Serpent Mage

by Margaret Weis

  “You are careless today, Haplo,” said his father, tapping the naming stick—a thin, pliable branch of a plant known as a creeping rose, adorned with flesh-pricking thorns—on the hard ground. “It is said that back in the days of our freedom, before we were thrown into this accursed jail by our enemies … Name the enemy, my son.”

  “The Sartan,” Haplo said, trying to ignore the stinging pain of the thorns left stuck in his skin.

  “It is said that in the days of our freedom, children such as you went to schools and learned the runes as a kind of exercise for the mind. But no longer. Now it is life or death. When your mother and I are dead, Haplo, you will be responsible for the sigla that will, if done correctly, grant you the strength needed to escape our prison and avenge our deaths on our enemy. Name the runes of strength and power.”

  Haplo's hand left the trunk of his body and followed the progression of the tattooed sigla that twined down his arms and legs, onto the backs of his hands and the tops of his feet. He knew these better than he knew the runes of protection and healing. Those “baby” runes had been tattooed onto him when he was weaned from the breast. He had actually been allowed to tattoo some of these newer sigla—the mark of an adult—onto his skin himself. That had been a proud moment, his first rite of entry into what would undoubtedly be a cruel, harsh, and brief life.

  Haplo completed his lesson without making another mistake and earned his father's curt nod of satisfaction.

  “Now, heal those wounds,” his father said, gesturing to the thorns protruding from the boy's palm.

  Haplo pulled out the thorns with his teeth, spat them on the ground, and, joining his hands, formed the healing circle, as he'd been taught. The red, swollen marks left behind by the thorns gradually disappeared. He exhibited smooth, if dirty, palms for his father. The man grunted, rose, and walked away.

  Two days later, he and Haplo's mother would both be dead. Haplo would be left alone.

  The lucky and the strong were generally lonely….

  Haplo's mind drifted on a cloud of agony and weakness. He traced the sigla for his father and then his father was a bloody, mangled body and then his father was the Lord of the Nexus, whipping Haplo with the cane of the rosebush.

  Haplo grit his teeth and forced himself to blink back the tears and bite back the scream and concentrate on the runes. His hand traveled down his left arm, to the sigla he'd drawn there as a boy and those he'd redrawn as a man and those he'd added as a man, feeling his strength and power grow within him.

  He was forced to sit up, in order to reach the sigla on his legs. His first attempt nearly made him black out, but he struggled out of the whirling mists and peered through the blinking lights of his mind, choked back the nausea, and sat almost upright. His hand, trembling with weakness, followed the runes on thighs, hips, knees, shins, feet.

  He expected, every moment, to feel the sting of the thorny cane, the reprimand, “No! Wrong! Begin again!”

  And then he was finished and he'd done it correctly. He lay back down on the deck, feeling the wonderful warmth flow through his body, spreading from the name rune at his heart through his trunk and into his limbs.

  Haplo slept.

  When he awoke, his body was still weak, but it was a weakness from prolonged fasting and thirst—soon cured. He dragged himself to his feet and peered outside the large window on the bridge, wondering where he was. He had a vague memory of having passed through the horrors of Death's Gate again, but that memory was literally ablaze with pain and he swiftly banished it.

  He was not, at least, in imminent danger. The runes on his body glowed only very faintly, and that was in reaction to what he'd suffered and endured, not reacting to any threat. He could see nothing outside the ship except a vast expanse of aqua blue. He stared at it, wondered if it was sky, water, solid, gaseous, what. He couldn't tell, and he was too lightheaded from hunger to try to reason it all out.

  Turning, he stumbled through the ship, making his weary way down into the hold, where he had stored his supplies. He ate sparingly of bread dipped in wine, mindful of the adage “Never break a fast with a feast.”

  His strength restored somewhat, Haplo went back to the bridge, dressed himself in his leather breeches, white long-sleeved shirt, and leather vest and boots, covering every sign of the telltale runes that marked him as a Patryn to those who remembered their history lessons. He left only his hands free, for the moment, for he would need to steer the vessel, using the magical runes of the steering stone.

  At least, he assumed he'd need to steer the vessel. Haplo stared into the aqua-blue whatever-it-was that surrounded him and tried to make sense of it, but he might have been sailing into a dome of air that spanned all the vistas of his vision or about to fly smack into a wall covered with blue paint.

  “We'll walk onto the top deck and take a look around, eh, boy?” he said. Not hearing the usual excited bark that always greeted this statement, Haplo glanced about.

  The dog was gone.

  It occurred to Haplo, then, that he hadn't seen the animal since … since … well, it had been a long time.

  “Here, boy!” Haplo whistled. No response.

  Irritated, thinking the dog was indulging in a raid on the sausages, as happened from time to time, Haplo stomped back down to the hold, prepared to find the animal looking as innocent of wrongdoing as was possible with sausage grease smeared over its nose.

  The dog was not there. No sausages were missing.

  Haplo called, whistled. No response. He knew then, with a sudden pang of loneliness and unhappiness, that the dog was gone. But almost as soon as he experienced the aching pain, which was in some ways almost harder to bear than the burning pain of his torture, Haplo felt it ease, then disappear.

  It was as if his being were opened like a door. A cold, sharp wind blew in and coated with ice every troubling doubt and feeling he'd been experiencing.

  Haplo felt renewed, refreshed, empty. And the emptiness, he discovered, was far preferable to the raging turmoil and confusion that had previously churned inside him.

  The dog. A crutch, as his lord had always said. The lucky and the strong were generally lonely. The dog had served Haplo's purpose.

  “It's gone.” He shrugged and forgot it.

  Alfred. That miserable Sartan.

  “I see it now. I was duped, tricked by his magic. Just as my people were duped and tricked before the Sundering. But not now. We will meet again, Sartan, and when we do, you won't escape me this time.”

  Haplo, looking back, was appalled to see how weak he'd grown, appalled to think he'd actually doubted and attempted to deceive his lord.

  His lord. He owed this new freedom from doubt, this new feeling of ease, to his lord.

  “As my father punished me when I was small, so my lord has punished me now. I accept it. I am grateful for it. I have learned from it. I will not fail you, My Lord.”

  He swore the oath, placing his hand upon the name rune over his heart. Then he walked out, alone, onto the upper deck of the elven ship called Dragon Wing.

  Haplo paced the deck, looked up beyond the tall masts with the dragon-scaled wings, leaned over the rail to stare far below the ship's keel walked forward to study what lay beyond the snarling dragon's head that was the prow. He caught sight of something in the distance. Not much, nothing more than a dark splotch against the blue, but from the tingling of the sigla on his skin and the creeping feelings of dread shriveling his bowels, he came to the conclusion that he was looking at Death's Gate.

  Obviously, then, he'd passed through the Gate, since he certainly wasn't in the Nexus. His lord must have launched his ship on its way.

  “And, since I was preparing to travel to the fourth world, to Chelestra, the world of water, this must be it,” Haplo said, talking to himself, comforted by hearing a voice break the silence that surrounded him like the endless aqua blue.

  His ship was moving; he knew that much, now that he could fix his sight on a point—Death's Gate—and
see it dwindle and grow smaller behind him. And he could feel, standing out in the open on the deck, the wind created by their forward motion blow strong against his skin.

  The air was cool and moist, but Haplo assumed that there must be more to a world of water than high humidity, and he again paced the length of the deck, trying to figure out where he was and where he was headed.

  A world of water. He sought to envision it, although he was forced to admit that he'd failed in his attempts to envision the previous three worlds he'd visited. He imagined islands, floating on an endless sea. And once he'd imagined that, he couldn't very well picture anything else. Nothing else made sense.

  But, if so, where were the islands? Was he, perhaps, in the air above them? But, if that was true, where was the vast expanse of water, glistening in the sun?

  Haplo returned below decks to try to sort out the problem, see if perhaps the runes of the steering stone offered some clue.

  But, at that moment, he found out what Chelestra was like. His ship slammed into a wall of water.2

  The force of the impact sent Haplo toppling over backward. The steering stone jolted from its mountings and went rolling about the deck. Haplo started to regain his feet, froze, listened in astounded horror to a crack and a booming sound, like thunder. The main mast had snapped, broken.

  Haplo ran to the window, stared out to see what was attacking his ship.

  Nothing. He couldn't see any enemy, only water.

  Something fell over the window, blocking his view. He recognized it as part of the dragon's-wing sail that helped guide the vessel. Now it flapped and fluttered helplessly in the water like a drowning bird.

  Other crashes, occurring amidships, and the sudden trickling of small streams of water onto the bridge brought an unwelcome revelation. He wasn't under attack.

  “The damn ship's breaking apart!” Haplo swore, stared about in disbelief.

  It was impossible. Every plank, every beam, every mast and sail, every splinter of this ship, was protected by rune-magic. Nothing could harm it.

  The Dragon Wing had sailed without injury through the suns of Pryan. It had survived the Maelstrom of Arianus, floated unscathed on the molten lava sea of Abarrach. A powerful Sartan necromancer had tried unsuccessfully to break its spell. The dread lazar had sought to unravel its magic. Dragon Wing and its pilot had survived them all. But water, ordinary water, was causing it to shatter like flawed pottery.

  The ship was wallowing sluggishly, timbers creaking and groaning, straining to survive, then giving way. Dragon Wing was breaking apart slowly; it hadn't been crushed, but it shouldn't be breaking apart at all.

  Haplo still couldn't believe it, refused to believe it. He stood up with difficulty, fighting to balance himself on the listing deck. Water sloshed over his ankles.

  He turned to look for the steering stone, wondering briefly as he searched why it should have been knocked loose. It, too, was covered with runes, protected by sigla that guided the ship. If he could retrieve the stone, replace it, he could steer his vessel out of the water and back to what he now concluded must have been some sort of air pocket.

  Haplo located the steering stone; it had rolled up against the bulkheads. Its rounded top was barely visible above the rising water. He waded toward it, reached down to pick it up. His hand paused. He stared at the stone.

  It was smooth, round, and completely blank. The sigla were gone.

  Another crash. The water level was rising rapidly.

  This must be a trick of his mind, a panicked reaction to what was happening. The sigla on the steering stone were inscribed deeply, magically, in the rock. They could not, by any possible means, be washed away. Haplo plunged his hands into the water in an effort to retrieve the stone. He drew it out, speaking the runes that should have caused its magic to activate.

  Nothing happened. He might have been holding a rock dug from his lord's garden. And then, glaring at the stone in baffled, angry frustration, Haplo's gaze shifted to his hands.

  Water dripped from his fingers, his wrists, his lower arms, ran from skin that was smooth and unblemished, as blank and bare as the rock.

  Haplo dropped the stone. Oblivious to the water that was at his knees now, to the shattering crashes that told him Dragon Wing was in its death throes, he stared hard at his hands, tried in vain to trace the comforting, reassuring lines of the runes.

  The sigla were gone.

  Fighting a surge of panic that rose in him even with the level of the water, Haplo lifted his right arm. A trickle of the liquid streamed from the back of his hand—now bare— down his rune-covered arm. In amazed horror, he watched the drop of water slide down his skin, meander among the sigla tattooed on his flesh. In its wake, it left a clean trail of slowly fading, diminishing runes.

  This, then, was what was happening to his ship. The water was dissolving the runes, wiping out any trace of magical power.

  Unable to think of any explanation why the water should destroy the magic, Haplo could find no way to remedy the situation. His mind was in turmoil and chaos. Accustomed to relying all his life on his magic, he was suddenly rendered helpless as a mensch.

  The water level on the bridge was high enough now to float Haplo off his feet. He felt a strange reluctance to leave the protection of his vessel, though he knew logically that it would very soon be able to offer no protection whatsoever. Its magic was diminishing, dying, even as his own magic was dying. The thought came to him that it would be better to die himself than to live like a mensch—or worse than a mensch, for some of them possessed magical skills, though on a very crude level.

  The temptation to shut his eyes and let the water cover his head and end his anguish was a fleeting one. Haplo was angry, furious at what was happening to him, furious at whatever or whoever was responsible. He determined to discover who it was and why it was and make them pay. And he couldn't do that if he was dead.

  Haplo gazed upward, hoping to see some sign of the surface. He became convinced that he saw light above him. Drawing in a last breath, he shoved aside the floating remnants of Dragon Wing and pushed and kicked his way through the water.

  Powerful strokes of his arms propelled Haplo upward, fended off the pieces of drifting plank and boards. There was definitely light; he could look down and see the contrasting darkness of the water beneath him. But, no sign of the surface.

  Haplo's lungs began to burn; bright spots danced in his eyes. He could not hold his breath much longer. Furiously, driven by a panicked fear of drowning, he swam upward.

  I'm not going to make it. I'm going to die. And no one will ever know … my lord will never know …

  The agony became too great. Haplo could bear it no longer. The surface, if surface existed, was too far above him. He lacked strength to keep fighting. His heart seemed likely to burst, his brain to explode, his chest flaming with excruciating pain.

  Muscles acted in reflex the brain fought against. Haplo's mouth opened. He sucked in water through nose and mouth and, feeling a strange warming sensation run through his body, assumed he was dying.

  He wasn't, and that astonished him.

  Haplo didn't know a lot about drowning. He'd obviously never drowned himself, nor had he met anyone who had and come back to describe the event. He'd seen drowned bodies, however, knew that when the lungs were filled with water, they ceased functioning, along with all the other organs of the body. He was considerably surprised to discover that, in his case, this was not occurring.

  If it had not seemed too improbable, Haplo could have sworn he was breathing in the water as easily as he had once breathed in the air.

  Haplo hung motionless in the water and paused to consider this unusual and perplexing phenomenon. The rational, thinking, reasoning part of him refused to accept it, and if he dwelt consciously on the fact that the next breath he took would be filled with water, he caught himself holding his breath again, terror rising in him. But if he relaxed and didn't think about it, the breath came. Inexplicably, but it came
. And, to some part of him, it made sense. A part of him long, long forgotten.

  You have returned to what was. This was how and where you began life.

  Haplo considered this, decided he would puzzle it out later. Now all that mattered was that he was alive, irrationally, but he was alive. And living presented an entirely new set of problems.

  The water might be air to his lungs, but that was all it was. Haplo could tell by the empty, gnawing sensations in his belly that the water could not nourish him, nor quench his thirst. Nor could it bolster his rapidly flagging strength. Bereft of the magic that might have sustained him, he would survive drowning only to perish of thirst, hunger, fatigue.

  His head cleared. Relieved of the panicked fight to avoid death, Haplo studied his surroundings. He could see now that the light he'd hoped was sunlight appeared to be shining, not above him, but somewhere to one side. He doubted now it was the sun, but it was light, and, hopefully, where there was light, there was life.

  Catching hold of a scrap of lumber drifting from the wreakage of Dragon Wing, Haplo struggled out of his heavy boots and most of his clothes that added weight and drag. He gazed ruefully at his bare legs and arms. No trace of the runes remained.

  Haplo rested himself as comfortably as he could upon the board and lay there, floating in the water that was neither cold nor hot but so near his own body temperature that he had no sensation of it at all against his skin.

  He relaxed, consciously refusing to think, letting himself recover from shock and fright. The water supported him, buoyed him up. He could see, from the hair streaming past his face, that the water had a motion to it, a current, a tide that appeared to be running the direction he wanted to go. This strengthened his decision. It would be easier to travel with the tide than against it.