Lilith: A Snake in the Grass flotd-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  As we walked, Bronz turned to me and said, softly, “Well, now you’ve met her. Sumiko O’Higgins, chief witch and a regular loving charmer.”

  “She is—ah—formidable,” I returned.

  “That she is,” he agreed. “Still, she’s strong. If anybody can help Ti and you, she can.”

  “I don’t think I made a good first impression or something,” I noted. “She certainly seemed less than pleased with me.”

  He chuckled. “Sumiko doesn’t like men very much. But don’t worry. This is strictly business.”

  I didn’t feel reassured. “Will she really help me?”

  I pressed. “I mean, all things considered, she’s got us where she wants us.”

  “Don’t worry,” he responded, “you’re perfectly safe. Satanists pride themselves, oddly, on their honor. They simply don’t break agreements and commitments once made. Besides, she hates the keeps more than anyone I know, and you’re a refugee wanted by the higher-ups. That gives you status here.”

  “I hope so,” I said dubiously. “Who is she, anyway? She’s at least a Master hereelf.”

  He nodded. “Probably more. And with no formal training whatsoever. If she’d gotten some, she might have been ripe for Lord, but that wouldn’t fit her personality.”

  We walked along for some time, losing sight of the cart and of any trace of the road or anything remotely familiar. We were in fact prisoners of the witch-queen’s whims. I hoped fervently that Bronz was right about her, but I still remembered his cross and prayer. This was definitely the first human being I’d seen that Father Bronz feared.

  We walked on for some time—how long I couldn’t tell, since the life on Lilith and the abnormally long days and nights had played hell with what little time sense I retained. Finally, though, we arrived at our host’s encampment, a jungle enclave that was quite different from any of the Keeps that I’d seen. The houses were made not from bunti but from strong wood and bamboo like reeds, the pointed thatched roofs from some woven straw. The arrangement was a bit odd: thirteen such “houses” were arranged in a large circle around a clearing in the center of which was a pit, a fireplace for central cooking, and some sort of stone cairn. The inhabitants of the village seemed most active in the dark; they were going about then: tasks as we entered the village, and I noticed that the population was larger than I’d expected—sixty, perhaps more—and that all were women. The lack of men anywhere- only served to increase my nervousness.

  The cart had already arrived by some other route. The women doing whatever they were doing by the nickering light of the low central fife and a number of gourd lanterns filled with the flammable juices of several plants paid us no real mind as we entered. A few glances up of obvious idle curiosity, but no more. Clearly we were not only expected but weren’t even big news. I noticed that most of the women were naked and unadorned, marking them as pawns. Apparently the ranking members of the tribe, Supervisor level and above, had all come out to meet us. That told me that they felt their village secure but hadn’t been any too trusting of us.

  The leader called out to a couple of women, and instructions started flying all over the place. Father Bronz and I decided that we were somehow redundant at the moment and just stood back out of the way, watching.

  A covering was removed from the central area near the fire, revealing a large stone slab with what might have been a carved recess in it. It looked like a cross between a birdbath and one of those damned tables in Pohn’s chamber of horrors. The fire was being stoked, and now Ti’s inert form was brought from the cart and placed in the recess in the stone. Twelve women, ten of them apparently pawns, formed a circle around the comatose girl, almost blocking her from view.

  I turned to Bronz and asked, “What the hell is going on here?”

  “That’s what it is, all right—hell,” he sighed. “They’re going to try and bring Ti out of the state she is in, but being Satanists, they will do it as a religious ceremony. This is hard on me, understand, but these women are deluded rather than evil and I’m a pragmatist. Sumiko was the only one I knew with this much power and some medical knowledge who wasn’t on the other side or too far away to dp us any good.”

  I shrugged. Satanism and Catholicism were one and the same to me, both remnants of ancient superstitions and power structures no longer relevant to modern times. Still, I conceded to myself, if this mumbo jumbo allowed them to concentrate and focus then- powers to help Ti, well, so be it.

  The twelve started chanting. I couldn’t really catch the words, but if they were words, I think it was a language I didn’t know.

  They chanted for some time, until it started to get boring, but just when I’d settled down to relax, Sumiko O’Higgins entered from one of the huts. She was something to see, draped in black robes and a cape, wearing what appeared to be a carved upside-down cross on some sort of vine necklace.

  As she approached the circle of chanting women, the fire, which had almost died out, burst back into explosive life with a force all its own, an action that startled me. It was an eerie effect, all the more so since I knew that the Warden organism died in fire just as all others I’d ever known did, and thus that fire business couldn’t be a Warden power trick.

  O’Higgins closed the circle by her presence and joined the chant, then dominated it, eyes seemingly closed, arms stretched out to the sky, appearing almost in a trancelike state. Suddenly the chant was stilled, leaving only the sounds of the massive insects of Lilith. I didn’t even hear anybody breathe or cough.

  “Oh, Satan, Lord Of Darkness, hear our prayer!” she chanted.

  “Gather, darkness!” the others responded.

  “Oh, great one who combats the totalitarianism of church and government, work within us and hear our plea!”

  “Hear our plea,” echoed the others.

  She opened her eyes and lowered her arms slowly, then placed both hands on Ti’s unmoving head. “Give us strength to heal this girl,” she prayed, then closed her eyes again, still touching Ti’s head, apparently re-entering the trancelike state. It was difficult to tell if she was faking it or was really in a trance. I began to have some doubts about this procedure, but there really was no alternative. I glanced over at Father Bonz and saw him just looking on and sadly shaking his head.

  The tableau in the center court seemed frozen for some time, and I understood that, no matter what then-odd beliefs, O’Higgins and maybe some of the others were probing, analyzing, perhaps even making repairs.

  Suddenly the witch queen let go and stepped back, raising her arms once again. “Oh, Satan, Prince of Darkness, rightful King of the Universe, we give thanks!” she almost shouted, and the litany was repeated by the others. The fire flared again into near-blinding brilliance, then almost died, causing the strong impression of a tangible darkness closing in, embracing all of us there in the village. I felt a little chill despite the heat and humidity, I have to admit I could well understand how this sort of thing could attract followers.

  “From light into darkness, from dark knowledge the final victory,” she intoned, and then it was broken, as if by some signal. All thirteen of the women stood a little unsteadily, appearing to have gone through some strenuous physical labor.

  O’Higgins recovered quickly, though, and walked back to the still unmoving form of Ti, placing hands again on her head. She nodded to herself, then called for others to bear Ti to one of the huts. As they were carrying out her orders, she turned and walked over to us.

  “Well, Bronz, your side couldn’t do a damned thing,” she noted.

  Bronz shrugged. “You did what was necessary?”

  “I undid what I could,” she admitted, “but I told you that that butchering bastard was really good and really clever. She’ll be all right for a while, though—in fact better than all right, since I had to bypass a lot of Pohn’s knots and create alternate routes that might not hold up. There’ll be a rush, though—she’ll probably feel like she can topple mountains, even though in reality s
he’ll be quite weak until she gets a lot more exercise and regular food, and I fear the repair job won’t hold forever.”

  “You mean,” I put in, “that she’ll eventually lapse back into that state?”

  She nodded. “Remember the way the system works,” she said. “The Warden organisms have a single idea of what is natural. Those with the power can convince Wardens that something else is what they want to do—and that’s what Pohn did. Her Wardens want to put her back into that state because he’s fooled them into thinking that it’s normal. I bypassed the nerve blocks by using parts of the brain not normally used at all, but the Wardens will perceive my meddling as an injury, like a broken arm. They will rush to fix it, put it right. They’ll be battling my own work with some localized Wardens, but the barriers will eventually break down. It’ll take somebody as expert in cranial medicine and/or more powerful than Dr. Pohn to put her completely right, although that could be accomplished in a matter of minutes by such a person.”

  I frowned. “How long, then, will she—wake up?”

  She shrugged. “A few days, maybe a week. No more. It’ll go slowly, so there’s no sure way to tell.”

  I groaned in frustration. “Then what the hell was the use of all this? Who could really heal her in that length of time?”

  She looked at me, slightly surprised at my tone. “You really care? About a small female?”

  “He cares,” Bronz put in, saving me from making nasty comments to my host. “He escaped from Zeis and he could have done it a lot easier without bringing her. Instead he’s lugged her with him everywhere, fed her, cleaned her—you name it.”

  She looked at me again, this time nodding slightly, and for the first time I felt like I’d attained the status of human being in her eyes. “If she means that much to you,” she said to me, “then perhaps something can be done. There’s only one place I know of for sure, though, that could do the job, and it’s pretty far away.”

  “Moab Keep,” Father Bronz added, nodding. “I suspected as much. But four thousand kilometers, Sumiko! How in God’s name can we possibly get her there in under a year? Let alone Tremon here, who needs to take the full treatment.”

  She grinned evilly. “Not in God’s name, Augie. But the answer’s obvious—we- fly. A besil can do three, maybe four hundred kilometers a night, resting days, so we’re talking ten days at the outside. That sound a lot more possible?”

  “Besils!” Bronz scoffed. “Since when do you have access to any domesticated besils capable of carrying passengers?”

  “I don’t—now,” she admitted. “I expect that if we need besils, though, we can get them pretty easily courtesy of Zeis Keep.”

  I jumped, “What!”

  She shrugged. “Either you slipped up somewhere, Augie, or he did. It doesn’t matter. We’re partially surrounded by Zeis troopers right now, and I expect them to come in at sunup, when they can see what they’re doing.”

  I whirled around, staring at the darkness in nervous anticipation. When I realized that neither of the other two seemed in any way concerned by that news, I just grew a little more paranoid about them.

  I turned to Father Bronz, who was cocking his head slightly, as if listening for something. Finally he said, “How many do you make them?”

  “No more than twenty or thirty, all on besils,” she responded casually. “I’d suppose somebody’s gone back for more, but he’s not about to commit more than a fraction of his force. Some of the other knights might get the idea to exploit the weakness and attack Zeis.”

  Bronz nodded agreement. “Then well face no more than forty, a fifth or so of his force. I agree. Okay, forty people at arms, with Artur almost a certainty and, say, two other masters?”

  She nodded. “That’s about it.”

  “Wait a minute!” I exploded. “It may not be inv-portant to you, but they’re after the girl and me! You can’t fight a force like that!”

  Sumiko O’Higgins shook her head slowly in disgust “Now, isn’t that just like a man! Look, you just go cower someplace and maybe get some sleep and leave the worrying to me.”

  “But—but—they’re all highly trained soldiers, all of ’em at least supervisors and with more masters than you’ve got here!” I sputtered. “How do you expect to defeat them?”

  “Just don’t you worry about it,” she replied condescendingly. “We—Father Bronz and I—have a lot of work to do between now and dawn. A good thing the God-lovers and we Satanists can get together and agree on one sort of cooperative venture,” she added. “Atheists! Pgh!”

  Father Bronz added, “She knows what she’s doing, Cal,” in his most reassuring tone. If it hadn’t been for the under-the-breath addition of “I hope” to his statement I just might have believed him.

  As it was, I just stayed there, not feeling at afl asleep, seeing Master Artur’s fierce moustachioed gaze behind every darkness-shielded bush and tree in the jungle.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I Do Believe in Witches—I Do, I Do!

  Needless to say, I got very little sleep that night. Of course nobody in the witch village seemed to sleep at night, although they were all rather expert at ignoring anybody they didn’t want to see and I was a non-person in their eyes.

  The best I could do was occasionally check on Ti, who when I peeked in for the third or fourth time was not only breathing deeply and regularly, as if in normal sleep, but actually gave out a moan and turned over by herself. That sight alone made this whole business all worthwhile—provided, of course, I lived through the next day.

  Although I knew little about witchcraft and remembered less, from the village itself I made a few deductions. Thirteen, the unlucky number because it was the number at the Christians’ Last Supper, was naturally a positive number for devil-worshipers. Thirteen women in the coven, then, which explained the number at the ceremony. Thirteen large huts, too, although there were far more than that number living here communally. I never could get an exact count, but I was willing to wager that whatever it was, the number was a multiple of thirteen.

  Witch, of course, was a female term. If my old children’s stories meant anything, a male witch would be called a warlock, but for some reason you just about never heard about them. They were more mischievous, less powerful, somehow. I remembered that Father Bronz’s faith limited the priesthood to males in most cases, which might explain female dominance in Satanism, but it also occurred to me that Dr. Pohn had said that women tended to have more of the power than men, particularly wild talents. I wondered about the hierarchy itself on Lilith now. How many of the knights were female? I wondered. Half? Or a majority? Despite the fact that Tiel was the knight at Zeis, it was Vola who taught me, as she had taught Artur and Marek Kreegan. Artur, Dr. Pohn, and Father Bronz not withstanding, it suddenly seemed to me that an extraordinary number of the staff of the Castle had been female, and the first master I’d met after arriving on Lilith had been a woman, as had at least half of Artur’s soldiers.

  Even in my statistically small sample, then, the women were numerically superior to the men. Perhaps Pohn had more reason to confine his experiments to young women than just perversion.

  I looked around again at these—witches. Dismiss the religious cultism, the “savage” label, all the rest, and reduce it to what was known. Their chief was one who had the power in spades—Bronz had said she might be in Kreegan’s class had she had training, but as I knew only too well, such power even untrained can be enormous if emotionally aroused, and hate was one of the best emotions for that sort of thing. Sumiko. O’Higgins hated Zeis, if only for the principle of the thing—Zeis had Pohn, and Pohn had done a number on Ti, a woman.

  These others… Even though most looked like pawns, were they? There was something here I was missing, unless Satan, Prince of Darkness, really had something here. Something had kept this tempting target for Keeps all around safe and secure—so secure O’Higgins dared bring her most powerful personnel to collect us.

  It was getting clos
e to dawn, and I was becoming more and more nervous. O’Higgins and Father Bronz had been at it all night, making plans of some kind or another—an odd couple if there ever was one, I decided—and finally the priest emerged from a hut and came over to me. “You look lousy,” he said.

  “You don’t look so bright and eager either,” I responded glumly. “But how’d you expect me to sleep through something like this?”

  He sat down wearily. “I need some strong tea to wake me up,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “She’s really got something here. I have to hand it to her. I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but if it does, it’s almost revolutionary. No, it is revolutionary.”

  I stared at him. “Give. What are you talking about?”

  “You remember our talks on the balance on Lilith? Well, she seems to have something that upsets that balance, at least a little.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You see these women? All virgins, believe it or not, at least with men. All exhibited strong wild talents at puberty, although most subsided to pawn status, as •per normal, after a few months to a year.”

  “You can’t tell me O’Higgins is a virgin,” I commented.

  He chuckled. “Hard to say. I doubt if she’s ever been to bed with a man, if that’s what you mean, and that’s all that seems to count in this business. There may be something to the old legend of virgins having more power in magical things—in a purely biological sense, Lilith style, I mean. Perhaps some very tiny chemical changes were not introduced. I don’t know. But Sumiko got this idea, after combing the savages of the wild, that it was so. She may be crazy but she’s not stupid. She was once a pretty good biochemist Outside, so don’t sell her short no matter what her crazy beliefs now. At any rate, when she got sent to Lilith she didn’t stay a pawn very long. Hot-blooded. Got so damned mad she not only fried her supervisor but stalked angrily out of a Keep to the west of here, glowing, it’s said, like a firecracker from the Warden power, injuring or killing anybody who even tried to get in her way.”