Riding the Serpent's Back (62 page)

“Okay, okay!” said Red. He hadn’t come out here just to be ridiculed and teased by Oriole. “I don’t need this today, okay?”

He turned and walked away from her. He would head out into the city and see what wonders he could find. He was drawn up short by a voice from his past. An old woman’s voice.

“Oh!” it cried. “What a lucky man indeed, that this good lady is to be your wife.”

He spun on his heel. Oriole’s eyes were fixed on him, her body suddenly hunched over, her face distorted by a tic which tugged at her mouth and left eye.

He stared at her. “You were there?” he gasped. She must somehow have been watching them riding that day, when they had come across the old witch Anathea and received her blessing for their undying love.

She laughed cruelly. “Oh yes,” she said, in her old woman’s voice. “Old Anathea was there, all right.”

He shook his head. He couldn’t take it in. Lachlan’s mage must have the rarest of the True Family Talents: the ability to change her form. Oriole was a shape-shifter, and it was she who had cursed Red and Estelle to their distorted form of love.

“Why?” he asked. He felt that his whole body was about to explode with the effort of comprehension.

Oriole straightened, still smiling. She was enjoying his pain, just as he had enjoyed hurting Estelle in the night. She was toying with him. Playing the game.

“Why?” she repeated. “Isn’t that obvious? Do you think your beloved Principal Pieter Lammer would ever have joined us if you hadn’t undermined his judgement? Pieter would not be ours now if you hadn’t wounded him in the first place.”

He started to back away. “And me?” he asked. “Estelle?”

Oriole was laughing now, in an eerie blend of her own voice and that of Anathea. “You were fun,” she said. “And don’t concern yourself about darling Estelle. She’d never want to give up the world of pleasure I have opened up before her. You’ve done her a favour, Red Simeni.” She stepped towards him, her arms held wide. “You’ve done
yourself
a favour, too.”

He looked into her eyes, felt dizzy, felt a powerful urge to fall forwards into her embrace.

He shook his head, turned, and ran as fast as he could, out of the gardens, out through the long arched tunnel and into the streets of the First City.

He didn’t stop running until he reached the railway terminus, and even then he only paused until he spotted a train trundling slowly away on the start of its journey across the Heartlands. Running alongside it, he reached up and heaved a door open, then jumped on board. The carriage was full of soldiers and for a moment a sudden silence descended and they all stared at him.

He smiled and brushed his fine clothes down. “The bastards,” he said, addressing the whole carriage in his most irritating True Family whine. “They went on a train last night but they tied me up and left me in a horse trough.”

Voices rose up again, eyes moved away. Red closed his eyes and slid down onto a space on a bench. He had no idea what he would do next.

Leeth removed his jacket and tucked it into the pack slung over his back. The sweat was streaming down his body – his clothes had been soaked through almost as soon as he started to walk. The air was so heavy with moisture he found it an effort even to breathe.

He kept going, heading – he hoped – vaguely northwards. His reasoning was that he had only been flying over the jungle for an hour or two before becoming stranded: far better to turn back than to try to cross the broadest part of the jungle to the south.

As he walked, he kept a constant look-out for the big cats that were said to live in the Zochi jungle. The only signs of animal life were the continual barrage of screeches, buzzes, cries and wails from all around, and a cloud of flies that hung immediately before his face as he walked.

Above him, the jungle canopy was so thick he couldn’t use the sun for navigation. All he had to guide him was memory of the sun’s position when he had left the clearing, and a feature of the vegetation he had noticed a short time ago: a kind of slimy green mould or moss that tended to be thicker on the side of the tree trunks that loosely corresponded with what he hoped to be north.

At least not much undergrowth had been able to grow in the thick gloom of the forest floor. Anything that had managed to take root scrambled up the nearest trunk in search of light.

The ground soon fell away from the rocky outcrop that had formed the clearing. When it levelled, Leeth’s feet squelched with every step.

He remembered Joel’s description of the jungle from when the horseman had been telling him of his travels. “Across the central region of the Rift the land rises marginally,” Joel had said. “The two Hamadryads are dammed in and they soak into the soft ground, and there’s a belt of sodden, hot land that cuts the Rift in two. The land is so saturated that the water table is virtually at ground level – it’s not so much a jungle: it’s a forested lake.”

Leeth came to a wide pool, covered in a scum of part-decayed leaves. Then he remembered the concluding words of Joel’s description: “The only sure way to traverse that confounded jungle is with a boat and a native guide.”

Leeth stared at the pool. At least it created a gap in the canopy. He peered up to see where the sun was.

Behind its screen of clouds, the sun hung directly above – it was midday – giving no hint of whether or not he was still heading north.

He wandered around the fringe of the pool, frequently sinking up to his ankles in foul-smelling mud. The vegetation here was much thicker as the light penetrated to the forest floor. Great screens of lianas and hanging moss blocked his way. The jagged crowns of bromeliads thrust up out of clefts in trees. Vivid orchids competed with ferns and toadstools on the dead wood that littered the swampy ground.

Leeth felt a sharp prickling sensation on the back of his hand. He looked down and saw three black flies. He swatted at them, but immediately several more settled on both hands.

He saw the ruddy-brown encrustation on his skin and realised his hands were still covered in Sky’s blood from when he had held the courser’s wound closed. He stooped by the pool to wash the blood away, hoping the flies would then leave him alone.

When he pulled his hands free of the water they were each loaded with about a dozen fat, brown leeches. He pulled at one and it came away, leaving its jaws embedded in his flesh, the blood oozing. Instantly the flies returned, drawn by the fresh blood.

He made himself look away and try to ignore the remaining leeches. The things would drop off when they had taken their fill, he hoped. He walked on through the undergrowth until he had rounded the pool, then resumed what he hoped was a northward trek.

~

When the gloom of the jungle started to deepen and spread, Leeth suddenly wondered what he would do for the night.

He had spent the day making repeated detours to get past pools and sluggish streams and areas of mud he didn’t dare cross. He had finished what food he had quickly that morning, for fear that it would soon be eaten or spoilt by the flies that seemed capable of getting into anything.

Now he was hungry and exhausted. He felt sick, too, from the foul water he had made himself drink from the pools to counter the huge quantities of moisture he had been losing in sweat throughout the day.

At least the overbearing humidity was lifting with dusk.

He looked around, not knowing what to do. He had slept rough on the Serpent’s Back on a number of occasions, but never in conditions remotely like this.

He squelched his feet, which were wet and sore. It was a long time since he had been on anything that could remotely be called dry ground. Some of the trees had broad horizontal limbs, but none of these were less than twenty or thirty standard paces clear of the ground and the trunks that were not rotten and crumbling away were smooth, offering little in the way of handholds.

It became too dark for him to continue. If he went on like this he would inevitably stumble into a stream or a swampy area. He found a smooth-boled tree and squatted with his back against it for support.

Now that he had stopped moving he became intensely aware of the cacophony all around. Insects, birds, monkeys, frogs, peccaries, tapirs, deer. Occasional crashing sounds in the canopy high above startled him, although he knew it was the silent approach that he should fear: jaguars, snakes, the big jungle spiders.

~

The next day he was so hungry he tried eating ants, impaling them one by one on a long thorn as they processed away from their nest. He had seen birds and lizards and small shrew-like creatures queuing up at these nests the day before as if they were at a jungle canteen.

He sucked each one off his thorn. Their juices stung his tongue but he persisted for a time, in the belief that any tiny morsel of sustenance might be the difference between survival and death.

A little later, he came across a dead peccary, lying on its side by a tree. Immediately he looked around to see if there was enough material for a cooking fire – if he could manage to light it, of course.

Then he looked a little closer at the dead hog.

There appeared to be a pulse in its chest. Would he have to kill the thing first? He went closer. The entire beast was moving, its skin squirming about as if it was a loose fit.

He prodded the peccary’s flank with his boot. The skin tore and a foul, gaseous stench burst forth. Hundreds of white maggots tumbled out, each as thick as his finger. Even when they had stopped spilling out of the tear, all he could see was more maggots inside.

He turned away, tears merging with the sweat that cut lines through the grime on his cheeks.

~

Some time in what he guessed must be the afternoon, Leeth found the first signs of civilisation, albeit one long lost to the Zochi jungle.

He came to yet another ditch, which he crossed by swinging from a low horizontal branch. Only when he was on the other side, stooping to drink from a cleanish-looking puddle, did he realise that the ditch was straight, a sure sign that once there had been humans here.

A short time later, he found a huge rectangular stele: an upright block of stone that reached his shoulders and was perhaps ten paces across. Its surface was covered with a golden fuzz of moss. Curiosity breaking through his fevered exhaustion, Leeth scraped at the growth with his knife.

When he had cleared a small area, he stepped back and stared at it. Under the moss was some kind of relief, a frieze made up of strange figures. The outlines were indistinct, after what must have been centuries, if not millennia, of neglect, but as Leeth stared he began to distinguish the shapes of men wearing kilts and arm-bands. He looked more closely at these figures’ faces: not the faces of men, they were the faces of animals – from the extended fangs he guessed they must be jaguars. He knew the wild cat of the jungle had a long-established place in the beliefs of the Rift’s people. It was a symbol of revenge, most frequently associated with the sun god, Tezchamna: the guise he took when he visited the Rift to stalk those who had crossed him.

He looked more closely at the figures of the cat-men. They were all carrying spears and clubs and now he saw that they were trampling skulls and bones underfoot – they might even be dancing on the bones, he realised.

He walked on, and soon he found another stele, its images less obscured this time: more skulls and bones, more dancing cat-men, some with eagles perching on their heads.

He scraped away the moss.

Partway along the frieze he found a circular, grey-green plaque embedded in the rock. The disc had what appeared to be emeralds and turquoise set into it, depicting a round face with blind eyes and fangs: it was clearly some primitive rendition of the sun god, Tezchamna, confirming Leeth’s interpretation of the first frieze.

Tezchamna could be the most benevolent of gods: ripening the crops and warming the world. But with the duality inherent in everything, he could also be cruel and harsh, feeding the fires of the earth and causing eruptions that killed all in their path, demanding sacrifices from his faithful, relentlessly stalking those he felt had crossed him.

Leeth studied the frieze he had uncovered. Whoever had carved this had clearly been thinking of the more malevolent aspect of Tezchamna’s nature.

He really should take something with him, as proof of his discovery if he should ever escape this accursed jungle. He looked at the disc, set with its precious stones. He would take Tezchamna’s face, he decided. He slid the blade of his knife into a narrow crack at the side of the disc.

It was loose already. In fact it didn’t really look as if it had originally been intended to be a part of this frieze in the first place. He worked his knife around the edges and then with a slight puff of dust, the thing came free.

He turned it over and over in his hands, marvelling at the handiwork. There was even a small hole at the top. He threaded a piece of cord from his pack through the hole, then hung the disc around his neck. Its coolness against his chest felt strangely reassuring.

Suddenly he began to believe he might escape this place.

He walked on, more alert to his surroundings.

As he learnt to see more clearly what was around him, he started to pick out shapes and outlines in the jungle: buildings, collapsed and broken columns, even a pyramid rising up out of a tangle of undergrowth.

It was a city, he realised. A lost city. It must date back at least as far as the beginning of the current Era, if not before. Leeth had been taught that there were no known remnants of the previous Eras of the world: was this the first physical proof of life in other times?

The buildings all around were strangled by the lush, tropical growth. Tree-roots had grown through the monuments, toppling them and ripping them away from the facings of pyramids and high-walled buildings. Lianas choked everything, great drapes of moss hanging down to close off archways, wild tangles of growth running riot across roofs and walls and the lintels spanning the tops of a line of columns. The whole place was alive with the cries of birds and animals, the atonal buzz of insects, all of it crumbling away in the relentless humidity of the jungle.