Dreamsnake

“And what’s your place in this plan? Should I bring you up to be my herald? You could dance into each new town and tell them I was coming.”

“I admit I wouldn’t care to die down here.”

North laughed harshly.

“You could help so many people. There was no healer when you needed one because we haven’t got enough dreamsnakes. You could help people like you.”

“I help the people who come to me,” North said. “Those are the people who are like me. They’re the only ones I want.” He turned away.

“North!”

“What?”

“At least give me a blanket for Melissa. She’ll die if I can’t keep her warm.”

“She won’t die,” North said. “Not if you leave her to my creatures.” His shadow and his form disappeared.

Snake hugged Melissa closer, feeling each slow, heavy beat of the child’s heart through her own body. She was so cold and tired that she could not think any longer. Sleep would start to heal her, but she had to stay awake, for Melissa’s sake and for her own. One thought remained strong: defy North’s wishes. Above everything, she knew she and her daughter were both lost if they obeyed him.

Moving slowly so the work of drawing pain from her shoulder would not be undone, Snake took Melissa’s hands in her own and chafed them, trying to bring back circulation and warmth. The blood on the dreamsnake bites was dry now. One of the serpents wrapped itself around Snake’s ankle. She wiggled her toes and flexed her ankle, hoping the dreamsnake would crawl, away again. Her foot was so chilled she barely felt the serpent’s fangs sink into her instep. She continued to rub Melissa’s hands. She breathed on them and kissed them. Her breath plumed out before her. The dim light was failing. Snake looked up. The slice of gray dome visible between the edges of the crevasse had turned nearly black with gathering night. Snake felt an overwhelming sensation of grief. This was how it had been the night Jesse died, lacking only stars, the sky as clear and dark, the rock walls surrounding her just as steep, the cold as exhausting as the desert’s heat. Snake hugged Melissa closer and bent over her, sheltering her from shadows. Because of the dreamsnakes, she could do nothing for Jesse; because of the dreamsnakes, she could do nothing for Melissa.

The dreamsnakes massed together and slithered toward her, the sound of their scales on fogdamp stone whispering around her — Snake came abruptly awake out of the dream.

“Snake?” Melissa’s voice was the rough whisper she had heard.

“I’m here.” She could just see her daughter’s face. The last diffused light shone dully on her curly hair and the thick stiff scars. Her eyes held a faraway dazed look.

“I dreamed…” She let her voice trail away. “He was right!” she cried in sudden fury. “Damn him, he was right!” She flung her arms around Snake’s neck and hid her face. Her voice was muffled. “I did forget, for a little while. But I won’t again. I won’t…”

“Melissa—” Melissa stiffened at the tone of her voice. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. North says he won’t hurt you.” Melissa was trembling, or shivering. “If you say you’ll join him—”

“No!”

“Melissa—”

“No! I won’t! I don’t care.” Her voice was high and tight. “It’d be just like Ras again…”

“Melissa, dear, you have a place to go now. It’s the same as when we talked before. Our people need to know about this place. You have to give yourself a chance to get away.”

Melissa huddled against her in silence.

“I left Mist and Sand,” she said finally. “I didn’t do what you wanted, and now they’ll starve to death.”

Snake stroked her hair. “They’ll be all right for a while.”

“I’m scared,” Melissa whispered. “I promised I wouldn’t be any more, but I am. Snake, if I say I’ll join him and he says he’ll let me be bitten again I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to forget myself… but I did for a while, and…” She touched the heavy scar around her eye. Snake had never seen her do that before. “This went away. Nothing hurt any more. After a while I’d do anything for that.” Melissa closed her eyes.

Snake grabbed one of the dreamsnakes and flung it away, handling it more roughly than she would have believed she could.

“Would you rather die?” she asked harshly.

“I don’t know,” Melissa said faintly, groggily. Her arms slipped from Snake’s neck and her hands lay limp. “I don’t know. Maybe I would.”

“Melissa, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it—” But Melissa was asleep or unconscious again. Snake held her as the last of the light faded away. She could hear the dreamsnakes’ scales on the damp slick rocks. She imagined again that they were coming closer, approaching her in a solid aggressive wave. For the first time in her life she felt afraid of serpents. Then, to reassure herself when the noises seemed to close in, she reached out to feel the bare stone. Her hand plunged into a mass of sleek scales, writhing bodies. She jerked back as a constellation of tiny stinging points spread across her arm. The dreamsnakes were seeking warmth, but if she let them find what they needed they would find her daughter as well. She shrank back into the narrow end of the crevasse. Her numb hand closed involuntarily around a heavy chunk of sharp volcanic rock. She lifted it clumsily, ready to smash it down on the wild dreamsnakes.

Snake lowered her hand and willed her fingers open. The rock clattered away, among other rocks. A dreamsnake slid across her wrist. She could no more destroy them than she could float out of the crevasse on the cold, thick air. Not even for Melissa. A hot tear rolled down her cheek. When it reached her chin it felt like ice. There were too many dreamsnakes to protect Melissa against, yet North was right. Snake could not kill them.

Desperate, she pushed herself to her feet, using the crevasse wall as support and wedging herself into the narrow space. Melissa was small for her age, and still very thin, but her limp weight seemed immense. Snake’s cold hands were too numb to keep a secure grip, and she could hardly feel the rocks beneath her bare feet. But she could feel the dreamsnakes coiling around her ankles. Melissa slipped in her arms, and Snake clutched at her with her right hand. The pain shot through her shoulder and up and down her spine. She managed to brace herself between the converging rock walls, and to hold Melissa above the serpents.

Chapter 12

The cultivated fields and well-built houses of Mountainside lay far behind Arevin at the end of his third day’s travel south. The road was now a trail, rising and falling along the edges of successive mountains, leading now casually through a pleasant valley, now precariously across scree. The country grew higher and wilder. Arevin’s stolid horse plodded on.

No one had passed him all day, in either direction. He could easily be overtaken by anyone else traveling south: anyone who knew the trail better, anyone who had a destination, would surely catch and pass him. But he remained alone. He felt chilled by the mountain air, enclosed and oppressed by the mountains’ sheer walls and the dark overhanging trees. He was conscious of the beauty of the countryside, but the beauty he was used to was that of his homeland’s arid plains and plateaus. He was homesick, but he could not go home. He had the proof of his own eyes that the eastern desert’s storms were more powerful than those in the west, but the difference was one of quantity rather than kind. A western storm killed unprotected creatures in twenty breaths; an eastern one would do it in ten. He must stay in the mountains until spring.

He could not simply wait, at the healers’ station or in Mountainside. If he did nothing but wait, his imagination would overpower his conviction that Snake was alive. And if he began to believe she was dead: that was dangerous, not only to his sanity but to Snake herself. Arevin knew he could not perform magic any more than Snake could, magical as her accomplishments might appear, but he was afraid to imagine her death.