The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  “Then you’re Shansar.” Panduv spoke with all the hauteur of Visian Alisaar.

  “No. The Shansarians are not generally so adept. I am Amanackire.”

  Panduv swore. “A Lowlander.”

  “Amanackire, I said. There is a difference.”

  This then explained why the driver had allowed the woman into Panduv’s carriage. While the invader-conquerors might occasionally be denied something, one denied nothing to Lowlanders. They could totter cities, the rabble of the serpent witch, and summon gods from under the sea.

  “What do you want?” Panduv said. Patently it would not be oneself. Which was lucky, for white flesh repelled her.

  “The Lydian,” the woman said. “The Children of Daigoth know each other’s business. Tell me how he’s to be come at.”

  “You do surprise me,” said Panduv. “How should I know? Go to the stadium. Petition him, like the others. Send a gift.”

  “You misunderstand what I want. To speak with him, privately.”

  “The stadium. Petition. A gift.”

  “Zakorian,” said the woman. Her soft voice chilled the very air of that hot pre-Zastian night, “my kind are never refused.”

  “Then he won’t refuse you. Why come to me?”

  “To ease my path. Yes, now I see it. He’s at a supper—will leave shortly, since in four days more he fights in the stadium—how explicit, your mind—And which homeward route will he walk, Panduv Am Hanassor, alone in Alisaarian night?” (Panduv, her inadvertent thoughts rifled, robbed, attempted to wall off her knowledge of the city’s avenues. Failed, of course.) And, “Thank you,” said this Amanackire bitch, gentle as a killing snow.

  • • •

  Just past midnight, a group of Saardsin Swordsmen came out from under the portico of a mansion of Pillar Square. They were laughing, and a touch drunk, dressed in all the splendor of youth and strength and money. One of their number was Rehger Am Ly Dis.

  As they crossed under the columned arcades, moving toward Sword Street, a voice called to the Lydian.

  His companions, unheeding, went on. He hesitated, and glanced back. A pale shadow, that of a woman, was framed between two pillars.

  “Not tonight, beautiful,” he said, already turning from her. “I fight the first day of Zastis.”

  Then he realized that no one had spoken. His name had been surely uttered, but within his own skull.

  All the blond races boasted of their ability to mindspeak. Most unmixed Vis abhorred the notion. Rehger turned again, and went to the woman. A lamp burned near, but it was behind her; he could see nothing of her but the pallor of her cloak. He stood over her, and carefully shut the anger from his face and tone before addressing her.

  “That trick could earn you a beating in New Alisaar. Don’t do it, even in play.” He looked around, and added. “Where’s your escort?”

  “I have none,” she said. She used her real voice now, it was cool, it did not invite.

  “That’s unwise,” he said. “Next time, take your servant or slave.”

  “Because only a champion is safe on these streets? Even cutthroats follow the races and are gamblers in Saardsinmey.”

  “No man would try for me,” he said. “He knows I could kill him.” It was not vanity, only a fact.

  But she said, “No man would try for me. That would also mean death.”

  She took a step away, under the lamp. And as she did so, brushed the hood from her head.

  He had never seen such whiteness. Perhaps, in a figurine of marble. Her skin, her hair—there was a trace of shadow on her brows and color at her lips, and maybe that was paint. Her eyes were unhuman, they rasped his senses—the white eyes of a snake—he did not want to look at them, or at any part of her.

  All her race were said to be magicians. He supposed he believed it, seeing her.

  “Why have you detained me?” he said.

  “You acquiesce, then. I may detain any man I wish, roam where I will and as I want? You admit, my people have your people now under the booted heel.”

  “I’m a Swordsman and charioteer. I know nothing about your people.”

  “All Vis knows something of us.”

  “And a slave, the property of this city. My opinion isn’t worth anything to you. So much said, lady, excuse me. Good night.”

  “I don’t give you leave to go.”

  “Madam, with or without your leave, I regret.”

  He moved away from her and had begun to walk again toward Sword Street, when she said, “A paradox. A slave who is a king. Lydian.”

  “What do you want?” he said, finding he had stopped after all.

  “Come to my house tomorrow evening.”

  “Again, my apologies. I’m obliged to be somewhere else.”

  “You can find it with no trouble. Ask on Gem-Jewel Street. Anyone will tell you where the Amanackire is lodging.”

  He strode out now, and left her standing under the lamp.

  The columns marched by him. Some were scratched with mottoes or poetry, or the names of feted prostitutes.

  He had known this city nearly all his life, been famed and free of it since his nineteenth year. Yet now some drifting memory of the other land, the first, surfaced in his mind. The mountains of Iscah. A woman, whose face he did not remember, only the springing blackness of her hair. He thought of her sometimes, his mother. Sometimes even, in lieu of jewels or the gold chain, he wore in his ear the stud of coin, the drak his father had paid her with for their night. He did not lament or eschew the incoherent past.

  He recalled, too, more clearly than faces or words, how in that country one of the men had struck the woman (his mother), continuously. Here and now, no man who was clever lifted his hand to a woman in the Lydian’s presence. He had required his preference, confronted by the white-eyed Lowlander. For he had felt in those minutes a thing which only came to him rarely in the stadium, the boiling itch of blood-desire. It seemed to him he had wanted her death.

  6. Chacor’s Luck

  THE STAR ASCENDED, the night burned. From ship to shore, from avenue to promenade, in the sumptuous chambers of palaces, in huts piled up the hill behind the Street of Tombs, lovers loved. But in the courts of Daigoth, those men due to fight tomorrow lay watchful, and hungry. The phallus must become the sword. The shows were always very good, in the initial days of Zastis.

  Before sunrise, before the great hawks, which hunted over the crags of the city, launched themselves into a hollowing sky, fighters were at exercise in the stadium yards.

  “The Corhlan is in love with Rehger. The chariots weren’t enough for him, he’ll be back for more.”

  “What can dung-heap Corhl offer him? If he can win a bout here, even unowned as he is, he might make some cash.”

  Boastful, the slave-Swords. Free men were poor things. No one worshiped them enough to keep them. Often they came here, these outsiders, to try the lots, chancing their arm against Saardsinmey heroes. Generally they left the stadium feet-foremost in carts.

  Those that sparred with Rehger knew that he, or they, were capable of finishing any Corhlan, if it came to it. This was Zastis, and every man at work here in the dawn mingled words and unspoken concepts of sex with the killer’s banter. Not one Saardsin would be drawn against another—that, too, was Daigoth’s law. They would be tried on the blades of other cities, other lands. So it was safe to mention death. You did not slay your brothers. And who wanted to grow old?

  The sun rose, climbed. The exercise court was empty.

  The noise of the morning city came and went. Over the high stadium walls, the sky hammered out its blue.

  Slaves appeared with their baskets and scoops of sand. The central platform had been lowered, and the whole great oval stretched flat. The slaves scattered the sand thick and white across it, everywhere, making the stadium into a beach. A sea would break u
pon this beach, of a sort.

  At noon, the gates were thrown open. The crowd crowded in. Colors poured down the terraces. The smell of scent, sweat, and fruit, changed the air into a pomade. But soon there would be, too, the butchery smell of blood, to lay the perfume and the sand.

  Because he was a free man and an amateur, not bred and molded to the customs of a stadium, Chacor the Corhl had spent the foregoing night with two girls. It had been far from a random tryst. He had sought it purposely, intending to rid himself of the first need of Zastis, and leave mind and body clear for the fray. The idea of starving the need and deploying it as a weapon was one he would not have entertained. Such things Zakorian pirates did to their oars-slaves, chaining them during the Red Moon so they could not even see to themselves, until the act of rowing became the only release.

  Meanwhile, Chacor’s luck in surviving the chariot race had prompted him to display other skills. It was true, there was nothing much for him at home. He had come out of Corhl with only his goddess for property. In little towns of Ott, Iscah, and unfree Vardian Zakoris, he had beaten the locals at this and that. The cities of New Alisaar, with their codes of dueling and betting and their choice of public games, had lured him on. Perhaps he wanted glory more than wealth, but pure metal bars and bags of draks were not uncharming.

  He had also, in a young man’s way, become obsessed by the Lydian, and wanted to fight him. The Lydian was a slave, a king, a god, and an older male. Just as the three-year stallion animal would try to oust the herd-lord, Chacor longed to challenge him, tussle, bring him down, or at least to taste the strength of what bettered him and would not yield. Envy and admiration mixed in it. Besides, he could not help but be aware, on some mostly submerged level, that the Lydian Swordsman, vastly his superior in skill, would not slay a free man the crowd was partial to. A sense of the hazard, the mere foolhardiness of the venture, were not let past the Corhlan’s mental doors. Indeed, he had been praying to Corrah for this chance, to be drawn in the lots against Saardsinmey’s champion. Obscurely, since Corrah and Cah—the goddess of Iscah—were one, Chacor imagined she might wish also to bring both of her sons together, like any primitive mother of the region, to do battle. Not a hundred years ago, Alisaar’s princes fought each other to the death for the kingship. In Free Zakoris they did it still, and in several areas of the western lands, many, noble or peasant, kept the tradition.

  Chacor, if his family had retained this method, believed he could have disposed of all his legal brothers, and so inherited his father’s small wooden palace in the forested swamps of Corhl. But Corrah had instead meant him for a wanderer. Corrah had brought him here to match him with the Lydian.

  Convinced he could not die, the Corhl thought to himself, And if he kills me, that’s glory, too.

  • • •

  The acrobats came out first, clad as characters from myth, or beasts, and did their tricks, chancy, spectacular and ribald by turns. Then there was a mock race, spoof of the Fire Ride, teams of waddling orynx drawing flimsy gilded cars. Snorting and defecating in rage, the orynx soon ran amok and the chariots collided and collapsed, the charioteers tumbling and diving in all directions. The winner gained the favors of a promising maiden, but was only allowed to embrace her while hung upside down from a pole. After several attempts, during which the crowd laughed and proffered instructions, the lady ran off with a monkey.

  Following the acrobats, the creatures of the stadium menagerie were paraded, swamp leopards in jeweled collars, fighting-bis, plumed and hooded, a pride of Vardian lions with gold in their ears and manes, Shansar horses, neighing, brindled kalinx, and apes as tall as a man.

  A selection of these animals might be reared for combat, but generally they were trained for use in religious processions, or to spice scenes of terror in the theaters. The citizens, diverted by a display of their possessions, always, weighed and measured and evaluated, and threw flowers to the lions.

  When the display had finished, and the stadium, where necessary, had been swept and freshly sanded, there sounded the blast of brass horns.

  It was at that moment, when all eyes were inclined to fix passionately on the arena, that a slight stir ran along the eastern tiers. Someone had come late, and appeared suddenly in one of the boxes to the left of the Guardian’s seat. This was the section reserved for women of rank. A fringed awning mantled it, and here and there were screens of pierced stone behind which the boxes’ occupants might modestly conceal themselves, a convention seldom observed. Those female aristocrats who attended the sports alone, made display, each jamming the box with her retinue and bodyguard.

  There had been a rumor for most of the month that an Amanackire was in the city. Now, she was here. Clothed entirely in white, her ice hair lit with silver ornaments, she entered the box, unguarded, without a single slave, and sat down there.

  The Guardian was absent on political affairs. His counselor, occupying the center box, angled himself to favor the white woman with a stare. When she turned, his nod of courteous deference underlined a plain disapproval, both of her boldness and her life. But her cold, cold eyes returned him nothing. She looked away as if she had not seen him, or, seeing him, had not thought him to matter. She, too, fixed her gaze downward on the stadium floor.

  The Swordsmen were coming out on to the sand. The attention of the eastern tiers refocused itself.

  There were eighteen pairs of fighters, eighteen Saardsins matched with eighteen contenders, slave-Sword or free, from the rest of Vis. They were strategically spaced around the stadium, to give every part of the terraces the view of an individual battle, at least in its commencement. As habitually, the Swordsmen of whom the most was expected were ranged along the portion of arena below the Guardian’s seat and the boxes of the rich and royal.

  Here, then, the Lydian, with either side, at a distance of some fifteen feet, two Zakor-born champions, the Ylan, who had only recently earned for himself recognition by the name of birthplace, and the older man famous with axe and mallet, nicknamed the Iron Ox.

  The crowd yelled and waved its arms. Flowers fell for the beauty of dangerous men as for the danger of beauteous beasts.

  Armored at loins, right forearm and calves, heads helmed and eyes shuttered behind the sealed visors, already in the drug-dream heat, Zastis, the glare of the sand, the love-partnership each man with the man before him, Daigoth’s Marriage of the Sword—not one looked upward to the tiers, or into the boxes.

  • • •

  Chacor had been aggrieved. The lot had not cast him with the Lydian. He was paired, on the north side of the stadium, with an Alisaarian-born Sword. Nevertheless, everything was not lost. Overwhelm the Alisaarian, and Chacor might choose his next “Marriage” from any Saardsin also rendered partnerless by success. So it would go on, until every man had been fought out and a majority of one side only, the Swords of Saardsinmey, or her foreign challengers, were on their feet. Grueling, this bout, as only Alisaar could devise. But when the Lydian fought, the city, without exception, won. He had never left this place other than on his feet, sometimes bloody, but always unbeaten.

  Since his mastery of the chariot race, more than usual was anticipated from him today, and the betting had been fraught if biased.

  The wise gamblers of the city had seen Regher’s kind before. Like the orchid, they broke quickly to bloom, and burned in brightest magnificence a handful of years. Then the gods, sensible men must not rival them too long, cut the plant to the ground.

  The horns brayed, and the Alisaarian’s steel came like a flash of water, to slice Chacor’s arm to the bone. But Chacor was away. He grinned, and slammed back with a rough crazy stroke, never completed, instead switched sideways as the Alisaarian moved, disdainfully to block it. Chacor’s blade, like all the rest burnished to blind, tickled the Alisaarian’s ribs into a thread of blood.

  Above, the north tiers, having noted the impudent Corhlan was returned, gave him a
howl of wrath and glee. He was valued as lucky, and had been bet upon.

  The Alisaar, put out to be bleeding, struck back with his own feint, which Chacor dismissed, catching the actual blow squarely on the oblong stadium shield. Then, abruptly tilting the shield, pushed his opponent’s sword wide, an equally unpredicted deed the Alisaar did not care for; he was forced to hurry in his own shield as Chacor, excited now, drove for his guts.

  “Fool,” remarked the Alisaarian.

  “Accursed-of-Corrah,” replied Chacor.

  It was a mistake to converse while fighting, but one commonly made by free men used to backland duels.

  “What?” encouraged the Alisaarian.

  As Chacor gladly repeated what he had said, with a jewel or two added, the Alisaarian set his sword glancing, left, right, left—smashing upward as he did so with the shield. In three seconds Chacor found himself nipped in the right shoulder, left forearm bruised from the impact of the brass shield rim. Such injuries, far from fatal, could nevertheless tell. While anything that bled shortened a fighter’s time on the sand.

  A rolling gasp went over the north tiers, ending in unholy roaring. A man had gone down to the left, not a Saardsin. (Lost in the universal shouting and clamor, the fate of the Lydian’s partner at the eastern end.) Chacor, angry at his error, smarting, wished now he had not ridden with those girls last night. He could see, from a curious glow in the Alisaar’s mask-framed eyes, that unspent sex might also have its worth.

  Then the Alisaar aimed a stroke that almost took Chacor’s arm from his body.

  Springing backward, propelled by the instincts of panic-speed, Chacor’s feet slid in wetness. (The Saardsin leftward had finished his man, blood ran in a river.) Chacor fell, had fallen. Bloody sand burned his shoulders, and the Alisaar loomed over him, laughing, ready. Yes, there were frequent kills at Zastis. Chacor had learned that, from the Alisaar’s eyes. Above, the crowd were moaning and swaying, crying out, caught in Zastian sex-death-blood-lust.