Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (28 page)

Slowly and carefully, he knelt down beside the hole and uncoiled the python from his shoulders. As the snake slithered down an arm, Kwasin lowered the creature toward the opening in the ground. The python paused briefly; then, finding a ledge of rough stone cropping from one side of the hole’s interior, it slid down into the earth.

A fleeting guilt tinged Kwasin’s conscience as he thought of the woman, a guilt he quickly cast off. To live, one often had to do unpleasant things, even if that meant risking the life of a potential ally. Besides, he had seen the woman handle the snake when she stood illuminated by lightning atop the stone pillar—the python appeared to be her familiar. Had he not also seen the oracle at Dythbeth seemingly command her sacred serpent before his very eyes upon the occasion of the pronouncement of his exile to the Wild Lands? The priestesses of Kho—and this woman was certainly one—seemed to have an affinity with their ophidian pets. Surely the woman’s own snake would not harm her.

But doubt returned as Kwasin stood above the hole, the rain running in small waterfalls off the colossal column of black stone. For a long while he stood there waiting, until the fury of the storm abated to a gentle drizzle and he began to wonder if the man had indeed crawled into the pit. Then, at last, it came—a choked-off male scream of utter terror.

Kwasin grinned. His inspired decision had been the right one. After all, in cursed Miterisi, was it not best to ally with the local snake god than to fight against him?

A short time later the woman crawled slowly up out of the dark mouth in the earth, the whitish-scaled, diamond-spotted python draped over her back and coiling around a shoulder and arm. She was indeed a priestess, as evidenced by the jewel-studded ceremonial dagger sheathed upon her shapely hip. She must have recovered the blade from her captor after the snake had strangled him.

Kwasin made the sign of Kho and the priestess’s strong white teeth glistened back at him in the darkness.

He had been about to speak but stopped himself abruptly. Did the woman’s canines look a little too long, a little too sharp? A little too... snakelike?

Kwasin frowned at himself, then laughed—a trifle nervously, he thought. No, it was just these cursed ruins playing tricks on his mind once more. When he saw the woman in the bright daylight he was sure she would appear as ravishingly and humanly beautiful as the darkness of the night hinted.

“What are you looking at?” the priestess said. “We must hurry. Now that the storm’s abated, the shipmates of the sailors we’ve killed will likely come ashore looking for their men. Let’s go!”

The woman reached out for his hand, but Kwasin hesitated. When the woman had spoken, had he merely imagined that her tongue flicked out from between her luscious lips in a most unmistakably reptilian fashion?

Kwasin frowned again. Then, uttering a half-facetious—and half-serious—prayer to Kho, he took her cold, tiny hand in his own warm, giant one and headed out into the night.

* * *

Kwasin awoke the next day in the little temple that rose from the center of the sacred grove of the pythoness. Through the little window beside his bed of sleeping furs, he could hear the gentle tinkling of the creek that wound around the temple and through the forest. With a heavy sigh of contentment, he flung aside the furs, sat up, and regarded the lithe form of the priestess that lay sleeping beside him.

The sight of the naked woman aroused him, but not enough for him to wake her for more lovemaking. Although the priestess was of uncommon beauty, that beauty also was of uncommon strangeness. The darkness had not deceived him about her teeth—her canines had indeed been filed to points resembling those of a serpent’s fangs. He lightly touched the numerous scrapes on his shoulders and chest where she had raked him with those teeth while in the throes of passion.

A chill ran through him as he recalled his night with Madekha. Her movements during foreplay had been eerily snakelike, and though she had kissed him as lovingly as any warm-blooded woman, he could not mistake the soft hissing between kisses. But then, he should not have been surprised—what did one expect from the high priestess of the Spotted Python Totem? And he could not say he did not enjoy himself at the time.

The woman reached out to pull the furs back over herself, then groaned lightly and opened her eyes with a silent yawn. Seeing Kwasin, she smiled.

“Sinuneth welcomes you this morning, O Giant Warrior.” The priestess now looked past Kwasin to the pile of furs and linens piled up at the head of the oak-framed bed.

Kwasin’s skin crawled as he slowly turned his gaze to where she looked. Then he jumped up out of the bed, cursing loudly.

The priestess’s diamond-spotted familiar glided out from the deep mass of coverings to coil caressingly around its mistress’s outstretched arm.

The woman laughed and said, “You did not seem to mind Sinuneth’s company last night.”

“You mean the snake was in our bed while we—” Kwasin bellowed another curse and began donning his lion-skin kilt.

“I don’t advise you to leave the temple by daylight.” Madekha let the snake slither from her arm and back onto the bed, then arose and continued. “If a worshiper from the village sees you, it might get back to T’agoqo and his jealousies will be all the more enflamed. Though he and his fellow priests have thus far resisted King Minruth’s blasphemies, I hold little faith they will continue to do so. T’agoqo has only maintained a thin façade of faithfulness to Kho because he desires me and I have dangled out the thread of hope. He knows he will never have me if he publicly turns against the cause of the Goddess, but if he learns I am harboring a legendary criminal and that I have invited him into my bed...”

Madekha arose and rang a small iron bell, and before long two young, raven-haired priestesses entered the chamber. “See to his needs,” she ordered them, and then regarded Kwasin.

“We have much to discuss, O Kwasin. You are a criminal, exiled by the oracle at Dythbeth for crimes against a daughter of Kho, and we must address that fact before we speak any further. But we are also in a Time of Troubles, and even the Goddess must seek aid where she can find it.” She motioned to the priestesses to escort Kwasin from the chamber, but as he passed through the doorway she called out to him.

“Behave yourself with my priestesses,” she said as he turned back. “They will clean you up and take care of your desires, but if you harm them in any way, you will awake in Sisisken’s dark house before you even know what has struck you.”

Kwasin smiled innocently and traced the sign of Kho with his fingers, but deep inside he felt troubled at the snakewoman’s words.

* * *

A little over two hours later, Kwasin met with Madekha beneath a portico behind the temple overlooking the well-tended grove to Terisikokori, the local pythoness goddess. The storm had passed and the strong, late morning sun shone down through the trees, causing the leaves that had blown to the ground during the previous night’s torrent to glisten with a golden light. Already the day’s oppressive heat fought to break through the shade of the trees.

Above, Kwasin heard the cry of
datoekem,
then spied one of the large, white-winged gulls arcing overhead through the trees. It reminded him of the proximity to the shore of the temple and the adjoining village of Kaarkor. Madekha had told him the seagirt cliffs of the Saasanadar lay not a quarter mile north of the hallowed grove.

With a nod, Madekha dismissed her attendant, who had come with news of Khowot’s recent eruption and the devastation it had once again wrought upon the capital. It seemed that Minruth blamed the disaster on the prisoners who had just escaped from his prison, proclaiming their breakout had precipitated a great shouting match between Kho and Resu. But though the prisoners had made their getaway, Minruth asserted that Resu had won out in the end, for had not the god of the sun and rain quickly brought the blessed showers that saved much of the city from the fires that threatened to destroy it? Still, Resu was angry that the escapees had succeeded, and if they were not caught soon, the sungod would punish the mortals in the capital for their incompetence. Further, Minruth had sworn vengeance on any city, village, or individual that came to the aid of Kwasin and the other escapees. The priestess was taking a great risk by harboring him.

“You look refreshed,” Madekha said, not unpleasantly, though her face betrayed worry at her attendant’s news. “But then you will need to be, for you have much work ahead of you in the days to come, O Kwasin.”

“It is not my intention to stay here, O Priestess,” Kwasin said. “I can’t tarry here and fight your battles. Those I have yet to face lie westward, on the road to Dythbeth, where I intend to clear my name.”

Madekha smiled grimly. “There is truth in what you say, but do you think you can just walk into Dythbeth and demand forgiveness from Queen Weth?”

Kwasin said nothing. He had not truly thought out his plans for accomplishing his goal once he arrived at his birth city. Not that he had had the time to do so since his flight from the capital.

“But the oracle did pronounce that you would be permitted to return to the land when Kho so decrees,” Madekha went on. “I, of course, am not in a position to speak for Kho on this matter, but that is not to say I cannot aid you. After all, you saved my life in the old city, although it is true I would have been in no danger had it not been for you. But it was my decision to enter the ruins of Miterisi all the same, prompted as I was to go there by a vision from the sacred pythoness herself, and I don’t regret slaying the followers of Minruth’s new order. I owe you... well, if not a favor, then an opportunity.”

As the priestess spoke, Kwasin had the sinking feeling he was about to be pulled into a business of which he wanted no part. What she said next convinced him of it.

“Much has changed across the land even since you returned from your exile and were imprisoned. Minruth’s profane revolt has spread to the outermost corners of the empire. While it is true that Dythbeth yet holds out against the sun worshipers, the cities and towns all around her are falling fast. And though the rural areas and mountain villages remain in large part stolid against the ambitions of Minruth and his wicked priests, that is not to say they have gone untouched. One such village—profaned by the blasphemers, and very dear to me for reasons I will soon explain—lies in the path of your journey westward across the island: the village of Q”okwoqo.”

Kwasin nodded in the Khokarsan negative, feeling as if one of the
nukaar,
the long-armed hairy half-men of the trees, had reached down out of the jungle, taken hold of him in its viselike grip, and pulled him up into its dark abode. The woman meant to trap him with her so-called opportunity.

“I have no interest,” Kwasin said, “in the age-old struggle between the priestesses of Kho and the priests of Resu. Kho helps him who helps himself! She cares nothing for the mortals who merely get in Her way or who attribute their own self-serving prattle to Her divine lips!”

“Hear me out, Kwasin!” Madekha snapped. “Do you forget I can turn you in to the priests in the village if you displease me?”

He recognized the desperation in the woman’s voice as well as her conviction. She would not hesitate to execute her threat if he crossed her. Besides, he was desperate as well. If she could truly help him make amends with the Great Mother at Dythbeth, could he resist her offer, no matter the task given him?

“Go on,” he said at last, but he did not hide his displeasure.

“Only two days ago,” Madekha continued, “my cousin Tswethphe—an acolyte serving the village priestess—arrived from Q”okwoqo. She reports that a small band of soldiers has taken the village, and that the priestess escaped into the wilderness with only my cousin by her side as the soldiers struck. The priestess sent Tswethphe to neighboring Dythbeth to ask for succor, but King Roteka is too busy fighting off Minruth’s legions to be bothered with the troubles of a small mountain village. And so my cousin left Dythbeth and crossed the island to throw herself upon my mercy.”

“Why does this backwoods village concern you, priestess? Your cousin is safe in your arms, and Q”okwoqo is but an insignificant abode of mountain-dwelling yokels.” Kwasin had heard of the rustic mountain village, having lived out his early years in Dythbeth at the foothills of the Saasamaro. He could think of no strategic importance the place might bear upon the struggle against the sun worshipers.

“Alas, I do not disagree with your assessment of Q”okwoqo, but my twin sister, Adythne, the priestess of the village, is as stubborn-headed and dogged as Kopoethken herself. She will not leave her village to the blasphemers and says she will singlehandedly launch a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the soldiers if no one comes to her aid. She will get herself killed!”

Madekha, her face flushed with emotion, paced the granite blocks that composed the portico’s floor, but Kwasin only roared with laughter.

“I like the sound of your sister! Are you sure you want to trust me with her?”

The priestess of the sacred pythoness glared at him, the points of her sharpened teeth whitening her otherwise sensuous crimson lips.

“What would you have me do?” Kwasin offered when she said nothing. “Bring her back to you, against her will?”

“No, she would have none of it. I know her too well. Even if you tied her up and carried her here, she would only fly back to her village at the earliest opportunity. You must aid her in her quest. That is the only way. It’s a fool’s errand, I know, but what other choice have you? If you agree to help her, I shall whisper into Queen Weth’s ear of your efforts to free Q”okwoqo, as well as your act of heroism in defending a daughter of Kho in the ruins of Miterisi—both deeds which will go a long way toward forgiveness of your crimes against the Goddess. But if you refuse to help my sister, I may tell Weth another story, of how in a murderous rage you sought to slay me with your ax amid the ruins. And lest you think I carry no weight with the queen, know that I trained with Weth in the college of priestesses. She will listen to me.”