The Serpent Tower

Chapter Ten

The Foragers marched beneath the white banner of truce. It flew alongside the bat-winged angel on a black background that marked them as being part of the Seventh Infantry regiment. Sardec rode beside Lady Asea. She was the only person mounted aside from himself and it made him feel very conspicuous. There was no reason to be nervous, he told himself. Ilmarec would not harm an ambassador.

Sardec’s mouth was dry. Pain came from where his hand once had been. Before it had happened to him, he would never have believed a hook could hurt. There were times when he woke and thought he could still feel his fingers, that the loss of his hand had all been a dream. Of course, it was the phantom hand that was a dream. He had heard that sorcerers used mystical techniques to shape reality around them, imagining things so strongly they became true. He wondered if a sorcerer could imagine himself a severed hand so strongly that it became real. He mentioned it to Lady Asea. She seemed grateful for the distraction.

“On Al’Terra, I knew mages who could manipulate objects with hands they created by pure concentration. I doubt there is enough ambient magical energy to recreate that feat here.”

“What about growing new limbs? I had heard that was possible too.”

“With sufficient power you can stimulate the body in such a way that it repairs itself, like a Serpent Man growing a new tail.” Asea seemed sympathetic. She obviously understood his interest. She looked a little odd this morning as well.

Perhaps she had taken a new lover as camp gossip suggested. The half-breed had spent a long time in her tent last night. Sardec doubted they had been just talking. There was a time when he would have condemned her for it. He still felt the urge, but given his own actions with the girl Rena yesterday evening, he was in no position to throw stones. He felt a faint thrill at the memory of the previous night.

“That’s not an attractive image,” he said, wondering if he were talking about a hand growing like a Serpent Man’s tail or the picture of Asea and the half-breed writhing in passion that passed through his mind.

“There are less attractive ones,” she said. “Some sorcerers used to saw off the hands from the living and attach them to stumps of lost limbs.”

“It worked?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes the limb rotted. Sometimes the recipient died. No one was sure why. The practise never became popular for that reason.”

“My father claimed the Princes of Shadow took limbs from the dead.”

“He was right. Necromancers could reanimate them, and make them work, but there would be no sensation. They were like the limbs of lepers. Some of the Desecrator’s Lieutenants did that, and worse things.”

“You mean Moghrag and his armour of flesh?”

“Just so.” The infamous Moghrag had built a suit of armour from reanimated corpses turned inside out. The bones were fused on the outside to form an exo-skeleton, while clumps of necromantically-animated muscles on the inside amplified his strength. He was said to have been able to rip a man’s head from his shoulders with his bare hands.

Asea said; “Moghrag was always a sick one, even as a child. He was fond of dissecting things. I think he got that idea cutting up lizards and stitching them together.”

It was sometimes hard for Sardec to grasp that to one of the First, people like Moghrag were not simply the names of ogres from the Testaments, but living breathing individuals they had once had the acquaintance of. Asea had known Moghrag before the Exile, so had Azaar, so had Ilmarec for that matter.

“Azaar killed him, did he not?”

“He did. Azaar was First Blade of the Realm then. No one could match him with a sword, not even Moghrag with his strange armour and the stolen strength of a dozen warriors.”

Silence fell between them. When he had read the tales as a child, it was sometimes hard to understand why anyone would have sided with the Princes of Shadow, but there was a dark strain in the Terrarch psyche, and now he could imagine reasons.

He remembered the odd look in Rena's eyes when the cold metal of his hook had touched her naked flesh. He wanted to be whole again. He wanted to be handsome once more. He wanted to be able to think that women did not look at him with horror. There had been times when he had thought that dark sorcery might be the answer; it tempted him, particularly at night when he lay in bed alone with his thoughts. Under the sun, he could see it was madness. He had no desire to bear the stolen limb of another or to have the parts of an animated corpse grafted to his body. That was no solution to his problem.

“Could you work the healing magic?” he asked. The words just suddenly blurted out. They came from the deepest well of his being, and he had not expected to say them at all. Asea looked at him with something like pity on her face, and that was the worst part of it.

“In the right place, at the right time, possibly, yes,” she said. “On Al’Terra, where the flows of power were stable, strong and far more predictable than here it was difficult sorcery. Here on Gaeia, it would be even more complex.”

“Why is such sorcery difficult? You can summon demons from the Pit. Surely healing cannot be all that difficult in comparison.” She smiled as she might have done at a child who expected her to be able to reach up into the sky and pull down the sun.

“They are different types of magic,” she said. “Sometimes it is easier to do the big things than the little ones, just as it is easier to hack off a limb than to sew it on again so that it works. If you stimulate the body to repair itself you must do it exactly right. Otherwise it re-grows too much. Cancers come, or the limb becomes monstrous and malformed and useless, and you must amputate and begin the whole process again. That too is a risky procedure.”

“You do not make it sound easy.”

“No sorcery is ever easy. There is a cost for the sorcerer as well as the person ensorcelled. All magic puts enormous strain on the body and on the mind. Some think that this is why magic has so many ill effects on humans. They do not have the vitality or the mental capacity for it.”

Another thought occurred to Sardec. “Why can the Serpent Men re-grow limbs when we cannot?”

“I do not know. Their bodies are built differently from ours. They grow their entire lives, some of the Eldest are huge, almost the size of dragons. They are thousands of years old.”

“They must be an awesome sight.”

“They are. When I was in Xulander I visited several of the nest cities. Once I was shown into one of the sleeping chambers where the Eldest dream.”

“You never talked to one?”

“No- they are all asleep now. In hibernation I would guess.”

“Why?”

“Why do our own dragons spend most of their time asleep these days? It is a sign of the times, perhaps.”

“I have heard it said that the Serpent Men are cruel to their humans.”

“I have heard it said we are cruel to our humans.” She spoke in the High Tongue so the soldiers would not understand. He responded in kind.

“In the Dark Empire we are.”

“Some would say it’s not just in the Dark Empire.”

He shrugged not wanting to argue with her. He knew that politically they would never see eye to eye. She was too old and too radical. She had, after all, been a founder of the Scarlet faction.

“Do you think it’s true that the Serpent Men came from the stars?” he asked, to change the subject.

“So their Watcher Priests claim, and I see no reason to doubt them. It is said that many of the Elder Races did.”

“To cross the gulf between stars- that is a mighty sorcery.”

“To be sure, but no mightier than to cross between the worlds as our people did, when we came here.”

“Did they use gateways like we did?”

“You are in a curious mood this morning, Lieutenant Sardec.”

“I find it helps relax me when I may be riding into the teeth of Elder World weaponry. I fear I have the urge to learn something of the force that might destroy me.”

She laughed, a clear, ringing sound. “An admirable attitude but I think we are safe. I doubt Ilmarec will feel threatened enough by our force to unleash the horrors of the Ancients upon us.”

Sardec glanced back at the Foragers. They were a sadly depleted force. Perhaps thirty of the original company he had led into Achenar were present. The rest were either dead or recovering from their wounds. There were plenty of new faces, recruits posted from other companies to fill the roster. He hoped they had the skills of the men they were replacing. They were supposed to, but you never knew.

“My father fought in the sea battle at Ssaharoc. He said it was dreadful. The great towers guarding the harbour emitted beams of green light and our fleet just burned or exploded. Do you think Ilmarec has learned the secret of that light?”

“That seems as good a guess as any.”

“My father always said that if the Serpent Men could make the weapons on their Towers mobile, they could conquer the world.”

“Perhaps they can. Perhaps they simply have no desire for conquest. They are a strange people: alien and incomprehensible and I think to our mind very slothful. Perhaps they prefer inertia.”

“Then we had best hope that no one else learns their secrets.”

“All the Elder Races had mighty weapons, Lieutenant. They used them in their wars. That is why so much of the eastern half of this continent is devastated.”

A thought occurred to Sardec. “With such weapons we could have defeated the Princes of Shadow.”

“Perhaps, for a time.”

“You do not sound hopeful.”

“I think perhaps we could have defeated their armies, but the Princes themselves would have just done what they always did, and retreated into hiding until they had mastered the secrets themselves, and then they would have returned stronger than ever.”

“You do not think we will ever reclaim the Homeworld then?”

“It is a dream. Only a dream.” Sardec could not help but think that if they reclaimed Al’Terra, he might be able to regain his hand. He smiled sadly. It was a stupid petty reason to want to conquer a world, but he supposed such things had happened for lesser reasons.

The road passed over a ridge and suddenly, stunningly, Morven lay before them. Sardec barely noticed the walled townships on the islands in the river, or the sprawl of houses around the base of the great cliffs that rose above the river. He hardly saw the vast ruins that covered the land on one side of the tributary. What he noticed was the great stone spur rising above the town and the structure that perched atop it. Of course, he had seen the spire from a distance but the hills had blocked out the full view on their approach. This was the first time he had seen it in its entirety.

The tower was an immense structure, tall and thin, jutting a thousand feet into the air, tapering to a needle-sharp point at the tip. It glittered in the summer sun, reflecting the light greenly, for it appeared to have been carved entirely out of one titanic emerald. The sides were sleek and shiny. Here and there he could see small balconies and windows. Strange runes had been inscribed on its sides; they were of a lighter green and seemed to glow with inner light. Towards the tip were panels of the stuff, like vast stained glass windows.

The Tower was taller than any Terrarch structure he had ever seen, and gave off an aura of immeasurable age and strength. He knew those walls could resist dragonfire and sorcery; they could not be chipped with blades of truesilver. Seeing it for the first time he was brought face to face with the concept that there once had been mightier powers in this world than ever his own people had been. The sorcery that had created the Serpent Tower had been of an order greater than any his folk ever had access to, on this sorry world at least.

“It is beautiful, is it not?” said Asea.

“Aye, Lady. Lovely.”

“Strong beyond measure too.”

“Any fortress can be taken, Lady.”

“So Lord Azaar says but no one has taken the Tower since Ilmarec made it his own five centuries ago.”

“Who had it before him?”

“No one. It was shunned for centuries. They claimed a mad sorcerer lived there once, performing awful rituals. He was old before the Terrarch conquest. He ruled one of the old petty human kingdoms. His name was Lharquon.”

“What happened to him?”

“They say he was carried off by demons. It might well be true. Such creatures are always difficult to control.”

She should know, Sardec thought, for she had summoned a few in her time. It was strange to think of this serenely beautiful woman consorting with horrors from the Pit. At least by the light of day it was. He knew he would have no trouble believing it if he encountered her by night.

Sardec found his gaze glued to the tip of the Tower of Serpents. It glittered even more than the rest of the tower as if some great jewel caught the sun there. At any moment, he expected the green light his father had described to lick out and destroy them, but nothing happened. He raised his spyglass to his eye and studied the structure. There were people on the balconies, tiny at that distance, and robed. He wondered if one of them was Ilmarec.

The Foragers began the long descent of the ridge, following the road that led to the town. All around them were fields. Off to the east was an area of the ruins that looked burned and scorched. Large stones lay all around. Asea pointed to them. “Once there were huge Elder World buildings there. Now all that remains are those shattered fragments.”

“The green light?” Sardec asked.

“I am guessing so.”

As they entered the sprawl of houses, Rik felt as if he were coming home. He was a city boy at heart, and he never felt completely at ease in the countryside. Now with the tall crooked buildings rising around him, he felt more relaxed. There would be dangers here, but they were of a type he was prepared to deal with. The houses were not quite like the ones he knew. There was more stone than brick here, and the roof slates were a deeper, more brownish-red. But there were more similarities than differences. The buildings were still packed close together, and leaned towards each other like drunken men supporting each other after a big night out.

“A tavern,” said the Barbarian, pointing to a wooden sign swinging in the breeze above an open doorway. It showed a plump farmer dancing with a tankard in his hand and a serpent in the other. A crowd had gathered in the doorway to watch the soldiers riding by. As Rik watched, Sardec sent Corporal Toby to ask for directions. He knew from what Asea had told him last night they were heading for a mansion owned by a merchant. He had some business connection with her factors and her house. Toby returned and spoke to the Lieutenant. They headed on through the winding roads until they came to a bridge.

As toll money changed hands with the bridge-keeper, Rik studied their surroundings. Morven looked a prosperous place. It had three large Temples. Two had the plain spires of the New Faith, one was topped by a bronze angel. That would be where the followers of the Old Way worshipped.

He noticed that some of the new soldiers, the ones from Redtower, were pointing out the Old Way Temple. They imagined it the house of heretics and heathens, just as those who used it would imagine them to be. Like everything else, the faith had split in the great wars of the Schism. The New Faith was followed in the predominantly Scarlet nations like Talorea. The Old Way, which had never accepted the legitimacy of the Martyred Prophet, was followed by those aligned with the Dark Empire. The New Faith was said to be more open to humans, and more true to the spirit of the teachings of the Prophets, but if that was the case, he shuddered to think how repressive the Old Way was.

“You look as thoughtful as a fat man being offered a choice of pastries, Halfbreed,” said Weasel. “What are you thinking about?”

He lied from force of habit. “I am thinking at least we were not struck down by Elder World magic.”

“That’s what I like about you, Halfbreed. You always look on the bright side.”

“There’s no need to be so bloody sarcastic.”

Weasel merely smiled his annoying smile. “The Quartermaster gave us a special job. We’re to get in touch with the right people.” He made the peculiar wriggling motion of his fingers that let Rik know he was talking about the local underworld.

“Business as usual,” Rik said.

“If you’re not too busy with your new ladylove,” said Weasel

“Lucky bastard,” said the Barbarian. Rik said nothing to disabuse them of the notion that he was Asea’s fancy boy. It was a lot better than telling them the truth.

Why was it, he thought, that he always seemed to end up lying to his friends? He had not told them the real reason he had wanted Zarahel’s book back before Achenar. Now he could not tell them the real reason Asea was interested in him. He was destined always to walk apart even from the people who knew him best. He shrugged. What of it? He had always been set apart. His unknown father had seen to that.

They started to march again, passing over the cobbled bridge. It was a hundred strides long and lined with statues of saints and knights. As they came out from among the buildings he caught sight of the Serpent Tower again, looming above them like the spear of God. It was awesome. He had never imagined anything so large or so beautiful could exist. He saw no way any force on this earth could take it. It was just too old and too strong.

They crossed the bridge and entered another twisting, narrow cobbled street. Rik returned to his brooding. He had often wondered about his parents. He had often hated them and just as often fantasised about finding them, particularly his father. In his wildest and most unrealistic dreams he had thought about being acknowledged and taken in by some Terrarch clan. Now it seemed that even that was forbidden him. He came from bad blood. His father was a demon clad in flesh, and Asea believed some aspect of that had been passed on to him.

He wondered if it was true. The priests at the orphanage had always told him he was deep down bad, and perhaps they had been right. After he had escaped from their clutches he had done nothing but cheat and lie and steal and kill. He had done it to keep himself alive but he doubted the clergy would think that a satisfactory excuse.

Perhaps he had always been destined to turn out the way he had. Perhaps his destiny had been fixed before ever he was born, by the Terrarch who had sired him and the woman who had died. Perhaps it went deeper than that. Perhaps, as some of the preachers claimed, God had already decided who was damned and who was not. After all, if he was infinite and omniscient, surely he must have known how things were going to turn out when he created the universe. All life was part of his vast incomprehensible design.

Such thoughts made his head spin. What sort of god would create a universe in which people were damned before they first drew breath? It was the sort of logic that almost made you believe those that claimed that the Shadow had made the universe in defiance of God’s will. For himself, he was inclined to side with those who claimed that God had made the universe and then abandoned it as a botched job and left everybody to their own devices. That seemed to fit the facts better.

He shook his head. He took responsibility for his own actions. There was no sense in blaming any God, good or bad, for anything he had done. If ever he was called to account for those actions by God, he would ask him why he had created such a crazy, fucked-up universe in the first place.

“What are you frowning at, Halfbreed?” The Barbarian asked. “A man in your position should look happy. I would.”

He made an envious face, and then laughed. “I guess I will be drowning my sorrows elsewhere tonight.”

The streets had widened out into a square. In the centre was a statue of a tall Terrarch man in a military uniform. He was striking a heroic pose, sword in hand, leading an invisible army towards victory. Who was he, Rik wondered? In Sorrow he would have known the answer but this was some local hero or noble, and as such a stranger.

“Who are those bastards?” the Barbarian asked. Rik looked in the direction he indicated. A group of Terrarchs lounged against a street corner. They all wore long coats with silver buttons. They coats were coloured with a purple so deep and dark it was almost black. Their boots were high. Near them were squads of large, blond-haired men. All of them were big, with the brutal, brutalised faces of eastern peasants.

“Those, my friend, are part of the Legion of Exiles,” said Weasel.

“Khaldarus’s elite guard?” Rik asked. The Legion had an evil reputation. They were rogues and killers so bad they had been banished from the Dark Empire. Or so it was claimed. Others said they were a secret Dark Empire army in the service of Prince Khaldarus sent to infiltrate Kharadrea in a way that did not break the terms of the Treaty of Oslande. The refugees from the civil war had spoken of their cruelty and their efficiency.

“What the hell are they doing here?” asked the Barbarian.

An exceedingly tall, exceedingly thin Terrarch strode towards them. His skin was so pale he seemed almost albino. His long hair was so blond it could have been bleached. At his side hung a long sword in a black, rune-encrusted scabbard.

“Looks like we are just about to find out,” murmured Weasel.