The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [50]
"Sssuch venom ssslays all but those who serve the Ssserpent," the cowled priest said formally, approval in his dry voice. "Rise, sssister, and join in the most sssacred service in all Darsar."
As the woman found her feet, the glow on her breast flared into white brilliance. Cowled figures were gliding silently to places all around her, forming a circle. Their faces were hidden under bent cowls, but she could feel their eyes upon her.
"Kisss the Initiator," the Priest of the Serpent commanded, extending his hand. The scaly head whose fangs had savaged her breast wavered in front of her, and she was seized by the sudden fear that its fangs would tear out her eyes or throat… but as she dared to bestow a kiss on those scales, the snake lifted its head a little to rub against her lips, like a purring cat.
At the dry, leathery contact, she was suddenly seeing not snake or priest, but a daylit field with a huge slab of rune-graven stone embedded in its trampled grasses, and robed, cowled figures standing around it. Live snakes slithered and coiled up and down their arms.
"Behold the tomb of the Ssserpent, in the backlands of Aglirta," the dry voice murmured in her ear, "watched over day and night by Ssserpent priests who await the time of the Rising. The vast body of the Ssserpent slumbers beneath it, invisible to any spell or digging shovel, awaiting the time of its Rising, when all Kingless Aglirta shall be devoured and made the realm of the Ssserpent. In that time, only the faithful shall survive the deadly feeding of the Coiled One-the faithful whose ranks you have just joined, sssister."
She felt his very human lips kiss her cheek, and then knew no more.
Her body did not bounce as it met the floor; many hands were waiting to catch her and cushion her fall.
Shattered bones shifted under her, and Embra found herself sliding helplessly back and down, following her left shoulder into darkness. Well, at least she wasn't staring up at her boots and the whirling storm far up the shaft above them any more, while struggling to breathe with all her own weight on top of her.
As if that made things any better. All she'd done was amuse her father and given his mages a little practice. She could have just given the two Blackgultans some gems and helped them back off the island as fast as they'd come. She should have asked them to make love to her-gods, how she ached for someone to just hold her, with love and not for cruel sport!-and then kill her, cheating her father out of his Living Castle by dismembering her and giving her parts to the river.
She should have killed herself years ago.
Not that she'd ever had the courage to do more than pick up a knife and watch herself tremble in the mirror as she thought about using it. Drenching her fine white rugs with bright blood, staring at the ceiling until everything went dark…
She was no adventurer. Gods above, she wasn't even a sorceress. And here she was, dragging men to their deaths. Men whose hatred of her was only held back by their fear, though they knew her not.
Well, they knew she could hurl spells, and they knew she was a Silvertree. That was reason enough to hate and fear her, was it not? All Coiling Vale hated and feared the Silvertrees, with good reason in plenty.
"I will not be like my father," she told the darkness around her fiercely. "I will not!"
As if the darkness was eager to answer, there came a dry rattling sound off to her left. A clacking sound, as if something old and dry was moving deliberately closer to her.
Embra felt for the bowl that had struck her cheek earlier, hand grasping at empty air and tinder-dry bones in the flood of debris between her legs. She needed magic to call up magic; she needed a flame to see.
That dry clacking came again, a little closer, and she was suddenly floundering around in bones, frantically wallowing and rolling to try to find footing, and stand. Her raking, darting