The Serpent Bride

by Sara Douglas

  "Isaiah--"

  "Ba'al'uz has requested an escort for the lady from the FarReach Mountains back to Aqhat. He is worried that Maximilian might try to rescue his wife."

  "Frankly, I'd be a bit worried about that as well," Axis muttered. Gods, what had Ba'al'uz done...and what in the world was Isaiah thinking?

  "Axis, I ask that you lead a company of men north to the FarReach Mountains, there to meet Ba'al'uz'

  men and this woman, Ishbel, Queen of Escator, and escort her to me."

  Axis was now rendered utterly speechless. The news that Ba'al'uz had kidnapped the new wife of Maximilian of Escator was startling, and the idea that Isaiah would take her as a conquest wife even more so, but that Isaiah should trust him to lead a company of armed men north...that was unbelievable.

  And exciting. The idea of doing something was as heady as a draft of wine.

  "Of course," said Axis, then he smiled. "So long as you trust me with her."

  "You're the one man I do trust with her," said Isaiah. "I can't see you betraying Azhure for any other woman. Besides, the trip will be useful in another way, for you can check to see how well the resettlement plans are progressing. Ezekiel and Morfah have sent regular and very reassuring reports, but it doesn't hurt to have you cast your eye over their progress, does it?"

  Later that night Isaiah sat in a chair in his private chamber, holding the Goblet of the Frogs in his hands.

  He rolled it gently between his palms, watching the light play through its beautifully crafted shape.

  Ishbel, here at Aqhat. Oh, the dangers, not merely to her, but to everyone.

  But, oh, the possibilities. Isaiah knew Lister would be worried--frantic, even--but Isaiah wondered if more was at play here than just what Kanubai might be whispering into Ba'al'uz' mind.

  Ishbel coming back to Aqhat would be Ishbel coming home. Ishbel coming home could be an Ishbel awakened. From what Lister had said of her, Ishbel had shut herself off completely from her true nature.

  She would need to wake, sooner or later.

  Isaiah thought of what he'd sensed clinging to Kanubai's back...of his sense that something else was rising with Kanubai.

  Ishbel might be able to see more clearly than he.

  After all, she was the one with the blood for it.

  "What of you, my friend," Isaiah murmured to the goblet. "Anxious, or pleased?"

  The goblet responded, not with words, but with a wave of delighted emotion. Isaiah smiled, then raised the goblet to his lips and kissed it gently.

  There were dangers, but Isaiah could protect her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Road from Kyros to Escator, the Central Kingdoms

  Maximilian had left Malat in Kyros without any clear idea what to do. He felt completely, stupidly useless. His wife had been taken from him, and he had no idea how best he might save her. Egalion had organized the Emerald Guard into a search of the area between Kyros and the inn, but they had discovered nothing. Maximilian was not surprised. Ishbel and her kidnappers must be far, far away by now.

  But in what direction?

  And who?

  What could he do?

  Nothing. Nothing, and that infuriated Maximilian more than anything. What a worthless husband he was!

  He could not protect his pregnant wife and keep her safe. He could do nothing to rescue her. He was leagues and leagues from home and friends, and, because of the series of events from Margalit to Kyros,

  no one wanted to lend him aid, or even a sympathetic ear.

  And Ishbel didn't even have her ring.

  If Ishbel had been wearing the ring, then Maximilian would have had a good sense of where she was, in which direction. The rings bound each other and their wearers.

  But Ishbel had given hers back to Maximilian.

  From hopelessness, Maximilian succumbed to anger. Why had he not insisted she wear the damned ring?

  From anger, Maximilian swung back to guilt as he remembered how badly he'd treated Ishbel after Borchard's death. She had not been responsible. She had become yet another victim.

  What memories would she have to carry her through her ordeal? His hard, judgmental face?

  Everyone in his party left Maximilian alone as much as they could. Not even Garth dared engage him in conversation.

  After three days of useless snarling and hanging about the inn from where Ishbel had been taken,

  Maximilian made the decision to return to Escator as fast as possible. He could do nothing here, and at least in Escator he'd have more resources, plus the advice of Vorstus, who Maximilian realized he needed to speak to very badly, as much as he disliked and distrusted the man.

  And he'd be home.

  If without his wife.

  Maximilian and his party had just reached the western fringes of the Kyrrian lands when, at noon on a lovely warm day, eight Icarii landed on the road before them.

  "StarWeb!" Maximilian cried, dismounting and striding out to meet her. He grabbed her shoulders,

  hugged her, then kissed her on the cheek.

  "Thank the gods," he said.

  "Maxel?" she said. "What has happened?"

  "Ishbel has been taken. Gods, almost three weeks back. I have no idea where she is. StarWeb, I need you to--"

  "Maxel! Stop a moment...what is going on? I am here because not a week ago Lixel rode into Ruen with a tale that none of us could believe. Murders, accusations against you...and now Ishbel? Taken?"

  Egalion and Garth had now joined Maximilian, and both greeted StarWeb and the other Icarii warmly.

  "Ishbel was kidnapped from my side almost three weeks ago," said Maximilian, "by men pretending to be Malat's soldiers. I have no idea where she is, but now that you're here--"

  "That woman is nothing but trouble," StarWeb muttered.

  "She's pregnant, StarWeb."

  StarWeb glanced sharply at Maximilian at that, but did not comment.

  "We can use your wings and eyes," Egalion said. "If you--"

  "Almost three weeks?" said StarWeb. "She's likely to be dead by now."

  Maximilian winced. He finally seemed to realize the presence of the other Icarii behind StarWeb, and greeted them, apologizing for his tardiness.

  "You are distracted, Maximilian," said one of them, a blue-and-silver birdman called BroadWing EvenBeat. "Remembering your manners is surely a low priority right now." He looked at Egalion. "This is a mess."

  "Aye," said Egalion. "Please, if you can aid us--"

  "We will do what we can," said BroadWing, "and be glad of it. You have made a ground search of the area about Kyros, yes?"

  "Yes," said Maximilian. "I do not think her anywhere near Kyros."

  "Then where?"

  "Either north or south," Maximilian said. "They would not take her toward Escator, and I think it unlikely they would take her back toward the troubles in the Central Kingdoms. But which? I can't decide which way to--"

  "We will divide up," said BroadWing. "I will lead four of my fellows south, and EverNest can take two north. Maximilian, try not to worry. One of us shall find her."

  "Ishbel is trouble," said StarWeb. "Too much trouble."

  "For gods' sakes, StarWeb," Maximilian said. "She is pregnant. Does that mean nothing to you?"

  Garth thought Maximilian's judgment of character had been severely clouded by his anxiety if he thought he could speak such words to his only-barely former lover. StarWeb didn't like Ishbel, was jealous of her, and would resent the fact she was pregnant. Icarii found it difficult to achieve a pregnancy, and that Ishbel had managed it so quickly would not endear her to StarWeb at all.

  Suddenly Garth wondered if it was a good idea sending StarWeb to find Ishbel, after all.

  "Maxel--" he began.

  "We'll leave immediately," said BroadWing. "Maximilian, we will do all we can, I promise."

  Maximilian nodded, but there was no hope in his eyes. "Thank you," he said.

  Part Five

  CHAPTER ONE

 
Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

  Leave now," the Duchess of Sidon told the man sitting naked on the edge of her bed, and he rose silently, dressed, and did as ordered.

  Salome lounged back on her pillow, sated with sex, glad the man had left without wanting to, of all things,

  talk.

  She hated talkers. They invariably wanted something, or, even worse, thought they could mean something to her life.

  Salome much preferred not having a man as a permanent fixture in her life. She loved sex and took lovers as she wanted them, or used some of the more attractive servants in her palace as she needed, but had no other need for men. Her husband, the late and never-to-be-regretted duke, had died within two years of their marriage, leaving her, a sixteen-year-old widow, to nurture an infant son, and to wield the political power that an enormous fortune and possession of the most powerful deity in Coroleas gave her.

  His death had been a remarkable relief. Now Salome allowed no man to get near her emotionally, nor,

  apart from sex, physically.

  Her son, Ezra, now Duke of Sidon (although held under the regency of his mother until his nineteenth birthday), was Salome's pride and joy. She meant him to be emperor one day, had schooled him in the alphabet and in intrigue, had loved and coddled him, prodded and encouraged him, bribed anyone who could aid her ambition, and smoothed the path forward to the emperor's throne with a few judicial murders along the way.

  He would be emperor by the time he was twenty. Salome would let nothing stand in his (her) way.

  It was close to dawn now, and Salome rose from the bed, the marks of her lover still on her, and went to stand naked by the open full-length window.

  She was a striking woman. She had enormous strength to her face, an exotic lift to her cheekbones and eyes, and such long and glamorous (and, for Coroleas, unusual) white blond hair that men invariably found her irresistible. Naturally Salome was aware that her position as the most powerful woman in the empire (no one but a fool ever considered the current empress more powerful) also had its attractions,

  but men found it no hardship to be invited (or commanded) to her bed. Neither the marks of time nor childbearing had left their scars on her body, and it was still as straight and slim at thirty as it had been when the duke had first lusted for her as a fourteen-year-old girl.

  Content with her world and her lot, Salome lounged against the window frame, as uncaring of any who might look up and see her as she was at the twenty-pace drop immediately below her feet.

  The Palace of the First spread out below her: naturally Salome had one of the best apartments in the palace, high in the Tower of the Beloved, beneath only the emperor's apartment. Corolean society was divided into three castes: the Forty-four Hundred Families, also known as the First, who commanded the majority of the wealth and power in the empire--the emperor and nobles could only come from this caste; the Thirty-eight Thousand Second Families, or the Second, who made up the educated intelligentsia and traders and minor landowners of the empire; and the Third, the name given to the mass of men, women, and children who worked to serve the First and the Second.

  Beneath the Third, living a life so wretched they did not even have a caste, were the slaves, who lived and died at the discretion of any who owned them.

  Salome loved to stand at this window in the early morning, looking down over the Palace of the First (a sprawling complex of palaces and apartments that housed the members of the First when they were in Yoyette to attend the emperor's court), and reminding herself of her authority.

  "Most powerful of all in this empire," she murmured, "save for the emperor himself, and then, within a few short years, not even he." Salome might love Ezra, but she wouldn't allow him to stand in her way.

  When Ezra commanded the vast Corolean Empire as its emperor, then she would command him. After all, the boy would have a vast debt to repay his mother.

  The sun was well above the horizon now, and Salome stretched, catlike, in the window, before turning back into the room to prepare for her day.

  As she did so, the sun caught her back and for an instant illuminated the faintest of scars that ran down her spine from the center of her shoulder blades to the crease of her buttocks.

  The court of Coroleas at the Palace of the First in Yoyette was known over the entire civilized world for its elegance, its richness, its entertainments, its murderous intrigue, and its breathtaking, uninhibited immorality. That immorality did not merely encompass sexual conduct, but the way in which members of the First valued human life overall--generally with the utmost contempt. The court was a frightening,

  powerful, exhilarating, alive place in which to hunt or to enjoy oneself, and it drew to itself not only the members of the First (who could hardly imagine life without it), but also adventurers and fortune-hunters from countries across the Treachery Straits. The First tolerated them, allowing them generous access to the court, and accommodation within the palace. After all, it was the adventurers and fortune-hunters who provided the First with much of their amusement.

  StarDrifter SunSoar had lived here, off and on, since the fall of Tencendor five years earlier. He loathed Corolean society, and was repelled by the manner in which the First mistreated everyone below them,

  but he had nowhere else to go. Somehow, during those cataclysmic events that had culminated in the loss of Tencendor beneath the waves of the Widowmaker Sea, StarDrifter had found himself still alive, and inexplicably at the Corolean court.

  To be completely factual, he'd found himself sprawled on the floor of a corridor just beyond the kitchens,

  bleeding to death from the terrible wounds in his back where the demonic Hawk Childs had torn out his wings.

  He would have bled to death save that two male slaves had wandered by, discovered his barely conscious body, and had, without comment (finding the half murdered lying unattended in the corridors of the Palace of the First was hardly a remarkable event), dragged StarDrifter to a physician, who had managed to close his wounds and usher in their healing.

  StarDrifter had not been grateful. He wished he had died. In the frenzy that had mutilated StarDrifter, the Hawk Childs had also murdered his granddaughter, Zenith, who StarDrifter had loved. Loved, that is, as a man loves a woman, for it was no sin in Icarii society for a grandfather to bed a granddaughter. They only balked at first blood: children or siblings. StarDrifter had lusted for Zenith for years, but she had continually rejected him, to his enormous frustration. It was that frustration, in the end, that had caused Zenith's death, for he had inadvertently set the Hawk Childs loose on her by his thoughtless words.

  It was not just Zenith whom StarDrifter had lost. It was everyone and everything. Once a proud prince and Enchanter of Tencendor, and father of Axis, StarMan and Star God, StarDrifter had enjoyed privilege and honor. Now he was nothing but an amusement at the Corolean court. He drifted through the court, getting himself involved in some of the more minor and less bloody of its schemes, taking lovers here and there, getting drunk with various other adventurers and lost souls, and avoiding all the other Icarii at the court like the very plague.

  They reminded him of everything he had lost. Most particularly, their ability to fly reminded him very painfully that he no longer had his wings. StarDrifter had spent two centuries soaring over the peaks and plains of Tencendor. Now he lived as a cripple: an Icarii with no wings was nothing, and he loathed those who could still soar. In truth he did not have to do much to avoid them, for there were relatively few Icarii at the court.

  There were a thousand or so spread around Coroleas, at the universities and larger cities, and some haunting the Jai Alps to the south, but most were nauseated by the bloody immorality of the court and shunned it whenever possible.

  Hate it as he might, StarDrifter could lose himself within the court, within its shadows and intrigues and its habit of never asking too many questions. He could drift and exist, hate and intrigue, and somehow hope to forget his empty life.

/>   Today was one of the more interesting--and for the slaves in the Palace of the First, one of the most dangerous--days in the yearly cycle of court activities. It was Fillip Day.

  One of the privileges that the First claimed for themselves was the right to play the ancient game of Fillip.

  The game epitomized everything StarDrifter loathed about the Corolean court--its blatant sexuality, its carelessness of life, its utter superficiality, its dark plots--but for his own terrible, bitter reasons,

  StarDrifter felt the need to attend.

  Normally Fillip was played in the utmost privacy and, for Corolean standards, with great discretion. But on this one day of the year it came out of the closet and was celebrated in the Diamond Colonnade, the general gathering hall for the court (as opposed to the Emperor's Hall for more formal occasions), whose columns and vaulted ceiling were literally smothered with diamonds set in gold. The colonnade was massive, running almost two hundred paces east-west, open at both ends so that it caught both the rising and setting sun, and with star-shaped glassed openings in the vaulted roof that allowed in the noon light.

  The colonnade glittered and sparkled every daylight hour.

  StarDrifter thought it looked cheap.

  He arrived in the colonnade at mid-morning, by which time most people who were going to attend had already arrived. Every one of the Forty-four Hundred First Families had several representatives present,

  and in some instances the entire family had decided to attend; members of the Second were only rarely invited. The emperor--an almost obscenely fat man clothed in several glaring shades of silk and far too much bulky lace for the warm morning--was in attendance, as was his empress and half a dozen of his official concubines. Most of the adventurers and hangers-on of the court were here, as were almost two thousand of the Third, to serve and indulge the First.

  Yet even so, the Diamond Colonnade was not crowded.

  StarDrifter strolled down one of the side aisles, hands behind his back, an expression on his face that discouraged any from engaging him in idle conversation. Despite the inapproachability of his demeanor he was a very striking man, almost beautiful. Tall and lean, yet of a muscular build, StarDrifter was clad in fitted cream breeches and shirt, which set off his close-cropped golden hair, high-cheekboned face, and blue eyes. He walked with a slow, lithe grace, rather like a dancer, yet with the calculated precision of a hunter.