Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

Sophie removed her spear from the harness on her back, though she wasn’t at all sure it would have much effect on the snakes if it came to it.

The snakes moved quickly along the path and then split into two groups, curving around on either side of Caitlin and Sophie. They continued up the sheer, slick walls of the tower and came together over the top of the door, where they began to crawl into each other’s mouths. The serpents merged, becoming larger, until finally one huge snake undulated down to bring its eyes on a level with Caitlin and Sophie’s. They glittered red with a disturbing intelligence.

‘Speak your business,’ the snake said with a soft sibilance.

‘A Sister of Dragons and a Fragile Creature are seeking the wisdom of Math,’ Caitlin said.

There was a brief pause before the serpent replied, ‘That name has not been heard since the days of the tribes.’

‘But it still holds, does it not?’ Caitlin persisted. ‘Math, great magician, brother of the goddess Don. He was a friend to Fragile Creatures in times past.’

‘There are no times past,’ the snake hissed. Another pause. Then: ‘Enter, and prove yourself worthy to stand before the Seer of the Seven Worlds.’

With a fizz, the snake dissolved into tiny balls of light that drifted away on the breeze. A second later, the studded door swung open, releasing a heady aroma of incense.

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Sophie whispered.

‘Nor me. When they’re not being pompous, these gods are more than a little sneaky.’

Caitlin stepped over the threshold and made her way to a staircase that wound upwards around the inside of the walls. It was lit intermittently by tiny lanterns, but there were still many troubling pools of shadows. The silence that filled the tower was not peaceful; it felt as if some loud bell was just about to toll.

Caitlin and Sophie moved hesitantly up the stairs, each trailing a hand along the cool wall for support. When they had reached what they guessed was the halfway mark, the atmosphere became oppressive.

‘Can you feel it?’ Sophie asked. ‘Something’s coming.’

A sound like the wind through leaves echoed softly at first from further up the tower, drawing closer. Caitlin and Sophie waited with mounting apprehension, until the first signs of something approaching were indicated by undulating shadows cast by the flickering lanterns.

‘More snakes,’ Caitlin said. ‘Lots of them.’

As they rounded the next bend in the stairway, Caitlin and Sophie saw that these weren’t the light-snakes they had encountered at the foot of the tower, but hard-scaled, sharp-fanged serpents that were undoubtedly real. Yet they had an otherworldly ambience that made them even more menacing. Several were as broad as Sophie’s body, their tails lost in the dim recesses of the upper tower, but the majority ranged from the width of an arm to barely larger than a finger, shimmering greens and scarlets and golds, with strange black patterns along their skin that resembled runes. There were so many snakes that they filled the stairway up to Sophie’s waist, a slow-moving tidal wave that would easily engulf the two women.

Sophie grabbed Caitlin’s arm. ‘Come on. We have to go down.’

‘We can’t,’ Caitlin said desperately. ‘This is our one chance. If we go down, he’ll never let us back up again.’ She turned to Sophie, her face hard and determined. ‘You go. You don’t have to do this.’

‘You’re insane! Look at them.’

The nearest snake had the hood of a cobra, but strange alien growths like mushrooms lined its back. It reared up to bare its fangs, venom sizzling where it splashed on the steps.

‘You’ll never survive one bite,’ Sophie pressed.

Caitlin surveyed the mass of writhing bodies, almost close enough to touch now. Then she said firmly, ‘It’s a test. Math wants to see if we’re up to the honour of meeting him.’

‘Yes, dead or alive, it would seem.’

The nearest snake moved within striking range. Caitlin made her decision and then lay flat on the stairs.

‘What are you doing?’ Sophie said incredulously.

‘He said we had to prove we’re worthy. He wants us on our bellies, supplicating.’

‘You’re mad.’ Sophie looked from Caitlin to the snakes and then back down the stairs. Then she recalled what she and Mallory had had to go through in the temple beneath Cadbury Hill and knew that Caitlin was right. Cursing under her breath, she threw herself down. ‘If I survive I’m never going to forgive you for this.’ She closed her eyes and pressed her face hard into the cold ivory of the steps.

The serpents reached her a second later, a writhing mass pressing down so hard that Sophie felt she might suffocate. The sensation of constant movement above her made the bile rise in her throat. Their skin was dry against her face, forcing their way through her hair, wriggling past her cheeks, under her nose, forcing her lips apart with their tiny bodies, pressing against her eyes.

A minute later she was drowning beneath a sea of serpents, her face crushed into the hard steps, blood on her lips, in her mouth. In a desperate attempt to distract herself from the horror of what was happening, she grunted rhythms in her throat, made up tunes in her head, anything that might take her mind away.

And then the claustrophobia set in and she began to choke, but the weight above her was so great that she couldn’t have lifted herself up from the steps if she tried. Panic rammed rational thoughts aside and she knew, in that instant, how easy it would be to go insane.

The snakes continued to come for what felt like hours, until Sophie couldn’t believe there were so many snakes in all the worlds. Just when she thought her last breath was about to give out, the mass above her grew lighter, and then quickly receded.

Finally, she was on her knees, choking and spitting, unable to believe that she hadn’t received one bite. Caitlin was beside her in the same state, yet strangely smiling. She grabbed Sophie’s arm and indicated down the stairs in the direction the serpents had gone. Sophie looked around, but there were no snakes to be seen anywhere.

‘You’re not telling me that was all in my mind,’ Sophie choked.

‘It was real all right,’ Caitlin said. ‘And we survived.’

After a moment gathering themselves, they started back up the winding stairway. The aroma of incense grew stronger, and eventually the stairway opened out into a room that covered the whole floor at the very top of the tower. Four windows at the cardinal points looked out over the glittering lights of the dreaming city. In front of each sat a creature that resembled an animal, but had the same otherworldly quality as the snakes — a gleam of intelligence in the eye, or an odd movement of the mouth as if it was muttering to itself, or an unusual size.

There was an enormous boar, fat and bristling, its piggy eyes green and furious; a hawk that was almost as big as Sophie; a salmon, again as big as a person, sitting in a large wooden chair, its tail flapping against the wooden floorboards; and a bear, watching them contemptuously. All were fastened in place by an iron chain attached to a ring bolted to the floor. The four beasts radiated an air of menace that made Sophie and Caitlin wary of venturing too close.

Purple drapes covered with gold and silver magical symbols lined the walls between each window, and the floorboards were marked with similar magical symbols. A brazier gave off the heavy incense, while other mystical objects stood around. Several lanterns burning with a dull red light hung on chains from the ceiling; a brass telescope, maps and charts lay on a table, flanked by books and flasks of philtres.

And in the centre of the room, nearly seven feet tall, stood Math. Long black robes covered his entire body and on his head, protruding from a four-holed cowl, was a brass mask with a different face in each of the holes: a boar, a falcon, a salmon and a bear.