The Rat and the Serpent

by Stephen Palmer

  Why could it not have been some other way?

  Or, more pertinently, why should it not be some other way? What makes the Mavrosopolis the way it is? Mere soot? Surely something more.

  There is a man who rules this place, who—though I have not asked to check my guess—must be the ruler, the source of all that I would change. Where is he, this Goth, this man in black, this hatted shadow, this cloaked silhouette?

  I must know what is going on! I will not be left to fumble in shadows.

  Thankfully I still have my independence; the pain I feel is evidence of this. The Mavrosopolis has not yet numbed me with its sootfalls and its strictures and its tenebrous presence. I feel pain: I am driven to action. So long as I am driven, I am alive. If I fall into nepenthic bliss I am lost forever and my life in this conurbation is over. I do not deny that I have been tempted by the luxuries that have been set before me, set like so many idle women asking me to consort with them. But I have strength. It is the kind of strength that cannot be described, only felt.

  Chapter 17

  The nights passed like so many black handkerchiefs linked into a noose. I did not leave House Sable again. For much of the time I read tomes in my room. I met with the other elitistors to discuss and agree new laws, concerning the recording of weather patterns, the repairing of streets and buildings, and the calculation of house distribution. Despite my state of anxiety I found some of the work interesting, and even contributed to the formulae used to decide citidenizen occupation levels. But it was what might be happening in subterranea that engaged my mind.

  As for my body, it was changing. Sleep became a state difficult to attain, as the powers contained in my shamanic leg and arm fought for freedom, at first through exhausting my body, then, insidiously, by bringing nightmares whenever I happened to doze off. The mixture of fatigue and sleeplessness was a terrible torture that I had not expected, and I found no method to cope with it. I just had to survive. Each night I would tell myself that I only had to endure the torment a little bit longer.

  And there was something else...

  Yes, that mysterious door on the ground floor tempted me. One night, as the clock chimed midnight, I found myself walking down the central staircase, half awake and half asleep, as if hypnotised. I heard the sound of a door closing: I returned to consciousness.

  “Where am I?” I said.

  Nobody answered me. I knew that I must have been sleepwalking. But I continued to descend until I was standing at the bottom of the stairs. A lantern stood to one side of me, a bowl of black fish on a table to the other. Some of the elitistors were in the library and the kitchen; I could see them. Nothing seemed out of place in the hall. It was an ordinary night.

  I turned to face the forbidden door, then walked towards it.

  “Wait there,” came Herpetzag’s voice from behind me.

  I turned around. There stood Herpetzag and Ince, with Lithuther watching from the far end of the library. “What is the matter?” I asked.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Herpetzag demanded.

  “Nowhere.”

  Herpetzag strode forward. “You’ve been in House Sable for a fortnight, and already you think you can walk through that door?”

  I shrugged. “And if I was going to?”

  “I would stop you.”

  Now all the elitistors were aware of the conversation, and they stood watching from vantage points around the hall. Silvögyur said, “What is going on here?”

  Herpetzag answered, “The new elitistor has ideas above himself.”

  “And if I do?” I said, bringing some of the irritation I felt to my voice.

  Herpetzag mocked me. “You think you know it all because of who shields you.”

  “From you?” I retorted. “Well, you are the only one who wants to kill me.” I shrugged. “All your other petty schemes failed.”

  Herpetzag pointed a finger at me. “I know what you are.”

  As if communicating by telepathy the other elitistors fled, and I was appalled to hear the sound of outside doors slamming. That left me and Herpetzag alone. Suddenly I felt fear. The departure of the elitistors was an unmistakeable response.

  I turned to face Herpetzag. “You think you know what I am?” I said.

  “A shaman of a non-serpentine animal, a foreigner in this house. The Mavrosopolis was tricked when you passed the initiation rite. I’ll see to it that you get no further. Your place is on the street.”

  I tried to marshall my resources. Lightly I replied, “It so happens that I agree with you. But I am not going to return just yet.”

  The response was hissed. “Oh, yes you are.”

  Then I saw a sight so dreadful I was unable to look away. Herpetzag raised his hand and pulled off the eye patch to reveal a slitted eye: the eye of a snake. It was as cold a thing as I had ever seen, inhuman, calculating, callous. The other eye seemed dull in comparison, as if this one was made of crystal. Then Herpetzag raised his hand again and pulled off his mask, to reveal a jaw covered in scales, and, when it opened, fangs, and a grey tongue with a bifurcated end that flicked as it tasted the air. This was the mouth of a snake, pale inside, puffed up with venom sacs. I stood rooted to the spot.

  “You see,” Herpetzag said, “like you I am a shaman. I have asked for two wishes to be fulfilled and I have paid the price—like you. That is how I know what you are, because to get here I followed a similar path. That is why I know how to destroy you. And I will.”

  I struggled to control myself. “You won’t,” I replied in a wavering voice. I stood straight. “You too are deceiving the Mavrosopolis—”

  “Ah, ah! Not at all. The fight is unfair because it is weighted to my side. You see, Byzann is a serpentine creation, and because I am a shaman of the mambasnake I am camouflaged. I am at one with Byzann. I can do what I like and it will not be noticed. You see now that you have no chance against me? I always win. I always win because I am serpentine, just like the Mavrosopolis.” He opened his mouth and venom leaked from his fangs. “Prepare to die.”

  “Never! We will prevail.”

  “So you admit you have a helper.” Herpetzag gestured at the building around us. “Where is the Goth now? Where is he?”

  “He is near. He is always near.”

  “He is not. He cannot interfere with this battle. You must win with your own skills—and you cannot call upon your rat totem. Remember that when I bite you!”

  Herpetzag lunged forward with a scream, but it was not an attack, rather it was a melodramatic attempt to frighten me. In reply I pulled a silver lamp from its pole mount, then broke off the pole and turned it upside down, fitting it under my right armpit so that it was for all intents and purposes a crutch.

  And Herpetzag understood the symbolism of this move; and I knew his hesitation was a hint that he might be worried.

  I decided to use every resource available to me, including my mind and my mouth. In a voice quavering with anger I said, “You forget that I was born on the street. I have lived on the street almost all my life, fighting for every crumb, drinking disgusting sea water.” I lifted the metal pole with my right arm. “This is the weapon I used for every one of those years. I am no innocent. I was in fights every other day.”

  “Fights?” Herpetzag replied. “Fights? You face a sorcerer—what use are fists?”

  Time to attack! I lunged forward and, though the pole was unbalanced compared to my crutch, I managed in one movement to raise it, stand on my left leg and swing the weapon around, so that it struck Herpetzag on the upper arm. He yelled. He had not expected that. I jumped back.

  “Who said I’d be using fists?” I cried.

  In reply Herpetzag raised his arms and uttered a few syllables in a voice like thunder. The hall where we stood became storm-dark, as from the crevices of the floor and the skirting boards a horde of dracunculi emerged, to look as one at Herpetzag, then turn their attention to me. I shuddered.

  I had no option but to ignore the sorcery and
attack its source: the sorcerer himself. With a savage scream, such as I had uttered as a youth on Blackguards’ Passage, I leaped forward and began to batter Herpetzag with the pole, until my opponent was cornered and had to grab the weapon, push it aside, then run off to the other end of the hall. Meanwhile the dracunculi swelled as if they were absorbing water then began to swarm towards me. But my temper was up. I had seen a man flail beneath my attack. If I could distract him for long enough there would be no chance for sorcery.

  I had a plan!

  Again I leaped forward, but now the dracunculi were on my boots and beginning to bite into my breeches; and where they found skin, they stung. I was forced to hop away, then reach down to pull the leech-like creatures off.

  Herpetzag laughed. “Dance, boy, dance!” he said.

  There came the briefest glimpse before my mind’s eye: dropping to hands and knees, barging aside pigs, beginning to search the piles of earth, soot and dung for the ring fragment...

  So I danced. I pandered to the sorcerer’s whim. “Look at me caper,” I said, imitating anger and humiliation as I skipped first on one leg then on the other, all the time reaching down to pull off and squeeze the life out of the dracunculi. I hopped as often as I could on my stronger rat leg, though occasionally I had to change. But Herpetzag watched every foolish twist and turn as though mesmerised. It was working.

  In this way I closed in on him. Most of the dracunculi were a glutinous mess on the floor, and there was a stench of vinegar and offal. But they were almost all gone. I screamed my battle-cry again. Holding the pole in my strong rat arm I leaped forward and began an attack so fierce Herpetzag was forced to shield himself with a tome, then with a metal tray that clattered as blow after blow rained down upon him. And these were not random blows; I knew my attack would exhaust me, so I tried to land as many blows as possible on the arms and chest of my enemy, so that, should sorcery be attempted, injury distorted or even stopped the flow.

  Eventually I had to stop and regain my breath. Herpetzag was shocked; he must have imagined an easy victory. He stood still, breathing hard and fast, with his pale and puffy mouth wide open. I wanted to taunt him, to force another mistake, but I knew scorn could induce a frenzy in him such as I had just offered up, so I remained silent. Herpetzag must be controlled, not mocked.

  We stood face to face. Herpetzag tried to lift his left arm, but I reached out and knocked it aside. Herpetzag seemed to shrink a little. He raised his other arm, but again I knocked it back.

  Stalemate—for the moment.

  So long as Herpetzag was controlled I felt I might have time to rest. But I would have to concentrate without relapse.

  “You can’t stop me speaking,” Herpetzag said.

  “Gloat as much as you like,” I replied.

  Herpetzag laughed, and there was a note of malice, even joy in the sound. I tensed my body, knowing that above all I must not undertake close combat, for then I could be bitten. But then Herpetzag uttered a stream of nonsense syllables, a spell, and too late I realised what was happening.

  His eye began to glow with pure white light; not a strong gleam, but an entrancing one, a radiance that seemed to leak down onto his clothes and skin, and thus make him a better, more trustworthy man. I watched as the transformation continued. Now Herpetzag was revealed in this new light as an ancient, noble and true, the dark and macabre side lost in purity.

  He was not an enemy at all.

  A fragment of true thought entered my mind then, and I realised that I was being hypnotised. I raised my hands to shield myself from the eye, but its syrupy radiance leaked through my fingers and continued to mesmerise me. I yelled out for help. But there was nobody.

  Desperation exaggerated the importance of the true thought that had occurred to me. I remembered that Herpetzag and I were opponents. I remembered that the shaman of the mambasnake had cast a spell. I concentrated on that realisation. Slowly, I pulled back the part of my mind that had been embraced by the mesmeric light, to return, for a moment, to myself; and in that moment I tensed myself then denied everything I knew about Herpetzag.

  The illusion was shattered. But almost at once the light returned to the eye and I was mesmerised again, staring in wonder at this remarkable man. Then another effort, a casting off of hypnotism, and a definite, though weaker return to my former self.

  “You cannot overcome the Mavrosopolis,” Herpetzag told me, as the marvellous light once again seeped from his eye. “Give in to me.”

  I felt my body torn apart. I so wanted to dive into the light and heal myself, but a small and stubborn part of me knew it was a trap, and, for the moment, I was able to oppose it. But my defences were weakening.

  I uttered an unearthly cry. Time was short, resources finite. As the sound of my voice faded I raised my pole, then with a sudden thrust of my outstretched arm I jabbed the thing forward. Herpetzag flinched, but too late, and as I had hoped the crystal eye was knocked clean out of his face.

  For a few heartbeats we both stared in shock at the sphere of light as it landed, intact, on the floor. Then the moment of horror passed and Herpetzag took a deep breath. He bent down to retrieve his sorcerous orb, but, without even a single, reasoned thought, I balanced myself on my rat leg and threw the pole like a javelin, so that it struck the eye, knocked it forwards, then smashed it against the far wall. There was a single, tinkling crash, musical, yet harsh, as if the very notes of destruction were claimed by Herpetzag’s vile sorcery.

  Then silence. We stood in the middle of the hall, looking at the pole and at the crystal shards which lay in their hundreds across the floor. The ceiling lantern dimmed. Coldness entered the room. I stood in shock.

  Then Herpetzag turned and stared at me with menace inexpressible. I said nothing. Herpetzag walked towards the pole, picked it up and with a single motion brought it down upon his knee. It bent like straw, and I realised that this was no sorcerous deed, it was due to the will of a man pushed by fury alone into a feat of supernatural strength.

  I was very afraid. And I was tired. I had tried everything. I took a few steps back until I struck the wall at the bottom of the stairs: to my left the door to the library, to my right the fish bowl.

  Herpetzag said nothing. He just walked with slow, deliberate steps towards the wall where I cowered.

  He stopped an arm’s length away. I could smell the venom leaking from his fangs. “Enough of this farce,” he said. He opened his mouth, allowed his pale tongue to flicker a few times, then took a step forwards. Despite the lack of sorcery I was hypnotised, this time by the overwhelming will of my opponent. I pressed myself into the wall.

  Something cold at my right hand. I felt water, and as Herpetzag let his mouth open into a serpentine yawn that seemed to fill my field of vision, I realised what it was—the fishbowl. Herpetzag took a second step forward, coming in for the kill, but with a single lithe movement I reached down, grasped the rim of the bowl and brought it upturned over his head. There were a few moments of confusion: water leaking, arms waving. I saw a serpentine jaw magnified by the bowl.

  I lunged forward. The water was escaping. I kicked Herpetzag’s left knee and pulled his left arm, so that he fell to the stairs. I jumped over him, then pulled the arm again so that he was on his back, head down, feet up. I sat on the kicking legs, then reached out with my rat arm to ensure the bowl did not fall off. Herpetzag was trapped, drowning, one arm underneath his body, the other held by me.

  Herpetzag was strong, but shock and lack of air were already weakening him. But I too was tiring, and I could feel the bowl moving as my right arm lost grip. Herpetzag realised this. He shook his body, trying to release his left arm, and this increased motion threatened to dislodge the fishbowl.

  Then movement ceased. I remained tense. Black fish flapped over the steps, their mouths opening and closing as they died.

  Herpetzag began smacking his head against the stairs, trying to smash the bowl. I was now reaching the end of my endurance and I felt my grip failing
on the bowl’s rim. But much of the water remained inside.

  “No!” I cried out. “Not yet!”

  I tried to convince myself that I could hold on, crushing the writhing legs, gripping the left arm, pulling with fading strength on the bowl. But I was failing, and Herpetzag was still smashing his head against the steps. The bowl was coming off; the shaman still had strength remaining, even if it was his last.

  “No!” I cried again. “Help me!”

  There came a flash of light from the hall. The whiskers, snout, then body of the rat of light emerged, rising from the black floor. A tremor passed through the house, a shock in the ground itself.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I gasped, knowing what that tremor meant.

  “Is it time for your third wish?” the rat of light replied.

  I was gripping the bowl with just my thumb and forefinger now. I could not feel the rest of my rat hand.

  “What will you give me?” I asked. “Another new arm?”

  The answer was immediate. “You have had leg and arm. I will give you the strength of mind to defeat your opponent. Quickly!”

  I had the briefest mental vision of myself: mind could only mean head. I would lose my human face, become a rat forever.

  That could not happen.

  “Begone!” I cried.

  For Herpetzag was almost drowned. I sensed that his struggles were weakening. The rat of light vanished.

  I held on with my thumb and forefinger. There came an awful sound, half rattle, half bubble, and then the struggles ceased; but knowing the cunning of this man I held on anyway, until there was no doubt that my enemy had drowned. With a grunt I rolled off the stairs and lay on the floor, breathing in hoarse gasps, feeling the return of sensation to my body, then standing and staggering towards a couch, where I collapsed.