Riding the Serpent's Back (34 page)

She stared at him for a long time, then nodded and said, “Come along then, love. I’ll show you.”

With a twist that was a performance in itself, Mags turned and flowed along the corridor. Leeth followed uncertainly. She started to rise and then, behind her, Leeth saw stairs begin to appear.

His room was directly above the bar and it was barely big enough for both Leeth and Mags to stand in. “Look okay?” she asked.

Leeth nodded, even though most of the room was obscured by his hostess. When they had haggled over the price, Leeth backed out into the corridor so that Mags could extricate herself. Then he went back inside. He shut the door and locked it firmly, then slumped onto the floor.

Only then, at last, did he begin to sob, his whole body wracked so violently that he threw himself from side to side. For Cotoche, for Chi, for all those poor tormented wretches in the village. He went on for so long he began to fear for his sanity, to think he might never be able to stop again.

Eventually, still sobbing, he dragged himself across to the sleeping mat and lay, curled up tightly in a ball.

Sleep crept up on him like an assassin, so that he had just long enough to realise how frightened he was of what he might dream before it took him and he was powerless.

~

He spent the next few days perfecting his anonymous act, studying the people in the street, making subtle changes to his expressions and mannerisms. To supplement the small amount of money he had left, he helped out Mags and Denzi in the bar, soon becoming adept at hopping out of the way as they approached.

“You’re good,” said Denzi one evening. “The barmaid we had before you had to leave on account of a few broken ribs when she didn’t get out of Mags’ way quick enough. You can’t blame Mags, I told her, but even so, she wasn’t best happy about it all. You got to be nimble in this trade, I told her. You got to learn from your betters.” Within a very short space of time, Leeth learnt to be nimble enough for the three of them.

It was several days before Leeth found the courage to leave the Waterside district of Khalaham. Amongst the dockers and bargees he felt safe, but he knew he could not hide here forever.

He took to roaming through the town by day, staying in Waterside only at night. He went to wander in the Scrips district around the Embodied College he had fled so long ago. He found the boarding house where he had shared a room with a votary from Annatras. He found the inn where the students had occasionally gathered and was shocked at how genteel it was: his memory was of how rebellious it had been to go out drinking in the town.

He even saw a tutor he knew, walking with someone he had to struggle to identify: a fellow student, who should have graduated long ago.

Feeling brave, Leeth walked past them across the forecourt of one of the college buildings. They looked straight through him, their attention caught by a Charmed poster activated by their proximity. Leeth smiled, taking childish pleasure in his disguise.

That night he made his excuses with Mags and Denzi and went out into the streets.

He walked for some time, before a fight suddenly erupted out of an inn, bursting across the street so that he had to dodge the flying bodies and then make a rapid retreat.

He went into another inn and ordered a warm, spiced brandy. He knew he had to make some decisions. He couldn’t stay in hiding, and his experience in the village had convinced him that he could not roam forever, running away from the failures of his past.

Before he knew it his mug was empty and he had ordered another. He had to decide, he had to work things out.

He noticed a man watching him. In any terms other than comparison with Mags and Denzi, this man was fat, but now, to Leeth, he appeared quite slim. Suddenly, Leeth realised the man was wearing the somewhat dishevelled smock of a priest.

He looked away, fearing that he had been recognised.

He searched frantically through his memory but couldn’t place the priest at the college. He ordered another drink, angry at his own paranoia.

“You don’t have the look of a drinker.” The priest had moved over to the empty seat by Leeth.

“Just watch me learn,” said Leeth. “Tell me: do I know you? I’ve been trying to think, but...” He stopped himself, aware that he must seem a complete fool.

The priest shook his head, his eyes not leaving Leeth’s. He reached across and put a hand on his arm. With a nod of his head, he indicated a niche with two empty seats. “Will you come and join me? Maybe talking is better than drinking.”

He gave Leeth’s arm a reassuring squeeze before letting go and standing. The contact penetrated Leeth’s gloom and he meekly followed the priest across to the dark corner of the bar.

“I don’t need your help,” he said aggressively, when they were seated. “You must do this all the time – do you get a bonus for every lost soul you convert?”

The priest shook his head, seemingly oblivious to Leeth’s hostile tone. “A little company,” he said. “I will go now, if you prefer.”

Leeth shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s this place. This town. It gets me down. Makes me suspicious of everything.”

The priest nodded, but said nothing.

After a time, Leeth said, “Are you from Khalaham? You don’t look...” He stopped, not sure what he had been going to say.

“Well-presented enough?” The priest laughed gently. “I know what you mean: I am just a country priest and I have been travelling for many months.” He pulled at his smock, straightening it at the shoulders. “I appear to have lost the look somewhat, no?”

Leeth shrugged and looked away.

“I know,” continued the priest. “I am something of a pitiful old case.” He leaned forward, so that Leeth found it impossible not to meet his look. “It gets lonely, you know. I’ve lost all my friends, the people I love...and so in every town I come to I end up in a miserable little inn, spilling out my troubles to a complete stranger.”

Finally, Leeth looked away again. “It’s okay,” he lied, wishing he was back with Denzi and Mags. “People need company.” He finished his drink and, as if it was a signal, the priest called over to the bar for a refill.

“I should be dead, you know,” he said, as the barmaid retreated.

Now, Leeth looked at him with a touch of curiosity.

The priest nodded. “For years I had a cosy little placement in a small farming community in the Farlowe. I tended the shrine and taught in the school and looked after the spiritual requirements of the village. But I was a priest of the old school, you see. My people were more important to me than the stricter interpretations of the cyclicals. I became politically inappropriate, in certain people’s eyes.

“I was nothing more than a plain, old-fashioned moderate. I tried to teach understanding and forgiveness, I did what I could to make life easier to bear for the poorer members of my church. What was wrong with that?”

Leeth shrugged, aware that this story must have been told dozens of times already.

“The bastard-Principal sent his investigators into the Farlowe: small parties of officials accompanied by a truth-seer, who would interrogate their victims to try and tease out any strands of revolutionary thought. I was lucky the first time they came. After six hours of interrogation, they let me off with the warning that I would be placed under the close supervision of my senior priest in Tule. To these people there is no such thing as a moderate: anyone not unswervingly following their rulings and policies is a revolutionary. I had to re-educate myself, or face expulsion or worse.

“After this ordeal, even my own people began to doubt me. They either believed that I was guilty, or that I was weak for not standing up to the investigators.

“I knew my time was running out when I lost contact with my senior priest. Officially, he had been replaced, but I heard through friends that he had been found guilty of heresy and executed. When, a short time later, I heard that the investigators were coming again, I packed a bag and fled. I am not a brave man, you see. My superior was a brave man and look what happened to him.”

After another silence, the priest said, “Most people who hear my story don’t believe it. They don’t believe their church is capable of such—”

“I do.”

The priest peered at Leeth, who continued, “I came across a massacre, before I arrived in Khalaham. Soldiers. They’d slaughtered an entire village. But...they hadn’t just killed them: they...they’d
abused
them. Tormented them. Someone had used their Talent in the most grotesque manner. Someone very strong...”

He could say no more. The fear and repulsion were rising up, threatening to swamp him again. He lowered his head and tried not to cry.

The priest reached out and covered his hand on the table. “It must have been awful,” he said.

Leeth nodded. He looked up at the man. “You believe what I say?” he asked.

The priest nodded. “I’ve heard such stories before. The bastard-Principal and his followers are growing stronger all the time. You know, of course, that it will be attributed to bandits. Or a raiding party come north from the Shelf.”

Leeth had already guessed that much. With his free hand, he rubbed at his eyes.

The priest stood and pulled Leeth to his feet. “Fresh air,” he said. Then, when they were outside, he put an arm across Leeth’s shoulders. “We appear to have a lot in common,” he said. Leeth was intensely aware of the imprint of the man’s hand on his shoulder. It was so long since he had felt such a reassuring touch.

“How do you mean?”

“Both victims of the regime of the new church. Both affected by the violence of our times. It is so rare to make such a contact, with a compatible soul.”

Suddenly, Leeth realised what the priest meant, what had been behind all his words, behind the way he had taken him to a corner table and trapped him with his life story and his compassionate words.

“Why so tense?” asked the priest, squeezing his shoulder. “If you can’t relax with me, then when can you relax at all?”

“But...”

The priest stopped and stood before him. “I haven’t felt like this for so long,” he said, finding Leeth’s hands and gripping them tightly. “Another soul I can reach out and touch. You are very attractive, you know.”

Leeth didn’t know what to do. There had been occasional encounters in his time on the Serpent’s Back, but never before with a man. He thought suddenly of Cotoche’s rejection and said, “Not attractive enough.”

“Oh, but you are. You are!” The priest moved towards Leeth and his arms snaked around him, enfolding him, trapping him.

Clumsily, the priest pushed his mouth against Leeth’s face, slithering across his cheek until he found his mouth. His tongue pushed at Leeth’s tightly closed lips, trying to force its way inside.

“Oh, come on,” gasped the priest. “You can’t lead me on like this! You can’t.”

Slowly, Leeth tipped his head up and let the priest kiss him, feeling a strange thrill at the stubbly scraping of the man’s face pressed against his own. A man’s tongue exploring his mouth for the first time.

He felt hands moving across his body, tugging at the fold of his kilt. He pulled away and said, “Not here. Please.”

The priest took his hand, a grim, almost desperate, expression on his face. In a short time they came to the black mouth of an alleyway and they plunged into the darkness.

Immediately, the priest forced Leeth up against a wall, driving his tongue hard into his mouth, pulling madly at his clothes.

Leeth felt simultaneously frightened and excited. He buried his hands into the soft flesh of the man’s sides, pulled his smock up until he found his trousers and the cord that tied them.

He released them and immediately a stiff penis flapped against his hand.

He found it again with one hand and then the other, enclosed it, found its slippery end with a finger.

The priest pulled away from him, eyes closed as Leeth gripped his penis. Then seeming to sense Leeth’s uncertainty, he kissed him tenderly on the mouth.

Leeth didn’t know what was expected of him, what would happen next.

The priest straightened and then took Leeth by the shoulders and turned him so that he stood bent over against the wall. He felt his kilt being lifted and then hands running down across his buttocks, squeezing and caressing.

Suddenly, a finger forced its way inside Leeth, sliding easily in up to its root. Leeth felt a strange, somehow distant thrill in his belly, as if it was not quite associated with this rough probing.

It felt so peculiar. Like nothing he had ever known.

Just then, something larger pressed against him, guided by the priest’s shaking hands.

With a grunt, the priest pushed himself inside. Leeth felt as if he was about to faint. In and in and in, it pushed, until Leeth felt certain the thing would emerge at some point through his chest.

Then the priest stopped, eased back, pushed again, finding a rhythm that soon became frantic.

Leeth started to pant as his entire consciousness was taken over by the pounding rhythm of their two bodies. Slowly, he reached down between his own legs, wanting to feel what was happening with his fingers.

Down through the fringe of pubic hair, his fingers moved, across the soft swelling of his mound, until they found a flap, a fold, the hair wet with their sex.

His finger found a parting, a small wet niche with a stiff centre, then slid further back to the opening, the hard shaft driving in and out of his vagina.

He cried out in a mixture of horror and panic.

What was happening?

Frantically, his fingers searched, but this served only to drive the priest on harder, harder, until suddenly he jerked, drove hard against Leeth, and then slumped.

Leeth stepped away, his hand still buried between his legs, searching for what was missing. He thought of his efforts to blend in, to change himself so completely that no-one would know him. He thought of the changes in his body and his mannerisms, of how proud he had been that it came so naturally.

Now, he knew why it had been so easy for him to adopt these new, anonymous guises. Now he knew he had been cursed with the rarest of all the Talents.