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The twitching corpses and the constant whispering drove Ishbel to the brink of insanity. She didn’t want to live. She had gone mad, here in this cold house of death, watching everyone she had ever loved putrefy before her eyes.
Listening to their never-ending whispers.
Prepare, our darling … for the Lord of Elcho Falling.
She tried to starve herself, but one day she had weakened, sobbing, stuffing her mouth with mouldy pastries from the kitchen.
Then she found a knife, and drew it across her wrists, but was too weak to carve deeply, and too cowardly to bear the pain, so the blood just seeped from the thin cuts and Ishbel had not died.
Finally, frantic, crazy, Ishbel had stuffed her ears full of wadding and crept close enough to rub the foul effluent from the cadavers of her parents over her body and face. Then she licked the foulness from her fingers, just to be sure. It made her retch and sob and then scream in horror, but she did it, because surely, surely,this way the plague would manage to take a grip in her body and kill her as mercifully fast as it had killed everyone else in her life.
But all that had happened was that the scars on her wrists became infected, and wept a purulent discharge, and throbbed unbearably.
Ishbel survived.
Whenever she slept, she dreamed of the Lord of Elcho Falling, turning his head ever so slightly so that he could look at her over his shoulder, and engulfing her in sorrow and pain.
She grew thin, her joints aching with the cold and with malnutrition, but she survived.
Outside the crowds waited.
Every so often Ishbel called out to them, letting them know she still existed within, because, no matter how greatly Ishbel wanted to die, she did not want to do so within an inferno.
On this day, huddled in the atrium of the house, Ishbel began to dream about death. She looked at the great staircase that wound its way to the upper floors of the house, and she wondered why she’d never before thought that all she needed to do was to climb to the top, then throw herself down.
Very slowly, because she was now extremely weak, Ishbel crawled on her hands and knees towards the staircase. She was frail, and she would need to take it slowly to get to the top, but get there she would.
Ishbel felt overwhelmed with a great determination. Her death was but an hour away, at the most.
But it took her much longer than an hour to climb the stairs. Ishbel was seriously weak, and she could only crawl up the staircase a few steps at a time before she needed to rest, collapsing and gasping, on the dusty wooden treads.
By late afternoon she was almost there. Every muscle trembled, aching so greatly that Ishbel wept with the pain.
But she was almost there …
Then, as she was within three steps of the top, she heard the front door open.
A faint sound, for the door was far below her, but she heard it open.
Ishbel did not know what to do. She lay on the stairs, trembling, weeping, listening to slow steps ascend the staircase, and wondered if the crowd had sent someone in to murder her.
She was taking far too long to die.
Ishbel closed her eyes, and buried her face in her arms.
“Ishbel?”
A man’s voice, very kind. Ishbel thought she must be dreaming.
“Ishbel.”
Slowly, and crying out softly with the ache of it, Ishbel turned over, opening her eyes.
A man wrapped in a crimson cloak over a similarly-coloured robe stood a few steps down, smiling at her. He was a young man, good-looking, with brown hair that flopped over his forehead, and a long, fine nose.
“Ishbel?” The man held out a hand. “My name is Aziel. Would you like to come live with me?”
She stared at him, unable to comprehend his presence.
Aziel’s smile became gentler, if that were possible. “I have been travelling for weeks to reach you, Ishbel. The Great Serpent himself sent me. He appeared to me in a dream and said that I must hurry to bring you home. He loves you, sweetheart, and so shall I.”
“Are you the Lord of Elcho Falling?” Ishbel whispered, even though she knew he could not be, for he did not drag loss and sorrow at his heels, and there was no darkness clinging to his shoulders.
Aziel frowned briefly, then he shook his head. “My name is Aziel, Ishbel. And I am lord of nothing, only a poor servant of the Great Serpent. Will you come with me?”
“To where?” Ishbel could barely grasp the thought of escape, now.
“To my home,” Aziel said, “and it will be yours. Serpent’s Nest.”
“I do not know of it.”
“Then you shall. Please come with me, Ishbel. Don’t die. You are too precious to die.”
“I don’t need to die?”
Aziel laughed. “Ishbel, you have no idea how greatly we all want you to live, and to live with us. Will you come? Will you?”
Ishbel swallowed, barely able to get the words out. “Are there whispers in your house?”
“Whispers?”
“Do the dead speak in your house?”
Aziel frowned again. “The dying do, from time to time, when they confess to us the Great Serpent’s wishes, but once dead they are mute.”
“Good.”
“Ishbel, come with me, please. Forget about what has happened here. Forget — everything.”
“Yes,” said Ishbel, and stretched out a trembling hand. I will forget, she thought. I will forget everything.
She did not once wonder why this man should have been able so easily to wander through the vindictive crowd outside, or why that crowd should have stood back and allowed him to open the front door without a single murmur.
Two weeks later Aziel brought Ishbel home to Serpent’s Nest. She had spoken little for the entire journey, and nothing at all for the final five days.
Aziel was worried for her.
The archpriestess of the Coil, who worshipped the Great Serpent, led Aziel, carrying the little girl, to a room where awaited food and a bed. They washed Ishbel, made her eat something, then put her to bed, retreating to a far corner of the room to sit watch as she slept.
The archpriestess was an older woman, well into her sixties, called Ional. She looked speculatively at Aziel, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the sleeping form of the child. Aziel was Ional’s partner at Serpent’s Nest, archpriest to her archpriestess, but he was far younger and as yet inexperienced, for he’d replaced the former archpriest only within the past year, after that man had strangely disappeared.
Ional knew she would partner Aziel only for a few more years, until he was well settled into his position as archpriest, and then she would make way for someone younger. Stronger. More Aziel’s match.
Now Ional looked back to the girl.
Ishbel.
“You said,” Ional said very softly, so as to not wake the girl, “that the Great Serpent told you she would not stay for a lifetime.”
“He told me,” said Aziel, “that she would stay many years, but that eventually he would require her to leave. That there would be a duty for her within the wider world, but that she would return and that her true home was here at Serpent’s Nest.”
“She is so little,” said Ional, “but so very powerful. I could feel it the moment you carried her into Serpent’s Nest. How much more shall she need to grow, do you think, before she can assume my duties?”
“When she is strong enough to hold a knife,” said Aziel, “she shall be ready.”
Deep in the abyss the creature stirred, looking upwards with flat, hate-filled eyes.
It whispered, sending the whisper up and outwards with all its might, seething through the crack that Infinity had opened.
It had been sending out its call for countless millennia, and for all those countless millennia, no one had answered.
This day, the creature in the abyss received not one but two replies, and it bared its teeth, and knew its success was finally at hand.
Twenty years passed.
2 (#ulink_845c4075-00f2-52b8-88fd-ea957fcdc2c4)
SERPENT’S NEST, THE OUTLANDS (#ulink_845c4075-00f2-52b8-88fd-ea957fcdc2c4)
The man hung naked and vulnerable, his arms outstretched and chained by the wrists to the wall, his feet barely touching the ground, and likewise chained by the ankle to the wall. He was bathed in sweat caused only partly by the warm, humid conditions of the Reading Room and the highly uncomfortable position in which he had been chained.
He was hyperventilating in terror. His eyes, wide and dark, darted about the room, trying to find some evidence of mercy in the crimson-cloaked and hooded figures standing facing him in a semicircle, just out of blood-splash distance.
He might have begged for mercy, were it not for the gag in his mouth.
A door opened, and two people entered.
The man pissed himself, his urine pooling about his feet, and struggled desperately, uselessly, to free himself from his bonds.
The two arrivals walked slowly into the area contained by the semicircle of witnesses. A man and a woman, they too were cloaked in crimson, although for the moment their hoods lay draped about their shoulders. The man was in middle age, his face thin and lined, his dark hair receding, his dark eyes curiously compassionate, but only as they regarded his companion. When he glanced at the man chained to the wall those eyes became blank and uncaring.
His name was Aziel, and he was the archpriest of the Coil, now gathered in the Reading Room.
The woman was in her late twenties, very lovely with clear hazel eyes and dark blonde hair. She listened to Aziel as he spoke softly to her, then nodded. She turned slightly, acknowledging the semicircle with a small bow — as one they returned the bow — then turned back to face the chained man.
She was the archpriestess of the Coil, Aziel’s equal in leadership of the order, and his superior in Readings.
Ishbel Brunelle, the little girl he had rescued twenty years earlier from her home of horror.
Aziel handed Ishbel a long silken scarf of the same colour as her cloak, and, as Aziel stood back, she slowly and deliberately wound the scarf about her head and face, leaving only her eyes visible. Then, equally slowly and deliberately, her eyes never leaving the chained man, Ishbel lifted the hood of her cloak over her head, pulling it forward so that her scarf-bound face was all but hidden. She arranged her cloak carefully, making certain her robe was protected.
Then, with precision, Ishbel made the sign of the Coil over her belly.
The man bound to the wall was now frantic, his body writhing, his eyes bulging, mews of horror escaping from behind his gag.
Ishbel took no notice.
From a pocket in her cloak she withdrew a small semicircular blade. It fitted neatly into the palm of her hand, the actual slicing edge protruding from between her two middle fingers.
She stepped forward, concentrating on the man.
He was now flailing about as much as he could given the restriction of his restraints, but his movements appeared to cause Ishbel no concern. She moved to within two paces of the man, took a very deep breath, her eyes closing as she murmured a prayer.
“Great Serpent be with me, Great Serpent be part of me, Great Serpent grace me.”
Then Ishbel opened her eyes, stepped forward, lifted her slicing hand and, in a movement honed by twenty years of the study of anatomy and practice both upon the living and the dead, cleanly disembowelled the man with a serpentine incision from sternum to groin.
Blood spurted outwards in a spray, covering Ishbel’s masked and hooded features.
As the man’s intestines bulged outwards Ishbel lifted her slicing hand again and in several quick, deft movements freed the intestines from their abdominal supports, then stepped back nimbly as they tumbled out of the man’s body to lie in a steaming heap at his feet.
The pile of intestines was still attached to the man’s living body by two long, glistening ropes of bowel, stretching downwards. The man himself, still alive, still conscious, stared at them in a combination of disbelief and shock.
The agony had yet to strike.
The man trembled so greatly that the movement carried down the connecting ropes of bowel to the pile at his feet, making them quiver as if they enjoyed independent life.
Ishbel ignored everything save the pile of intestines. Again she stepped forward, this time leaning down to sever the large intestine as it joined the small bowel.
Behind her the semicircle of the Coil began to chant, softly and sibilantly. “Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us. Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us.”
“Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us,” Aziel said, his voice a little stronger than those of the semicircle.
Ishbel had pocketed the slicing blade now, and stood before the intestines, her hands folded in front of her, eyes cast down.
Please, Great Serpent, she said in her mind, grace me with your presence and tell me what is so wrong, and what we may do to aid you.
The man’s intestine began to uncoil. A long length of the large bowel, now independent, rose slowly into the air.
The man had bitten and masticated his way through his gag by now, and he began to shriek, thin harsh sounds that rattled about the chamber.
No one took any notice of him.
All eyes were on the rope of intestine now twisting into the air before the archpriestess.
It shimmered, and then transformed into the head and body of a black serpent, its scales gleaming with the fluids of the man’s body and sending shimmering shafts of rainbow colours about the chamber. Its head grew hideously large, weaving its way forward until it was a bare finger’s distance from Ishbel’s masked face.
Then it began to speak.
