They descended into the forested valley along paths narrow enough that the horses had to be led. Therumit seemed locked in her own thoughts, but Hesprec, the traveller of old, kept her eyes wide. What she could see of the cultivation looked slipshod. Whole swathes of forest that had once been carefully cultured by human hands had grown wild and untended. As she descended, so most of the buildings were hidden from her, but those she could see looked vacant, unlit, no sign of movement, and the vines reclaiming them.
‘They have not been good stewards of what we left with them,’ she remarked drily.
Therumit glanced back, and there was a blankness in her face that made Hesprec wonder whether they were even seeing the same sights.
Since being driven from this place, the Serpent had dwindled. A few hundred lived along the River, of whom perhaps a third performed active priestly duties. Children were yet born to them, but not often – most were very old indeed, and the urge to create new life and bring fresh souls to human form had waned in them. Hesprec had sired a daughter and borne a son in her time, but that was long ago, other bodies, other lives. The gift of shed skin, which let those born to the Serpent’s coils live on and on, brought a strange, slow perspective on events. No wonder, when we had to make a sudden decision, we panicked. All that time spent building a civilization on the banks of the Tsotec, and then one day the most ancient and terrible enemy was at their doorstep with no warning.
Except there was plenty of warning, but we would not believe it. I had to go all the way to the Crown of the World, and I was almost too late returning. She had left a skin in the cold earth of the north – the old man who had been Maniye’s fellow fugitive – and become this young girl who felt so ill equipped to meet the storm.
And Therumit was a generation older, at least. But surely not so old . . . ?
‘You were not here, before.’ A statement, not a question. She would not believe Therumit was that old.
‘No . . .’ The old face turned towards her again, and Hesprec saw it then. Not of that lost generation who fled the usurping Pale Shadow, but perhaps the generation that came after. What tales would the infant Therumit have been raised on, save We will have it back, and How golden were our halls? And then time had swept back and forth across the Tsotec, and the River Lords had been woven from individual clans into a great Kasranate. The Serpent had gone amongst all the priests of the River and become a part of their creeds and teachings, not the ruling divinity, but the god that underlies all. There had been lessons in agriculture and architecture, mathematics, writing and government, and most of the Serpents had lost that dream, sloughing it away with one shift of skin or another. And most of Therumit’s generation were dead, for the knife or the fever or just the weariness of too many lives still claimed the Serpent’s long-lived children.
And through the centuries, one face after another, old to young to old to young, Therumit had guided the Estuary peoples and never lost her childhood dreams.
I am less than confident we are doing the right thing. But the revelation was too late. Here they were. The path was too narrow even for her to turn her horse around, and she had a feeling Therumit might not let her go so freely.
Onward then, but still, not blindly. ‘Therumit, do you not feel the servants in these halls are remiss in their duties?’ She pointed at the heights of a tower emerging from the trees and the swathing sheets of white. ‘I see a statue there that’s nothing but two feet and broken shins, and the tower-top’s not much better. And that tiered palace beyond it has gone back to the jungle. The roots pry between its stones. Do you not think this says something about the hospitality we shall receive?’
‘Perhaps it says this place is ready for us to return,’ was Therumit’s dry response. ‘The Pale Shadow were mighty once, to drive us out. Perhaps they have weakened to the point where mere force will win back our legacy for us.’
‘I trust you’ve brought a force of invisible soldiers then,’ Hesprec commented. ‘It might tax just the two of us.’
‘If soldiers are needed then the River will provide,’ Therumit told her. ‘But for now we have an invitation, or did you forget?’
Not something I am ever likely to, Hesprec knew. One of the Pale Shadow had come into the Estuary. A pale, hollow woman naming herself Galethea, she had been colluding with Therumit and some others of the Serpent there, with promises that the Oldest Kingdom was theirs for the taking. The Pale Shadow sought the Serpent’s teaching, she had said. Hesprec believed not a word of it and, if that had been all, she would not be here about this foolishness. But of course there had been more, for Galethea had spoken about the Plague People. The Pale Shadow were less than overjoyed to find their distant relatives on these shores. They spoke of common enemies – and enemies that they understood as even the Serpent never could.
Another lie, probably. But the news from the Plains had been dire enough to spur Hesprec on. And I should admit it to myself: one more journey; one more place so few have ever seen. I always knew wanderlust would get me killed.
And now they were down, in amongst the trees, following a stone-clad track that was humped and broken by the hungry roots, furred by moss. Around them, the deeps of the forest were shrouded, webs stretching in a maze of solid mist until look far enough in any direction and all you saw was white: the Pale Shadow.
There were animals – Hesprec heard the birdcalls quiet as they neared, start up again behind them once they had passed. She heard frogs creaking in the silted-up irrigation channels and there would be jaguars and capybara and peccaries winding their ways between the trees. None of these were seen though, knowing the presence of man enough to flee it. What she did see were the spiders.
They were small, for the most part. Tiny eight-legged motelets drifted on the faintest breeze, trailing silk. Thumbnail-sized skitterers crept on every leaf and branch. Hairy hand-sized monsters bumbled across their path, their ambling turned to a sudden flailing rush as the hooves came close. And none of this was what concerned Hesprec, who was only thinking, None of these spun those great webs I see, not alone, not all together, not in a hundred years of weaving.
And at last, after hunting the branches and canopy, she spied one, and tapped Therumit’s bony shoulder to draw her attention. The creature squatted in the crook of a tree, its bulbous body as great as Hesprec’s own, its short legs drawn in and kept so still she might have missed it – as she had perhaps missed many of its kin already. A Kasra of spiders, architect of the enshrouding sheets and nets that hung all about them.
Therumit just grunted, unsurprised.
Do they have souls, I wonder? But the question was not one Hesprec would voice to her companion. There were sacrileges even the most irreverent priest should not consider.
Then Therumit stopped, swiftly enough that Hesprec’s mount jostled hers. The old woman took out a gnarled cane from the sling on her saddle, holding it like a switch for striking.
Hesprec let herself down to the earth, spiders or not, because she was not the rider Therumit was. In case of trouble she would trust to her fangs and her coils.
There was movement about them – the sense of large creatures moving quietly. For a moment Hesprec was still thinking of spiders, but long experience told her this was a more familiar threat. She knew the scent of a big cat, the soft pad of its feet. The People of the Jaguar had raised this city along with the Serpent, in the distant past. Serpent had been wise and Jaguar had been strong. Strong, but ultimately dissatisfied and easily suborned, as history had borne out.
‘I don’t think they’ve come to welcome us home,’ she murmured.
Therumit said nothing, but her visage was terrible. It would be a brave warrior who would face that gnarled countenance, all the bottled scorn and bitterness of a dozen lifetimes. Still bravery was a crop raised from numbers, and Hesprec reckoned there were a dozen men and beasts out there, at least.
Then one made himself known: a tall, broad-shouldered man with skin as dark as the Serpents or the Rivermen, but features distinct from either. Others were slipping out from between the trees on all sides. The Jaguar were heavy-jawed, heavy-browed; they wore their hair in long plaited tails. Some of them had spotted pelts slung over their shoulders; others wore quilted tunics. A few had faded rags and swatches of silk given pride of place about their bodies that said to Hesprec favours or cast-offs. They had stone-beaked clubs and jagged spears.
In between the men were the cats, shoulders high as Hesprec’s ribs, eyes narrow with green fire, their coats leaping out from the shadows when they moved, fading into nothing when they were still.
Therumit faced them down with a masterful arrogance. ‘You will not raise a hand against the Serpent.’
To Hesprec’s surprise, that sent a shiver of wariness through them. There would be some strange old stories told at the hearths of these hunters about the old times. Did they have doom-filled prophecies of Serpent’s vengeful return? Did they all bear the mark of their forebears’ ancient treachery?
Therumit guided her horse forward one more step, stick upraised. Hesprec knew full well how fierce her fellow priestess could look, no matter what face she wore. The warriors before her backed off, anger vying with fear naked on their faces.
She almost saw the movement in time to cry a warning, but by the time her mouth was open, the jaguar was already in the air. The big cat landed claws out on the haunches of Therumit’s mount and the beast reared up, screaming. She fell back from the saddle, landing in a looping nest of coils, rearing up higher than a man to menace them with her fangs. Hesprec Stepped alongside her, choosing a more slender shape that might go unseen for vital moments, dropping into the thick greenery that was sprouting between the stones of the path.
The attacking jaguar was still mauling the horse, but the others had made a move for Therumit. More than half had lost their nerve almost instantly, leaving only a handful with the courage to brave her. Hesprec lashed her body forwards, striking five feet out and then recoiling herself, seeing one Jaguar warrior drop with his leg gashed, the venom already starting to shake him. That sent another tumbling back, swiping at the undergrowth around him as though there were serpents everywhere. The remaining two met Therumit’s full wrath.
Her coils surged and coursed within one another like wheels, impossible to know where she was going until she was already there. One of the Jaguar was lost within them instantly, looped about the chest and arms and throat, legs kicking frantically. The final attacker swept his club at her body, the beak slanting away from her scales. Therumit reared higher, almost to the branches above, then struck down at him like a hammer, driving her fangs into his eyes.
Momentarily, Hesprec thought they would flee, but there was a sound from deeper in the overgrown city – a braying horn sounding some uncomfortable, jarring note. It did not give the warriors courage, but it gave them desperation, and abruptly they were thronging in, getting in one another’s way, spear-shafts rattling against each other as they tried to pin the Serpents down. Therumit Stepped again, from great constrictor down to ribbon-thin viper that squirmed between their legs like an eel. They lashed at her – carved up the earth and bloodied their own shins – but she was out from their knot and already lunging back to send a jawfull of poison into an errant foot. Hesprec took that moment to Step larger, erupting from the undergrowth as a great black snake rising as high as their heads, spreading a hood that flashed fierce eyes at them and sending them tumbling back. They were terrified, yet they were not fleeing, and all this show would only work for so long. Neither she nor Therumit had limitless venom and the numbers would tell. They must either flee into the unknown jungle or fight and fall.
A club cast its shadow over her and she shrank and darted away. Feet were trampling everywhere, threatening to crush her even if their owners did not realize it. She darted for the nearest leg and wound up it, climbing the man in rapid zig-zags as she would have done a tree. He cried out and tried to grasp her slender body but she slipped out from his fingers and threatened his face with her fangs. Then one of the others lashed at her and struck his fellow full in the head. She heard the skull crack like an egg from the force of it and dropped to earth with the dying body, already twisting to see where the next blow would come from.
But in that moment they were fleeing, gibbering and calling to one another in some bizarre speech from which she could make out one word in three.
We scared them off! But the thought died even as she tasted it. They had been crammed full of fear of serpents and still tried to fight. Some other force had mastered them in the end. She watched them plunge between the trees and her heart almost stopped when a great grey shape lunged from the shadows to bowl three of them over, seizing one in its fangs and bearing him away. A shape with many legs, larger than a horse. The spiders she had seen in the canopy were mere hatchlings compared to it.
She Stepped back to her human shape, feeling new bruises. Beside her, Therumit had done the same, levering herself to her feet and drawing her dignity about herself like a mantle.
Their hosts had arrived.
At first they seemed too bright to look at: radiant with silver and gold as though they had stolen the secrets of the sun and moon, striding through the forest like gods. Perhaps that was what the Jaguar saw, but Hesprec had lived enough lifetimes to see through such trivial matters. They were not truly lustrous, but it was the thought they placed in the eyes of those who looked upon them. And if you were not looking for it, you’d not see the emptiness within them. Maybe that’s how they fooled our ancestors. Which was less shaming? That their ancestors had lacked the wisdom to pierce this glamour, or that they had been blinded by their own pride.
Hesprec saw a dozen of them: eight women, four men. All were very fair, unnaturally pale. Had that inner absence not been apparent to her, no doubt she would have found them beautiful. They wore robes of shimmering gossamer that were likewise beautiful until she considered what must have spun them. Some had armour of hide that was ornamented with gold. Most wore bands of precious metal at their wrists and ankles and necks, enough that they could not have Stepped – although of course they had no shape to Step into, without a soul to gift it to them. So are they children, then? Children who never grow up? She felt it was a dangerous comparison.
There were spiders amongst them – some that crawled on their bodies or amidst their clothes, toying with the silks as though adjusting their fit. Others with iridescent bodies crouched on their breasts like jewels. Larger beasts ran beside them, grey and hairy and long-legged. If Hesprec had only glanced, and not truly seen, she might have thought they were accompanied by nothing more than hounds.
Therumit glanced for her horse, seeing it mauled and dead. Hesprec’s beast had remained nearby, more spooked by its surroundings than the bloodshed.
‘When last we met,’ she said, ‘a companion of mine introduced you to our customs of host and guest.’ She faced the glare of their glamour with barely a narrowing of her eyes. ‘Now see how we are met, who were invited.’
She expected them to retort with some piece of arrogance, but instead one of their women stepped forward, and she recognized none other than Galethea, their ambassador from the Estuary.
‘We are not all of one mind, one heart here,’ she said. ‘Please, come with us to the palace of our house. You will be safe there.’
Hesprec doubted that very much, not sure whether division within the Pale Shadow was something to fear or exploit. She glanced at Therumit in time to see the old priestess nod curtly. Without a word she snagged the reins of the surviving horse and hoisted herself into the saddle. She held a hand out to Hesprec, who Stepped into a little serpent and climbed up it, finding a roost about Therumit’s shoulders. Let the other woman do the talking; she would watch.
And watch she did, as the party of the Pale Shadow passed through the forest, noting how the buildings grew less ruined – how there were signs of occupation: cloth at the doorways, lights in the windows. She saw men and women of the Jaguar who were plainly the servants or slaves of the Pale Shadow – they knelt when the shining entourage passed by, and averted their faces from any sight of the Serpent.
And yet so few, Hesprec thought. She was reminded of the Shining Halls of the Tiger, a great power laid low by their losses in the war against the Wolf. So what war came here? But she sensed some more final hand was laid on this place than mere brawling. There was a gauntness to their hosts’ faces, a brittle precision to their motions. Had they been real humans she might have thought that a plague was stalking here, eating away at them even as they ate away at themselves. She had the sense of arriving at the ending of something nobody should witness.
But then that’s true of all the world right now, and if it were not for that I would never be walking in these shadows, and nor would any sane human.