Riding the Serpent's Back (50 page)

“If Donn is expecting me,” he gasped, between breaths. “Then why was I turned away by the gatekeeper?”

“I’m sorry,” said the housekeeper. “But that was what the master instructed him to do.”

“But—”

“The master is particularly fond of his little tests,” the housekeeper continued. “And might I add that you performed most commendably?”

Abruptly, it became brighter as the tunnel widened out into a broad, low-ceilinged cavern.

Light seeped into this space from both sides. To Leeth’s left, there was a lava-spring, gurgling out from a hole halfway up the wall. The lava flowed like water down a channel of creamy rock, and then at the far end of the cavern, splashed into a circular lava pool, five paces across. The molten rock filled the darkest recesses of the cavern with its malevolent light.

To Leeth’s right, an entire length of the cavern was open to the elements. He stared out of the narrow gap, eyes adjusting to the daylight. The sea was wild now and he could see a few gulls being tossed about by the wind.

The housekeeper had backed away to stand unobtrusively in a niche. Leeth walked across towards the daylight. He stopped at the edge and looked out. Despite the wildness of the conditions, he could neither hear nor feel the sea or wind.

He looked along to his left. A man was approaching him, seated in a chair with wheels that he turned by hand.

Leeth stared at him: the thin beard, the straight white hair, the hooked nose that gave his face the appearance of some kind of hawk.

“Muranitharan Annash!” cried Leeth. He recalled a Charmed gannet heading directly towards him: the panic, the sharp pain as its beak scratched along his bare back.

Muranitharan Annash was the old courser flier who had helped him cultivate his Talent for bonding with beasts. The old man who had ingratiated himself with Gudrun so that Leeth might be allowed a courser of his own.

The old man peered up at Leeth from his invalid seat. “I have been called that, it is true,” he said. He looked a ghost image of the old man Leeth had once known: indeed, he had been frail even then – that had been his excuse for training Leeth, to preserve a dying art before he was too old. Now, his skin hung down from his face in great folds, mottled grey and purple with the marks of age. The blue of his eyes was surrounded by a sickly yellow, his every move a battle with age-induced tremors.

Leeth stared at him, taking in every detail, searching for any clue to their similarity. “You could have told me,” he said.

Donn arched an eyebrow. “And what good would it have done you, eh?” As he spoke, a line of spittle extended itself down from the twitching corner of his mouth.

“I’d have known who I was,” said Leeth. He hadn’t had any clear idea what to expect of the great mage, but it had certainly been far removed from this worn-out old shell of a man.

“And you know that now?”

Leeth shook his head. He was nobody, he realised. A blank template, dragging along a bunch of memories in its wake. He could be whoever he wanted.

Donn turned one wheel of his chair so that he faced the sea. “I like it like this,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. “Earth-energy colliding with sea-energy. There are no two greater powers.”

Leeth stared out at the grey sea.

“Why are you here?”

Leeth looked at him, but Donn refused to take his eyes off the surging currents breaking against the rocks below. “To see you,” he said. “My father.”

Donn tipped his head back, his tongue moistening his already wet lips. “But you want something,” he said. “You always want something.”

Leeth had the impression Donn’s ‘you’ was not directed at him, but at the whole world, always making demands. “Advice?” he suggested. “To make up for the years I have been without my father?”

Donn turned sharply, and snapped, “Gudrun Hamera is a good man – you have never been without a father.” Then, with more control, he added, “You will find it difficult if your intention is to play on my emotions – I am not without feelings, and guilt might be one of them, but I have several centuries’ experience of keeping them in rein.”

“I have no such intention,” said Leeth. “I found out about you yesterday. A short time before that I learned that I am a shifter. I went through a period when I could not hold on to a constant form. I was feverish, delirious...I had no control. I have to learn how to manage this Talent you have passed on to me. Cora suggested I ask for your help.”

“Oh yes? Your mother...Atethlalai...expects me to lead you every step of the way, does she? As I did with your bonding Talent?” Donn shook his head vigorously from side to side. “You don’t need my help, or my advice. You have it all up there in that head of yours. You think
I
had someone to coach me through it all, eh? You want me to tell you what you already know: about how much it hurts every time you shift, every time your bones and muscles have to settle into a new configuration? You’ve discovered that already. You do it too often, or too glibly, and you’ll lose control again and you might never come out of the shifting fever.

“You want me to tell you about how you’re doomed to spend the rest of your life as an outsider? How, even though they can’t quite put their finger on it, everyone just knows there’s something odd about you, something disturbing? They don’t like the ambiguities of identity that seep into every aspect of a shifter’s life. They don’t ever really trust you, they exclude you. There! Do you feel better now I’ve told you that? Eh?”

Donn raised a trembling hand and pointed at Leeth. “
You’re
the one with the Talent. Me? I’m just an old man with fading memories. Stuck in this.” He rapped his chair with a fist. “Your Talent will grow and mature. You’ll learn to control it if you handle it with care. And then, as is the way, you will grow old, your powers will fade, and you will die.”

Donn looked beseechingly at Leeth. “You think I like being like this? The shadow of what I was? All the time, I’m so
tired
.” He tapped the side of his head. “In here, I mean. So tired. Losing it all.”

“People say you are the most Talented mage of our Era,” said Leeth. “Some even say you will be remembered as a god.”

Donn snorted, then wiped at his nose. “Perhaps they’ll remember me as such: there are enough wild stories in circulation. People repeat stories, and the best stories get repeated most of all. The characters in these stories might become regarded as gods one day, but they are just people, nonetheless.” He shrugged. “I have my story to play out, my cycle to finish.”

Leeth was shocked. “You don’t believe in the gods?”

“Habna, Samna, perhaps,” said Donn, rocking back and forward in his wheeled chair. “But a god of flowers? A god of suicide?” He snorted again. “All I argue is that our interpretation of the basic truths is continually distorted by our personal, and our shared, experiences. History is the greatest liar of all. There are no gods as they are portrayed today, that is all I say.”

“Cora worships every day, when she can. She goes to the Island of Ten Thousand Columns. Where I was conceived.”

Donn seemed pleased by that. “Atethlalai knows the truth, better than any,” he said. “She told you? ‘Earth-tuned daughter of Lai’ is what I call her. She doesn’t worship the gods of the Embodied Church – she worships the energies, themselves. Just like her seventh grandfather, Lai. Atethlalai was always my special one.”

Leeth studied the distant look on the old man’s face. Until then, he had not been fully aware of the depth of the wound in his own identity caused by his mother’s confession. Now, he sensed how intensely he resented his twenty-three years of ignorance and deception. They should have told him.

“I expect you said that to them all,” he said, hoping to dent Donn’s smug reflection. “Did you tell Chi’s mother she was special? Kester’s? Joel’s? Petro and Sawnie’s?” Then he recalled there were two others he had not met, and added, “Monahl’s and Red’s, too?”

Donn was nodding. “Oh yes,” he said, deflating Leeth’s indignation. “I said it to them all. It is only polite, after all, to proclaim a certain degree of fondness for the mothers of your children.” He fixed Leeth with his yellowing old eyes. “But no matter how many times you say it, you only really mean it once. Atethlalai was my special one.”

Leeth looked away.

“I have always had any number of bed partners,” Donn continued. “Celebrity attracts admirers...but I also had a certain Talent – I believe Joel and Red have inherited it most strongly now – for seduction. It is easy to grow bored, you know. Despite the claims of legend, the lubricated friction between bodies only has a certain diversity: it soon becomes little more than a physiological requirement, and eventually—” he flapped his hands to indicate his frail frame “—it becomes somewhat impractical, too. It is easy to become bored and stop trying, but I was determined to win Atethlalai. I used all the tricks I knew, all my powers of Charm short of immobilising her.

“She resisted it all. No one has ever had such strength against me. I gave up, Leeth. I had to leave the island. I could not face seeing her and not...not touching.”

It was the first time during this encounter that his father had used his name. “But you came back,” said Leeth. “You won her in the end.”

Donn shook his head. “She drew me back, boy.
She
won
me
. She came to me in my dreams, playing games in my head. Charming me. She brought me back to Laisan when she was ready, and there we met again on the Island of Ten Thousand Columns. I was in a state of shock. I barely spoke until afterwards, when I told her she was special. She smiled at me, then, and said, ‘I know.’ Just like that. Since that day I have never touched another woman.”

“But you came back to Laisan again.”

Donn nodded. “You are special, too, Leeth. In your own way. You are my last child. I wanted to see how you progressed. And – I confess – I could not stay away from your mother.”

“You wanted to see how I progressed, yet you say you have no intention of helping me cope with the legacy you have passed on. Both Chi and Joel spoke of how you visited them and told them of their heritage. Yet you leave me to find out on my own.”

Donn squeezed his head between his fists. “I’m old,” he said. “And so, so tired. Your siblings earned my help, my empty words of advice. But you? What have you ever done, except run away from things when they become too challenging? You didn’t even know you could Charm a courser until I pushed you in that direction, at the insistence of Atethlalai.

“You’re a drifter. You evade responsibility. I thought you would be special, but I overlooked the random nature of inheritance. I think now that Chichéne must be the special one, but I have become too weak to seek him out and tell him so.”

Leeth was stunned by the sudden onslaught. He turned away from his father and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the housekeeper standing in the shadows, staring absently at the lava stream.

“I was with Chi,” he said, struggling to hide his emotion, yet knowing the mage could never be fooled: Donn had wanted to hurt him, and he must know he had succeeded. “He—”

“But you ran away.”

Leeth stared at him.

Without a word, Donn turned his chair and trundled across the uneven rock floor of the wide cavern. Leeth followed him, and they came to a halt at the raised lip of the circular pool of lava.

The heat there was intense, but the old man seemed unaffected. Leeth took a step back and immediately Donn smiled a little. The mage was playing him like a fish on a line, he realised: he seemed to know exactly how Leeth would respond to him as he alternated between attack and confession.

Donn was staring into the glowing pool.

Leeth followed his gaze and saw a ripple spreading out from the centre, as if something had been dropped into the lava. As the rings spread, the lava seemed to stabilise, its golden glow starting to shimmer.

Shapes began to form.

Leeth knew the story of Tezchamna’s third eye: the sun and volcano god could achieve visions by looking into the lava. He remembered what Donn had said about stories and legends accreting into beliefs: Donn was no god, just an extremely Talented old man.

Leeth stared into the lava pool. He saw two figures, as if he was looking down from a great height. They were naked, making love, and they were lying in a pit filled with the writhing bodies of snakes.

Donn chuckled. “I told you Red had inherited my gift of seduction,” he said. The vision clouded, and for a moment Leeth thought that was to be it: the pool had taken on a lurid, golden pink glare which for a moment he mistook for its natural hue.

Then he made out a tiny figure, crawling across a harsh pink expanse of crusted-over mud. The skin hung in tatters from her arms and legs. She stumbled forward into the mud, then heaved herself up again and resumed her crawling. Leeth turned to Donn, aghast. “You have to help her!” he said.

Donn raised his eyebrows. “Again,” he said. “You expect me to help you all. If Monahl dies then she is not worthy. Life is full of tests – you want to be cosseted and protected through them all?”

“No, but...”

The view was shifting again: a boat, cutting across a wide expanse of water. At the boat’s prow was a boy, with a spear loaded at the ready in a small atlat. The boy had a beard, and the look in his eye sent a sick feeling of recognition right through Leeth: that look of madness that had so disturbed him in his last days with the man-child, Chi.

“You ran away from him,” said Donn.

“He’s dangerous. He can’t handle his own powers.”

“You were scared.”

Leeth nodded.

“Chichéne’s name is derived from the First Tongue phrase, ‘She-ab-sheen’,” said Donn. “‘Land and sky’. It was most often used in the earliest stories about Qez: the evening star who periodically dies to be reborn as the morning star, just as Chichéne died and returned in a child’s body.

“There are two sides to us all: the creative and the destructive, the good and the bad. The stories of Qez in the cyclical texts tell of his drunken instability, his violence, his volatility, but they also tell of how great a leader he was, of his tremendous wisdom and passion for life. They also tell of a minor figure called Litherameran, ‘he who brings together’, who is a calming influence on Qez, moderating the wilder swings of his moods, allowing his more creative aspects to flourish.”