“The hatchling is correct.” The serpent’s lower jaw moved in time with the words, but its tongue was out of sync. “This one is a Dreshin Viper, and the hatchling is kindred.”
Oh, Thunderer. Trevor told me about Dreshin Vipers, and I thought he was recounting hero’s tales. That means this isn’t a dream. I’m sitting on a magical snake. And I’m its kin?
“What do you mean, I’m kin?”
“This one is permitted to care for the kindred. This one shall optimize the hatchling. Attend.”
The huge serpent lowered its snout and stared into his eyes. Suddenly the snake’s aura danced in opalescent white and piercing indigo flames, and he could focus on nothing else. Its aura faded, and he gazed into pale, clear, blue eyes.
It has such wonderful eyes, he thought groggily. The peaceful, dreamy feeling returned.
“The nascent embryo shall sleep. The hatching is distant. This one shall safeguard the venture until the conjuncture. Permit this one offer devotion to its hatchling.”
Waves of love poured over him, gentle rain on thirsty land. He was a child cradled by his mother, a young man glowing in his lover’s arms.
Why should it matter that his lover was a snake?
He began to sink back into sleep, but Lorel, as usual, disturbed his pleasant dream. “Wake up, kid. This is important.” She paced between the Kyridon and the trees, and back again. “Why?”
Why what? And what made her think he’d know?
The Kyridon raised its snout and hissed at her.
The new girl, whose name he couldn’t remember at the moment, stood well behind her, watching everything with calm but unhappy eyes.
“Why?” Lorel repeated. “The capture, the poisonings, you being here in this swamp. Why?”
How in Menajr could a Dreshin Viper wind up in the middle of a swamp? “Good question.” He swallowed noisily. Why was his throat sore? He lifted his head from his bed of serpent coils, but let it drop. Simply too much trouble.
Lorel fingered the hilt of her long sword.
The Dureme-Lor girl rested her hand on her knife hilt. He was surprised the girl had followed them. He hadn’t exactly been welcoming, and she seemed terrified of any hint of magic. And now she was faced with a magical snake.
The Kyridon studied each of them. “This one acted in response to the quality of the hatchling’s aura. The swordling might be inclined to call it a vision, although to do so would be an oversimplification.”
“A vision?” Lorel crossed her arms and glared at the serpent. Her dark face was paler than he’d ever seen it. “I don’t half understand your chatter. A vision. Magic stuff?”
“The swordling is correct.” The Kyridon shifted its coils and lifted Viper’s upper body. Suddenly he could breathe easier.
Why did his chest hurt so much?
“A revelation was achieved the moment this one beheld the hatchling. The swordlings could be of value, therefore this one permitted them to survive. But the hatchling is essential.
“This one is cognizant of a malevolent entity which aspires to consume all civilization. This one observed attributes in the hatchling which may enable it to deter or destroy the criminal. This one subsequently deduced a method to avert considerable devastation.”
Lorel frowned. “What did it just say, kid?”
“Hush, turybird, I’ll tell you later.” After he figured out what in lightning it meant. ‘It wants to stop trouble’ wouldn’t satisfy her.
The snake stared at Lorel for a moment, but dipped its head. “Four weapons must be fashioned, weapons of magic, of music, of war. The creators of the weapons must travel to Land’s End in the cold north. The magic must be carved into Hreshith bone.”
Of Hreshith bone? It was the rarest and most expensive of all sorcerous supplies. Trevor only owned a single jar of Hreshith-bone dust, which he used up in the scrying spell that killed him. No one knew where the stuff came from. Or no one admitted to knowing.
The Kyridon lowered its head and peered into Viper’s eyes. “On a day when the moons align, the weapons and the wizard must destroy said evil, or a Mindbender will enslave the world for seven hundred years.”
A Mindbender? Like Empress Altrada, whose empire still ruled most of a continent after she’d been dead a thousand years?
Tsai’dona shuddered and backed away. “Not another Aizen-myoo!”
“Seven hundred…” Lorel sputtered and fought to catch her breath. “Weaver’s blood! Seven hundred…”
“We can’t let that happen.” Viper struggled to sit upright inside the warm coils. “We must do something.”
“The hatchling shall be tranquil.” The Kyridon tightened itself around his body.
Lorel leaned forward and glared into the flat face. “By weapons, you mean swords?”
The snake glanced at her and nodded.
“The kid is good at making swords.” She touched the hilts of the bahtdor-bone swords he’d carved for her. “And music? Like musical instruments?”
The Kyridon stared at her. Its snout dipped slightly.
“Then you need me as much as you need him.” Lorel tossed back her hair and stood straighter. “He can carve swords, but I can make musical instruments, and he can’t!”
“Does the swordling desire immunity to this one’s venom?” The huge wedged head tilted to one side. “This one would be most honored to oblige.”
“No!” Lorel scooted backwards and fell butt-first into the fire. She yelped and jumped up, beating at her singed rear end.
“The swordling has chosen appropriately.” The Dreshin Viper turned back to him. “The swordling is not meant for the desert and the pass. Those are for the hatchling alone.”
Lorel slapped at her trousers one last time and glared at both of them. She wandered closer to the Dureme-Lor girl. “Miswoven magical beastie is just full of secrets. And I don’t none like the way the kid looks at the slithery thing.”
Tsai’dona shrugged and bent to scoop scattered coals back into the pit. “One problem at a time. At least the critter finally stopped trying to get rid of us. The boy will wake up eventually.”
“Hey, I’m right here. And I hear you just fine.”
“This one will not dispose of the swordlings if they elect to collaborate. However, this one must express disquiet concerning postponements. The Autumnal Equinox commences on this date. It is obligatory that the initial unit of the quest terminates upon the Vernal Equinox.”
The creature’s word choices amazed him. It must have learned Zedisti out of a book. A severely outdated book written by a foreigner who’d never visited Zedista.
Why on Menajr were they speaking in Zedisti?
“What did that slithering wiggler say, kid?” If Lorel looked any more sour, she’d curdle the whole swamp. Maybe that would make traveling easier.
“It said we have exactly one half of a year to get to Land’s End and create the weapons.” Not much time to travel two thousand miles, if his best guess of where they were going was right. He needed to pull out a map–
Who was he kidding? Land’s End was marked in different places by all the various mapmakers, none of whom had been there.
But considering he could only walk ten or fifteen miles a day, they wouldn’t have time for any delays. They needed to reach Land’s End before early spring.
“Not a problem.” Lorel shrugged and turned back to the Kyridon. “You know a quick way out of the swamp, wiggler? And how long is your poison gonna make the kid sick? We can leave as soon as he can move.”
“The hatchling will recuperate its vitality by daybreak. This one would prefer the swordling did not refer to it as a wiggler. This one is a Dreshin Viper.”
What’s this talk about poison? He was a bit sore, but he wasn’t sick. He stood up to prove he was fine, but the swamp spun around him like he’d been hit with Trevor’s wine curse. He stumbled and came down hard on his stump. Blast, that hurt.
Lorel darted forward and steadied him with one hand. Her other
hand was on her short sword’s hilt. “What’s a Dreshin Viper?”
Viper squeezed her hand a moment, but let go before she had time to fuss at him. He carefully balanced himself on his one shaky foot.
What happened to his padded boot? For that matter, who bathed him and dressed him in dry clothes? Last he remembered, he was covered in swamp mud.
Lorel frowned at the serpent, but stayed close enough to catch him if he fell again. “And I want to know if that slithering snake a he or a she. I’m tired of this ‘it’ crap.”
“The swordling does not require such information.”
He didn’t want to know who gave him a bath, come to think of it. There were only two choices, and he wasn’t sure if it was more embarrassing to know or not which girl it had been.
He laid one hand on the Kyridon’s coils to stay balanced. “What happened to my boot?”
Tsai’dona reached to the side of the fire and lifted it up. “We’re trying to dry it out.”
Lorel scowled down at him. He’d better answer some of her questions before she raised a real ruckus.
“What’s a Dreshin Viper? It’s rather like a wulfrun, big, fierce, intelligent, and magical. But the intelligence and the magic are very different from ours. They don’t like people much, so they’re rarely seen. But when they are, there’s a legend in the making.”
“A legend? I like that!”
Tsai’dona rolled her eyes. “You would. Stopping a Mindbender would surely make a huge legend. If it doesn’t get us all killed. I don’t think I have the guts to go face to face with a Mindbender.”
He agreed with that sentiment. Losing his soul to a Mindbender would be the worst kind of torture.
Lorel shrugged. “Death is a risk every warrior takes. Saving people from another Altrada is worth the danger. We’ll take on your quest, Kyri-thing.”
Since when did any kind of danger worry his turybird? She simply charged right at it.
He hated danger, though. He’d felt helpless ever since the doctor amputated his foot. Ever since Trevor died. Ever since he’d been Outcast from his tribe.
Stopping a Mindbender was too big a task for a little cripple like him. He’d rather go back to Zedista and beg Samiderf, or any other sorcerer, to take him on as an apprentice. He had too much to learn before he’d be valuable to anyone. As it was, he was only a useless former sorcery apprentice playing at becoming a gem merchant.
But he couldn’t let Lorel go on alone, not even with Tsai’dona’s assistance. They couldn’t carve the swords the Kyridon needed, and he had that skill. He could manage to do that much. Someone else could do battle with the Mindbender.
He nodded at Lorel. “We’ll head north in the morning. Could you bring over my map case? I’ll plot out the quickest route.” For as far as the maps went, anyway. After Padue, they only said ‘Here be dragons’ and ‘Active volcanoes.’ And everyone knew that volcanoes were a myth.
Lorel hustled back to the fire and opened his pack. “Sing to the Weaver. I tried reading your scribbles, but they ain’t like the ones Ahm-Layel showed me.” She pulled out the map case and waved it over her head as though she’d discovered a treasure.
He rolled his eyes. “I need to teach you how to read a real map. What if I’d died and left you stranded?”
“I’d’ve killed the murdering snake. The way I saw it, I wouldn’t need to worry about it, afterwards.” She strolled back to him with a sly grin stretched across her face.
“Oh, you turybird. I hate to think you’d die avenging my dead body.”
“It would make one Loom-breaking legend, though.” Lorel buffed her nails on her filthy tunic and peeked at him from the corner of her eye.
Only his turybird would think dying in a stinky swamp would make an impressive legend.
Tsai’dona snickered.
Viper threw back his head and laughed. His good knee collapsed, and she caught him as he slumped down to sit on the Kyridon’s coils again. He wrapped his arms around his chest and cackled.
Lorel fought down her grin and held out his map case. “Ain’t that funny, kid.”
“This one is gratified that the hatchling has obtained amusement.” The Kyridon slipped a coil around his waist and pushed the map case away with its tail. “This one has determined its stratagem. This one shall accompany the travelers.”
“Thunder and lightning!” Viper clapped his hands like he was cheering on a magician’s puppet show. How embarrassing. Why was he acting like a little child?
Tsai’dona sighed and turned away to feed the fire.
“Weaver spawned a toad!” Lorel stomped away and kicked the stack of firewood, scattering it. “A fraying slithering toad.”
Hmm. This was going to be an interesting trip.
Chapter 4.
If Viper got any wetter, he’d melt into mangy, moldy, maggoty mush.
Rain had splatted on him for so long, he felt as if it would never end. It had started before sunrise yesterday, the third day after they’d escaped the swamp. By noon his jacket was soaked through, and by this afternoon his padded boot was chafing against his ruined ankle.
He was exhausted. If he didn’t stop soon, he’d shame himself by collapsing. And Lorel was carrying all of their gear. He had no excuse to be this tired.
He doubted they’d covered ten whole miles that day.
In his defense, the terrain was rough, and miserable on his crutches. They were hiking up Lorel’s choice of a narrow, rocky canyon, headed toward a craggy mountain range. A shortcut, she’d said. He should have insisted they stay on the road.
Rain dripped off his nose, off his hair, and trickled down his chest. His whole body was wrinkled up like a prune.
His good ankle turned on a rock, and he leaned hard on his crutches to stay upright. He couldn’t wait to get back under the trees where the footing was easier, but the forest was several miles ahead. Or a hundred feet up the canyon wall. Before he’d been crippled, he could have climbed that cliff in less than an hour. Now, he doubted he could climb up a ten foot wall.
He huffed out a laugh. He wouldn’t leave Lorel or Tsai’dona behind anyway, no matter the temptation.
Lorel still looked fresh, impatient to start the race. He hated he was holding her back. “You doing good, kid?”
Doing good? His foot hurt, his stump throbbed, his armpits burned. He was soaked and chilled to the bone. But he had to reassure her before she starting nursemaiding him again.
“I’m fine. Isn’t it time to look for a place to camp?” If she offered to carry him, he’d swat her with both crutches, even if he had to whack her while lying flat on his back in the mud.
“I see a house.” Tsai’dona pointed up the canyon. “Maybe they’ll put us up for the night.”
Lorel frowned. “Weird place for a house.”
The rough-hewn log cabin did look like a giant had picked it up and set it on the rocks willy-nilly. It sat up on a dozen short, thick stilts that raised the wooden floor two feet above the ground. No garden surrounded it, no path led to its door. Surely it was abandoned.
But it was more or less level, and it looked waterproof.
The mere hope of getting dry decided him. “If it’s not leaking much, we’ll rest there for the night.”
Lorel sighed, but nodded and led the way toward the cabin. “Where’s the Kyri-thing?”
“Same place as last time you asked. I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Honestly, he did care, and he did know vaguely which direction it had gone. It was strange to have a mental link with anyone, much less with a snake. But he wasn’t about to admit that to his turybird. She fussed over the oddest things.
Tsai’dona snickered. “It’ll show up whenever you don’t want it to.”
“I don’t never want it to.” Lorel hesitated. “Don’t that mean it’ll always be around? So I gotta say I want it to show up? Yuck.”
Thunderer protect him. The turybird showed signs of understanding philosophy. When had she gotten so smart?
He crutched around a small boulder and focused on the rocky ground. They must be traveling in a dry stream bed. The rounded stones were easier on his tired foot than the cracked shale they’d walked on earlier.
Lorel hovered close beside him, but Tsai’dona trotted ahead and pounded on the cabin’s door.
The door creaked open at her touch.
She stuck her head inside. “Yup, it’s abandoned, and it’s dry. I’ll grab some brush and sweep it out.”
Lorel helped him sit on a boulder, dropped their packs and instrument cases next to him, and sprinted over to inspect the place. “I don’t see no critters.”
Praise the Thunderer. Though he’d consider sharing the cabin with raccoons and squirrels as long as he could get dry.
Lorel scooted out of the way when Tsai’dona swept clumps of leaves and dry mud out of the door. She stuck her head back inside. “Plenty of room for all three of us to lay out blankets. Or all fraying four of us.”
Tsai’dona shrugged. “The snake doesn’t have any blankets.”
“And ours are soaking wet.” Viper levered himself to his foot and hobbled over to look inside. The place was bigger than he thought. No furniture, unfortunately. They’d be sitting on the splintery floor. But there was a stone hearth in the middle of the room. He’d be able to fix a hot meal.
“I pack better than that, kid.” Lorel trotted back and scooped up their gear. “Blankets ain’t gonna be too wet. Unless you sit on them before you dry out.”
She must be reading his mind. All he could think about was lying flat. And sleeping for a few hours. Like maybe a dozen hours.
She grabbed Tsai’dona’s pack, eased past him into the cabin, and set all of their gear in the far corner. “Hey, kid? How about you carve a wooden sword for Tsai? We need to practice.”
Now? When he could barely hold his head up? Of course not. He didn’t have any wood. “Sure. As soon as we reach the forest I’ll start work on it. You’ll each need one. Your bahtdor-bone swords will carve through a wooden sword faster than a bronze razor through paper.”
“I guess. Look, Tsai, let’s use these switches.” She snatched up a handful of long, dry twigs and grinned over her shoulder at him. “Kid taught me sword work with a bunch of willow twigs. I was so pissed he was making fun of me, but he like to switched me to shreds.”
Serpent's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 3) Page 3
