The Serpent Read online

  “Nothing’s been squealing for attention so loudly I’ve heard it,” Clain said. “But Mistress Toledana might’ve heard something before I would. Work it out between the two of you.”

  He rubbed his bristly chin and went on, “As for Irene, she’s rented the second floor of a building in the city, above some upscale shops. She proposes to teach women to become Makers. Louis tells me that’s not possible, but it seems a harmless business to me.”

  “I understand what Louis means,” I said, “but the lady certainly does something and calling it being a Maker seems pretty accurate.”

  I shrugged and added, “It seems harmless to me too. Has she gone back to Master Sans’s workshop for more equipment, do you know?”

  “I haven’t any idea,” Clain said. “The only reason I know as much as I do is that the lady is renting the property from me. I wondered whether there were enough women wanting to be Makers to make the effort pay, She told me that there are wealthy widows who view this as an alternative to getting more involved in church work, and some of them sponsor younger protégés. Also there are very ordinary working women who see this as a way to better themselves. The charwoman who does for Irene is trading her services for lessons.”

  Clain shrugged. “In any case, I don’t see it as a concern for the Commonwealth, unless Jon tells me it is.”

  “I wish her well,” I said as I got up again. “I’m just glad she’s out of my hair—and also Morseth’s. I’ll go chat with Mistress Toledana and find a reasonably useful way of staying away from dinner parties and the like.”

  I left Clain’s office and headed up to the Clerk of Here on the top level of the north wing.

  * * *

  The Clerk of Here’s office contained a great deal of floor space, but what it mostly contained were paper files of one sort or another. After the reception clerk at the entrance, I saw only half a dozen people using the ranks of cabinets as I walked briskly through the aisle I took to the back. They were probably staff working out routes for the few querents in reception.

  Mistress Toledana was one of the most important people in the Commonwealth; she had a complete listing of the entire Road network in the Commonwealth and as far beyond as people had reported back to her. Unlike the Chancellor, however, her office got very little traffic. Most people didn’t want to travel out of Dun Add once they had reached it. I was unusual in feeling the romance of nodes as minor as Beune itself was.

  I rapped on the door in the far wall. “Come on out,” the Clerk called. “The breeze blew the door shut.”

  Mistress Toledana’s office was cantilevered off the side of the palace. The timbers supporting it were as sturdy as those supporting the roof. Nonetheless, I was never comfortable coming out here with her. It’s what she wanted, though, for whatever reason.

  She was glad to see me, smiling and saying, “Pal? It’s always good to see you. You were on a general patrol, weren’t you? Have you reported yet?”

  “I asked Baga to do that,” I said. “But I just sent him off in the boat, so if he didn’t I’ll try to fill out the form myself. There really isn’t much to say except that we got off in a region linked to Here but only accessible by a Maker doing something I don’t understand. It’s surrounded by the Waste, but I don’t know how it connects with Here or if it does.”

  “Jot all that down on your way out,” she said. “I’ll figure out how to file it later.”

  “What I’m really seeing you for,” I said, “is a new foot patrol route. Do you have someplace that you’d like to know more about?”

  Mistress Toledana looked hard past my left shoulder. “Look, seeing it’s you, Pal, and you’re not very fussy…?”

  “Not a bit,” I agreed. “I told Jon when he made me a Champion I’d go where he sent me. My job was to go where he thought I’d be useful. Lord Clain said you’d decide that for me.”

  “Well, in that case,” the Clerk said, “I’ve had my people rough out a route along the western Marches. It’s mostly outside the Commonwealth at the moment. It’s a hike to get there, though. You’d save yourself a lot of effort by taking your boat to Arpitan and jumping off from there. It’s got a nice inn.”

  “The boat’s carrying Guntram and the local ruler off to Midian where there’s a problem,” I explained. “Jon is expecting Midian to come into the Commonwealth if Guntram makes things work out.”

  “So it’ll be just you and Baga?” Mistress Toledana said.

  “I’ll borrow Jon’s boat,” I said. “I don’t have as good a memory for routes as Baga does but I’ll take the itinerary your people send me with and jot down notes as I go.”

  She sighed and said, “You’ve always known what you’re doing, but you’re really going to be roughing it this time, Pal, once you get past Arpitan. There isn’t a rush on this, so if you wanted to wait till you got the boat back, nobody’d care.”

  “Thank you, mistress,” I said as I went back inside the building. “But the truth is, I kinda like being off on my own now and again.”

  CHAPTER 7

  To the Southwest

  Sam, Baga, and I reached Arpitan in the late afternoon. According to Mistress Toledana’s note and what folks in Arpitan said the next node on was the better part of a day beyond, so I elected to spend the night here and jump off in the morning.

  Which at dawn we did. The Road branching left out of Arpitan got very little traffic and had narrowed to the point that I doubted two men could’ve walked abreast. We were in good spirits. It was good to be beyond the Commonwealth.

  We reached three minor nodes just off the Road. One was so little used that Sam noted only a vertical line in the Waste. I tugged him to take it. The node was little more than ten feet across, forested and really interesting only because one edge was washed by a stream. I filled my water bottle for me and Baga and scraped a bowl in the clay to make it easy for Sam. He emptied it twice.

  Nobody in Arpitan had mentioned it and it was at least possible that they didn’t know the node existed. It could be a useful source of water for a body of troops or emigrants passing through. I jotted it down on the margin of my itinerary. The second and third nodes were equally small but were actually on the Road rather than just off it, though they had no amenities—not even water. They were already on the itinerary. I thought of building a small campfire, but we had nothing to cook except the sausage, cheese and biscuit we’d brought from Dun Add. We didn’t need to rest our legs yet. There was supposed to be a proper inn at Waltherius so Baga and I pressed on.

  The itinerary said that Waltherius had about sixty people in two communities. There were only a dozen houses in this one, but one had a loft and a barn which I hoped was the promised inn. I headed for it.

  The door gave only onto a common with a bar on the left end and a fireplace, cold at present, on the right. There was a man on a bench near the fireplace holding what looked like a face mirror. I didn’t see anyone else for a moment, but a boy of ten leaped into sight behind the bar and shouted, “Hey, Pa! You got a guest!”

  The man on the bench looked over at me and said, “Where are you from, sir?”

  “I came from Arpitan,” I said. “But I was born on Beune, if that’s what you mean. My name’s Pal.”

  A heavy man clumped down the stairs. “Looking for a room and a meal for you and your man?” he called.

  “And a kennel and food for my dog,” I agreed.

  “Six coppers for you and your man, and two more for the dog,” he said. “That’s full weight coins, mind you.”

  I fished the tariff out of my purse and clacked the coins on top of the bar. I suspected if I’d arrived as Lord Pal on a mission for the Leader the charge would have been in silver. As Pal, a traveller from a place nobody’d ever heard of, I got charged what I should have been charged. I was carrying silver in my purse and gold in the hem of my tunic, but it would rankle to be robbed.

  “My name’s Gelb,” called the man on the bench. “I’m a farmer on Minata. Guess I’m abou
t the biggest man hereabouts, wouldn’t you say, Abel?”

  “That’s surely true, Master Gelb,” the innkeeper said.

  I looked back to Gelb. He was the model of a prosperous farmer. But that wouldn’t have impressed me greatly on Beune, and it surely didn’t now that I’d lived in Dun Add.

  “Say, come over and look at this, Master Pal,” Gelb called.

  Out of curiosity rather than a desire to get to know Master Gelb better, I walked over to the couch and looked more closely at what I’d taken for a mirror. Instead of reflecting the interior of the common room, the polished bronze face showed me the yard of a prosperous farm—like that of Squire Groves on Beune.

  As soon as I took the handle of the mirror, I knew what I had. To Master Gelb I said, “This is an Ancient artifact and it’s been restored by an expert Maker. Where did you get it?”

  “Well, who are you to ask!” Gelb said, jerking the artifact back from me.

  “Sir,” I said, stepping away and raising my hands palms out. “I misspoke. I’m a Maker myself in a small way and was startled by the excellence of this workmanship. I would very much like to meet the Maker who accomplished it. He’s on Minata, then?”

  I recalled the name Minata from the list of nearby nodes on the itinerary the Clerk of Here had provided for me, but I would certainly need a guide if I were to go there myself. I wondered if Gelb would guide me?

  “He is not,” the farmer said, relaxing slightly. “He lives in a node not far from here, but I don’t know that it has a name. It used to be Not-Here when Abel opened the inn, and it’s still pretty much a desert, but Sime moved in right away. Do you know a name for it Abel?”

  “I do not,” said the innkeeper. “It’s off the way to Basnight on the West road from here, the first right turning. He comes by often enough—Sime does, I mean.”

  “Right,” said Gelb. “It’s here I found him, three months back it must be, and arranged to buy this mirror. I can watch my farm from wherever I am!”

  “You can indeed,” I said in a positive voice, to keep him in a good mood. “If I may ask, sir? How much did you pay? The price would have been in gold, I’m sure.”

  “Gold isn’t any good here,” Gelb said scornfully. “I offered him a year’s subsistence and the delivery costs. That’s something that actually counts.”

  “I see,” I said, imagining that a stranger came to Beune and offered to pay for something in gold. Not that there was anything in Beune that anyone would want that much. “Nonetheless I would very much like to meet Master Sime. Is there someone who would guide me to his node for…say, a silver Rider?”

  The innkeeper blurted, “For silver? My lad Georges’ll do that. Hell, for silver I’d just about close up and guide you myself.”

  “Georges will be fine so long as he knows the way,” I said.

  Abel walked to the front door and bellowed, “Georges! Got a job for you!”

  He turned to me again and said, “Georges makes the run two or three times a week, carrying up the loads for Master Gelb. If you can wait a minute I’ll make up a bag of spices for Georges to take up.”

  A boy just into his teens clomped up on the porch. “So what is it you got now?” he demanded.

  “A bit of luck for you, boy,” Able said. “The master here’s going to pay you in silver to guide him to Master Sime. Can you handle that?”

  In a few minutes I’d recovered Baga and Sam from the barn and we were off again, Georges carrying a leather sack and two loaves of fresh-baked bread. Gelb apparently staged his payments to Master Sime through the inn. I suspected that livestock was driven up at intervals, to be salted down after slaughtering at the far end.

  “Do you have to carry a lot of salt?” I asked Georges.

  He shook his head. “Mostly bread and firewood,” he said. “Master Sime says he keeps meat from spoiling without salt.”

  “He does?” I said. Castle Ariel, which I’d taken back from the monster from the Waste who’d made it his lair, had a large chest which did that. The castle had also many other artifacts that I’d never heard of elsewhere.

  “What other Ancient artifacts does Master Sime have?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask me,” Georges said. “I keep away from that weird stuff.”

  That was a normal layman’s attitude. Folks in Beune thought I was weird, but they’d known my mom and dad all their lives. I won’t say Beune was proud of me, but folks weren’t bothered to have me around.

  The node we were going to was within fifteen minutes of the inn. I’d been told that it had recently been Not-Here, but the boundary with Here had recently drawn back and the node was suitable for human settlement again. It was largely barren, though, just in the beginnings of being colonized from nodes of Here which had been adjacent to it before the Ancients shattered the Cosmos into the place we now lived in.

  Where we lived, and into Not-Here the Beasts lived.

  On the node it was easy to follow the tracks of sheep walking in across the barren ground. A man rose to his feet a hundred yards ahead of us. He was in his forties and looked gaunt. Beside him was a machine on four legs. It had the sheen of metal or crystal.

  Georges called, “Master Sime!” and waved one of the long bread loaves he was carrying. “There’s a fellow here to meet you, and I brought a little wood and some bread.”

  A second machine like the first got up and stood at Sime’s other side. “Georges!” I said. “What are those with him?”

  “Oh, those’re his dogs,” the boy said. “I just forget they’re around.”

  Sam had noticed the machines. He kept walking on but I heard his low-pitched growl. It came from his chest, not his throat. I wondered if I should have my weapon out.

  That would probably send the wrong signal. I took my left hand out of the pocket and waved my right, calling, “Good afternoon, sir. I’m Pal of Beune and asked to meet you after Master Gelb showed me the viewer you’d made for him. I’m not an enemy.”

  “I know that,” Sime said. His voice was rusty. “If you were, the dogs would tear your throat out. They sense what you’re thinking.” He stroked the neck of the machine on his right. From up close the creature’s surface seemed more liquid than metallic.

  “They’re Ancient artifacts, then?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Sime said. “I believe they were originally made in Not-Here by those we call the Beasts.”

  “I didn’t know that human Makers could work on the creations of the Beasts,” I said. “You’re able to?”

  I had come to know one particular Beast quite well. He had saved my life and I had repaid him. I didn’t have the reaction of most humans in seeing the inhabitants of Not-Here as dangerous monsters to be killed if possible—or fled from if not. They were utterly different, however, and so far as I knew even Guntram could do nothing with the Beasts’ work.

  “Pretty evidently, I can,” Sime said, continuing to stroke the mechanical dog’s neck. “Come,” he added, turning. “I’ll show you the real reason I came to a node that had been Not-Here until recently.”

  When we walked over the rise I saw the sea lapping a shingle beach. “Is the water salt?” I asked.

  “It is,” Sime said. “Sometimes a log washes up, I suppose from Not-Here. That doesn’t matter, but the Waste has been bringing up artifacts here for a very long time. While this was still Not-Here, I’m sure.”

  There was a large tent farther down the beach. The sides were weighted down with shingle. Beside it was a chest like the one I’d seen—and now owned—at Castle Ariel; it was too big to move or I’d have brought it back to Dun Add for Guntram. The side facing us wasn’t original but appeared to be silicon glass or some other crystal.

  “I found the dogs covered legs-up in the shingle and dug them out myself and repaired them,” Sime said. “The chest was on its side, the other side. When we first noticed it, I got six men at Waltherius who helped me carry it out of the water to where it is now. I paid them with the sort of baubles tha
t I traded to Gelb.”

  I walked to the chest and put the flat of my hand against the repaired side. I put myself into a light trance to view the structure. The surface molecules were silica as I’d expected but the patterns below included several metals. More interesting were the gaps I found in the structure where there should be an atom but I couldn’t find one. Yet something was completing the crystal.

  “How do you fill out the structure?” I asked.

  Sime shrugged. “Materials I find,” he said. “The usual way.”

  “I’d really like to bring you to Dun Add,” I said. “To meet some of the Makers there. You have a great deal to teach them.”

  “I’m not interested in leaving,” he said. He turned toward the lapping salt water and said, “I have to remain in this place to bring my wife back.”

  “Where has your wife gone?” I asked, wondering if there was a way I could turn this new situation to my advantage in getting Sime to Dun Add. If his wife wanted the high life of the Leader’s court, I could certainly introduce her to May—or even the Consort herself.

  “Not far,” said Sime. He threw open the chest we were standing beside. I looked within. There was a hog carcase missing the right ham, and the body of a woman of around forty. Her face was wasted looking and her cheeks had fallen in.

  “Your wife is dead?” I said. Baga jumped back.

  “Until I bring her back,” Sime said. “She died while I was repairing the chest, but I’d gotten it working and put her in it immediately. She doesn’t deteriorate in the chest, you see.”

  “I see that,” I said. “But she’s dead, isn’t she? Ah—I’m very sorry.”

  “I’ll bring her back with the artifacts I’m finding here,” Sime said, sounding very confident. He closed the lid of the chest again. “And I’m not leaving until I do.”