Serpent's Blood

by Brian Stableford

  "It doesn't mean anything," Jacom said wearily.

  "People can't and don't have Serpent's blood."

  "Nor Salamander's fire?" said Dhalla.

  "In my country, they say giants have Salamander's fire in their hearts.

  Sometimes, I feel it here burning."

  She tapped her ribs, beneath her left breast.

  "It's just a metaphor," Jacom said, uneasily aware of the fact that she must know that as well as he did. Either she was teasing him, or she was trying to suggest, delicately, that the allegation that the princess had Serpent's blood in her veins must mean something, even if it were not entirely clear what.

  "Serpent's blood is bad witchery," Koraismi whispered to Jacom. "You should let this princess alone."

  If only I could! Jacom thought.

  "It's all right," he said to the boy, patting him on the head.

  "Aulakh Phar has charms against bad witchery, just as he has charms against all other ills."

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  Dhalla recognisedlthe irony in this, and smiled.

  "We're supposed to be on the same side, Dhalla," Jacom said, trying to take some encouragement from the smile.

  "We both want the princess to be safe. Remember that, when you have to decide which way you're going to go, and who you're going to trust."

  "I will," she promised. There was no hint of mockery in her tone. As he turned to go, however, she added: "Checuti is ours now he belongs to Ereleth, and to the princess. Leave him to us. The amber too.

  Don't try to interfere, if you value your life. "

  The naked threat unleashed a tide of angry resentment within him, but he fought hard to keep it hidden. He knew there was no point in arguing. He'd played his cards, and they weren't good enough to make any impression on her.

  In spite of the livery she wore she was yet another adversary, determined to thwart his one chance of reclaiming his careeer. It seemed that he had far too many adversaries, and not a single true friend on whom he could depend.

  In the circumstances, neither Fraxinus nor Purkin could be counted as a true friend and if Dhalla was his enemy too, he was on his own against the whole world, with only a dark lander boy to help him.

  "She's bad," Koraismi said, once they were at a safe distance.

  "Tainted. Best stay away from, her, and all things like her."

  "That might well be good advice," Jacom admitted glumly, 'but those who live under the sun must share its light with all creatures.

  There's no safety from the taints which stain the world, not even in the Forest of Absolute Night. " '

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  i9 the leader of the Eblans, who had told

  Lucrezia that his name was Djemil Eyub, studied his two prisoners pensively.

  Elema studiously looked away, as if the man were beneath contempt, but Lucrezia stared back at him defiantly, challenging him with her eyes.

  The princess had assured Eyub that there was no need for him to keep their hands tied, but he would not relent, although he did seem slightly ashamed of his refusal. The Eblans were clearly exhausted by whatever ordeals they had undergone. Once they had all assembled, the greater number had laid out sleeping-mats and thrown themselves down.

  There was an element of despair in their fear.

  One man had been sent back to the ford to keep watch, while another had been stationed in the bushes where Lucrezia and Elema had stood.

  Apart from these two, only Eyub now remained awake, and only he was free to take an interest in the two women. He seemed harmless enough he had touched Lucrezia only once, and that for the sole purpose of examining the texture of her clothing. He seemed far more ambivalent about her than Elema, whom he clearly regarded as an enemy by virtue of her pale skin. His men had not relished their encounter with the dark landers Lucrezia grudgingly admitted to herself that his present attitude was understandable.

  Lucrezia was able by now to meet Eyub's troubled gaze sternly. She had contrived to hide the signs of her grief over the loss of Hyry Keshvara.

  Although he was standing and she was sitting, and his hands were free while hers were not, she did not feel that the advantage was entirely his. She had watched the Eblans carefully while they made ready for sleep, and was confident that they were primitive by comparison with her own people. They had very little 301

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  metal with them; almost all their cooking apparatus seemed to be made of stone and glass, even their knives, forks and spoons.

  Their clothes were well tailored, which suggested that they had good needles, but the saddles and harnesses their horses wore were crude.

  Eyub came to a sudden decision and sat down in front of the princess, leaning forward so that he could speak to her in a low I: voice.

  "You are not a native of the forest," he said cautiously.

  "You come from a city, as we do a great city, so you say. How many people has it?"

  "Two hundred thousand live within the city walls," she informed him matter-of-factly.

  "A further half-million live in the surrounding lands of Xandna itself. The western and southern provinces contain two million more. I don't know how many people live in the Thousand Isles, but there must be at least a million and a half, probably two.

  Say five million in the empire as a whole. What population has Ebia? "

  "Not nearly as many," he conceded. He spoke guardedly, trying to imply that Ebia might have been comparable with Xandria but happened to be a little smaller, but it was obvious that the figures Lucrezia had quoted were of an order of magnitude higher than he could have imagined.

  "Where is Ebia, exactly?" Lrc'rezia asked, while his mind was still distracted by contemplation of the figures.

  "It's the biggest of the river towns," he said vaguely.

  "It's rumoured that the Cities of the Plain in the far south have more people, but no one from that region has come to Ebia in my' lifetime

  "Do you mean this river?" she asked sharply.

  "No. There's another river, much bigger and deeper than this one, which flows south from the Dragomite Hills. It passes through Ebia and several smaller towns before veering westwards into the Soursweet Marshes. You're a person of rank, I presume?"

  Eucrezia had told him her given name but not her title; it was, however, obvious from her clothes although they were rather dirty and ragged by now-and her unspoiled hands that she was a leisured person, unlike Elema. She contented herself with saying: "I'm high-born, within the greatest empire in the whole world." She was quick to add: "I can speak for the empire; any treaties which I make will be honoured by my people."

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  He was sceptical about that, as he had every right to be.

  "There are some in Ebia who boast of their knowledge of the world," he observed obliquely, 'but the lore masters claim that the globe's circumference is not less than sixty thousand kirns. If so, it would take half a lifetime to ride around it, even if the road did not run through all kinds of unearthly wilderness. Who can possibly say that any city is the greatest in the whole world? "

  "In Xandria we know more of the world than most," she told him, unwilling to surrender the point even though his judgment seemed perfectly fair.

  "We command the waters of the Slithery Sea, which may not be the largest ocean in the world but has the advantage of not being too shallow. Although it has very many islands the greater number have harbours usable by deep-keeled and fully laden ships. Our merchants trade with two thousand other cities, none as great as Xandria."

  "Ebia is a great
city too," Eyub told her, with equally stubborn pride.

  "It has more water-mills than all the river towns put together, and better canals to irrigate the surrounding fields. We are by necessity a warrior race but we live in peace with our nearer neighbours. The drago mites have long been reckoned our enemies, but they never bothered us unduly until the plague came. When we realised that the nearer hills had been depopulated we set forth to explore the extent of the disaster. We did not expect to encounter the mound-women, although we have legends about girl-children being stolen by drago mites to serve as nest-slaves. Are the mound-women your allies? Do your merchants trade with them?"

  "Dragomites are unknown in the lands north of the forest," Lucrezia told him.

  "Few men of Xandria have ever seen one, although our merchant-adventurers are prodigious travellers. The dark landers are our friends, but they too had only legends concerning humans associated with drago mites until the forest was invaded. If dark landers attacked you, they must have mistaken you for the drago mite-people."

  "How could they do that?" Eyub wanted to know.

  "Are we not men? Have we not horses to ride?"

  "They regard the forest as their own territory," Lucrezia said defensively.

  "This is a time of crisis for them, and they are apprehensive. Some among them are talking of the end of the 303

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  world. The warriors who attacked you

  made a mistake, which needs to be repaired" You have nothing to fear from Elema, and would be wise to befriend her before more dark landers pass this way, lest another mistake should be made. "

  Eyub spared Elema a passing glance. She continued to ignore him; she refused to speak to him while her hands were tied. || Lucrezia wondered whether she ought to have been similarly proud.

  "Are you, then, a merchant-adventurer?" Eyub asked of Lucrezia.

  "My erstwhile companion is or was," she countered.

  "The falling tree which brought your men here carried her away in its crown.

  She must have been stung by a flower worm while trying to obtain a clearer sight of your men."

  Eyub arched a sceptical eyebrow at this, although he must have deduced from the horses and the outlay of their camp that Lucrezia had had another companion.

  "We were waiting here to join a much larger company," Lucrezia added cautiously.

  "They should be here any day. They are more than a dozen strong, and very well armed, but they will do you no harm if you meet them peaceably. Elema and I can both be useful to you as intermediaries, but if you insist on keeping us prisoner you will surely invite the enmjty of our friends."

  So this is the game of diplomacy, she thought proudly. / believe I have a talent for it. She knew" however, that the proper time for self-congratulation would not arrive until her hands were freed.

  "Where is this larger company going?" Eyub asked quietly.

  "And why?"

  There seemed to be no reason to withhold that information, so she answered promptly and accurately.

  "Rumour had reached Xandria that it might now be possible, for the first time in many generations, to cross the Dragomite Hills. My friend had earlier bought goods in the forest which were said to have come from the Navel of the World."

  She was about to add that these goods had been supplied by bronze men, but thought better of it. The Eblans seemed to be at odds with so many people that mention of another group might complicate matters further. Instead, she said: "Perhaps it was your people who sold these things to my friend?"

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  Eyub shook his head pensively.

  "The Navel of the World and the so-called Chimera's Cradle are mere myths,"

  he told her firmly.

  "They're said to lie in the far south-west, beyond Salamander's Fire and the Silver Thorns, but no one who values his life has gone into those regions for centuries. Whoever sold the things you mention must have been lying about their origins, perhaps to boost the price. They might have been from one of the down river towns, whose people are somewhat given to lying but they might not." His tone implied that the latter possibility was the more ominous.

  "Wherever they came from," Lucrezia said, 'the fact that they came at all was enough to excite interest in Xandria. My companion and others were anxious to discover whether there was indeed a road through the Dragomite Hills. "

  "I can assure you that there is no road," said Eyub, with a short, barking laugh.

  "But there is a way of sorts, littered with dead drago mites and the putrefying produce of their unearthly fields. The world is changing, it seems. There has been a great shift in the fortunes of the drago mites - and also, it is said, of the Serpents in the west. I cannot believe that the world is ending, but I could believe that it is the beginning of the end for everything unearthly which I would reckon a good thing, although the mound-women might not agree."

  "The dark landers certainly wouldn't," Lucrezia observed.

  "The trees which make up this forest are themselves unearthly. Perhaps that's why they're so anxious. Perhaps they fear and justifiably so that the blight might spread from the hills to the forest. There is little that is unearthly in the lands around Ebia, I take it?"

  "Ebia and its neighbours occupy the best and purest land to be found between the Soursweet Marshes and the Spangled Desert," he said proudly, 'our ancestors often had to hold it against invaders, and we remain as zealous as they to root out any and all unearthly things which threaten to become established there. "

  That was not the philosophy of the bronze men who sold Hyry Keshvara the seeds which drew me into this affair, Lucrezia thought. These are simple-minded folk more simple-minded, in their way, than the dark landers who make more complicated calculations as to what might be reckoned tainted.

  "You've been forced to stray further from your homeland than you would have liked, I believe," she said carefully.

  "You didn't 305

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  cross the ford hoping to make friends on this side of the river, I think you've been driven north by angry pursuers." I Eyub did not confirm this guess, but the manner of his silence led her to conclude that she was right. Perhaps the Eblans had never intended to enter the forest, nor would have had it not been for their unexpected encounter with the drago mites human allies.

  "My friends are peaceful men," Lucrezia said.

  "They're interested in exploration and the possibility of opening new trade-routes. The dark landers are not barbarians, even though they live simply, and they aren't inclined to wage war against their neighbours unless they're threatened, as they were by the recent incursion of drago mites They attacked you because of a misunderstanding, but they aren't your enemies, and will become your friends as they are ours if you let them. Many of them know what it is to fight drago mites and will pay you the respect you deserve if you are drago mite-fighters too. Is it not so, Elema?"

  Elema was perfectly prepared to talk to Lucrezia, if not to Eyub. "It is true," she said calmly.

  "I could take these men to a meeting of the Uluru, so that they could explain who and what they are. The Uluru could teach them signs which would announce them to all dark lander warriors as friends."

  "And I could speak on your behalf to my friends," Lucrezia added, speaking directly to the Eblan leader.

  "Perhaps we can combine forces, to make sure that we can cross the southern reaches of the forest and the Dragomite Hills in safety. You might sell your services as guides if you already know a safe way through the hills, and you would certainly benefit from being allied with a heavily armed company like ours."

  Eyub was unprepared to take all this on trust, although he mus
t have desired very ardently to believe it.

  "When can you make good these fine promises?" he asked suspiciously.

  "As soon as you will permit it," Lucrezia said, hoping that it might be true although she was uncomfortably aware of the fact that she could not be certain of a warm welcome from Carus Fraxinus and Aulakh Phar now that Hyry was not with her.

  "I must think carefully about what you have told me," he said, with uneasy formality.

  "I fear that I'm very tired. When dawn comes and my men have rested we will speak again . . . until then, I fear, I must keep you tied. I'm truly sorry."

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  The princess opened her mouth to protest, but then thought better of it.

  Eyub was a long way from home, and things had obviously gone badly for him.

  The prospect of doubling the strength of his company for the return journey southwards- and increasing its steel a hundredfold would in the end prove irresistible, but he dared not take everything she had said on trust, and he must be aware of the grave risks involved in greeting a superior force of total strangers with open arms. Lucrezia understood that.

  She also understood, of course, that his natural anxieties were not entirely unjustified. Knowing her father and his ministers as she did, Lucrezia did not doubt that they would delight in the notion of adding yet another city to the empire's list of subject states, even though Ebia was so far away that it could never be anything but a client of Xandrian mercantile endeavours. A nation as iron-poor as Ebia seemed to be might be very vulnerable to that kind of trade even though it had nothing to fear from Xandria's armies.

  Eyub had already risen to go to his bed, but he paused. These things that were brought across the hills from the southern side and sold to your friend," he said, speculatively.

  "What were they?"

  Lucrezia hesitated, but she didn't want to seem overly evasive or be caught out in a downright lie.

  "I encountered only one of them," she confessed.