CHAPTER THREE

Serpent’s Nest, the Outlands

A ziel followed Ishbel to the day chamber they shared, pouring her a large of glass of wine as she undid her cloak and tossed it to one side.

“Pour yourself one, too,” she said. “You shall be glad enough of it when I tell you what the Great Serpent said.”

“Ishbel, sit down and take a mouthful of that wine. Good. Now, what—”

“Disaster threatens. The Skraelings prepare to seethe south. Millions of them.”

“But…”

“Millions of them, Aziel.”

Aziel poured himself some wine, then sank into a chair, leaving the wine untouched. The Skraelings—insubstantial ice wraiths who lived in the frozen northern wastes—had ever been a bother to the countries of Viland, Gershadi, and Berfardi. Small bands of ten or fifteen occasionally attacked outlying villages, taking livestock and, sometimes, a child.

But millions? And seething as far south as Serpent’s Nest?

“I know only what the Great Serpent showed me, Aziel,” Ishbel said. “I don’t understand it any more than you.” She took a deep breath. “I saw Serpent’s Nest overrun, the members of the Coil dragged out to be crucified on crosses. You…” Her voice broke a little. “You, dead.”

“Ishbel—”

“There’s worse.”

Worse?

“A forgotten evil rises from the south,” Ishbel said. “Something so anciently malevolent that even the bedrock has learned to fear it. It will crawl north to meet the Skraelings. They whisper to each other…the Skraelings are under its thrall, which is why they are so unnaturally organized. Between them they shall doom our world, Aziel.”

“Ishbel,” Aziel said, “there have been no reports of any unusual activity among the Skraelings. In fact, from what I’ve heard, they’ve been quieter than usual these past eighteen months. Are you sure you interpreted the Great Serpent’s message correctly?”

Ishbel replied not with words but with such a dark look that Aziel’s heart sank.

“I apologize,” he said hastily. “I was shocked. I’m sorry.” Aziel finally took a large swallow of his wine.

“You are the most powerful visionary to have ever blessed the Coil, and what I just said was unforgivable.” Then he gave a soft, humorless laugh. “I suppose that I am merely trying to find a means by which to disbelieve the Great Serpent’s message. Did he show you the reason behind this disaster?

Why it is happening? How? The Skraelings have never managed more than the occasional, if murderous, nuisance raid. A death or two at most. Millions? How can they organize themselves to that degree?”

“The evil in the south organizes them, Aziel,” Ishbel said. “I thought I’d said that already.”

Aziel did not reply. He understood Ishbel’s irritability. By the Serpent, had he been the one to receive this message he was sure he would have snarled far harder than Ishbel.

Ishbel rose, pacing restlessly about the chamber. “There is more, Aziel,” she said finally.

He, too, rose, more at the tone of her voice than her words. The irritation had now been replaced with something too close to despair. “Ishbel?”

She turned to face him, her lovely face drawn and pale. “The Great Serpent showed me the disaster which threatens, but he also showed me the means by which it can be averted.”

“Oh, thank the gods! What must we do?”

“It is what I must do. I must leave the Coil, leave Serpent’s Nest—”

Aziel stilled. Had not the Great Serpent told him twenty years ago, when he sent Aziel to rescue Ishbel from that house of carnage, that this would eventually come to pass?

“—and marry some man. A king.” Ishbel paused, as if searching for the name, and Aziel had the sudden and most unwanted thought that he hoped Ishbel would remember the right name.

“A king called Maximilian,” Ishbel said. “From some kingdom to the west…I cannot quite recall…”

“Escator,” Aziel said softly. “Maximilian Persimius of Escator.”

“Yes. Yes, Maximilian Persimius of Escator. Aziel…the Great Serpent wants me to marry this man!

What can he be thinking? How can a marriage…to a man…avert this approaching disaster? I am not meant to be a wife, and I have no idea, none, of how to be a woman!”

Aziel stared at her lovely face, and saw the splatter of blood across one eyebrow that had penetrated her scarf’s protection.

No, he could not imagine her a “wife,” either. But, oh, the woman…

“We cannot hope to understand the Great Serpent’s reasons,” said Aziel, “nor the knowledge behind them.”

He stepped over to Ishbel and took her face gently between his hands. “My dear, we always knew you would leave us. You knew you would need to leave us. It is why we marked you as we did.” For a moment his hands slid into her hair, the tips of his fingers running lightly across her scalp. “Now,” he continued, his hands sliding back to cradle her face, “the time is here.”

“I do not know how to be a woman,” Ishbel repeated, refusing to meet Aziel’s eyes.

That statement, Aziel thought with infinite sadness, summarized Ishbel’s life perfectly. In the twenty years since he had rescued her from that charnel house in Margalit, Ishbel had devoted her entire being to serving the Great Serpent. She had no idea of her beauty, nor of her allure. All the members of the Coil were bound by vows of chastity, but only loosely. Liaisons and relationships did develop, and were allowed to continue so long as they remained discreet.

Aziel would have given full ten years of his life if it meant Ishbel looked at him with eyes of love or desire.

But she had no idea of his true feelings for her, and Aziel often wondered if Ishbel could even grasp the concept of love.

He stepped away from her. “Marriage to Maximilian of Escator, eh? It is a small thing, surely, if it will save us from the disaster the Great Serpent showed you.”

Ishbel looked at him as if he had committed an act of the basest betrayal. “Marriage? To some undoubtedly fat and ancient man who—”

“You do not know of Maximilian?” Aziel said. Surely everyone knew Maximilian’s story—the news of his rescue eight years ago had rocked the Outlands, as well as all the Central Kingdoms and as far away as Coroleas. Had Ishbel listened to none of the gossip that infiltrated the walls of Serpent’s Nest via tradesmen and suppliers?

Ishbel gave a small shrug. “Why should I know?”

Aziel sighed. Because everyone else in the damned world knows. “Sit down,” he said, “and I shall tell you of Maximilian Persimius.”

He waited until Ishbel had sat herself, her back rigid, her face expressionless, before he spoke.

“I shall be brief, as I am certain you shall have ample opportunity to hear this story from Maximilian himself.”

Ishbel’s face tightened, but Aziel ignored it.

“Eight years ago there was an uproar when the presumed long-dead heir to the Escatorian throne, Maximilian, suddenly reappeared. He told an astounding tale: stolen at the age of fourteen, thrown into the gloam mines—known as the Veins—to labor in darkness and pain for a full seventeen years until he was rescued by a youthful apprentice physician and a marsh witch. Yes, I know, stranger than myth, but sometimes it happens. It transpired that Maximilian’s ‘death’ had been staged by his older cousin Cavor, who wanted the throne. Once free of the Veins, Maximilian challenged Cavor for the throne, won, and…well, there you have it. Maximilian has since led a fairly blameless life running Escator and, as luck would have it, looking for a wife. I have never seen him, nor met him, but I have heard good of him. He is respected both as a man and as a king.”

“He was imprisoned in the gloam mines for seventeen years?”

“Yes.”

“Then I hope he has since managed to scrub the dirt of the grave from under his fingernails.”

“That was ungenerous, Ishbel.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she snapped. “Maximilian may be of the noblest character, and patently has endurance beyond most other men, but I have no wish to be his wife. I do not wish to leave Serpent’s Nest.”

“Ishbel…the Great Serpent has said that—”

“Perhaps the Great Serpent is mistaken,” Ishbel said, and with that she rose, snatched up her cloak, and left the chamber.