Sara Douglass - The Serpent Bride

Maximilian stood there a long time, the rings silent, before he turned abruptly on his heel and left the chamber.

And the crown of Elcho Falling.

Ishbel sat in her bare chamber, staring unseeing at her hands clasped in her lap.

Tomorrow she was to leave for Margalit. The early negotiations with Maximilian had been successful. He was willing to consider the offer of the “ward” of the Coil — Ishbel’s mouth curled slightly in a smile — as a wife. She’d entertained doubts that Maximilian would even come this far, but he had, and so now she must leave.

Maximilian was sending a deputation to Margalit to meet with Ishbel and to hash out more detailed negotiations. The negotiations could still break down — Ishbel could almost smell the wariness in Maximilian’s initial interest — but they could just as easily progress further, and Ishbel needed to ready herself to commit to marriage.

Ishbel had indeed largely resigned herself to marriage with Maximilian. She still had no idea why the Great Serpent thought such a union would help avert the threatening disaster, but she would do as he (and as this curious frog god) wished. Ishbel had spent the last few weeks discovering all she could about her potential husband, but that was little enough. There had been more details about his harrowing seventeen years spent as a prisoner in the gloam mines, some interesting tales about how he’d been released and how he had defeated Cavor in battle, but very little information about the man himself. Ishbel discovered that Maximilian was respected across the Central Kingdoms, that he had a good relationship with the kings of Pelemere and Kyros, and that his small kingdom of Escator was, indeed, crippled by debt. Ishbel had decided that Maximilian was likely harmless enough, and that his worst fault (apart from some as yet undiscovered socially embarrassing habit) was likely to be a mild dreariness engendered by his long imprisonment.

He certainly had done nothing to set the world afire since his restoration to the throne of Escator.

Ishbel had also steeled herself to accept the sexual intimacy of the marriage. She would endure, if that was what the Great Serpent needed of her.

Additionally, she would endure the necessity of deferring to her husband. She, the archpriestess of the Coil, who had hitherto bowed only before gods.

What Ishbel feared most was the actual leaving of Serpent’s Nest. It had been her only home, her entire world, for most of her life. The mountain was her safety and her comfort, and it shielded her from the horror of the world beyond.

For an instant a memory resurfaced of her mother’s whispering corpse, and Ishbel jerked a little, fighting to keep it at bay.

She was not looking forward at all to her journey to Margalit. Ishbel would be travelling only with a company of guardsmen from Margalit itself. No one from the Coil would be accompanying her. Ishbel understood the necessity for this. She needed to distance herself from them and become the Lady Ishbel Brunelle rather than the archpriestess of the Coil, and Ishbel could not do that if any of the Coil or their servants travelled with her.

There came a knock at her door, and Aziel entered. He came over to Ishbel and sat down beside her on the bed. Wordlessly he picked up her hand, kissed it, then kissed the side of her forehead.

“You will come back,” he said softly, and Ishbel blinked away her tears, and nodded.

She would return.

Since the night he’d looked at the map, Maximilian had either avoided Vorstus, or had avoided speaking to him alone. Maximilian simply did not want to give Vorstus the satisfaction of a reaction.

It irritated Maximilian that Vorstus had not simply come to him and said, “Maxel, an offer of a bride comes out of the Mountain at the Edge of the World. A woman associated with a serpent god, no less. What do you think about that, then?”

Instead, Vorstus had decided to play games.

It took Vorstus eight days before he knocked one evening at the door to Maximilian’s bedchamber as Maximilian was preparing for evening court.

Maximilian waved away the servants, then indicated Vorstus should take a chair. “What can I do for you, Vorstus? You are normally cloistered in your library at this time of night.”

“What did you think of Serpent’s Nest, Maxel?”

Maximilian tugged at the cuffs of his linen shirt, making sure they sat comfortably under his heavy velvet over jacket. “I’d wondered why you did not come to me directly, Vorstus, instead of cloaking this offer in mystery. You know more than you are saying. What?”

“All I know is what I have told you. No one was more shocked than I when I saw that Serpent’s Nest is what was anciently called the Mountain at the Edge of the World.”

Maximilian shot him a deeply cynical look. As Abbot of the Order of Persimius, Vorstus was privy to almost all of its secrets.

“All I know is what I have told you,” Vorstus repeated quietly.

“How coincidental that the Mountain at the Edge of the World is now dedicated to a serpent god.”

“Perhaps just a coincidence.”

Maximilian stopped fiddling with his attire and looked at Vorstus directly. “Is Elcho Falling stirring, Vorstus?”

“I don’t know, Maxel.”

“I am sick of hearing your ‘I don’t knows’!”

“I —”

“Listen to me, Vorstus. I know that you were instrumental in aiding my escape from the Veins, and for that you know I am grateful. But I am not going to spend my life mired in debt to you, nor am I going to put up with you stepping coyly about something that has the power to destroy this entire world. Gods! Have I not had enough darkness in my life? Or do the gods demand something else from me besides losing seventeen years, seventeen years, Vorstus, to those damned, damned gloam mines? Have I not suffered enough”

“If Elcho Falling is waking, Maximilian Persimius, then you must do what needs to be done.”

The patronising idiot, Maximilian thought. “Ah, get out of here, Vorstus.”

Maximilian waited until Vorstus had his hand on the door handle before speaking again.

“One more thing, Vorstus. You know of the Persimius Chamber?”

Vorstus gave a wary nod.

“You know what it contains?”

Another wary nod.

“But you never took Cavor there. You never inducted him into the deeper mysteries of the Persimius throne.”

Vorstus now gave a very reluctant single shake of his head, and Maximilian could see that his hand had grown white-knuckled about the door handle.

“I was standing in the Persimius Chamber the other night, Vorstus, and a strange unsettling thought occurred to me. Here you are, Abbot of the Order of Persimius, and the only one apart from the king and his heir who knows what truly underpins the Persimius throne. But for seventeen years, when everyone save Cavor thought me dead, you never once took the opportunity of inducting Cavor into the mysteries? Should you not have done that? I can perhaps understand you waiting a year or so, hoping for a miracle, but seventeen? ”