Nothing in the world has earned the power to frighten you, Sethennai had said, long ago.
“Thanks a lot, sir,” she muttered, and slid down into the pit. She landed with a little puff of sand, and let out a slow breath. The back of her neck prickled. Her hands were damp with sweat.
Atharaisse’s coils rose on all sides, like walls of breathing ivory. No amount of ill treatment and degradation could make her less frightening. Each of her scales was the size of Csorwe’s palm, gleaming in the moonlight. Csorwe flattened herself against the wall of the pit and inched her way crabwise toward the mouth of the tunnel on the other side.
As Csorwe reached the midpoint, she heard a low, whispering sigh. She only had time to freeze as Atharaisse uncoiled like a snapped string. Her eyes met Csorwe’s with terrible swiftness, keen and red.
“Quail,” said the serpent, hissing like water on gravel in Csorwe’s head. Her mouth opened, revealing two fangs, each as long and slender as a shinbone. “For thy doom is upon thee. We are Atharaisse, most ancient and most exalted scion of Echentyr.”
Csorwe bowed, and straightened up to meet her eyes again. Despite the circumstances she couldn’t help feeling a spark of satisfaction that she had been right.
“Good evening, ma’am,” said Csorwe, with only the faintest tremor. As much as she had hoped Atharaisse would stay asleep, she had planned what she was going to say. “I am honoured to stand in your presence.”
A fine membrane twitched over Atharaisse’s eyes, and retracted.
“Our subjects here have lost their manners. They do not regard us as they ought. What manner of thing art thou?”
“I am nothing,” said Csorwe. “The smallest of my master’s creatures.”
“If so, we find it ill mannered in him to send you,” said Atharaisse. “To our grandeur is owed his foremost envoy.”
“Of course,” said Csorwe. “It’s my fault. I wanted to meet you. Ma’am, I have seen Echentyr.”
The great head moved closer, slipping over the sand until the tip of Atharaisse’s snout was less than an arm’s length from Csorwe. The wall was at her back. There was no getting away.
“And what hast thou seen, in the ruin of our world, that made thee so eager to look upon us? To laugh, perhaps, at our reduced estate?”
“No, ma’am,” said Csorwe, with sincerity. “It was—it was—” She searched for the right word, unsure what she could say about the enormous strangeness of Echentyr that wouldn’t get her eaten. “It was impressive. I saw the, uh, the Royal Library. I wanted to see you and learn how it had been before.”
Atharaisse tasted the air with her tongue, the double point almost touching Csorwe’s face.
“No,” said Atharaisse in a low, furious hiss. “We recognise thee. Thou liest.”
“I swear to you, ma’am,” Csorwe whispered, flat against the wall of the pit. “I am telling the truth.”
“Thou servest at the table of a parasite. A flea may believe that he is king, and summon other fleas to dance attendance, and bite the flesh of his betters, but he is less than dust before us! We are the last daughter of our world! We survived the ruin of Iriskavaal! And we will see the craven Psamag suffer!” Her tail thrashed in the sand, stirring up choking clouds.
“I am not Psamag’s servant,” said Csorwe. “My master sent me here. He desires Psamag’s death as you do.”
This might have been an overstatement. She was pretty sure Sethennai wouldn’t shed a tear at Psamag’s funeral, but he had never specifically asked Csorwe to murder him.
“Master! What master? Do not lie to us again. Our people dealt with the Thousand-Eyed One in the morning of all worlds and were granted the true sight. We cannot be deceived.”
“My master is Belthandros Sethennai,” said Csorwe. “The rightful ruler of Tlaanthothe.” This was a shot in the dark, an admission she had hoped not to make, but Atharaisse’s eyes flared with recognition, bloodshot and brilliant.
“Ahaaa,” she said. “That is a recollection that escapes us not. And what has become of the exquisite Belthandros?”
“He’s all right,” said Csorwe.
“Come away from the wall, little mouse, and let us look upon thee properly,” said the snake. She withdrew her head a little way, and Csorwe had no choice but to step out into the middle of the pit, and let Atharaisse circle around her, inquisitive interest shining in every scale.
“There is a familiar smell of wizardry about thee,” said Atharaisse after a while. “And thou desirest the extermination of this false warlord. Very well. Thou comprehendest not the scale of our magnanimity. We would have eaten thee. But as a mark of our favour to Belthandros we will let thee pass. Thou wishest to go down into the tunnel, no doubt, into the narrow places where we cannot go.”
Csorwe had not been conscious of holding in her breath, but now she let out a gasp of relief. This indignity seemed to amuse Atharaisse, at least.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “But … there’s one more thing.” Somehow, between the fear of imminent death and the fear of accidentally saying something insulting, she had come up with a new idea.
“Thou art truly like him,” said Atharaisse, still not unamused. “A bold, presuming, insolent little delicacy. But certainly it refreshes us to be addressed in terms of proper respect by such an impertinent scrap. Ask, then.”
“Ma’am … are your fangs poisonous?”
“Ahh,” said Atharaisse. “The sacred terror. The blessing of Iriskavaal. The kind death, the cold fire, the destroying sweetness … they are venomous, little hatchling.”
So it was that Csorwe found herself climbing the serpent’s flank to reach the vast concavity of her open mouth. She balanced upon the scaled rim, and reached out to touch a hollow fang that could have pierced her through without difficulty.
“Ah, thou askest much, and thou darest much,” said Atharaisse, her voice throbbing in Csorwe’s head though her tongue and her teeth remained perfectly still. “For the hunger of ages tears at us still, and the urge to bite is very strong. Thou art audacious.”
At last Csorwe leapt to the ground, holding in one hand a tightly fastened waterskin, plump with venom. She bowed again. Atharaisse purred.
“Go thy way, little crumb.”
Csorwe resisted the impulse to bolt under the retreating loop of Atharaisse’s tail and run full pelt toward the tunnel in the back wall. She bowed several times as she left, making her way with slow courtesy. Only once she was safely into the tunnel did she stop, and slide down the wall, and rest until her limbs had stopped shaking.
The tunnel led into a maze, which could have been devised by some previous lord of the fortress to torment his captives. Csorwe found her way to a buried stair, curving downward, under the surface of the desert. Perhaps some other ancient lord had intended this way as an escape route in times of siege. For Csorwe, it was a long downward climb, down a channel so narrow that she could not spread her arms to either side. Then the staircase ended, and opened into darkness. She had reached the caves.
Csorwe was about to step out into the dark, but some impulse, some caution, wired deep in the animal part of her brain, made her stop. On the left-hand wall of the passage, above the bottom step, there was a red, fist-sized glob of something like wax, plastered to the rock just below head height. There was a sign stamped into the wax, a quintuple curlicue so unpleasant to look at that it could only have been magical. The whole thing looked not just dangerous but disgusting, as though the wall had sprouted a purulent boil.