The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  “Lydian! Lydian!” Young tavern girls in the blushed dusk, gilded bells in their plaited hair. “Oh, Lydian— are you glad or sorry that boy’s alive?”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes, oh, yes.”

  “Where is he then?” He laughed down at them as they laughed up at him, putting blossoms into the mane of the thoroughbred, touching his ankle or foot shyly, pressing their breasts against the animal, wanting the man.

  “With her,” one said. “The white one. She healed him by Lowland witchcraft. He’s her prize then, isn’t he. He’s handsome, Lydian.” She gazed into his eyes, unable to help herself.

  He put them softly aside, and rode on, and they let him go, standing to speak of him under one of the night-blooming torch-poles.

  Nearly at the merchant’s doors, Rehger quickened the thoroughbred into a trot. They went straight by, down Sword Street, over Pillar Square, and through the maze of slighter roads that led south.

  At the fountain on Gem-Jewel Street, he reined the beast in. Across the way, on the stair of a prosperous wine-shop, a man opened wide his arms.

  “Thanks for my winnings, Lydian, may your gods always love you. Will you delight us by drinking here? Good wine, happy girls.”

  “Another night,” the Lydian said. Then, as she had told him to, he asked, “The Amanackire woman. She lodges on this street?”

  The man’s arms fell, and his face. He looked uncertain, but he said, “By the lacemakers. The tiled house with the high wall.”

  • • •

  The house stood back in the alley that curled behind the lacemakers. In the wall, a gate of ornamental iron gave at a thrust. A garden lay there, with trees, and overgrown by dry grass. Flushed starlight fingered a choked pool.

  The lower floor of the house seemed in disrepair and unoccupied. In the second story a cluster of windows showed light within their grills.

  Rehger, having tethered his animal, went in by the unlocked entry and ascended to the upper story.

  A lit lamp hung over the door, and a bell, in the Alisaarian manner.

  A minute went by, during which he thought of nothing, did nothing. Then, as he reached toward the bell again, the door was opened. A servant, a tawny mix girl with those eyes one came to see sometimes in three or four generation mixes, clear brown as ale. She said nothing, but stood aside to let him enter, then led him through the outer chamber into a salon.

  This also was lamplit, the flames under painted glass, that set the room awash with pale rainbow colors. The furnishings were simple, not comfortless but with none of the luxurious clutter Rehger associated with wealth and women. He scarcely saw any of it. On a table, a crystal jug and beakers. The servant girl went there and poured him a drink unrequested. It was yellow Lowland wine, he had never seen it before, and stared into the cup before motioning her to take it away.

  The girl did not argue with him. She replaced the cup upon the table, and went softly from the room.

  Rehger stood, waiting, not thinking, clothed in his elegant garments for dining, his fighter’s meticulous grace. The Corhlan was not here. He knew that. Only she.

  There was a perfume on the air. Not of the usual sort, bottled essences and burning gums.

  A curtain drifted. She entered the salon, the Amanackire.

  “Be welcome,” she said, and bowed to him. Lowland courtesy, meaningless. Or a jibe.

  “Thank you. Am I welcome also to lay hands on and kill you?”

  “You have done your killing,” she said, “in the stadium.”

  “Yes, and been cheated of it, I heard. Is it a lie? The Corhl stays dead.”

  “He lives.”

  “I’ve only your word for that.”

  “And the word of the whole city, which brought you here.”

  “No, madam,” he said, “I meant to call on you anyway. You played a game with me today. I didn’t care for it.”

  She watched him across the length of the room, the wavering rainbows of light.

  “Why?” he said. His voice had nothing in it, except perplexity. He could not strike her or rage against her. With no woman on earth would he ever do that. So what was left to him? She was not tall for her sex, and slender, a breakable thing that did not even look human. He went toward her because that was all he could do, as if proximity might invite reason.

  “Ice in the sun,” she said. “You, and all men. This city.”

  “If you invade my mind,” he said, “you’ll find nothing of use to you.”

  “You are too modest.”

  “Do it then. I can’t stop you. But why bother with it, or with the sword? Or to save the boy’s life?”

  “It was owed to him. It was my fault that you harmed him as you did.”

  The perfume came from her. It was not perfume. It was the scent of her skin, and hair.

  The crown of her head hardly reached his shoulder. And her face was a girl’s, she could be no older than the boy she had raised from the dead.

  “This is so,” she replied, to his thoughts. “Yet I have a power in me and upon me. You never met a man in your arena of blood and steel who had such power. Lydian, I could end your life in moments, by will alone. Do you believe me?”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “Look,” she said. She raised her hand, and her hand began to blaze. He saw its bones, he saw white fire where flesh should be. Then the blaze went out. Her hand was only white, and the arm, white as lilies, ringed by a bracelet of white enamel darker than her skin. The bracelet was a snake, with tintless zircons for eyes.

  “Temple sorcery,” he said. “But what’s your quarrel with me?”

  There were pink pearls in her hair, and a drop of rosy amber, the Lowlanders’ sacred resin, depended above and between her brows.

  She was beautiful, but not as something born; too beautiful, as something fashioned, sculpted. Yet she was alive, he saw her breathing, and felt the warmth of her, so close now in the heat of night.

  There was in fact a depth to her eyes. This near to her, he could not help but see it. A depth without a floor, bottomless.

  “Why?” he said to her again. He leaned forward as he spoke, so the word itself should brush her lips. “I seldom fought a man whose name I knew. It’s a Swordsman’s superstition, you may have heard of it. Are you afraid then, to give me your name?”

  “My name is Aztira,” she said. “Shall I say yours?”

  “Say it.”

  “Amrek,” she said. Her voice was a wire of hatred. “Amrek, the Enemy, branded by the bane of Anackire. Genocide, and monster.”

  He stood back from her, startled despite everything. He did not know the name, or if he did, it was nothing to him—some king out of history, dead a century or more.

  “Your wrist,” she said. “What is that?”

  He said, calmly, his heart thundering, “This? A birthmark. I’ve had it since childhood.”

  “Yes, birth-marked for sure. Her mark. Her curse on him, on you, son to daughter to son.”

  Rehger took his eyes with difficulty away from her. He looked at the thin silvery ring around his left wrist, familiar to him, forgotten.

  Then he looked again at her.

  But all at once she turned from him. As he had done, and with the same recognizable muted violence, she wept.

  In his experience, which was limited in such things, women did not weep for any cause. They wept when there was none. Moods of amorous passion or jealousy, to conceal, over little things—the loss of a lover or an earring. In his limited world, no woman had ever shed tears at misery or pain—slave-girls beaten, an old beggar-crone huddled in Iscaian snow. . . . his mother kicked across the dirt floor of the hovel: Dry eyed.

  Yet, some inner sense, recognizing her real anguish, for he had been shown something of her strength, moved him to pity.

  Almost unrem
embering their prelude, he took hold of her carefully, quietly, to soothe her. And as against the white silk of her hair and skin he saw the metallic darkness of his hands, bronze on marble, his body, waiting all this while in Zastis cunning, astonished him with a sudden bolt of hungry lust. What he had disliked before, it was this very thing which ravened now through his veins.

  He was not amazed that she slid instantly from him. They were cold as they looked, her kind, so it was said.

  She had not let him see her tears, only hear them, and now she moved before a window, her face to the garden shadows, hiding herself still.

  “I’ve been greatly mistaken,” she said. “In everything. A blind, meddling child. Go away, Swordsman. Go to your own, of whom you have no fear. For I fear you, and I fear them, your Alisaarians, your peoples of black Vis. And my own kind also, I am afraid of them.” She gripped the iron of the grill in both her hands. “Oh, Rehger!” she cried out. “Warn this city! Warn them—tell them—”

  She was on her knees beneath the grill, still gripping the iron in her hands as he had seen prisoners do, or men dying in agony. Her weeping now was terrible to hear. Death’s music, grief that was triumphant.

  To question her, to think that she might be questioned, was impossible. Since he might otherwise only console her in the Zastian mode she would abhor and resist, he did as she said. He went away.

  • • •

  The merchant was cheated of his dinner guest that night. But it was Zastis. Heroes, immune to cutthroats, might yet be waylaid at every corner . . .

  He had gone to the inn on Five Mile Street, the drinking-house that he would visit before an event, to taste the “last sweet cup.” (One day that would be true.) He had been there the night before. To go back after the stadium was a favor they would value.

  He did not climb up to the roof, but sought the smaller court to the building’s rear, from which, once in a way, you might catch the sighing of the ocean. It was a spot for trysts, vacant tonight, as he had foreseen, for all the assignations had been made. The Lydian did not want fame or celebration, he did not want to drink.

  The girl who came to him through the vine shadows was Velva. Her skin, darkest honey, was as smooth, her face clear of the blow the Var-Zakor mix had given her, for the physician on Sword Street was excellent, even if he could not cure the dead—

  She drew in her breath when she saw the man under the vines. The fragrance of her caught in his brain. Her hair, as his had been, was wreathed by golden poppies.

  “What can I bring?” she murmured.

  “You.” He took coins and put them in her palm, holding her fingers closed upon the money. “If you can, and will.”

  “Yes—” she said. Her eyes flamed in the light of the Star.

  “Not a room here,” he said. “Come to the shore with me. Give the cash to him. Tell him I want you for the night.”

  “No payment—not from you— He wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, payment. And more for yourself.”

  “No.” But she ran to take the politeness of the coins to the inn-lord, her anklets ringing.

  When she came back, her eyes were lowered. She let him lead her down out of the inn to the yard, and lift her up before him on the black thoroughbred.

  Five Mile Street was loud with people and lights. Here and there someone greeted the champion, but soon they turned into the side alleys that ran toward the market.

  Near the harbor wall a sentry or two gave them a mild good night. The Guardian’s men knew well enough who this rider was, but made no comment. With all the palace and aristocratic liaisons he could choose from, if he wanted to bring a wine-girl to the beach, that was his business. As for such a man being a slave, this sort of slave did not seek to break for liberty. Bred for their destiny, whatever other thing could offer them what slavery gave? The gods of the stadium went where and how they pleased.

  As they rode down the path into the vast, plush, reddened black of sea and night, he began to caress her. The entire ride had been a caress, their bodies moving against each other, his arms roping her as he held the reins.

  The pleated sea was fired by the Star. The Red Moon scorched behind the heights of the city. Nearest of all to heaven and to Zastis, strangely, the long hill combered by the tombs of the dead—

  Under the rock, at the sea’s edge, the Lydian lay over Velva in a bath of satin sand. Her flesh burned with the light, her breasts tasted of powders and cinnamon, and of the salt of the ocean, budding against, within his mouth— She could not be still, her hair furling in inky coils along the dune, her hands polishing his skin, every muscle and tendon waking at her touch— She fell back dying into ecstasy long before he had penetrated the sea-cave between her thighs. He laughed at her rapture, cradling her through the joy, beginning again to court her even as it ended. When he took her, she was already crying out, calling thin and disembodied as a sea-bird— He thrust to the center of the sweetness, and the fount of life surged from him, excruciating pleasure, with the misleading finality in it of death. The poppies of her garland had been crushed between them.

  In the brief hiatus, before the urging of the Star seized on him again, Rehger heard the waves on the shores of Alisaar, as he had heard them some eighteen or nineteen years. Changeless, those waters. Mankind did not matter. Once could know that at such moments, and not mind.

  • • •

  He had come to this southern city to enable them to betroth him to a girl he had never seen. She was apparently most beautiful. That did not encourage him; his mother was beautiful, the bitch of bitches, a Dortharian woman who plastered her skin with white. Why? To be different from every other woman of Vis. Or for some secret reason beyond him— Unless it was to turn the knife a little more in his wounds.

  From the palace windows, he saw the snow, white also, lying on the city.

  There were Lowlanders in the city. Despite everything he had ordered, every edict. Every terror.

  Gloved, held in by cloth and rings, his hand lay out on the window embrasure before him. He need only strip the rings, the one great ring on the smallest, deformed finger, to see the hand as it was. The right hand (naked, well-formed, very dark, unflawed), the right hand moved toward the left, stealing up on it. Take off the glove, and look. No. No need. He knew. From childhood, from his first conscious hour. He recalled that once, once only, he had stared very long at the ungloved hand, turning to catch the lamplight of another room, in Koramvis. It had come to him then that the hand was actually a marvelous thing, almost an artifact, for it seemed made of silver, and the fine chiseled scales upon it, marred only by old scarring near the wrist, were perfect as silver discs laid one upon another. The scales, after all, of a dragon, not a serpent. Not the snake-scale curse on him of the Lowland goddess Anackire—

  There was rapping on the door. The woman, the mistress of his pleasure-girls. He had told her to go and fetch the one the soldiers had abducted. The Lowland girl-beast.

  The door was already opened, and as the slave slipped out, the Lowlander was pushed through, and left to him.

  She was terrified, he saw immediately. Good. She was too afraid to see his fear. That was often his means, was it not, the fear of others before a High King, a Storm Lord. They dropped at his feet and did not see him trembling.

  He said something to her. What had he said? That she was a Lowlander, was she? Take off her rags then, and let him see the rest.

  But she only stood there clutching at the air and gasping.

  So he went on talking to her, reviling her, and in the middle of it, as if he could not prevent himself, his own horror filled him and that in turn spoke to her. Was she afraid of his hand, this one? Well, that was just. The blasting of her people laid in rape on her.

  And he was also horribly aroused by her, her whiteness, her skin like snow, her hair like ice. Revolted and fascinated, sick, and avid— He pulled her to him a
nd pressed the snake-scale hand over her breast and felt the heart leaping like a creature in a net. But then it ceased leaping, there was nothing, under his hand, his mouth. She had died. She was dead. He let her go and looked at her on the floor. A child. A dead child.

  He knelt down slowly. He kneeled beside her, waiting for her to live again, for death to be a faint from which she would recover. He smoothed her face. He took her hands, and relinquished them. He slapped her.

  He had not meant her to die. That was not fair, on her or on him. He had meant her to be used. Perhaps not even that. Only the gods, who hated him, knew what he had wanted or truly meant to do. But to kill her—should not have been possible.

  Yet it was foolish, for he would not tolerate any of her race in the world. He would be rid of them. And this—was one less.

  • • •

  “It was only a dream.”

  He looked into the girl’s dark face, framed by black hair and night, the Star-burned ocean.

  “Yes,” Rehger said. “A dream.”

  But Velva leaned over him still, her eyes wide, searching his.

  He said, “What is it?”

  “The Lowland witch,” she said, muttering so he barely heard her. “You were saying, the Lowlander, the Lowlander—”

  Red lightning flickered, smiting the southern sea.

  Rehger drew her down. “Now I say only ‘Velva.’”

  He silenced her with kisses. He drew her astride and let her ride him, helping her with his strength until she moaned in an agony of delight. But even as his own body swelled toward its tumult, his mind stood far away. His mind was in the palace rooms of Koramvis and Lin Abissa, looking out of the eyes of Amrek, High King of all Vis, one hundred and thirty years and more in the past.

  • • •

  In the garden courtyard of the house on Gem-Jewel Street, Katemval was breakfasting, while his tame water-birds pecked at crumbs or swam about in the cistern.