The Serpent Page 4

  “Take care of Sam, Baga,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they stocked wine instead of beer here.”

  I’m a lager drinker for choice, but Baga preferred wine and tonight I didn’t mind him really tying one on. He’d been a good servant to me.

  Lady Irene stepped onto the porch with me. I opened the front door and gestured the lady in before me and followed. “Can you find us two separate rooms, innkeeper?” I called to the figure behind the counter as my eyes adjusted.

  “We’ll find you something,” said a voice from behind us. I turned and caught a glimpse of the red-haired Errol just as he switched on his weapon and his figure blurred. The men deeper in that inn were Lady Irene’s guards also, bringing their weapons live on all sides.

  I’d had it. I’d screwed up and we were doomed as a result. I grabbed for my shield and weapon, but they were on all sides.

  Irene shouted, “Lord Pal!” and flung something at the floor. Reality shattered.

  Lady Irene leaped through the hole and I followed her.

  * * *

  I sprawled on a hard floor. Irene was just in front of me, picking up her scattered yarrow stalks. I turned quickly and switched on my equipment. None of the guards had followed us.

  Baga and Sam were outside or already in the stables. I hoped they’d be all right. Obviously I had my own problems but their situation worried me more: they were in a pickle because of me. I’d made my own decisions—and besides, at bottom I always believed I could get myself out of any situation I got into.

  We were in a high-roofed room with crystalline walls. I would have to go into a trance to check the crystalline structure but from other Ancient sites I was sure the walls were diamond. There were boxes and crates along the walls and in a corner was a fountain over a basin. I recognized that as a device which converted any sort of organic matter into food and potable water. Ancient boats like mine used similar ones to feed the boatman and passengers, and Guntram had refurbished a small one to provision him on the rare occasions he travelled by the Road.

  “What is this place?” I asked Irene. The boxes contained rods of varied materials. They had no meaning for me, but along the wall opposite the single narrow doorway was a narrow container which might be a coffin. It was plumbed for fluids.

  “This was Master Sans workroom,” she said. “This is where I go when I flee Here and where Master Sans raised me.”

  I gestured to the coffin-like container. “This is where Sans made the dolls for your father?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Irene said. She grimaced, then looked directly at me and said, “I will not be a sexual partner for you, Lord Pal.”

  She kept her voice calm, but I could feel fury not far beneath the surface.

  “Ma’am, Lady May and me, she’s one of the Consort’s ladies in waiting, are a couple. I had no intention of insulting you by my attentions.”

  She looked as though she was poised to claw my eyes out, despite my reassuring words. At least I meant them to be.

  In our short acquaintance I’d given her no reason to doubt my good intentions. It might be that Lord Frobier had—but surely I deserved to be judged by my own behavior. Not for the first time I realized that the world wasn’t fair. I suspected Lady Irene would have agreed with that, but she would have spun it in a different direction.

  I walked to the single doorway through the crystal walls. It was only about two feet wide—a tight squeeze, even for me. Beyond was a park of deciduous trees with eight-inch-diameter trunks. There was a scattering of oak leaves and acorns on the ground but it was too sparse to completely cover the roots. There were even patches of grass.

  I turned back to Irene. “How far does this go?” I asked. “The grounds, I mean.”

  “There’s a boundary about half a mile from the pavilion,” she said. “If you walk through it, you turn around and find yourself walking back. The same thing happens to deer. I’ve watched them.”

  That didn’t make much sense to me. I said, “I’m going to look for myself,” and started off across the park. There were no points of reference in this compound. The trees were roughly the same size and species (oaks); on the other hand prospecting in the Waste had polished my sense of direction.

  “But wait!” Irene called. I turned. “You’re forgetting the monster, the giant mouse.”

  “I need to deal with it sometime if we stay here,” I said. “I’d sooner have it over and done with.”

  I knew that mice—or any rodent—could give a hell of a bite. But I didn’t see them going on a killing spree that left severed legs and hooves strinkled across the compound—as I could see for myself this one had done. I wondered how many deer there’d been in Master Sans’s herd before the monster had gnawed his way through it?

  “Lord Pal,” Irene called, “don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone.”

  I looked back at her, standing in the doorway. “The only way you can be safe is to stay where you are. But if you insist on being with me, come along. We’re going to walk to this barrier.”

  After an instant’s hesitation, she darted out to join me. I didn’t want her with me when we were likely to be attacked from any direction, but it struck me that she could return to Here any time she wanted to. If I told her she was on her own, I might very well find her gone when I returned to the pavilion.

  “What happens if we return to Here when we reach the barrier?” I asked. “Are we half a mile from the inn? Or do we take a chance of winding up in the Waste?”

  “We go back to exactly where we were when we entered the Underworld,” she said. “The same when I enter the Underworld: it’s always in the pavilion.”

  The thing came out of the Waste behind us—between us and the pavilion. I smelled its arrival rather than hearing it. It wasn’t a long-snouted mouse but rather a shrew the size of an ox. I turned to face it, bringing both shield and weapon live. Irene cried out and maybe I did too. The shrew and I rushed together. My shield would slow physical missiles shot at me but I didn’t know what effect it would have on a creature that must have weighed a ton.

  I aimed my weapon at the shrew’s left shoulder rather than at the wriggling snout. The blade cut in, adding the stench of burning hair to that of the shrew’s musk. The beast twisted its long jaws to clamp on me, but because of my shield the movement bunted me out of the way.

  I didn’t lose my footing but I fetched up against a tree hard enough to stun me. The shrew shrieked and lunged at me again. I wasn’t able to pick a target this time but slashed across the thing’s muzzle. It turned and I charged, cutting deep above the short tail. I couldn’t afford to let it get away, because it could come back through the Waste.

  The shrew began to thrash. Its hind legs didn’t work anymore. When it twisted at me again, I thrust through the low skull, hearing the creature’s skull crackle and seethe.

  I backed away from the dying creature. Only then did I think of Irene. I turned and said to her I was afraid we’d smashed into her in the fight. “You’re all right then?”

  Her eyes didn’t seem to focus. “How did you do that?” she said.

  “I said I’d deal with it!” I snapped. I really didn’t want to think about what had just happened. “If you’re all right, we’ll go on.”

  “Are you angry?” Irene said. “I don’t know why you should be.”

  I resumed walking on. I’d been scared to death and I didn’t want to talk about it. I suppose I could’ve said that, but I really didn’t want to talk about it.

  Irene followed me. I was in a bad mood, which wasn’t fair. But surely I wasn’t the only man who didn’t want to yammer when he thinks he’s on the edge of losing it. If I could just keep moving on, I’d be fine.

  I’d switched off and thought about putting my gear back in my pockets, but I wasn’t sure the shrew was alone. “I think we’re close to the barrier,” Irene said though the woods ahead of us looked the same to me. “Here!”

  I paused, then shuffled forward. I still could
n’t feel anything but my leading foot began to vanish as though it had been cut off at mid-instep. I didn’t feel anything. There was motion on the ground near where my foot was disappearing. My foot was reappearing beside itself. I recognized the rough-out leather that Herman, the best cobbler on Beune, had used for the shoes, but to be sure I waggled the toes. I couldn’t imagine how that was happening.

  My left hand with the shield went through and reappeared beside itself also. I took a deep breath and switched on my weapon to be ready for whatever was on the other side and jumped fully through the barrier.

  Being on the different plane that the weapon put me into made no difference. I stepped out beside where I had entered the barrier, but now facing in toward the pavilion.

  I switched off my weapon again and saw Lady Irene staring at me in obvious amusement. “Now that you’ve proved I was telling the truth,” she said, “what do you propose to do?”

  “What happens if you treat this barrier as you would the interface between the Underworld and Here?” I said. “Where do you wind up then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t think of that.”

  She stared hard at either a distant tree or something I couldn’t see. She cast her yarrow stalks on the ground beside me. The air separated, not shattering as it had done a moment ago in Here but rather the way frost vanished from a sunstruck window pane. I stepped into the room beyond.

  CHAPTER 4

  Neighbors

  I didn’t feel anything when I walked through the barrier, any more than I had when it was turning my attempts backward. I was in a room that was empty except for a chair fixed in the middle facing one wall. I’d apparently entered through the back of the room; there was an ordinary doorway in the wall to the right.

  I turned to see Irene entering through the melted hole as I had and kneeling to pick up her yarrow stalks again. I guess they were the thing she counted on to keep her safe from sudden attacks—the way I did my weapon and shield.

  When it happened, Irene’s bolt hole had saved us when I’d been too late in getting out my hardware. Now she looked at the wall the chair faced and said, “An image screen like the one in my compound! Show us the inn where we were ambushed.”

  “Do you mean me?” I said, but the wall was answering her by becoming a window onto the room we’d just escaped from in the common room that I’d barely glimpsed. Half a dozen of Irene’s guards stood around Baga. They were threatening and several had their weapons out, but they weren’t actually knocking him around.

  Irene looked at me in puzzlement. “How did you do that?” I said, gesturing to the figures. We weren’t hearing them. “Make them appear, I mean.”

  “I just told the screen what I wanted it to display,” I said. “I assume it’s Ancient work like everything in the Underworld.”

  The window changed without Irene directing it. A man of thirty or so was facing us. “Good day,” he said. “I am Blessus and you are very welcome in this place. I took this method of greeting you lest you react as though I were an enemy, which I surely am not.”

  “What is this place?” I asked. I probably sounded harsher than I meant to be. I was surprised and I suppose frightened.

  “We are in an enclave in the Waste,” Blessus said. “I believe you are both from Here.”

  “Were you a friend of Master Sans?” Lady Irene said sharply. “We came from his compound, which is now mine.”

  “I have never left this enclave,” Blessus said. “There are wonderful things here which you do not have in Here. Ancient artifacts as they were left in working order and others that I have repaired.”

  “I’d like to see that,” I said. “See them.”

  I didn’t ask Irene what she wanted because this was a wonderful opportunity for me and I had some rights in the matter. I only regretted that my friend Master Guntram wasn’t here to share the experience.

  The image of Blessus disappeared, and an instant later the man himself walked through the doorway on the right side of the room. He held what I took for a weapon loosely in his right hand. I didn’t see a shield, however.

  “I just wanted to make sure you knew I wasn’t a threat,” he said and quirked a smile at me. “Would you like to see something else on the display before we leave this room?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Do I just speak the way Irene did?”

  Blessus nodded, and I said, “I’d like to see Beune, Master Demetri’s farm.”

  I guess I said that because I was missing home so much. Not the place but rather me being in the place and I guess being young. I wasn’t but twenty-two now, but the past two years had been hard ones. My life had changed more than it had for all the time I’d lived in Beune with Mom and on my own after she’d died. I couldn’t go back and I didn’t even want to: I had everything I’d dreamed of as a kid—and a lot more.

  I not only sat in Jon’s Hall of Champions, I was one of the most respected members of it. I’d been a self-taught Maker, but by meeting and working with Master Guntram I’d learned more even than I had as a warrior compared to the boy who came to Dun Add.

  There were no women in Beune who were even a patch on Lady May. I’d gained her by being myself.

  As I thought that, I heard from the other room Irene saying, “Show me Lady May in Dun Add.”

  Instead of speaking to Blessus as my lips had been pursing to do, I ducked back to the display. May sat on a hassock in the Consort’s suite in the palace with several other of the ladies in waiting. Two of the Champions were socializing also, Lord Bryson and Lord Clain. Clain when not working—he was the Chancellor and a very good one—could generally be found in the Consort’s company.

  May was holding the long-necked lute she frequently played, though at the moment she was chatting with Clain. I pointed her out to Irene and said, “That’s May. And that’s the Chancellor, Lord Clain.” Then I said, “Why are you watching her? You don’t know her.”

  “You mentioned her and I was curious,” Irene said in a cool voice. “She has lovely long hair.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Now, shut it off. You’ve satisfied your curiosity. She doesn’t deserve to be spied on. Nobody does.”

  “Close the display,” Irene said obediently. I’d expected an argument and didn’t have any idea about what I could do to compel her.

  I returned to Blessus. I indicated the narrow tank with my toe and said, “Do you make humanoid dolls, Master Blessus?”

  I felt Irene stiffen beside me. “No,” Blessus said. “The tank was part of the compound’s original fittings but I repaired it myself. I find it relaxes me. I’m the only one who’s been in the tank since I found it.”

  Blessus looked completely human but so had Lang, whom I had met beyond the Marches at the edge of the Commonwealth. Lang had been a thing of the Waste as surely as the Wraith I’d killed on my first journey back from Dun Add to Beune—with my tail between my legs, I don’t mind saying.

  The Wraith had been the enemy of all life. So I think was Lang. I certainly didn’t trust Blessus.

  Lady Irene joined us in the outer room. She looked at the paraphernalia as I had but with greater understanding. She removed a flexible sheet rolled tightly from a cabinet and shook it open, then laid it in the tub I’d noticed.

  “This is a jig,” she said to Blessus in an accusing voice. “A template. You said that you don’t make dolls.”

  “No one has used the tank but myself,” Blessus said. “What you see are things that the Ancients left, for whatever reason they left them.”

  I don’t know if Irene believed him or not, but I did. It left other questions, though.

  There was movement outside among the trees of the compound. My frozen attention drew the eyes of the other two.

  “It’s another shrew!” I said, taking my equipment out again. “Go back to the inner room. It can’t fit through the doors. I’ll take care of it.”

  “There’s no need of that,” Blessus said. “I will kill it.”

 
He hefted his weapon, taking it in both hands. I got a good look at it for the first time. Instead of a tube, it was three four-inch tubes spaced equidistant around one that was about ten inches long. I would have to spend considerable time with it in a trance to see how the assemblage was interconnected. I was pretty sure even with a cursory scan that though parts of it were Ancient work at least some was recent.

  Blessus stepped out into the compound. The shrew sensed him—I wasn’t sure how good its sight was—and came toward us with a fast sinuous motion around the trees. I thought of a creek moving swiftly over the rocks of a steep streambed.

  Blessus held out the weapon. There was a dazzling flash like a lightning bolt from the end of the weapon to a sapling twenty feet from where Blessus stood. The sapling—I think it was a dogwood—exploded into a red torch just in front of the shrew.

  It jumped into the air with an earsplitting screech and stood upright for an instant before springing again toward Blessus. He shouted also and ducked around the pillar he’d been standing in front of.

  With my shield advanced, I went out to face the monster as I’d intended to do in the first place. The fur of the shrew’s muzzle and chest was singed. It was insane with rage, though the term may not be applicable to a creature with no waking thought but to kill.

  I thrust into the lower jaw. My point glanced from the row of teeth but dug into edge of the lip with a sizzle and hiss. The shrew sprang backward as though it were a bent tree limb.

  “Pal, come back!” Lady Irene said.

  I charged the shrew, striking for the muzzle again. The beast was too angry to be afraid of pain. It snapped at me, bouncing me back against a pillar; a hard knock, but I didn’t hit my head. I thrust at its left eye and the point bit deeper than it had on tooth enamel.

  The shrew kept worrying my shield, jerking his head back and forth and pulling me with it. I didn’t let go of it, though, so the long jaws were never able to close on me. I continued to cut at the monster’s skull. Every time it tossed its head, blood spattered me.