On the surface above, the sandstorm raged for the third or fourth day—he’d lost count. In this room where Sandy lay so close to death, a quiet and cool atmosphere prevailed, suitable for an invalid. The flames of the massed candles hardly flickered. She lay motionless beneath the red, blue, and yellow striped wraps, her hair curling against her head. The dose of some mysterious liquid administered by the local healer had made her breathing less labored. Mark had received the same potion to drink and found relief from nausea and dizziness within moments. His arm burned, but the swelling subsided. Mark rolled his sleeve up again, checking to make sure, as much as he could tell in the dim torch light.
He lounged on the low chair next to the bed, oblivious to the continued comings and goings of the Mikkonite women. He ignored the tray of food and drink placed at his elbow. When it was removed, hours later the serving woman clucked her tongue in dismay to find the offerings untouched. To please his hosts, he sipped the fruit juice and took a few bites of a meat-stuffed roll. Only then would the servant take the rest of the food and leave him alone.
He held Sandy’s hand, so cold yet with a reassuringly steady pulse at the wrist. He stared at her serene face, noting the fine lines above her eyebrows and around her eyes. She was a remarkably beautiful woman now, not the girl he’d loved. So many long years had passed while he’d been in exile in the Sectors and she’d been enmeshed in her grandmother’s dynastic schemes. Becoming a doctor, of all things. He admitted he hadn’t given her enough credit for the accomplishment, wondered what drove her to make the choice.
He couldn’t believe he might lose her now, on a world alien to both of them, among strangers. His heart stuttered as he considered how much was unsaid between them. His fault too, all his fault. She’d been ready to welcome him right back into her heart where they’d left off over twenty years ago, but he’d held himself aloof, stubborn, blaming her for things she was innocent of. Afraid to tear down the walls he’d constructed for himself. He’d said some deliberately hurtful things to keep her at a distance until it suited him to seek rapprochement, if it ever did.
Lajollae had sent them into their own private Eden, and he’d been impatient to break free, frightened of the confinement. Action over emotion. His stupid, self-defeating motto.
Sandy had kept her own thoughts and wishes to herself, accompanied him on this wild goose chase with people she didn’t know, committed to a cause she didn’t believe in, rather than lose him again.
“Please, you have to survive this. Come back to me. We can sort out the barriers between us.” Smoothing the damp curls off her face, he brushed a kiss on her forehead. “I promise on my life—” He broke off, hearing a faint stirring in the hall behind him.
“She remains unconscious?”
Mark realized Jagrahim stood on the threshold, one hand holding aside the leather curtain trimmed with cascades of amber beads. “No change.”
“Come, I wish to show you something,” the chief told him.
Incredulous anyone would expect him to abandon Sandy while she was helpless, he knew his tone skirted rudeness. “I can’t leave her. It’ll have to wait.”
“My wife will sit with her. You remember her? She is our healer.”
Robes fluttering, the shy village woman stepped from behind her tall husband and moved to the bedside. She laid one graceful hand on Sandy’s brow. Frowning, the princess muttered something and shifted on the mattress to avoid even such a light touch.
The healer showed no sign of dismay. “I’m pleased by the progress the wound on her arm shows.” She peeled back Sandy’s sleeve much as Mark had done a few moments ago. “The marks are fading and receding. The swelling subsides by the hour. The poison leaves her system.”
“Please,” the chief said to Mark, “this will only take a few moments. Surely you trust my wife to watch over her patient?”
“What is it I need to see?”
“Just come and perhaps you will understand.”
Mark squeezed Sandy’s hand and laid it by her side on the colorful blanket. Rising, he stretched muscles cramped after the long hours of motionless vigil. He allowed the chief’s wife to slip past him and sit in the chair he’d vacated.
He followed Jagrahim into the corridor, deserted at this hour. His companion walked without talking through a succession of hallways. The chief led Mark into a large chamber filled floor to ceiling with shelves holding thousands of scrolls. A long, shiny table occupied the middle of the room, its legs graceful depictions of some birdlike creature. A scroll had been partially unspooled and spread out, waiting for them, the edges anchored with glimmering green and blue stones carved into fanciful shapes of birds and fish.
“What is all this?” Mark paused on the threshold, breathing in the musty but not unpleasant smell, stunned by the sight of thousands of scrolls.
“The Library of Khunarum himself.” Jagrahim’s voice held pride. “When the great city perished from the lives of men, and the people fled away to the south, my tribe received the duty and honor of preserving the knowledge. We even have some of the oldest books known to man.” He gestured to a far corner of the room, dark and shadowed. “Stone tablets. No one can decipher them any longer, yet we preserve them.”
“Can you read these?” Mark had been in the great Archives of the Sectors once, and its keepers had been no less proud of the accumulated knowledge.
“Three are appointed in each succeeding generation to learn the written language. We used to maintain a cadre of five readers, but my people are dwindling in number. Life here in the Empty Lands is hard. We can’t spare so many these days who don’t contribute to the direct work of keeping the village alive. But yes, I can read the scrolls.”
“This is fascinating,” Mark said with a diplomacy he didn’t feel. “Rothan and Tia will want to see this. But why did you bring me here tonight?”
“After hearing your description of the serpent in the temple, I remembered a reference to such a creature. I’ve spent the night searching the pertinent scrolls.” He gestured at the scroll spread open on the table.
“Is there mention of an antidote for the venom?”
Jagrahim didn’t answer but drew him to the table. “Is this the creature?”
Moving a candle closer, Mark leaned over the page and swallowed hard. There on the parchment, depicted by the brushstrokes of some long-dead master artist, lay the snake, drawn half life-size. “Oh yes, I’d know it anywhere.” He was fascinated by the sparkling turquoise eyes, almost alive on the paper, staring at him. Tightly coiled, the milky white body was limned with some iridescent substance, to suggest the eerie transparency of the actual reptile’s scales. “What does the text say?”
The desert chieftain regarded him with an odd expression. He didn’t answer, but carefully unrolled the scroll a few more turns. Mark could see the edges were crumbling. It must be beyond ancient. Long lines of elegant symbols surrounded the depiction of the snake.
The desert chief repositioned the anchor stones. “Read for yourself.”
Mark shook his head. Even if this was High Chetal in the written format, which he doubted, his hypno training covered spoken languages only. He could no more read this than the well-meaning man opposite him could speak Outlier. “I can’t. Translate for me, please.”
“This is Sherabti, companion to the Goddess Mother Nuet, She Who Came Before. She who gave birth to the parents of the gods who now guard the world and the underworld, the life and the afterlife. The Goddess Mother was powerful, all knowing. You took shelter in her temple, you know. Sherabti served as her messenger, her watcher—”
“Wait just a moment.” Mark held up his hands against the flood of words. “You’re talking about this snake as if it’s a myth.”
Jagrahim seemed to be in unmistakable agreement. “Myth, legend, divine being, who can say?”
Mark shook his head in quick, hot denial. “No, I stood this close to it. Then it bit Sandy. Hell, it bit me—look!” Mark shoved his sleeve aside to rev
eal the twin fang marks above his wrist on the inside of his left arm. The marks were red and purple, surrounded by a spectacular black bruise. “Lucky it ran out of venom, or I’d be in a coma too. The snake was real, all right. Mythical creatures don’t leave damage like this.”
“Did the others see it?”
“Well, no. I think Rothan caught a glimpse maybe. I’m telling you, a real serpent attacked us.”
“There’s no such creature known to my people, my lord, and we live in this desert. There are snakes, yes, and many are deadly. But this”—he tapped the crumbling, painted surface—“doesn’t exist, save in the oldest scrolls of a long-dead religion. The Goddess Mother isn’t served by any now. I remembered this picture because, as a child learning to read, I enjoyed the old stories. You were sheltering in what was her main temple, eons ago, when the Empty Lands were green and fertile and heavily populated.” He started to roll the document onto its ornately carved wooden spool.
Mark reached out to stop him. “Hang on a moment. What does it say about this Sherabti?”
“Sherabti’s role was the messenger of the Lady, as I told you already. The serpent could bring good or bad tidings—or warnings—as the Lady willed. It could kill, and it could bring life.”
“Confusing. And not one whole hell of a lot of help right now.” Mark permitted Jagrahim to complete his delicate task.
“I’m sorry. I assumed you’d want to have the details of what you were dealing with. Was I wrong?”
Mark accepted the chief had meant well. “I’m out of my depth here. I’m a soldier, you know? I can take a collection of hard facts and make them add up like a stack of bricks. You want to attack some kind of fortress, I’m your man. You want someone assassinated or kidnapped, I can do it. But what am I supposed to do with this kind of magical construct? And how do I use it to help Sandy? Do I go back there and tell her to wake up, quit faking it, because, hey, you were bitten by a mythological snake, not a real one?” He bit his lip against the flood of words. Panic over the possibility of losing Sandy was uncomfortably close to the surface of his emotions.
Jagrahim inserted the scroll into a jar with others and fastened a thin leather cover over the opening, knotting a string around the jar’s neck. “I regret having confused you more than I helped. You and your Lady of the Star Wind are sadly unprepared for what you’ve found upon your return to our world.”
Mark was unwilling to go into the whole discussion again of their actual identities. It wasn’t going to make any sense to Jagrahim, any more than stories of goddesses and their snake messengers made sense to him. Sometimes old truths were well buried in the mythology of a planet, but he didn’t have the training or the aptitude to try to ferret out from the deteriorating lore what might be of use in the current crisis. Frustrating to know there might be answers hidden from him in this room, but he had to accept defeat. “May I return to Sandy now?”
“Of course. Tomorrow I’ll have the readers search through more of the older scrolls, see if any further details can be gleaned about Sherabti.”
“I’d appreciate the effort.” Mark was being more diplomatic than truthful again. He didn’t think any myths or legends about snakes were going to help Sandy recover. His frustration was going to grow if people kept arguing with him about whether the snake existed. Damn it, he could prove the fucking thing had been real—didn’t he bear the fang marks? He rubbed at the ache where the snake had struck him.
Jagrahim led him through the winding corridors in silence.
“She hasn’t moved.” The chief’s wife slid from the chair to make room for Mark to resume his vigil. “She’s neither worse nor better. We can hope for no more at this stage.” She patted him on the arm in a maternal fashion. “You need rest as well.”
He gave her a tired grin, which was the best he could muster, and muttered his thanks.
“We’ll retire to our own chambers now,” Jagrahim said, arm around his diminutive wife. “Should you need anything in the night, a servant waits outside your door.”
“Thanks.” Mark sank into the vacated chair and took Sandy’s hand in his, not turning his head to watch his hosts leave. He harbored lingering doubts about the Mikkonite, questions he wanted answered, but he had to admit the tribe was taking good care of Sandy.
The seemingly endless night hours continued to drag by. The candles guttered. He didn’t mind sitting in the semidark. At some point, he fell asleep, unable to resist the demands of his tired body any longer.
“Mark?”
Her soft voice brought him awake hours later. He sat up, still holding her hand, and now she squeezed his. Examining her face intently, he asked, “How do you feel?”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know—sort of dizzy. Strange. I’ve been dreaming for the longest time.”
He laughed, not sure yet whether to be relieved. “You’ve been out for two and a half days.”
With one hand, she explored the back of her head gingerly. “Well, I guess I didn’t dream this. I smacked my head on the base of a column, didn’t I?”
“You sure did, as if the snakebite wasn’t injury enough. Is there anything I should do, check your reflexes or get you something from your medical kit?”
“No, if I made it to this point, I’m probably okay. No double vision, no weakness. Slight headache.” Eyes narrowed, she attempted to see through the gloom. “Where are we? Not at the oasis?”
“No, we’re in the village of the Mikkonite. Old allies of Rothan’s ancestors. The tribe rescued us from the sandstorm. It’s a long story. Do you want more light?”
“No.” She clutched at his hand as he made to rise from the chair to rekindle the lamps. “Don’t leave me again.”
“Never. Not in this lifetime. I’ve been a total fool. I’m sorry. I’ve had nothing to do but think while I’ve been sitting here. I prayed to the Lords of Space to pull you through, even though they probably don’t listen for appeals from this place.” He swallowed hard. “You were all I ever wanted, and then when I find you again, I waste the opportunity. I was being stubborn, holding your grandmother’s crimes against you. Not being willing to let my shields down and tell you—”
She reached with her free hand to touch his lips, stopping him in midsentence. “The past is finished, done. We agreed to start over and meet each other as we are now, remember? Besides, she told me we had to accept the situation here, since we’d made the choice already.”
He paused in the middle of plumping the pillows to make her a better backrest. “She?”
“I was dreaming. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. I went somewhere…else. Not this planet at all, but not like the Traveling. A beautiful room full of light.”
“Don’t tell me if remembering the dream distresses you.” The hairs on the back of his neck rose at the eerie way she was talking.
“I can’t remember the details now.” Sandy closed her eyes for a moment, long lashes brushing her cheeks before she blinked and stared at him. “The experience or vision is fading, piece by piece. But there was a woman, or maybe several women, from this world we’re on. She said she’d known me before, in another time, and she’d know me again in the future. She told me so many things, and now I can’t remember. I can’t even picture her face. She was so beautiful—it almost hurt to be in her presence. And there were others there too, but silent onlookers most of the time, watching me. And then the truly terrifying Mother arrived.” She broke off, laughing. “I must sound deranged to you.”
“Since we’ve been here, there’ve been so many strange things going on. I don’t discount anything anymore.” The way she talked of her experiences disturbed him. “The people here say the snake doesn’t exist. Not as I described it anyway.”
“Sherabti? But she does. She served the Mother. The young ones had no other way to bring me to them. But you weren’t there. You didn’t come.” She stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Sandy, I didn’t have any dreams at all. The venom sure affected us differently. I’ve ha
d a lot of inoculations against native toxins in a wide range over the years, which probably shielded me from the worst of the poison.”
“Some of the people there argued against letting me return to this life. I think at least one wanted me to die.” Sandy’s eyes filled with tears, and she reached for him.
Mark moved onto the bed, enfolding her in a comforting hug. She clung to him and cried. At a total loss now, he wondered how she knew the name of the mythical snake. Had he said it to Jagrahim once he reentered the bedchamber? He didn’t think so. Mark stayed silent, content to hold her and stroke her hair.
Wiping her eyes on the sleeve of the tunic the Mikkonite had dressed her in, she leaned against the pillow. “The choice was left to me at the end,” Sandy said with a small hiccup.
“What choice?”
“Whether to die or come back here.” Her words indicated she was somewhat disoriented.
“Thank you for choosing life, for choosing me,” he said, gratitude warming his heart even as he worried about the stability of her recovery.
“We can’t ever go home, you know.” She rested her head on his shoulder.
“I didn’t think we could. Lajollae made it pretty clear she sold one-way tickets.”
“I’d kind of hoped we might find a way, in the oasis. I know better now. We’ve got work to do here. We’re not the right people, not truly Star Wind and her consort, but we have to be, if we’re going to be on this world. We’ve got decisions ahead of us.” She worried at the fringe of the blanket, knotting and unknotting the strands.
Mark laid his hand over hers. “Sweetheart, don’t concern yourself about it now. I’m not pressing you for any decisions. You’re remembering remnants of dreams, as you said.”
“I’m afraid to sleep again.” She sounded drowsy. “But I can’t stay awake any longer either. My eyes won’t stay open. So tired—”
Lady of the Star Wind Page 11
