Riding the Serpent's Back (67 page)

He followed them up a steep path overhung with trees.

A short time later, they emerged on a cobbled square, enclosed on three sides by low stone buildings. “You live here?” asked Leeth, feeling the need to hear a voice again, even if it was his own.

The last votary turned and shook his head. “This is the palace,” he said. “The Palace of Masks.”

Leeth followed them across the square to a narrow passageway which led through to a small ornamental garden. Beyond was a trellis screen, then some vegetable gardens and finally a cluster of meagre wooden shacks.

One of the votaries showed him into a hut and found some clothes for him. “You may stay here tonight,” he said. “No one is ever turned away from the Sanctuary of the Last Mourners – if we refused to accept a person where else could they turn?” He smiled, and Leeth smiled in return, realising the man had attempted a joke. “You may keep these clothes, with our blessing. A man cannot be allowed to depart unclothed.”

Leeth peered at him cautiously as he accepted the clothes, not liking the possible interpretations of that word,
depart
. “Thank you,” he said. “But I will leave immediately.” He estimated he still had two or three hours of daylight left to him, time to put some distance between himself and this creepy place.

He tugged on a pair of trousers and tied them at his waist with a length of cord. He pulled a smock-top over his head. The clothes smelt stale and they itched abominably, but at least they were clothes, he told himself – he could hardly turn up at a river-port dressed in only a flapping kilt, his skin daubed jaguar-drab.

As he strapped on a pair of stiff sandals, the votary said, “Before you go. Perhaps you would give thanks in the Palace of Masks.”

Leeth sensed there might be some kind of honour involved: he had desecrated the dead by his eccentric means of arrival in this place – now he was expected to make amends.

~

He entered the low stone building by a doorway from the ornamental gardens. Inside, the place was gloomy, illuminated only by a few meagre candles and the light from a row of tiny, coloured windows set high on the walls.

From a small entrance hall, he chose one of a dozen archways and found himself walking along an aisle lined with row upon row of funerary masks retrieved from the river’s dead.

He peered at them in wonder. He had never appreciated the sheer variety of the things, or the effort and skill that went into their creation. Most were made from wood: pale wood, dark wood, wood that was polished smooth or wood so heavily grained it was a wonder anything could be made from it. Others were made from terracotta, or carved from pumice. They were painted and stained, some finished in a smooth, milky enamel, others embedded with jewels and glass. They were painted, polished, etched and engraved, some simple and plain while others were elaborately moulded into the features of the gods.

Leeth wandered along the aisles, staring at the ranked funerary masks in wonder. He remembered the earthquake just before he had left Edge City, the teams of woodworkers who had laboured through the night to produce rafts and huge batches of simple pine masks for those lost in the quake and the mud-slides it had triggered. The dead from that tragedy had been floated down from just above the Falls, to the Hamadryad’s steamy terminal sea on the Burn Plain. The masks in thie palace belonged to the peoples of the north.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that somewhere amongst these thousands – millions? – of masks, might be those of his own ancestors. He remembered the funeral of his mad grandfather, the one he had initially assumed must have been responsible for his shifting Talent.

He walked farther amongst the masks, drawn ever onwards, although he knew he must leave soon.

As he rounded a corner, he spotted a figure at the far end. It was a statue, dressed in the clothes of the dead, an ornate mask hiding its face, inset with jade and emeralds and a huge ball of turquoise between its eyes.

Leeth approached it, staring.

And then the statue moved.

He stopped abruptly as the figure removed its mask and then another man came out to stand at its side.

The man with the mask was the assassin, Grath – even in the dim light of the Palace of Masks, Leeth could see a number of gashes across his face where the monkeys of Hazlet had sunk their teeth – and the other man was his accomplice.

Leeth started to back away, struck dumb by the sight of the two grinning men.

The votaries had expected him because a seer had anticipated his arrival – had these men tracked him in the same manner?

Grath moved, reaching into his jacket, where Leeth knew he kept a diagonal belt of throwing knives.

Everything seemed to slow down as Leeth took another uncertain step backwards.

Grath pulled a knife free, paused to balance it in his hand, and then threw.

Leeth watched the knife flashing through the air towards him, transfixed by the precise grace of its flight, unable to move. It was aimed straight at his heart.

Nonchalantly, Grath turned to his accomplice and in the same instant the knife struck home.

Leeth gasped and looked down.

There was a hole in his smock, but no knife, no blood. Under the hole, he saw the glinting smile of Tezchamna’s face on the disc he had removed from the lost city in the jungle.

He looked up to see the knife spinning away as it rebounded from the pendant.

He lunged, caught the knife by its handle and in the same, fluid movement hurled it back along the aisle.

As soon as he had released the thing, he dropped his shoulder and fell into a squatting position, ready for a counter-attack.

He felt the thundering beat of his heart, saw the flickering candles suspended from the ceiling, the tiny, dimly coloured windows ranked along the top of the wall.

Grath must have sensed the danger. He ducked. His friend glanced at Leeth, his gaze flitted towards the knife and then it was buried to its hilt in his left eye.

He fell to the floor, dead instantly.

Leeth rolled away to one side, putting a line of masks between himself and Grath. He tore a mask of hammered bronze from its mounting. It was half a man’s height, but narrow, with a pointed chin: insubstantial for a shield, but better than nothing.

He stood and backed away, aware of the sudden silence.

He tried to work out where he was in the building in relation to the exit.

Retreating around the corner, he retraced his steps.

He realised he was giving Grath time to double back, so he broke into a run, determined to reach the exit first.

Eventually, he came to the entry hall. He stepped cautiously into the open space, his long, narrow shield held before him.

There was nobody there.

He came to the doorway to the gardens. He was certain he had got here first: he would have heard Grath if he had come past him in any of the parallel aisles and there had not been time for him to go the long way around.

He checked left and right, then stepped outside. He heard a sudden gasp and looked up.

The Tullan soldier was silhouetted against the sky, suspended in mid-air as he dropped down onto Leeth from the top of the porch. In his hand he held a long, bladed club.

Leeth dropped to his knees and thrust the mask above his head to protect himself.

The impact knocked the breath out of his lungs.

Seconds later, as he gasped for air, he realised that the man on top of him was not moving. He heaved himself free and staggered to his feet.

Grath lay on his side, a faraway look in his eyes. His hands were clutching his abdomen and suddenly Leeth saw the bronze mask. Its pointed chin was buried deep in the fallen soldier’s belly.

He stared for a long time at the man’s unmoving form, then he noticed the votaries filing across the gardens.

He backed away, until he found the passage between two wings of the Palace of Masks.

He paused, staring at the placid grey faces of the votaries, come to tend to the funerary rites of another two departed souls. Then he turned and ran as fast as his legs would take him.

~

He jogged and walked for much of what remained of the afternoon, before coming across a small village on the banks of the New Cut. No more than a meagre cluster of huts around a store and a small jetty, it was civilisation, nonetheless.

“Please,” he said to a wary young man who was mending nets at the riverside. “I need to get to the Shelf. Can you tell me where’s the best place to find passage on a barge?”

In a thick accent, the man said, “Why’n you wanna go there? Un’s reb country, is.”

Leeth took the plunge. “I’m going to join them,” he said. “I need to find Chichéne Pas.”

The man stopped his work and stared at Leeth. “Say that here,” he said. He sliced a finger across his throat. “Un’s dead. Soldiers on every barge, is.” Then he shrugged, and added, “Anyhow, un’s left Edge City, un is. Reb’s come up north. You’n wanna go Porphyr or Seelwood, find un.”

Leeth looked at the man. Things had moved rapidly in the time he had been away. “Is there any way I can cross the Cut?” he asked. He spread his hands out before him. “I’m afraid I have nothing. I lost it all in the jungle.”

The man was standing now, gathering up his net. He shrugged casually, then nodded towards his small boat. “Room for two, is,” he said.

They rowed out into the New Cut, Leeth marvelling at how the young man handled the small skiff in the surging waters, the waves driven high by a stiff wind from the north.

The crossing took nearly an hour and on the way they passed within sight of a number of heavily armed barges heading north from the Shelf. The rebels must have taken the Junction, Leeth presumed.

He slept rough in the fringe of the Zochi jungle. At least the ground was dry here, although when he woke he was smothered by insect bites again. He travelled along Two Rivers Road, across the northern fringe of the jungle, for three days. Mostly he walked, but often he was able to hitch lifts on wagons travelling between the towns of the region.

He passed through many sleepy army posts, all occupied by rebel troops, either from the Shelf or from a number of provinces and principalities allied with Chi. The towns along Two Rivers Road were rebel strongholds, and Leeth built up an impression of a war operated almost by default: a sleepwalking war where the rebel forces edged gradually forward until resistance was met and the lines of the inevitable confrontation marked out.

At every settlement, he asked where Chi had made his base. His enquiries were often met with suspicion but eventually he knew that his journey must be drawing to its conclusion.

Dropped off by a wagon that had stopped at a farm, he continued on foot, following the muddy road as it passed through the scrubby forest-edge.

Dropping down from the crest of a hill, he spotted a lone horseman ahead, leading a riderless horse. They met halfway down the hill and the man dismounted and approached him, a strange look in his eye.

Leeth looked at him, wary of the spear he carried, mounted at the ready in an atlat-sling.

The man was short and slight, but he had a hardened look about his features, something vaguely familiar in the way he carried himself. Even as he spoke, Leeth was making the intuitive leap: another of Chi’s siblings, the brother he had not yet encountered. Red Simeni.

“Leeth?” said the man, peering into the gloom.

“Red Simeni?”

Then the man’s expression suddenly changed, as if a candle had been snuffed. In a sudden movement, he swung his arm back and then with a swift snap of the wrists he hurled a spear directly at Leeth.

Red had travelled south aware that this was a destiny he had struggled to avoid for most of his life: running, tail between his legs, all the way to big brother.

There had seemed little else left to him. Riding slowly along the road from Brierley, his thoughts kept returning to the time in Totenang, so long ago, when Kester Etheram had come to him, the sister he had never known. How different things might have been if he had gone with her that night, instead of repeating the tired fiction he had created about his past and turning her away! There had been no tangible reason why he should have believed her, yet he had sensed in his gut the bond between them. He had rejected her for the same old reasons: he needed no one, he would get through on his own.

And look at the mess he had made of that.

He reached the edge of a small town. Seelwood, he supposed. He had never been in this region before: it was far beyond Totenang’s sphere of influence, and the province – rich in neither industry nor resources – had been of little value as a trading partner.

Guards came out of yet another watchpost to challenge him and, for a moment, he looked beyond them to the shabby buildings that lined the street. It had come to this. He would never see his beloved Totenang again.

“Hmm?” He turned to the young soldier. He was no more than a boy, wearing only parts of a uniform. He stared at the boy’s features, suspicious of everything.

The boy stared back at him and suddenly Red looked away. It was pathetic. Ever since his flight from Samhab he had been paranoid about everyone he met: searching their faces for giveaway signs or expressions, listening to their voices for telltale mannerisms or phrasings.

He feared that every person he met might be a shape-shifted Oriole, come back either to haunt him or to kill him for betraying Pieter and running away.

But it was just a boy in a little tin helmet, carrying a Tullan rifle so old and corroded it could not possibly still work.

“My business?” he said, repeating the boy’s challenge. He had concocted a number of stories during his journey, but now he was tired and he opted for the truth. “I’m looking for Chichéne Pas,” he said. “My name is Red Simeni. I am his half-brother.”

~

After being passed onto, and questioned by, a number of soldiers, Red was finally shown into a room in a house just off a market square. From the external appearance of the place and the decoration of its interior, this building had clearly once belonged to someone important. Now, most of the furniture had been removed and it was occupied by officers of the rebel army.