Riding the Serpent's Back (43 page)

And then she began to notice the old man in the street, and at the shrine on Estethera Way where she worshipped most days. From neighbours and friends, she learnt that his name was Idreth Majir, or Raneth Annashand, or even Marc Jaspera, and that he was a semi-retired merchant, or industrialist, or priest, looking for somewhere to settle for his final years.

The first time she came to the Island of Ten Thousand Columns, she found him kneeling alone in Tezchamna’s eye, his own eyes closed in prayer. It was late in the evening and just about all the company they had were the strutting peafowl and a few departing worshippers: even the stalls at the island’s entrance were closed. Gudrun was away in Tule, and Cora had felt a sudden urge to explore; although she had lived most of her life within sight of Ten Thousand, she had always felt wary of the place until that night.

She felt pleased to see him, the familiarity of his features releasing her unease at being here.

He looked up and smiled, and then rose to his feet. “Atethlalai,” he said, arching his eyebrows. “So nice to see you.”

She smiled, a little confused. “That’s not my name,” she said. She had never told him her name. “I’m Cora Hamera. And you are Idreth Majir. Or Raneth Annashand, or Marc Jaspera, depending on who is gossiping at the time.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I use none of those names. I am usually called, simply, Donn.”

It didn’t sink in immediately, but when it did she stared at him, surprised. She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off by nodding. “Yes,” he said. “Although most of the stories about me are untrue.” He reached out and she took his hand without thinking, surprised at how frail it seemed: mere bones wrapped loosely in skin several sizes too large.

“And let me assure you, although you call yourself Cora, you really are Atethlalai. It comes from the First Tongue of our Era: you are the ‘Earth-tuned Daughter of Lai’. Your sensitivity to the Earth’s strange currents is embodied in your ability to Charm inanimate objects. ‘Daughter’ is taken in its broader sense as descendant in the female line.” He waved a hand back towards Laisan’s main island. “Your distant grandfather gave his life to establish the Pact which preserves your city.”

“Every family on the island claims that lineage,” said Cora. She wished she wasn’t there. She sensed unearthly things going on, strange currents in the night air.

“Ah,” said Donn. “But for you I know it to be true.” He stopped and turned to face her. “That is the reason I chose you.”

“‘Chose’?”

He nodded. “I am an old man – even for a mage. I have passed through the cycles life has dictated to me, and now I know that my time is nearly finished. Our world faces great upheavals – it is time for history to repeat the shapes of an earlier Era. I cannot let my Talents die with me and so I have embarked upon a plan to pass them on to a new generation. It will be up to my descendants to use their inheritance as best they can.”

“What do you mean?” asked Cora.

“I mean, Atethlalai, that I have chosen you most carefully. Our lines complement each other very closely. I would like you to carry my child.”

She stared at him, aghast. “You can’t mean that,” she said. She was shocked, as much as anything, by the way he had made his proposal: as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if he was merely negotiating a contract. “I am happily married. You can’t expect me to—”

“And you will remain so, I am sure. Gudrun is a good man, although a little dull.”

“No!” She shook his hand free, and backed away.

The next day, she heard from a friend that old Raneth Annashand had left in the night and would not return.

~

“But...”

Cora continued, “I started to dream: about him, and about Lai and the Charmed Pact of Laisan. I know Donn was manipulating my emotions, playing with me, bending my thoughts. Eventually, I put the incident behind me and, if I thought of it, it was with a kind of vaguely flattered fondness. He came back a year later, looking suddenly old and frail. I was the only person to recognise him, although he made no effort to approach me.

“I realised then, when I saw how close he had come to death, that I had come to love him in his absence. No, not
him
, not as a man: I loved his magic, his wisdom, I loved the currents that flowed through him. Through Donn I could sense the earth itself.

“I came here to Ten Thousand one night and he was right here in Tezchamna’s eye, where we had first met. Without saying a thing, we made love and you were conceived. The only thing he said to me in all of that visit to Laisan were his parting words that night: ‘I had to come back, Atethlalai. For
you
, not for your lineage. I dream of you all the time. Of all my lovers, in all my life, right at its very end, I have found you. My special one.’”

Leeth stood with his eyes fixed to the ground. Donn must have repeated that line to all his lovers, he thought. He couldn’t drive from his head the image of his mother, locked in the throes of passion with a white-haired old man on this very spot.

He shifted uneasily.

“I don’t know if I can handle all this,” he said. He felt like he had in Khalaham, when he had fled through the streets with his fist buried in his groin, not believing...not able even to begin to take in what was happening to him. He thought that at any moment he might lose control again, start shifting and sliding forever, unable to stop.

He felt that everything had been taken away from him: he was no longer who he was. He had been changed: physically, of course, but also in his head, his whole sense of identity falling apart. A member of a True Family never really appreciates how central that is to their identity until it is taken away: now, Leeth was no longer the son of Gudrun Hamera, grandson of Dimit and Carla Hamera. And his body was merely the arrangement of features in which it had most recently settled.

He was losing control. Losing any grip on who he was, losing his
self
.

Cora studied him, looking concerned. Leeth wondered what he must look like, if his face was melting and reforming even as he sank into panic.

She reached for his hand and he let her hold it this time. “Remember,” she said. “You’ve already conquered this thing once: you controlled it. That’s the biggest fight. As time passes you’ll become more and more adept at keeping yourself stable.”

She reached up and pinched his cheek between finger and thumb. “You can change this,” she said, then she smacked his chest firmly. “So now you just have to learn how to change
this
.”

Leeth peered at her uncertainly.

“If you can change yourself outwardly,” she explained. “Then perhaps it’s time you learnt to change yourself inwardly, too. Your biggest problem has always been that you disparage yourself. You need to learn to be positive, to accept who and what you are – that’s the one thing that
won’t
change. Learn to be happy, Leeth. Learn to be your own hero.”

“You make it sound easy,” said Leeth. “But I need help.”

“I know,” she said. “You need to know what it’s like. You need to talk to Donn.”

Leeth stared at her. “But he’s dead,” he said. “He died years ago.”

Cora was shaking her head. “Oh no,” she said. “Your father isn’t dead yet. You should go to him immediately, while there is still time.”

Leeth went directly to the family house, having left his mother alone on Ten Thousand.

Ibby hovered in the corridor. For once she seemed uncertain about what to do. “You be careful,” she said, awkwardly. “I know what you’re like, Mister Leeth. I know trouble just has a habit of followin’ you around.”

He hugged her, for the first time in his life. “I’ll be all right,” he said, fighting his emotions. “We Hameras are always all right in the end.”

Just before he left, he looked again at his mother’s sculptures: the masks of Ellen and the single, odd one of himself. Now, he saw why it had struck him as so peculiar: it was clearly him, but the angles of the face were subtly different. It was Leeth as he had been in his female form. For the first time, he wondered what it must have been like for his mother to have had this encounter looming over her for all of his life; ever since he had left home she must have been preparing herself for his anger and confusion.

He turned to Ibby again. “Tell everyone goodbye for me. I won’t leave it so long next time.” Then he left her standing in the doorway and went out into the street to mount the waiting Sky.

~

Leeth was unaware that Ellen had followed him to Ten Thousand that morning. After he had left his room she had hurried back to her own and dressed.

By the time she emerged onto the street he had gone, but she knew where he was heading. As she had said to him earlier, if she waited until people told her things then she would know virtually nothing of importance by now. It was one of the first things she had learnt upon reaching the age where suddenly one’s parents start to lose their aura of perfection, where she started to realise they could be as vain, as mistaken, as devious as any of her friends.

She knew what Leeth was up to: he thought he could just stroll back in and pick things up where he had abandoned them five years earlier. Just because the Rift hadn’t lived up to his expectations he thought he could worm his way back into the family, and the business, negating all the hard work Ellen herself had put in to cultvate her aunt and uncle.

And the best place to start his worming was into Cora’s affections: she had always been the weakest link in everything. Leeth knew that if he could win her over, together they would easily win Gudrun.

She remembered how he had been when she was a child, before his abortive trip to college. She snorted, suddenly, alarming a woman passing her in a narrow alleyway. If it wasn’t for her own resourcefulness she might not even have discovered how soon he had run away from college – she might, like the old hag, Ibby, still think he had graduated with full honours.

She had looked up to Leeth until he left home. She had thought him handsome and funny and, like everyone, she knew he was clever. She could easily have learnt to love him, if the plan hatched between her father and Gudrun for their marriage had gone ahead.

Instead, she had learnt how much Leeth despised her. He had said she was ugly and stupid, he had said he would rather remain celibate than ever lay so much as a finger on her.

And then this morning...his arrogant assumption that now she was an attractive young woman she might still want him, when half the boys in Laisan would do anything just for a smile. The way he had casually climbed out of bed, showing himself off to her, wordlessly telling her, ‘Look! This is what you could have had!’

When she reached the Tezchamna bridge, she saw him partway along it. She would have to watch him closely now that he had returned. He would soon find out that she wouldn’t let him back in without a fight.

At a stall she took a robe and a smear of orange dye to spread across her face. In the guise of the masses, she followed him more closely as he wandered aimlessly amongst the columns.

He seemed so slow, so hesitant, so clumsy in his search.

Then he found Cora, kneeling in an open space, almost submerged in that ridiculous gown of hers.

Ellen stood behind a column and listened.

“...by her friends. Poor Ellen always was so easily swayed.” She hated the patronising tone Aunt Cora so frequently adopted.

Then she heard Leeth say, “I think she tried to seduce me this morning.” The swine! How could he say such a thing? Even as she cursed him, she recognised that he was using his claims to win into Cora’s trust.

And it worked.

“Foolish girl,” said Cora.

It was all Ellen could do to resist the urge to march out there and confront them. But she was too good at this game, too experienced to betray herself. She knew that in the long run it would pay her best to remain in hiding.

She was shocked when she worked out what they were talking about. She had always thought there was a lot that was peculiar about her cousin, but she had never even begun to suspect that he was a shape-changer. She even felt a prick of sympathy for his plight. She knew she would find it hard to cope with such a burdensome Talent.

But then she heard where he got it from, she learnt of her aunt’s betrayal of poor Uncle Gudrun. She learnt that Leeth was not full heir to Gudrun’s business after all, his claim even weaker than her own.

She felt a rush of emotions, such a sudden assault that she did not even know what they all were. Betrayed and guilty, angry and sad and outraged.

Then she heard a name that crystallised her anger and frustration.

“My brother – my brother is Chichéne Pas!” Leeth gasped. Chichéne Pas? The bandit leader from the Shelf who was guilty of so many gruesome and barbaric crimes against the Embodiment?

She could take no more. She hurried away, fighting back her tears of frustration and outrage, frightening a peahen that had been picking at an offering stuck to a column.

She dumped her robe on the stall and ran back across the bridge to Laisan’s main island.

“Hey!”

In a street that slanted up the hill, she stopped and turned. Piet Udelai was hurrying to catch her up. “Why such a hurry?” he said. Then he stopped and stared at her. She wondered what was wrong until he reached out and touched her cheek. When he showed her his finger it was smeared orange.

She snatched a cloth from her pocket and scrubbed at her face. “I...I was out at Ten Thousand,” she said, knowing that was hardly adequate explanation.

Piet was a votary in the True Church. She had frequently complained to him about her mother’s primitive worshipping on the island, yet here she was displaying evidence that she, too, had been there.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s not what you think.”

Piet nodded solemnly. “Good,” he said. “I would hate to see my lovely Ellen lost to the pagans. You’re upset.” Piet never displayed much emotion, but he was one of the most perceptive people she had ever known, even when her state was not as obvious as it now was.

“I followed Leeth there,” she said.