by Sara Douglas
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE SERPENT BRIDE. Copyright © 2007 by Sara Douglass Enterprises. All rights reserved under
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Microsoft Reader Apr 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-143797-7
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The Legend of Chaos (Kanubai)
I n the beginning and for an infinity of time there was nothing but the darkness of Chaos, who called himself Kanubai. After a time Kanubai grew weary of his lonely existence and so he invited Light and Water to be his companions. Kanubai and Light and Water coexisted harmoniously, but one day Light and Water merged, just for an instant of time, but in that instant they conceived a child--Life.
Kanubai was jealous of Life, for it was the child of the union of Light and Water and he had been excluded from that union. He set out to murder Life, to consume it with darkness, but Light and Water came to the defense of their child. Aided by a great mage, Light and Water defeated Kanubai in a terrible battle, and interred his remains in a deep abyss. They stoppered this abyss with a sparkling, life-giving river, which combined the best both of Light and of Water, and they hoped that Kanubai was trapped for all time.
Trapped, but not extinguished. Every day Life was reminded of Kanubai's continuing malignant presence by the descent of the night, when for the space of some hours the dark memory of Kanubai blanketed the land.
Despite this daily sadness, Life prospered, and many creatures came into existence.
For eons Kanubai lay trapped, able to do little more than darken each light-filled day with the reminder of his presence.
But then, one day, something remarkable happened.
Infinity visited.
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
Margalit, the Outlands
The eight-year-old girl crouched by the stone column in the atrium of her parents' house. Clad only in a stained linen shift, she hugged her thin arms tightly about herself, her eyes wide and darting under her bedraggled and grimy fair hair.
The house was cold and still, and the girl's breath frosted as she hyperventilated.
The foul liquid of rotting cadavers streaked her face and arms. For many days now the girl had crept about the house, seeking out the bodies of her parents (almost unrecognizable, four weeks after their death), rubbing the stinking, viscous liquid that had leaked from their flesh over her body, sucking it from her fingers.
All she wanted was to die, too.
It had been a bad month. Four weeks ago everyone in the house--save the little girl--had died within a day of the first person falling sick. Thirty-four people--not just the girl's parents and siblings, but her three aunts, their husbands, their children, her grandmother, and the household's servants as well--all dead from the plague.
Just her, left alive.
Outside gathered a frightened and angry crowd, neighbors as well as sundry other concerned citizens and council members of Margalit. They had blocked off all entrances to the house as soon as they realized plague had struck the household.
In the initial days after everyone had died, the girl, Ishbel, screamed at the crowd outside for help,
begging them to save her. She pressed her face against the glass of the windows and beat her small fists against the frames, but the hostile expressions on the faces of the crowd outside did not alter.
They would not move to aid her.
Instead, Ishbel heard cries demanding that the house be set alight, and all the corpses and their infection burned.
She screamed at them again, begging them to allow her freedom.
She wasn't ill.
She didn't have the plague.
Her skin was unmarked, her brow unfevered.
"Please, please, let me out. Everyone is dead. I want to get out. Please...please..."
The crowd outside had no mercy. They would not let her escape.
Ishbel begged until she lost her voice and scraped away several of her fingernails on the wood of the front door.
The crowd would not listen. No other house in Margalit had the plague. Just the Brunelle house. Its doors and windows would not be opened again. The house would never ring with life and laughter as once it had.
When the girl was dead, they would burn the house, and all the corpses within it. Until then they would wait.
Eventually Ishbel crept away from the windows and the cold, bolted doors. She could not bear the flat hostility in the eyes outside.
All she wanted was comfort, and so she crept close to the corpse of her mother and cuddled up next to it.
Her mother was very cold and smelled very bad, but even so Ishbel garnered some comfort from the contact with her body.
Until the moment it began to whisper to her.
Ishbel. Ishbel. Listen to us.
Ishbel recoiled, terrified.
Her mother's corpse twitched, and it whispered again.
Ishbel, Ishbel, listen to us. You must prepare--
Ishbel screamed, over and over, her hands pressed against her ears, her eyes screwed shut, her body rolled into a tight ball in a corner of the room.
Then the corpses of two of her aunts, which lay a few feet from her mother's, also twitched and whispered.
Ishbel, Ishbel, listen to us, our darling. Prepare, prepare, for soon the Lord of Elcho Falling shall walk again.
A vision accompanied the horrifying whispers.
A man, clothed in black, standing in the snow, his back to her.
Darkness writhed about his shoulders.
He sensed her presence, and turned his head a little, glancing at her from over his shoulder.
Bleakness and despair, and desolation so extreme it was murderous, overwhelmed Ishbel's entire world.
The despair that engulfed her annihilated everything Ishbel had felt until now.
The loss of her family, and her entrapment with their corpses, was as nothing to what this man dragged at his heels.
Prepare, Ishbel, prepare for the coming of the Lord of Elcho Falling.
After her mother, and her two aunts, every other corpse in the house twitched in the same mad, cold,
macabre dance of death, and whispered until the words echoed about the house.
Prepare, Ishbel, our darling, for the Lord of Elcho Falling shall walk again.
The twitching corpses and the constant whispering drove Ishbel to the brink of insanity. She didn't want to live. She had gone mad, here in this cold house of death, watching everyone she had ever loved putrefy before her eyes.
Listening to their never-ending whispers.
Prepare, our darling...for the Lord of Elcho Falling.
She tried to starve herself, but one day she had weakened, sobbing, stuffing her mouth with moldy pastries from the kitchen.
Then she found a knife, and drew it across her wrists, but was too weak to carve deeply, and too cowardly to bear the pain, so the blood just seeped from the thin cuts and Ishbel had not died.
Finally, frantic, crazy, Ishbel had stuffed her ears full of wadding and crept close enough to rub the foul effluent from the cadavers o
f her parents over her body and face. Then she licked the foulness from her fingers, just to be sure. It made her retch and sob and then scream in horror, but she did it, because surely, surely, this way the plague would manage to take a grip in her body and kill her as mercifully fast as it had killed everyone else in her life.
But all that had happened was that the scars on her wrists became infected, and wept a purulent discharge, and throbbed unbearably.
Ishbel survived.
Whenever she slept, she dreamed of the Lord of Elcho Falling, turning his head ever so slightly so that he could look at her over his shoulder, and engulfing her in sorrow and pain.
She grew thin, her joints aching with the cold and with malnutrition, but she survived.
Outside the crowds waited.
Every so often Ishbel called out to them, letting them know she still existed within, because, no matter how greatly Ishbel wanted to die, she did not want to do so within an inferno.
On this day, huddled in the atrium of the house, Ishbel began to dream about death. She looked at the great staircase that wound its way to the upper floors of the house, and she wondered why she'd never before thought that all she needed to do was to climb to the top, then throw herself down.
Very slowly, because she was now extremely weak, Ishbel crawled on her hands and knees toward the staircase. She was frail, and she would need to take it slowly to get to the top, but get there she would.
Ishbel felt overwhelmed with a great determination. Her death was but an hour away, at the most.
But it took her much longer than an hour to climb the stairs. Ishbel was seriously weak, and she could only crawl up the staircase a few steps at a time before she needed to rest, collapsing and gasping, on the dusty wooden treads.
By late afternoon she was almost there. Every muscle trembled, aching so greatly that Ishbel wept with the pain.
But she was almost there...
Then, as she was within three steps of the top, she heard the front door open.
A faint sound, for the door was far below her, but she heard it open.
Ishbel did not know what to do. She lay on the stairs, trembling, weeping, listening to slow steps ascend the staircase, and wondered if the crowd had sent someone in to murder her.
She was taking far too long to die.
Ishbel closed her eyes, and buried her face in her arms.
"Ishbel?"
A man's voice, very kind. Ishbel thought she must be dreaming.
"Ishbel."
Slowly, and crying out softly with the ache of it, Ishbel turned over, opening her eyes.
A man wrapped in a crimson cloak over a similarly colored robe stood a few steps down, smiling at her.
He was a young man, good-looking, with brown hair that flopped over his forehead, and a long, fine nose.
"Ishbel?" The man held out a hand. "My name is Aziel. Would you like to come live with me?"
She stared at him, unable to comprehend his presence.
Aziel's smile became gentler, if that was possible. "I have been traveling for weeks to reach you, Ishbel.
The Great Serpent himself sent me. He appeared to me in a dream and said that I must hurry to bring you home. He loves you, sweetheart, and so shall I."
"Are you the Lord of Elcho Falling?" Ishbel whispered, even though she knew he could not be, for he did not drag loss and sorrow at his heels, and there was no darkness clinging to his shoulders.
Aziel frowned briefly, then he shook his head. "My name is Aziel, Ishbel. And I am lord of nothing, only a poor servant of the Great Serpent. Will you come with me?"
"To where?" Ishbel could barely grasp the thought of escape, now.
"To my home," Aziel said, "and it will be yours. Serpent's Nest."
"I do not know of it."
"Then you shall. Please come with me, Ishbel. Don't die. You are too precious to die."
"I don't need to die?"
Aziel laughed. "Ishbel, you have no idea how greatly we all want you to live, and to live with us. Will you come? Will you?"
Ishbel swallowed, barely able to get the words out. "Are there whispers in your house?"
"Whispers?"
"Do the dead speak in your house?"
Aziel frowned again. "The dying do, from time to time, when they confess to us the Great Serpent's wishes, but once dead they are mute."
"Good."
"Ishbel, come with me, please. Forget about what has happened here. Forget--everything."
"Yes," said Ishbel, and stretched out a trembling hand. I will forget, she thought. I will forget everything.
She did not once wonder why this man should have been able to so easily wander through the vindictive crowd outside, or why that crowd should have stood back and allowed him to open the front door without a single murmur.
Two weeks later Aziel brought Ishbel home to Serpent's Nest. She had spoken little for the entire journey, and nothing at all for the final five days.
Aziel was worried for her.
The archpriestess of the Coil, who worshipped the Great Serpent, led Aziel, carrying the little girl, to a room where awaited food and a bed. They washed Ishbel, made her eat something, then put her to bed,
retreating to a far corner of the room to sit watch as she slept.
The archpriestess was an older woman, well into her sixties, called Ional. She looked speculatively at Aziel, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the sleeping form of the child. Aziel was Ional's partner at Serpent's Nest, archpriest to her archpriestess, but he was far younger and as yet inexperienced, for he'd replaced the former archpriest only within the past year, after that man had strangely disappeared.
Ional knew she would partner Aziel only for a few more years, until he was well settled into his position as archpriest, and then she would make way for someone younger. Stronger. More Aziel's match.
Now Ional looked back to the girl.
Ishbel.
"You said," Ional said very softly, so as to not wake the girl, "that the Great Serpent told you she would not stay for a lifetime."
"He told me," said Aziel, "that she would stay many years, but that eventually he would require her to leave. That there would be a duty for her within the wider world, but that she would return and that her true home was here at Serpent's Nest."
"She is so little," said Ional, "but so very powerful. I could feel it the moment you carried her into Serpent's Nest. How much more shall she need to grow, do you think, before she can assume my duties?"
"When she is strong enough to hold a knife," said Aziel, "she shall be ready."
Deep in the abyss the creature stirred, looking upward with flat, hate-filled eyes.
It whispered, sending the whisper up and outward with all its might, seething through the crack that Infinity had opened.
It had been sending out its call for countless millennia, and for all those countless millennia, no one had answered.
This day, the creature in the abyss received not one but two replies, and it bared its teeth, and knew its success was finally at hand.
Twenty years passed.
CHAPTER TWO
Serpent's Nest, the Outlands
The man hung naked and vulnerable, his arms outstretched and chained by the wrists to the wall, his feet barely touching the ground, and likewise chained by the ankle to the wall. He was bathed in sweat caused only partly by the warm, humid conditions of the Reading Room and the highly uncomfortable position in which he had been chained.
He was hyperventilating in terror. His eyes, wide and dark, darted about the room, trying to find some evidence of mercy in the crimson-cloaked and hooded figures standing facing him in a semicircle, just out of blood-splash distance.
He might have begged for mercy, were it not for the gag in his mouth.
A door opened, and two people entered.
The man pissed himself, his urine pooling about his feet, and struggled desperately, uselessly, to free himself from his bonds.
T
he two arrivals walked slowly into the area contained by the semicircle of witnesses. A man and a woman, they too were cloaked in crimson, although for the moment their hoods lay draped about their shoulders. The man was in middle age, his face thin and lined, his dark hair receding, his dark eyes curiously compassionate, but only as they regarded his companion. When he glanced at the man chained to the wall those eyes became blank and uncaring.
His name was Aziel, and he was the archpriest of the Coil, now gathered in the Reading Room.
The woman was in her late twenties, very lovely, with clear hazel eyes and dark blond hair. She listened to Aziel as he spoke softly to her, then nodded. She turned slightly, acknowledging the semicircle with a small bow--as one they returned the bow--then turned back to face the chained man.
She was the archpriestess of the Coil, Aziel's equal in leadership of the order, and his superior in Readings.
Ishbel Brunelle, the little girl he had rescued twenty years earlier from her home of horror.
Aziel handed Ishbel a long silken scarf of the same color as her cloak, and, as Aziel stood back, she slowly and deliberately wound the scarf about her head and face, leaving only her eyes visible. Then,
equally slowly and deliberately, her eyes never leaving the chained man, Ishbel lifted the hood of her cloak over her head, pulling it forward so that her scarf-bound face was all but hidden. She arranged her cloak carefully, making certain her robe was protected.
Then, with precision, Ishbel made the sign of the Coil over her belly.
The man bound to the wall was now frantic, his body writhing, his eyes bulging, mews of horror escaping from behind his gag.
Ishbel took no notice.
From a pocket in her cloak she withdrew a small semicircular blade. It fitted neatly into the palm of her hand, the actual slicing edge protruding from between her two middle fingers.
She stepped forward, concentrating on the man.
He was now flailing about as much as he could given the restriction of his restraints, but his movements appeared to cause Ishbel no concern. She moved to within two paces of the man, took a very deep breath, her eyes closing as she murmured a prayer.
