Serpent's Reach

Then the Mind did a very difficult thing, and lied to itself.

Mother directed certain three Warriors, who rushed from the Chamber and from the hive and out into the heat of the day. Beyond the thorn-hedges, beyond the safe boundary of the hills, they stopped, and began purposely to alter their internal chemistry, breaking down all the orderly complex of their knowledge, past and present.

The hive lost them, for they were then mad.

They died, wandering inevitably into red-hive ambush in the valley, and red-hive could only believe the lie which it read in the chemistry of the slaughtered blues, that blue-hive had tasted the death of the young queen of Kethiuy hive, that no such survivor existed.

iii

“What is this?” Lian muttered, looking about him at the Council, the many-Coloured representatives who settled into place beneath the serpent emblem of the Kontrin. Suddenly there were new faces, new arrangements of seating. His blurred vision sought friends, sought old allies. The eldest Hald was gone; a younger man sat in his place. There was of the blue of Meth-maren…the black-bordered cloak of a Ruil; of several of the oldest septs and Houses…no sign, or younger strangers wearing their Colours. Lian, Eldest of the Family and first in Council, looked about him, hands trembling; and, having almost risen—he sank down again.

He began to count, and took reckoning what ma

“Uncle,” said Terent of Welz-Kaen. “Eldest?”

Lian turned his face away, hating the cowardice which must now be the better part of common dense. Assassins had been planted. A purge had been carried out with extreme efficiency, not at one point, but at many. One had no idea where matters stood now, or what the count of votes would be on a challenge. There was something. new shaped or shaping, dangerous to all who stood too tall in the Family. One did well now to wait and hear others’ decisions.

Lian felt his age, an incredible weight on him, memory which confused one with too many alternatives, too much of wisdom, experience heaped on experience, which always counselled… wait and learn.

“Eldest!” the Malind elder called aloud, dared rise from her seat, marking herself among dissenters. “You will open the session?”

The whole hall was waiting. He declined with a gesture, hand trembling uncontrollably. There was a sudden murmur of surmise in the hall, dismay from many. He looked last on Moth, aged Moth, seeming older than he in her face and her brittle movements, but she was half a century younger. Her pale eyes met his, shrouded in wrinkles.

She bowed her head, having taken count as well as he; her hands occupied themselves with some minute adjustment in the trim of her robes.

Of those who had come first into the Reach, first humans among majat, there had been few survivors. Even immortality did not stand well against ambition.

This morning, in Council, there were fewer survivors still; and new powers had risen, who had waited a century in patience.

The new Held rose, bowed ironically, and began to speak, setting forth the changes that were already made.

iv

Raen lived.

She discovered this fact slowly, in great pain, and on the verge of madness.

That she was Meth-maren, and therefore no stranger to majat at close quarters…this saved her sanity. She was naked. She was blind, in absolute darkness, and disoriented She suffered the constant touches of the Workers the length of her body, wetness which worked ceaselessly on her raw wounds, and over all her skin and hair; an endless trickle of moisture and food was delivered from their mandibles to her mouth. Their bodies shifted above and about her, invisible in the dark, with touch of bristles and grip of chelae or mandibles. They hovered, never stepping on her, and their ceaseless humming numbed her ears as the dark numbed her eyes.

She was within the hive. No Kontrin had ever gone within a hive, not since the first days. The Pact forbade. But the blues, the peaceful blues, so long Kethiuy’s good neighbours—had not cast her out. Tears squeezed from her eyes. A Worker sipped them instantly, caressing her face with feather-touches of its palps. She moved, and the humming at once grew louder, ominous. They would not permit her to stir. Raw touches on her wounds were constant. She flinched and cried out in agony, and they hovered yet closer, never putting full weight on her, but hindering each movement. The struggle, the needed co-ordination, grew too much. She hurt, and surrendered to it, finding a constant level for the pain, which finally merged with the sound and the sense of touch. There was neither past nor future; grief and fear were swallowed up in the moment, which stretched endlessly, circular.

She was aware of Mother. There was a Presence within the hive which sent Workers scurrying on this mission and that, to touch her and depart again in haste. In her delirium she imagined that she sensed the touches of this mind, that she was aware of things unseen, the movements in countless blind passages, the logic of the hive. She was cared for. The dark was endless, the touches at her body ceaseless, the sound only slowly varying, which was like deafness, and the touches became numbness. It was, for a long time, too difficult to think and too hard to struggle.

But from the latest sleep she wakened with a sense of desperation.

“Worker,” she said into the numbing sound, on a delicate balance of returning strength and diminishing sanity. “Help. Help me.” Her voice was unused, her ears so long assaulted by majat-song that human words sounded alien in her hearing. “Worker. tell Mother that I want to speak with her. Take me to her. Now.”

“No,” said the Worker. It sucked up more air and expelled it through chambers, creating the illusion, if not the intonations of human voice. Other sound fell away, Workers pausing to listen. Worker harmonised with itself as it spoke, the chambers all working in intricate combination. “U

“Mother doesn’t know what I intend.”

“Tell. Tell this-unit”

“Revenge.”

Palps swept her face, her mouth, her body, picking up scent. Worker could not comprehend. Majat individually had their limits. A Worker was not the proper cha

It drew back abruptly: she suddenly missed that particular touch. Others filled the gap, constantly feeling at limbs and body.

“It’s gone for Mother?”

“Yes,” one said. “Mother.”

She stared at the blind dark, hard-breathing, euphoric with her success. She moved her hand with difficulty past the hindering limbs and palps of Workers, felt of her wounds, which were slick with jelly…tested her strength, moving her limbs.

“Are there,” she asked, “azi within call?”

“Mother must call azi.”

“I shall stand,” she declared, rationally, firmly, and began to do so.

Workers assisted. Palps and chelae caressed her naked limbs and urged her, perhaps sensing new steadiness, conscious direction of her movements. Leathery bodies, Chitin-studded, pushed at her. She trusted them, despite the possibility of pain. Their knowledge of balance and leverage was instinctive, none truer. With their support she stood, dizzied, and felt about her in the featureless dark. The floor of the chamber was uneven. Up and down seemed confused in the blackness. Her ears were still numbed by their voices; bet hands met jointed palps and the hard spines of chelae. The Workers moved with her, never overbalancing her, supporting her with unfailing delicacy as she sought a few steps.