The Serpent Bride

by Sara Douglas

  "The homesteaders passed on some more gossip they'd heard from Isaiah's troops," she said.

  "And?" said Maximilian.

  "Isaiah has abandoned and forsaken all his eighty-odd former wives," said Serge, "for a new and Favored Wife, as she is styled. A new bride. Ishbel, former Queen of Escator."

  There was a complete silence about the campfire as everyone fought not to look at Maximilian.

  "Then this Isaiah has good taste," said Maximilian, his voice now very tight, "and poor judgment, to think Ishbel's Escatorian husband so willing to abandon her."

  "I am sure that Ishbel wouldn't--" Ravenna began.

  "I don't think any of us can count on what Ishbel would or wouldn't do," said Maximilian, very quietly,

  "or where her loyalties lie. I just want her and our child. I have not come this far to turn back now."

  No one said anything.

  "But, by gods," Maximilian said, "I cannot wait to quit this land and get back home. Skraelings!

  Ah...Serge, do you know how far distant Sakkuth is? And in what direction?"

  Serge gave a nod. "It will take us a week to travel there. East, and slightly south. But we will be traveling into a war zone, Maximilian, and life will not be easy for us once we approach Sakkuth...not the least because, according to the villagers, Isaiah has at least half a million men gathering in and about Sakkuth.

  And then more, for many of them have their wives and families. Perhaps close to a million people, all to move north."

  Maximilian opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was too much to assimilate all at once: invasion,

  Skraelings, Ishbel now Isaiah's "Favored Wife," and now this.

  "Sakkuth it is then," he said after a moment. "We free Ishbel, then we head home as fast as we may.

  Ravenna, Venetia, we will need your skills, as well as my penchant for the shadows, to get us close to this Isaiah."

  He paused. "And then to get us out again."

  Maximilian found it difficult to accept this much abysmal news. He set aside the terrifying news of the Skraeling invasion, and even that of the forces that Isaiah mustered, for at the moment he could do nothing about either.

  Instead he thought about Ishbel.

  He sat apart from the others for a while, the Weeper in his lap, his fingers gently stroking its cool surface.

  He hoped that it might say something to him, impart some understanding, but there was nothing.

  Maximilian had once or twice asked his Persimius ring what it knew of the Weeper, and the ring had only replied that the Weeper was very old and very sad and entirely lost without his employment. That last confused Maximilian even more, and the ring steadfastly evaded any attempt to get it to explain itself.

  Ishbel. This Isaiah's Favored Wife.

  Maximilian hoped that she'd been taken unwillingly, and that the relationship was purely theater and not actuality. What else? Ishbel was now virtually full-term in her pregnancy and could surely not be sharing her body with this man.

  Isaiah...

  Maximilian still had the sense that people were being drawn together, all being drawn toward Elcho Falling. Even though he was now desperate to get home to Escator, Maximilian had the powerful sense that he must get to Ishbel first. Perhaps she would know more of what was happening.

  Perhaps she might even be prepared, now, to share some truths with him.

  A week and he would have more answers.

  A week, and perhaps he would have his wife and maybe even a child.

  A week, and then he could take his family home to Escator.

  "Maxel?" Ravenna sat down next to him in his solitary spot a little distant from the fire. "Such bad news we have heard this day, and poor news regarding Ishbel indeed. I am sorry for the hurt it has caused you."

  Maximilian made a gesture with his hand, not truly wanting to discuss Ishbel with Ravenna.

  "Perhaps she is not such a good wife for you, Maxel."

  Maximilian sighed. He set the Weeper to one side and began to strip off his outer coat, then his shirt,

  meaning to change into something fresher, and hoping that perhaps Ravenna would take the hint and move away. As much as he liked Ravenna, for the moment he just wanted to be alone.

  "Maxel, what will you do if she has gone to Isaiah willingly?"

  "Ravenna, we will know soon enough. I really do not feel like roaming into conjecture here and now. I

  just want to get Ishbel and our child, and go home."

  "Of course, Maxel. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pried." Ravenna started to rise, then halted, staring at Maximilian's right biceps.

  "Maxel?"

  "What is it?"

  Ravenna had laid a hand on his shoulder, and Maximilian felt his flesh quiver at its warmth and pressure.

  "Your mark...the Manteceros."

  Maximilian twisted his head to look at the bright blue tattoo of the Manteceros, the supernatural creature that was both symbol and protector of Escator, that had been engraved into his skin as a baby.

  It had faded into almost nonexistence.

  Maximilian went cold. He was being prepared for a greater throne indeed--Escator was literally fading from his grasp.

  Perhaps he would never return to Escator...

  "What is going on?" Ravenna hissed. "What sorcery erases this mark?"

  Maximilian studied her. She both looked and sounded angry, almost affronted. The Manteceros, in his true guise as Drava, Lord of Dreams, had been Ravenna's lover for many years, and Maximilian supposed that she saw this fading as an affront to Drava himself.

  I wonder where your true loyalties lie, my lady, he thought. Are you here for me, or to watch me on behalf of your supernatural lover?

  "The world is turning upside down, Ravenna," he said, shrugging off her hand and pulling on a fresh shirt.

  "Perhaps the mark of the Manteceros is being lost in the confusion."

  After she'd left Maximilian, Ravenna went for a walk into the darkness. She was disturbed deeply by the fading of Maximilian's mark. Everything had gone wrong in Maximilian's life, and it had all gone wrong from the moment he'd met this woman, Ishbel.

  "I do not think I like you, Ishbel," Ravenna whispered, "but I think you are going to play right into my hands."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sakkuth, Isembaard

  In the end it took Maximilian and his party a mere six days to get to Sakkuth, and that accomplished only with effort, physical as well as magical. For the first two days they traveled relatively unhindered, but then, having crossed the River Lhyl, they entered the territory just to the west of Sakkuth.

  It was here that Isaiah's army gathered, together with the settlers from the northwest of the Tyranny.

  Maximilian, Serge, and Doyle stood together on a small hillock at dawn on the day they encountered the gathering army, hidden by a small stand of trees and some of Maximilian's ability to meld with the shadows, and stared eastward.

  "That is not an army," Doyle said softly. "That is a nation."

  "An ocean," said Serge, "gathering for a storm."

  "When did you two become so poetical?" Maximilian said, but any humor in his voice was overwhelmed by the shock of the sight before him.

  Thousands, no...hundreds of thousands...of men gathered in encampments spreading as far as the eye could see. The original rumor of a million men, Maximilian decided, was wrong. There were far more,

  particularly when the numbers were engorged by settlers.

  "The north will fall within weeks," said Serge. "Days."

  "Thank you for your revised estimate," Maximilian said, then he paused. "Shit! I cannot believe this!"

  Serge and Doyle looked at Maximilian with some surprise--the man rarely swore.

  "Can we get around them?" Serge said.

  "We have no time," Maximilian said. "Getting `around' them will take weeks, and weeks we don't have."

  "Through them, then?" Doyle said, his voice soft.

  "That is our only option,"
Maximilian said. "Venetia, Ravenna, and I have some skill in the arts of disguise...we will need all of that and then some luck, but we shall have to manage it."

  "You don't want to announce yourself to the nearest senior officer and demand to be taken to Isaiah in the style of a king?" Serge said.

  Maximilian gave a soft laugh, and indicated his grubby clothing, far the worse for the wear and tear of his journey through the mountains and northern Isembaard.

  "Who would believe this?" he said. "No. We do this secretively, and we do it as fast as possible. Come."

  Manage it they did, but only at the cost of exhaustion for Maximilian, Venetia, and Ravenna, as well as the drain of nervous energy on the rest of the party. StarDrifter and Salome also battled continuing fatigue from the development of their wings--now large, twin raised ridges hunching out almost four handbreadths from either side of their spines.

  They managed it only with the aid of the Weeper. When one or more among Maximilian, Venetia, or Ravenna began to flag while moving the group quietly through the ranks of the army, then the Weeper began to hum, and bolstered not only the concealing shadowy cloak that the two marsh witches and Maximilian had constructed, but its constructors' strength as well.

  The days spent creeping through the ranks of what everyone had come to refer to as the gathering storm drained emotional energy as well as physical and magical.

  Everyone was appalled at the enormity of what Isaiah would throw at the north. No one had ever seen anything like it, nor heard of it.

  At night, when they crouched in whatever shelter they could find, relying on the Weeper by that stage of the day to conceal them, they talked in low tones about what they had passed through.

  "StarDrifter," Serge asked one night, "did you ever see the like during the wars you witnessed in Tencendor?"

  StarDrifter took some time to answer that, dredging up the memories of the wars with considerable reluctance. "No," he said eventually. "I saw seething Skraeling armies--and to think that such are gathering again, to bolster Isaiah's forces!--but nothing like this. No one in Tencendor could have managed such sheer numbers of soldiers." He shook his head slightly. "It is inconceivable."

  "Salome?" Maximilian said. "Did Coroleas ever raise such a force?"

  Salome gave a cynical laugh. "No, Maximilian. Coroleans practice war by stealth. The single, highly paid assassin, with a dagger in a crowd of frivolity. A drugged glass of wine. Or drugs administered by other means." She sent a single dark glance at StarDrifter. "But not armies. No. Never. We were far too indolent."

  "I wish BroadWing and his companions were with us still," Maximilian said, "if only so I could use their wings to report this nightmare. I am sure my fellow princes are still engaged in a futile struggle with each other. Not looking south."

  "Or north toward the Skraeling homelands," Doyle muttered. He turned to his friend and fellow former assassin. "What do you think of the Isembaardians' weapons, my friend?"

  Serge thought a few minutes, every eye in the group on him.

  "They're not intending much close hand-to-hand fighting," he said. "Spears and arrows predominate. I

  imagine Isaiah plans to send a storm of metal raining down upon the forces opposing him, decimating them within an hour at most. Then, if needed, Isaiah could send in a few swordsmen to finish off those still left alive."

  "If they could get through the bristling crop of spears and arrows littering the corpses on the ground,"

  said Venetia. "Why do you men do this? Why propagate such vile death?"

  "It is not us," Maximilian said sharply. "All I want is my bride and child returned to me."

  "I apologize, Maxel," Venetia said. "The question was rhetorical only, and born of my fright and fatigue more than anything." She looked at her daughter. "Methinks you should have remained with the Lord of Dreams, Ravenna. I am sure that this"--she gestured vaguely at the encampment of soldiers not fifty paces distant--"was not something to which you wanted to return."

  "I returned because I was needed, Venetia," Ravenna said, but she looked at Maximilian rather than her mother as she replied.

  A day later they arrived in Sakkuth.

  Here they did not need to use magical disguise as much, for the city was bustling with people, come to aid the gathering forces. Merchants, traders and craftsmen, prostitutes, cooks, tailors--countless differing skills and hopes paraded on the streets every twenty paces. StarDrifter and Salome did, however, need to keep cloaks hunched over their backs to disguise their growing wings. Fortunately Sakkuth was in the midst of an unnaturally cold snap--even in winter the city rarely slipped below the balmy--and thus the cloaks caused no comment on the streets.

  By some miracle of comradeship, Venetia found them two small rooms in the basement of a bakery. The baker's wife was a covert witch-woman whom Venetia had met previously in the borderlands of the Land of Dreams. They recognized each other instantly, and the baker's wife just as instantly intuited their need for shelter and rest. Her husband was not so enthusiastic about a band of strangers occupying two of his bakery's storerooms until Serge took out a bag of coin and casually moved it from hand to hand;

  then he grudgingly agreed.

  "And so it has come to this," Maximilian said, sitting on a sack of grain and idly swinging one leg back and forth. "A king, a talon, two witch-women, two assassins, and...what would you call yourself,

  Salome?"

  "The single sane member of this group."

  Maximilian smiled. "And the single sane one among us, hidden in the basement of a bakery, in a strange land, surrounded by the largest army creation has ever seen, looking for a woman and a child. What do you think our chances of success are?"

  "Fairly high," said the baker's wife, who had just entered the room, "for the streets are abuzz with the news that the tyrant himself is now entering the city. There are stairs inside the bakery to the roof. You should have a good view there."

  Maximilian's humor had vanished, and his face was now tight with emotion.

  "To the roof, then," he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sakkuth, Isembaard

  Axis was almost as astonished at the size and complexity of Isaiah's forces as, had he known it, were Maximilian and his party.

  He'd never seen anything like it.

  For the past week they'd ridden from the Lhyl where they'd left their riverboats, across territory undulating with soldiers. Their encampments had stretched as far as the eye could see.

  Axis had been as impressed with the tight discipline of the horde as much as he was with its size. After what Ezekiel had told him about the chaos that had ensued after Isaiah had been kidnapped on the Eastern Independencies campaign, Axis had more than half expected a mass of undisciplined and slothful soldiers.

  But perhaps they sank to such depths only once a tyrant's throne was vacant, for the army that Axis saw was under tight control and exhibited extreme discipline.

  His admiration for the Isembaardian generals, as well as for Isaiah, notched up yet another degree.

  Sakkuth was everything Axis had expected. It was a stunningly beautiful, walled, and multispired city constructed predominantly of pink and cream stone quarried in the FarReach Mountains. As they rode through the main gates and into the wide avenue that led through the heart of the city to Isaiah's official palace, Axis wondered why Isaiah didn't spend more time here. Axis had been with him for a year, and yet not once in that time had Isaiah left Aqhat.

  What kept him in Aqhat? The serenity of the river...or DarkGlass Mountain?

  The avenue was crowded with people, mostly ordinary city dwellers going about their daily business.

  Soldiers had crowded people back against the buildings in order to give Isaiah room to pass, and in order to give him the room to pass in splendor.

  Axis noted their response to Isaiah and his two hundred strong escort with as much curiosity as he'd marked the army beyond the city's walls.

  Generally the crowds displayed a
mix of deference, genuine awe (or perhaps fear), and a decided reluctance to look directly at the face of Isaiah, or any of his closest companions--among which included Ishbel, who rode directly behind Isaiah, the pair of them kept closely guarded by several squadrons of heavily armed men.

  This morning, when Axis had gone to mount his horse, he'd noted that Isaiah and Ishbel, who had regained all her strength and vitality after the baby's birth, had attired themselves in great majesty. Both wore great golden and bejeweled collars that draped over their shoulders, robes of fine embroidered silks, and two or three golden bands on each of their bare arms.

  Isaiah appeared calm and relaxed, Ishbel a little less so, and Axis thought he saw slight lines of strain about her eyes and mouth.

  Axis was ambivalent about their relationship. He knew they were now sleeping together, and was honest enough with himself to admit there was a small kernel of jealousy there. But he didn't know what Ishbel wanted. Did she truly wish to be Isaiah's wife? Was she just marking time until she could manage a means to leave him? How did she actually feel about arriving back in her homeland on the tide of a massive invasion and on the arm (and in the bed) of the invader?

  To none of these questions did Axis have an answer, and he hadn't had the opportunity of asking Ishbel.

  He'd not seen her alone for weeks--a situation he realized was fully managed by Isaiah as well as by Ishbel herself--and any time he did spend with her was in the company of Isaiah, who deflected any conversation away from Ishbel if he felt it too personal.

  Ishbel was now clearly out of bounds to Axis.

  Ah! What did it matter to him? Ishbel was her own woman, and old enough to know what she was doing with her life.

  But still...Axis wondered if she had really thought through what she did.

  He dismissed the thought the next moment as ungenerous and undoubtedly born of his own jealousy.

  Stars, would he have refused if Ishbel had come to him?

  No. He wouldn't.

  Axis sighed, looking about. He was some four or five riders behind Isaiah and Ishbel, and enjoying not being the center of attention for once. It gave him so much opportunity to observe freely.