The Serpent Bride. Sara Douglass

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СКАЧАТЬ Every muscle trembled, aching so greatly that Ishbel wept with the pain.

      But she was almost there …

      Then, as she was within three steps of the top, she heard the front door open.

      A faint sound, for the door was far below her, but she heard it open.

      Ishbel did not know what to do. She lay on the stairs, trembling, weeping, listening to slow steps ascend the staircase, and wondered if the crowd had sent someone in to murder her.

      She was taking far too long to die.

      Ishbel closed her eyes, and buried her face in her arms.

      “Ishbel?”

      A man’s voice, very kind. Ishbel thought she must be dreaming.

      “Ishbel.”

      Slowly, and crying out softly with the ache of it, Ishbel turned over, opening her eyes.

      A man wrapped in a crimson cloak over a similarly-coloured robe stood a few steps down, smiling at her. He was a young man, good-looking, with brown hair that flopped over his forehead, and a long, fine nose.

      “Ishbel?” The man held out a hand. “My name is Aziel. Would you like to come live with me?”

      She stared at him, unable to comprehend his presence.

      Aziel’s smile became gentler, if that were possible. “I have been travelling for weeks to reach you, Ishbel. The Great Serpent himself sent me. He appeared to me in a dream and said that I must hurry to bring you home. He loves you, sweetheart, and so shall I.”

      “Are you the Lord of Elcho Falling?” Ishbel whispered, even though she knew he could not be, for he did not drag loss and sorrow at his heels, and there was no darkness clinging to his shoulders.

      Aziel frowned briefly, then he shook his head. “My name is Aziel, Ishbel. And I am lord of nothing, only a poor servant of the Great Serpent. Will you come with me?”

      “To where?” Ishbel could barely grasp the thought of escape, now.

      “To my home,” Aziel said, “and it will be yours. Serpent’s Nest.”

      “I do not know of it.”

      “Then you shall. Please come with me, Ishbel. Don’t die. You are too precious to die.”

      “I don’t need to die?”

      Aziel laughed. “Ishbel, you have no idea how greatly we all want you to live, and to live with us. Will you come? Will you?”

      Ishbel swallowed, barely able to get the words out. “Are there whispers in your house?”

      “Whispers?”

      “Do the dead speak in your house?”

      Aziel frowned again. “The dying do, from time to time, when they confess to us the Great Serpent’s wishes, but once dead they are mute.”

      “Good.”

      “Ishbel, come with me, please. Forget about what has happened here. Forget — everything.”

      “Yes,” said Ishbel, and stretched out a trembling hand. I will forget, she thought. I will forget everything.

      She did not once wonder why this man should have been able so easily to wander through the vindictive crowd outside, or why that crowd should have stood back and allowed him to open the front door without a single murmur.

      Two weeks later Aziel brought Ishbel home to Serpent’s Nest. She had spoken little for the entire journey, and nothing at all for the final five days.

      Aziel was worried for her.

      The archpriestess of the Coil, who worshipped the Great Serpent, led Aziel, carrying the little girl, to a room where awaited food and a bed. They washed Ishbel, made her eat something, then put her to bed, retreating to a far corner of the room to sit watch as she slept.

      The archpriestess was an older woman, well into her sixties, called Ional. She looked speculatively at Aziel, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the sleeping form of the child. Aziel was Ional’s partner at Serpent’s Nest, archpriest to her archpriestess, but he was far younger and as yet inexperienced, for he’d replaced the former archpriest only within the past year, after that man had strangely disappeared.

      Ional knew she would partner Aziel only for a few more years, until he was well settled into his position as archpriest, and then she would make way for someone younger. Stronger. More Aziel’s match.

      Now Ional looked back to the girl.

      Ishbel.

      “You said,” Ional said very softly, so as to not wake the girl, “that the Great Serpent told you she would not stay for a lifetime.”

      “He told me,” said Aziel, “that she would stay many years, but that eventually he would require her to leave. That there would be a duty for her within the wider world, but that she would return and that her true home was here at Serpent’s Nest.”

      “She is so little,” said Ional, “but so very powerful. I could feel it the moment you carried her into Serpent’s Nest. How much more shall she need to grow, do you think, before she can assume my duties?”

      “When she is strong enough to hold a knife,” said Aziel, “she shall be ready.”

       Deep in the abyss the creature stirred, looking upwards with flat, hate-filled eyes.

       It whispered, sending the whisper up and outwards with all its might, seething through the crack that Infinity had opened.

       It had been sending out its call for countless millennia, and for all those countless millennia, no one had answered.

       This day, the creature in the abyss received not one but two replies, and it bared its teeth, and knew its success was finally at hand.

       Twenty years passed.

2

       SERPENT’S NEST, THE OUTLANDS

      The man hung naked and vulnerable, his arms outstretched and chained by the wrists to the wall, his feet barely touching the ground, and likewise chained by the ankle to the wall. He was bathed in sweat caused only partly by the warm, humid conditions of the Reading Room and the highly uncomfortable position in which he had been chained.

      He was hyperventilating in terror. His eyes, wide and dark, darted about the room, trying to find some evidence of mercy in the crimson-cloaked and hooded figures standing facing him in a semicircle, just out of blood-splash distance.

      He might have begged for mercy, were it not for the gag in his mouth.

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