Serpent's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 3)

by D J Salisbury

  “This one assures the anchor its exertions are esteemed.” The serpent lifted its head a scant inch off the bench. “The anchor’s expertise is essential.”

  Lorel sniffled and shrugged.

  She didn’t ask what the Kyridon meant. She must be severely depressed. How could he help her?

  Tsai’dona set the skillets near the campfire and added a few chunks of driftwood to the flames. “I wish I could help. But I’m not good for anything at the moment. Not until you need a caravan guard. That’s all I know.”

  “You know how to forage.” When she wrinkled her nose, he added, “In the swamp and here on the beach, you’re good at foraging. You mend things. You make wonderful baskets. Besides, your being here keeps us sane.” And kept them from sniping at each other as much as they did before she joined them. Lorel would have hit him lunars ago if the girl hadn’t been with them.

  Maybe food would cheer up his tall friend. She had been on tight – and boring – rations for lunars.

  He scooped a spoonful of lard out of the cask and melted it in the larger frying pan. “Fetch a couple of bowls, would you? I don’t want the shells scattered inside the camp. All we need is scavengers creeping underfoot.”

  Tsai’dona dashed back inside the wagon and was back with the bowls before Viper could think of any other way to console Lorel.

  The Kyridon sniffed and arched its neck. “When will the hatchling concoct the gametes?”

  That was a surprise. He couldn’t remember it ever asking about food before. “Why? Do you want one? Cooked or raw?”

  Shining blue eyes focused on the bulging basket. “This one desires to taste both.”

  Lorel snickered and wiped moisture from her cheeks. “There’s surely enough for all of us.”

  Viper laughed and cracked the first egg into the smaller bowl.

  Chapter 19.

  She couldn’t believe it. Even seeing it with her own eyes, she fraying couldn’t believe it.

  It – whatever it was – rode the wave onto sand the way a Zedisti acrobat slid along a thin rope. But the thing was way too big to be any sort of entertainer. It looked bigger than her parents’ house.

  Why would a sea monster beach itself? “What on the Loom is that?”

  “A Hreshith,” the kid whispered. He sat on the wagon’s arched roof, his eyes way too big and suspiciously wet. She couldn’t figure out when he’d climbed up there, or why. He didn’t look like he planned to come down any time soon.

  Tsai looked as stunned as she felt. They both turned to watch the monster.

  It swept in on the wave surging up the beach and thrust its pearly body inland another seventy paces. It lay panting on dry sand, huddled close to the nearest skeleton.

  “Bog swallow it,” Tsai whispered.

  Weaver drowned in tears, was what she was thinking. Weird, creepy, but not all that scary. That monster couldn’t crawl much closer.

  But the whole performance was totally messing up the kid.

  “The Hreshith’s death song is so beautiful,” he whispered. Snot dribbled off the end of his nose. “It sings of deep oceans and tender lovers, cool bays and laughing children. It sings of hope and fear and trust. Its voice is full of strength, of power, of death.”

  That didn’t sound like his usual crummy poetry. “How come you’re crying, kid?” She walked closer to the wagon and stared up at him. She’d never seen him cry before, not even when the Kresh healer wanted to cut off his foot. At least, not since the night the gang tortured him, but that didn’t count. The Weaver herself cried that night.

  The kid wiped his face, but new tears dripped down his cheeks. “We are together.”

  That made even less sense than he normally did. “Whatcha mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He reached both hands toward the Hreshith. “It talks to me in the language of the ocean. I hear it, and mourn it, but I don’t know what it means. But I feel it. I feel it breathing and hurting. I feel it dying.”

  The Hreshith convulsed, throwing itself deeper within the boundary of the graveyard.

  The kid cried out and slumped over, holding his ribs.

  “Kid?” She climbed up to the driver’s platform. “You all right? Maybe you better come down before you fall off.”

  “No, I’m fine now.” He curled onto his side. “It’s going to be a long time dying. She’s going to be…”

  His eyes were sorta open, but not like he was seeing anything. His skin was cold, too cold. The noodle brain was out here without his cloak, or even a coat, just a light jacket. But his arm felt even colder than a few minutes in the wind would make it.

  “That’s enough of this crap.” Lorel scooped his limp body off the roof and carried him down to the ground.

  He sorta woke up for a moment. “Don’t take me inside,” he begged. “Let me see the sky.”

  “Sure thing, kid.” She hated going inside that box, herself.

  She held him until Tsai made a deep bed of pelts near the fire. Lorel laid him on it and covered him with a couple of wool blankets and more serdil pelts, including his bunny-lined cloak.

  Together they rigged a tent of hides around him to keep the wind off.

  When they finished, she noticed Kyri-thing on the driver’s bench, watching them. “Come down here and warm him up, toad.”

  “The hatchling will not die,” the snake said, but it obeyed her anyway. “What would the swordling do?”

  If the kid was hearing that critter inside his head, there was only one thing she could do. “I’m gonna go put that poor monster outta its misery.”

  She clambered into the wagon and grabbed the largest Crayl war axe, the one the kid planned to sell to Setoyans because it was three feet taller than she was. The steel head felt like it weighed twice as much as she did. How had he ever managed to get it off the smithy wall?

  By the time she got it outside, the slithering toad had curled around the kid’s floppy body, lifting and cradling him. It nodded at the overgrown axe. “The anchor’s intention is appropriate. When the sea empress rolls on its side, the swordling must sever the spine just behind the supraoccipital.”

  She rolled her eyes. Killing things was easy.

  “The what?” Tsai scrunched up her face like she smelled something rotten. Nice to know somebody else didn’t like the toad’s big words.

  “The word signifies the rearmost headplate.” Snaky blue eyes peered up a her. “If the blow falls lower, it will cause intense agony, which the hatchling will share. If higher, the haft of the axe will break, for the plate is exceedingly resilient. Does the swordling understand?”

  “I got it.” She was pretty sure, anyway, it meant the critter had a hard skull. Not a problem. She started toward the overgrown monster.

  The kid’s weak voice stopped her. “She thanks you,” he whispered.

  What a thing to say.

  He was so pale. She hoped this worked out right. He really seemed to be inside of that beastie’s head. More magic stuff.

  Good thing she had a real person she could rely on. “Stay with him, will you?”

  Tsai nodded. “Yell if you need backup.”

  “Sure thing.” Not that she’d need help. She lugged the huge axe through the bone cemetery until she stood close to the dying monster. But she stayed within the shelter of the nearest skeleton so she wouldn’t get mashed by the overgrown fish. Its worst wiggles just heaved the old bones a little to one side.

  Bitter blood in the Warp and the Weave, the critter was big. It seemed lots bigger than the skeletons. No wonder the toad said to wait until it rolled over. She’d never reach its backbone if it didn’t.

  Long bendy spikes along its back whipped forward and back with the monster’s every twitch, reminding her of a snapped seawall cable. She’d seen a man cut in half by a broken cable, years ago, and she suspected that those spikes could do the same to her.

  The pearly color she’d noticed earlier was gone. The Hreshith was just a dull, mottled gray.

  She f
ound the edges of the beastie’s skull, but no way could she reach the backbone. The monster thrashed about too much to try and climb up on it.

  Might as well inspect its face while she waited for the critter to turn on its side.

  The Hreshith looked at her with a green eye as big as Nightshade’s chest. It blinked slow, like it was in agony, and rolled over until its back pointed mostly toward the ground.

  Blood in the Weave. It knew what she was trying to do.

  She dashed back to the end of the headplate and raised the heavy axe high over her head. “Sleep with the Weaver, Sea Empress!” She rushed forward and swung the steel axe with all of her strength.

  The war axe severed the Hreshith’s spine cleanly. The sea monster thrashed a little, but was motionless far sooner than she thought possible. Like its ghost had pushed away from its body.

  The kid’s tortured wail echoed through the skeletons and drifted over the beach like a cobweb shroud.

  It hadn’t been a friend. It hadn’t even been an enemy. But it ended its life with honor. She didn’t hardly feel guilty for killing it. She only hoped she died with that much dignity.

  Lorel sat on the sand and leaned against the great body. “Weaver’s peace on you, Empress.” She wiped her nose on her coat sleeve.

  Flowers grew out of the sand, not far away. She started to pick them for a death wreath, but changed her mind. Let them live. Let them grow and make baby flowers. She didn’t need to kill anything else today.

  The kid was sitting up on his own by the time she got back, but she knew he was still messed up. His eyes didn’t focus at all. When he stood up, Tsai kept a hand under his elbow, but he didn’t seem to notice her.

  Lorel sighed. Now things would really get weird.

  ***

  Viper staggered to his feet and stumbled through the temple of bone until he stood beside the dead Hreshith. “What a fascinating creature.”

  Lorel slipped his serdil-pelt cloak over his shoulders. “You don’t gotta whisper, kid. She can’t hear you no more.”

  “I know.” Seagulls pecked hungrily on the enormous corpse. What a desecration. “I wish we could bury her properly.” He hadn’t taken the time to bury Trevor, and he regretted it now. The Zedisti set great store on funerals.

  “Nah, kid.” She swatted him on the back, nearly knocking him over.

  Tsai’dona grabbed him before he lost his balance. Now both girls were nursemaiding him. How annoying.

  “She wouldn’t like that a bit.” Lorel rapped on the skeleton beside her. “She’s here with her kin and gotta get cleaned up like them.”

  “How morbid.” How un-Zedisti. He’d never seen this side of her.

  “Not me, kid. Just you. She knew exactly what she was doing, right up to the end. You know that.”

  “It still doesn’t seem right.” There were better ways to celebrate her life than to watch greedy birds peck at her. He took a notebook and pencil out of his jacket pocket and began to draw the creature.

  “But it’s all right to do her like you did the serdil stiffs?”

  “She showed herself to us.” He drew a cautious silhouette. He had to be careful. He’d never seen so much as a sketch of a Hreshith before it turned into a skeleton. “I’d like to think there was more to her timing than death.”

  “The Weaver ain’t picky about other people’s schedules, noodle brain.”

  “I know.” He continued to draw in his notebook. “I can still try to make more of her death than… just dying. I read everything in Trevor’s library about Hreshiths,” well, everything on the lower shelves, “and no one ever admitted to seeing one alive. They’ve only documented the bones of a single stray that died thirty years ago near Noran, far east of here. That’s where all the Hreshith dust in the world comes from nowadays. One hundred fifty years ago a skeleton was found north of Shi and the villagers kept that one hid. A skeleton only show up every hundred years or so. That’s how rare they are.”

  “So you think that gives you the right to tell the world about this one?”

  “Only wizards and sorcerers, and only what she looked like.” He waved his notebook at the graveyard. “I couldn’t ever tell about this place. Somebody would move a town out here and crush up all these skeletons for trade.”

  “At least you got a little sense. I’m going back to camp. You stay outta trouble, you hear me?”

  “Yes, elder sister.”

  Lorel grunted and stalked away. Tsai’dona shrugged and followed her.

  Viper grinned and recorded voluminous notes. Praise the Thunderer he’d stitched together a new notebook just last night.

  The sun was beginning to set by the time he had worked his way along the back to the tail. He finished drawing the tail flukes and walked around to the other side.

  Crabs swarmed all over the Hreshith’s exposed belly.

  His stomach heaved. He turned away hastily.

  What a way to leave the world, in the guts of a crab. Light a candle to the Wind Dancer that Lorel killed the poor creature before this horror started. It would be a cruel torture, being eaten alive by a thousand crabs. It was almost enough to ruin his appetite.

  But not quite enough.

  He shoved his dull pencil and the notebook into his jacket pocket and folded his cloak into a sack. He snatched five large incoming crabs and tucked them inside. Hopefully none of them had time to take a bite out of the Hreshith.

  Lugging a heavy cloak filled with squirming crabs caused his stump to hurt even worse than usual. But what he found at camp made it worth the trouble.

  Lorel and Tsai’dona sat beside the fire, both of them glaring at a pot of boiling water.

  “No birds for supper tonight, kid,” Lorel said apologetically. “We couldn’t stand the thought of eating nothing that been chewing on the Empress.”

  “Same here.” He held up his cloak. “So I brought crabs that didn’t have a chance to get to her yet.”

  “You think good, kid! I’ll get the pot.”

  Tsai’dona also leapt to her feet. “I’ll grab more firewood.”

  The crabs were duly boiled, and carapaces buried a hundred feet downwind. Lorel dumped the shovel near the cook fire. Something else he’d need to put away. But not until later.

  The Kyridon accepted its portion of shelled meat politely, though without enthusiasm. After the meal was over, it bowed its head. “This one has a request.”

  That was a first. What could a serpent need?

  Lorel asked before he could. “What’s that, toad?”

  “This one desires to experience roasted serdil. This one is exceedingly weary of fish and fowl.”

  They were all weary of their limited diet. There wasn’t much he could do about that until summer. But serdil?

  Tsai’dona wrinkled her nose. “You want us to cook a serdil?”

  “I hear you, toad,” Lorel said amiably. “But it’s gonna be a while before we catch one.”

  The Dreshin Viper stared east for a moment. “This one doubts the supposition is correct.” It turned back to Lorel. “This one suggests that the swordlings prepare for battle.”

  “There’s a pack coming?” Tsai’dona jumped up and drew her sword.

  “This one predicts the approach of seven packs of seven packs. This group has only until twilight to prepare.”

  Lorel blinked, and turned toward him. “How many’s seven packs and all that, kid?”

  “Seven times seven times five or ten? From two fifty to five hundred.” He limped to the pile of driftwood he’d gathered the day before and began to drag pieces into a circle around the camp. “Too many!”

  Tsai’dona stared at him as if he’d gone insane. “What are you doing?”

  “Fire will slow them down.” He tugged another log into place. “If we have a ring of fire around the camp, we’ll only have to deal with the brave ones. Otherwise a pack that big would drag us and the horses down before we could defend ourselves.”

  “Good thing you got brains, kid.”
Lorel headed toward the shoreline. “But we’ll need more wood.”

  “Lots more.” Over the past days they’d used up all of the closest wood. He grabbed the team’s harness and laid it out on the sand. “Go tie together as much driftwood as you can find. I’ll be right behind you with the horses.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’ll see.” Viper shooed them away. “Hurry.”

  Both girls grabbed ropes and ran toward the beach.

  “Poppy! Periwinkle!”

  The horses pricked up their eyes and ambled into camp.

  “Lower your head, please.” He hoisted the collar over Poppy’s head and urged her backwards to stand in the harness. Periwinkle sighed and trudged up to stand beside her, waiting for his collar. Viper strapped on the harness and led them to the beach.

  The girls had already tied a huge pile of wood into a rough sled.

  Lorel grinned at the horses. “I see what you mean. Now we’ll get enough wood to do some good.”

  Together they tied the makeshift sled to the harnesses.

  “We’ve got to get more wood than this,” Viper panted. Fastening a few ropes was more work than he’d anticipated.

  “Move the team out. We’ll bring extra.” Tsai’dona scooped up a double armload of wood and staggered toward the wagon.

  Lorel seized the end of a log she seemed unable to lift and dragged it back to the camp, beating the overburdened team.

  Tsai’dona grabbed a stick and drew a large circle around the camp, enclosing the wagon, a few large tufts of grass and several feet of the brook. “Can we get enough wood for a fence this big?”

  Viper nodded and wiped sweat out of his eyes. “Mark where you want the ‘gate’ to be. We’ll fill that in after the horses are inside. Try to think up some way to defend the water.”

  Lorel frowned and drew that side of the circle smaller, so only one short edge touched the brook. “That won’t be easy.”

  The Kyridon slithered up to the driver’s bench and stared eastward.

  Viper untied the ropes and stood back while Lorel pulled out the largest pieces of wood. He and Tsai’dona tugged the smaller chunks onto the sandy circle.