The Serpent Read online

  The shrew suddenly collapsed. I jerked away and found I could barely stand. The shrew’s squeals and yips must have been deafening for when they stopped my ears were numb.

  I sat down heavily on the diamond floor of the building. “When my weapon recharged, I wasn’t able to use it again because you and the creature were so close together,” Blessus said.

  “We got the job done without it,” I said.

  “But it would’ve been so much easier—” he began.

  “It would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if you hadn’t stirred it up with your toy!” I shouted. If I hadn’t been so tired I would’ve kept my temper.

  “Well regardless, it’s done,” Blessus said.

  Irene hadn’t moved from where she was when the shrew attacked. She said to me, “You could have been killed.”

  “I’m a Champion,” I said. “This is the job. I knew that when I came to Dun Add.”

  After a moment I said, “What I’d like now is a meal. Does this site have that available, Master Blessus?”

  “At very high quality,” Blessus said and led us into another inner room in which banquette seating surrounded a table on which a flat disk sat and dispensed whatever dish we requested. I asked for roast goose. The result was very like the best I’d eaten on Beune. The texture was odd, but it was more tender than Mother Hollert’s geese ever had been in my recollection. Lady Irene seemed happy with her fruit selection, while Blessus himself was eating some sort of flat bread. I hadn’t heard what he’d called it.

  “This is very good,” I said, wiping my hands on a piece of toweling beside my place. I turned to Lady Irene and said, “Are you ready to move on, milady? Do you think we’ll be back in the inn again where we were ambushed if we start from here?”

  “I have no idea,” Irene said. “I suppose so. What will happen then?”

  I thought about it and said, “I guess I’ll see what I can do to your gang of guards if they don’t have the drop on me. I figure if you can keep giving me a way out, I can keep whittling the numbers down two or three at a time until they’re all dead.”

  “That sounds horrible!” Irene said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t like the idea either, but I need to rescue Baga and Sam,” I said. “I figure being able to watch the guards before I attack I can get Errol right at the start and I think the rest of them will leave us alone.”

  “Lord Pal and Lady Irene,” Blessus said. “You don’t have to leave at all, you realize. You’re welcome to stay as long as you wish. Your presence is a great pleasure to me.”

  “Thank you, Master Blessus,” I said, “but I have job to do back in Here. And I have people I want to get back to.” May and others, but especially May.

  I decided to take a chance, though. “Blessus, you’re a very skilled Maker,” I said. “If you’d like to come to Dun Add, I can introduce you to people almost as skilled as you are.”

  “If I were to leave,” Blessus said, “I would have to leave all this—the devices could not be transported. And you have nothing comparable in Dun Add, I have watched you.”

  “But perhaps you and Master Guntram working together might advance Dun Add,” I said. And that was true—but not in any real sense. The Underworld contained surviving Ancient artifacts to a degree no part of Here did. It wasn’t just knowledge that Blessus would have to leave here but a huge quantity of physical artifacts that all the Makers in Dun Add couldn’t duplicate in a century.

  “No, no,” Blessus said. “But there’s no need to decide immediately.”

  Lady Irene stood up. “Master Blessus?” she said. “Would you direct me to the bath in your compound? If you don’t have one I’ll have to go back to my own. And Lord Pal, will you be ready to resume our journey in the morning?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was amused at the way she had cut through our host’s profitless chattering.

  I got up. I was ready right now to kill Errol and as many of his henchmen as it took until the survivors decided to leave us alone. I didn’t like the situation, but I hadn’t created it.

  “There is a bath here,” Blessus said. “It may not be safe for you to leave the pavilion with two if these monsters coming from the Waste while you’re here. I wonder if you’re drawing them, Lady Irene?”

  “I was here many times before with Master Sans,” Irene said. “And I was back in Banft with my father when the first thing killed Master Sans.”

  “If another shrew or anything else attacks her,” I said, “I’ll deal with it as you’ve seen. Now, our quarters, please?”

  “There are three suites of rooms besides the one I use myself,” Blessus said. “Each contains a bath.”

  He led us into a narrow corridor. I wondered what this structure had been when the Ancients built it?

  Blessus gestured Lady Irene to a doorway. “I wish you would rethink your determination to leave, Irene,” he said. “You are reacting on a surface level but I’m sure that if you took time to consider you would find many advantages to remaining here.”

  “I am sure I would not!” Irene said sharply. “Master Blessus, you aren’t any more human than the dolls Sans made for my father were. You have used the same tools to make yourself a close copy of a human—but you aren’t one. We will leave in the morning.”

  “If that were true,” Blessus said, “would it be so very bad? Someone whose whole being is focused on being human and has Ancient resources to achieve that. With you to help and guide him, Lady Irene, he could achieve marvelous things.”

  Irene shouted on a rising note, “You’re not human! Leave me alone!”

  The panel closing the doorway was too light to slam, but she shut it as hard as she could in ducking inside her suite.

  Blessus sighed and said, “And what do you think, Lord Pal? Am I human?”

  “I don’t really know what human is,” I said truthfully. “I said I would take you to Dun Add and sponsor you.”

  “Thank you for your honesty,” he said. I wondered if he realized I did not believe he was human and that I would say as much to my superiors in Dun Add. “What of Lady Irene?” Blessus asked. “Might she at some point change her mind about me and about the situation?”

  “I know very little about what women think,” I said truthfully. But because I was so tired, I didn’t leave it there and instead continued, “I very much doubt that Irene will change her mind. She has fixed opinions about men and I doubt she ever changes them.”

  “I see,” said Blessus. “Again, thank you for honesty.”

  He opened the door of the suite beyond Irene’s. I collapsed on the raised sleeping platform, not even bothering first to bathe. I was exhausted from fighting the second shrew and puzzled about why I had done that when remaining in the pavilion would have been safe.

  Killing the beast had been unnecessary. Perhaps I had been proving something—I suppose to myself.

  CHAPTER 5

  Dealing with Things

  In the night I heard a scream. I hadn’t undressed, so drawing my shield and weapon were second nature. The only difficulty was the tangle of bedding around my legs.

  I stumbled into the corridor. Against the light in the banqueting room beyond I saw Blessus carrying Irene over his shoulder. He pressed his own weapon against her as she struggled against him.

  “Help me, Pal,” she shouted.

  “I’ll deal with it,” I said.

  “If you come closer I will shoot you!” Blessus said.

  My shield jarred me as I started to charge through the narrow doorway. I dropped it and went on with my weapon in front of me.

  “Don’t!” Blessus shouted.

  I rushed him. He was trying to point his clumsy weapon at me but the bolt glanced off the diamond wall to my left. It felt as though I’d brushed glowing iron.

  His weapon was harmless for the moment but I cut down at it to finish the business. It wrecked itself in sparks and crackling.

  Lady Irene wrenched herself away. “Kill him!” she shouted. “Kill h
im!”

  I was breathing hard. My weapon was still live. “No,” I said. “Not unless I already have.”

  I’d cut as carefully as haste allowed—not because I cared about Blessus, but he and Lady Irene were tangled. I’d gotten at least some of his fingers when I sheared through the body of his weapon and it looked like I’d cut his cheek also. He was surely a bloody mess despite the cauterizing effect of my weapon at high intensity. None of the wounds I’d inflicted looked life threatening, though.

  His own weapon had exploded when I cut it though, and his abdomen was a bloody, blackened mess.

  “Irene!” I said. “You know how that tank in the other room works, don’t you? We’ll put Blessus in that and rebuild him. He’s still alive!”

  “Why would we do that?” Irene said. “He deserves to die!”

  “That’s for the Lord to decide,” I said. I scooped Blessus under the knees and shoulders and lifted him. I turned to settle him in the same direction as the tank. I was getting blood all over my clothes but that didn’t matter any more than it had the times I’ve lent a hand to butchering a hog.

  “No,” Blessus said. I had to bend close to be sure he was speaking.

  “The vat cannot make me human. I’ve proved that,” he said. “Let whatever I am die and merge back with the Waste.”

  I hesitated. Blessus said, “Lady Irene will never be safe so long as this thing lives.”

  “Pal!” Irene said, “You cannot do that to me!”

  She was right, of course. I sighed and carefully lay Blessus down on the diamond floor. I stepped away and said to him, “I don’t believe you, but I can’t take a chance.”

  “No, you can’t take a chance,” Blessus repeated. He began to laugh, making the blood bubble from the holes in his torn chest. He was still laughing when he finished dying.

  “I really wanted to save him,” I said to Irene. “He was trying so hard to be human.”

  “He disgusted me,” said Irene. “He was the same as those dolls my father used.”

  “I know,” I said. “But he was trying.”

  “He tried to kill you!” Irene said.

  “He surely did,” I agreed. “That weapon can’t have been six feet from me when he sent the bolt.”

  Irene looked squarely at me. “You said you would take care of him,” she said. “He was frightened. He’d watched you charge the shrew, and now you were coming for him. Pal, doesn’t anything frighten you?”

  “Lots of things do,” I said. “But you have to do the right thing however scared you are.” I picked up my shield, then returned it and the weapon to my pockets. “Now,” I said, “speaking of things that scare me, let’s look up Errol on your display. I need to kill him and a couple of his mates.”

  Baga was still at the inn where we’d been attacked but the band of guards was not. Irene located Errol somewhere on the Road. They’d apparently given up their vigil. That had saved the lives of some of them.

  And perhaps saved my life as well.

  CHAPTER 6

  Back to Here

  “Take us back to the inn, please, Lady Irene,” I said. I took my gear out as Irene prepared her own. She flung her bundle of yarrow stalks and we stepped one after the other back into the inn parlor. A servant screamed and flung herself into what seemed to be a storage closet, but there was no worse result from our sudden appearance.

  The guards had robbed Baga but they hadn’t stolen Sam, for which I was grateful. I’d have tracked them down to get Sam back.

  “Now what, boss?” Baga said.

  I turned to Irene and said, “Lady Irene, do you still want to go to Dun Add?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I rubbed Sam behind the ears and said, “Let’s go to Dun Add.”

  * * *

  Lady Irene wasn’t in shape for hiking to Dun Add, but it was the only way she was going to get there. Sam and I didn’t push but neither do I find much entertainment in staring at the Waste along the side of the Road—which was the only thing to do if we didn’t walk on.

  I’d come to Dun Add the first time with a religious lady who’d been making a pilgrimage around sites some distance from Dun Add. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time.

  Now I wondered how difficult the hiking had been for Dame Carole, who was in her fifties; thirty years older than Irene. She hadn’t seemed to be having much trouble. Maybe it was attitude. Dame Carole was certainly used to having her own way, but when confronted with reality, instead of whining, she just got on with it.

  I hadn’t liked Dame Carole, but I was coming to respect her.

  “Lord Pal, we have to stop for a rest,” called Lady Irene. I stopped where I was and waited for her to catch up with me. When she did, I walked along beside her.

  I said, “We’ve got to keep moving, milady. If you’d like, I’ll put an arm around your waist for a little support.”

  “I do not like the idea of you handling me!” Irene said. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, milady,” I said and moved a little away to the side. I didn’t blame her for being concerned about a man’s intentions but it was very irritating. I wasn’t going to molest her. She didn’t know that—but we’d been together for long enough that she should have.

  The Waste to the sides of the Road changed from apparent closely packed tree trunks—predominantly brown as my mind saw the Waste through Sam’s eyes—to low scrub—which I saw as predominantly bluish green. None of the shapes or colors were real, but the apparent change was important: my mind was seeing a change, even though it couldn’t identify the change with traditional shapes and colors.

  Sam perked up noticeably. A group of travellers came out of a branch of the Road joining ours to the left. There were about twenty of the strangers all told—I took it for really three groups who’d met on the Road and came together for company and safety—though for the past few years the dangers were much reduced from what they’d been at the start of the Commonwealth.

  There was nothing to be done about monsters wandering in from the Waste, but they had never been common. When a Champion met one, he dealt with it—or his replacement did.

  There were still bandits but banditry on a large scale requires a base, and any node suspected of becoming a robbers’ roost very quickly got a visit from a Champion of the Commonwealth. If cleaning up the problem required a unit of the regular army, it got that too. I was proud to be a Champion of the Commonwealth. My friends and neighbors on Beune were safer because of us.

  The sudden dollop of traffic clogged the Road in front of us. I could easily have bulled on through them, but instead I used them as an excuse to slow our pace to theirs. Lady Irene moved back closer to me and said, “Are you from Dun Add, Lord Pal?”

  It was the first thing she’d said to me during the five days we’d been on the Road that wasn’t a complaint so I responded with more enthusiasm than I might otherwise have, “Not at all, ma’am. I come from Beune, which is a lot smaller than Boyd’s Node and besides isn’t on the way to anywhere. I’d read romances, though, and decided that the Champions of the Commonwealth were the greatest men who ever lived. I’m enough of a Maker that I made myself a weapon and shield and went off to Dun Add two years ago.”

  “You made your equipment?” Irene said. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “I made the equipment I was using then,” I corrected her. “It was junk, but it gave me enough confidence to go to Dun Add and I made friends there. I guess you could say it was all upward from then.”

  “And the Leader made you one of his Champions even though you’re from nowhere?” Irene said. “If you don’t mind me putting it that way.”

  “That’s the truth whether I mind it or not,” I said. “You earn a place in the Hall of Champions. I’ll say that most Champions are better born than I am because they’re more likely to have equipment of decent quality. Which I didn’t have, like I tell you.”

  “I see,” Lady Irene said. “You’re telling me you’r
e unusually skilled as a warrior, then. I knew that, I saw you fight that shrew.”

  “No, I wasn’t saying that,” I said. “Lord Clain himself couldn’t have fought his way through the Aspirants’ Tournament using the crap I brought to Dun Add the first time. But I made friends with the most subtle Maker in the Commonwealth, Master Guntram, and he got me the hardware I’m using now.”

  “I’d heard that Master Louis is the Leader Jon’s chief Maker,” Irene said, frowning. “He’s the man whom Master Sans spoke of.”

  I’d forgotten that Irene had specialist knowledge of the Maker’s art. I nodded to her in acknowledgment and said, “Louis is a specialist in weapons,” I agreed, “and there’s nobody his equal in that specialty. I think he could turn an Ancient writing stylus into a Champion-grade weapon. Right now that’s what the Commonwealth needs. But nothing else interests him.”

  “And this Master Guntram?” Irene said.

  “Everything interests Guntram,” I said. “And someday the Commonwealth may want to know how the Ancients made those displays you learned to use in the Underworld and all the other wonderful things the Ancients had that weren’t weapons and shields. Guntram will be the man to show them and people with minds like him.”

  I cleared my throat. I had that kind of mind, but not a shadow of the skill that Guntram had.

  “A thing that you said earlier that I ought to come back to,” I said. “What you saw with the shrews wasn’t any great skill on my part. I just went in and stabbed them to death. A joust with a Champion is a real test of skill, and there are warriors better than I am. The shrews were just dumb animals. Lots of folks could have done that.”

  “But would they have?” Lady Irene said.

  I saw what she meant and said, “I think about any Champion would have. And ma’am, courage isn’t that hard to find, not really. Skill is a different matter, but when we were out in the woods and the shrew came up behind us—what else was there to do but go for it?”

  “You could have frozen and let both of us be eaten,” she said.

  I laughed and said, “That doesn’t appeal to me.” Then I said, “Lady Irene, we’ve reached Dun Add. I’m going to take you to a place you can stay.”