The Serpent Mage (23 page)

"Heir to Adonna, eh?" Michael asked, as the dusty wind beat at them from around the floating graveyard. Shiafa said nothing.

The ice beneath the Realm was cracked and veined and calving into huge, drifting spikes and bergs. With some difficulty, Michael found the shaft leading back to the Irall, and they rose to the surface of the Realm.

Chapter Twenty-Four

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The night of the failing Realm was impenetrably dark. The ribbon of moon that had once stretched across the sky, and all the twirling stars congealing into a fixed night canopy, had gone. There was nothing but cold wind and the soughing of the grass around their campfire.

Michael had started the fire by extending his
hyloka
to one finger and igniting a small pyre of dried wood and leaves. Shiafa watched him with some interest and then experimented on her own pile of leaves. She, too, was able to light a small blaze, which she then heaped on the bigger fire. She turned her large pale blue-green eyes on Michael and blinked.

"I'm not sure there's anything I can teach you," Michael said. "My skills are crude."

She said nothing, but went to the horse and removed a comb from her pack, then began currying the animal's short, tight-packed fur swiftly from neck to withers.

"There are people here — humans," Michael said. "I know some of them. I'd like to get them out of the Realm before it collapses."

Shiafa nodded.

"Do you have any suggestions?"

"The Ban of Hours defies my father," she said. "You might consult with her."

"Is she still in Inyas Trai?"

"No. The city is empty."

Truth so far
, he thought.

"She's protecting the humans?"

Pulling back from a long stroke that made the animal shiver with pleasure, Shiafa shook her .head. "I do not know."

"You speak English well," Michael said. Neither Tarax nor his daughter had resorted to in-speaking. "Where did you learn it?"

"From my
Mafoc Mar
," she said. "My Bag Mother. She attended the Mab on Earth before the final flight to the Realm. The Mab had dealings with English and Scots. And my father has been to Earth since."

"Your father still hates humans."

"Yes," she answered matter-of-factly.

Michael sighed and stared into the crackling flames. "If he becomes mage, the new world he makes won't be suited to my people, will it?"

She did not answer. That much was self-evident.

"This is crazy," Michael said. "You're probably a better magician, just by instinct, than I am."

"No," she said. "That is not so. You defeated the Isomage. My father was unable to do that."

"I had some guidance," Michael said.
And an element of surprise
. "What does your father plan to do with the humans here?"

"I do not know."

"Is he at war with the Ban of Hours?"

"I do not know."

Michael wrapped his hands together and cracked his knuckles, something he hadn't done in years. Shiafa's voice was having an effect on him he did not relish. He increased the level of his discipline and fought back the attraction.

"You don't sleep, do you?" he asked.

"No."

"Do you eat?"

"I eat what food the teacher thinks necessary."

Now was the time for the big question. "If your father is unhappy with the way I train you, he won't tell me how to find the woman I'm looking for, will he?"

"I do not know," Shiafa said.

"Are you keeping track of me for him? Spying?"

"I will not communicate with my father until the training is finished."

"Honestly?"

Shiafa betrayed her first sign of irritation. "Humans may find Sidhe untrustworthy," she said. "But I have never lied in my life. Neither has my father."

"Some Sidhe haven't been allowed that luxury," Michael said, thinking of Biri and Clarkham's Sidhe woman, Mora. "Do you hate humans?"

"You are the first I've ever met."

"Do you sympathize with your father?"

"I have had little contact with my father."

"And your mother?"

"Since my birth, I have never met her." Not knowing one's mother was the reverse of the usual situation for Sidhe, Michael thought.

"I'm going to close my eyes and rest," he said a moment later. He lay back and banked his
hyloka
until he was enveloped in warmth. After some hours had passed, he opened his eyes and saw Shiafa sitting on her slender haunches by the fire, face peaceful, staring into the darkness.

Wary thoughts tickled him.
Magic is passed through the female
.

Dawn came as a sudden steely grayness and a teeth-grating vibration that set the grass shivering. The vibration passed quickly, but it left Michael disoriented and uncertain of where he was and what he was doing. Shiafa was also discomfited.

"Morning has never been that bad," she said. "We must hurry."

Michael had composed another string of questions, but thinking about what he had learned last night — not much of any use — he kept his silence. They mounted the horse. He spread his probe out across the land and felt for the human sign, but his disorientation persisted.

"Everything's changed location," he said. "Nothing is where it was yesterday."

"Dead gods have bad memories," Shiafa said behind him.

"I thought your father was taking Adonna's place."

"He is not stronger than Adonna was," she replied. "And he would have to be much stronger and more clever to hold the Realm together."

Michael concentrated all his effort and fanned his probe in a broad circle, as he had done on Earth. The result was remarkable. For the first time, he felt the
edges
of the Realm — not the chasms paring it like a badly cut pie, but the borders it shared with the between-worlds and the Earth. They were not linear borders, nor even areas of boundary — they were spaces of demarcation, hard to visualize and even harder to think about. /
can learn from witnessing a world falling apart
, he thought.
Learn what, though? How to be a mage
?

Within the borders, still at about the same distance but in a new direction, he found once again the massed human auras. Overall, they seemed little changed from the day before. He bent down to the horse and began to whisper in its ear, then jerked back with a start.

"Is this your horse — the one you'll have to — ?"

Shiafa shook her head. "Tarax will bring that one to me. A special horse."

"Then I can impress myself on this horse?"

"You can try," she said. "Not all of Adonna's mounts are so cooperative."

He frowned and reapplied his lips to the naked, warm interior of the horse's ear. "You are my soul, I am your body." The horse shook its ears and twisted its head to stare at him. Again there was that icy, resentful, half-lidded eye, filled with light like a frozen man's dream of fire. "Okay," Michael said. "Unimpressed."

Shiafa smiled, and Michael quickly looked away from her. Very dangerous, a smile on that long, lovely face.

"So we only borrow this horse," Michael said. He stroked its neck and then felt under its ear, along the deep line of its jaw. Through his fingers he passed a kind of out-seeing or
evisa
for the beast. The horse trembled, then trotted across the grass in the direction he had requested.

Michael had decided against any more precipitous
abana
, at least for the time being. The last such journey had not been pleasant; he thought it best to rely on the horse's higher talents only in an emergency. He was even wary of prodding the horse into the spectacular flying gallop its kind could execute so easily. So they moved at a measured pace across the inconstant landscape, passing within hours through areas where both spring and winter ruled.

They found another chasm when they crested a hill and looked across a broad, sparsely forested savannah. Within the chasm, an island tens of miles long — carrying a mountain on its broad back — had pulled away and wobbled ponderously. Chunks office several hundred yards wide hung without support near the island.

"Were you born in the Realm?" Michael asked.

"Yes," Shiafa replied.

"But you've never been to Earth."

She shook her head when he glanced back at her. "My father has been telling me about it recently."

"What do you know about magic? About
lengu spu
, for example — in-speaking."

"I know only the basics," Shiafa said. "Only from one to one. Not to spread wide."

"Can you feel me broadcasting?"

He allowed her to draw the meaning of that word from his own memory. "Yes," she said. "Like standing before the sun."

"Do you know the three disciplines of combat —
isray, vickay, stray
?"

"I know of them," she said. "Sidhe females are not always trained in those things. The
Mafoc Mar
have other defenses for us to learn."

Michael suddenly realized that he could not train this female the way the Crane Women had trained him. He could use very little of their instruction, in fact… because they had trained him as a male. He had no idea how to train a female Sidhe. Shiafa would have to guide him… student leading the teacher.

"Do you know how to throw a shadow?"

"Yes. We have many kinds of shadow. There is the shadow preparatory to birthing — given out before we are bom, to carry away all illness and malformation. That shadow is taken and disposed of by the
Ban Sidhe
. We do that instinctively. And there is the shadow before mating and the shadow of motherhood."

"That's all you know?" Michael asked facetiously.

"It is not," Shiafa said, slightly indignant. "When women fight, we spin shadows like webs to confound our foes—"

"And you know how to do that?"

"No. That you must teach me."

Jesus
, Michael thought. "I'm not sure why your father thinks I can train you."

"Nor am I," Shiafa confided. "But he does, and you must."

So be it.

They rode until the quick evening, then set up a temporary camp. In the darkness, they ate a few pieces of overripe fruit from a withered copse of trees.

As the evening lengthened, there was once again a discontinuity, and all locations and directions changed — but this time to their advantage. Michael sensed that the humans were much closer. The next morning, he directed the horse again, and they traveled across another, much wider savannah of emerald grass.

"I think we are near the
Chebal Malen
," Shiafa said. "Can you smell the snow?"

Michael sniffed the air but could not. "It's a little colder," he said. "That might be the seasons changing again."

"1 don't think so," Shiafa said.

At the end of that day, they came across the nearly empty basin of what had once been a huge lake, perhaps fifty miles wide and as much as a mile deep, with scattered ponds of water glistening green and stagnant at the basin's bottom. "
NebchatLen
," Shiafa said.

"Someone once described this to me as a sea," Michael mused, rubbing his cheek with one finger. "I wonder what drained it…?" Then he shook his head and grinned. "1 think I know. The Pelagals lived here, didn't they?"

"Here, and in the brazen ocean at the edge of the world," Shiafa said.

"I think most of them are on Earth now. They crossed over in a cataract."

"You saw that?"

He nodded. "Why haven't all the Faer left the Realm yet? Many are already on Earth."

"You are the teacher," Shiafa said quietly.

"That means you don't know."

"It means I don't know."

"All right. We travel around the lake, across the forest called
Konhem
— am I right? — and after that we'll find the
Chebal Malen
, the Black Mountains. And somewhere in the
Chebal Malen
is the
Sklassa
, the fortress of the Maln." He drew his brows together and reached out again to feel for the humans. His heart sank. Beyond any doubt, that was where they were being detained. "We'll have to go there," he said.

"That is not wise. There may not be time, and it is very difficult to reach the
Sklassa
. It is protected." The emotion in her voice went beyond caution. For the first time, Michael detected unease in Shiafa.

"Nevertheless, that's where we're going," Michael said. "That's where all my people are being held. Have you been there?"

"No," she said. "I was raised in Inyas Trai and the Irall."

"What sort of difficulties can we expect to find there?"

"You are the teacher," Shiafa said, somewhat forcefully.

"But you
do
know," Michael persisted.

"I am not supposed to know."

"What does that mean?"

Shiafa turned her eyes away, and an odd, defiant expression — chin outthrust, eyes narrowed — crossed her face. "When I was a child, I listened to the
Mafoc Mar
when I was not supposed to. They were talking with each other about the
Sklassa
. It is not a place for young Sidhe."

"But you're Tarax's daughter," Michael reminded her.

"It is not a place even for me."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Michael said. "What are the difficulties?" ;

"I cannot tell you."

"I am your teacher," Michael prodded.

Shiafa's eyes widened, and her mouth became a tight, thin line, "We will learn them together, then," she said.

Michael shook his head and smiled. Beginning of the discipline, he thought. Rattle the student, the initiate, and strip away preconceptions. Ultimately, terrify her. That's what the Crane Women had done to him. But who was rattling whom?

If Tarax's daughter was worried by the thought of going to the
Sklassa
, then what should his own attitude be? Michael started the horse on the long journey around the drained basin of
Nebchat Lent
uncertain now whether they could keep up such a torturously slow pace — or whether they would have to use the horse's erratic talents again.

"Perhaps we should hurry," Shiafa said an hour later.

He sighed, then squinted at the empty blue sky. "I agree," he said. "Are you prepared to
aband
?"