The Price of Wisdom

by Shannah Jay

  'Well, go back again, then!' yelled Quedras, who had very acute hearing. 'I don't want any mama-babies in my fighting band.'

  'Who are you calling a baby? I'll have you know I was the best swordsman in the Holding.'

  'Hah! I'm terrified! When we get out of this place, I'll rreally show you how to use a sword.'

  Querilla chuckled and added her mite. 'And I'm just as good as he is, so you and I will have a couple of bouts as well, eh, when you've defeated my mate?' She winked at Quedras. With each other to practise with, neither of them doubted they were the best swordfighters in the whole of the Twelve Claims.

  Within a couple of hours it was going dark again. 'Better rest!' Quedras ordered. 'Might as well have a nap while we're at it.'

  As dawn broke, a new branch began to grow out from the tree, a slender one, with leaves that unfurled quickly, flowers that bloomed and died in a minute, and purple fruit that formed in clusters.

  The woman the branch had first touched yelled in shock, then called out to let Quedras know what was happening. 'Hey, it's growing some fruit,' she yelled a minute later.

  'Pass one along to Quall. He'll tell us whether we can eat it or not.'

  Quall rubbed the juice of the fruit along his lips and waited to see if there would be any reaction. It was hard not to bite into the fruit, it looked so good. 'Better wait at least an hour, then I'll just try a bit,'

  he told Quedras.

  The air around them suddenly started humming and a deep voice said, 'Fruit safe for humans.

  Grown specially.'

  'Hah!' said Querilla. 'Quequere was right. These trees can talk.'

  There was silence, with someone at the rear gulping audibly, then Quall shrugged. 'If Quequere trusts these tree creatures, so should we.' He bit into the fruit, closing his eyes in ecstasy at the taste.

  There was silence as everyone watched him.

  'Mmm. It's delicious.' He finished the whole cluster.

  Quedras looked back at him. 'Hey, don't eat them all. Pass me some!'

  Soon they were all sucking and chewing the juicy purple globes.

  'Thanks, tree!' Querilla yelled before they set off.

  A vibration was her only answer. Or was it the wind in the leaves?

  After a couple more of these short days, they had another nap, sleeping as best they could in niches that grew for them in the branch they were currently on. Fruit and nuts grew around them every time they stopped.

  'Thank you, tree,' Quedras said each time. He still felt a fool talking to a tree and he glared around him as he spoke, daring anyone to laugh.

  But no one did. This was a strange world where trees did helpful things and spoke to you. It was not unreasonable to speak to them in your turn, to be polite. Just to be on the safe side.

  When they reached the last of the great trees, a branch started to bend downwards to let them get to the ground. Quedras, the first to descend, for he always led his people in person, slapped the trunk and said. 'Thank you very much, tree.'

  The rough bark vibrated beneath his hand. 'Help Herra,' said that strange deep voice. 'Go in peace, humans.'

  When it said no more, Quedras took a deep breath and gestured to the others to follow him. At the bottom of the tree a pathway led them on through more walls of dense green foliage to an archway.

  Quedras drew his sword and went through it, to find himself in a sunny peaceful landscape with a settlement in the distance.

  'Phew!' said Querilla, slapping his back. 'I'm glad to be out of that place. You can't beat open space and a breeze on your face.'

  'I agree,' he admitted. Then he frowned. 'Better be ready for a fight, though, if we're in the Twelve Claims. Damned if I'm going to scuttle away from those snake-lovers like a burrow beetle.'

  'You're right there, Queddie.' She drew her own sword, brandishing it so that the blade caught the sun. 'I've missed using this. Farming might fill your belly and let you raise your children safely, but it's a cursed tedious life, if you ask me.'

  As they approached the settlement, a group of people walked out to greet them.

  'They don't look to be armed,' Querilla commented, for she had the sharpest eyesight of anyone.

  'Bright colour they're wearing, though. Foolhardy, that. Couldn't hide yourself.'

  'It's Sisterhood blue.' Tears filled Fiana's eyes at the sight of the familiar Sisters' robes. 'No, Kindred blue now,' she amended, as she saw men wearing tunics of the same colour.'

  'Greetings, friends,' the strangers called, holding their arms wide.

  'Anyone could take this lot by surprise,' Querilla muttered in Quall's ear.

  'Perhaps they live in peace, with no enemies to fight.'

  She snorted. 'And perhaps I've got two heads. This is the Twelve Claims, isn't it, where Those of the Serpent reign?'

  The older woman leading the small delegation turned at Querilla's words. 'This is not yet the Twelve Claims, my friend. This is the last stopping place before you reach Peneron, the south-western claim.

  We call our home Outpost. Who is your leader?'

  'More speeches,' grumbled Quedras, winking at Quall as he stepped forward.

  But there were no speeches, only a warm welcome, good food and soft beds. After an excellent night's rest, they got ready to leave Outpost. Again, a few of the younger men and women wanted to leave with them.

  'At this rate, we'll have out work cut out protecting those who join us,' Querilla said loudly. 'We need fighters, if we're to win through to Herra.'

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  A young man stepped forward. 'Benjan taught us some ways of fighting. We've been practising. And we have other skills.'

  'Oh, yes?'

  He grinned. 'Draw your sword.'

  She snatched at it to humour him and found her movements slowed down. Sweat stood out on her brow as she struggled to pull the sword from its scabbard, then suddenly it came free and she nearly overbalanced. She grinned delightedly, always ready to embrace a new way of fighting. 'Hey, what did you do?'

  'It's called stilling - an inborn Gift - only I can't do it as well as Herra, who can actually stop people moving. I can only do it enough to slow someone down.'

  'Hah! That's still a good trick, though, lad!' She clapped him on the shoulder, sending him staggering. 'Did you see that, Queddie. They're not just going to be deadweights, after all.'

  Quedras rolled his eyes. Tact was not his Querilla's strong point. And he was beginning to find out that you sometimes had to be very tactful to hold a disparate group of travellers together.

  Still, he looked round with pride, because there were now forty people who had started calling themselves Quedras's Band. Forty very determined people, but none more determined than he and Querilla. And none more ready for a fight.

  CHAPTER 17….THE TIME OF THE SERPENT

  The square in front of the main shrine in Setherak was deserted. All the worshippers had gone into the shrine for the evening sacrifice. Incense wafted across the square, making a woman who was creeping along a side alley wrinkle her nose in disgust. The incense seemed particularly strong this evening and nausea roiled round her stomach as she inadvertently breathed it in. Covering her mouth and nose with a corner of her cloak, she hurried on. A child was sick and she was risking her life to go and heal it.

  In the square the ground heaved suddenly and a deep rumbling noise issued forth. Two men who were late for the sacrifices let go of their wives' hands and fled. The women wailed and followed them, clumsy in their long heavy garments. These people were reluctant worshippers at the best of times and they didn’t wait to see what was making the ground heave and quake.

  Wind blew debris around the empty square, clouds scudded across the sky, giving alternating moonlight and darkness. The wind grew stronger, the clouds thicker and the ground continued to heave.

  Inside the shrine Sen-Sether raised his head and a look of exaltation made his eyes glow with a wild light. 'Dread my Lord!' he called, in a voice which carried
to every corner of the shrine. 'Come to us, Dread my Lord.'

  The nearest Servant cracked his whip and started intoning, 'Serpent, save your Servants! Serpent, save your Servants!' The cry was taken up by all in the shrine, even the women waiting in the pens for their turn to be used on the altars, the women whose despair could be felt and enjoyed by the Initiate passing by.

  Sen-Sether moved towards the main doors, feeling the surges of dark power that meant the Serpent was with him, in him, flooding him with pain and ecstasy both. He stiffened suddenly, motionless in a listening posture. 'Get everybody outside!' he called, as he began to move again. 'Everybody to wait in the square!' He picked up a heavy candle, its wax a dirty pinkish colour and tossed it to a nearby Servant. 'Light more of these! And take some outside.' Men ran to obey, as they always did when Sen-Sether spoke, for even his fellow Initiates were afraid of him.

  Thicker clouds of smoke began to waft around the shrine, smoke with a new and potent scent, smoke that was absorbed by the skin as well as the lungs, to taint the blood of those in attendance that night. Eyes went blank, faces slack. Hands twitched. Those holding the whips breathed deeply in anticipation of the pain they would soon be meting out.

  Black cloak flapping behind him, showing the golden lining, lust and something else twisting his face into a horrifying gargoyle, Sen-Sether strode through the shrine. People stumbled along after him, uncertain what was happening, only knowing they were bidden to follow and to disobey might mean death. Servants prodded the women out of the side pens. Whips cracked, candles guttered and above it all could be heard and felt the deepest of subterranean rumblings.

  At first the sound was a mere shudder along the nerves. Then it began to throb up from the ground more loudly, on and on, beating into a pulsing rhythm. One woman sobbed aloud and jammed the side of her hand into her mouth to hold back further cries as she felt a whip crack about her shoulders. You didn't cry out until they wanted you to, not if you valued your life.

  As the square filled with worshippers, Sen-Sether stood in the centre, his arms raised, a circle of torches flaring around him, making the shadows flicker across his face, turning it into a mask of ugly savagery. 'Dread my Lord!' he called and called again. 'Dread my Lord, come among us tonight!'

  And the ground continued to shake, making people stagger as if they had drunk too much ale.

  A circle of Initiates formed around Sen-Sether and when he gave some more sharp orders, Servants formed a line that kept a third of the square clear, the middle third, a strip with the circle of Initiates at one of the short edges, the Servants at the other, and the bewildered worshippers down each of the longer sides.

  The ground shook again, heaving and cracking, so that even through their numbed senses, people felt apprehension shivering in their guts. The women clutched one another. The men stood motionless, waiting, waiting, malleable as clay. And the smoke wafted over and around them all, twisting and coiling and settling.

  Next time the ground shook, it heaved and split apart, causing deep cracks to open up, cracks filled with an almost liquid darkness that began flowing outwards, carpeting the cobblestones, weighing down the feet of those who had thought only to do their duty in the shrine that night and then return in relief to the fragile safety of their homes.

  From the depths of the ground came more rumbling sounds, sounds so deep they vibrated along every bone of those trapped in the square. And then the darkness moved upwards, rising to form a figure whose shape was engraved on the walls around the square, emblazoned on the black and gold triangular banners that lay limply at the tops of the standards, a figure that was everywhere in Setherak.

  The Serpent had risen.

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  'Dread my Lord, welcome!' shrieked Sen-Sether.

  'Welcome! Welcome!' intoned the Initiates and the cry was taken up by those who could still move their lips.

  The dark tide rose higher, the serpent's head formed and expanded, the eyes glaring a baleful dirty red. The body followed it, forming out of nothing and writhing along the ground, nearly filling the area which had been kept empty.

  Terror was everywhere - you could touch it, see it, feel it, taste it. But it was strongest among the women and those who worshipped the Serpent only with reluctance.

  The red eyes opened wide and the huge serpent figure writhed closer to a group of people pressed against a wall in the corner. The mouth opened, the tongue flickered out as the serpent struck. First a woman then a man was snatched, each body waved aloft and then ingested with a gulping sound. The Serpent roared so loudly it hurt the ears. As it spat out the dried husks of its victims' bodies, its huge coils knocked the nearby people over like alehouse skittles, but it seized no more victims.

  Sen-Sether stepped forward confidently towards it. 'Dread my Lord,' he called. 'Tell us your wishes.'

  The great head reared above him, moving from side to side. ' YOU,' it throbbed in a voice so low the words were blurred, ' YOU SHALL LEAD. YOU SHALL LEAD MY PEOPLE TO THE HIGH

  ALDER. NOW,' the words beat upon the air and the earth shook again, 'NOW IS THE TIME. NOW

  I AM READY TO DEFEAT THE DEPRAVED HAGS.'

  Sen-Sether's voice rang out like a trumpet call. 'We shall obey, Dread my Lord. Now is the time.'

  Then the ground shook again, the Serpent began to sink slowly down, very slowly, and the dark vapour slithered after it, taking so long to vanish that people were nearly fainting with the fear that it might return.

  'Now is the time,' cried Sen-Sether again. And only then did he wave one hand in a dismissive gesture that sent folk scurrying to their homes, to lie there trembling in the aftermath of the first true manifestation of the Serpent God.

  But Sen-Sether did not, could not sleep that night. For the Serpent had risen and named him leader.

  It was at last time to march out, time to crush Herra of Tenebrak and all the depraved hags who followed her softbelly ways.

  ***

  As the shadowy figure of the Serpent sank into the ground on the planet, above them on the satellite, Robler lay writhing on his bed in the parody of the sexual act that he experienced whenever the Serpent took possession of his body. Ah, Serpent Lord, he thought, you call and I hear. I, too, shall answer you, serve you, worship you. Dread my Lord, I shall serve you well.

  And from that day onwards, he carried a certainty within him that even if the Confex rescue team did come, he would be able to defeat them, with the help of his Dread Lord, defeat them and use them. He became quieter, spending more time in his cabin, gloating, planning, scheming. He was a mere shell of the old Robler, an empty vessel filled to the core with Discord madness.

  He began to make preparations. Very carefully. He didn’t allow the new feeling that burned within him to push him into rash action. That was no way to serve the Serpent. He didn’t show how he felt to the others, though sometimes they looked at him a little strangely. Sometimes, he had a struggle to bite back an explosion of rage at their stupidity. But he didn’t lose control. He needed them. There were so few to tend the satellite now.

  Most especially he didn’t intend the com-system to know what he was doing. For the com-system, too, was his enemy now. And one day he would destroy its power to resist him, one day he would find a way to control it. No one should set up machines to overrule men. Confex had had its day. It’d grown weak, like those damned Sister hags. But Robler wasn’t weak. He’d win his battles up here, and then he’d go down to the place whence his Dread Lord called. Thereafter he would give himself utterly to a life of dark and beautiful power.

  Carefully he studied the intricate design of the satellite and its maintenance systems, pursuing detailed knowledge which had never interested him before. He took hypno-sleep courses in communications design, in weaponry, in engineering, in any skill he thought might aid his plans to strike a blow for the Serpent.

  This, he thought to himself during the long nights when he lay sleepless, this is how men were meant to live. Not
as weaklings and cowards, but as warriors. And women were meant to serve them, not to lead them by the noses like children and simpletons. No wonder the Confederation had fallen apart. No wonder Discord was spreading. A man couldn’t deny his true nature without paying the price.

  When a message came from the Confex rescue vessel to say they were on course for a rescue, though proceeding more slowly than expected, it was fortunate that Robler was alone in the com-room. He made an appropriate response, assured the Captain that all was well on the satellite and kept the news to himself.

  When the rescue team reached them, he’d disarm them and take over the whole vessel. Maybe - his breath caught in his throat - maybe he’d use that vessel afterwards to spread the Serpent's name across the vast reaches of space. Or he could just send the rescue vessel crashing down to the planet below.

  At the thought of that, of the huge destruction and pain he could offer to the Serpent by such an action, viscous delight crept thickly along his veins.

  When he visited the diagnosis-system for his regular check-up, he kept himself calm and was pleased when it informed him that his body was in good shape, better than on the previous visit.

  ' Have you had any further occurrences of extreme anger?' it inquired, in its smooth metallic voice.

  'No. I regret my behaviour that day very deeply. A single aberration, I'm sure. The stress of being responsible for everyone on the satellite. But now that the trouble-makers have left, the stress has lessened considerably, and I feel well again.'

  It hummed for a while, but made no comment as it let him go. Even the machines were fools.

  He saw little of the rest of the remaining crew these days. They tended to walk around in pairs, which made him smile sometimes when he thought about it. Once he decided to strike, it wouldn't matter whether they were in pairs or all together. Not with the power that would course through him from his Dread Lord. They, too, would serve the Serpent - or die. It was really very simple.

  Those of the Confederation had been wrong to deny him recognition as a Potential Cathartic Agent. Utterly wrong. Well, he’d achieved his full potential now, in spite of them. One day, they’d have to change the tests, to improve their ways of judging children's potential. But that was for the distant future, when the Serpent's banner flew over the whole Confederation.