Serpent Catch: Book Two of the Serpent Catch Series

by David Farland

  Scandal followed Tull uphill, and Phylomon went to work. There was nothing left of the wagon, and precious little left of the provisions. Phylomon found a broken ax, and he chopped up the wagon for use in the funeral pyre.

  He watched Tull from time to time. The young Tcho-Pwi showed no sign of grief aside from slight spasms in the muscles of his shoulders. Instead, he sat upon a lichen-covered rock and held his dead wife, stroking the girl’s hair and, gazing into her face.

  Wisteria had looked so at peace as she asked if the child were dead. Why could she not have taken her damned guilt with her?

  Ayuvah came to Phylomon as he worked. “In our village, the Pwi give the dead to the sea. Fires are only for humans. I let you burn Little Chaa only because we were so far from the ocean,” he said. “We should take her to the river.”

  “All right,” Phylomon said. “We’ll take her to the river. We need water to make a camp anyway.”

  That evening, Scandal made up a bundle of his best spices and gave it to Born-in-Snow, slight payment for a brother and two mammoths. The Hukm hung his head and took off south in long strides, his part of the journey done.

  Phylomon and Scandal made two trips back to the wagon to salvage provisions, and set camp. Tull held Wisteria’s body until sundown.

  Ayuvah lit two torches, set them by the water. In a short ceremony, they dressed Wisteria in a necklace made of autumn leaves and folded her arms across her chest.

  When Ayuvah came to put her in the water, Tull clung to Wisteria’s corpse. “Let me hold her for a while longer.”

  “She’s gone stiff,” Ayuvah answered. “She’ll begin to smell. You don’t want to remember that. Here …” He cut a lock of her hair with his knife and set it in Tull’s hands.

  Tull thanked him softly, then Ayuvah carried Wisteria’s rigid body into the shallows, laid her face up in the water, and pushed her into the river, where she swirled away into the darkness.

  Tull sat on the grass by the shore. He wrapped his arms around his knees and held the lock of hair, stroking it.

  Scandal’s long labors produced a meager dinner of boar’s head soup, and pan bread with honey, and the men camped around a small fire to eat. Scandal took some food to Tull, but the Tcho-Pwi waved it away.

  Phylomon had seen many Pwi follow their loved ones to the House of Dust. Usually, they starved themselves, but sometimes they hurried the process. He remembered an old shaman who built a bonfire of his house, a woman who ate Death Angel mushrooms. For Tull it would be so easy to walk into the river, follow Wisteria’s body toward Denai until one young serpent grabbed him.

  “What do you think will happen to him?” Phylomon asked Ayuvah, nodding toward Tull, a mere forty feet off. “I don’t know how to read him. If he were human, I’d say he wasn’t grieving much. But I know better.”

  Ayuvah shook his head. “He felt the love-that-enslaves for her. Maybe he will choose to die now.”

  “Yet they were not married long,” Phylomon countered.

  “He loved her for years before they married,” Ayuvah said, and then he shouted, “It is not right for him to go to the House of Dust for a human whore. Her belly was filled with another man’s child! He should grieve instead for the serpents she killed. He should grieve for the people who will die!” Tull was so close, he could not help but hear.

  “Come now,” Scandal countered. “Hold your bitterness, boy. Wisteria wasn’t a whore. Why, I tried my best to bed her, but she’d have none of it. The girl was just hurt, damaged.”

  Tull glanced back over his shoulder at them, but turned back to the water.

  “I have a sister who has loved him for years!” Ayuvah shouted. “He should give his life to Fava instead of throwing it away!”

  Scandal took another bowl full of stew, took it to Tull, and sat for a moment, whispering, urging him to eat. Tull waved it away, and Scandal walked back to the fire. “Can’t get him to eat,” Scandal said.

  “Wait until morning,” Ayuvah offered. “If he does not eat by then, we will force water down his throat.”

  When Phylomon was young, he’d met a Pwi once, an old woman who had outlived three husbands. News of this had surprised him so much that he had asked her bluntly why she had not gone down to the House of Dust with any of them. Her reply had always stayed with him. “One does not choose to go down to the House of Dust,” she had said. “I loved each of my husbands truly, and my grief tightened the belly. I could not eat after my sweet husbands died, but my daughter forced water down me, and after many days, my stomach loosened, and I was able to eat. Also, there were many good men in the village, and they came and asked me to marry.” Phylomon thought upon how Ayuvah was working to keep Tull alive—offering him reason to hate the dead, a promise of the love of a living woman, and threatening to force water down him until his grief passed. Phylomon laughed, “You are a wise man, Ayuvah.”

  Ayuvah looked up at Phylomon, and smiled weakly. “Not wise enough, it seems.”

  “Does your sister really love him?” Phylomon asked in Pwi.

  “She speaks of it often,” Ayuvah admitted.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Scandal asked. “We’ve failed! Our serpents are dead, and in case you haven’t looked in the water recently, the run is over. We won’t find another serpent, much less another dozen. And I’ve spent a thousand silver eagles on this venture. What a waste!”

  “There is always next year,” Tull said from beside the river.

  “You and a hundred men couldn’t drag me back over these mountains again,” Scandal said. “You saw that army moving up into Gold River Pass, and the army on the other side of the mountains. Any fool can see that by this time next year, these mountains will belong to the Craal.”

  Phylomon shook his head. “By this time next summer, everything from here to the White Mountains will belong to Craal.”

  “We can’t wait a year,” Ayuvah said. “My father foresaw that the dinosaurs would swim from Hotland this summer. We must capture serpents on this trip!”

  Scandal sat back, grunted.

  “We have another alternative,” Phylomon said. “I know where there are serpents if you are man enough to get them. You call yourselves egg raiders.…”

  “Live eggs!” Scandal said in wonder. “You want to raid a serpent’s nest? Impossible! You can’t sail a ship within twenty miles of a serpent hatch. Not the way the great mothers guard their eggs!”

  “Yet we know where the serpents hatch here in the north,” Phylomon answered, “in the rocks near Bashevgo.”

  “Where we can’t get to them,” Scandal added.

  Ayuvah looked up, and there was desperation in his eyes. The pirates of Bashevgo often sent slave parties into the Rough to capture Pwi. So near the straits, they would be easy targets for slavers, and they would be hunted.

  Scandal sat silently for a moment, “So, it’s come to that, has it? Sail the Straits of the Zerai, where if the serpents don’t take you, the slavers will.” He grunted and shook his head, wiped the beaded sweat from his brow. “I came for a little adventure, a chance to see Craal. I didn’t come to die. Or to get a rat’s-eye view of some slave pen in Bashevgo. Here in Craal, we’re protected by traveling papers. But pirates won’t give a damn about papers.”

  “Then, we’ll have to make sure the slavers don’t see us,” Phylomon answered.

  Scandal gave him an evil look. “Why, I’ve heard the cliffs there are hundreds of feet tall—with no place to anchor. And the great mothers don’t take kindly to trespassers. One three-hundred-foot serpent is enough to deal with. But we’re talking dozens, hundreds.”

  “I did not say it would be easy,” Phylomon said.

  “Damn your thick blue hide, it’s not possible!” Scandal countered. “We should go back to town. I don’t care what it takes—we can all move inland, live in a fortress while the saurs infest the whole damned continent. Even if a few people die, it’s better than risking this madness.”

  Phylomon s
tudied Ayuvah. The Pwi sat hunched, staring at the fire. Phylomon said, “I’ve seen serpent eggs before—down south, many years ago. They were sandy brown, the color of sandstone, and there were perhaps a dozen of them in a bunch. It was late in the fall, and each egg was six inches around. The mothers fastened them to the rocks, and during extreme low tides you can sometimes find them. At least, that is what the young children said who showed me the eggs. We could easily get a boat in Denai, steal a wagon and head for Bashevgo as planned. If we found even ten dozen eggs, we’d bring home a better catch than what we had. What do you think?” Phylomon asked Ayuvah.

  “I think it has been too long since I have seen Sava and Etanai,” Ayuvah said. “I want to go home.” He sighed deeply. “You talk of this place we all fear—Bashevgo. I’m here in Craal, and it is bad enough. I will not go to the isles of the pirates if I do not have to.”

  “What else can we do?” Phylomon said.

  “This journey has not gone well. I think we have failed, unless …” He hesitated, lost in meditation.

  “What?” Phylomon asked, watching Ayuvah’s face. A sudden fear shook him, a feeling of unease. It was a sensation he seldom felt, and Phylomon had long ago learned not to ignore this sense. It was his skin speaking to him, and he got up and looked around quickly, searching for the source of danger.

  Ayuvah said, “I will take a Spirit Walk, which I fear to do. I will look into our future and see if there is hope for this journey yet.”

  Phylomon looked at the Pwi and understood: there was the source of danger. “You are young. You have never taken a Spirit Walk before.”

  “Nevertheless,” Ayuvah said, “My father is Spirit Walker for our village, and I am his oldest son. The burden falls to me.”

  “Once you take a Spirit Walk, you can never come home,” Phylomon said, quoting an old Pwi proverb.

  “Since we left the village, I have seen my little brother’s body torn in half. And Tull, the brother whom I have always respected, has lost a wife. I have been into the Kingdom of Craal, and I have looked on the face of the God of Terror. Even if I walk back to my own house now, can I ever hope to return home?”

  Phylomon saw a stoniness in Ayuvah’s eyes that had not been there a few short weeks before. It was true that the Spirit Walkers became old and shriveled, wizened and emotionally devastated by what they saw. Yet Phylomon looked in Ayuvah’s eyes and saw a Pwi who already understood what it meant to be a Spirit Walker.

  ***

  Chapter 22: An Empty Heaven

  “How will you begin your journey?” Phylomon asked Ayuvah softly.

  “There are many gates to the Land of Shapes. For a Spirit Walker, it does not matter which path he takes, as long as it brings him to the gate of death. My father always chose the path of starvation.”

  “I have heard that it is easiest,” Phylomon admitted, “But it takes many days.”

  “I will take the gate of blood,” Ayuvah said. “It is quickest.”

  Before Phylomon could warn him against it, Ayuvah unstrapped the knife from the sheath on his hip, and slashed both of his wrists. He held them up and watched the blood pump out in great bursts. “The gate of blood,” Ayuvah said, and he got up and paced around the fire, dripping blood into the dirt.

  Phylomon growled in disgust. He got up and walked over to Tull, who sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking off at the river in the torchlight. The river had swollen over the past three days from rains somewhere far upstream, and the dark water swirled quickly and almost silently. Phylomon sat and watched Tull, looked at Ayuvah. I should watch them both for the night, he thought, make sure Ayuvah doesn’t bleed himself to death and Tull doesn’t jump into the river.

  After an hour, the torches by the river had burned down to the ground, and the camp fire grew dim. Ayuvah walked in circles around the camp until he finally stumbled and fell.

  Phylomon and Scandal bound Ayuvah’s wrists to stop the bleeding. It was impossible to tell if he was on a Spirit Walk. He looked only as if he slept, though his face was drained. After they bound him, Scandal excused himself and went to bed.

  Woden rose. The clouds were thin feathery streaks, and the moon shone through dimly. A strong wind began to whip down the canyon, carrying a chill. As Phylomon’s eyes grew tired, he rested them, and at last Tull spoke.

  “She betrayed me,” Tull said. “I don’t know which hurts more, the fact that she is dead, or the fact that she betrayed me.”

  Phylomon searched his memory, wondering exactly what Tull meant by ‘betrayed.’ “She didn’t betray your marriage,” Phylomon said. “You married her the night before we left, and if she was carrying Garamon’s child, she must have been with him sometime before that.”

  “I would have forgiven her,” Tull said. “She must have known that I would have forgiven her of that.”

  “Ayaah,” Phylomon said, “I think she knew. But she could not forgive herself. She loved you, I think, and she felt shamed by her own deeds. Your forgiveness would have only hurt her more. I am sorry that she’s dead. Often when a person dies, a grandmother or a sickly child, your friends will tell you that ‘It is better this way,’ that the sick are no longer in pain. They try to disguise the fact that life sometimes feeds you a bowl of dung. At least no one will tell you that it is better this way.”

  “The hardest part of it,” Tull said, “is knowing that I can’t ever touch her again.” He stroked the lock of hair for a moment. “Grief comes in waves, like the throbbing pain of a toothache. I keep waiting for it to stop, but it doesn’t stop, and I don’t know if I can fight it.”

  Phylomon studied Tull’s face. The young Tcho-Pwi’s mouth dipped in sadness, yet his voice held a note of desperation. “Perhaps you should not fight it. Perhaps you should just let it out, let it have its way.”

  “I want to die,” Tull said. “Fazahn, the God of Grief, wants me to die. If I let him have his way … Phylomon, I cannot control my hands.” He held up his hands, and they shook violently. “I cannot express what I feel right now, but I am afraid of what I might do. Will you tie my hands for me?”

  Phylomon shook his head. “Stop them yourself.”

  Tull said no more, and Phylomon sat with him for a long time. Two young raccoons wandered into camp, smelled around, and went straight for the food.

  Phylomon walked over to the supplies to chase the young raccoons away. They shrieked and chittered and wandered off grudgingly. They had rolled a jar of sausages out of its sack, so Phylomon straightened the bag, then looked up at the sky. It was glowing in the east. Dawn was almost here, and he wondered … for he had been setting food out for Tirilee every night, and tonight, for the first time, she had not come to eat.

  He bolted straight. It could only mean one of two things—either she was dead, or her Time of Devotion had come.

  He left the camp quickly, searching for the nearest high ground, a place that might harbor a grove of aspens.

  Tull held his hands clasped in his lap and watched the water flowing. Somewhere, downriver, Wisteria’s corpse was drifting to sea, bobbing and spinning on the river’s surface.

  When he’d made love to Wisteria the first time, he had felt Zhofwa’s presence, felt the goddess take him, move him of her own accord, felt the passion that burned within him. It had opened a road that had always been closed to him before, had let him finally love someone. And now he wished to God that it had never happened.

  He clasped his hands, holding his fingers tight, dismayed at the grief that shook him, that tried to move him toward self-destruction. He’d once heard sung by a sailor, a strange man with a hunched back who bellowed out his song in a pain-filled voice:

  Don’t take the silver stairs

  it’s a long hard climb.

  Stay here in the darkness

  until the end of time.

  On angel’s wings

  the demons dine.

  If you escape Ruin’s kingdom

  an empty heaven is all you’ll ever find
.

  ***

  Chapter 23: The Land of Shapes

  “When you take your first Spirit Walk, Ayuvah, you must not take it alone. The Land of Shapes has dangers of its own.”

  Ayuvah had heard these words often as a child, both from his grandfather, who was dead, and from Chaa, so he was aware of the dangers. For what seemed like hours, Ayuvah had felt himself spinning, reeling across great open plains like a straw at the heart of a whirlwind, unable to stop. He tried clinging to the ground, calling out for help, cursing whatever Gods there might be. It was not until he breathed deeply and commanded the whirlwind to stop that something happened.

  He opened his eyes and found himself on the ground, lying flat on his back, with his head tilted to the side. Though it was dark, everything was vaguely luminous. The pine trees above him had feathery tendrils of light—like tiny orange hairs—extending from each needle. A rock beside him glowed soft and pink, the color of sunrise. And Ayuvah saw grubs in the pine tree above and worms burrowing in the dirt beside him, fiery beings that glowed through the soil and through the bark of the trees like torches. Only the sky was dark, a flat slate of black without stars, without wind, dark and deep high above, but glowing at the horizon.

  Ayuvah tried to push himself up with his elbow, but found that he could not move. It was as if his arms and legs were disconnected from him. He found that he could not blink his eyes, move his neck, stir a finger.

  For awhile, he struggled to move, then he thought back on the lessons his father had taught. “In the Land of Shapes,” Chaa had said, “all things are connected—earth and grass, trees and sky, life and death, past and future. In our world, we seldom see that we and our neighbors, our garden and our tomb, all form one part of a much greater thing. But in the Land of Shapes this truth is brought home. “You cannot move in the Land of Shapes until you feel the connection. And then you are drawn where you want to go, whether it be to home, or to a loved one—or a time, such as the moment of orgasm that gave you birth, or the last fluttering of your heart.”