Riding the Serpent's Back (17 page)

Zigané was built on an island of rock, floating free on the Burn Plain. The ancient city had long been preserved by a Charmed Pact, maintained by the devotion of its people. If Zigané should ever stop moving, the Pact would fail and the city would start to sink – to forestall this, the devotees meditated and prayed in an unending rota.

Again, Monahl lost track of time, lost in contemplation of the currents and forces that surged through the Burn Plain and sustained the city; struggling to add her scrap of Talent to all the minds that guided Zigané forever onwards. For a long time she was engulfed by an ecstasy only the most devout could ever know. She felt humble and diminished, yet simultaneously so strong she could carry the city across her shoulders if that was what the gods decreed.

Voices broke through her contemplation. Gradually, she rose back to the surface.

It was cooler now. The ash-thickened clouds had become so dark that the evening sun’s feeble ruddy glow was barely visible.

Monahl moved.

She rolled her shoulders, freeing the stiffness that had accumulated through her vigil.

Just then, a slight tremor reverberated along the slender spur of rock. For a giddy moment, Monahl clung on for her life. She would not be the first devotee to die in such a manner. She wondered if she had stopped concentrating too soon – if that could explain the shock. She had disputed this with her daughter Freya, when she had last seen her two days before.

Freya refused to believe that if the devotees ceased Charming Zigané into movement the city would sink into the Burn Plain. “The city won’t sink,” she had said. “Not ever. It just couldn’t, could it? It’s the way it is: Zig’s lighter than the lava so it floats. Like a good turd in water.

“Zig doesn’t move because you pray for it: it moves because of all the currents and tides in the magma.” As ever, the argument had progressed to broader issues. Monahl blamed Freya’s worthless friends for corrupting her mind – she wasted her time with them and so betrayed her Talents. Freya blamed Monahl’s general frigidity and arrogance on her inability to deviate from dogma and see the real issues, although she never said what these issues might be, so Monahl immediately ascribed the reasoning to her worthless friends again.

As always, Monahl had tried not to rise to her daughter’s taunts. Twelve was an awkward age. Eleven had been, too. And ten, nine, eight...She took comfort in the ever-present duality of the human mind: Freya was passing through a time in which she must find a balance of her own, between the swinging pendulum of her own nature and the conflicting pulls of those around her. Needless to say, Freya resented such arguments, too. She said Monahl was jealous that she had friends of her own.

“Sister Monahl.”

Again, a voice penetrated her contemplation.

“Sister Cheri,” she said in reply.

Slowly, she stretched out first her right leg and then her left until both were held straight before her. She slid her hands beneath her buttocks and took her weight on them, then tucked her knees up to her chin and swung her body so that her feet were placed in the narrow space between her spread hands.

She straightened, turned, put a foot out so that the sole was flat on the down-sloping surface of the spur. She took a step, then another, and then she was walking calmly down the narrow pedicel as if it was the widest of streets.

When both feet were back on firm ground she stood before Sister Cheri of Amasanth, the devotee-priest who had taught her all she knew. Cheri was at least twice Monahl’s age – well into her sixties – but her skin remained supple and unlined, retaining the natural golden hue of those born in Zigané. Monahl leaned towards her and kissed her on the chin, the nose, the brow. Cheri returned the gesture, then stepped past Monahl and walked serenely out along the spur, where she would remain until morning.

Monahl stooped to gather up the small bag Cheri had left. She withdrew a plain samite smock and pulled it over her head. In the bottom of the bag, Cheri had left a paper-wrapped packet of maize-cakes.

Monahl hadn’t been aware of her hunger until she found that packet, but now she was ravenous. She unwrapped the food and went on her way.

~

Soon it was as dark as it ever became in Zigané. The Burn Plain, all around, lit the sky with its savage glow, casting the narrow streets in a sulphurous twilight. Lantern light spilled out through unshuttered windows, and every so often the glow of candles emanated from a street-side shrine.

When Monahl had left Zigané for a time, some years before, the sheer darkness of night on the mainland, or deep in the Serpent’s Back, had struck her even more powerfully than the wide-open spaces. Riding the Burn Plain gave the city’s inhabitants a natural sense of the open, even if much of that open space was hostile to them. But darkness was only ever a private thing in the wandering city, a behind-shuttered-windows thing – it was not a thing of the open.

Monahl climbed the steep streets, solid, square buildings pressing in on either side. Zigané’s sturdy architecture dated back to some historical time when passage across the Burn Plain had been more prone to seismic disturbance. The most recent Pact had been constructed by the city’s Guardian, Herold, some hundred years before, and it had done much to preserve the city’s ancient structure.

It was said by some that Zigané was even older than the current Great Era. Others said that was impossible: how could a settlement be older than civilisation itself? Proponents of the theory argued that, by virtue of its place in the Burn Plain, the city was not affected by the great upheavals at the ending of an Era and the start of a new one: why should Zigané be affected by the destruction of the Rift, they asked?

Monahl was not decided about these arguments – if asked for an opinion she always excused herself for having little training in the interpretation of the histories. But what she lacked in training was compensated for by her empathy with the earth: as she walked through her beloved city on this night she could
feel
the age of the place seeping out of every rock used in its construction. She could leave it to the academics to argue figures, the stones spoke straight to her heart.

She could feel the magic which held her city together.

~

She was climbing a long set of steps when she heard the screaming child.

Whenever she climbed these steps she kept to the outside: the centre of each step had been hollowed out by use, so she preferred to inflict her own infinitesimal increment of wear on a less-frequented piece of stone, spreading the damage.

“No! Mama mama
mama!
”

She snapped herself out of contemplation and looked around. The streets were fairly quiet at this time, but those citizens nearby looked up in surprise.

Suddenly a small boy appeared at the top of the steps so abruptly he nearly fell headlong as they dropped away beneath his feet. He stumbled and tottered downwards until Monahl caught him by the wrists and stood him straight.

His terrified grey eyes looked up into her face as if she were about to eat him.

When, eventually, it penetrated his brain that she was a devotee-priest, he calmed down a little. Gradually, the colour returned to the golden skin of his cheeks.

“You’re safe here,” said Monahl. “It’s okay. Will you tell me what frightened you?”

The boy’s face suddenly went pale again. His eyes darted back towards the top of the steps.

“It was ’im,” he said in a whisper Monahl could barely hear. She looked irritably up to where the boy now stared.

“Who?”

“
’Im
.” With a sudden twist of his body the boy broke free and ran down the steps. After a short distance, he paused and turned back to Monahl. “Don’t go up there,” he said. “Or he’ll get you. The Maggot Man’ll get you.”

~

Monahl turned quickly and climbed several more steps. She paused before the top and peered through the chunky stone fretwork of the retaining wall.

She saw nothing, so she advanced, warily.

Wide flagstones formed a new terrace, flanking this part of Zigané’s central hill. At the far side buildings sprang up again, and yet more steeply inclined steps.

The place appeared deserted, which was unusual for any part of Zigané – the city was so densely inhabited that even at the dead of night there was usually a steady flow of people in the streets.

There were some figures far away to the right, so Monahl turned left. Cautiously, she headed towards a row of standard lemon trees planted in stone pots. The view from this terrace was always spectacular: out across the flat roofs of the city, descending the hillside like giant steps, to the Burn Plain. In the darkness, the Plain was a sight to inspire awe, even in those who saw it all the time. Great blocks of blackness were cut across by the violent golden slashes of lava rivers; wide pools of magma lit the smoky sky from below. Despite the crusting over of the Burn Plain in this region, the city of Zigané cut through the thin covering as if it were no more than the skin on goat-milk.

Three weeks earlier, the view had been entirely different: the dark shapes of a few wandering islands, scattered thinly across what was the more widely held view of the Burn Plain – a smooth, golden sea of magma. The light, then, had been so bright that only the angle of the shadows in the street had distinguished it from daylight.

Monahl paused to hum a brief prayer to Tezchamna, the god of the sun. At the end of each day, Tezchamna sank into the underworld, where he would don disguise so that he might pass through without being recognised and trapped by the dead to bring light to their world. But every night, his passage was betrayed by the burning trail he left in his wake and it was only his fleetness of foot that let Tezchamna make it through to his rightful place in the sky every morning. According to legend, the Burn Plain marked Tezchamna’s hurried passage, his heat so intense that even the rock became liquid and rose to the surface.

When Monahl resumed her search, it was a different god she found.

Suddenly, a small figure appeared around the corner of a building. It was clothed in filthy rags and a few tufts of white hair poked from beneath the wide-brimmed hat perched at an improbable angle on its head. Its face was blue-grey in colour, the lips puffed up a gruesome pink. The thing’s eye-sockets were empty and as it drew closer to the transfixed Monahl, she saw that maggots were squirming about in the open sores on its cheeks.

Michtlanteqez. Guardian of the underworld, the god of the dead who would trap Tezchamna to bring never-ending light to his domain.

No wonder the small boy had been terrified.

Monahl put a hand over her face, but the smell of rotting flesh was still overpowering. She stared at the abomination, forcing herself not to look away as it turned its head towards her. Its puffy lips twitched into a gruesome smile. It wanted her...Michtlanteqez had come to take her away.

She heard voices coming from somewhere...shouting and arguing and laughing, like demons trying to break through her skull and seize control of her mind.

She swallowed, and her spittle tasted of decay.

Reaching up, she detached a silver disc from one of her heavy necklets and, with a sharp flick of the wrist, hurled it at the thing. The disc curved through the air, as if homing in on its target, and the hole where it had clipped onto the necklet made a high-pitched whine.

It buried itself between the thing’s empty eyes. The Maggot Man’s hat flew away into the darkness as its head split like a melon, spilling its wriggling grey contents onto the flagstones.

Monahl went over to where the small figure lay lifelessly on the ground. She watched as its ghastly features melted away.

Within seconds, she was crouching over a rag-doll dressed in tatters. All that remained of the apparition was the smell of rotten innards. She looked at the smile painted on the doll’s face, then picked the thing up and carefully retrieved the disc embedded in the soft padding of its head.

She stood. “Freya,” she said. She was tired and still hungry, but now both feelings were overridden by her anger. “
Freya
,” she hissed.

A tall girl came slowly around the corner, where the Charmed doll had appeared a short time before. She was thin and golden-skinned and she held herself in a manner so casual that it was clearly forced. Her hair was dark, as her father’s had been, but now the light picked out some of the gingery tints which were just about all Monahl seemed to have contributed to the girl’s appearance.

Freya glanced behind her and, in response, three older children followed her out. Jamie Rue, Jess Orstall and Diggory Leehan. Monahl had suspected as much as soon as she saw the frightened boy hurtling down the steps.

She looked at the damaged doll in her hands. It had been a clever game, but one both sacrilegious and cruel. She met Diggory’s eyes and said, “I thought you were too old to play with dolls.” He refused to look away, but said nothing. It was almost certainly the fifteen year-old Diggory who had thought of Charming the doll to look like the Maggot Man guise of Michtlanteqez, but she knew he had little Talent of his own – his True Blood merely exhibited itself in a harsh disregard for others. Jamie and Jess were Talented enough, it was true, but Monahl knew whose skill had been abused to animate the doll.

“Freya,” said Monahl again, determined to remain calm. “Say goodbye to your friends.”

The girl glanced at Diggory and the others, then back at her mother. “Bye,” she said, quietly, then: “Ma. Please. It was only a game. We were playing.”

Monahl thrust the doll out towards her daughter and said, “Are you going to make apologies, or just excuses?”

Reluctantly, the girl took the doll, holding it between finger and thumb. Monahl saw the tears in Freya’s eyes and suddenly she felt that she, herself, should be the one to apologise, to try to make amends to the gods. What had she done wrong? She had rejected her initial reaction which was to stamp and shout at the girl, to forbid her from ever seeing Diggory Leehan again. She had managed to remain calm, yet that seemed to intimidate her daughter even more.