Riding the Serpent's Back (53 page)

In the carriage there was yet more drink and food set out on the tables between the rows of seats. Red sat and closed his eyes, feeling sick and exhausted.

He opened his eyes again as the carriage jerked into life. He watched in silence as the docks retreated. Then the train stopped, and minutes later there was the jolt of wagons coupling somewhere behind them. For nearly an hour this continued as the train accreted behind them for the journey across the Heartlands to Samhab.

Eventually, they were on their way and as they passed through the outlying parts of Broor the line curved and Red could look back along the chain of carriages and wagons, losing track of the number when it had passed fifty. Somewhere at the rear he could see the trail of steam of a second engine, but it was so far away it never came into sight.

Posted at regular intervals along the train, he could see little fortified sentry-units on the roofs of carriages or mounted on truncated wagons of their own. Valuable cargo, he supposed, heading through the wilderness that had long been the preserve of primitive nomads. Somewhere in the depths of his aching head he recalled that he had lived for a time amongst such people, but the thought never quite reached the surface.

He found a bottle of wine and struck its neck against a bench, trying to open it by breaking the top off as he had seen a soldier doing with a beer bottle at the docks.

The bottle shattered, covering his lap with its dark, sticky contents. He stared down at the mess for a long time, then slumped forward against the table and fell asleep.

He woke up to a sudden lurching sensation, not so unusual when he had been drinking as heavily as he had on the four day journey down the Little Hamadryad.

Except this time the heaving was not from within.

Red raised his head groggily as the second shudder went through the train. Suddenly, everything was skewed to one side and he flopped over against the wall.

And then he was thrown back sprawling across the carriage as it was tossed in the other direction, wheels leaving the track with a grinding screech.

He looked around in panic and raised an arm to fend off flying food and bottles. Then a body landed on top of him, driving the air from his lungs.

When everything had stopped moving, he grunted, tried to shift his crushed body, then gave up. Later he would claim to have blacked out, but in reality, he merely shifted his head into a less uncomfortable position and fell asleep again.

Leeth didn’t feel as bad as he might have expected. In the space of little more than a day his identity and lineage had been ripped away and he had, in turn, been ridiculed and rejected by his real father, Donn.

Yet strangely, deep in the core of his being, he felt as if something had become resolved. Why should he cling to the tatters of an identity that had been a sham? At last he knew who he was, and that knowledge answered a number of questions that had always bothered him.

He had never quite fitted in, even at home he had been an outsider. For so long as a small boy he had tried to model himself on Gudrun, but it had never worked: he was too emotional, too inconstant, he had always lacked the intensity of focus that distinguished everything Gudrun ever did.

He was a drifter, a wanderer. A waster.

But now he was a drifter with a purpose. He would seek Chi out and find out why he had kept Leeth’s own lineage a secret from him, for he was certain the man-child had known all along. And Donn had been insistent that he had the power to moderate Chi’s excesses, that the boy-leader could be tamed.

He was going to ride the serpent’s back.

~

He flew Sky south for what remained of the day and spent the night in the shelter of a pine forest that clung to the flanks of a steep valley.

Sky settled down to sleep immediately in the small clearing where they had landed.

Leeth was still on edge. He walked a little first, his body still aching from his trial on the bridge at Donn’s volcano home, and from the day’s flying.

The carpet of needles smelt overpoweringly fresh and clean, and all around, titmice and finches darted through the heavy canopy and squirrels came periodically to investigate him. He returned to the clearing and settled to sleep, lying against the courser for warmth.

When he woke early in the morning, parts of his clothing were frozen stiff. He found the contents of his pack strewn across the clearing where some night invader had been searching for his small supply of travellers’ biscuits.

When Sky was awake they set off again. Flying directly south-west, with the pine forest forming a thick grey blanket over the rolling hills below. Occasionally they came across small settlements and cleared blocks of hillside where the loggers had been at work. He didn’t stop.

Eventually, the forest thinned and was replaced by the regular shapes of fields. This region to the west of the Hamadryad was one of the Rift’s most fertile and its group of small principalities and provinces had always been tied to Tule, a few hundred leaps to the east.

As they flew, Leeth was surprised to see military watch-posts on every major road, at every junction. At one point, he came across a clearing by a small river where there was a sprawling army encampment. It seemed strange that there should be a presence like this in such a loyal region.

He took Sky high, but even so, he spotted two coursers taking off from the encampment. They caught up with him easily, and tailed him for some time.

“What’s the matter?” shouted Leeth, above the roar of the wind.

The fliers said nothing, just flew one to either side, until he was out of sight of their base. Eventually they dropped back and Leeth flew on alone, relieved they hadn’t been in the mood for a little more sport.

Later that day, he learnt the reason for the high numbers of troops in the area. He stopped off at a market town called Hazlet, where he planned to stay for the night. Only a few hours’ more flying would put him over the Zochi jungle and he wanted to leave that part of the journey for a fresh start in the morning.

When he flew in low towards the edge of the town, he saw another watchpost by one of the roads. The guards spotted him and started to wave and gesture that he should land.

He considered ignoring them, but Hazlet was not large and if he intended to stay here tonight he supposed he should do as they wished.

Sky landed by the guard post. It was a small wooden building and Leeth could see a number of troops lazing about inside in various stages of undress.

A soldier approached him and said, “If you wish to enter Hazlet then you must state your purpose, and where you have come from.”

Leeth looked at the man, and realised his uniform was not embellished with the eagle crest of the Tullan Army – a symbol that had become widespread through most of the Rift with the increasing influence of the capital’s Embodied Government.

“I’m a traveller,” he said. “My father would say I am a drifter. I’m heading south and I need accommodation for the night. I come from the Rim.”

The guard gave a single nod. From a pocket he took a piece of card and handed it to Leeth. “You’d best try Guardian Street by the river,” he said. “When you’ve found somewhere you’ll have to fill this in and take it to the town hall on Tinkers Row. If you can’t write, someone there will help you.”

“Thank you,” said Leeth, pocketing the card. With a quick command, he dismissed Sky for the night. “Will you tell me something?” he asked. “I’ve never been through this area before – I was surprised at the numbers of troops.”

“They’re from Tule,” said the guard, leaning back against the wall of the guard building. He waved a hand up towards the west and said, “The principality of Panesh supports the rebels led by Chichéne Pas.” He waved a hand back east and north towards the land Leeth had flown over during the day. “The principalities of Hso and Halemenni are with Tule.”

“And Rana?” Rana was the small province to which Hazlet belonged. It was sandwiched between the three regions the guard had mentioned.

“Neutral,” said the guard. “Although the Tullans keep pushing us. Our Governor is trapped: if he plays safe and gives in to Tule, Rana will be swamped in no time. If he goes the other way, he alienates our two largest trading partners who will cut off the main trade route to the Hamadryad. And, whatever he chooses to do, if it ever comes to fighting, Rana will be the battleground.”

Leeth walked into the town. He found it difficult to grasp how quickly things had moved on since he had left Edge City, yet he had known Chi was forming allegiances and pacts wherever he could. Throughout the Rift it must be like this: every principality and province forced to choose sides in a fight most of them neither wanted nor understood.

Hazlet was unlike any town Leeth had seen before. In his experience houses should be built of stone or brick, yet almost every building in Hazlet was constructed entirely of wood. No house was plain or simple, every beam and upright was carved into animal shapes engraved with quotations from the cyclicals. The streets were narrow and the buildings high, with exaggeratedly pointed roofs and towers. As he walked, Leeth found it hard to conceive of such a genteel and ornate place being turned into a battleground.

He found Guardian Street and arranged to stay in a small boarding hall above a half-empty inn. “Don’t have so many visitors these days,” said the landlady of the inn, eyeing him curiously. “They used to come up from Tule and Annatras for the festivals.” She nodded towards the few seated drinkers and diners. “Place’d be overflowing out onto the street.”

Leeth dumped his bag by a sleep mat. The boarding hall smelt musty and damp, but at least he would have the place to himself tonight. He went back down and decided against staying to eat here – the landlady had caught his eye, he couldn’t face an evening of her dull monotone struggling to convince him how good it had all once been.

He asked her how to get to the town hall and, following her instructions, was there in a few minutes, filling in his registration card under the suspicious eye of a junior official.

Outside again, as the sky fell dark, he headed for the river.

It was bordered by a long strip of gardens, no more than a few paces across. He stopped and stared at the dark waters. The river would merge with the Hamadryad in a hundred or so leaps. Eventually, the waters that flowed past him here would plunge, steaming, onto the Burn Plain, either over the main falls or from any of the countless lesser rivers that emerged from the central jungle of Zochi.

He wandered along the track by the riverside. He could hear an eerie hymn, drifting on the night air, and occasionally he caught the smell of incense. There must be a shrine or a temple nearby, he supposed.

Eventually the gardens opened out into a square that fronted the river. Leeth cut across it, following the sound. First, he came across a strange skeletal building, all beams and wooden ribbing, but without the infilled panels, the floors and roofing that would have made it complete.

At first he took it to be half-finished, but as he approached, he saw that the timbers were darkly matured. Oil lamps glowed from inside, casting the wooden skeleton in silhouette. And then, by their light, Leeth saw a mass of movement, at the far side.

The building was full of monkeys.

Swinging from the beams, clambering up ancient pillars, chattering all the time, adding to the choral sounds from somewhere beyond.

The place must be a shrine to the monkey god, one of the forms Habna was said to take in his visits to the Rift.

Leeth leaned against the building to peer within. He watched the way the animals sat on their haunches, rocking from side to side, how they were never still. He could sense the shapes of their hyperactive minds, almost as clearly as he could sense that of Sky.

He lost track of how long he stood watching them, until suddenly, he realised he was squatting, rocking from side to side, hands twitching, flicking. He could sense the shape of his own mind, now, continually jumping about, flitting from one thing to another.

He gasped, and made himself stand. He touched his face, half-expecting to discover he had shifted into the form of a monkey.

He was still himself.

Now, as he looked into the building, he saw that every monkey sat, turned towards him, watching him as closely as he had watched them. He felt that their minds had grown unnaturally calm and he quickly turned and walked away, back towards the river. Behind him, the monkeys returned to their agitated chattering.

He stopped at the river and stared. A procession of long dark shapes was floating down the centre of the channel, each topped by a flaring red candle.

Funerary rafts, he realised.

The eerie hymn he had heard drifting on the night air had been the sound of a funeral. He looked out at the line of rafts and corrected himself: the sound of several funerals.

As with most riverside communities, the people of Hazlet floated their dead on rafts. Charmed by a priest to stay at the centre of the flow. As the Charm faded, most would eventually become stranded along the way, but Leeth had seen occasional rafts on the Hamadryad, south of the New Cut, on their way to the Falls. He supposed most must become stranded where the river sank into the porous ground of the Zochi jungle.

Suddenly, he saw a hunched shape resting on one of the rafts. A monkey, pulling at the red blanket draped over the corpse.

Now he saw why the animals had congregated at the far side of their shrine: the river must bend back on itself there, they had been watching the funeral as it was performed by the river frontage of the shrine.

The monkey paused and looked across at Leeth, and then a man ran wailing out of the night, cursing the monkey. “My Carea!” he cried. “My Carea!” He ran, unseeing, into Leeth and they sprawled on the cobbles. “My Carea,” he sobbed.

Leeth twisted and saw the monkey. It was still watching him. He stared at it, trying to find the shape of its thoughts.

The monkey dropped the drape and dived into the river. It swam back to the bank and then ran across the square to rejoin its cousins.