Riding the Serpent's Back (75 page)

Every so often they passed small army camps, posted along the line to protect it from rebel sabotage. The soldiers’ tents and uniforms had become stained by the dusty winds so that they were the same reddish hue as the ground, an all-pervasive camouflage.

She should have been scared, but now that she was committed to this course of action she found that she was calm, resigned to her fate, whatever that might be. She had seen this far in her vision, but she knew how fallible the gift of Sight could be: the future was influenced by so many variables, a seer could only ever plot out probable courses. Nothing was fixed.

She could be discovered at any minute and be killed as an enemy agent.

But she knew this was the best option.

She had done as Chi had asked, that night on the rock. She had hovered for a long time on the edge of the trance, struggling to sink into a vision. But visions normally rose unbidden from the subconscious mind and here she was trying to force it, to control what had always been a volatile, haphazard process.

Eventually, she had been on the point of giving up, allowing herself to slide into a more general meditative state: in tune with the world, with her mind, with the energies rising up through the rock.

And it had happened.

First, she saw a future in which Chi accepted that his forces had been so depleted that he could never subdue his son’s army. After a succession of disputes with his allies over how the situation should be handled, he sent out envoys to the First City to negotiate a peace settlement. He became reconciled with Lachlan and accepted into the government of the Embodied Church, but soon he was out-manoeuvred by his son and his position became increasingly undermined. He hung on to his position with a grim tenacity, convinced that he could retain some kind of influence over the dictatorship of the True Church. Within a short space of time, the only person in the entire Rift who did not regard him as a misguided fool was Chi, himself; when he finally understood what had happened, he cracked and spent the rest of his days in a madhouse.

Her second vision was just as grim, merciful only in its speedy conclusion. Chi accepted the advice of Captain Marsalo and others and chose to counter-attack while he still had control of his forces. His soldiers were slaughtered, and the boy-leader fell too, one dead amongst so many.

In Monahl’s third vision, Chi opted to retreat and regroup on the Shelf. He saw that he could not possibly beat Lachlan’s army, but was determined to defend the Shelf as a place that would remain free of the Embodiment’s cloying and brutal rule. The northern armies pursued them, picking them off one by one as they fled. Instead of a fight in the barren Heartlands, the main battles took place on the Shelf where tens of thousands of civilians were caught in the fighting and the retributions. Recognising the inevitability of defeat, Chi called a halt to the fighting and fled across the Burn Plain. He lived out the rest of his life as a hermit on a small rock island that drifted across the lava sea, turning his failures over and over in his mind. Those who fleetingly visited his island home did not know his name, so he became known as ‘Ifonly’ after his favourite phrase.

At the end of that vision, Monahl had lifted clear of the trance and she became aware of the spreading glow of the rising sun. Then she had been struck by a sudden image, so abruptly that she almost fell from her perch in shock: riding on a train from Khalaham, a soldier offering her a drink, the certainty that Chi would be safe for a time if he left the jungle fringe unguarded and concentrated his defences against attacks from the north.

~

As she alighted from the carriage she recoiled at the barrage of earth-energy pumping up out of the ground. She had thought the strange feeling in her body had been the vibrations of the rumbling train, but now that she was in the open she felt it so
clearly
.

Immediately, she was struck by the vibrant flow of life in the First City. The streets were paved with marble, and gaudy wagons carrying finely clad people moved along at a canter. Soldiers were everywhere, watching the crowds, overseeing labourers with carts loaded with stone for the construction work.

As the train had entered the city, it had passed through sprawling army camps, then great swathes of land where labour-gangs swarmed over the half-built skeleton of the city.

But here, in the heart of Samhab, the work had been finished. Huge, square buildings thrust up on either side of the road. She passed a large palace, the walls of which appeared to have been constructed entirely from coloured glass, the colours flowing and merging together in patterns that changed as she watched.

She passed a high, gold-plated tower that made her dizzy just to peer up towards its peak. She couldn’t see the top, it was so high up.

She passed a temple fronted by enormous ranks of granite steps. Carved serpent-balustrades rose up on either side, with scales crafted from slivers of silver and bronze. The temple itself took the form of a great pyramid, with a number of passages leading deep into its gloomy interior, topped by a crystal pagoda that glistened in the sun.

She wandered through the city, forgetting to play the part her disguise demanded, but then that hardly mattered: walking round with her mouth half-open in awe, her eyes glazed as the city’s energy-flows took hold, she looked just like any other pilgrim come to worship at the Rift’s First City.

She came to her senses when she saw a palace bigger than any other building she had seen. Not as tall as many buildings, it sprawled out along one entire side of a square. It must easily have been a standard leap from wing to wing. The palace front consisted of a series of arches, each filled in with elaborate screening of brickwork or stone or coloured glass. One arch at the centre of the palace opened into a wide tunnel that led into the heart of the building.

This was her destination, she knew. She had thought her vision had only consisted of that brief snatch of an image: the interior of the carriage in which she had come here. But now she understood that there had been more, and that only now was it seeping back into her consciousness.

She cut across the square, passing through crowds of idlers and sight-seers. She had expected Samhab to be little more than a shell: she had had no idea that it had already become a living place, a fully-functioning city.

As she approached the palace, she saw something that made her shudder. Set into the arches, were dozens upon dozens of lifesize friezes, each made up of scenes with the figures of stone soldiers thrusting out of the wall. But these were no ordinary statues: these stone figures were moving, writhing about as if trying to free themselves from their rocky restraints.

She remembered stories of the stone armies that had defended the founders of the First City in its earlier incarnation.

There was a man, seated cross-legged before a block of these statues. He was dressed finely, but when he turned to look at Monahl, she saw that one of his cheeks had been ripped away, to reveal discoloured rows of broken teeth.

He smiled at her. At least, she thought it was a smile.

He waved a hand at the stone soldiers, and said, proudly, “My men. I am Charming them free.” He waved a hand at his broken face, then continued, “And then, when they are free, I will choose the strongest amongst them and have his body for my own.”

Monahl couldn’t tear her eyes from the horrible sight of the stone soldiers, writhing and squirming as if trapped in quicksand.

She hurried on, and as she did so, she was aware of dozens of pairs of stone eyes following her as one.

~

She ignored the main entrance into the palace. The soldiers posted there were not stone, they were flesh and blood. She headed across the square and then turned a corner into a smaller side-street which took her along one side of the building.

Here, she saw that the palace was not only wide, it extended a long way back, too.

Eventually, she came to a heavy wooden door. She knocked loudly, then stooped and swung aside a small metal plate from a grill. “Anna!” she cried. “Anna! It’s Bettamara.” The words came to her as she spoke: until then she had had no idea what she was going to do.

A few seconds later, she heard a sound. She stepped back and waited as the door swung towards her.

A small Habnathi woman in a maid’s overalls stared out at her, her expression changing sharply from an easy smile to one of wide-eyed shock and surprise.

Monahl didn’t give her time to think. She swung her fist back and then punched the maid hard in the throat.

The woman fell back, struggling for breath, and Monahl stepped inside and hauled the door shut behind her. She picked the maid up and carried her into a small side-room full of old sacking and packing material.

Minutes later, Monahl emerged, wearing the maid’s uniform.

She set off along the corridor, praying constantly for guidance and getting none.

“Anna?”

She stopped. It was a man’s voice, from behind. She turned and looked at the man: a young soldier, with a playful smile on his face.

When he saw that he was mistaken he raised his hands in apology. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought...”

Monahl smiled. There must be so many household staff in such a huge palace. “Anna had to go out with Bettamara,” she said. “She’ll be back later.”

The soldier shrugged. Monahl turned and hurried away along the corridor before he could challenge her.

~

She emerged in a garden full of Charmed fountains. The water curved through the air, twisting and turning, holding impossible shapes against the pull of gravity.

She had seen this place before, in a vision.

She set out across the garden and, sure enough, she came upon the statue that had so disturbed her before. But now it was even more unnerving.

In her vision it had been a huge pyramid of sculpted human forms, with a king at its peak and succeeding layers of more and more compressed bodies until, at the base, it was supported by the king’s single upraised finger, completing the cycle.

Now, the thing had been Charmed into life. The king sat at the top, smiling complacently, and below him his followers moved and twitched, so that the whole thing was a single heaving mass. Those in the bottom tiers could barely move, but still they tried, they heaved and squirmed under the great weight and, worst of all, they groaned and whimpered in agony.

Monahl hurried past.

She came to another small doorway and went back into the gloomy interior of the palace.

Finally, she came to a wide archway, screened by shimmering light. She went inside.

She found herself in a room lined with columns that had been sculpted into the grotesque forms that were half man, half beast, their faces contorted with pain – they were moving, she realised: almost imperceptibly, these stone columns were animated, coming to life like the statues outside.

She was not alone. At the far end of the room was a wide desk, loaded with papers and seated at the desk was a small, bearded man who could only be Lachlan Pas. He glanced up, surprised. “Yes?” he snapped.

Lined up behind him were about twenty men of a race she immediately recognised. Tall and bronze-skinned, with high, slim heads and waxed spikes of hair – these were Lachlan’s Morani bodyguards, she realised.

She stared at their impassive features, the finely muscled bodies ranked behind their master.

Lachlan had returned to his paperwork, but now he realised she was still there and looked up again. “What is it?” he snapped.

She approached him along the narrow room, aware of the twitching columns all around her, aware of the Morani guards, ready to leap to Lachlan’s defence.

“Lachlan,” she said, in a conversational tone. “I am surprised you are not more civil towards a relative. I am Monahl of Camptore from Zigané. I am Chi’s sister – your aunt.”

Lachlan stared at her in surprise. Then he collected himself and signalled to his guards with a quick movement of his hand. He smiled and came out from behind his desk, and the block of Morani bodyguards closed in on either side of him.

“I am impressed,” he said. “You must be resourceful indeed to have penetrated this far. Can I assume you wish to join the winning side? Are you another traitor, like Red Simeni and poor Joel?”

Monahl shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’ve come to stop you.” She glanced at the Moranis, but their impassive expressions gave nothing away.

“What a shame,” said Lachlan, shaking his head slowly. He was playing for time, she knew. Had he somehow sent a signal beyond the confines of this room? Were there more guards rushing through the corridors of the palace, even as she stood here, dithering?

She stepped towards him and a look of irritation crossed his face. “Oh really, Monahl,” he said. “You’re so crude. I had hoped for better.” He turned half away and said to his guards, “Kill her.”

They didn’t move.

Lachlan had been about to return to his desk, but now he faltered and stared at the tall tribesmen. “I said, ‘Kill her.’”

Still, they did not move.

Monahl took another step towards Chi’s son. She didn’t understand. She knew the Morani had resented the manner in which Lachlan had enlisted their support, but they were an honour-bound race: these men were the finest warriors their people could provide – they had accepted a duty to protect Lachlan. She did not understand why they were hesitating now.

Lachlan knew something was seriously wrong. He grabbed the arm of the nearest man to him and tried to shake, but it was like trying to shake a statue set into the ground: the Morani did not move.

“Kill her!”

Then, suddenly, the guards turned their eyes to look at Monahl and, in unison, each touched a finger to his brow.

A gesture of obeisance, she realised. Honour to their god was more important than anything.

In a flash, Monahl recalled the words of the albino healer, Noname:
You have been marked by the Lord Huipo to tell all before you that you bear his blessing
. The way they were looking at her...

Now she knew: when Huipo had come to her in the soda-plains he had touched her on the forehead – exactly where these Morani had touched their brows! – and must have left his mark for them to see.