03 City of the Snakes

by Darren Shan

  We stand close by one another while the steam envelops us and the mamaconas slither around, whispering, occasionally breathing in our faces or scratching us teasingly with their nails. I don’t like this. It’s surreal. I imagine all sorts of monstrosities circling us. I want to break free of the steam, shove the priestesses away and run. But I hold myself in check and remind myself that every minute wasted is a bonus, as long as they don’t keep us here too long.

  Eventually the mamaconas withdraw and the priest says, “Advance.” We stagger through a set of heavy drapes into a candlelit tunnel a hundred feet long, blocked at the far end by more drapes. I pause nervously at the second set of drapes, then rotate my neck left and right, working the tension out of it. When I’m calm, I part the drapes and step through.

  I find myself in a cavern with a low roof—no more than seven feet high in places—supported by dozens of thick wooden pillars. The room is lit by many candles, set in the floor, casting their light upward. Women crowd the area close to the entrance, spread in a semicircle, naked like our guides, eyes bright. When they see me, they squeal like groupies at a rock concert and point excitedly with long, curved nails.

  “You seem to be a hit with the ladies,” my father grins.

  “But do they want to screw me or sacrifice me?”

  “Possibly both. But if you are lucky, they will fuck you first.”

  Ama moves up beside us and eyes the women critically. “I don’t think it would kill them to buy some clothes.”

  The English-speaking villac sniffs. “The mamaconas have been blessed by the goddess of the moon. They are pure, and must exist in a state of purity. They cover the soles of their feet because this earth is not worthy to receive their touch, but otherwise parade as nature intended.” He sighs. “It is because of their purity that we surrender the use of our eyes. We are not fit to gaze upon them.”

  “You let yourselves be blinded so you can’t look at your priestesses?” I blink slowly. “Didn’t you ever think of blindfolds?”

  “One does not blind oneself to heavenly beauty with a strip of cloth,” he retorts. “It is an honor to give one’s eyes in the service of the mamaconas.”

  Ama moves ahead of us and studies the women. They don’t attempt to shield their nakedness. Some pick at her clothes, frowning, as if they’ve never seen such garments. “These are servants of the moon goddess?” Ama asks the priest.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you worshipped the sun god, Inti.”

  “The creator of all things was Viracocha. When he created the first people, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, he split himself in two, becoming the sun and the moon. Our men worship the male form of the god, our women the female. But you will learn more of this soon. Come—the Coya awaits.”

  The priest claps and the women part. As I walk, I whisper out of the side of my mouth to my father. “Do you think the pillars support the roof or are they just for show?”

  “They look like they are integral,” he replies.

  “If we set off our explosives here…”

  He smiles bleakly. “If not for the fact that it would mean my destruction too, I would love to bring the house down. But it is better if we wait. Do not be in a hurry to embrace death, Al m’boy.”

  I spy a massive red sheet hanging from the roof. It’s maybe sixty feet wide and the hem touches the floor. As I get closer, I see that two more run at ninety-degree angles to it at either end, and I guess they’re connected by a fourth at the back to form a square.

  The villacs stop at the red sheet of cloth and the mamaconas drop to their hands and knees. They’re crooning softly. The priests wait until the tune stops, then the English-speaking one faces us. “It is time to meet our Coya. This is a great honor. As I said earlier, you must treat her with respect or suffer the consequences.” This is addressed to Paucar Wami, who adopts as innocent an expression as he can muster. “By rights, I should present only Flesh of Dreams to her, but I assume you wish for your allies to accompany you?”

  “Yes,” I answer promptly.

  “Very well. But you alone have the privilege of addressing her. The others must speak to her through you or me, and they should do so only if they feel it is imperative. This is not a time for idle questions. One last point.” He pauses, and now his white eyes settle on Ama. “There must be no emotional outbursts. Control yourself, no matter how difficult it may prove.”

  “I’m not a child,” Ama huffs.

  The priest catches hold of the sheet and lifts. I bend low to pass under it, as do Ama and Paucar Wami. The priest follows us, but his companions remain on the other side of the sheet, along with the mamaconas.

  I stand inside the veiled room and allow my eyes to adjust to the light, which is much dimmer here. As objects swim into focus, I realize that much of the room is taken up by an enormous bed—no mattress, just a base—on which rests the largest, most gruesome-looking hag I’ve ever seen. She’s lying on her side, thighs obscured by the hanging folds of her sagging stomach. It’s hard to guess her height, but I’d put it at ten or eleven feet. Layers of fat encircle her like boa constrictors. Her face is double the normal size, her skin grey and mottled, her teeth sharp and uneven, her eyes a dull red color. The nails of her fingers and toes are all but invisible—the flesh of the appendages bulges out over them—and her breasts hang to her pubic mound, her nipples huge and black, leaking a dark liquid. She’s naked, but there’s nothing remotely appealing about her.

  The Coya casts an eye over us, then puts a question to the priest, who’s holding his hands up by the sides of his face, lightly touching his temples with his fingers. He answers with a grunt. She looks at me and smiles. Moves her left hand in under the layers of fat to her vagina. Wets the fingers, lifts them to her nose, then speaks to me in words I can’t understand.

  “She senses loneliness in you,” the villac translates as I gaze distastefully at the creature on the bed. “She offers to use her juices to create a mate for you, one who will be all that you wish.”

  “No thanks,” I mutter, stomach churning at the thought of having anything to do with this foul monster’s juices.

  “Al,” Ama says tightly. Her face is rigid and I can see that she’s struggling to hold herself together. “On the floor, near her feet.”

  I look down—I haven’t had eyes for anything but the Coya until now—and notice a mass of chains and locks. As I stare, something moves beneath the chains and a face swims into view. It’s a man. His features are bruised and bloodied, and his ears and nose have been cut off, but I place him instantly—Capac Raimi. He looks fit for nothing but death.

  I reach out a hand to steady Ama, afraid she’ll disobey the priest’s warning and bring the wrath of this monster down upon us. “I’m OK,” she says, then looks at the Coya and gulps. “Will you ask her if I can go to him?” I raise an eyebrow at the priest. He speaks to his queen, who snorts but waves a hand magnanimously. Ama dashes forward to check on the welfare of the man she was created to love.

  “Capac?” she moans, shoving the chains away from his face. He stares at her with his right eye—his left has been poked out and dangles down his cheek, making him look like a waxwork dummy on a ghost train. “Capac?” she says again, the word breaking into a sob on her lips.

  The Cardinal’s eye widens. “Ama?” he croaks, and as his mouth opens I see that most of his teeth have been extracted. He raises a hand, stops, lets it drop away. “No,” he groans. “Just a vision. A trap. Can’t be. You’re dead.”

  “No, Capac, it’s me!” she cries, grasping his hand and kissing the bloody fingers. “They brought me back. They used me to tempt you down here, but they’re not using me now. We’ve come to—”

  “Ama,” I interrupt hastily. “You’d better leave him. Talking can’t be easy in his condition.”

  “It’s easier than it was a couple of weeks ago,” the villac laughs. “We cut out his tongue. It has only recently grown back.” The priest walks over to where Ama is weeping
and gazes cynically at the battered Cardinal. “He thought he was more powerful than us. He assumed, since he could not be killed, that we could not harm him.” He stoops, grabs a chain and tugs. Raimi grunts with pain and his single eye snaps shut. “He was wrong.”

  “Leave him alone!” Ama screams, thrusting her nails at the priest’s face. But he anticipates the move and slaps her hands aside, then releases the chain.

  “He forgot that if he’s taken to the verge of death, but not beyond, his body will heal, even to the extent of regenerating parts that have been removed.” The priest faces me proudly. “We have kept him here since abducting him, subjecting him to torture and mutilation. We focus on a different part of the body each day. After a while, when that part has healed, we return to it and start over.”

  “Mother… fuckers,” Raimi wheezes, glaring at his tormentor.

  “Be careful, Blood of Dreams,” the priest retorts. “We can take your right eye as simply as we took your left.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Ama hisses, pointing at the priest with a shaking finger.

  “Please,” he yawns, “let us dispense with threats. We did what had to be done. He needed to learn the price of disobedience. If he doesn’t do as we command, we can keep him here forever. There is no escape unless we grant it.”

  “I killed myself… a couple of times,” Raimi sighs. “They were waiting for me on… the train. Took me before… consciousness returned. Drugged and brought… me back. Made me watch as they… castrated me.”

  “The cruellest cut of all,” Wami murmurs, stepping forward to study the work of the priests. Raimi’s eye fills with fear at sight of the killer, but he doesn’t cringe from his touch. “A professional job. I could do better, but my standards are higher than anyone’s.” There’s an almost melancholic gleam to his green eyes. “A victim with self-healing powers, who lives forever… What a time I could have with him! If there is an afterlife, and I am to be rewarded in it by a god or devil, I can think of no greater treasure than this.”

  “You’re real, aren’t you?” Raimi says, glancing from my father to me and back again. “The other’s Al Jeery. But you’re the real Paucar Wami.”

  “The original and best,” my father grins.

  “Have you come to make good on your promise?”

  Wami frowns. “What promise?”

  “You swore, if you survived… Dorak’s passing, you’d see me suffer… for making him jump.”

  The assassin shrugs. “I never thought I would hear myself say this, but I think you have suffered enough. Besides, I have new enemies. You are nothing next to them.”

  “Where are the keys?” Ama asks, sifting through the locks.

  “He will not be freed until he agrees to work with Flesh of Dreams,” the villac says. “When he is ready to commit himself to our cause, we will cast the chains aside and all shall be as it was. If he persists in defying us…”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Raimi splutters. “I can take as much of this… as you can dish out.”

  “Perhaps,” the priest sneers. “But can you take more from my son? And his? Our line is endless, Blood of Dreams, as your suffering will be if—”

  He’s interrupted by the Coya, who says something while waving at the captive on the floor. The priest frowns and replies uncertainly. She repeats herself, sharply this time. He nods and fiddles with the chains, unlocking them with a set of keys that he’s been carrying in a pouch.

  “Our Coya says that there is no further need for violence,” he says, freeing the wary-looking Cardinal. “Your closest mortal ally, Flesh of Dreams, has come of his own free will, bringing the woman you loved and lost ten years ago, who has now been restored—by us. Once you talk with your companions, and dwell upon this in the safety of Party Central, you will see that it does not benefit you to defy us. We want the same thing—a peaceful, strong, independent city. Why not work together to build it?”

  “Fuck you,” Raimi growls, hobbling to his feet, wincing, pausing to snap his loose eye free of the strands attaching it to its socket. He throws it away with a curse, then faces the Coya, ignoring the blood dripping down his left cheek. “One thing kept me going these long years.” I don’t correct him—this isn’t the time to tell him he’s only been down here a matter of weeks. “The thought of wrapping my hands around your filthy fucking throat and throttling you. Now that I’m free, I’m going to…” He’s about to mount the bed when he stops and squints at the grinning Coya and priest.

  “Blood of Dreams,” the villac laughs, “do you really think I would have freed you if there was the slightest chance that you could harm our queen? You may attempt it if you wish, but in your present state I would not advise it. Her sleeping place is sacred, as the inti watana is, and you would be repelled the instant you made contact.”

  “Bullshit,” he snarls.

  “It’s true,” I tell him. His head turns slowly. “I don’t know about the bed, but the inti watana stone is charged with some kind of magic. You can’t set foot on it unless you’ve been cleared. The jolt’s savage at the best of times.”

  Raimi holds my gaze until I look away—I don’t like staring into the bloody maw where his nose should be—then takes a step back. “What brings you here, Jeery?” he asks, brushing some of the dried blood from his cheeks. “I thought you knew better than to get into bed with these fuckers.”

  “The city’s gone to hell since you were taken. This is the only way to restore order.”

  “You’re a fool. This city’s all they have. They won’t irreparably damage it.”

  “Maybe not, but they’ve killed plenty of my neighbors and friends.”

  Raimi shakes his head and spits blood onto the bed, splattering the Coya’s legs. She only grins. “I always suspected you had a soft side. Even when you killed, you only went for scum, never the babes or innocents.”

  “You and my father have an advantage over me,” I respond. “You’re inhuman. I have a conscience.”

  “I used to think I had one too,” Raimi sighs, scratching the spot where his right ear should be. He looks around the sheeted room at the Coya, Ama, Paucar Wami, me, the villac. “What now? We all go home, play happy families and jump when you say?”

  “More or less,” the priest smiles. “I would hold you here if it were up to me, but our queen thinks differently. She says you will come around to our way of thinking when you have time to weigh up the pros and cons. If you do not, we will haul you down here again. It’s not like you can flee the city and hide from us, is it?”

  Raimi mutters something dark and terrible, but he knows he’s beaten. I don’t think for a second that he means to take his defeat lying down—as soon as he’s back in Party Central, his thoughts will turn to revenge—but for the moment he’s prepared to throw in the towel.

  Not me. This is the only chance I’ll get to hit back at the villacs. If all is going as it should, the first blows have already been struck. Now I have to play for time to ensure the queen and her mamaconas don’t slip away to hatch fresh schemes and renew their grip on the city.

  “We’re going nowhere until our questions have been answered,” I say, grasping Raimi’s elbow and forcing him to sit. “We’re not as lost as we seem,” I hiss in his ear cavity. “We need to keep them talking.” The Cardinal shows no sign of having heard, but lets me lower him to the floor, where he starts to shake and moan.

  “Capac!” Ama reacts instantly, rushing to his side.

  “It would be easier to kill him,” the priest says. “That way he can re-form on the train, physically whole. Otherwise he faces a slow, painful recovery.”

  “Later,” I say. “He’s got a right to the answers too. Give us a few minutes to clean his wounds.”

  The priest looks to his queen, who shrugs lazily. “Very well. But be quick. I wish to take word of this momentous occasion to my brothers. We have waited so long for the bloodlines to merge. There will be much celebrating tonight.”

  “We’ll do the best we can,”
I lie blithely, and step aside to let Ama tend to her lover’s wounds. She works slowly, wiping away blood with her robes, fetching water from a barrel near the foot of the bed. There’s not much she can do about his nose and ears, but she fusses over the gaps, stretching out the minutes, as aware as I am of the need to procrastinate.

  “We need to stitch these,” Ama says, examining gashes on his skull and chest.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the priest replies. “We have wasted enough time.”

  “But it will only take—”

  “No,” he snaps. “Our Coya is tiring of your company. Put your questions to her now or take them with you.”

  I can’t think of an excuse to delay further, so I settle into my role of inquisitor. “Let’s start with the Ayuamarcans. As I understand it, Ferdinand Dorak created them with your assistance, and when he died, they died as well. So how come this lot”—I wave at my back-from-the-dead companions—“are up and walking?”

  The Coya answers slowly, the priest translating as she speaks.

  “There was much Ferdinand Dorak didn’t know about our powers. He saw what we wished him to see, no more. Where there were gaps, he overlooked them or filled them in with logic of his own. We never corrected him when he was wrong. We never even spoke to him in words he could comprehend—we had not bothered at that time to learn the language of your people.

  “The generation of the Ayuamarcans was not as straightforward as he believed. When he wished to create a person, he chose a face from his dreams, then came to our villacs. Having shared his dream, they had constructed a doll in advance, which they daubed with their blood and his, then cast a spell on. He thought that was the end of the process.”

  The Coya shakes her head and chuckles. “It was not so simple. Every act of creation requires a mother and a father. That was why Viracocha split himself in two when he wished to create the first humans. As a single entity he could only replicate himself. Divided, he was able to give life to new creatures, to Inti Maimi and Mama Ocllo.”