Margaret Weis: Serpent Mage

“Lie down. I must lie down.”

Blindly, his vision clouded by his confused thoughts, Alfred stumbled and groped his way along the wall that held many crystal chambers until he came to his own. He would return to it, lie down, sleep ... or maybe wake up. He might be dreaming. He—

“Blessed Sartan!” Alfred fell back with a hoarse cry. Someone was in it! His chamber! A man of early middle years, with a strong, cold, handsome face; strong hands stretched out at his side.

“I am mad!” Alfred clutched at his head. “This . . . this is impossible.” He stumbled back to stare at the woman who was not Lya. “I’ll shut my eyes and when I open them, all will be well again.”

But he didn’t shut his eyes. Not trusting himself to believe what he thought he’d seen, he looked fixedly at the woman. Her hands were folded across her breast—

The hands. The hands moved! They rose . . . fell! She had drawn a breath. He watched closely for long moments; the magical stasis in which they lay slowed breathing. The hands rose and fell again. And now that Alfred was over his initial shock, he could see the faint flush of blood in the woman’s cheeks, a flush that he would never see in Lya’s.

“This woman’s . . . alive!” Alfred whispered.

He staggered across to the crystal chamber that had been his own, but was now another’s, and stared inside it. The man’s clothing—a plain, simple, white robe—stirred. Eyeballs beneath closed lids moved; a finger twitched. Feverishly, his mind overwhelmed, his heart almost bursting with joy, Alfred ran from one crystal chamber to another, staring inside each. There could be no doubt. Every one of these Sartan was alive!

Exhausted, his mind reeling, Alfred returned to the center of the mausoleum and tried to unravel the tangled skein of his thoughts. It was impossible. He couldn’t find the end of the thread, couldn’t find the beginning. His friends in the mausoleum had been dead for many, many years. Time and again he’d left them, time and again he’d returned, and nothing had ever changed. When he’d first realized that he and he alone, out of all the Sartan on Arianus, had survived, he’d refused to believe it. He’d played a game with himself, told himself that this time, when he came back, he’d find them alive. But he never had, and soon the game became so exceedingly painful that he’d quit playing it.

But now the game was back on and, what’s more, he’d won!

Admittedly these Sartan were strangers, every one of them. He had no idea how they came to be here, or why, or what had happened to those he’d left behind. But these people were Sartan and they were alive!

Unless, of course, he was truly insane.

There was one way to find out. Alfred hesitated, not certain he wanted to know.

“Remember what you said about retreating from the world? About no longer getting involved in other people’s lives? You could leave, walk out of this chamber without looking back.”

“But where would I go?” he asked himself helplessly. “This is my home, if anyplace to me is home.”

Curiosity, if nothing else, propelled him to act.

Alfred began to chant the runes, singing them in a high-pitched nasal voice. As he chanted, his body swayed and he moved his hands in time to his rhythm. Then, lifting his hands, he traced the sigla in the air and, at the same time, formed their intricate patterns with his feet.

The body that was so incredibly clumsy when left on its own filled with magic and Alfred became, for an instant, beautiful. Grace flowed through every limb, radiance touched his sad face, bliss lit his smile. He gave himself to the magic, danced with it, sang to it, embraced it. Round and round the mausoleum he solemnly whirled, coattails flying, frayed lace fluttering. One by one, crystal doors opened. One by one, those in the chamber drew their first breaths of air of an outside world. One by one, heads turned, eyes opened, gazing in wonder or confusion, loath to leave the sweet dreams that had entertained them.

Alfred, lost in the magic, noticed nothing. He continued his dance, weaving gracefully back and forth across the marble floor, feet moving in prescribed patterns. When the magical spell was cast, the dance coming to its end, he moved slower and slower, continuing the same graceful gestures, but smaller in scope. At last, he ceased to dance and, lifting his head, gazed about him, far more bewildered than those who had just risen from their dreams. Several hundred men and women, all clad in soft white robes, had gathered in silence around Alfred, politely waiting for him to complete his magic before disturbing him. He came to a halt and they waited another respectful moment, to give him time to let go of the bliss and return to reality, tantamount to falling into an ice-cold lake.

A man, the same Sartan who had been in Alfred’s crystal chamber, stepped forward. He was obviously the acknowledged spokesman of the group, for the others gave way deferentially, regarded him with trust and respect. He was, as Alfred had seen already, a man in early midlife, and it was easy to see, from his appearance, how the mensch had once mistaken the Sartan for gods. His face was cast in strong lines; intelligence molded the features and lit the brown eyes. His hair was trimmed short and curled over his forehead in a fashion that was familiar to Alfred, yet he couldn’t quite recall where he’d seen it.

The strange Sartan moved with a casual grace the clumsy Alfred envied.

“I am Samah,” said the man in a voice that was rich and mellow. He bowed in respectful greeting, an old-fashioned, courtly gesture that had gone out of style long before Alfred’s childhood, but had been occasionally practiced among the elder Sartan.

Alfred made no response. He could do nothing except stare, transfixed. The man had given his Sartan name! [5] Since the Sartan language is magic in and of itself, Sartan have two names: a private name which is magical and could possibly give another Sartan power over them and a public name that tends to nullify magic. This either meant that Samah trusted Alfred—a stranger, an unknown—as a brother or that he was so supremely secure in his own magical prowess he had no need to fear another gaining ascendancy over him. Alfred concluded the reason must be the latter. The man’s power radiated from him, warming the wretched Alfred like the sun on a winter’s day. In ages past, Alfred would have given this man his own Sartan name without a thought, knowing that any influence such a man as this must have over him could only be good. But that had been an Alfred of innocence, an Alfred who had not seen the bodies of his friends and family stretched out in their crystal coffins, an Alfred who had not seen Sartan practicing the forbidden black art of necromancy. He longed to trust them, he would have given his very life to trust them.

“My name is ... Alfred,” he said, with an awkward bob.

“That is not a Sartan name,” said Samah, frowning.

“No,” Alfred agreed meekly.

“It is a mensch name. But you are a Sartan, are you not? You are not a mensch?”

“Yes, I am. That is, no, I’m not,” Alfred floundered, rattled. The Sartan language, as the Patryn language, being magic, has the ability to conjure up images of the worlds and environment of the speaker. Alfred had just witnessed, in Samah’s words, a realm of extraordinary beauty, a realm made entirely of water, its sun shining in its center. A world of smaller worlds—landmasses encased in bubbles of air, landmasses that were themselves magically alive though now they slept, drifting in their dreams around the sun. He saw a Sartan city, his people working, fighting . . . Fighting. War. Battle. Savage monsters crawling from the deep, wreaking havoc, bringing death. The vastly conflicting images came together with a crash in Alfred’s head, nearly depriving him of his senses.