by Shannah Jay
'Pity about that storm blowing up so suddenly,' Bel-Halath continued, pulling a face at his second in command. 'Serpent's teeth, but you stink of dead fish. Could you not have changed your clothes before coming to see me?'
Vizran found enough breath to gasp out, 'It w-wasn't a storm, lord. It was F-Feera.'
'No such thing as Feera. It's a bugaboo to frighten children.'
'No.' Vizran screamed the word at his lord, forgetting respect in his resentment at the way he was being treated. 'It's not a bugaboo. It's real. I saw it. It picked up our boat and threw everyone else into the sea. It h-held me in the air and sh-shook me, then it sent me back to you with a message.'
Bel-Halath looked cynical. 'Oh, yes? What did it want?'
'It said: t-tell Bel-Halath to get his forces away from the coast by tomorrow. And - and t-tell him not to raze any m-more villages, if he v-values his own life.'
Bel-Halath studied his henchman's staring eyes and shivering body. 'You've had a shock,' he said, remembering the years of service Vizran had given him and for once choosing to be kind. 'Go and lie down. You'll forget this nonsense and feel better tomorrow.'
Vizran opened his mouth to protest, but a sharp gesture from Bel-Halath sent him stumbling from the tent. You didn’t argue with the lord of this claim when he had that tight expression on his face. Not if you valued your life, anyway.
But no matter how close Vizran sat to a fire, no matter how much wine he poured down his throat, and no matter how many blankets his body-servant later piled upon his bed, he couldn’t banish the chill from his bones. Nor could he forget Feera's warning.
When grey daylight crept into the world the following day, Vizran stumbled outside his tent, staring up at the dark storm clouds looming above them. He was filled with a nameless apprehension. As he stood there, the sun appeared briefly, only to disappear behind banks of cloud that had begun to roll in from the sea. He started shivering again, shivering and begging the Serpent to watch over them all. So crazed did he look that men gathered to watch him and not even his dour body-servant dared try to pull him back into his tent.
Thunder boomed suddenly in the sky, so loud that men jerked in shock. With it came a voice roaring, 'Begone!' In defiance of the laws of nature, many-forked lightning arced up from the water, sizzling as it touched the land, burning the earth, burning anything it touched. A boat in the harbour burst into flames as light sliced into it. A kitchen tent in the camp erupted into a fireball, and charred, fluttering pieces of canvas from it floated above the staring men, raining black smuts down upon them.
'Begone!' roared that voice again.
This time the thunder was loud enough to awaken Bel-Halath himself, loud enough to send him stumbling to the door of his tent, mouth open in a spluttering rage that no one could hear. And as the lightning flashed again, he was outlined in silver, caught for a dreadful moment's frozen agony. No one who saw it ever forgot the sight of his flaming body crumbled to the ground to char away to nothing.
When the word 'Begone!' boomed at them a third time from the sky, men panicked and started running. Some tried to rescue their belongings. Some just took to their heels. Others lost all sense and ran to hide in tents that would give them no shelter from the searing, burning silver tongues that were still arcing across the sky from the ocean with every bone-jarring crash of thunder.
And in the middle of it all, Vizran stood and laughed, shrill laughter that made men's blood run cold. He stood with his face turned up to the sky and laughed until his sides ached, laughed on and on until he was swept away by a roaring wind that blew down the remaining tents and sent men tumbling about like alehouse skittles.
Even then, Vizran struggled to his feet and began to dance up and down, turning and twisting in time to his own raucous laughter. 'Here I am,' he screamed. 'Here I am, Feera!'
He welcomed the stabbing light with another shriek of laughter as it finally found him out and seared his cries to silence in his throat.
And when the storm at last died down, there were no living men left in the Fringelands camp, only debris and bodies.
The forces from the Halani Claims did not re-form. Some groups of zealots took it upon themselves to form small fighting bands and make their way across country towards Setheron, causing needless destruction everywhere they went and gathering a few men here and there to follow their triangular serpent standards. But the groups weren’t large enough to take every village that resisted them. And not many joined them, for word of the fate of Bel-Halath and his men had gone before them.
***
Up on the satellite, Robler watched the destruction of the army and the fishing harbour with cool detachment. Only primitives would imagine that some sort of god had caused it. He knew better.
Clouds could blow into strange shapes and primitives saw them as living beings. It was just bad luck that it had happened now. The commanders should have taken more note of the storm brewing over the sea.
The Serpent would manage without these men. Pity, but these things happened. The important thing was to destroy the Kindred. When it at last happened, when that hag died, and her foolish acolytes and followers with her, he would be waiting to drag Davred and Soo back to the satellite.
By good fortune, Lizan was on duty with Sim when the next message came from the Confex rescue vessel.
'You answer them,' Sim mouthed.
She nodded.
A short exchange followed, punctuated by the whistlings and shriekings and loss of contact occasioned by the destruction of some of the com-stations that normally routed hyperlight messages swiftly across this corner of the galaxy.
'Sir, you have to believe me!' she begged the commander, knowing that Robler would incarcerate her under stasis if he ever found out what she was doing.
JAY The Price of Wisdom169
'She's right, sir,' Sim said, adding his pleas to hers. 'The Exec is not - he's just not behaving normally lately.'
'You'd better be telling the truth about that,' the grim voice said. Then contact was lost.
Lizan and Sim exchanged glances. 'What else could we do?' she whispered.
'Nothing. Let's just hope Robler doesn't find out about what we said. And let's tell the others not to mention it, either, or discuss it with anyone else.' They both knew that Robler had monitoring devices all around the satellite and that he listened in to people's conversations in a random manner.
They were lucky. Robler didn't happen to review that particular conversation. And since no one now talked to the Exec unless they absolutely had to, Sim and Lizan managed to spread the news to the other crew members without him finding out.
The Confex rescue team was slightly ahead of schedule, but would be out of contact for the next stage of the journey, since all com-stations in the sector it was currently traversing had been destroyed.
It was a secret that raised morale considerably. And not before time. No exploration team been ever stranded on a satellite for so many years. Never before had Confex taken so long to rescue anyone.
What was happening out there? Was the whole Confederation falling apart?
CHAPTER 24 THE PATH OF THE SERPENT
It took Sen-Sether's army ten days to get across the Great River in the north of Netheron, the river that formed the boundary with Garshlian. The army left behind it a ravaged land. The territory was called the Loop, because it lay nestled within a wide curving loop of the Great River, just where it was joined by the Belder River. It had always been a good place to live. Until now.
Those who hadn’t gone over to the Serpent had all fled, taking as much as they could on any cart or handcart they could find, and driving as much of their stock with them as they could, too.
By the time the army moved on, whole stretches of the usually fertile land were denuded of both houses and crops, for the wooden houses of the empty villages had been easy to burn, all in the name of the Serpent, and any crops that weren’t ripe or usable for nerid feed had been burned, too, helped by the sp
ell of dry weather that had followed the army across the whole Loop. Serpent's weather, the soldiers were beginning to call it, for it made travel easier for the great mass of men and carts and riding nerids that could so easily get bogged down when it rained.
The villages that had gone over to the Serpent feted them, providing women for the sacrifices, providing young men for the fighting, and then watching in stunned amazement as their older men were taken, too, in fact, anyone fit enough to walk, whether that person had fighting skills and a strong enough body or not.
The villages seemed very quiet afterwards, as the women waited for their wounded backs to heal, tended their children and tried to cope with the farming work their menfolk had usually done.
No one was left to keep the incense burning.
And in that time of blackest desperation, as heads cleared from years of numbness, a resolution was born in many women who had just endured what they couldn’t change in dumb misery for the past couple of decades. It was a resolution that only grew stronger as they sorted out their broken lives and tended their children.
They would not return to the ways of the Serpent once their menfolk returned - if they returned.
They would die rather than go on as they had been doing. And they would never, ever burn that incense again. In earnest of that, they sought out all stock of incense candles and smashed them, then buried the fragments in widely scattered holes.
***
Once the army had crossed the river, it was greeted by the people of Garsh very respectfully, those from the towns, anyway. The plains of Garsh were more desolate than the Loop, for there only grass seemed to grow, grass that fed the straggling herds of wool nerids scattered here and there - though there weren’t many of them left after the army had passed - except for those which had been hidden before the army's arrival.
Sen-Sether made straight for the city of Garshalik, which sat on the edge of the Belder River, whose waters were led into the city itself through a chain of canals. The houses of the rich were built on the more westerly canals and the wool merchants had their premises on the easterly canals, where the waterways had deliberately been made narrower to speed up the flow that turned their wheels and spun the wool. But the weaving itself was always done by hand, and people laughed at the idea of creating machines to do it for them. What would a machine know of beauty? What would a machine know of the sudden instinct to change a plan, use a softer colour, twist the wool twice instead of once around a certain strand of warp? For the Garsh were famed for their beautiful hangings and rugs and materials.
No machine could ever create such beauty.
Great celebrations were held in the main shrine, with Sen-Sether leading the Initiates there into a depth of dark ecstasy they’d never plumbed before. Two of their victims died under the whip, which was, Sen-Sether insisted, the correct way to honour their Dread Lord on a special occasion like this.
If the plump Initiates and Servants of Garshalik felt that this was going rather too far, they were skilled enough to hide their feelings. Life was easy in Garshalik, and would be easy again after this dark tide of warriors had passed through. As folk said in Garshalik - All things flow like the river; only learn to flow with them and endure.
The Lord Claimant was away in his summer hunting lodge in the mountains, deliberately absent, Sen-Sether was sure. But he made no complaint about that, just accepted the homage of the lord's deputies, then conferred with Those of the Serpent and made a few changes in the shrines and incense manufactories. Time enough to deal with this recalcitrant Lord Claimant when they’d accomplished this task. But he wouldn’t forget, Sen-Sether vowed; he never forgot an insult.
He sent his men to ransack the city's warehouses and found them strangely empty. The caretakers were full of assurances that this was all they had left until the harvest was in. That, too, he would remember on his way back and make them produce the hidden goods. He contented himself with taking all the stores of food he could find, every grain, every vegetable, every piece of dried fruit.
He laughed when they begged him to leave them just a little. 'I'm afraid you'll have to go hungry in Garshalik next winter. It will teach you to respect your god in future, I'm sure.'
***
As the army marched north in a sluggish tide of weary men, Sen-Sether rode along on his white
JAY The Price of Wisdom171
nerid. Soon! the blood sang in his veins. Soon! And he breathed in the clear sparkling air at the front of the long columns with great relish, though the air the men behind him breathed in was full of dust kicked up by the many feet.
All around them was a sea of grass. Those from the coast couldn’t get over their amazement at the emptiness of the land and the way the beige summer grasses rippled in the breeze like water on the surface of a bay. Those from the wooded parts of the southern claims found the landscape empty and somehow threatening. They were glad they didn’t have to live in such a bare place where the sun dazzled your eyes so that you had to bind thin cloth across them against the glare, and where the dust clogged your throat and flavoured all your food.
Here and there they found abandoned villages, but they caught no sight of the inhabitants. And nowhere on the great plain did they find villages where the Serpent was worshipped. So behind them many columns of black smoke burned, giving mute testimony to the destruction the Serpent brought to his enemies.
One afternoon, a band of men on foot raided the slower provision carts at the rear of the army. The first thing they did was to put out the incense sticks that burned on metal stands on each cart. They managed to set some of the wooden vehicles on fire before running off again across the grass with their booty, whooping like savages.
Strangely, men just stood and stared after them, as if their wits were addled, instead of pursuing.
Some of the soldiers were more interested in breathing deeply, for the air tasted so clean without the incense, so very fresh and clean.
It was a while before the nearest group of mounted soldiers came to their aid and spurred their nerids into pursuit of the raiders. They found nothing, no sign of folk passing and no sign of tunnels or hidden ways, though men on foot had surely not had enough time to get away.
It made poor telling and no one could explain it. Sen-Sether, once he had recovered from his anger, sent round a message that the incident was not to be discussed. It had been the surprise that did it, that was all, and they would be ready if it happened again.
But men knew what they’d seen, and you couldn’t stop them remembering the way disorientation had seemed to creep over them as the incense was extinguished. Above all, they remembered the way the air had tasted. Fresh, clean air.
Then the incense sticks were lit again, one for each ten-group, and the brief taste of freedom began to fade into a dream-like memory. Men turned back to obey their ten-men and their fifty-men, and to bow low before the Servants and Initiates. But some hugged the memory of the clean fresh air to their hearts like a light seen ahead on a misty night.
Olleff, safely hidden in a tunnel, across whose entrance the Lord Ebrlk himself had once set permanent wards, watched with glee as the pursuers came close enough to be overheard and yet found nothing. The Lady Maritha, once Elder Sister of Temple Garshalik, but now, like Herra of Tenebrak, outside the temple leading her people in revolt, put a finger to her lips to warn him to contain his glee and he nodded, though he couldn’t stop rocking with stifled amusement at the puzzled angry comments from outside.
It was joy unbounded to Olleff to do any small damage to the ravagers of his land. Those of the Serpent had killed his little daughter, blinded his mother and ill-treated his wife. A Sister named Cheral
- he smiled at the memory of that cross bustling little woman - had helped them fight back, so that the town of Marrinak was now a free town again, as towns should be on the Plains of Garshlian. When the wind blew there, it didn’t send incense whirling around the streets nowadays, only good honest air.
An
d dust, of course.
And when the Houran howled across the plains, that was the time to attack these marauders. It was as if the powerful wind was on their side.
He watched those who had pursued him abandon their search and ride towards the straggling army, then he turned to the Lady Maritha to share with her an idea he had for another small foray. Only a day's ride away. Nothing big. He had a few friends and relatives who would be happy to help him, and surely any harm they could inflict on Those of the Serpent, any small damage, would help their Brother's cause, as well as giving the people of Marrinak great joy.
'Very well,' she said, hiding a smile. Olleff was like a mischievous child, but he was cunning in his plans, like most of the herders. 'But only on windy days,' she added. 'Remember that.'
And so it was for the next twenty days, until Maritha said firmly that it was time to stop. They were getting into unknown territory. They wouldn’t know whom to trust. They’d done their share now.
Reluctantly, Olleff returned home, to boast to any who would listen of his exploits against the Serpent. He bored his wife and family silly with the same tales for the next twenty years. It was his moment of glory and he never forgot it. The Lady Maritha herself had thanked him and said their Brother would be pleased.
***
In the north of Garshlian the army ground to a halt again, as Sen-Sether waited impatiently for the forces from the Northern Claims to join him. Waited and waited. But only small groups arrived, full of bitterness and anger at their inability to raise the whole land against those hags.
Sen-Sether listened to their excuses, then sent them off to form their own units and learn what they could about fighting in an army. As they joined those who had undertaken what men were now calling the Great March of the Serpent, his expression was grim.
That night he had congress with his master and offered up a plan which had been lying at the back of his mind for some time.
With a deep surging roar that was heard all over the vast camp, the Serpent signified his approval.
The next day, three large wagons were unloaded of goods which had been hidden under tarpaulins and carefully guarded for the whole journey so far.
