"Neither mathematics nor mapmaking requires that you kill people for practice, highness," Hyry said, in a low tone.
"You can't blame people for talking about things like that."
"People are killed every day," Lucrezia said dismissively, 'for far less reason than testing the accuracy of lore which has been corrupted by falsehood and mystification. My father condemns men to death in hundreds of different ways, of which the scaffold is merely the quickest. Nor is murder a royal prerogative in a city like Xandria, where the struggle for survival is so I'm told more than usually intense. Do you ishink the men I took from the wall- gangs weren't as good as dead already? "
Hyry Keshvara did not reply.
"Witchery generates dread Oy virtue of superstitious awe, not by virtue of killing people," Lucrezia said, quoting Ereleth word for word.
"That's part of the Art, part of the mystique but you of all people should have a better understanding. You may be too delicate to use weapons like mine, but you're entirely happy to supply them, aren't you? You brought me the murderous seeds from the Navel of the World, and told me what to do with them are you any less responsible for the consequences than I am? This forest is only half-unearthly, but the land to the south has far less of the earthly in it, hasn't it? It's a land full of witchery and you can hardly wait to get there, to pass through territories which have long been closed to humankind, in search of the place where man- eating thorn bushes grow wild.
Do you have the temerity to disapprove of me because of palace gossip? I thought you were my friend, Hyry. Or were you only cultivating a good customer?"
"I am your friend, highness," Hyry said firmly, 'and I've killed my file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Brian%20Stableford%20-%20Serpents%20Blood.TXT (239 of 495) [11/1/2004 12:26:21 AM]
share of
men, not always under threat of my own death. " Her tone was sincere, but Lucrezia couldn't help wishing that she hadn't appended the highness to the first claim.
Lucrezia would have said more, but at that point she was interrupted by a strange noise in the crowns of the nearby trees. The canopy was never silent, even by night, but the voices of the birds which sang and the frogs which croaked were faint and unobtrusive; the new sound was not loud but it was strangely insistent and ominously ever present. It was an oddly throaty sound . as if the entire forest were on the point of choking.
"What in the world is that?" Lucrezia asked.
"It's rain, highness," Hyry said, seemingly glad of the opportunity to speak lightly.
"Only rain."
Lucrezia looked up and around, squinting to make the most of the yellow lamplight and the white auras surrounding the tree- trunks.
"But none of it is reaching the ground!" she said.
"The trees are greedy for all the rain that falls," the trader said.
"Even if it falls in torrents, the canopy catches almost every drop.
These unearthly trees have webs, rather like those on a duck's feet, extended between their lower boughs- as you can see by day if you look very carefully into the confusing riot of colour. Some rainwater trickles down through channels in the bark, hidden by the surrounding growth, but most is directed through veins deep in the boles. Every full-grown tree is hollow at the heart. The surplus is leaked into the soil, where the roots reclaim it later.
"There are streams in the forest, and one great river, but far the greater proportion of the water they carry flows from the Dragomite Hills. The forest is always breathing, you see moisture evaporates constantly from every leaf, and the interval before its return to earth can be a time of trial if it's too long extended. There's no need for you and I to fear thirst- the sap of the trees can always be tapped, if you know how- but we might have to let the two extra horses go if we can't get to the river quickly enough."
They had four horses now. Two of the mounts ridden by the men who had attacked them had run off before Hyry could secure them, but they had kept the others in order to relieve the pressure on their own.
Lucrezia knew that 'letting the two extra horses go' meant trading them to dark landers in exchange for supplies of
2JJ
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food and other easily perishable goods. The dark landers would use the horses as meat they weren't enthusiastic riders.
"How long will it take us to reach the river?" Lucrezia asked.
"Hard to tell," Hyry said evasively.
"It's not so easy to navigate when the stars are never visible and you can hardly tell which part of the sky the sun's in except for the few hours near dawn and dusk.
We might find dark landers willing to guide us, but even they don't have a perfect sense of direction. We'll certainly hit the river bank eventually, but I can't guarantee that we'll arrive within an easy walk of the ford, and following the watercourse would take us by a winding route. Might be five days, might be eight. Could be ten if things go badly. "
"Things haven't gone badly so far," Lucrezia said, 'except for those men who tried to . . . "
She trailed off, realising that Hyry might well think that things had gone exceptionally badly, simply because she had been forced to bring the princess but all Hyry said in reply was: "There shouldn't be any difficulty, provided that the night cloaks leave us alone and neither of us sticks her hand into a flower worm tentacles. Once we meet up with Fraxinus and Phar, everything will be fine ... until we rearih the Dragomite Hills, that is."
"That will be the beginning," Lucrezia said softly.
"All this is just the prelude to the real adventure."
"We'd better get some sleep, highness," Hyry advised, hauling blankets and protective netting out of the pack against which she had been leaning.
"Prelude or not, tomorrow will be a long and arduous day."
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II
ndris had little option but to follow Burdam Thrid when A;
Lthe big man said
"Let's go!" The idea of surrendering to the king's guard didn't hold the least appeal, and although the prospect of a fight was little more attractive it seemed that sticking close to Thrid was the most likely way to effect an escape. Checuti's other men left clandestinely via dark windows, but Thrid went through the rear door and charged into the darkness like an angry bull, wielding his big knife in one hand and a heavy cudgel in the other. The news that there were only two men covering the back of the house had dispelled any anxiety he might have had as to the possibility of being captured.
It was dark among the outbuildings, bur Thrid moved with perfect confidence.
Thanks to the dark landers careful scouting he knew exactly where the guardsmen were stationed, and where he would have to make his stand if they moved to intercept him.
As things turned out, Andris caught only the merest glimpse of the two men, who took only one step forward before hesitating. He couldn't blame them.
Thrid was an intimidating sight in his own right, and once the guardsmen had glimpsed an even taller man behind they must immediately have come to the conclusion that the contest was too unequal to be worth a serious attempt.
They didn't stop running when they were clear of the farmyard and the guardsmen. Thrid didn't know whether the guardsmen had horses, and didn't care to hazard a guess as to whether discretion would continue to dictate their actions if reinforcements arrived. Considering his huge girth Checuti's henchman was a good runner, the awesome length of his stride making up for a slight awkwardness of gait. Andris was easily his equal, though-and when stamina eventually came into play, his superior.
When Thrid's breathing grew terribly laboured and his pace ^37
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FR1;faded to
>
a drunken walk, Andris still had strength in reserve. He could have slipped-Fway then, but he didn't have the slightest idea where he was or where he might start to look for Merel, so he continued to keep company with Thrid. For his own part, Thrid didn't seem to care overmuch whether Andris stayed with him or not
They had been going for more than an hour by the time their journey came to an end, at a nondescript building set beside a well-used cart-track. Thrid opened the door and staggered in, then collapsed on one of a series of wooden benches, panting hard. Andris judged that it would be several minutes before his companion recovered his breath sufficiently to engage in conversation, so he closed the door and waited behind it in the near- darkness, listening for sounds of pursuit.
Eventually, Thrid came to his feet and lurched forward, bumping into several of the benches before reaching the far end of the room, where after some groping around- he struck a match and lighted several candles set in brackets on the wall.
The starlight streaming through the high windows had already informed Andris that he was in an unusually large room with little or no furniture save for the crude benches, but the candlelight showed him far more. The ceiling was supported by a strangely complicated web of wooden beams which filled the overhead it space like some kind of crazed spider-web. There was not a chair
|| or table to be seen, although there was a waist-high wooden partition separating out a rectangular space at the far end of the room. The floor between the rows of benches was strewn with padded mats in a very poor state of repair, each one far too small for anyone but a dwarf to sleep on.
Inscribed on the far wall was an enormous plus sign, and below ij, it the recently repainted words:
I CHANGE AND DECAY IN ALL AROUND I SEE tHOU WHO CHANGE ST NOT, ABIDE WITH ME
"What is this place?" Andris asked. | "It's a meeting-house," the big man told him.
"Some call it a I church. Don't you have deists in the frozen north?" ij
"The climate's temperate in Ferentina," Andris informed him. | "It's a pleas anter and more civilised nation than Xandria ~ which I might account for the fact that we have no deists there, whatever deists are."
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"It's got nothing to do with civilisation," Thrid told him. There're more deists in cities than out in the wilds. You never heard of them?
God and all that? "
Andris had heard of God, although the notion was by no means fashionable in Ferentina.
"Oh, God," he said, as the significance of the plus sign and the words inscribed beneath it became clear to him.
"You mean this place is used by people who believe the world was created by some awesomely powerful being, who lives in a parallel world immune from all decay?"
"That's right deists. They think life is a kind of rehearsal for some better existence, but that you have to be a believer in order to get the extra stretch. That's why they have the plus sign up there.
They have a set of secret commandments just like the dark landers Checuti used to hang out with, only it's probably a different set.
Anyone who thinks you can still be alive after you die is crazy, but they're harmless. I got nothing against 'em. "
Andris remembered that such believers were reputed to be given to a strange occult practice called 'prayer', and concluded that the meeting-house was where such rites were carried out.
"One can see the attractions of the idea," Andris said.
"A second life, lived in world immune from the ravages of decay, would be a wonderful thing. Just think how easy life would be if everything didn't rot so rapidly and so resolutely. It's like the legendary incorruptible stone writ large ... if you're going to believe in incorruptibility, why stick at a stone? Why not a whole world . . .
or a whole universe? They say the stars are incorruptible, don't they? "
"Except for the ones that explode," Thrid agreed.
"But it makes no sense to me. l.life is a constant battle against corruption and corrosion I mean, that's what it ;s, that and nothing more. A world which has life after life, without death and decay, is just. . .
horse shit. " He smiled at his own joke.
Andris echoed the smile. For the first time, Burdam Thrid began to seem like a human being instead of some kind of monster.
"Why come here?" he asked.
"Is Checuti . . . ?"
' "Course not," Thrid was quick to reply.
"It's just a good place to hide out a while. No one else ever comes here. .
. except, of course, the deists. They wouldn't hurt us or turn us in."
"Are there many deists in these parts?" Andris asked, figuring 239
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that he
might as well keep the conversation going now that Thrid had thawed out a little.
"A fair number," the big man replied.
"Checuti says it's just like the dark landers secret societies. We don't live in such small groups, but even in towns most people stick pretty close by their families, following their own trades and conserving their own lore.
Something like deism binds all kinds of different people, from all parts of the empire, into a network of mutual aid. According to Checuti, it doesn't really matter that the things they do and believe are silly the fantasies are just the glue that holds the whole thing together. "
"I see what he means," Andris said.
"When I came south to the Slithery Sea the only way I could try to make useful contacts was to : look for Uncle Theo -- who turned out to be long dead, though ; mercifully not without issue. If I'd been a deist, I could have looked [ for whole communities which might have made me welcome and found me a place."
; "Right," said Thrid.
"Like people from the so-called provinces J going to Xandria. The rich move into the circles of the rich, the ^.
undeserving poor have people like Checuti to help look after them, I and the deists have other deists. " jifi
"And the ideas at the heart of it aren't that silly," Andris said, Swarming to the discussion.
"It's certainly no sillier than taking the Lore of Genesys seriously. Who can really believe that there used to be another world circling another star, from which the I forefathers came in a huge ship? I mean, how did the people get to that world? What sort of ship could sail the void between the ij stars? The ship would have to be just as incorruptible as this ' imaginary world the deists believe in."
"It's not something I worry about," Thrid told him.
"Checuti seems to be getting over-anxious about such matters, but that's because the dark landers are on at him about drago mites and Serpents in the forest, and everything coming to an end. I told him we didn't need those dark land hunters to rob the citadel, but he just had to be clever about it.
I told him that if he wanted to be squeamish about killing people a sharp tap on the head was as good a way of knocking them out as any, but. . ."
The big man stopped as the door opened and Checuti stepped through.
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sat quietly on his
shoulder, and he didn't even seem to be out of breath. He had the map clutched in his left hand, rolled up rather more neatly than Andris had been able to roll it when he had earlier taken to his heels.
"Everything went well," Checuti assured them, as he pushed the door to behind him.
"Not a life lost on either side, not a drop of blood spilled. I only hope the good captain believed me when I told him the truth. Fool though he is, he might turn out to be an inconvenient fool if he's found reinforcements and decided to chase us. The governor might well think that he could get a much bigger cu
t if he could lock us up for a while in one of his prisons you can never trust these petty officials who have a greedy finger in every pie.
Shall we go?"
He had stepped towards them while speaking, but not quite far enough.
When the door behind him was thrust violently inwards it crashed into his back and precipitated him forwards in a very ungainly manner. He tripped before reaching the nearest of the benches and stumbled heavily. The monkey leapt from his shoulder as he fell, chattering in panic.
An enormous shadow filled the open doorway, but the candles were too far away to reveal to Andris and Thrid exactly what manner of being it was. Andris, awed by the sheer size of the shadow, stood as if rooted to the spot, but Burdam Thrid was made of sterner and more reckless stuff. Snatching his knife and cudgel from his belt the bandit went forward full tilt, hurdling the benches with surprising agility and coordination.
As Thrid ran past the fallen body of his master the shadow in the doorway moved. The light was so poor that Andris thought for a moment that it was moving away, but it was not. It was coming forward to meet Thrid's assault and it did so with contemptuous ease, in spite of the fact that it had no weapon in either of its enormous hands. As Thrid danced towards it with his cudgel raised and his blade extended he was met by a force sufficiently powerful, and so skilfully deployed, that he was hurled backwards far more abruptly than he had hurled himself forwards. For all his bulk- which was very unusual by ordinary human standards he was thrust back by a single dismissive slap. He fell supine upon the ground, with a sickening thud- and he showed not the slightest sign of getting up again.
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Serpent's Blood Page 29
