by Don Wilcox
“I must tell you,” said the King, “that the piece of red cloth which you fed the snake was not from Parroko’s garment. It was a mistake.”
“Don’t tell me it belonged to the husband of this new dancer?” I stared at the King, trying to make him look me in the eye. He squirmed.
“Can’t you fix it up for me, Kisqv? You men of magic have a way.”
“You’re making mockery of my magic,” I said.
“Not at all. I have the utmost respect. All I ask is that you wish. Wish that the piece of garment did belong to her husband, whoever the man may be.”
“Blasphemy!”
“But I am convinced that Parroko is not my enemy—so he must not take the ritual Death. You’ve got to do something.”
Safsaf had been listening in on this discussion, and now, high-minded gentleman that he was, he came forth with the one logical plan of action.
“We shall find out,” Safsaf said, “exactly where that bit of red cloth came from. Then we shall know whose death to expect from the snake ritual.” Good old systematic Safsaf, as earnest and sincere as one might wish the King himself to be. Once I had thought he was promoting Parroko’s death; but he was only following the course of action he thought right.
Confidently I predicted that an investigation would find Parroko not to be the owner of the garment. There was something from the Death Verse that echoed back to me. Someone was to lose his “covering” to the innocent. Would that not be a reference to a garment? Now, who was it, according to that parchment message?
“The garment did not belong to Parroko,” I said. “I am sure because it was delivered to you by Graspy with his own chimpanzee hands—and Graspy had not seen Parroko.”
“How do you know?” said Safsaf. “Because the message which I gave him to deliver to one of Parroko’s party was not delivered.”
“How do you know that?” said the King.
“Because my wife hadn’t received it.”
“Your wife?”
“She was in Parroko’s party,” I said.
“She is the new dancing girl you’re trying to fall in love with.” I aimed these words at the King and shot them hard.
He gave an awful puff on his pipe and I thought he was going to bite the stem in-two. For the next five minutes he smoked like a burning haystack and refused to look up. He knew he had made himself as transparent as glass. He had asked me to falsify my magic to make myself the death victim—so he could marry my wife.
Safsaf was so much embarrassed by this turn, of events that he strode off into the dark, leaving a few husky attendants around us to make sure we didn’t come to blows during his absence. A moment later he returned with Graspy.
“Now, you with the chimp hands, answer my question honestly, or the Kisqv will give you a chimpanzee face to match your hands. Where did you get the piece of garment that you passed off to us as Parroko’s?”
“I stole it,” said Graspy. “I stole it a long time ago.” His hands were quivering. And, lo and behold, they were hands, not claws!
Safsaf and the King both saw. Then they looked to me.
“I wished,” said simply.
The big question at stake was only made the more urgent by this revelation. My magic was a working thing. It was swift and effective. The wish of Death that I stuffed down the snake’s throat was going to get someone, the King had no doubt about it.
“You stole the garment a long time ago,” Safsaf resumed, clutching Graspy by his human wrist. “Out with it. Where did you steal the garment?”
The King leaped up, broke into a snort and a gasp. “Ugh! I remember! Don’t tell! I remember that garment. Don’t tell where you stole it!”
A very much agitated King. His flash of memory had burst with such suddenness that, anything he might have intended concealing, was revealed as bright as the campfire.
Graspy nodded sheepishly at the King. “What shall I do to make up for what I stole? It wasn’t an expensive garment, only the color—so bright—and I didn’t think you’d miss it—”
“Shut up!” said the King. “Curses on the garment. The ritual is the thing! The doom. It will cut me down. Me! The King! All because I wanted—I wanted—”
It was the hissing voice of the Queen that finished his limping, groping confession. She had come up in the darkness and was standing behind his back.
“All because you wanted a new Queen,” she said. “First it was Parroko’s wife. Then this new dancing girl caught your eye. So you wanted to kill your personal enemy, did you? And now it turns out that your personal enemy was yourself!”
The King’s head sank into his folded arms. He had no answer. He was completely whipped, the more so because the damning words came from the one who was accustomed to lashing him.
But it was the Queen who thought she saw a way out for her husband, who otherwise might be expected to lose his life.
“So the snake that hangs on the highest branch of the highest tree on the cliff has never failed to bring death,” she said. “But this will be an exception.”
“How so?”
“No Kisqv’s decision is final,” she said. “There is always one appeal. We all know the source of the Kisqv’s magic power is the five-fanged serpent in the third chamber of the cavern. I am not afraid to face that serpent. Are you?”
“We should go at once,” said Safsaf. The silent King did not move until the Queen boxed his ears and told him to quit acting like a baby. “Come on, we’re going to call on the big serpent.”
“What do I hear?” said the King. “Voices coming from the trail? Who comes to the village at this late hour? It is almost morning.”
“That’s a party of our own people returning from an excursion up the trail,” said Safsaf. “They went to look at the body of a Kisqv who met some strange Death yesterday. Perhaps they will have found his Death Verse.”
“No,” said Graspy, reaching into his pocket like an honest man. “They won’t find it. I have it. I meant to steal it when this Kisqv gave it to me by mistake. But now that he has restored my hand I will not steal. Here is the Death Verse.”
CHAPTER X
The Death Verse at Dawn
The amazing thing to me was that I still commanded respect as a Kisqv, even though these people had found out what had happened up there on the trail on the previous noon. They had seen the body, they had identified it as a former Kisqv. And now, in full proof, the Death Verse had come to light.
No doubt about it, I was getting by with a killing. No one cried murder at me. Why? Partly because my magic power was being proved, and that fact alone made me feared and respected.
Partly because it was being rumored about that I was also the husband of the beautiful girl who danced the weird Death ritual.
But most of all because of the Death Verse itself. You see, when a Kisqv writes a Death Verse for himself it is virtually an invitation to the Grim Reaper. One who happens along in time to cooperate with the Kisqv’s purpose is not to be censured.
The little party around the King and Queen grew into a first-rate multitude before we reached the entrance of the caverns. Besides Safsaf and his attendants and the high-spirited Graspy with his human hands, there was also the entire party of villagers who had gone up the trail to see the dead Kisqv for themselves.
This party had arrived before the smaller group of us could give them the slip. They heard that a Death Verse had been found, and that news they quickly spread to waking villagers.
Parroko himself joined us, spear in hand. You could tell that he knew the score, all right. He walked along with in easy spearing distance of the King all the way.
The Queen watched him with an admiring eye, and when we reached the mouth of the cavern she said, “You will not die, Parroko, for you are innocent in the eyes of this Kisqv. But to make sure, you had better come in with us and be assured by the great serpent.”
We were ready to enter, but the crowd was too nearly a mob. They demanded to hear the Death Verse re
ad. We simply could not leave them clamoring so. The King was obliged to read the verse aloud to them.
“Who strikes this Kisqv—” and the King gestured toward the hill trail to indicate the dead man, “strikes a five-fanged serpent.” He gestured toward the cavern where the great serpent of magic was said to reside. “Strike not lest five fates or fortunes be unleashed.”
The crowd looked at me, then, for I was the one who had, struck. I could not read that host of faces, staring through the twilight of morning, staring out of large brown eyes, watching me with wonderment, estimating my powers.
The King went on: “Lest a visitor lose his fears to a King—”
The villagers stole glances about, as if wondering who among them might be the visitor. Again the eyes came back to me. Could I be the one referred to? Did I have any fears that could be lost? Maybe they didn’t know it, but I had plenty.
“Lest a King lose his covering to an Innocent”
The King new what this meant, all right, and so did the others of us from the inner circle. We knew, and the crowd was sure to learn sooner or later, that a bit of the King’s garment had been panned off as Parroko’s—and who could be more the Innocent than Parroko?
“Lest an Innocent lose his fate to a Serpent,
“Lest a Serpent lose his form to a Queen,
“Lest a Queen lose her queenly gift to a visitor—”
Here I caught my breath. If I was the visitor, was I to inherit some property of the Queen’s? I shuddered. What would it be like if her hissing disposition were to be fastened on me for life? If she had any other queenly gift besides a gift for stirring up trouble, I hadn’t observed it.
The latter part of the reading seemed only to summarize the foregoing: “Who loses to a King, Who loses to an Innocent, Who loses to a Serpent, Who loses to a Queen, Who loses to a Visitor—” and from that point the verse condensed itself into the letters KISVQ.
We left the crowd to think it over, and a few of us entered the cavern to see if there was anything we could do about it. The Queen was most anxious to lead us in and get everything straightened out to her own satisfaction. She had come here alone for consultations, much as one might go to a feared and dreaded hypnotist. She led the way in with the confidence of a lion tamer.
Safsaf and several guards were our protection. Some of the guards were left at the outside door to make sure the crowd didn’t come in, or that the serpent didn’t come out. Safsaf followed all the way to the third chamber. There he and the three men who had once hauled me around in the jog-wagon took their stand.
“Right-Rear” was eating as usual; for lack of anything better to munch on, he gathered some snails off the cavern wall and munched on them.
The early morning sunlight filtered in through the natural windows in the right wall. The floor of the cavern was slimy to my bare feet. Pools of blue water, whose depth I had no way of guessing, caused us to thread our way carefully along the walls. Soft blue mists rose from these pools.
We followed the Queen out into the center of this cavernous room by way of a narrow path of rock between two pools. There were only four of us who had come this far: the Queen, the King, Parroko, and myself. Now I looked for a retreat. I didn’t like the deadend route into which the Queen had led us. She leaped to a tiny island of rock within the pool to the right of the path.
“This is my conference post,” she said with an exaggerated air of feeling at home. Each of us in turn leaped the wide yard of blue water—almost too much of a jump for the King.
For one person, such as the Queen, this little flat-topped cone of rock might have been an adequate station. But the four of us were crowded, and I, the last to jump, caught Parroko by the hand and almost upset him and the other two from their narrow footing.
“The serpent will come to us here,” said the Queen. “We have made it in time. The serpent will change the doom of the Death ritual. You don’t feel ill, do you, dear?”
Her last remark, directed at the King, was spoken in a most sarcastic manner, an air of “I told you so.” She was missing no tricks. Her husband was going to live because she was saving him, bringing him here in time to appeal to the source of magic wisdom.
“I am not ill,” said the King, though he sounded very sick indeed.
Parroko turned to notice me for the first time. “You—you’re the new Kisqv?” He whispered. “I have a message for you . . . No, not yet. I must first clear myself of the King’s hatred. That’s why I have come here.”
The Queen was calling, not in Hazzwart language, surely, but in the language of serpents.
“Kisssssssssqv! Kissssssssssqv! Lis-ssssten to our wissssssh! Commmmme, ssssserrrrrpent of fivvvvvfi fannnnng!”
Her hiss grew louder, and the echoes of the cavern chamber multiplied the weird effects. Soon I was not able to tell whether it was only her whispered voice or whether an answer was blending with it.
Then it came clear, the answer, echoing back from the walls, so that we all looked around through the blue steam, into the dark recesses, across the deep blue pools. Where was the hissing coming from? It seemed to be first from one direction, then another.
“Lllllisssssstennnn toooo yourrrr wissssssh!”
The King was looking down, and he was certainly ill now. His face was ashen, his sad eyes were wide with a sickly horror. And no wonder. Those whispered replies were coming from the surface of the waters right at the edge of the little cone-shaped island that held us.
The serpent’s head, a trifle larger than my own, moved noiselessly above the surface, only three or four feet of its neck showing. A silent swimmer. Brilliantly colored. As it rounded our little station, a curve of its back arched out of the water, like a bowed tree trunk, a flashy yellow patterned with a mosaic of green and purple markings.
Now as it rounded us again I caught a clear view of its head—sensitive red nostrils, a deep red throat within the ivory fangs—three above, two below. Its eyes, in contrast to all its other bright colors, were opalescent, soft, mysterious. Somehow you knew at once that it was very wise, very cunning, and much amused at our helplessness in its presence.
“Soooo, youuuu neeeeed the pow-errrrs of Kissssssqv!”
With these words it suddenly reared upward from the surface of the water and seized my plumed headgear with its fangs.
CHAPTER XI
Serpentine Magic
It was a fascinating sight to watch that monstrous creature swimming around us slowly with the black-plumed headdress in its mouth. With each hiss, the plumes puffed outward with an audible flutter, and sometimes you could see through the circle of them, into the serpent’s red throat. The red of the headgear band was like the red of that throat; and the colored markings which I had been wearing next to my forehead were of the same pattern as the green and purple design that tapered down to a point on the serpent’s bright yellow nose.
“He’s breathing powers into your headpiece,” Parroko whispered to me. “No Kisqv has powers of his own when he is not wearing his plumes.”
For a few minutes this process went on as the serpent made one round after another of our tiny island. The Queen’s hissing questions were ignored during those minutes, and she was growing distressed—yes, fearful. Her husband looked to be very ill. I knew her suspicion was growing—that he would cave in under the weight of that stuffed snake ritual before this great serpent answered her appeals.
Two coils of the serpent’s cylindrical body folded up on each other at the edge of our station. Its head came sliding along for a third coil.
“It’s coming too close,” the King mumbled.
“It has to come close to talk to us,” said the Queen, scornful of her husband’s nervousness.
It raised its head and replaced the headdress over my forehead. I drew the band down snugly. It was warm with an abundance of that strange electrical heat. What a wonderful elation I felt in that moment! As if I might wish for anything in the world.
But this wise serpent read my tho
ughts.
“Beforrrre annny wisssssssh,” it whispered, coiling more closely around our island until its chill body rubbed softly against my shins, “firrrrst the Deathhhh Verrrrse of anotherrr Kisssssqv musssst beeee fulfillllled!” The high whistling sound of its last word rang through the chamber, and I saw Safsaf and his three companions, at the cavern passage many yards away, half crouched in fear or wonderment.
“What is the meaning of the verse?” the Queen cried out, now suddenly losing her bravado. “I do not want to lose my queenly gift to any visitor.”
The serpent didn’t answer. It was busy crawling around us, coiling closer, arching its neck in such a way as to look into the faces of one after the other of us out of its glistening opalescent saucer eyes.
“Your queenly gift!” the King mocked weakly. “Yes, you’re a great charmer, aren’t you! Why don’t you tell this beast to quit scraping so close to my knees.”
A sort of answer came from the serpent itself. It talked, hissing and whistling, with an outpouring of ideas that somehow fascinated and held us. It must look at us, one by one, it must, weigh us in the toils of its own body, to know what we were made of and which of us best fulfilled each of the stipulations of the dead Kisqv.
It seemed to be having a hard time making up its mind. We were crowded together more closely. Our little circle began to tighten.
Fear struck us, one after another. It charged through my heart when Parroko whispered to me:
“My message—in case I should not be released from this. She has gone on. My wife is accompanying her to the coast. She will board a plane there. This I was to tell to you.”
I thanked him. I hardly had breath to do more. Too late I realized what a fool I had been. This serpent had gathered around us in four tightening coils. It had somehow hypnotized us with its whisperings, and gathered in on us while we listened.
It was tightening, tightening.
Those last breaths—ghastly grunts and wheezes, sickening gurgles. Both the King and Queen tried to demand some knowledge of the fate that the Death Verse had promised them. But now the snake’s hiss was no longer the articulate whispering of words. It was the hiss of mockery, a taunting, spine chilling hiss of laughter.
