure. “It is as it used to be. It seems as if no time has passed at all.” The dog, feeling itself forgotten, whined and shoved its head into Alfred’s dangling hand.

The touch of the cold nose made Alfred jump. Startled, he looked down at the dog, forgot to watch where he was going, and tumbled into a marble bench.

“Are you all right?” Orla asked in concern.

“Yes, thank you,” Alfred mumbled, picking himself up and endeavoring to put himself back together.

He looked at Orla in her soft white robes, at all the other Sartan dressed alike in their white robes. And he looked down at himself, still wearing the faded purple velvet suit of the mensch court of King Stephen of Arianus. Frayed lace cuffs were too short for his long, gangly arms; the hose covering his ungainly legs were wrinkled and sagging. He ran his hand over his balding head. It seemed to him that the smiles of his brothers and sisters were no longer friendly, but patronizing, pitying.

Alfred wanted, suddenly, to grab his brethren by the collars of their long, white robes and shake them until their teeth rattled.

Time has passed! he wanted to shout. Eons. Centuries. Worlds that were young and newly born out of fire have cooled and grown old. While you slept, generations have lived and suffered and been happy and died. But what does that mean to you? Nothing more than the thick layers of dust covering your perfect white marble. You sweep it away and prepare to go on. But you can’t. No one remembers you. No one wants you. Your children have grown and left home. They may not be doing that well on their own, but at least they’re free to try.

“Something is the matter,” said Orla solicitously. “If you’re hurt, the Council can wait ...”

Alfred was startled to find himself trembling; his unspoken words churned inside him. Why not say them? Why not let them out? Because I may be wrong. Most probably I am wrong. Who am I, after all? Not very wise. Not nearly as wise as Samah and Orla.

The dog, accustomed to Alfred’s sudden and erratic tumbles, had leapt lightly out of the way when he fell. It returned to gaze up at him with a certain amount of reproach.

I have four feet to worry about and you only have two, the dog advised him. One would think you could manage better.

Alfred was reminded of Haplo, of the Patryn’s irritation whenever the Sartan stumbled over himself.

“I think,” said Orla, eyeing the dog severely, “we should have left the animal behind.”

“He wouldn’t have stayed,” said Alfred.

Samah appeared to be of the same opinion. He eyed the dog, sitting at Alfred’s feet, suspiciously.

“You say that this dog belongs to a Patryn. You have said yourself that this Patryn uses the animal to spy on others. It shouldn’t be in a Council meeting. Remove it. Ramu”—he gestured to his son, who was acting as Council Servitor[23]—“remove the animal.”

Alfred made no protest. The dog growled at Ramu, but—at a soft word from Alfred—suffered itself to be led out of the Council Chamber. Ramu returned, shutting the door behind him and taking up his proper place before it. Samah took his place behind the long, white, marble table. The six Council members took their places, three on his left and three on his right. All sat down simultaneously.

The Sartan, in their white robes, faces alight with wisdom and intelligence, were beautiful, majestic, radiant.

Alfred, seated on the Supplicant’s Bench, saw himself by contrast—huddled, faded, and bald. The dog, tongue lolling, lay at his feet.

Samah’s eyes skipped over Alfred, fixed on the dog. The head of the Council frowned, glanced at his son.

Ramu was astonished. “I put him out, Father, and”—he glanced behind him—“I shut the door! I swear!”

Samah motioned Alfred to stand and come forward, into the Supplicant’s Circle. Alfred did so, feet shuffling.

“I ask you to put the animal outside, Brother.”

Alfred sighed, shook his head. “He’ll just come right back in. But I don’t think you need worry about him spying on us for his master. He’s lost his master. That’s why he’s here.”

“He wants you to look for his master, for a Patryn?”

“I believe so,” said Alfred meekly.

Samah’s frown darkened. “And this doesn’t seem strange to you? A dog belonging to a Patryn, coming to you, a Sartan, for help?”

“Well, no,” said Alfred, after a moment’s reflection. “Not considering what the dog is. That is, what I think it is. Or might be.” He was somewhat flustered.

“What is this dog, then?”

“I’d rather not say, Councillor.”

“You refuse a direct request of the head of the Council?” Alfred hunched his head into his shoulders, like a threatened turtle. “I’m probably wrong. I’ve been wrong about a great many things. I wouldn’t want to give the Council misinformation,” he concluded lamely.

“I do not like this, Brother!” Samah’s tone was a whiplash. Alfred flinched beneath it. “I have tried to make allowances for you, because you have lived so long among mensch, bereft of the companionship, counsel, and advice of your own kind. But now you have walked among us, lived among us, eaten our bread, and yet you willfully persist in refusing to answer our questions. You will not even tell us your real name. One might think you distrusted us—your own people!”

Alfred felt the justness of this accusation. He knew Samah was right, knew the flaw to be in himself, knew he was unworthy to stand here, to be among his people. He wanted desperately to tell them all he knew, to fling himself prostrate at their feet, to hide beneath the hems of their white robes. Hide. Yes, that’s what I’d be doing. Hide from myself. Hide from the dog. Hide from despair. Hide from hope . . .

He sighed. “I trust you, Samah, members of the Council. It’s myself that I don’t trust. Is it wrong to refuse to answer questions to which I don’t know the answer?”

“Sharing information, sharing your speculations, might benefit us all.”

“Perhaps,” said Alfred. “Or perhaps not. I must be the judge.”

“Samah,” Orla said gently, “this arguing is pointless. As you said, we must make allowances.”

If Samah had been a mensch king, he would have ordered his son to take Alfred and wring the information out of him. And it seemed, for a moment, as if the Councillor was regretting he wasn’t such a king. His hand clenched in frustration, his brow furrowed. But he mastered himself, continued on.

“I am going to ask you a question and I trust you will find it in your heart to answer.”

“If I can do so, I will,” Alfred replied humbly.

“We have urgent need to contact our brethren in the other three worlds. Is such contact possible?”

Alfred looked up, amazed. “But, I thought you understood! You have no brethren in the other worlds! That is,” he added, shuddering, ’ ”unless you count the necromancers on Abarrach.”

“Even these necromancers, as you term them, are Sartan,” said Samah. “If they have fallen into evil, all the more reason to try to reach them. And you yourself have admitted that you have not traveled to Pryan. You don’t know for certain that our people are no longer on the world.”

“But I have talked to one who has been there,” Alfred protested. “He found a Sartan city, but no trace of any Sartan. Only terrible beings, that we created—”

“And where did you get this information?” Samah thundered. “From a Patryn! I see his image in your mind! And you would have us believe it?” Alfred shrank into himself. “He would have no reason to”

“He would have every reason! He and this lord who plans to conquer and enslave us!” Samah fell silent, glaring at Alfred. “Now, answer my question!”

“Yes, Councillor. I suppose you could go through Death’s Gate.” Alfred wasn’t being very helpful, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“And alert this Patryn tyrant to our presence. No, not yet. We are not strong enough to face him.”

“And yet,” said Orla, “we may not have any choice. Tell Alfred the rest.”

“We must trust him,” said Samah bitterly, “although he does not trust us.” Alfred flushed, stared down at his shoes.

“After the Sundering came a time of chaos. It was a dreadful time,” Samah said, frowning. “We knew there would be suffering and loss of life. We regretted it, but we believed that the greater good to come would make up for it.”

“That is the excuse of all who wage war,” said Alfred in a low voice. Samah paled in anger.

Orla intervened. “What you say is true, Brother. And there were those who argued against it.”

“But what is done is done and that time is long past,” Samah said in stern tones, seeing several of the Council members shift restlessly in their seats.

“The magical forces we unleashed proved far more destructive than we had anticipated. We found, too late, that we could not bring them under control. Many of our people sacrificed their own lives in an attempt to stop the holocaust that swept over the world. To no avail. We could only watch in helpless horror and, when all was ended, do what we could to save those who had managed to survive.

“The creation of the four worlds was successful, as was the imprisonment of our enemies. We took the mensch and brought them to havens of peace and safety. Such a world was Chelestra.

“This world was the one of which we were the proudest. It hangs in the darkness of the universe like a beautiful blue-white jewel. Chelestra is made completely of water. On the outside, it is ice; the chill of the space around it freezes the water solid. Within Chelestra’s heart, we placed a seastar, which warms the water and warms as well the durnai, hibernating, living beings that drift around the seasun. The mensch call them seamoons. It was our intent, after the mensch had lived here many generations and become accustomed to it, that they should move onto these seamoons. We would remain here, on this continent.”

“This isn’t a seamoon?” Alfred looked confused.

“No, we needed something more solid, more stable. Something that more closely resembled the world we left behind. Sky, sun, trees, clouds. This realm rests on a huge formation of solid rock formed in the shape of a chalice. Runes cover its surface with intricate patterns of force both outside the stone and within.

“Inside the cup is a mantle of molten rock, covered by a surface crust not unlike our original world. Here we formed clouds, rivers and valleys, lakes and fertile land. Above all arches the dome of the sky that keeps the sea at bay while letting in the light of the seasun.”

“You mean,” said Alfred, awed, “that we are now surrounded by water?”

“The turquoise blue you see above you that you call sky is not sky as you know it, but water,” said Orla, smiling. “Water that we could share with other worlds, worlds such as Abarrach.” Her smile faded. “We came here, out of despair, hoping to find peace. We found instead death, destruction.”

“We built this city with our magic,” Samah continued. “We brought the mensch to live here. For a time, all went well. Then, creatures appeared, coming up out of the deep. We couldn’t believe what we saw. We, who had made all the animals of all the new worlds, had not made these. They were ugly, horrible to look on. They smelled foul, of decay and putrefaction. The mensch called them dragons, naming them after a mythical beast of the Old World.” Samah’s words created images in the mind. Alfred listened and saw and was carried back with the head of the Council to a far distant time. . . .

. . . Samah stood outside, upon the steps of the Council Chamber, and gazed in anger and frustration down upon the newly made city of Surunan. All around him was beauty, but he took no comfort in it. The beauty, instead, seemed a mockery. Beyond the high, glistening, flower-covered city walls, he heard the voices of the mensch beat against the marble like the pounding of a storm-tossed sea.

“Tell them to return to their homes,” Samah ordered his son, Ramu. “Tell them all will be well.”

“We told them, Father,” Ramu replied. “They refuse.”

“They are frightened,” Orla explained, seeing her husband’s face harden.

“Panicked. You can’t blame them. After all they’ve been through, all they’ve suffered.”

“And what about all we’ve suffered. They never think of that!” Samah returned bitterly.

He was silent long moments, listening to the voices. He could distinguish the races among them: the raucous blaring of the humans, the flutelike laments of the elves, the booming bass of the dwarves. A terrible orchestra that, for the first time in its existence, was playing in concert, instead of each section trying to drown out the other.

“What do they want?” he asked finally.

“They are terrified of these so-called dragons. The people want us to open the gates to our part of the city,” Ramu told him. “They think they will be safer inside our walls.”

“They are just as safe in their own homes!” Samah said. “The same magic protects them.”

“You can’t blame them for not understanding, Father,” Ramu replied scornfully.

“They are like children, frightened by the thunder, who seek the safety of the parents’ bed.”

“Open the gates, then. Let them in. Make room for them where you can and do what you can to keep the damage they cause to a minimum. Make it clear to them that it is only temporary. Tell them that the Council is going out to destroy the monsters and, when this is done, we expect the mensch to return peacefully to their homes. Or as peacefully as can be expected of them,” he added in acerbic tones.

Ramu bowed and went to do his father’s bidding, taking with him the other servitors to assist.

“The dragons have done no great harm,” said Orla. “I am sick of killing. I entreat you, again, Samah, to try to talk with them, find out something about them and what they want. Perhaps we can negotiate—”

“All this you said before the Council, Wife,” Samah interrupted her impatiently. “The Council voted and the decision was made. We did not create these creatures. We have no control over them ...”

“And so they must be destroyed,” Orla concluded coldly.

“The Council has spoken.”

“The vote was not unanimous.”

“I know.” Samah was cold, still angry. “And to keep peace in the Council and in my home, I will talk to these serpents, learn what I can about them. Believe it or not, Wife, I, too, am sick of killing.”

“Thank you, Husband,” Orla said, attempting to slide her arm through his. Samah stiffened, held himself away from her touch.

The Sartan Council of Seven left their walled city for the first time since they had arrived in this new world of their own creation. Joining hands, performing a solemn and graceful dance, the seven sang the runes and called upon the winds of ever-shifting possibility to carry them over the walls of the center city, over the heads of the wailing mensch, to the nearby shores of the sea.

Out in the water, the dragons awaited them. The Sartan looked on them and were appalled. The serpents were huge, their skin wrinkled. They were toothless and old, older than time itself. And they were evil. Fear emanated from the dragons, hatred gleamed in their red-green eyes like angry suns, and shriveled the very hearts of the Sartan, who had seen nothing like it, not even in the eyes of the Patryns, their most bitter enemy.

The sand, which had once been as white and gleaming as crushed marble, was now gray-green, coated by trails of foul-smelling slime. The water, covered with a thick film of oil, washed sluggishly up on the polluted shore. Led by Samah, the Council members formed a line upon the sand. The dragons began to slither and leap and writhe. Churning the seawater, the serpents stirred up great waves, sent them crashing to shore. The spray from the waves fell on the Sartan. The smell was putrid, brought a horrid image. They seemed to be looking into a grave in which lay moldering all the hastily buried victims of sinister crimes, all the rotting corpses of the battlefield, the dead of centuries of violence.

Samah, raising his hand, called out, “I am head of the Council, the governing body of the Sartan. Send one of your kind forward to talk with us.” One of the dragons, larger and more powerful than the rest, reared its head out of the water. A huge wave surged to shore. The Sartan could not escape it, and were drenched to the skin, their clothes and hair wringing wet. The water was cold, chilled them to the bone.

Orla, shivering, hastened to her husband’s side. “I am convinced. You are right. These creatures are evil and must be destroyed. Let’s do what we have to, quickly, and leave.”

Samah wiped seawater from his face, looking at it, looking at his hand in awe and perplexity. “Why do I feel so strange? What is happening? As if my body were suddenly made of lead, heavy and clumsy. My hands don’t seem to belong to me. My feet cannot move—”

“I feel it, too,” cried Orla. “We must work the magic swiftly—”

“I am the Royal One, king of my people,” called the serpent, and its voice was soft and barely heard and seemed to come from a far distance. “I will speak with you.”

“Why have you come? What do you want?” Samah shouted above the crashing of the waves.

“Your destruction.”

The words twisted and writhed in Samah’s mind as the dragons twisted in the water, dipping their serpent heads in and flinging them back out, flailing and lashing their bodies and tails. The seawater foamed and boiled and surged erratically over the shore. Samah had never faced any threat as dire as this one and he was uncertain, uneasy. The water chilled him, numbing limbs, freezing feet. His magic could not warm him.

Samah raised his hands to draw the runes in the air. He began to move his feet in the dance that would paint the runes with his body. He lifted his voice to sing the runes to the wind and the water. But his voice sounded flat and raucous. His hands were like claws, tearing the air. His feet moved in opposing directions. Samah stumbled, clumsy, inept. The magic washed away. Orla tried to come to her husband’s aid, but her body unaccountably failed her. She wandered across the shore, her feet reacting to a will that was no longer under her control. The remaining members of the Council staggered along the shore or tumbled into the water, like drunken revelers. Samah crouched in the sand, battling fear. He faced, he guessed, a terrible death.

“Where did you come from?” he cried in bitter frustration, watching the dragons surge into shore. “Who created you?”

“You did,” came the reply.

The horrible images faded, leaving Alfred weak and shaken. And he had only been a witness. He could not imagine what it must have been like to have lived through the incident.

“But the dragon-snakes did not kill us that day, as you may have surmised,” Samah concluded dryly.

He had related his tale calmly enough, but the usually firm, confident smile was thin and tight. The hand that rested upon the marble table shook slightly. Orla had gone extremely pale. Several of the other Council members shuddered, one let his head sink into his hands.

“There came a time when we longed for death,” Samah continued, his voice soft, as if he spoke to himself. “The dragons made sport of us, drove us up and down the beach until we were faint and exhausted. When one of us fell, the great toothless mouth closed over the body, dragged the person to his feet. Terror alone put life in our bodies. And, at last, when we could run no more, when our hearts seemed as if they must burst and our limbs would no longer support us, we lay in the wet sand and waited to die. The dragons left us, then.”

“But they came back, in greater numbers,” Orla said. Her hands rubbed the marble table, as if she would smooth out its already smooth surface. “They attacked the city, their huge bodies battering into walls, killing and torturing and maiming any living thing they found. Our magic worked against them and we held them off for a long time. But we could see that the magic was starting to crumble, just as did the rune-covered walls surrounding our city.”

“But why?” Alfred gazed from one to the other in shocked perplexity. “What power do these dragons have over our magic?”

“None. They can fight it, certainly, and they resist it better than any other living beings we have faced, but it was not, we soon discovered, the power of the dragons that left us helpless and defenseless on the beach. It was the seawater.”

Alfred gaped, astonished. The dog lifted its head, its ears pricked. It had fallen asleep, nose on paws, during the recital of the battle with the dragons. Now it sat up, looked interested.

“But you created the seawater,” said Alfred.

“As we—supposedly—created these dragon-snakes?” Samah gave a bitter laugh. He eyed Alfred shrewdly. “You have not come across anything like them in other worlds?”

“N-no. Dragons, yes, certainly, but they could always be controlled by magic, by mensch magic even. Or seemed to be,” he added suddenly, thoughtfully.

“The water of the sea, this ocean that we named ‘Goodsea’ ”—Samah spoke the word with irony—“has the effect of completely destroying our magic. We don’t know how or why. All we know is that one drop of the seawater on our skin begins a cycle that breaks down the rune structure, until we are helpless—more helpless, in fact—than mensch.

“And that is why, in the end, we ordered the mensch out into the Goodsea. The seasun was drifting away. We lacked the magical energy to stop it; all our power had to be conserved to fight the dragons. We sent the mensch to follow the seasun, to find other seamoons, where they could live. The creatures of the deep, whales and dolphins and others the mensch had befriended, went with them, to help guard and defend them from the dragons.

“We have no idea whether the mensch made it safely or not. Certainly, they stood a better chance than we did. The seawater has no effect on them or their magic. In fact, they seem to thrive on it. We stayed behind, waiting for the seasun to leave us, waiting for the ice to close over us ... and over our enemy. We were fairly certain, you see, that the dragons wanted us. They cared little for the mensch.”

“And we were right. The dragons kept up the attack on our city,” Orla continued, “but never in numbers sufficient to win. Victory did not seem to be their goal. Pain, suffering, anguish—that is what they wanted. Our hope was to wait, buy time. Each day the sun’s warmth lessened, the darkness gathered around us. Perhaps the dragons, intent on their hatred for us, did not notice. Or perhaps they thought their magic could overcome it. Or, perhaps, at the end, they fled. All we know is that one day the sea froze and on that day the dragons did not appear. On that day, we sent a final message to our people in the worlds beyond, asking that in a hundred years they come to wake us. And we went to sleep.”

“I doubt if they ever got your message,” said Alfred. “Or if they did, they couldn’t have come. Each world had its own problems, it seems.” He sighed, then blinked. “Thank you for telling me. I understand better now and I ... I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting. I thought . . .” He stared at his shoes, shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

“You thought we had abandoned our responsibility,” Samah said grimly.

“I’ve seen it before. On Abarrach . . .” Alfred gulped. The Councillor said nothing, looked at him expectantly. All the Council members were looking at him expectantly.

Now you understand, they were telling him. Now you know what to do. Except that he didn’t. Alfred spread trembling hands.

“What is it you want of me? Do you want me to help fight the dragons? I know something about the creatures, those we have on Arianus. But they seem to me to be very weak and ineffectual dragons, compared to these serpents you’ve described. And as for experimenting with seawater, I’m afraid—”

“No, Brother,” Samah interrupted. “Nothing so difficult. You told Orla that the arrival of this dog on Chelestra meant that the dog’s master was also on Chelestra. You have the animal. We want you to find the master and bring him to us.”

“No,” said Alfred, flustered, nervous. “I couldn’t . . . He let me go, you see, when he could have taken me prisoner to the Labyrinth—”

“We have no intention of harming this Patryn.” Samah’s tone was soothing. “We only want to ask him questions, discover the truth about the Labyrinth, his people’s suffering. Who knows, Brother, but that this could be the beginning of peace negotiations between our people? If you refuse, and war breaks out, how could you live with yourself, knowing that it had once been in your power to prevent it?”

“But I don’t know where to look,” Alfred protested. “And I wouldn’t know what to say. He wouldn’t come—”

“Wouldn’t he? To face the enemy he has longed to challenge? Consider it,” Samah added before the flustered Alfred had time to think up another argument.

“Perhaps you can use the dog as your means of getting him to return.”

“Surely, you aren’t going to refuse a request of the Council?” asked Orla softly. “A request that is so reasonable? One that affects the safety of us all?”

“No, of ... of course not,” Alfred said unhappily. He looked down at the dog.

The animal cocked its head, thumped its plumy tail on the floor, and grinned.