fools.
The woman finished her account with a bold underline. Below, in a black, erratic scrawl, were the words,
Sorrow for the hangman indeed! Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow!
And that was all. But Medrian had learned that if the host were killed, the Serpent would enter the body of the killer. To her, the spidery writing was a perfect graph of his torment.
She stared at the blank end-paper of the book as if willing words to appear on it. She felt bloodless, raw, her lungs full of grit. There must be more, she thought. Is this all there is? I haven’t found everything out yet. What about the thousands of other hosts there have been?
Then she realised.
The truth was inside her, waiting to be explored. All the knowledge and memories were in M’gulfn’s mind, if she only had the courage to look at its thoughts. She had already felt some of the memories, in that strange emotion resembling jealousy. The Serpent, although it had treated all its hosts cruelly, apparently also felt an attachment for them, a sick, possessive love. She recoiled inwardly as she recognised that. Distorted by evil as it was, it was not a parody of affection. It was real.
Closing her eyes and leaning back against the shelf of books, she let herself drift down the Serpent’s corridor of memories. She saw every detail of its long solitary existence in the Arctic snow, the stealing of its eye by the Guardians, all its many hosts, the few hopeless missions to destroy it, the giddying flights across the world that left it torpid and exhausted… She reeled away from its mind, fighting to re-establish her own identity. She had learned… she had learned more than she had ever desired to know. She had felt blood in her mouth…
Medrian staggered to her feet, wavering like a dying tree in a cold wind. I’ve learned the truth; what have I lost? I never had hope anyway, never any hope, she kept telling herself. She tucked the book, The First Witness of the Serpent , under her jacket and smuggled it from the library with the ease of an adept thief. The librarians were locking the doors. Outside, all was darkness.
Medrian wandered from Shalekahh and eventually left Gorethria’s borders, not knowing or caring where she was going. She wandered as if blind, numb to almost everything outside and inside herself.
She was so stricken by the truth she’d discovered at last that she ceased to function. The Serpent could not be suffered to live. Yet it was, she now knew, indestructible. Even she could not endure such a depth of despair within herself, and so instead she stopped feeling and thinking. She let the horse carry her where it would, staring ahead as it plodded on. If anyone spoke to her, they were ignored.
Sometimes she sat and stared at the unmarked last page of the book for hours, searching for some unforeseen revelation there.
Then a nightmare came and shook her out of her stupor. A confusion of impressions, something that the Serpent was experiencing physically, flickering through its mind to hers. Although it had not moved for centuries, it was preparing to fly. To attack.
No!
Like the painful first cry of a baby, her awareness, her thoughts and feelings and nerves, screamed back into life. Don’t attack – not Forluin – not anywhere–
But the Serpent did not listen to Medrian. It flew and ravaged a peaceful island, while she endured the nightmare of vague impressions – blood and death and vertigo – until, sated, it returned to the Arctic and lay in torpor, brooding on its pointless victory.
And Medrian lay awake on the hard ground, wide-eyed and shuddering throughout a long night, while the horse grazed impassively close by. It is not just my suffering, she thought – it is everyone’s; and the hosts – there were thousands before me and there will be thousands after me, and I can do nothing.
When morning came, Medrian had made her decision. She filled in the last page of the book, turning increasingly grey as she wrote, as if she were
The woman finished her account with a bold underline. Below, in a black, erratic scrawl, were the words,
Sorrow for the hangman indeed! Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow!
And that was all. But Medrian had learned that if the host were killed, the Serpent would enter the body of the killer. To her, the spidery writing was a perfect graph of his torment.
She stared at the blank end-paper of the book as if willing words to appear on it. She felt bloodless, raw, her lungs full of grit. There must be more, she thought. Is this all there is? I haven’t found everything out yet. What about the thousands of other hosts there have been?
Then she realised.
The truth was inside her, waiting to be explored. All the knowledge and memories were in M’gulfn’s mind, if she only had the courage to look at its thoughts. She had already felt some of the memories, in that strange emotion resembling jealousy. The Serpent, although it had treated all its hosts cruelly, apparently also felt an attachment for them, a sick, possessive love. She recoiled inwardly as she recognised that. Distorted by evil as it was, it was not a parody of affection. It was real.
Closing her eyes and leaning back against the shelf of books, she let herself drift down the Serpent’s corridor of memories. She saw every detail of its long solitary existence in the Arctic snow, the stealing of its eye by the Guardians, all its many hosts, the few hopeless missions to destroy it, the giddying flights across the world that left it torpid and exhausted… She reeled away from its mind, fighting to re-establish her own identity. She had learned… she had learned more than she had ever desired to know. She had felt blood in her mouth…
Medrian staggered to her feet, wavering like a dying tree in a cold wind. I’ve learned the truth; what have I lost? I never had hope anyway, never any hope, she kept telling herself. She tucked the book, The First Witness of the Serpent , under her jacket and smuggled it from the library with the ease of an adept thief. The librarians were locking the doors. Outside, all was darkness.
Medrian wandered from Shalekahh and eventually left Gorethria’s borders, not knowing or caring where she was going. She wandered as if blind, numb to almost everything outside and inside herself.
She was so stricken by the truth she’d discovered at last that she ceased to function. The Serpent could not be suffered to live. Yet it was, she now knew, indestructible. Even she could not endure such a depth of despair within herself, and so instead she stopped feeling and thinking. She let the horse carry her where it would, staring ahead as it plodded on. If anyone spoke to her, they were ignored.
Sometimes she sat and stared at the unmarked last page of the book for hours, searching for some unforeseen revelation there.
Then a nightmare came and shook her out of her stupor. A confusion of impressions, something that the Serpent was experiencing physically, flickering through its mind to hers. Although it had not moved for centuries, it was preparing to fly. To attack.
No!
Like the painful first cry of a baby, her awareness, her thoughts and feelings and nerves, screamed back into life. Don’t attack – not Forluin – not anywhere–
But the Serpent did not listen to Medrian. It flew and ravaged a peaceful island, while she endured the nightmare of vague impressions – blood and death and vertigo – until, sated, it returned to the Arctic and lay in torpor, brooding on its pointless victory.
And Medrian lay awake on the hard ground, wide-eyed and shuddering throughout a long night, while the horse grazed impassively close by. It is not just my suffering, she thought – it is everyone’s; and the hosts – there were thousands before me and there will be thousands after me, and I can do nothing.
When morning came, Medrian had made her decision. She filled in the last page of the book, turning increasingly grey as she wrote, as if she were
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