Serpents Rising (Eve of Redemption Book 3)

by Joe Jackson

  There was a brief conversation between Uldriana and the harmauth sentries. Though their dark hooves pawed the ground impatiently every so often, the guards seemed satisfied with whatever Uldriana told them. For that matter, so did Sonja and Danilynn, which Kari found a lot more comforting. She watched the swinging tails of the ram demons, which looked more like those of a lion, with a hairy tuft on the end. Kari wondered how expressive the tails were for the harmauths. It was only then that she came to the realization that they not only wore no clothes, but they carried no weapons. She had to wonder: was a harmauth that powerful that they didn’t even need weapons to deal with unruly members of the other demon races?

  The conversation lasted only a couple of minutes before the harmauths made dismissive gestures and continued on their way. Uldriana motioned for the others to follow her, but Sonja spoke up. “Is it true?” she asked. “Are you taking us to the city of Rulaj, and possibly to see King Emanitar?”

  “That was not my intention,” Uldriana said with a shake of her head, “though if you wish to see an elestram city, or meet with one of the eldest kings on all of Mehr’Durillia before we go to Saristor, we can do so. My intention was to travel towards Rulaj, but to go around it.”

  “What did the harmauths have to say?” Kari asked.

  “They just asked where we were headed, not much more,” Danilynn answered. “It’s strange that they simply took Uldriana at her word, but they did.”

  Kari considered that; it was possible it was all part of a trap, but it was also possible that what Uldriana had told her so far was true, and the guards in Tess’Vorg simply weren’t nosey. “Will it be dangerous for us to go to Rulaj?” she asked the mallasti girl. “Or will it delay us for too long?”

  “King Emanitar may find you to be a curiosity,” she answered. “I am not sure how he would react to finding that you are a hunter. I would assume he may believe that you are in his realm to cause trouble, and ask you to depart, but he would not likely cause you harm unless you gave him reason to do so.”

  “But Rulaj will otherwise be safe to, say, get a bath and resupply?”

  An odd look crossed Uldriana’s face. “Yes. Provided we do not announce ourselves or draw attention, King Emanitar will not likely take enough of an interest in three rir females to come see to us himself. We should be able to indulge ourselves in a bath, and take a night’s rest in a hostel without impacting the speed of our travels.”

  “How far is it to Rulaj?”

  “Three or four days’ travel,” the mallasti said, glancing to the northwest. “If you have never seen an elestram city before, it may be quite a tale to tell your friends when you return to your own home.”

  Kari nodded. “So the elestram prefer cities? They don’t live out in the open country like your kind?”

  Uldriana began walking again, and Kari and her companions followed along. “No, the elestram are a much more urban people, preferring their impressive architecture to the simple beauty of living in tandem with nature. They are the most intelligent of our peoples, and they build cities of not only impressive design and decor, but also of wonders that are not found in the other parts of Mehr’Durillia. It is hard for me to put into words; you will see for yourself.”

  They continued on for a few more days, crossing the golden fields of Tess’Vorg. The realm was as beautiful three days in as it had been at the border. They passed by other travelers, villages of mallasti, and the occasional harmauth patrol. None of the patrols stopped or even stared at the four women after the first time, and other than a curious glance here or there, the three rir women didn’t seem to attract much attention. The more Kari thought about it, it seemed to her that Uldriana drew more attention than Kari, Sonja, or Danilynn, perhaps because she was seen as leading the rir women on their journey.

  True to form, Uldriana interspersed some more lore and knowledge about Emanitar and his realm in between her lessons with Sonja. She talked a great deal about King Emanitar, most notably the fact that even with three mistresses and having been kast’wa to King Koursturaux, he had yet to sire an heir of either gender. Kari hadn’t considered it when Uldriana first mentioned it, but it became apparent that was an issue in light of King Sekassus’ attempt at murdering the mallasti king. In the back of her mind, Kari began to wonder if King Emanitar might be unable to sire a child.

  Kari was amazed that the journey had proven as worry-free as Amastri had suggested. She knew things were bound to change for the worse when they reached Sorelizar, but Kari started to get more and more curious about King Emanitar and, to a lesser extent, King Morduri. She wondered what it was the two neighboring kings wanted from their positions, and whether or not they were ever involved in plots against Citaria. While civilized and seemingly benevolent on the surface, Kari had doubts that they were that way to anyone besides their own people, and that in terms of their threat to Citaria, they were still enemies of Kari’s people.

  Not long after lunch on the fourth day within Tess’Vorg, the city of Rulaj came into sight. It was a rather conspicuous city on the open plains, and a lot of its detail was readily apparent even at a fair distance. Obelisks, sandstone statues, and walls inlaid with colored mosaics or bas relief artwork became identifiable even a mile from the city’s edge.

  “This place looks beautiful,” Sonja commented.

  “It certainly does,” Danilynn agreed. “Rather reminds me of the ice temples back home, or the terraced temple district of Dira Ch’Tori.”

  The closer they got, the more detail they could see: an aqueduct, several structures that appeared to be windmills, a grand and stately coliseum, and, not the least, a fortress-palace with high, pointed towers topped by flying flags. The flags, oddly enough, depicted a lion with the spots of a hyena all over it.

  “Wow,” was all Kari could manage to mutter as they continued along toward the city. Uldriana glanced at her with a slightly subdued smile.

  They began to follow a wide, dusty road, and traffic picked up as they got closer. Just as Kari had suspected over the past few days, a lot of the stares were actually directed at Uldriana. Kari and her friends, by comparison, didn’t draw much more than curious glances, no doubt because the people weren’t used to seeing rir. It further reinforced Kari’s perception that the people were more curious about why one of their own traveled with rir women.

  The people here were all clothed, just as Uldriana had suggested back in Moskarre. The mallasti tended to wear hand-woven, light garments made more for modesty than protection, though occasionally they were woven to include leather bits. Their garments were colorful and artistic by design, and many of the females they passed were wearing the pup carriers. Most of these had only a single pup in them, which Kari found curious. Most of the females in Moskarre had carried or nursed two to four pups at a time. Kari wasn’t sure if this development pointed to a high rate of infant mortality, or if those in Moskarre had raised their pups communally.

  A smile found its way to Kari’s face as she thought of the mallasti children as pups, and she had to remind herself not to become too enthralled with the demons. They were strange and new, and so Kari found them quite interesting, but she couldn’t afford to fall for the charms they possessed as a people and forget what they truly were. Kari understood she still had yet to see the absolute truth of this underworld, but everything from the stars at night, to the docility of the people of Moskarre, to the tolerance the people as a whole showed Kari and her friends, pointed to something being off with her Order’s perceptions.

  The elestram replaced the mallasti as the most prominent of the demon races when the friends reached the outer limits of the city. They were not unlike “The Wraith,” the elestram who’d saved Kari from the syrinthian assassin Irressa, and who acted as a not-so-imaginary friend for Kari’s son for months. The elestram were taller and more slender than the mallasti, most standing close to seven feet tall – or more when one took into account their high, pointed ears. They were lithe and graceful, and thoug
h they didn’t appear to build bulky muscle like the harmauths or even the mallasti, their long, lean muscles had a deceptive strength. Their faces were expressive, but seemed to most commonly have the same impassive, cold expression that the mallasti did. Their eyes were fascinatingly bright in color, and were ringed by either black flesh or short black fur that had the same effect as eyeliner.

  Kari took in the details of the elestram as they scrutinized her and her friends in turn. Many of the laborers wore clothing similar to that of the mallasti, but with more leather bits, allowing holsters and hooks for tools to be built right into their attire. The others wore very stylish pieces that were aesthetically pleasing and accentuated the alien beauty of their people: both males and females preferred chest coverings, but females left their bellies exposed and wore garments that drew attention to their hips. Kari found it strange that the elestram women would cover their breasts, but not the smaller nipples on their bellies. The smaller nipples weren’t prominent, and were usually fairly difficult to make out through the fur, but Kari was a stranger, so they drew more attention from her than other elestram or mallasti.

  The other details about the elestram that drew her attention were the different types of body art. Facial decorations seemed common: threaded beads or tasseled jewels between the brows of the females, lovely drawn or tattooed patterns under the eyes and across the cheeks, or sometimes they had shaved patterns on the arms that were underscored by tattoos. Earrings were common on both males and females alike, and with their long, pointed ears, some of them had dozens of rings through their pierced lobes. Kari saw one or two with an eyebrow or even navel piercing, but these seemed rather rare. Since Kari had no navel as a rir, she found the navel piercings to be the most interesting.

  Uldriana walked slowly to allow Kari and her friends to take in the sights of the city, so Kari took full advantage of it. The windmills weren’t like the typical ones Kari saw back home: these ones were tall and narrow, with fans that seemed as much for decoration as a practical purpose. They functioned in much the same way, but there were more of them in a small area, suggesting their design allowed them to be placed closer together without lower efficiency. Kari was no architect, but she could tell the elestram had put a lot of research and effort into honing their building crafts. The aqueduct struck Kari as odd, since the only source was a tower that seemed to be its beginning, and Kari wondered how or from where the tower produced water.

  The city smelled like its people, but it was not as unpleasant as Kari expected. The people had a slightly musky scent, as was common to those with fur, but the elestram seemed more accustomed to taking baths than their mallasti neighbors. Kari didn’t see any obvious signs of sanitation or sewers, but the city lacked any scents of waste, garbage, or rot that so commonly marked “civilization.” The word civilization brought the coliseum back to mind, and Kari turned to glance at it, wondering what sort of gladiatorial combat or games might take place therein.

  She didn’t get the chance to ask. “These glyphs...do the elestram inscribe them into the sides of the buildings?” Sonja asked as they continued into the heart of the city.

  Kari studied the calligraphy Sonja indicated. She had initially thought it was something akin to the calligraphy that adorned the tents of the czarikk or the mallasti. If Sonja referred to them as glyphs, though, Kari understood such meant they had some arcane purpose on top of their aesthetic design. Kari knew elestram wizards were among the most feared of underworld demons, and the presence of so many glyphs immediately put her on edge.

  “That they do,” Uldriana answered with a nod. “Are you familiar with these signs?”

  Sonja started to respond, but closed her mouth and shook her head. Danilynn, on the other hand, swiveled her head side to side, taking in the many glyphs around them. “My word,” she said, and she walked over to inspect the closest one.

  Kari marked the sudden interest of a nearby elestram laborer, but under Kari’s gaze, the demon turned and went back to his work. “What do you make of it?” she asked the priestess.

  Danilynn glanced at Uldriana and shook her head. “Not here,” the priestess said.

  The mallasti girl smiled and gestured for them to follow her again. She was as new to the city as any of the three rir women, but she had the advantage of being able to speak and read the local language. “Are you impressed with what you have seen so far?” she asked.

  “Very impressed. It’s not all that different from some of the cities back home, excepting for the style of architecture,” Sonja answered.

  “That and all the demons,” Kari finished, and Sonja nudged her with an elbow.

  Uldriana looked at Kari over her shoulder and then her gaze swung back and forth across the open streets. “I have yet to see even a single succubus or incubus since we entered the city,” she commented. “Why would you…” She took another few steps but then stopped and turned slowly to face Kari. “Wait, you believe…? Oh my; that explains much.” She suddenly looked embarrassed, and she continued on her way hurriedly.

  Kari looked to Sonja and Danilynn; both of them seemed just as surprised by Uldriana’s reaction. They followed her for several more minutes until she located a hostel near the center of the city. It was a simple, efficient structure with open archways and windows, and didn’t appear to have anyone staying at the present time. The lobby was empty but for a lone elestram reading a book in a corner by the open front windows. He put down his book and rose to his feet when he saw the visitors, and Kari saw that while he appeared to be an elestram, he had the heavier coat and coloration of a mallasti.

  “I assume you have never seen a mallestrem before,” Uldriana said quietly. “My people can breed with the elestram and the erestram, though an erestram breeding outside of its own kind at all is unheard of. Mallestrem are uncommon, but you will tend to see more of them when in the cities, where our folk intermingle.”

  She began to speak with the mallestrem proprietor in that other language of hers, but when Uldriana reached for her coin purse, Kari offered hers instead. The mallasti woman bowed her head in thanks and took an appropriate number of the metal marks. Once their rooms were paid for, the mallestrem showed them upstairs. He led them to a large, open sitting room with two smaller dormitories attached. The windows up here were open, but Kari could see that there were actual panes of glass in them that could be shut to give the women privacy. Kari looked around their temporary abode and saw a bath chamber among the smaller side rooms. While she looked around, she could hear Uldriana speak with the mallestrem in their other dialect.

  The bath chamber was impressive, and Kari called Danilynn and Sonja over to look at it as well. Two of its four walls were comprised entirely of mirrors, and in addition to the bathtub, there was a commode and two wash basins. The wash basins had drains in the bottom of them, something Kari saw only in the most luxurious of nobles’ houses, and they also had spigots that she knew were like automated hand-pumps. She found it odd that there would be a commode inside and on an upper floor, but she soon saw that it, too, drained out through the bottom to who-knew-where. A quick glance showed Kari that the bathtub was the same, and she realized Uldriana’s praise of elestram advances was not an idle comment.

  The mallestrem proprietor had left by the time Kari and her friends finished gawking at the lavatory, and Kari was curious what he’d spoken to Uldriana about for so long. “Was he asking about us?” she prodded, suspicious.

  “In a sense, he was asking about all of us,” the mallasti girl returned, and there was the faintest hint of a smile on her features. “He was offering his…services, should we require them. Tempting though it was, I declined, and took the liberty of doing so on your behalf as well.”

  “He was interested in us?” Kari asked curiously, and a glance to her friends told her they were wondering the same thing. Kari knew that exotic women sometimes drew interest from men who normally wouldn’t look outside their own race, but it still struck her as odd. On some level it ma
de sense that a demon would want to sample women of all kinds, but then Kari paused when she considered Uldriana’s reaction when Kari had called them demons in the first place.

  “He would not be a good or gracious host if he offered entertainment to only one of his four guests,” Uldriana returned, and she walked over to secure the door to their spacious abode. Once the door was closed and bolted, Kari and her friends shut the windows. The mallasti girl gestured toward the deep, cushioned chairs set about the sitting area. “Does it surprise you that a demon would offer you sexual pleasure? You will find that your kind are not considered at all unattractive to our peoples; you are alien and exotic, but there is an aesthetic pleasure to your forms that even…demons can plainly see.”

  “You seemed surprised when I called your people demons,” Kari said evenly, keeping her eye contact with the mallasti girl strong. “My kind aren’t called demonhunters for nothing.”

  “Yes, I suppose it all makes sense now: the name of your Order, the constant references to Mehr’Durillia as the underworld, your inherent distrust of all of my kind. You think…we are demons,” Uldriana said, trailing off with a shake of her head. She scoffed after a short stretch of silence and continued, “We have long believed that your kind are called demonhunters because of the way you viewed the creations of your Seril, and that your zeal against our own kind was, as you explained, due to the work of the kings and their servants on your world. Ketava, you are blind, ignorant, if you think we are the demons. It was long the belief of our people that your kind are demons.”

  There was a certain reciprocal amusing quality to that, but Kari shook her head. “Why would your people think we’re demons?”

  “Oh, we do not think that anymore, but when your race was young…,” Uldriana began. “Well, how else to put it? You have silver blood, and the nature of your gestation is completely magical. How many species have you ever encountered that have silver blood, or do not either attach to their young during gestation, or else encase them within the safety of an egg?”