Ishbel felt overwhelmed with a great determination. Her death was but an hour away, at the most.
But it took her much longer than an hour to climb the stairs. Ishbel was seriously weak, and she could only crawl up the staircase a few steps at a time before she needed to rest, collapsing and gasping, on the dusty wooden treads.
By late afternoon she was almost there. Every muscle trembled, aching so greatly that Ishbel wept with the pain.
But she was almost there…
Then, as she was within three steps of the top, she heard the front door open.
A faint sound, for the door was far below her, but she heard it open.
Ishbel did not know what to do. She lay on the stairs, trembling, weeping, listening to slow steps ascend the staircase, and wondered if the crowd had sent someone in to murder her.
She was taking far too long to die.
Ishbel closed her eyes, and buried her face in her arms.
“Ishbel?”
A man’s voice, very kind. Ishbel thought she must be dreaming.
“Ishbel.”
Slowly, and crying out softly with the ache of it, Ishbel turned over, opening her eyes.
A man wrapped in a crimson cloak over a similarly colored robe stood a few steps down, smiling at her. He was a young man, good-looking, with brown hair that flopped over his forehead, and a long, fine nose.
“Ishbel?” The man held out a hand. “My name is Aziel. Would you like to come live with me?”
She stared at him, unable to comprehend his presence.
Aziel’s smile became gentler, if that was possible. “I have been traveling for weeks to reach you, Ishbel. The Great Serpent himself sent me. He appeared to me in a dream and said that I must hurry to bring you home. He loves you, sweetheart, and so shall I.”
“Are you the Lord of Elcho Falling?” Ishbel whispered, even though she knew he could not be, for he did not drag loss and sorrow at his heels, and there was no darkness clinging to his shoulders.
Aziel frowned briefly, then he shook his head. “My name is Aziel, Ishbel. And I am lord of nothing, only a poor servant of the Great Serpent. Will you come with me?”
“To where?” Ishbel could barely grasp the thought of escape, now.
“To my home,” Aziel said, “and it will be yours. Serpent’s Nest.”
“I do not know of it.”
“Then you shall. Please come with me, Ishbel. Don’t die. You are too precious to die.”
“I don’t need to die?”
Aziel laughed. “Ishbel, you have no idea how greatly we all want you to live, and to live with us. Will you come? Will you?”
Ishbel swallowed, barely able to get the words out. “Are there whispers in your house?”
“Whispers?”
“Do the dead speak in your house?”
Aziel frowned again. “The dying do, from time to time, when they confess to us the Great Serpent’s wishes, but once dead they are mute.”
“Good.”
“Ishbel, come with me, please. Forget about what has happened here. Forget—everything.”
“Yes,” said Ishbel, and stretched out a trembling hand. I will forget, she thought. I will forget everything.
She did not once wonder why this man should have been able to so easily wander through the vindictive crowd outside, or why that crowd should have stood back and allowed him to open the front door without a single murmur.
Two weeks later Aziel brought Ishbel home to Serpent’s Nest. She had spoken little for the entire journey, and nothing at all for the final five days.
Aziel was worried for her.
The archpriestess of the Coil, who worshipped the Great Serpent, led Aziel, carrying the little girl, to a room where awaited food and a bed. They washed Ishbel, made her eat something, then put her to bed, retreating to a far corner of the room to sit watch as she slept.
The archpriestess was an older woman, well into her sixties, called Ional. She looked speculatively at Aziel, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the sleeping form of the child. Aziel was Ional’s partner at Serpent’s Nest, archpriest to her archpriestess, but he was far younger and as yet inexperienced, for he’d replaced the former archpriest only within the past year, after that man had strangely disappeared.
Ional knew she would partner Aziel only for a few more years, until he was well settled into his position as archpriest, and then she would make way for someone younger. Stronger. More Aziel’s match.
Now Ional looked back to the girl.
Ishbel.
“You said,” Ional said very softly, so as to not wake the girl, “that the Great Serpent told you she would not stay for a lifetime.”
“He told me,” said Aziel, “that she would stay many years, but that eventually he would require her to leave. That there would be a duty for her within the wider world, but that she would return and that her true home was here at Serpent’s Nest.”
“She is so little,” said Ional, “but so very powerful. I could feel it the moment you carried her into Serpent’s Nest. How much more shall she need to grow, do you think, before she can assume my duties?”
“When she is strong enough to hold a knife,” said Aziel, “she shall be ready.”
Deep in the abyss the creature stirred, looking upward with flat, hate-filled eyes.
It whispered, sending the whisper up and outward with all its might, seething through the crack that Infinity had opened.
It had been sending out its call for countless millennia, and for all those countless millennia, no one had answered.
This day, the creature in the abyss received not one but two replies, and it bared its teeth, and knew its success was finally at hand.
Twenty years passed.
CHAPTER TWO
Serpent’s Nest, the Outlands
The man hung naked and vulnerable, his arms outstretched and chained by the wrists to the wall, his feet barely touching the ground, and likewise chained by the ankle to the wall. He was bathed in sweat caused only partly by the warm, humid conditions of the Reading Room and the highly uncomfortable position in which he had been chained.
He was hyperventilating in terror. His eyes, wide and dark, darted about the room, trying to find some evidence of mercy in the crimson-cloaked and hooded figures standing facing him in a semicircle, just out of blood-splash distance.
He might have begged for mercy, were it not for the gag in his mouth.
A door opened, and two people entered.
The man pissed himself, his urine pooling about his feet, and struggled desperately, uselessly, to free himself from his bonds.
The two arrivals walked slowly into the area contained by the semicircle of witnesses. A man and a woman, they too were cloaked in crimson, although for the moment their hoods lay draped about their shoulders. The man was in middle age, his face thin and lined, his dark hair receding, his dark eyes curiously compassionate, but only as they regarded his companion. When he glanced at the man chained to the wall those eyes became blank and uncaring.
His name was Aziel, and he was the archpriest of the Coil, now gathered in the Reading Room.
The woman was in her late twenties, very lovely, with clear hazel eyes and dark blond hair. She listened to Aziel as he spoke softly to her, then nodded. She turned slightly, acknowledging the semicircle with a small bow—as one they returned the bow—then turned back to face the chained man.
She was the archpriestess of the Coil, Aziel’s equal in leadership of the order, and his superior in Readings.
Ishbel Brunelle, the little girl he had rescued twenty years earlier from her home of horror.
Aziel handed Ishbel a long silken scarf of the same color as her cloak, and, as Aziel stood back, she slowly and deliberately wound the scarf about her head and face, leaving only her eyes visible. Then, equally slowly and deliberately, her eyes never leaving the chained man, Ishbel lifted the hood of her cloak over her head, pulling it forward so that her scarf-bound face was all
but hidden. She arranged her cloak carefully, making certain her robe was protected.
Then, with precision, Ishbel made the sign of the Coil over her belly.
The man bound to the wall was now frantic, his body writhing, his eyes bulging, mews of horror escaping from behind his gag.
Ishbel took no notice.
From a pocket in her cloak she withdrew a small semicircular blade. It fitted neatly into the palm of her hand, the actual slicing edge protruding from between her two middle fingers.
She stepped forward, concentrating on the man.
He was now flailing about as much as he could given the restriction of his restraints, but his movements appeared to cause Ishbel no concern. She moved to within two paces of the man, took a very deep breath, her eyes closing as she murmured a prayer.
“Great Serpent be with me, Great Serpent be part of me, Great Serpent grace me.”
Then Ishbel opened her eyes, stepped forward, lifted her slicing hand, and, in a movement honed by twenty years of the study of anatomy and practice both upon the living and the dead, cleanly disemboweled the man with a serpentine incision from sternum to groin.
Blood spurted outward in a spray, covering Ishbel’s masked and hooded features.
As the man’s intestines bulged outward, Ishbel lifted her slicing hand again and in several quick, deft movements freed the intestines from their abdominal supports, then stepped back nimbly as they tumbled out of the man’s body to lie in a steaming heap at his feet.
The pile of intestines was still attached to the man’s living body by two long, glistening ropes of bowel, stretching downward. The man himself, still alive, still conscious, stared at them in a combination of disbelief and shock.
The agony had yet to strike.
The man trembled so greatly that the movement carried down the connecting ropes of bowel to the pile at his feet, making them quiver as if they enjoyed independent life.
Ishbel ignored everything save the pile of intestines. Again she stepped forward, this time leaning down to sever the large intestine as it joined the small bowel.
Behind her the semicircle of the Coil began to chant, softly and sibilantly. “Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us. Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us.”
“Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us,” Aziel said, his voice a little stronger than those of the semicircle.
Ishbel had pocketed the slicing blade now, and stood before the intestines, her hands folded in front of her, eyes cast down.
Please, Great Serpent, she said in her mind, grace me with your presence and tell me what is so wrong, and what we may do to aid you.
The man’s intestine began to uncoil. A long length of the large bowel, now independent, rose slowly into the air.
The man had bitten and masticated his way through his gag by now, and he began to shriek, thin harsh sounds that rattled about the chamber.
No one took any notice of him.
All eyes were on the rope of intestine now twisting into the air before the archpriestess.
It shimmered, and then transformed into the head and body of a black serpent, its scales gleaming with the fluids of the man’s body and sending shimmering shafts of rainbow colors about the chamber. Its head grew hideously large, weaving its way forward until it was a bare finger’s distance from Ishbel’s masked face.
Then it began to speak.
When it was over—the serpent disintegrated into steaming bowel once more, the agonized man dispatched with a deep slash to the throat—Ishbel turned and stared at Aziel, dragging the scarf away from her face so he could see her horror.
“We need to speak,” she said, then walked from the chamber.
CHAPTER THREE
Serpent’s Nest, the Outlands
Aziel followed Ishbel to the day chamber they shared, pouring her a large of glass of wine as she undid her cloak and tossed it to one side.
“Pour yourself one, too,” she said. “You shall be glad enough of it when I tell you what the Great Serpent said.”
“Ishbel, sit down and take a mouthful of that wine. Good. Now, what—”
“Disaster threatens. The Skraelings prepare to seethe south. Millions of them.”
“But…”
“Millions of them, Aziel.”
Aziel poured himself some wine, then sank into a chair, leaving the wine untouched. The Skraelings—insubstantial ice wraiths who lived in the frozen northern wastes—had ever been a bother to the countries of Viland, Gershadi, and Berfardi. Small bands of ten or fifteen occasionally attacked outlying villages, taking livestock and, sometimes, a child.
But millions? And seething as far south as Serpent’s Nest?
“I know only what the Great Serpent showed me, Aziel,” Ishbel said. “I don’t understand it any more than you.” She took a deep breath. “I saw Serpent’s Nest overrun, the members of the Coil dragged out to be crucified on crosses. You…” Her voice broke a little. “You, dead.”
“Ishbel—”
“There’s worse.”
Worse?
“A forgotten evil rises from the south,” Ishbel said. “Something so anciently malevolent that even the bedrock has learned to fear it. It will crawl north to meet the Skraelings. They whisper to each other…the Skraelings are under its thrall, which is why they are so unnaturally organized. Between them they shall doom our world, Aziel.”
“Ishbel,” Aziel said, “there have been no reports of any unusual activity among the Skraelings. In fact, from what I’ve heard, they’ve been quieter than usual these past eighteen months. Are you sure you interpreted the Great Serpent’s message correctly?”
Ishbel replied not with words but with such a dark look that Aziel’s heart sank.
“I apologize,” he said hastily. “I was shocked. I’m sorry.” Aziel finally took a large swallow of his wine. “You are the most powerful visionary to have ever blessed the Coil, and what I just said was unforgivable.” Then he gave a soft, humorless laugh. “I suppose that I am merely trying to find a means by which to disbelieve the Great Serpent’s message. Did he show you the reason behind this disaster? Why it is happening? How? The Skraelings have never managed more than the occasional, if murderous, nuisance raid. A death or two at most. Millions? How can they organize themselves to that degree?”
“The evil in the south organizes them, Aziel,” Ishbel said. “I thought I’d said that already.”
Aziel did not reply. He understood Ishbel’s irritability. By the Serpent, had he been the one to receive this message he was sure he would have snarled far harder than Ishbel.
Ishbel rose, pacing restlessly about the chamber. “There is more, Aziel,” she said finally.
He, too, rose, more at the tone of her voice than her words. The irritation had now been replaced with something too close to despair. “Ishbel?”
She turned to face him, her lovely face drawn and pale. “The Great Serpent showed me the disaster which threatens, but he also showed me the means by which it can be averted.”
“Oh, thank the gods! What must we do?”
“It is what I must do. I must leave the Coil, leave Serpent’s Nest—”
Aziel stilled. Had not the Great Serpent told him twenty years ago, when he sent Aziel to rescue Ishbel from that house of carnage, that this would eventually come to pass?
“—and marry some man. A king.” Ishbel paused, as if searching for the name, and Aziel had the sudden and most unwanted thought that he hoped Ishbel would remember the right name.
“A king called Maximilian,” Ishbel said. “From some kingdom to the west…I cannot quite recall…”
“Escator,” Aziel said softly. “Maximilian Persimius of Escator.”
“Yes. Yes, Maximilian Persimius of Escator. Aziel…the Great Serpent wants me to marry this man! What can he be thinking? How can a marriage…to a man…avert this approaching disaster? I am not meant to be a wife, and I have no idea, none, of how to be a woman!”
Aziel star
ed at her lovely face, and saw the splatter of blood across one eyebrow that had penetrated her scarf’s protection.
No, he could not imagine her a “wife,” either. But, oh, the woman…
“We cannot hope to understand the Great Serpent’s reasons,” said Aziel, “nor the knowledge behind them.”
He stepped over to Ishbel and took her face gently between his hands. “My dear, we always knew you would leave us. You knew you would need to leave us. It is why we marked you as we did.” For a moment his hands slid into her hair, the tips of his fingers running lightly across her scalp. “Now,” he continued, his hands sliding back to cradle her face, “the time is here.”
“I do not know how to be a woman,” Ishbel repeated, refusing to meet Aziel’s eyes.
That statement, Aziel thought with infinite sadness, summarized Ishbel’s life perfectly. In the twenty years since he had rescued her from that charnel house in Margalit, Ishbel had devoted her entire being to serving the Great Serpent. She had no idea of her beauty, nor of her allure. All the members of the Coil were bound by vows of chastity, but only loosely. Liaisons and relationships did develop, and were allowed to continue so long as they remained discreet.
Aziel would have given full ten years of his life if it meant Ishbel looked at him with eyes of love or desire.
But she had no idea of his true feelings for her, and Aziel often wondered if Ishbel could even grasp the concept of love.
He stepped away from her. “Marriage to Maximilian of Escator, eh? It is a small thing, surely, if it will save us from the disaster the Great Serpent showed you.”
Ishbel looked at him as if he had committed an act of the basest betrayal. “Marriage? To some undoubtedly fat and ancient man who—”
“You do not know of Maximilian?” Aziel said. Surely everyone knew Maximilian’s story—the news of his rescue eight years ago had rocked the Outlands, as well as all the Central Kingdoms and as far away as Coroleas. Had Ishbel listened to none of the gossip that infiltrated the walls of Serpent’s Nest via tradesmen and suppliers?