Serpent Mage (33 page)

The dog trotted after him, back and forth, until it grew tired, flopped down about halfway either direction, and watched Alfred's vacillation with considerable interest.

Finally, the Sartan made up his mind. “I'm not going inside,” he said decisively, did a little dance, and began to sing the runes.

The sigla wove their magic around him, lifted him up into the air. The dog jumped excitedly to its feet, and began to bark loudly, much to Alfred's consternation. The library was located far from the center of the Sartan city, far from the homes of the inhabitants, but it seemed to the nervous Alfred that the animal's yelps must be audible in Arianus.

“Shush! Nice dog! No, don't bark. I—”

Attempting to hush the dog, Alfred forgot where he was going. Or at least that was the only explanation he could give for finding himself hovering over the roof of the library.

“Oh, dear,” he said weakly, and dropped like a rock.

For long moments, he cowered on top of the roof, terrified that someone had heard the dog and that crowds of Sartan would be flocking around, wondering and accusing.

All was quiet. No one came.

The dog licked his hand and whined, urged him to once more take to the air, a feat the animal found highly entertaining.

Alfred, who had forgotten the dog's unique ability to show up where least expected, nearly crawled out of his skin at the unexpected slobber of a wet tongue.

Sitting back weakly against the parapet, he petted the animal with a shaking hand and looked around. He had been right. The only sigla visible were the perfectly ordinary runes of strength and support and protection from the elements that could be found on the roofs of any Sartan building. Yes, he'd been right, and he hated himself for being right.

The roof was constructed of massive beams of some tree Alfred didn't recognize, but they gave off a faint, woodsy, pleasing aroma. Probably a tree that the Sartan had brought with them from the ancient world, through Death's Gate.
¹
These large beams were placed at intervals along the roof; smaller planks crisscrossed beneath, filling in the gaps. Intricate sigla, traced on the planks and the beams, would keep out rain and rodents and wind and sun, would keep out everything…

“Except me,” Alfred said, gazing at the sigla unhappily.

He sat for long moments, unwilling to move, until the larcenous part of his nature reminded him that the Council meeting could not last much longer. Samah would return home and expect to find Alfred there, become suspicious if Alfred was not.

“Suspicious,” said Alfred faintly. “When did one Sartan
ever use that word about another? What is happening to us? And why?”

Slowly, he leaned over and began to draw a sigil on the wooden beam. His voice accompanied his work, his chant sad and heavy. The runes sank down through the wooden beams of a tree never known in this world, and they carried Alfred down into the library with them.

Orla paced about her house, restless, ill at ease. She wished Samah were at home, was perversely glad he wasn't. She knew she should go back out into the garden, should go back out to Alfred, apologize for behaving like such a fool, smooth the incident over. She should have never let it affect her like that, should have never let him affect her like that!

“Why did you come?” she demanded of his absent figure sadly. “All the turmoil and unhappiness was over. I could once more hope for peace. Why did you come? And when will you go?”

Orla took another turn about the room. Sartan dwellings are large and spacious. The rooms are made of cool, straight lines, bent, here and there, into perfect arches supported by upright columns. The furniture is elegant and simple, providing only what is necessary for comfort, nothing for show or display. One could walk among the few furnishings with ease.

That is, a normal person could walk among them with ease, she amended, straightening a table that Alfred had knocked askew.

She put the table to rights, knowing Samah would be extremely irritated to find it out of its proper order. But her hand lingered on it; she smiled to herself, seeing, once again, Alfred blundering into it. The table stood next to a couch, was well out of the flow of traffic. Alfred had been far away from it, with no intention of being anywhere near it. Orla recalled watching in wonder those too-large feet of his veering off in the direction of the table, stumbling over each other in their haste to reach it and knock it over. And Alfred, watching in bemused bewilderment, like a nursemaid
with a flock of unruly children. And he had looked at Orla in helpless, pleading apology.

know I'm responsible,
his eyes said,
but what can I do? My feet simply won't behave!

Why did that wistful expression of his tug at her heart? Why did she long to hold those clumsy hands, long to try to ease the burden that rested on those stooped shoulders?

“I am another man's wife,” she reminded herself. “Samah's wife.”

They had loved each other, she supposed. She'd borne him children, they must have … once.

But she remembered the image Alfred had conjured for her, an image of two people loving each other fiercely, passionately, because this night was all they had, because all they had was each other. No, she realized sadly. She'd never truly loved.

She felt no pain inside her, no ache, nothing. Only spacious, large emptiness, defined by cool, straight lines, supported by upright columns. What furniture existed was neat, orderly, occasionally shifting position, but never actually rearranged. Until those too-large feet and those wistful, searching eyes and those clumsy hands blundered into her and threw everything into wild disarray.

“Samah would say that it is a mothering instinct, that since I am past my childbearing years, I have the need to mother something. Odd, but I can't remember mothering my own child. I suppose I did. I suppose I must have. All I seem to remember is wandering about this empty house, dusting the furniture.”

Her feelings for Alfred weren't motherly, however. Orla remembered his awkward hands, his timid caresses, and blushed hotly. No, not motherly at all.

“What is there about him?” she wondered aloud.

Certainly nothing visible on the surface: balding head, stooped shoulders, feet that seemed intent on carrying their owner to disaster, mild blue eyes, shabby mensch clothes that he refused to change. Orla thought of Samah: strong, self-possessed, powerful. Yet Samah had never made her feel compassion, never made her cry for someone else's
sorrow, never made her love someone for the sake of loving, “There is a power in Alfred,” Orla told the straight and uncaring furniture. “A power that is all the more powerful because he is not aware of it. If you accused him of it, in fact”—she smiled fondly—“he would get that bewildered, astonished look on his face and stammer and stutter and … I'm falling in love with him. This is impossible. I'm falling in love with him.”

And he's falling in love with you.

“No,” she protested, but her protest was soft and her smile did not fade.

Sartan did not fall in love with other people's spouses. Sartan remained faithful to their marriage vows. This love was hopeless and could come only to grief. Orla knew this. She knew she would have to remove the smiles and tears from her being, straighten it up, return it to its straight lines and empty dustiness. But for a short time, for this one moment, she could recall the warmth of his hand gently stroking her skin, she could cry in his arms for another woman's baby, she could feel.

It occurred to her that she'd been away from him an interminable length of time.

“He'll think I'm angry at him,” she realized, remorseful, remembering how she'd stalked off the terrace. “I must have hurt him. I'll go explain and … and then I'll tell him that he has to leave this house. It won't be wise for us to see each other anymore, except on Council business. I can manage that. Yes, I can definitely manage that.”

But her heart was beating far too rapidly for comfort, and she was forced to repeat a calming mantra before she was relaxed enough to look firm and resolved. She smoothed her hair and wiped away any lingering traces of tears, tried a cool, calm smile on her face, studied herself anxiously in a mirror to see if the smile looked as strained and borrowed as it felt.

Then she had to pause to try to think how to bring the subject into conversation.

“Alfred, I know you love me …”

No, that sounded conceited.

“Alfred, I love you …”

No, that would certainly never do! After another moment's reflection, she decided that it would be best to be swift and merciless, like one of those horrid mensch surgeons, chopping off a diseased limb.

“Alfred, you and the dog must leave my house this night.”

Yes, that would be best. Sighing, not holding out much hope that this would work, she returned to the terrace.

Alfred wasn't there.

“He's gone to the library.”

Orla knew it as well as if she could look across the miles and peer through the walls and see him inside. He'd found a way to enter that wouldn't alert anyone to his presence. And she knew that he would find what he sought.

“He won't understand. He wasn't there. I must try to make him see
my
images!”

Orla whispered the runes, traced the magic with her hands, and departed on its wings.

The dog growled, warningly, and jumped to its feet. Alfred looked up from his reading. A figure clad in white was approaching, coming from the back of the library. He couldn't see who it was: Samah, Ramu? …

Alfred didn't particularly care. He wasn't nervous, wasn't assailed by guilt, wasn't afraid. He was appalled and shocked and sickened and he was, he was startled to discover, glad to be able to confront someone.

He rose to his feet, his body trembling, not with fear, but with his anger. The figure stepped into the light he had magically created to read by.

The two stared at each other. Quick indrawn breaths slipped to sighs, eyes silently exchanged words of the heart that could never be spoken.

“You know,” said Orla.

“Yes,” answered Alfred, lowering his gaze, flustered.

He'd been expecting Samah. He could be angry with
Samah. He felt a need to be angry, to release his anger that bubbled inside him like Abarrach's hot lava sea. But how could he vent his anger on her, when what he truly wanted to do was take her in his arms? …

“I'm sorry,” Orla said. “It makes things very difficult.”

“Difficult!” Fury and indignation struck Alfred a blow that left him reeling, addled his brain. “Difficult! That's all you can say?” He gestured wildly to the scroll
²
lying open on the table before him. “What you did … When you knew … This records everything, the arguments in the Council. The fact that certain Saitan were beginning to believe in a higher power. How could you … Lies, all lies! The horror, the destruction, the deaths … Unnecessary! And you knew—”

“No, we didn't!” Orla cried.

She strode forward, came to stand before him, her hand on the table, the scroll, that separated them. The dog sat back on its haunches, looking at each with its intelligent eyes.

“We didn't know! Not for certain! And the Patryns were growing in strength, in power. And against their might, what did we have? Vague feelings, nothing that could ever be defined.”

“Vague feelings!” repeated Alfred. “Vague feelings! I've known those feelings. They were … it was … the most wonderful experience! The Chamber of the Damned, they called it. But I knew it as the Chamber of the Blessed. I understood the reason for my being. I was given to know I could change things for the better. I was told that if I had faith, all would be well. I didn't want to leave that wonderful place—”

“But you did leave!” Orla reminded him. “You couldn't stay, could you? And what happened in Abarrach when you left?”

Alfred, troubled, drew back from her. He looked down at the scroll, though he wasn't seeing it; his hand toyed with its edges.

“I believe,” writes Alfred, in an addendum to this section, “that Samah had an innate regard for the truth. He tried to deny it, attempted to suppress it, but he could not bring himself to destroy it.”

“You doubted,” she told him. “You didn't believe what you'd seen. You questioned your own feelings. You came back to a world that was dark and frightening, and if you
had
caught a glimpse of a greater good, a power vaster and more wondrous than your own, then where was it? You even wondered if it was a trick….”

Alfred saw Jonathon, the young nobleman he'd met on Abarrach, murdered, torn apart by the hands of a once-loving wife. Jonathon had believed, he'd had faith, and he'd died horribly because of it. Now, he was probably one of those tormented living dead, the lazar.

Alfred sat down heavily in the chair. The dog, grieving for the man's unhappiness, padded silently over and nuzzled him with its nose. Alfred rested his aching head in his arms.

Gentle, cool hands slid around his shoulders. Orla knelt beside him. “I know how you feel. I truly do. We all felt the same. Samah, the rest of the Council. It was as if… How did Samah put this? We were like humans drunk on strong wine. When they're intoxicated, everything looks wonderful to them and they can do anything, solve any problem. But, when the effects of the spirits wear off, they're left sick and hurting and feeling worse than they did before.”

Alfred raised his head, looked at her bleakly. “What if the fault is ours? What if I had stayed on Abarrach? Did a miracle happen there? All never know. I left. I left because I was afraid.”

“And we were afraid, too.” Orla's fingers tightened over his arm in her earnestness. “The darkness of the Patryns was very real and this vague light that some of us had experienced was nothing but the tiny flicker of a candle flame, likely to be blown out with a breath. How can we put our faith in this? In something we don't understand?”

“What is faith?” Alfred asked gently, not talking to her but to himself. “Believing in something you do not understand. And how can we poor mortals understand that vast and terrible and wonderful mind?”

“I don't know,” she whispered brokenly. “I don't know.”