by Scott Taylor
The Emerald Serpent loomed larger as he walked towards it. It was Zhada’s destination, though he had no interest in watching any ball games on either side. While he had watched a few contests, both in his younger days and since he’d returned to the city, it couldn’t compare to the thrill of a Lowl hunt, pursuing spiral-horned elk for endless leagues across the vast plain far to the north.
Perhaps the sport had had more meaning when it was played under the auspices of the priests who had once ruled this sacred district, in the days before the inexplicable disappearance of all the city’s inhabitants left Taux empty and open to whoever dared profane its mysteries and brave its lingering ghosts.
Zhada was heading instead for the Serpent, first and most famous of all the Black Gate’s taverns. Whoever had first claimed that half of the long viewing palace had known a trick or two about keeping customers coming back even more readily than they visited the neighbouring Silk Purse and that house’s fragrant courtesans.
The pastry triangle in Zhada’s hand was still warm and plump with hotly spiced meat and fruit. He wolfed it down, relishing the bite of the pepper pods. So much Human food was tediously bland to Lowl tastes, but Mistress Talleran was Taux-born and accustomed to using all the Free Coast’s bounty in her cooking.
“Here comes a hound for hire!”
Zhada halted as he rounded the corner into the wider thoroughfare called the Silver Circle that ran the full interior of the stadium’s centre.
“Varrach.” He let his hand rest lightly on the hilt of his sword. “Don’t you find the day a little chill?”
Like the rest of his followers, Varrach was shirtless despite the season. Zhada noted that three more had now followed his lead and gone under the needle for tattoos. At first glance the ink extended the Lowl pelt covering their heads and necks right across their human-framed shoulders and down their chests. A closer look would show they were no more furred than any particularly hairy human.
He also saw Varrach’s gaze drop to check that knotted ribbons secured his sword’s hilt to its scabbard, to signal that Zhada had no intention of duelling today.
The tan-furred Lowl squared his impressively muscled shoulders and stared straight into Zhada’s eyes. “I choose not to soothe the humans’ fears through wearing their clothes.”
“Then shouldn’t you be going bare arsed?” Zhada’s riposte was as swift as any blade.
Varrach clenched a fist beside his tattered ulama trousers, the loose cotton fabric cut short above his knees and bare feet. “And throw the ball straight into the Merchant Guild’s hands? Their Sturgeons would chain me like a cur in their lock-up for goading humans into unsanctioned fighting. Who would challenge their claim on this city then?”
“But you don’t care to challenge them in their own language.” Zhada interrupted with a gesture towards the men and women walking past, fewer than half of them sparing curious glances for this exchange in incomprehensible, Lowl speech.
Varrach’s scarred muzzle wrinkled as he drew dark lips back from his canine teeth. “I have nothing to say to such stunted specimens, as good as deaf and noseless.”
Zhada cocked his head. “Why do you feel so threatened when Vitcoska’s blessing has given us so many advantages over them? She chose to form us from humanity. Doesn’t denying that kinship insult her? Don’t you see it every time you look in a mirror?”
Truth be told, he wasn’t speaking to Varrach now but to the pack of younger Lowl loitering behind him. He noticed that a couple of those fool pups had done something to their eyes. No longer manlike, their gaze was as dark and featureless as any beast’s.
The fur on the back of Zhada’s neck bristled with irritation. He took an angry step towards the closest, ready to grab his scruff and shake some sense into him. “What are you going to do next? Cut off your thumbs so you’re left with useless paws and start scurrying around on all fours?”
Varrach moved to intercept him, both fists clenched. Zhada halted. He didn’t have time to waste on this nonsense or on trying to explain himself to the city’s blue-liveried guards.
Taking a swift sidestep to wrong foot Varrach, he went on his way without another word.
Taken by surprise, the tan-furred Lowl settled for shouting a last insult. “Be sure they reward you richly for putting their leash round your neck!”
Zhada ignored him, lengthening his stride. He didn’t want to be late for his meeting and the sun had already risen above the vast stadium. He hurried into its shadow, heading straight for the Emerald Serpent.
When he entered the tavern , he saw Lareo already deep in conversation with some Human. Zhada approached nevertheless, to make sure that the aging Eldaryn had seen him. The diminutive individual was barely two thirds the height of most humans, even sitting on his tall stool.
Catching the human’s scent, the Lowl’s nostrils flared. Magic. A Tome Mage. One of those cheats peddling magic-wrought fakery on the basis of some supposed kinship with true Wizards. As if such mountebanks had any link with those scholars who lived unseen in the Star Tower across the harbour!
“Zhada, good day to you.” Lareo waved to him over the human’s shoulder.
The Lowl shucked his backpack and dropped it on the floor to land with a solid thud. The man turned around in his chair, startled.
“Good day.” His smile widened. “Ah, I am looking for one of your kinsmen. Do you know a—” he hesitated “—one called Durrau?”
Zhada had the tome mage’s measure in an instant. Newly arrived in the city from one of the New Kingdoms, probably Dravaria. While he’d have heard of Lowl he’d never have seen one beyond the seas. He didn’t know how to pronounce their names, just as he didn’t realise that Zhada now baring his teeth was nothing akin to a Human smile.
“No.” He barely managed not to snarl the word.
“No matter,” the mage assured him. “Perhaps you might be interested in my wares?” He reached into a pocket. “An amulet of illusion, to let you walk the wider city without drawing undue attention,” he explained with feigned delicacy. “Anyone looking at you will see a wholly human visage—”
“You”ll excuse me, Master Mage, but my friend and I have urgent business.” Lareo spoke quickly, before Zhada could snap his furious refusal. “I will be in touch,” he promised.
“Good day to you.” Zhada leaned over the mage with unmistakeable menace.
“Good day, good sirs!” As the mage slid out of his seat and backed away. Zhada smelled the tang of fear in his sweat.
He was tempted to take a swift step after him, to bark a savage Lowl curse, maybe even see if a full-throated howl would make the charlatan piss himself.
“You’re late,” Lareo observed, sliding his eyeglasses down his sharp nose to peer over their tortoiseshell frames.
Zhada took the vacant seat, the impulse to pursue the mage fading as the man fled. “Varrach.” He knew he needed to give no more explanation. He frowned. “Is that fraud selling his tricks to those tattooed fools?”
Tome mages had no shame, so why wouldn’t they sell one deceit to the Lowl who wished to look more like a beast while selling another to those like Durrau who had inexplicably become ashamed of their dual nature.
“What? Oh, no.” Lareo adjusted his eyeglasses with a long nailed finger and opened the rosewood coffer on the table beside him; a marvel of unfolding drawers and cantilevered trays. He found a little silk drawstring bag and shook two shining discs into his wrinkled palm. “See? Just coloured slips of glass to be worn inside the eyelids.”
Zhada winced at that notion as Lareo replaced the pointless trinkets. ‘swear you won’t tell that leech where to find Durrau?”
The Eldaryn leaned back and folded his arms. “Why should I forego a finder’s fee?”
His eyebrows bristled, as bushy and fiery red as Zhada remembered them, even if recent years had seen Lareo’s hair fade from burnished copper to pale gold.
“Wouldn’t it be better for Durrau to buy a harmless illusion,” the
Eldaryn continued before Zhada could reply, “instead of succumbing to worse temptation, to be found dead in a midden like Calouf?”
Zhada had no answer to that, choked by recollection of the young Lowl who’d sworn to all and sundry that a true Wizard had promised to transform him entirely. The following day he’d been found, lifeless, vilely poisoned.
“I thought we were here to do business ourselves.” Lareo grumbled.
“We are. Do you have the map?” Zhada made sure to speak sufficiently slowly to pronounce the word properly. The m sound wasn’t as problematic as the b and p sounds that littered the Human language but it still didn’t come naturally to a Lowl.
“I do.” Lareo made no move to produce it though. “If you’re still sure you want it. I have any number of merchant houses and trading guildsmen who would pay you handsomely to sign on as their guard captain. You’ve built a reputation since the start of the year that men with ten times your experience must envy.”
“And those traders would doubtless give you a handsome finder’s fee.” Zhada’s long jaw sagged and his tongue lolled in a Lowl’s true smile, to show Lareo that he meant no insult. “Forgive me, old friend, for not filling your coin chest further.”
“You’ll give taking such a hire some thought though, when you come back?” Lareo persisted. “And make sure you come back safe, you fool pup,” he added roughly, “otherwise your father will eat me for breakfast and your mother will crack my bones for marrow for her supper!”
“I will watch every step I take and return whole,” Zhada assured him, “as long as you give me that map,” he added pointedly.
Lareo sighed. He opened the bottommost tray of his cunning coffer and took out a folded parchment. “The quickest routes and the safest paths when you get there, as far as anything can be considered safe.”
His hand rested on the open drawer, one leathery finger tapping something still within it. “I can offer you a little more help?”
Zhada glimpsed an Eldaryn firestick. Not magic, whatever the Humans believed. Eldaryn alchemists mingled sulphur from the Crucible’s crater with charcoal and saltpetre to make their famed black powder. Tamped down inside the long hollow of a firestick, the substance could hurl a deadly lead pellet the length of an ulama court with lethal speed, once an Eldaryn’s element ignited it.
Their race’s innate spark of Fire was far stronger than any Lowl’s. Shortest and slightest of all the peoples found on any sea’s coast, the Eldaryn had long since devised various ways to level the odds so often stacked against them.
“The Candon could still be dangerous,” Lareo urged, “even if they’re supposed to be sluggish at this season.”
Zhada yielded. “Thank you.”
Lareo nodded, barely mollified, as he folded the map around the ebony stick and handed them both over. “You come back safe,” he repeated, “or I’ll kick a hole in the Shadow Plane myself and box your ghost’s pointy ears.”
Zhada couldn’t help a yelp of laughter at that prospect.
But the old Eldaryn might have to try making good on his joke, he thought grimly the following evening. Zhada consulted the map yet again. Granted, the Black Swamp was, self-evidently, a swamp but the paths which he was finding bore little resemblance to the peripheral routes which had long been charted, supposedly enduring on ground above the vagaries of the seasonal floods.
He had no doubt in his own abilities to find any path, not after being raised tracking prey by the merest dusty scuff marks or a few bent blades of grass. Just as he had no doubt that Lareo had given him the best information which any Eldaryn could buy, borrow, or bamboozle out of some unwary source. No, something untoward had happened here, to make such a nonsense of this map.
Still, he was well inside the fringes of the marshland now, so his chances of spotting his quarry should be improving with every step as long as he didn’t go too far and find himself in the truly trackless morass of ash sands and tar pits, where he would undoubtedly become hunted rather than the hunter.
Zhada looked warily around. This dense vegetation wilted and blackened in the cold season rather than dying back to fall away entirely. He searched the gloom beneath the twisted trees’ leathery leaves for any hint of movement.
The merest shiver of a fern caught his eye. Zhada stood motionless. A second mottled frond shifted and then a third. Something was moving through that undergrowth, keeping low to the ground.
He took a stealthy step forward, sliding his booted foot through the litter of decaying flotsam. Better to risk some banded snake breaking its fangs on the thick-oiled leather than to tread on a stick whose sharp snap would send his prey fleeing. Or worse, the sound would draw far more unwelcome attention his way.
Zhada studied the shadows intently for any hint of scarlet. Even travellers who hadn’t set foot within a hundred leagues of this swamp had heard of its Death’s Kiss; beautiful flowers somehow borne of death and corruption and the dark magic that oozed from the heart of the mire. Since no one could agree if the vine’s malice reached as far as arm’s length or even a long stride, he wouldn’t be going within slingshot of any such blooms, not if he could help it.
No, there was no hint of red amid the shifting black and green, only that same sustained ripple of movement advancing through the lowest leaves. Zhada took another pace, then another, his movement adding barely a whisper to the soft rustle of the breeze through the contorted branches.
His pricked ears angled this way and that, alert for any hint of more purposeful movement amid the eerie lack of birdsong. Anything hereabouts used to hunting Humans would soon learn how much more difficult it was to sneak up on a Lowl.
The breeze shifted and Zhada licked his nose. As the odours surrounding him instantly strengthened, his heart beat faster. Faint but unmistakable, he remembered the scent of the belt which his grandfather had shown him so long ago. A Lowl only needed one sniff to fix an aroma in their memory lifelong.
That belt had the same smell which he caught on the wind, but this wasn’t dead and faded. This was a living, breathing lure firing his blood for the hunt. Zhada looked ahead, tracing the most likely path for the creature he could now hear sliding through the knotted tree roots.
The dull daylight glinted on an oily slick of water. That’s where it was heading. Once it gained the water, he would have lost it. He kicked a silted clot of broken twigs without caring about the noise. Glancing back to the fern-clad tree roots, Zhada saw sudden stillness. Good. Looking back down to be sure that nothing venomous lurked in the debris, he stooped and grabbed a handful of spongy sticks in his off hand. His sword hand reached for his belt, not for his blade but for the braided leather hanging looped against his thigh.
He threw the dead wood hard and sure at the cluster of frayed leaves where his prey had stilled. The black serpent instantly sprang forth, swift and deadly. Alas for the inexperienced creature, it found Zhada still hanging back, too far away for its strike.
Standing half as tall as a man, the serpent reared up, just as the cobras of the plains would do. Mouth agape to display ferocious fangs, the black swamp snake batted its stumpy wings as angrily as a jessed hawk. A juvenile, it couldn’t yet fly and escape him that way. On the other hand, it had outgrown the caution of its first few seasons. More than ready to fight, it hissed a vicious challenge, daring Zhada to come within reach.
Swinging the strangling cord around his head, once, twice, the Lowl felt the familiar pull of the stone-weighted leather balls at the weapon’s ends. His people might have taken to fighting with Human swords and daggers as readily as opal otters took to water, but they still hunted with the weapons that had served them for time out of mind. He hurled the weighted cord. It spun through the air, fast and true.
The black-winged serpent’s hiss was cut comically short. Its weaving head was yanked backwards by the flying cord looping around its neck. Zhada was already running, drawing his dagger.
The black-winged serpent was thrashing in panic. Avoiding its muscular co
ils as thick as his forearm, Zhada planted one booted foot solidly on the leather rope. The serpent’s immediate attempt to strike up at him was foiled by the unyielding tether.
As it strained against the strangling bonds, he thrust his dagger underneath its gaping jaw. The blade sliced through the soft skin and tiny scales. He drove the point upwards into its brain. The winged serpent collapsed, as lifeless as the loops of weighted cord which entangled it.
Though the combative light in its eyes died, the rainbow glimmer on its scales shone as alluring as gemstones. The sheen of its feathered wings rivalled the most sumptuous shot silk.
Something rustled behind him. Zhada whirled around but there was nothing to be seen. An incautious gust of wind? He could only hope so. Regardless, there was nothing to be gained by any further delay. He’d got what he had come for, so the sooner he left this swamp, the better.
Dropping to one knee, he cut the winged serpent’s head clean off. As its coils writhed in one last spasm, he looked cautiously in all directions. Satisfied he was unobserved, he began skinning his kill. Zhada worked as swiftly as possible, shutting his nostrils as best he could against the rankness of the creature’s black blood. He hadn’t imagined it would smell as bad as this. Worse, the teasing breeze would carry such a pungent odour all too far and wide.
But he had come this far and he wasn’t about to leave without his prize, nor was he going to ruin it with incautious haste. He bent to his work, easing the blade between the serpent’s scaled skin and the black-streaked pale meat. The dead chill of the thing numbed his fingers.
Something rustled, and this time it rasped against a tree’s knobbly trunk. Zhada froze, seeing the waving tops of a tall cluster of reeds over beyond a slick of water. Judging the distance, he took a steadying breath. As well as the fetid stream, there was a decent expanse of open ground between him and that undergrowth. He should get a clear sight of whatever it was, when it chose to attack him.
