Chapter 1:
The Way of Serpents
I
He had lived in darkness, among the unseen things that chittered in the walls. Now a shirtless, barefoot slave preceded him, the orange glare of his lantern dangling from an outthrust hand. Grim guards marched behind, identical in turquoise kilts. The tramp of their feet had such clockwork precision, Hanuvar left off numbering his own paces and counted theirs.
The procession wound past the cell doors standing silent and gray like so many tombstones and into a hall stacked with wooden barrels and chests. Beyond lay the stairs, which led to blessed sunlight and an unpleasant end. Twelve paces stretched between him and that firstmost step, then ten—and then the slave veered away, leading him under a stone archway to the right. Hanuvar counted these paces too. He would know the way even without a lantern.
A turn under an ancient archway brought them to a hall awash with such brilliance Hanuvar narrowed his eyes. Three days within the cell had left him challenged by the wall’s torches.
The corridor held a mystery greater than the flood of illumination. Three men knelt beside a pile of stone bricks and a bucket of mortar. They shaped a low wall across the bottom of an open doorway. On the other side of the growing barrier, a shelf of jeweled goblets twinkled brilliantly, next to a small basket of pearls. Did the islanders mean to wall him in with the treasures? That made no sense. The ruler would earn a kingly fee for turning him over to the Dervan Empire. Hanuvar had known his fate the moment they’d found him half drowned on their beach.
The slave set his lantern on the floor and genuflected at the stout man in ochre silks who stepped out over the growing wall.
“On your knees.” One of the guards prodded Hanuvar with the butt of his staff.
Hanuvar knelt. The stone was cold against his legs.
“I do not like your look.” So saying, Narata’s king stopped in front of him. Hanuvar had not only an excellent vantage point from which to observe the ruler’s sandals, speckled with polished jade and onyx, but to obtain his hostage. They’d obligingly granted him a tarnished spoon, the handle of which he’d sharpened into a point and tucked into his belt.
Yet he did not act. This meeting felt less like a prelude to Dervan arrest and more like an interview. He would bide his time.
“You may rise,” the king said, as though permitting a grand luxury.
“Slow,” one of the guards cautioned. Hanuvar obeyed, his eyes fixed upon the king’s.
Like Hanuvar himself, the king neared his fiftieth year, but aside from their dark, olive-toned skin, Hanuvar found nothing similar in their appearance. The king’s balding head was crowned with a diamond-studded headband, and his clean-shaven chin and cheeks were padded with fat. Hanuvar stood a full head taller, his shoulders broad, his scarred arms and legs corded with muscle. His dark hair, peppered with gray, was thick and full. He wore a dirty white knee-length tunic, belted at the waist. His gray and brown beard was more than a week overdue for trimming.
“I have treated you well, General,” the king said. “I hope you will remember that.”
Hanuvar remembered the dark cell with the meager food, the pillowless stone shelf, and the doom he knew they’d summoned. He kept his expression bland. “I will remember all you’ve done for me.”
Like many tyrants, the king seemed to lack the capacity to perceive irony, although it might have been that he heard it too rarely for apperception. He nodded once, as though he’d received the praise he was due, then continued: “Circumstances being what they are, I’m willing to offer you an alternative to imprisonment and death at the hands of the empire.”
Hanuvar said nothing.
“Are you not curious?”
He awaited details. “Speak on, O king.”
“They say you know the ways of the great serpents.”
Whatever the king meant by that, he clearly hoped for an answer in the affirmative, so Hanuvar gave him one. “I do.”
The king motioned Hanuvar’s guards back. Only a few moments ago Hanuvar would have sprung forward to press his sharpened handle to the king’s throat. Now he grasped another option. It would be far better to walk free after striking a bargain than to flee with a hostage
The king explained. “This morning, a kekainen bird brought a message from the outer isles. The southerners have swept forth in a great raid. Their ships fill the ocean. They have burned and looted throughout the Lenidines, and they are on their way toward Narata.”
That explained only a little. Did the king truly hope to hide his wealth from the merciless southerners behind a false dungeon wall?
“Have you nothing to say?” the king snapped.
“Do you have a question?”
The king scowled. “Can you or can you not summon serpents?”
No man alive knew how to call the great winged asalda. Those who’d never worked with them misunderstood the nature of their relationships with humans. “I know their ways,” Hanuvar said.
“And can you master them?”
Now he lied outright. “Yes.”
The king nodded. “In the center of my island lives a great winged serpent. My grandfather’s father made a pact with the creature, so it would protect our island if we kept her from harm. I’m sending a priestess to remind the beast of her duty. And I am sending you to command her should she break her oath.”
“And I’m to go free afterward?”
“Of course.”
A lie, clearly, but Hanuvar bowed his head as though he believed. “I’ll require the flask I carried.”
“My wizard tells me it’s full only of ashes. Is it some magic unknown to him?”
“How do you think I control the serpents?”
“Ah. I see.”
“I’ll want a sword,” Hanuvar continued.
“When your task is through.”
“And a ship.” The king would never grant him that, but it was crucial the monarch think Hanuvar believed him.
“Certainly,” the king pledged breezily. “Now you must hurry. The messenger bird arrived hours ago. My priestess tells me that means the southerners will arrive near dawn. These two will lead you where you need to go.”
“I need food.” The lunch hour had come and gone without a meal. “And a bath and shave.”
“Fine. Eat quickly.”
The king half turned, waving a hand, then halted in midmotion. “Hold.” He considered Hanuvar once more. “You know siege craft, don’t you?”
“Somewhat.”
The irony of asking this of the general who’d brought the Dervan Empire to its knees escaped the king. “This stone work—will it hold? Given time to dry?"
“Yes. But if you want to fool the southerners, you have to do a better job disguising your entryway.”
The king’s jowls trembled in agitation. “What do you mean?”
Hanuvar advanced to the doorway, seeing a couch, wine jars, and a food-laden table set before gold statues and a basket of sapphires and rubies. “The southerners are old hands at sniffing out treasure. They’ll see the outline of where a doorway used to be. If you want to conceal yourself, you need to rip out the doorway’s frame to blend the stone with the existing wall.”
The king blinked at him and turned his head to consider the masonry. Two of the workmen looked up while the other troweled mortar. “Idiots,” the king said finally, “why didn’t YOU point that out? Rip this down and start over! Immediately!”
They blinked in surprise, then hurriedly began to remove the stones they’d just laid. Hanuvar expected they’d be killed the moment they finished their work so none could reveal the king’s hiding place. He couldn’t help wondering what measures the king had taken to ensure a way out should his loyal retainers be slain—or neglect to open the vault for a few weeks.
But that was the king’s concern.
II
The cliff’s edge loomed just past his outstretched fingers. Hanuvar shifted his left foot, then froze as a trail of dirt crumbled beneath his sandal. It spilled onto the upturned face of one of the twin guards—Meshtar, he thought—then rattled down the rock face to the distant jungle.
Meshtar shook his head like an angry dog. Hanuvar secured his footing, and with a little more leverage, gripped the edge of a sturdy rock and hauled himself up, dislodging an even larger stream of dirt onto the twin. In another moment he had gained the plateau. Bright blue flowers blossomed on green stalks, waving in the warm air.
Hanuvar lay on his stomach in the tough grasses and offered his hands to Meshtar. The guard grunted his thanks as he reached the top, then flopped down beside him to assist the others. Hanuvar climbed to his feet, wiping sweat from his newly shorn cheeks, and watched.
Next up was dark-haired Rudra, General of Narata, though general was a grand term for the commander of an island force numbering less than a hundred warriors. Rudra styled his hair elaborately, so it rose in a black wave. Hanging from his belt, opposite the garish sword sheath, was Hanuvar’s flask, the size of a small water jug. The general had insisted on carrying it himself until they reached the serpent, saying he didn’t trust Hanuvar not to work sorceries against them.
Following him was the young sea priestess, Lalasa. The
azure pendant of her office hung to her azure bodice. Her matching flowered skirt swirled about her calves as they raised her. She stepped away to brush dirt from her hands.
Finally came Meshtar’s brother, Beshkar, his small eyes set and determined. Hanuvar had already decided the general was a soldier only in title. Strong, able, silent, these two were the real threat.
Hanuvar unstopped his wineskin and drank.
They had advanced past huddled refugees into the jungle’s depths hours before. The island’s only large settlement was a two-hour hike behind them, lost beyond the waving greenery.
“How much farther?” Rudra asked.
Lalasa answered, her voice high and clear. “We look for a bridge now, to Mount Danar.” The sea priestess shook out her hair, gathered it together and tied it more tightly behind her head. She ignored the frank appraisal from the twins. That a woman in her middle twenties was the lead priestess in the island nation had surprised Hanuvar, but he had not yet asked for an explanation, and no one had offered one.
“Let’s keep moving,” Rudra ordered.
Lalasa pointed left. This time Rudra led.
There were no man-made trails, but they came to an animal track, and walked it, veering left. Hanuvar pushed past a brown vine big as his arm and stepped over a fallen tree bole thick with yellow ants. A rich, floral scent perfumed the air.
They reached a clearing. A single goat cropped at the thick green grass that lay between the jungle and the cliff edge thirty paces on. A dilapidated wooden suspension bridge stretched from it to another cliffside.
Rudra stepped into the clearing without hesitation.
Something crashed violently through the bushes on their right, alarming the goat, which fled into the brush. A leathery, skeletal thing erupted from the jungle, leapt in front of the bridge, and opened its beak with a hiss.
Rudra froze, but the twins drew steel. Lalasa touched her pendant.
The creature was half again the height of a man. Leathery skin flaps stretched between its long bony arms and its waist. It shook its blue-feathered head and clacked its beak. “If you would pass, you would pay!” it rasped.
“What would you have us pay?” Hanuvar asked.
It tilted its head and stabbed the sea priestess with sharp eyes. “Give me the soft one!”
“We have fine wine with us,” Lalasa countered.
The thing cocked its head, swift and birdlike.
“Yes,” she said. “Fine and sweet.”
“Give me the drink!”
Lalasa looked to Rudra, who stared back blankly until she pointed at his wineskin and motioned toward the monster.
Rudra fumbled to untie the skin from his belt. He threw it at the creature’s clawed feet.
It bent, snatched up the skin, and fumbled with the stopper before losing patience and biting it off. It upended the container into its beak and guzzled greedily. Dark red wine trickled down either side of its face.
Meshtar swore in disgust.
“More!” The thing shook the empty skin at them.
“We will give you more after we pass,” Hanuvar said.
The bird-thing’s gaze shifted between them. “You will each give me the sweet.”
“We’ll give you one more,” the sea priestess promised. “We’ll leave it for you on the bridge’s far side.”
“All!” It flapped its wings rapidly.
“One,” the priestess said. “Or we will go back into the jungle.”
The bird-thing hopped once, then scurried to one side. “I will watch. If you trick me, I eat you.”
“Try and we’ll kill you,” Rudra growled.
Hanuvar led the way onto the bridge.
The bird-thing obviously hadn’t spent its spare time in maintenance of its ambush point. Some of the ancient planks pointed skyward, as though heavy weights had been dropped on their far ends. Hanuvar and the others stepped carefully over the gaps, through which they glimpsed a gurgling jungle stream a hundred feet down.
They soon stood on the other side. Lalasa lifted her wineskin high so the monster would see it, then bent to place it on the bridge. The creature was already scampering to retrieve it as Lalasa guided them into the jungle.
Hanuvar listened for sounds of pursuit, but heard nothing.
When the sun lowered over the palms circling a little clearing, Lalasa called a halt. “We’ll rest until the moon is high.”
“We should keep moving,” Rudra said.
“And how will we see, with the dark jungle on every side?” Lalasa asked. “Now’s the time to rest and eat. We’ll move when moonlight marks the way.”
Rudra grumbled to the twins, who gathered wood for a small cook fire while he hunkered down on a nearby boulder and slapped at insects.
Hanuvar stepped to the clearing’s edge and bent down to touch his toes. More and more each year he felt the aches and pains of age. “You care for every weapon after use,” his father had told him when he was young. “So too should you care for your body.” And so Hanuvar had learned to ease strain from his muscles and joints, moving carefully through martial forms with his father each morning and night.
He had turned his attention to his calf muscles when Lalasa joined him. There in the shadow of the trees she was little more than a silhouette exuding the mixed scent of fragrant soaps and healthy sweat. She brushed
off a nearby log, sat down, and watched him. For a time there was no sound other than the calls of night animals, one of which let out a repetitious shrieking whoop.
“You are really a master of serpents?” the priestess asked.
“I know their ways.” Hanuvar climbed to his feet, widened his stance, and slowly rotated his arms.
“You speak the truth,” she said. “There’s sadness in your mind when you think of the golden serpent in the water.”
Hanuvar paused, staring at her dark form, and strove to blank his mind. He’d underestimated her. “You’re a mind reader.”
“Not one of any great skill. But I sense the feelings of others and sometimes glimpse portions of their thoughts. It’s like pressing up against a thin curtain. I can see what lies on the other side if the ‘light’ is right.”
“And what do you read from those three?” Hanuvar asked quietly. His head turned toward the twins, one of whom was adjusting the fire tinder while the other dug through his supply pack. Rudra drank from Hanuvar’s wineskin, which he’d appropriated shortly after they left the creature.
“From the general? Little,” she whispered. “Nervousness. Irritation. The other pair . . . there’s darkness there, and I don’t want to venture close.”
“They’re soldiers.”
“They’re killers.”
“So am I,” Hanuvar said.
The priestess grew silent. Hanuvar bent his head toward his knee.
She shook her head. “It’s not the same. There was a boatman in the village where I received my training, renowned far and wide for his skill. Men said he had been blessed by the gods, so wondrous was his talent. His mind felt something like yours.”
He laughed lightly. “I’m not blessed.”
She spoke swiftly, with great feeling. “I’m sorry they imprisoned you. They had no right. The Dervans are no allies of Narata. You should have been sent on your way.”
She was young, but surely she knew the appeal of gold. He wasn’t surprised so much that they’d imprisoned him, but that anyone so far from the mainland had recognized him from his belt crest and signet ring.
Hanuvar sat beside her, his mind returning to those impossibly long weeks on the deserted islet building rafts. Neither had been truly seaworthy. The second had delivered him within sight of Narata’s coast before sinking. It had been a long swim, and not his first.
The priestess had called him blessed, but a blessed man could have convinced more of his people to heed his calls to arms. A blessed man would not have lost his army, his people, his family. His city. His friend, Eledeva, the golden serpent.
After the Dervan catapult stone had struck her from the sky, Eledeva had been too
injured to fly, but she had carried him through rough waves for most of a day. And then she too had perished, and his only hope had been that tiny islet upon the horizon.
The priestess interrupted his musing. “Was Volanus truly as lovely as they say?” Her voice was kind. Had she glimpsed the last view of his city etched in his mind, as tendrils of smoke stretched skyward above the burning temples and the red-tiled houses? Could she hear the screams of his people?
“It was like any city,” Hanuvar answered flatly. “There were criminals and priests, beggars and rich men, performers and warriors and bakers and cobblers. More often than not those who ruled had more money than wisdom.”
“You’re lying,” she said after a moment.
He met her eyes. Here at close range their whites glimmered with a red pinpoint from the cook fire. “Her beauty was peerless,” he admitted. “But her silver towers lie shattered by the sea and the blood of her people has run into the water. Derva crouches like a fat toad amongst the ashes.”
Lalasa said nothing, but he felt her recoil. Doubtless now she sensed the truth.
“I too am a killer, Priestess,” he said. “I can recite poetry and the works of Aedara, frame witty quips, trade pleasantries with ladies of the court. But the Dervans fear me with reason.”
“You will help us, won’t you?”
Hanuvar studied her. “Why do you aid a tyrant?”
“I seek the asalda to help the king help his people.” She paused. “At the very least, the southerners will burn the city. But you know as well as I that they make a sport of hunting islanders. Sometimes they leave the women after they rape them, but sometimes they take them, or kill them.”
“So do the strong among the weak.”
“Is that what you did, among the weak?”
“I sought to crush the empire before it destroyed us.”
“You’re a man of oaths, and principles,” she stated, almost as if to remind him of the fact.
“Your king will turn me over to the Dervans when we return.”
“Help me complete my task,” Lalasa said with quiet urgently, “and I’ll aid you—” She broke off as Rudra drew close. The small fire backlit the general.
“What are you two whispering about?”
“Serpents,” Hanuvar answered.
“Are you? I’m watching you, old man. Don’t trust him, Priestess. They say he’s the father of lies.”
Lalasa didn’t reply, and Rudra shifted under their scrutiny. “How close are we?”
She answered. “When we see a narrow outcropping at the top of a steep slope, we’ll know we’re close.”
“But how close are we to that? Is the serpent even there?”
Lalasa breathed heavily. She raised one hand to her blue pendant, which glowed gently, suffusing her fingers and the revealed curve of her breasts. “I will see.” She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.
She was thoughtful, poised. It might be her religious order had chosen her for leadership simply because of her empathy and capability. She was just a little older than Hanuvar’s daughter had been when she’d been awarded an officer’s post in the Eltyr.
At the thought of Narisia’s likely fate, his jaw clenched.
Lalasa shook violently and her head flung back. Her eyes opened and she fell limp.
Hanuvar grabbed her shoulders before she hit her head on the log. He called her name to rouse her.
The priestess moaned, blinked, but it was a moment before she focused on Hanuvar.
“Is she all right?” Rudra demanded.
Lalasa stared past Hanuvar’s eyes. “We are half a night’s journey away still.” She grasped the log with her hands. Hanuvar released her and she righted herself.
“You found the serpent?” Rudra demanded.
“She’s there. Her mind brushed mine . . .” Lalasa shuddered.
“Eat,” Hanuvar said. Sorcerers were always weak after working magics, and he smelled the enticing aroma of crisping pork from the cook fire. “It will restore your strength. Come.” She took his hand as he stood and helped her rise, then released it and walked with him toward the fire.
III
The moon rose at last, bathing the jungle in silver light. The island creatures croaked and gibbered to it as Hanuvar and the others advanced through thick foliage. Rudra and the twins wielded manakas, wide, single-edged blades, to chop the clutching leaves.
Hanuvar walked at the rear. He might have disappeared into the jungle, and the others, desperate to find their asalda, wouldn’t have time to follow. Yet if he fled he’d have no way off the island. He had no weapon apart from a spoon with a sharpened handle, and, most importantly, the general still carried his rounded flask.
Better opportunities surely lay ahead.
“Halt,” Lalasa called, and Hanuvar found himself confronting a large, dark wall of rock.
A steep cliff shot free of the jungle plants and climbed vertically two hundred feet. At its height the moon shone on a pitted black projection shaped like a finger, pointing northwest.
The smooth, ancient
stone showed few handholds. There was no climbing that way. Hanuvar’s eyes searched the cliffside.
“Here,” said Lalasa. She had wandered to the right. The others followed.
Thick, hairy vines clung to the black stone at the point beside the priestess and stretched to the limit of their sight. Whether or not they rose to the cliff’s height Hanuvar could not determine, for detail was lost in the dark.
“You first, old man,” Rudra told him.
Hanuvar smiled thinly. He wrapped his hands around one of the vines and pulled, found them rooted securely to the stone. He looked up at the challenge ahead, then began his ascent.
He moved slowly, hand over hand, finding sure purchase among the thick plant fibers, working to the height.
Grunting with the final pull to the top, Hanuvar arrived at a circular lake fenced by wide-leafed trees, waving now in a cool wind that rippled the dark waters. Beyond the lake stood the final crest of the mountain.
He stepped back to the cliff to watch the progress of his companions. He heard the slightest noise, as of a tent-flap in the wind, and wheeled into a fighter’s crouch, the spoon’s sharpened handle in his fist. It was the bird-thing, on wing and bearing down with outstretched talons.
Hanuvar dropped too late. A clawed hand clipped him in the head. He lay stunned as it circled.
In one thing he was fortunate. The creature was a glider, and thus it struggled to gain height for its return. Hanuvar was up by the time it neared again.
The creature hissed and bore down toward him, its speed rising.
Hanuvar leapt as it closed. The bird-thing let out a raspy scream of surprise and pain, for Hanuvar’s aim and its own momentum had driven his makeshift knife into its chest. They fell in a jumble of limbs.
The monster clawed at his shoulder and Hanuvar gasped in pain. He bashed the clacking beak aside and thrust his weapon deep in the creature’s throat before rolling away.
He climbed to his feet as the thing thrashed out its life. By the time the others reached the cliff top he had washed out the long slash in his shoulder and rigged a bandage from his tattered tunic edge. The twins walked over to prod at the bird-beast while Lalasa examined Hanuvar’s injury.
Rudra seemed more concerned with Hanuvar himself. “How did you kill it?” Somehow his voice betrayed suspicion, fear, and awe all at the same time.
“I’ve been a warrior for more than twice your lifetime,” Hanuvar answered.
“But it was stabbed. And you had no sword.”
“True. I had no sword.”
“I think you’ll heal fine,” Lalasa said behind him, “so long as you keep the wound clean and change the dressing. The cut is fairly light.” She tightened the bandage as she spoke.
Rudra frowned. “Where do we go now?”
Lalasa stepped out from behind Hanuvar. “There.”
Rudra walked closer to the water and peered in. “What do you mean, ‘there’?”
“We swim.” Lalasa
pointed to the lake’s north end. “There’s an underwater tunnel that leads to the asalda’s lair.”
Rudra’s teeth showed. “How are we supposed to do that? We can’t breathe underwater!”
“The scrolls tell of the old king’s journey, General. There’s air in the asalda’s cave, but you’ll have to hold your breath for a long while to reach it.”
Rudra frowned at the water’s edge. Meshtar and Beshkar stepped up beside him.
Meshtar’s blade flashed as he tore it from his sheath. He caught the general’s chin in one hand, slashed the blade across his neck with the other. Blood spattered, and Rudra collapsed, flailing.
“What have you done!?” Lalasa cried.
“We have two things the Dervan pay well for,” Meshtar said with a self-satisfied grin. “We know the dwelling place of a mighty serpent. One they will gladly capture or butcher for their sorceries.1 And we have their greatest foe. Alive. Although if he proves troublesome, there’ll still be some money for his carcass.”
“You killed General Rudra!” Lalasa’s voice shook with rage. “What about the island? Your people?”
“What about you?” Beshkar said. Meshtar laughed as Beshkar advanced on her. “I’ve wanted a taste of you since you showed up last year.”
“Save some for me,” Meshtar came forward, Rudra’s blood dark on his weapon.
Lalasa fumbled for the knife on her belt, her movements growing frantic as they touched its empty sheath.
Hanuvar inched forward, head bowed. “Don’t slay me.”
“I’m not interested in you right now,” Beshkar said, stepping past. “Just stay out of the way.”
Hanuvar had held Lalasa’s knife against his arm. He flicked it up, drove it into Meshtar’s throat. While the dying man reached for his neck, gurgling, Hanuvar grabbed his sword and drew. He kicked hard at Meshtar’s knee and toppled him.
Beshkar screamed in rage and slashed high at Hanuvar’s head.
The blow rang off his brother’s sword, held stiffly in Hanuvar’s hand.
Hanuvar’s sword arm was numb from the terrific strike, but he kept it steady and circled right.
Meshtar lay twitching, bloody fingers pressed to his ruined throat.
His brother snarled. “You’ll die for that!”
Hanuvar smashed his sword into Beshkar’s before it completed its downward arc. The younger man grunted, his eyes following the blade as it swung wide. Hanuvar then drove his blade through Beshkar’s chest. Curious horror registered on Beshkar’s face as he realized the extent of his injury, then he folded to the ground. Hanuvar yanked the sword free and slashed through Beshkar’s neck. He stepped back, glanced at the dead Meshtar, and knelt to
wipe the blade on the grass. He hadn’t expected that particular development, but things had resolved well.
“Adras and Sussura, but you’re fast,” Lalasa breathed. She gave the dying men a wide berth and walked with Hanuvar to Rudra. While she bent to inspect the general’s wound, Hanuvar sank to one knee beside him.
“He’s already dead,” she said.
Of course he was. “It was a professional stroke.” Hanuvar rolled Rudra over to better undo his belt.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking back my flask.”
Lalasa said nothing while Hanuvar shifted the dead general’s belt to his own waist and compared swords, in the end choosing the less decorative but better-balanced blade he’d taken from Meshtar. He replaced the general’s sheath with Meshtar’s, but kept Rudra’s knife. He wiped Lalasa’s blade in the grass and set it aside for her, then moved on to their packs, consolidating the small amount of food and cooking supplies into one.
Lalasa watched silently until he’d finished transferring the money in their coin purses as well. “You don’t mean to go on.”
“No.”
A chill wind blew as they faced each other. Hanuvar didn’t usually justify his decisions, but her earlier kindness prompted explanation. “Dealing with an asalda isn’t the simple matter your fool king thinks.”
“At least give me some of your sorcerous powder,” Lalasa said.
Hanuvar touched the cap of the flask at his belt. “I have no sorcery, Lalasa. These are my little brother’s ashes. I must bear them to the Isles of the Dead.”
He could see little more of her but outline, yet he felt her gaze.
“I felt the truth of your words before.” She sounded hurt, confused. Betrayed.
“Eledeva was my friend—an ally of my city from its founding days. I have no magic other than experience and the loyalty of allies and family. And most of those are dead.”
“So is your duty to the dead, or the living? Can’t you help me? People will die if we don’t gain the asalda’s aid. Women and children.”
“This is a wild asalda. It will want a promise to bind our word. A blood sacrifice.”
She breathed deeply and he knew then that she understood.
“Your king was an idiot to think otherwise.”
“But what about the serpent’s agreement with the old king?”
“An unlikely story. I doubt any agreement will be honored with a representative who doesn’t smell of his bloodline. One or both of us would perish.” He spoke on, though he knew she wouldn’t accept his offer. “It was a fool’s errand. You couldn’t know. Come with me and live.”
Her eyes blazed in indignation. “I thought you were the man who spun victories from
defeats, who mastered armies three times larger than his own. Who devoted his life to the protection of his city and his people. Surely you know some—”
“There are things I must live to do.”
Silence fell over them. Her mouth thinned and she turned her back. “Leave me.”
He did not, though. A moment later she slid free of her sandals and shimmied out of her skirt, her slim figure clothed only in a close-fitting tunic.
She stepped gracefully into the water without looking back and dropped forward with a splash. The moonlight flashed against the water kicked up by the pale soles of her feet.
Hanuvar watched from the shore, his world suddenly further diminished, companioned now only by the dead. Sometimes it seemed they were all he had left. The woman too would die if he did nothing. Yet what was her fate compared to that of the remnants of his people, who could have little hope without him? He must live.
He wrestled with his conscience, for she, too, risked her life to save her people. Somehow he could not find it in himself to let her die.
Hanuvar cursed, tore off belt and gear and clothes, and dove in after her.
IV
The cold plunge lent new energy to Hanuvar’s tired body, and he swam vigorously to the north side of the lake, where Lalasa waited, treading water.
“I thought you said that this was a fool’s errand.”
“I am a fool,” Hanuvar said.
She smiled. “Take a deep breath. According to legend, it’s a long swim.”
“I hope you know the way.”
“Everything I’ve read so far has proven correct. Breathe deep and follow.”
A difficult thing, Hanuvar thought, beneath the waters in the dark, but then Lalasa closed her eyes and the pendant hanging about her neck glowed blue once more, lighting the water and outlining her wet clothing and her small chin.
The priestess sucked in a deep gulp of air, then dove, the dark hair tied behind her flowing like a black ribbon. Hanuvar swam after, and on toward a large cleft in the rock wall. A wide tunnel stretched beyond. How great was its extent, and might they be able to escape it if they ran low on air?
But Lalasa swam upward before his own lungs grew terribly strained. Beyond her the tunnel roof rose into a larger chamber. He followed, and then he breached the water, sucking in air tainted with the smell of damp earth—and something else, the faint odor of a den, and scorched stone.
Lalasa struck out for a rocky shoreline. Something nearby struck the water with
an immense splash and sent it surging. To the left, Hanuvar glimpsed a long serpentlike coil spiral into the water and disappear.
There was no talking to a serpent that had already begun its attack.
Lalasa pulled up on a rocky ledge and turned, her mouth open in astonishment. Water surged below him.
He did not know if he was panting from exhaustion or fear, but he reached the slippery rock and threw himself over the rim. The injured muscle in his shoulder protested as she grasped his hands and helped him upright.
The pendant bouncing on her chest glowed fiercely. From the water a thing of nightmares loomed, supported by a glistening silver neck wide around as two barrels.
The serpent’s skull was the size of a six-man rowboat, and her flaring nostrils wider than dinner plates. Further back, two immense slitted eyes glowed like emerald suns. The head rose steadily until it hung at least two body lengths above.
“Name yourselves, intruders!” The asalda’s voice echoed from the cave walls like the ringing of great gongs, and teeth the length of sabers flashed wetly in her mouth. As he had scarce dared to hope, she had granted them the opportunity for conversation. He meant to make the most of it.
“I am Hanuvar, son of Himli, of House Cabera, friend of the asalda known in my tongue as Eledeva. We come in peace.”
The serpent head swayed closer. “You are not welcome!” The nostrils widened. “You bear the memory of asalda upon you, but that does not grant you entry.”
“We have come at the behest of the king of Narata, great one,” Lalasa said, her head bowed.
“Why does Nara not come himself?”
The priestess hesitated. “Nara is long dead, great one, and his great grandson rules the island.”
“Has it been so long?” The asalda did not wait for an answer, commenting as if to herself: “You humans live such meager lives.”
“Our lives are all too brief,” Hanuvar agreed. “And many of them are threatened even now. The people of Narata seek your aid. A great fleet of raiders nears their shore, and their defense is poor.”
“The king would invoke the pact made with you by his grandfather’s father,” Lalasa said.
“The pact?” The serpent sounded almost amused. “You seek my aid, you, who clearly have no knowledge even of my name?”
“It . . . it was not known by the chronicler. I must ask your forgiveness—”
“You ask much, unnamed woman.”
“I mean no disrespect,” the priestess said, stepping forward. She raised her head with regal grace. “I am Lalasa, a daughter of the sea. And these folk of Narata are simple and forgetful and do not know the proper words or honors. But they mean you no harm, and their word.
is good. They still protect you, as you protect them, and they seek to invoke the pact they made with you ages past.”
“Protect me?” The asalda’s voice rang from the stone, rising shrilly in disbelief. “Do they think I need protection?”
Neither Lalasa nor Hanuvar dared answer.
“It is clear you have forgotten much!” The serpent’s head lowered until it was almost level with their bodies. “The pact was simple. I would leave you humans be if you would leave me to my doings and stay clear of my mountain. These simple things you have done. Until now. Your people have mostly kept your word, a rare thing in the history of your kind.”
“She would make a new pact with you,” Hanuvar said.
“Would she? Where is her tribute? I do not trust the word of humans who bear nothing to seal their promise.”
So it was with asalda. The taking of oaths was a weighty matter to them, and they did not trust save when humans had proven faith by sacrifice or harmless predictable presence.
“I am your tribute.” Lalasa started forward.
The serpent’s head rose.
Hanuvar barred Lalasa’s way with an arm and pushed her back.
“Not you—” the priestess cried.
“She means that she brings word of tribute,” Hanuvar said. “The king is weak and dared not come himself, but he waits for you.”
“You would have me go elsewhere for tribute?” The serpent’s teeth shown.
Hanuvar bowed. “The king realizes it’s much to ask, and so he has made great tribute for you. He has given himself to you with baskets of jewelry and gold. They lie hidden from prying eyes three hundred man paces east from the central tower of the palace, in a chamber just beneath the courtyard.”
“How do you—” Lalasa asked, but Hanuvar shot up a finger in warning without looking back at her.
“This is unorthodox,” said the serpent. “Yet I see the picture of this place within your mind. Why are the treasures hidden?”
“To keep it safe from the raiders. If you stop them, it is yours.”
“I shall take your tribute.” The serpent’s head rose. “And the raiders shall perish utterly. Now leave me.”
Hanuvar bowed from the waist, and the priestess echoed his gesture.
“Go!” The great creature roared. “I tire of your intrusion!”
Hanuvar dropped into the water, motioning Lalasa ahead of him. They kicked hard for the tunnel, the priestess’s pendant silvering the water beneath her. Hanuvar didn’t look behind him, though he felt the great eyes of the serpent burning into the back of his head. He tried not to think of it swimming after, its vast mouth opening wide.
He didn’t think it would, yet the minds of the asalda were never fully knowable. Who was to say that it might not take them in tribute as well?
The water beyond the tunnel seemed lighter. When they broke the surface, a red glow hung in the tree limbs along the shore. Dawn had come. As the two of them swam, a long rippling form with immense black wings exploded from the water and soared effortlessly into the sky.
They treaded water and watched the serpent’s sinuous form glide up and eastward, beating its wings almost as an afterthought.
Once they reached the shore, Lalasa paused only to grab her clothes. She hurried through a stand of trees. Hanuvar followed to the cliff’s edge. The whole of the island lay spread before them, and they looked down across miles of jungle canopy. Hanuvar saw the bridge they had crossed. The high, brown stone tower of the palace rose far to the left, near the shimmering blue waters. The serpent dropped beside it and disappeared from view.
“You’ve slain the king,” Lalasa said, voice quiet with awe.
“Far better him than you. Any good leader should be willing to sacrifice himself to protect his people.”
“He has no heirs—”
“Good.”
Lalasa stared at him. The dawn’s light glistened on the water drops beading her forehead. She shivered in the morning chill. “How did you know the king’s hiding place so precisely?”
“I counted my steps.”
From her expression he saw she didn’t understand, but she didn’t press further. “What will you do now?”
“I will inter my brother’s ashes upon the Isles of the Dead. Then—” Hanuvar’s voice dropped. “Then I have a long journey before me.”
“You could rule Narata,” Lalasa said, stepping close. She stood but hand spans from him. Her eyes were great dark wells. “You are very wise. You could take on a different identity—”
He shook his head no. “If I stayed, the Dervans would find me, and any who shelter me. Your people should appoint some other worthy person to lead. A wise young woman, perhaps.”
A light kindled in her eyes.
“Come. I’ll build you a fire. And then we’ll leave this mountain.” He turned,
, and she followed him from the ledge.
Within days the first of the blackened ship timbers reached the shores of Narata. They continued to sweep into the eastern beach for weeks after, sometimes in the company of burned body parts, bits of cloth, and occasional articles of clothing. By then Lalasa had used her new status to set a triumvirate in the king’s place.
And Hanuvar had sailed west, toward the land of his enemies.
Lalasa had gifted him with a small sailboat. Though supplied with ample stores, there were not enough to see him safely to his distant destination, and by and by he had to stop among the Lesser Lenidines for water and food and a few moments upon dry land. There he was to find an unforeseen challenge, and an unexpected ally.
—Sosilos, Book One
1 The animosity between humans and the winged serpents, or asalda, stems in part from the eagerness of sorcerers to harvest their organs for their rites and of hunters to demonstrate their skill and ferocity in the slaying of such cunning animals. While most readers are likely familiar with (probably exaggerated or invented) tales of individual asalda allying with or even befriending humans, the relationship forged between the two asalda of Volanus and the people of the city is unique to the historical record. Only in Volanus were the creatures comfortable enough with the presence of humanity to freely choose living for generations among them.
In almost all other recorded interactions, the best that relations between asalda and humanity could be described as is neutral. More often the two species are deadly adversaries, though asalda do not seem especially fond of human flesh.
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