The Serpent Gift

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  I didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t something I could control. But suddenly it was there, the Shamer’s voice. And Sezuan raised his eyes to mine as if he had to.

  “Oh yes,” he murmured, “I feel ashamed.”

  “At what?”

  “I did not kill your dog. It was not my hand that dropped the coppertail on you. It was not me. But it is my fault that Shadow is the way he is.”

  I caught a glimpse of something he remembered. A small boy unable to sleep. An older boy singing to him.

  “He is your brother!”

  “Half brother. My mother’s son by another man.”

  One hand stole up to touch the serpent earring. I don’t think he even noticed it himself.

  “My mother bore twelve children,” he said in an odd, flat voice. “For the sake of the family. Always for the sake of the family. To make the gift grow stronger, and our house more powerful.” His lips twitched, but I wasn’t sure it was meant to be a smile. “She was furious when your mother ran off. The whole household trembled for weeks. But even though we searched until we had half killed the horses, we never found Melussina. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone go against my mother’s will and get away with it.”

  I couldn’t help thinking what would have happened if my mother hadn’t escaped. How different my life would have been. The whole household trembled for weeks. No, I had to count myself lucky that I had never had to meet Sezuan’s mother. My grandmother. Grandmother. The word sat oddly in my mouth.

  “How could she care for so many children?”

  “She didn’t. Not really. It was only those of us who had the gift that she found interesting. The rest were cared for by servants.”

  “That’s a strange way to be a mother!”

  He shook his head slightly. “Perhaps it is. But when you are born to the life, you do not wonder at it. Her own mother had done the same thing. For the sake of the family.”

  It seemed cold. And I remembered Mama’s voice: Your mother sent you to me the way they send a stud to the mare. Because she thought the offspring might be interesting.

  Cold, yes. And I had been created almost as coldly.

  “When I was a boy, I was proud to be one of my mother’s true children,” said Sezuan in a strangely bitter tone of voice. “That was what she called us. The ones that did not disappoint her. Sometimes I wonder whether those of us who were raised in the servants’ wing were not the lucky ones.”

  “Was Shadow one of the true children?”

  “Nazim. Nazim was borderline. He went to the servants’ wing more than once. But each time he succeeded in doing something that convinced Mother that he was worth bothering about after all. Finally she gave him to me as a sort of test piece. If I could rouse Nazim’s gift and make it useful, she would consider me fully trained.”

  He looked across his shoulder, in the direction of our old camp. Shadow’s keening was still very loud.

  “Nazim was twelve. I was twenty-one. We were both much too young.”

  I raised my head with a jerk. Was Shadow… was Nazim really almost ten years younger than Sezuan? Anyone seeing them today would think it was the other way around. Much of the time, Shadow looked like an old man, even though he talked almost like a child.

  “I was strong, and proud of my strength. And Nazim wanted it so badly. He wanted to be one of us, one of the true children. But his gift was weak. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how severely I tasked him, nothing much came of it. And that was when I decided to give him the dream powder.”

  Sezuan met my glance. His eyes were like dark caverns.

  “I didn’t do it for him,” he said hoarsely. “Or not only for him. It was because I would not suffer defeat. I wanted to pass the test. I wanted to become a master. And I did.” He licked his lips and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he forced himself to open them again. “I became Master. And Shadow became Shadow. Not all at once. But gradually. Nazim seeped away, day by day, year by year. Until there was only Shadow left. Shadow thinks I have stolen his soul and that one day he will force me into giving it back. Master will be Shadow, and Shadow will be Master. You must have heard him say it.”

  I nodded, shivering a little. The Day of Vengeance, he had called it. And on that day, Death will eat his fill of little girls.

  “In a way he is right,” said Sezuan slowly. “One may say that I took his soul. But I am afraid that he will never get it back.”

  Finally, Shadow fell silent. Perhaps he was asleep. I clutched the blanket tightly around me. The last of the day’s heat had left the rocks, and the chill nipped at your ears and nose if you didn’t wrap up. I was thirsty, and my throat was dry, but I was too tired and too loath to give up the blanket’s warmth to go find the water skin.

  “Sezuan?” I whispered, tentatively. I still couldn’t make myself say the word “father” out loud.

  “Mmmh?” His voice was slurred with sleep.

  “If we have to bring Shadow along, then we’ll never make it into the Sagisburg.”

  He sighed. “No. You may be right.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  He was quiet for a while.

  “Do not worry about it,” he said.

  “We have to free Davin and Nico.” I wanted to tell him about my dream, but didn’t dare after all. It was almost as if it would become more real if I said it out loud. As if Death would somehow hear me and move closer, if he heard his name spoken. “You promised!”

  “Yes. I promised.” I could hear him stirring—perhaps he had rolled over. “Go to sleep now.”

  “But—”

  “I shall think of something. Go to sleep.”

  It took another six days for us to reach Sagia, the town below the Sagisburg. Every mile was a nightmare. We had very little to eat because we couldn’t let Shadow near to other people, and we had very little sleep because we had to tie him up at night, and when we did that, he howled like a dog, like he had done the first night. It is incredible how much you can come to hate someone who keeps you awake night after night. In the end I was wishing desperately that he had never been born. Or at least had been born so far away that I would never have had to feel the grasp of his bony fingers, smell his sour smell, or hear his shrill voice.

  Now, here we were, in a small orchard of quince trees just outside town. The quinces were nothing but small, brownish green knobs, completely inedible. But down there in the town were three inns, we had been told. Oh, to be able to take a room in one of them, to be able to bathe and eat my fill and sleep until I was no longer completely exhausted. Just one night’s sleep, I prayed. Just one. Then I might be able to believe again in Sezuan’s infallible Blackmaster powers. I might be able to believe once more that he would be able to get into the Sagisburg, free Davin and Nico, and get away with them unseen. We were so close now. If I looked up high enough, I could see the jutting gray ramparts of the Burg. I could see the houses of Sagia, with their sharply pointed slate roofs, stone walls, and tarred dark shutters. And the city gates. It would take me less than an hour to walk there. But with Shadow in tow, we wouldn’t even make it into town, to say nothing of getting unnoticed through the streets, up the castle road, across the dragon pits we had heard of, and through the big black iron gates of the Sagisburg itself.

  “You said you would think of something,” I whispered reproachfully. “What are you going to do? Tie him up? Lock him up in some cave? We have to do something.”

  “Dina,” he said tonelessly, “stop pestering me.”

  He didn’t look well. Worn out, sick, and exhausted. And more than that. His eyes were strangely dead. Maybe I was wrong to pester him, as he called it. But I was tired too. And hungry, and desperate. Davin and Nico had been prisoners in the Sagisburg for… for more days than I could readily count. More than a week. Nearly two. I hated to think what might have happened to them in all that time.

  “You made me a promise,” I said. “We made a deal. If you cheat me now, I’ll—I don’t want
to be your daughter!” It hurt unexpectedly to say it. In my own mind, I had begun to think of him as my father.

  He was quiet for a terribly long time. I grew scared that he was working up to telling me that it couldn’t be done, we would just have to turn back and go home. Perhaps it had never been possible. Perhaps he had made it all up in order to lure me away from Mama? The thought made me cold to the marrow and beyond. But Mama had believed it, hadn’t she? She had believed that he could do it. She just hadn’t been willing to pay the price.

  “Wait for me by the city gates,” he said.

  My heart skipped a beat. He had thought of something. But why wouldn’t he tell me what it was?

  “Sezuan—”

  “Go,” he said. “It will not take very long.”

  He took the flute from his belt, and I nodded to myself. I knew now what he meant to do. He would give Shadow a dream. And when Shadow came to his senses, we would be on the other side of the city walls. Now, if only Shadow didn’t manage to sneak in after us. He could be clever when he wanted to. How long could Sezuan make the dream last?

  Shadow, who had been trying to eat the inedible quince buds, snapped around as if pulled by an invisible string. It was as if he had some sixth sense that alerted him whenever Sezuan touched the flute.

  “A dream,” he whispered. “Master will give Shadow a dream?”

  “Yes,” said Sezuan. “Dina. Go. Wait for me by the gates.”

  I trudged along the road. The dust turned the toes of my shoes pale yellow. On either side of the cart trail the thistles grew higher than my head, and bees were buzzing in the blue and purple flowers.

  Behind me, Sezuan had begun to play. I walked on another few paces. Then my feet stopped without any orders from me.

  This wasn’t like the last time he had given Shadow the dream he so hotly desired. Nor was it like the time he had tried to call him out of hiding. I had never heard Sezuan play like this before.

  It was broad day. The sun was shining, veiled only by a thin cover of clouds. And yet I thought of moonlight. Moonlight, and velvet-soft scented summer darkness. A bird hearing those notes would look for its nest. A kitten would seek its mother. Home, said the flute. Shelter. Rest. It is time to sleep now.

  Was it my imagination, or had the day grown darker? A dove in a rowan tree by the road rubbed its beak against its chest and then tucked its head under one wing. The bees had stopped buzzing among the thistle flowers. Even the wind had died down.

  Rest now, whispered the notes. Sleep. You are safe now. Harm cannot reach you here.

  It was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. Like a sunset. Like icicles just before they melt. But I had begun to shake all over. I was thinking of my dream. Of Davin. He is not here. Half buried, his eyes closed… and still the flute kept playing:

  Rest now, tired eyes.

  Heart, be still. Stop beating.

  “No!”

  I meant to shout it, but no sound came. It was as if the flute had stolen my breath, and with it my voice. I closed my ears with my fingers to try to shut out the sound. I was staggering along on stiff, unwilling legs, not toward the city gates anymore, but back to the quince trees. I couldn’t hurry, but it didn’t matter anymore. I knew it was already too late.

  The notes died away. All at once, there was wind again, and sunlight, and the sharp smells of dust and thistles and sage. The dove from the rowan tree beat its wings and flew off.

  Sezuan was sitting with his back against a quince tree. Shadow’s head rested in his lap. But Shadow’s body was limp and lifeless, without a heartbeat, without breath. I knew he was dead.

  “You killed him,” I said. “You… you played him to death.”

  At first, Sezuan didn’t answer. The flute lay on the ground, and his hands looked empty and powerless without it. He himself looked barely alive.

  “I told you to wait by the gates,” he finally said. His voice was no more than a ragged thread, and he made no attempt to deny it or defend himself. Instead he looked at me in wonder. “Dina? Are you crying? Are you crying because of him?”

  “Of course I am!”

  “But he did you so much harm.”

  I didn’t answer. And still, Sezuan kept looking at me as if my crying made no sense to him.

  “He would have given us away,” he finally said, as if that were reason enough.

  “But you can’t just… can’t just…”

  But I had practically asked him to. My own share of the blame cut me like glass. I choked back a sob.

  Sezuan slowly rose. He came toward me and might have wanted to comfort me, to hold me. But I could only see his hands, his slender, beautiful flute player’s hands that had just killed a living human being. I backed away and wouldn’t let him touch me.

  He halted. He looked at me for a long time, and his gaze hurt.

  “I have to hide him,” he said. “Bury him. Stay here until I come back.”

  He bent to pick up Shadow, holding him in his arms like one holds a child. It looked as if the dead body weighed nothing at all.

  I still didn’t say anything. I was shaking all over like a dog that had just been beaten. I wished I had never set eyes on him. I wished I had never seen either of them, him or Shadow. I wanted to go home. I didn’t have a home. I wasn’t even sure I had a mother anymore, because who would want a child who had him for a father? He had played him to death. He had stolen his breath and stopped his heart and killed him dead with his serpent arts. And he didn’t understand why I was crying?

  He stood there with his dead half brother in his arms, and his face was as closed and strange to me as if I had never seen him before. “Dina. I mean it. Stay here.”

  “Yes,” I said. I was afraid to do anything else.

  DINA

  A Dead Man

  “Are you not going to eat anything?”

  Mutely, I shook my head.

  “Dina.” He pushed the dish toward me. “You need it.”

  I stared down at the dead chicken lying there with its broiled thighbones jutting into the air. It might have been pecking corn in the yard this very morning, until someone had caught it, chopped off its head, and roasted it for supper. There was a sour taste in my mouth, as if I had just thrown up. I couldn’t eat a dead chicken right now. I wasn’t too sure I would ever be able to eat anything dead again.

  “Eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He glanced quickly around the inn’s aleroom.

  “People are looking,” he said.

  I didn’t care.

  “Make them see something else,” I said bitterly. “You who are so good at lies.”

  His hand twitched, but his face was as expressionless as it had been ever since he killed Shadow.

  “I am very tired, Dina,” he said tonelessly. “And so are you. If you do not eat, you will be ill. Can we afford to wait around for a few days while you get well? Think about it.”

  I hated him. I hated his hands and his voice and his cold sensible reason that could always line things up in a way that left you no choice. How I hated him. But I ate a little bread.

  Getting into Sagia had proved unexpectedly difficult. The guards at the gate wanted to see all sorts of papers that we didn’t have. “Travel documents,” they called them. In these parts, apparently one had to have the permission of the Prince in order to go from one town to the next. I would have thought that Sezuan could easily persuade them to see him as a fine gentleman with no need for such trivialities, but he just stood there, looking tired and dirty, as if he were no Blackmaster at all, but just a road-worn common man with a donkey and a scared and silent girl he claimed was his daughter. Finally he had to pay a fine. And we had to sell the donkey to pay for a room at the Black Dragon, the cheapest of Sagia’s three inns.

  Sezuan ate the rest of the chicken. Six marks it had cost him, and he had had to lay his money on the table before the innkeeper would serve him. And this was the man who was supposed to talk the castle guards into lettin
g Davin and Nico go? A feeling of hopelessness spread through my body.

  “I need to sleep,” he said. “I think you should sleep, too. At any rate, you will come upstairs and rest.”

  The last bit was an order, that much was clear. I followed him up the stairs. He was right, people were looking at us. Perhaps they didn’t see strangers all that often?

  The room could hardly be called a room, we discovered. It was really just a sort of booth closed off with a curtain so faded and worn one could hardly tell it had once been blue. There was a bedstead with a mattress of straw, and two pegs to hang one’s clothes on. That was all.

  “Get in,” he said. “You will sleep on the inside.”

  Was he afraid I would run off while he slept? Or was he still trying to take care of me? I didn’t know. I was so tired I almost didn’t care. The mattress had a sour unwashed smell that reminded me of Shadow. But I rolled myself up in my blanket and fell asleep all the same.

  I woke later in the afternoon because the bedstead creaked. Sezuan had risen. Had he slept? He looked no less exhausted.

  “I am going to look at the castle gates,” he said when he saw that I was awake. “I want to know what sort of people they let in and out.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Can I leave you, Dina?”

  What did he mean? Was he asking me whether I would run away, or whether I was afraid to be left on my own?

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  But he kept looking at me as if he wasn’t sure.

  “Go on!” I said.

  “Sleep a little more, if you can. I will be back soon.”

  And he finally went.

  I lay for a while staring at the rough boards of the ceiling. Once they had been whitewashed, I supposed, but now they had an indefinite grayish yellow color, with stains where the rain had got in. From the cracks hung strange fronds of cobwebs, dust, and other kinds of dirt. There were eleven boards in our bit of ceiling. I counted them. Twice. Then I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, but even though I was tired, sleep wouldn’t come.