Margaret Weis - Serpent Mage

The waiting is the most awful part. Our terror grows in us daily. Our nerves are ragged, taut. Devon—good-natured Devon—quarreled with Alake over some little offhand remark she made about elves that he took completely the wrong way. I can hear them now, still raving at each other. It’s not anger that harries them, but fear. I think the fear will drive us mad. In remembering, I can, for a while, forget. I will tell about our leave-taking.

It was bitter and grievous. As it turned out, making that initial decision to give ourselves up to the dragon-snakes was the easy part. We composed ourselves, dried our tears, and talked over what we were going to say to our parents. We chose Alake as our speaker and went out to the terrace. Our parents were not prepared for the sight of us. Eliason, having so recently lost his beloved wife to some elven malady, could not bear to look at Sabia, his only daughter and the very image of her lovely mother. He turned away, his eyes filled with tears.

At this, Sabia lost her courage. Going to him, she put her arms around him and her tears mingled with his. Of course, this said everything.

“You overheard!” Dumaka accused us, scowling. “You were listening again!” I had never seen him so furious. Alake’s carefully planned speech died on her trembling lips.

“Father, we mean to go. You cannot stop us . . .”

“No!” he roared in a fury, and began pounding on the coral with his clenched fist, beating it, smashing it until I saw the pink turn red with his blood.

“No! I will die before I submit to this—”

“Yes, you will die!” Alake cried. “And our people will die! Is that what you want, Father?”

“Fight!” Dumaka’s black eyes flashed fire, foam frothed on his lips. “We will fight them! The beasts are mortal, just as we are. They have a heart that can be slashed open, a head that can be cut off—”

“Yes,” said my father stoutly. “We will do battle.” His beard was torn. I saw great clumps of it lying on the floor at his feet. That was the first time I fully understood what our decision meant. I don’t think we had made it lightly, but we had made it considering only ourselves, thinking only of what we would suffer. Now I came to realize that though we might die and die horribly, we could only die once and it would be over and we would be safe with the One. Our parents (and those others who loved us) must suffer and die our deaths in their minds time and time again. I was so ashamed, I couldn’t face him.

He and Dumaka were ranting on about battle-axes and weapons they would manufacture and how the elves would enchant them. Eliason actually recovered enough to offer a few broken suggestions. I couldn’t say a word. I began to think that maybe our people did have a chance, that we could fight the serpents and that our lives would be spared. And then I noticed Alake. She was strangely quiet, strangely calm.

“Mother,” she said suddenly, coldly, “you have to tell them the truth.” Delu flinched. She cast her daughter a swift, smoldering glance that commanded silence, but it was too late. Her look made it worse, for we all saw plainly that she had something to hide.

“What truth?” demanded my mother sharply.

“I am not permitted to speak of it,” Delu said thickly, keeping her eyes averted from us all. “As my daughter well knows,” she added bitterly.

“You must, Mother,” Alake persisted. “Or will you let them go blindly out to fight an enemy that cannot be defeated?”

“What does she mean, Delu?”

It was my mother again. She was the shortest person there. She is shorter even than I am. I can see her now, side whiskers quivering, chin jutted out, arms akimbo, feet planted firmly on the ground. Delu was tall and willowy; my mother came only to her waist. But, in my memory, it is my mother who stands tall to me that day, tall in her strength and courage.

Delu crumbled, a tree falling to my mother’s blade. The human sorceress sank down onto a low bench, her hands clasping and unclasping in her lap, her head bowed.

“I can’t go into detail,” she said in a low voice, “I shouldn’t be telling you this much, but. . . but . . .” She swallowed, drew a quivering breath. “I’ll try to explain. When a murder has been committed . . .” (I pause here to note that humans do actually kill their own kind. I know you might find it difficult to believe, but it is the truth. One would think that considering their short life span they would hold life sacred. But no. They kill for the most paltry of reasons, greed, vengeance, and lust being chief among them.)

“When a murder has been committed and the murderer cannot be found,” Delu was saying, “the members of the Coven can—by use of a spell whose very existence I should not now be revealing—gather information about the person who has perpetrated the deed.”

“They can even conjure up an image of the person,” Alake added, “if they find a lock of hair or traces of the murderer’s blood or skin.”

“Hush, child. What are you saying?” her mother reprimanded, but her protest was weak, her spirit crushed.

Alake continued. “A single thread can tell the Coven what the murderer wore. If the crime is recent, the shock of the outrage lingers in the very air and we can draw from it—”

“No, Daughter!” Delu looked up. “That is enough. Suffice it to say that we can conjure an image not only of the murderer but also, for lack of a better term, the murderer’s soul.”

“And the Coven performed this spell in the village?”

“Yes, Husband. It was magic. I was forbidden to tell you.” Dumaka did not look pleased, but he said nothing. Humans revere magic, hold it in awe and fear. Elves take a more practical view of it, but that may be because elven magic deals with more practical things. We dwarves never saw much point in either. Oh, certainly it saves time and labor, but one has to give up freedom to pay for it. After all, who ever really trusts a wizard?

Apparently, not even a spouse.

“And so, Delu, you cast this spell on the beast’s droppings or whatever they left behind.” My mother single-mindedly dragged us all back to the subject at hand. “And just what did you find out about their souls?”

“That they have none,” said Delu.

My mother flung her hands in the air in exasperation, glanced at my father as much as to say they’d wasted their time for nothing. But I knew, from Alake’s expression, that more was coming.

“They have no souls,” Delu continued, fixing her stern gaze on my mother.

“Can’t you understand? All mortal beings have souls. Just as all mortal beings have bodies.”

“And it’s the bodies we’re worried about,” snapped my mother.

“What Delu is trying to say,” Alake explained, “is that these serpents have no souls and are, therefore, not mortal.”

“Which means they are immortal?” Eliason stared at the girl in shock. “They can’t be killed?”

“We are not certain,” Delu said wearily, rising to her feet. “That is why I thought it best not to bring it up. The Coven has never encountered any creatures like this. We simply do not know.”

“But that is what you surmise?” Dumaka asked.

Delu would have preferred not to answer, it seemed, but after a moment, she concluded she had no choice.

“If what we have discovered is true, then they are not serpents. They are a creature of the genus known anciently as ‘dragon’. The ancients held the dragon to be immortal, but that was probably only because the dragon was nearly impossible to kill. Not that it couldn’t be killed.” She was briefly defiant, but her defiance quickly faded. “The dragon is extremely powerful. Especially in magic.”

“We cannot fight the beasts,” said my father, “and have any hope of winning. Is that what you are saying? Because what I am saying is that it makes no difference to me! We will not voluntarily give up one dwarf—any dwarf—to them. And so will say my people.”