The Serpent Bride

by Sara Douglass

  “I returned because I was needed, Venetia,” Ravenna said, but she looked at Maximilian rather than her mother as she replied.

  A day later they arrived in Sakkuth.

  Here they did not need to use magical disguise as much, for the city was bustling with people, come to aid the gathering forces. Merchants, traders and craftsmen, prostitutes, cooks, tailors—countless differing skills and hopes paraded on the streets every twenty paces. StarDrifter and Salome did, however, need to keep cloaks hunched over their backs to disguise their growing wings. Fortunately Sakkuth was in the midst of an unnaturally cold snap—even in winter the city rarely slipped below the balmy—and thus the cloaks caused no comment on the streets.

  By some miracle of comradeship, Venetia found them two small rooms in the basement of a bakery. The baker’s wife was a covert witch-woman whom Venetia had met previously in the borderlands of the Land of Dreams. They recognized each other instantly, and the baker’s wife just as instantly intuited their need for shelter and rest. Her husband was not so enthusiastic about a band of strangers occupying two of his bakery’s storerooms until Serge took out a bag of coin and casually moved it from hand to hand; then he grudgingly agreed.

  “And so it has come to this,” Maximilian said, sitting on a sack of grain and idly swinging one leg back and forth. “A king, a talon, two witch-women, two assassins, and…what would you call yourself, Salome?”

  “The single sane member of this group.”

  Maximilian smiled. “And the single sane one among us, hidden in the basement of a bakery, in a strange land, surrounded by the largest army creation has ever seen, looking for a woman and a child. What do you think our chances of success are?”

  “Fairly high,” said the baker’s wife, who had just entered the room, “for the streets are abuzz with the news that the tyrant himself is now entering the city. There are stairs inside the bakery to the roof. You should have a good view there.”

  Maximilian’s humor had vanished, and his face was now tight with emotion.

  “To the roof, then,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sakkuth, Isembaard

  Axis was almost as astonished at the size and complexity of Isaiah’s forces as, had he known it, were Maximilian and his party.

  He’d never seen anything like it.

  For the past week they’d ridden from the Lhyl where they’d left their riverboats, across territory undulating with soldiers. Their encampments had stretched as far as the eye could see.

  Axis had been as impressed with the tight discipline of the horde as much as he was with its size. After what Ezekiel had told him about the chaos that had ensued after Isaiah had been kidnapped on the Eastern Independencies campaign, Axis had more than half expected a mass of undisciplined and slothful soldiers.

  But perhaps they sank to such depths only once a tyrant’s throne was vacant, for the army that Axis saw was under tight control and exhibited extreme discipline.

  His admiration for the Isembaardian generals, as well as for Isaiah, notched up yet another degree.

  Sakkuth was everything Axis had expected. It was a stunningly beautiful, walled, and multispired city constructed predominantly of pink and cream stone quarried in the FarReach Mountains. As they rode through the main gates and into the wide avenue that led through the heart of the city to Isaiah’s official palace, Axis wondered why Isaiah didn’t spend more time here. Axis had been with him for a year, and yet not once in that time had Isaiah left Aqhat.

  What kept him in Aqhat? The serenity of the river…or DarkGlass Mountain?

  The avenue was crowded with people, mostly ordinary city dwellers going about their daily business. Soldiers had crowded people back against the buildings in order to give Isaiah room to pass, and in order to give him the room to pass in splendor.

  Axis noted their response to Isaiah and his two hundred strong escort with as much curiosity as he’d marked the army beyond the city’s walls.

  Generally the crowds displayed a mix of deference, genuine awe (or perhaps fear), and a decided reluctance to look directly at the face of Isaiah, or any of his closest companions—among which included Ishbel, who rode directly behind Isaiah, the pair of them kept closely guarded by several squadrons of heavily armed men.

  This morning, when Axis had gone to mount his horse, he’d noted that Isaiah and Ishbel, who had regained all her strength and vitality after the baby’s birth, had attired themselves in great majesty. Both wore great golden and bejeweled collars that draped over their shoulders, robes of fine embroidered silks, and two or three golden bands on each of their bare arms.

  Isaiah appeared calm and relaxed, Ishbel a little less so, and Axis thought he saw slight lines of strain about her eyes and mouth.

  Axis was ambivalent about their relationship. He knew they were now sleeping together, and was honest enough with himself to admit there was a small kernel of jealousy there. But he didn’t know what Ishbel wanted. Did she truly wish to be Isaiah’s wife? Was she just marking time until she could manage a means to leave him? How did she actually feel about arriving back in her homeland on the tide of a massive invasion and on the arm (and in the bed) of the invader?

  To none of these questions did Axis have an answer, and he hadn’t had the opportunity of asking Ishbel. He’d not seen her alone for weeks—a situation he realized was fully managed by Isaiah as well as by Ishbel herself—and any time he did spend with her was in the company of Isaiah, who deflected any conversation away from Ishbel if he felt it too personal.

  Ishbel was now clearly out of bounds to Axis.

  Ah! What did it matter to him? Ishbel was her own woman, and old enough to know what she was doing with her life.

  But still…Axis wondered if she had really thought through what she did.

  He dismissed the thought the next moment as ungenerous and undoubtedly born of his own jealousy.

  Stars, would he have refused if Ishbel had come to him?

  No. He wouldn’t.

  Axis sighed, looking about. He was some four or five riders behind Isaiah and Ishbel, and enjoying not being the center of attention for once. It gave him so much opportunity to observe freely.

  He looked at Isaiah, sitting his horse with such confidence and such natural arrogance that it appeared he could fear nothing.

  Axis suddenly thought of the assassination attempt on Isaiah at Aqhat and, his heart thudding in his chest, glanced upward at the roofline.

  Straight into the eyes of his father.

  Maximilian had been transfixed by the sight of Ishbel. She looked so beautiful, and very obviously no longer pregnant.

  His eyes quickly scanned back through Isaiah’s column, looking for the nursery litter, a wet nurse cradling the child, anything, then decided that perhaps the baby would come into the city later, when everything was calmer, or that, gods forbid, Ishbel had left it behind from wherever she had come.

  Would she have done that? Why?

  Then, four or five horsemen back from Isaiah, a man had looked up directly at the roof where Maximilian and his party stood, and StarDrifter had cried out, softly and heart-achingly, “Axis!”

  Maximilian acted instantly. He grabbed StarDrifter, now stepping forth to the very edge of the building, and hauled him backward toward the trapdoor that led from the flat roof down into the bakery.

  “Everyone back, now!” Maximilian hesitated. “Save you, Serge. Watch as carefully as you can. Let me know if you think Axis has reported us.”

  “Axis will keep his mouth shut!” StarDrifter hissed.

  “Yes?” said Maximilian, angry with frustration at being so near Ishbel and yet so damned distant, and angry also that he hadn’t thought to use either his power or that of Venetia and Ravenna to cloak them from prying eyes. Gods, what had he been thinking? Had the thought of seeing Ishbel so addled his wits?

  And where was their child?

  “Really?” Maximilian continued, his grip tightening about StarDrifter’s arm. “
He’s been living in Isembaard with Isaiah for many months at the least, and he didn’t look a reluctant captive to me just then, eh? Downstairs. Now!”

  Axis couldn’t think. He could not manage a single, damned coherent thought. He sat his horse in a state of shock, riding forward with Isaiah’s train automatically, trying to marshal some sense from his brain.

  StarDrifter. StarDrifter. Stars, his father was here in Sakkuth!

  Axis had not thought of StarDrifter in many, many weeks. To see him now, here, of all places, left him breathless not merely in shock, but in joy as well.

  His father.

  Oh, gods…what should he do?

  Axis managed to glance behind him again, trying to see the roof where he’d seen StarDrifter, but they’d ridden forward too far, and around a slight curve in the avenue, for him to be able to make it out.

  His brain, finally, managed to send out a few cautious observations.

  The darker man who had grabbed at StarDrifter, pulling him away.

  “Oh no,” Axis whispered, knowing intuitively who that must be. He had no reason at all to know it was Maximilian, but somehow he just knew. Axis’ hands, which to his amazement he discovered were trembling, tightened about his reins, making his horse jitter a little.

  What should he do?

  He looked ahead.

  Isaiah had turned on his horse and was smiling at Ishbel, then laughed at something she said.

  Axis’ face lost all expression. Isaiah and Ishbel had underestimated Maximilian. Very badly.

  He glanced upward again, although he knew he had no hope of seeing StarDrifter.

  What should he do?

  Nothing. Watch. And wait for his father.

  Axis knew StarDrifter had seen him as well, and he knew his father well enough to know that StarDrifter would seek him out.

  And what was Maximilian going to do?

  He looked ahead once more to Isaiah and Ishbel, revising his opinion that he should say nothing. But what to say? If he told Isaiah that Maximilian was in Sakkuth, would Isaiah then close down the city while soldiers searched door to door? Was that fair to Maximilian? To StarDrifter?

  Was it fair to Ishbel not to tell her that her husband was in town?

  “Stars,” he muttered, “what should I do?”

  Once more safely ensconced in the storerooms under the bakery, Maximilian finally let StarDrifter go and turned to Ravenna.

  “Tonight,” he said. “You and me only. Isaiah’s palace.”

  “Maxel—” StarDrifter began.

  “Ravenna and me only,” Maximilian snapped, and such was the expression on his face that no one argued the point.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sakkuth, Isembaard

  The supply column?” Isaiah said.

  “Already heading through the Salamaan Pass,” said Morfah. He tapped the map on the table about which Isaiah, Axis, and the five senior generals were standing. “There are already supplies of food positioned here, here, and here.” His finger stabbed down at locations in northern Isembaard between Sakkuth and Salamaan Pass, and then once at a point a third of the way through the pass. “And the supply train will encamp just before the pass widens into the plains leading to Adab. The army will move smoothly, Excellency, and shall not lack for food, equipment, or weapons.”

  Axis stood to one side, still in a quandary about Maximilian and StarDrifter. He’d not had a chance to speak privately either to Isaiah or Ishbel, and could hardly say something in front of the generals. With luck, he might manage a word once the generals had left.

  “Good,” said Isaiah. “And the settlers?”

  “They are traveling in a convoy just behind the army column,” said Ezekiel. “They are well provisioned and tightly organized. No laggards among them. Several Rivers”—a River was a unit of ten thousand soldiers—“come behind.”

  Axis set aside his quandary about Maximilian for the moment, thinking instead about the resettlement issue. It seemed extraordinary to him that Isaiah would want to weigh down the invasion column with women and children and great-aunts, plus their belongings and livestock, but Isaiah was insistent. The Outlands were to be colonized with native Isembaardians as rapidly as possible.

  Axis wondered how the settlers felt about this—ordered from their homelands into the unknown—but from all the reports he’d heard they appeared resigned. He remembered what the country had been like in the northwest when he’d ridden to meet Ishbel, and thought that perhaps they might even be a little glad to leave a land of arid and poor soil.

  “This is a huge column,” Axis said, keeping his thoughts about the settlers to himself. “You are not concerned that its existence, lurking just inside the northern entrance to the Salamaan Pass, will not be reported to the Outlanders?”

  “No one is being allowed through the pass to discover the column,” said Morfah. “We keep the pass so tightly closed that few people ever attempt its passage in any case, and the few stray peddlers who try are either turned back or, if too persistent, otherwise stopped.”

  Axis grimaced at the “otherwise stopped,” but said nothing.

  “No one will realize until it is too late,” said Ezekiel.

  “Besides,” said Isaiah, “the latest intelligence puts the majority of the Outlands’ armed forces up here.” He pointed to an area halfway between Pelemere and Hosea. “No one in their command will realize until too late just what it is comes up the Salamaan Pass.”

  He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “It is late, and I am tired. I thank you,” he said to the generals, “for these reports. All goes well. By tomorrow—”

  He turned as the door opened, then smiled as Ishbel walked in.

  In contrast to the men, all of whom looked weary, she looked refreshed and lovely, her hair left in a long loose plait over one shoulder, wound about with a thin bejeweled gold wire, and wearing a simple white linen robe that accentuated her figure and coloring.

  Axis froze. His reaction was not at Ishbel’s entrance as such, but at what he’d felt from the shadows in the back of the room at her entrance.

  Everything Ishbel had told him about Maximilian suddenly roared to the forefront of his mind.

  Stars…

  Ishbel went directly to Isaiah, who laid a hand on her shoulder, and pulled her close for a slow kiss.

  The generals all looked on impassively.

  Axis watched Isaiah and Ishbel, then, so briefly most would have missed it, glanced toward the shadows at the rear of the large chamber.

  “Well,” said Isaiah, still smiling down at Ishbel’s face, “tomorrow is another day and, right now, I would rather think about the rest of this night.”

  Axis suppressed a wince.

  Taking the hint, the generals murmured their good-nights, and left.

  “I’m sure,” said Isaiah, as the door closed behind the departing men, “that you also need your rest, Axis.”

  “Isaiah—” said Axis, then got no further.

  “Ishbel,” said a voice, “what have you done?”

  Axis looked to the back of the chamber as Isaiah and Ishbel spun about, Isaiah pushing Ishbel a little way behind him.

  A man and a woman had stepped forth from the shadows.

  The man, tall, dark, and with a face marked by pain and tragedy, registered briefly in Axis’ mind—Maximilian of Escator, it could be no other—but his attention was almost immediately and completely caught by the woman.

  For a single heart-stopping moment he thought it was Azhure, then realized that she was far younger and, while as tall as Azhure had been, slighter. She shared Azhure’s long and almost blue-black hair, but her face was finer, and her eyes…they were the most extraordinary eyes Axis had ever seen. Pale gray, the irises ringed with black, they were startlingly beautiful.

  Then Ishbel gave a cry, and Axis looked at her directly.

  He’d never seen such a look of utter devastation, such all-consuming guilt, on anyone’s face as he saw now on Ishbel’s.

  It was,
she thought, the most terrible moment she could ever possibly suffer. She’d thought that Maximilian would have gone home to Escator, and stayed there. She’d thought him to have forgotten her.

  But no, he’d come all this way—a hard, terrible journey, if his appearance was any indication—and she did not know how she could possibly tell him about their child, or explain Isaiah.

  Isaiah had grabbed a sword from the table, but Ishbel reached out one shaky hand and waved him away.

  “No,” she said, “not that.”

  Isaiah let the sword droop, but did not step away from Ishbel’s side.

  “That was a poor way to announce yourself, Maximilian Persimius,” Isaiah said, softly.

  Maximilian ignored him. He stepped forward, walked toward Ishbel, stopping two or three paces from her. “Ishbel?”

  She realized that he was as shocked as she, she could see it in his eyes.

  Along with such astounding pain that each successive breath she took became harder and harder.

  I have caused that pain, she thought. Oh, gods, what can I do?

  Ishbel became aware that everyone in the room was incredibly tense, and that no one knew what to do or say.

  “I would like,” she said, holding Maximilian’s eyes and speaking with as much dignity as she could, “to speak with Maxel alone.”

  “The baby is dead, isn’t it?” said the woman, who, to this point, had hardly even registered on Ishbel’s consciousness. “The baby is dead and you have fallen gratefully into the bed of a man who seeks to invade your homeland. Maxel, you are well rid of this woman. I think we ought to—”

  “Be quiet, you fool!” Isaiah snapped at the woman.

  “Dead?” Maximilian said at the same time, and Ishbel’s eyes filled with tears. She did not know how she could keep standing. She wished everyone would just go so that she could speak to Maximilian.