I struggled, but with each movement the enormous snake coiled around me, tightening its hold. Its skin, black with green and yellow stripes, gleamed in the pale light.
“Let me go!” I yelled at the snake’s head, which was even larger than my own.
The snake was not impressed.
I kicked and hit nothing but air. I tried to free my arms, but the strength of the huge serpent was infinitely greater
than anything I could muster. It was slow-moving but relentless, shifting, tightening, surrounding me with more and more of its incredible length.
I was helpless. Don’t panic, I told myself. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
But the more I tried to calm myself, the more I shivered with terror.
I looked up and saw that some of the branches above me were moving. There were more serpents.
Dozens. Perhaps even hundreds.
“I’ll save you, Byx!” Tobble cried.
He leapt to my defense, digging his teeth into the serpent that had pinned me, but suddenly the little wobbyk was snatched away, as if someone had him on a string. One of the snakes above had dropped a nooselike coil around Tobble’s chest.
“Help!” I shrieked, though I knew I wouldn’t be heard.
The serpent’s skin was as cold as a corpse.
“Oh, dear me!” Tobble yelped. “This is most unpleasant.”
“Help!” I cried again. “Somebody help us, please!”
“Are you sure you want help?”
I knew that voice, that soft, sardonic tone.
I knew it. And, desperate as I was, I welcomed it with all my heart.
A coil covered half my face, thick as the trunk of a young tree, leaving me with only one useful eye and a muffled mouth.
“Yes!” I managed to say. The snake tightened its grip, and I felt the air squeezed from my lungs.
“Do you swear by all you hold sacred not to escape me again?”
I was not in a position to bargain. “Yes! Yes! Save us!”
“Well,” Khara said calmly, “if you insist.”
The metallic ring of a sword being drawn met my ears, and what a sweet sound it was.
Khara raised her blade as my one eye stared in astonishment.
Her sword had been rusty and ancient, with a bent hand guard and a simple, leather-wrapped grip. But now, impossibly, the hilt was encrusted with jewels, and the blade glowed like forged iron fresh from the fire.
Khara brought it down hard on the snake’s tail.
I heard the clang of a cleaver on meat.
The snake hissed, turning its beady yellow eyes toward Khara. Still it wouldn’t release me.
My head swelled with blood. My limbs were numb. The world vibrated as the vision in my one free eye narrowed.
“I have no fight with serpent folk,” Khara warned, “but I will take your head next!”
I saw movement above her. I wanted to shout a warning, but I had no breath left. All I could do was moan.
A massive snake dropped from a branch directly above Khara.
She sliced it into halves midair, and the two pieces thudded to the ground. They writhed for a moment, then went still.
The snakes were done toying with us.
They were everywhere at once, slithering toward us, all but indistinguishable from the tangle of exposed tree roots.
They spiraled down branches by the hundreds. They lunged out of the water.
For a split second, Khara took it all in.
And then she went to work.
She twirled through the air. She leapt. She pirouetted, her shimmering sword leaving trails of golden light like a shooting star.
I felt hot sprays of serpent blood like fitful rain. But the great serpent who held me, the largest of all, did not relent. It raised its head high and opened its hideous mouth, revealing the deadly curve of two huge black fangs.
Please, I thought, if I must die, let it be swift.
With lightning speed the serpent dived at me. The top of my head wedged in its rank mouth, fangs just grazing my ears. My skull was too large to swallow, but the serpent meant to make it impossible for Khara to kill it without also killing me.
The slime, the putrid breath, the fangs beaded with venom: it was as if my head were trapped in some hideous, reeking helmet.
I gagged. The foul stench was more than I could bear.
And yet I had no choice but to bear it. I could not move, not even a hairbreadth.
I caught a glimpse of Khara’s sword inscribing a graceful arc. It swung horizontally.
Directly at my head.
The blade struck flesh.
Fortunately, it wasn’t mine.
The serpent went slack.
Khara had cut through the snake’s head, all the way through until the last fraction of an inch, the blade stopping within a finger’s width of slicing into my own face.
A collective hiss went through all the other snakes, like a wordless argument quickly concluded.
Tobble, released at last, dropped from above and landed with a muddy gloop near Khara’s boots. The snakes left in slow, sinuous retreat.
With the serpent’s grip loosened at last, I pulled myself partially free of its carcass. But its horrible mouth was still firmly attached to the top of my head. Try as I might, I didn’t have the strength to remove it.
“I could use some help over here,” I said, but Khara seemed more interested in Tobble.
“Who are you?” she demanded, kneeling beside the trembling wobbyk.
“Me?” Tobble squeaked. “I’m here to rescue Byx.”
“You’re a little late,” Khara said. “Do you have a name?”
“I’m no one,” Tobble replied in a small voice.
Khara stood. “Then we shall call you breakfast.”
“No! He’s a—a friend,” I cried.
“Hmm,” Khara said. “Then I suppose we shall feast on serpent instead.”
16.
Breakfast Is Served
We headed back to the cave, bedraggled and chastened. No one spoke.
Khara didn’t bother to tie us up. She seemed to know we wouldn’t be attempting another escape anytime soon.
Vallino snorted in annoyance when we arrived. It was a good thing Khara had made the decision to leave the horse behind and track us on foot. He would have been mired in mud in no time.
Risking a small fire, Khara grilled chunks of serpent on a stick. It felt a bit odd, eating something that just tried to eat me. But that didn’t change the mouth-watering flavor.
We ate in silence until Khara asked why Tobble hadn’t touched his food.
“Wobbyks don’t eat meat,” he explained, although I noticed he was eyeing the charred serpent with a certain fascination.
“What do you like to eat?” Khara asked. “Maybe I can find something.”
“I’m fine, thank you very much.” Even under the circumstances, Tobble couldn’t seem to stifle his natural wobbyk politeness.
“We’ve a long way to go.” Khara poked at the fire with a stick. “You’re certain you don’t want to eat something?”
“Absolutely,” said Tobble, just as his stomach let loose with a growl so ferocious, it would have made a felivet proud.