by Sara Douglas
"Great Serpent be with me, Great Serpent be part of me, Great Serpent grace me."
Then Ishbel opened her eyes, stepped forward, lifted her slicing hand, and, in a movement honed by twenty years of the study of anatomy and practice both upon the living and the dead, cleanly disemboweled the man with a serpentine incision from sternum to groin.
Blood spurted outward in a spray, covering Ishbel's masked and hooded features.
As the man's intestines bulged outward, Ishbel lifted her slicing hand again and in several quick, deft movements freed the intestines from their abdominal supports, then stepped back nimbly as they tumbled out of the man's body to lie in a steaming heap at his feet.
The pile of intestines was still attached to the man's living body by two long, glistening ropes of bowel,
stretching downward. The man himself, still alive, still conscious, stared at them in a combination of disbelief and shock.
The agony had yet to strike.
The man trembled so greatly that the movement carried down the connecting ropes of bowel to the pile at his feet, making them quiver as if they enjoyed independent life.
Ishbel ignored everything save the pile of intestines. Again she stepped forward, this time leaning down to sever the large intestine as it joined the small bowel.
Behind her the semicircle of the Coil began to chant, softly and sibilantly. "Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us. Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us."
"Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us," Aziel said, his voice a little stronger than those of the semicircle.
Ishbel had pocketed the slicing blade now, and stood before the intestines, her hands folded in front of her, eyes cast down.
Please, Great Serpent, she said in her mind, grace me with your presence and tell me what is so wrong,
and what we may do to aid you.
The man's intestine began to uncoil. A long length of the large bowel, now independent, rose slowly into the air.
The man had bitten and masticated his way through his gag by now, and he began to shriek, thin harsh sounds that rattled about the chamber.
No one took any notice of him.
All eyes were on the rope of intestine now twisting into the air before the archpriestess.
It shimmered, and then transformed into the head and body of a black serpent, its scales gleaming with the fluids of the man's body and sending shimmering shafts of rainbow colors about the chamber. Its head grew hideously large, weaving its way forward until it was a bare finger's distance from Ishbel's masked face.
Then it began to speak.
When it was over--the serpent disintegrated into steaming bowel once more, the agonized man dispatched with a deep slash to the throat--Ishbel turned and stared at Aziel, dragging the scarf away from her face so he could see her horror.
"We need to speak," she said, then walked from the chamber.
CHAPTER THREE
Serpent's Nest, the Outlands
Aziel followed Ishbel to the day chamber they shared, pouring her a large of glass of wine as she undid her cloak and tossed it to one side.
"Pour yourself one, too," she said. "You shall be glad enough of it when I tell you what the Great Serpent said."
"Ishbel, sit down and take a mouthful of that wine. Good. Now, what--"
"Disaster threatens. The Skraelings prepare to seethe south. Millions of them."
"But..."
"Millions of them, Aziel."
Aziel poured himself some wine, then sank into a chair, leaving the wine untouched. The Skraelings--insubstantial ice wraiths who lived in the frozen northern wastes--had ever been a bother to the countries of Viland, Gershadi, and Berfardi. Small bands of ten or fifteen occasionally attacked outlying villages, taking livestock and, sometimes, a child.
But millions? And seething as far south as Serpent's Nest?
"I know only what the Great Serpent showed me, Aziel," Ishbel said. "I don't understand it any more than you." She took a deep breath. "I saw Serpent's Nest overrun, the members of the Coil dragged out to be crucified on crosses. You..." Her voice broke a little. "You, dead."
"Ishbel--"
"There's worse."
Worse?
"A forgotten evil rises from the south," Ishbel said. "Something so anciently malevolent that even the bedrock has learned to fear it. It will crawl north to meet the Skraelings. They whisper to each other...the Skraelings are under its thrall, which is why they are so unnaturally organized. Between them they shall doom our world, Aziel."
"Ishbel," Aziel said, "there have been no reports of any unusual activity among the Skraelings. In fact,
from what I've heard, they've been quieter than usual these past eighteen months. Are you sure you interpreted the Great Serpent's message correctly?"
Ishbel replied not with words but with such a dark look that Aziel's heart sank.
"I apologize," he said hastily. "I was shocked. I'm sorry." Aziel finally took a large swallow of his wine.
"You are the most powerful visionary to have ever blessed the Coil, and what I just said was unforgivable." Then he gave a soft, humorless laugh. "I suppose that I am merely trying to find a means by which to disbelieve the Great Serpent's message. Did he show you the reason behind this disaster?
Why it is happening? How? The Skraelings have never managed more than the occasional, if murderous,
nuisance raid. A death or two at most. Millions? How can they organize themselves to that degree?"
"The evil in the south organizes them, Aziel," Ishbel said. "I thought I'd said that already."
Aziel did not reply. He understood Ishbel's irritability. By the Serpent, had he been the one to receive this message he was sure he would have snarled far harder than Ishbel.
Ishbel rose, pacing restlessly about the chamber. "There is more, Aziel," she said finally.
He, too, rose, more at the tone of her voice than her words. The irritation had now been replaced with something too close to despair. "Ishbel?"
She turned to face him, her lovely face drawn and pale. "The Great Serpent showed me the disaster which threatens, but he also showed me the means by which it can be averted."
"Oh, thank the gods! What must we do?"
"It is what I must do. I must leave the Coil, leave Serpent's Nest--"
Aziel stilled. Had not the Great Serpent told him twenty years ago, when he sent Aziel to rescue Ishbel from that house of carnage, that this would eventually come to pass?
"--and marry some man. A king." Ishbel paused, as if searching for the name, and Aziel had the sudden and most unwanted thought that he hoped Ishbel would remember the right name.
"A king called Maximilian," Ishbel said. "From some kingdom to the west...I cannot quite recall..."
"Escator," Aziel said softly. "Maximilian Persimius of Escator."
"Yes. Yes, Maximilian Persimius of Escator. Aziel...the Great Serpent wants me to marry this man!
What can he be thinking? How can a marriage...to a man...avert this approaching disaster? I am not meant to be a wife, and I have no idea, none, of how to be a woman!"
Aziel stared at her lovely face, and saw the splatter of blood across one eyebrow that had penetrated her scarf's protection.
No, he could not imagine her a "wife," either. But, oh, the woman...
"We cannot hope to understand the Great Serpent's reasons," said Aziel, "nor the knowledge behind them."
He stepped over to Ishbel and took her face gently between his hands. "My dear, we always knew you would leave us. You knew you would need to leave us. It is why we marked you as we did." For a moment his hands slid into her hair, the tips of his fingers running lightly across her scalp. "Now," he continued, his hands sliding back to cradle her face, "the time is here."
"I do not know how to be a woman," Ishbel repeated, refusing to meet Aziel's eyes.
That statement, Aziel thought with infinite sadness, summarized Ishbel's life perfectly. In the twenty years since he had rescu
ed her from that charnel house in Margalit, Ishbel had devoted her entire being to serving the Great Serpent. She had no idea of her beauty, nor of her allure. All the members of the Coil were bound by vows of chastity, but only loosely. Liaisons and relationships did develop, and were allowed to continue so long as they remained discreet.
Aziel would have given full ten years of his life if it meant Ishbel looked at him with eyes of love or desire.
But she had no idea of his true feelings for her, and Aziel often wondered if Ishbel could even grasp the concept of love.
He stepped away from her. "Marriage to Maximilian of Escator, eh? It is a small thing, surely, if it will save us from the disaster the Great Serpent showed you."
Ishbel looked at him as if he had committed an act of the basest betrayal. "Marriage? To some undoubtedly fat and ancient man who--"
"You do not know of Maximilian?" Aziel said. Surely everyone knew Maximilian's story--the news of his rescue eight years ago had rocked the Outlands, as well as all the Central Kingdoms and as far away as Coroleas. Had Ishbel listened to none of the gossip that infiltrated the walls of Serpent's Nest via tradesmen and suppliers?
Ishbel gave a small shrug. "Why should I know?"
Aziel sighed. Because everyone else in the damned world knows. "Sit down," he said, "and I shall tell you of Maximilian Persimius."
He waited until Ishbel had sat herself, her back rigid, her face expressionless, before he spoke.
"I shall be brief, as I am certain you shall have ample opportunity to hear this story from Maximilian himself."
Ishbel's face tightened, but Aziel ignored it.
"Eight years ago there was an uproar when the presumed long-dead heir to the Escatorian throne,
Maximilian, suddenly reappeared. He told an astounding tale: stolen at the age of fourteen, thrown into the gloam mines--known as the Veins--to labor in darkness and pain for a full seventeen years until he was rescued by a youthful apprentice physician and a marsh witch. Yes, I know, stranger than myth, but sometimes it happens. It transpired that Maximilian's `death' had been staged by his older cousin Cavor,
who wanted the throne. Once free of the Veins, Maximilian challenged Cavor for the throne, won,
and...well, there you have it. Maximilian has since led a fairly blameless life running Escator and, as luck would have it, looking for a wife. I have never seen him, nor met him, but I have heard good of him. He is respected both as a man and as a king."
"He was imprisoned in the gloam mines for seventeen years?"
"Yes."
"Then I hope he has since managed to scrub the dirt of the grave from under his fingernails."
"That was ungenerous, Ishbel."
"Don't lecture me," she snapped. "Maximilian may be of the noblest character, and patently has endurance beyond most other men, but I have no wish to be his wife. I do not wish to leave Serpent's Nest."
"Ishbel...the Great Serpent has said that--"
"Perhaps the Great Serpent is mistaken," Ishbel said, and with that she rose, snatched up her cloak, and left the chamber.
CHAPTER FOUR
Serpent's Nest, the Outlands
Wrapping the cloak tightly about herself, Ishbel walked quickly through the corridors until she came to the stairwell leading up to a small balcony high in Serpent's Nest. She was grateful she met no one, partly because she could not at the moment contemplate questions or small talk, but mostly because she felt deeply ashamed of her behavior and manner with Aziel.
Her shock and horror at the vision the Great Serpent had showed her--and then at the solution he had suggested--could not excuse her behavior toward Aziel. Ishbel owed the Great Serpent, the Coil, and even Serpent's Nest itself a great deal, but she owed Aziel so much more. He had been the one to rescue her. His had been the hand extended to lift her from the horror that assailed her. His had been the gentle smile, the soft encouragement, the friendship, over all of these years, which had helped her to put that frightful time behind her.
He hadn't deserved that face she had just shown him.
Ishbel sighed and began to climb the stairs. The eastern balcony was her favorite spot in Serpent's Nest,
and she often came here to think, or simply to stand and allow the salt breeze from the Infinity Sea to wash over her face and through her hair.
The climb was a long one, and, as it progressed, the stone stairs became ever rougher and a little steeper.
The increasing difficulty of the way did not bother Ishbel; rather, it comforted her, because it meant she approached the older part of Serpent's Nest.
The more mysterious part.
Serpent's Nest was a mystery in itself. Ishbel had begun to explore the structure in the first months after she had arrived as a child, completely fascinated by her new home. Serpent's Nest was not a town, nor even a building, but a series of interconnecting chambers and corridors hewn out of what Ional, the old archpriestess Ishbel had replaced, told her was the largest mountain in the world.
Inhabited once by giants among men, Ional had said, and a legendary warrior-king who wielded magic beyond comprehension, but now left with only us to keep its empty spaces company.
Ishbel could well believe that giants had once lived here. Well, many people, at the very least. The Coil only occupied a hundredth of the chambers that had been thus far explored, and there were yet more corridors and tunnels that led deep into the mountain through which no one had yet dared venture. No one knew who or what had once lived here. Ional had told Ishbel that the Coil had lived here for twenty-three generations, but that the mountain stronghold had been long empty when the Coil had first arrived.
The stairs suddenly broadened, and Ishbel felt the first breath of sea air wash over her face. She smiled,
relaxing, and stepped onto the eastern balcony. Ishbel had found this place in her tenth year, and had come here regularly ever since. No one else ever used the balcony, and Ishbel was not sure that anyone else even knew how to reach it.
Perhaps, among the myriad stairwells and corridors and possibilities that Serpent's Nest offered, no one else had ever found this particular stairwell.
Ishbel leaned back against the stone face of the mountain, the semicircular balustrade of the balcony wall two paces before her, and looked out over the Infinity Sea.
By the Great Serpent, was there ever a more beautiful view?
The mountain that Ishbel knew as Serpent's Nest rose directly above the vast Infinity Sea, its eastern face, where Ishbel now relaxed on her balcony, plunging almost a thousand paces into the gray-blue waters of the sea. Ishbel loved the great vastness of the ocean stretching out before her, with its wildness,
its unpredictability, its strangeness, and its unknowable secrets. Behind her rose the comforting solidity of the mountain, almost warm against her back.
Ishbel took a deep breath, forcing herself to think about what had happened today. The horror of the Great Serpent's vision...she shuddered as she replayed in her mind the sight of the ice wraiths with their huge silvery orbs for eyes and their oversized teeth, swarming over the mountain.
And the solution...
Ishbel shuddered again. Leave Serpent's Nest? Marriage? Marriage? Ishbel could almost not comprehend it. She struggled to remember household life in her parents' home. Her mother had been bound to the house, supervising the servants, the mending of linens, deciding what food should be served to her father for his dinner, being pleasant and hospitable to visitors. Her parents had been wealthy and important people, but Ishbel could remember that faint touch of servitude in her mother's manner to her husband--how the entire household revolved around his wants and needs--and even to those visitors that her husband needed to impress. She remembered how tired her mother had constantly appeared,
worn down by the responsibilities of the house and her large family.
True, marriage to a king would be different, but not so greatly. Ishbel would still be his inferior, and would still need to subject herself to him, as wou
ld any wife.
Here she was Aziel's equal, respected by all other members of the Coil, and feared by those who came to the Coil seeking their visionary aid.
Even worse, Ishbel would need to subject herself physically to the man. Ishbel had led an utterly chaste life since her arrival at Serpent's Nest. She did not even think of any of the male members (or any of the female members, for that matter) in sexual terms. She could not imagine a man thinking he had the right to touch her, and to use her body in the most intimate sense. She could not imagine having to subject herself to such intrusion.
And to lose all the support she had at Serpent's Nest in the doing. To lose everything she held dear, and which kept her safe, for such a life.
"The Great Serpent must be mistaken," she said. "This can't be the solution."
Ishbel straightened, squaring her shoulders, determined in her decision. "I will tell Aziel that I was mistaken, that I misinterpreted the Great Serpent's words, that--"
Ishbel, do as I have asked.
Ishbel froze in the act of moving toward the opening that led to the stairwell.
Very slowly, so slowly she thought she could hear the bones in her neck creak, Ishbel looked up toward the distant peak of the mountain.
An apparition of the Great Serpent writhed there: the setting sun glinted off his black scales and shimmered along the fangs of his slightly open mouth. His head wove back and forth, as if tasting the wind; then he slowly wound his way down the mountain toward Ishbel.
Do as I ask, Ishbel.
Ishbel could not move, let alone speak.
The Great Serpent wound closer, sliding between rocks and through cracks with ease until his head hung some ten paces above Ishbel.
Do as I ask.
Ishbel was recovered from her initial shock. The Great Serpent had occasionally appeared to her, but it had been when she was a young child and still wept for her mother. Then he had come to comfort her.
Now, it seemed, he was here to ensure Ishbel did as he wished. Given that Ishbel had just spent some long minutes silently fuming at the idea she should have to subject herself to the wishes of a husband, the idea that the Great Serpent was here to force her to his will irritated her into a small rebellion.
