Dreamsnake

Chapter 11

Moonlight shone dimly on the excellent road to Mountainside. Arevin rode late into the night, so immersed in his thoughts that he did not notice when sunset burned daylight into dusk. Though the healers’ station lay days behind him to the north, he still had not encountered anyone with news of Snake. Mountainside was the last place she could be, for there was nothing south of Mountainside. Arevin’s maps of the central mountains showed a herders’ trail, an old unused pass that cut only through the eastern range, and ended. Travelers in the mountains, as well as in Arevin’s country, did not venture into the far southern regions of their world.

Arevin tried not to wonder what he would do if he did not find Snake here. He was not close enough to the crest of the mountains to catch glimpses of the eastern desert, and for that he was glad. If he did not see the storms begin, he could imagine the calm weather lasting longer than usual.

He rounded a wide curve, looked up, and shielded his lantern, blinking. Lights ahead: soft yellow gaslights. The town looked like a basket of sparks spilled out on the slope, all resting together but for a few scattered separately on the valley floor.

Though he had added several towns to his experience, Arevin still found astonishing how much work and business their people did after dark. He decided to continue on to Mountainside tonight: perhaps he could have news of Snake before morning. He wrapped his robe more tightly around himself against the coldness of the night.

Despite himself, Arevin dozed, and did not awaken until his horse’s hooves rang on cobblestones. There was no activity here, so he rode on until he reached the town’s center with its taverns and other places of entertainment. Here it was almost as bright as day, and the people acted as if night had never come. Through a tavern entrance he saw several workers with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing, the contralto slightly flat. The tavern was attached to an inn, so he stopped his horse and dismounted. Thad’s advice about asking for information at inns seemed sound, though as yet none of the proprietors Arevin had talked to had possessed any information to give him.

He entered the tavern. The singers were still singing, drowning out their accompaniment, or whatever tune the flute player in the corner might have been trying to construct. She rested her instrument across her knee, picked up an earthernware mug, and sipped from it: beer, Arevin thought. The pleasant yeasty odor permeated the tavern.

The singers began another song, but the contralto closed her mouth quite suddenly and stared at Arevin. One of the men glanced at her. The song died raggedly as he and her other companions followed her gaze. The flute melody drifted hollowly up, down, and stopped. The attention of everyone in the room centered on Arevin.

“I greet you,” he said formally. “I would like to speak to the proprietor, if that is possible.”

No one moved. Then the contralto stumbled abruptly to her feet, knocking over her stool.

“I’ll — I’ll see if I can find her.” She disappeared through a curtained doorway.

No one spoke, not even the bartender. Arevin did not know what to say. He did not think he was so dusty and dirty as to stun anyone mute, and certainly in a trader’s town like this one people would be accustomed to his manner of dress. All he could think of to do was gaze back at them and wait. Perhaps they would return to their singing, or drink their beer, or ask him if he was thirsty.

They did nothing. Arevin waited.

He felt faintly ridiculous. He took a step forward, intending to break the tension by acting as if everything were normal. But as soon as he moved everyone in the tavern seemed to catch their breath and flinch away from him. The tension in the room was not that of people inspecting a stranger, but of antagonists awaiting an enemy. Someone whispered to another person; the words were inaudible but the tone sounded ominous.

The curtains across the doorway parted and a tall figure paused in the shadows. The proprietor stepped into the light and looked at Arevin steadily, without any fear.

“You wished to speak with me?”

She was as tall as Arevin, elegant and stern. She did not smile. These mountain people were quick to express their feelings, so Arevin wondered if he had perhaps blundered into a private house, or broken a custom he did not know.

“Yes,” he said. “I am looking for the healer Snake. I hoped I might find her in your town.”

“Why do you think you’d find her here?”

If all travelers were spoken to so rudely in Mountainside, Arevin wondered how it managed to be so prosperous.

“If she isn’t here, she must never have reached the mountains at all — she must still be in the western desert. The storms are coming.”

“Why are you looking for her?”

Arevin permitted himself a slight frown, for the questions had passed the limits of mere rudeness.

“I do not see that that is any of your business,” he said. “If common civility is not the custom in your house, I will ask elsewhere.”

He turned and nearly walked into two people with insignia on their collars and chains in their hands.

“Come with us, please.”

“For what reason?”

“Suspicion of assault,” the other one said.

Arevin looked at him in utter astonishment. “Assault? I’ve not been here more than a few minutes.”

“That will be determined,” the first one said. She reached for his wrist to lock shackles on him. He pulled back with revulsion, but she kept her grip. He struggled and both people came at him. In a moment they were all flailing away at each other, with the bar patrons shouting encouragement. Arevin hit at his two assailants and lurched almost to his feet. Something smacked against the side of his head. He felt his knees go weak, and collapsed.

Arevin woke in a small stone room with a single high window. His head ached fiercely. He did not understand what had happened, for the traders to whom his clan sold cloth spoke of Mountainside as a place of fair people. Perhaps these town bandits only preyed on solitary travelers, and left well-protected caravans alone. His belt, with all his money and his knife, was gone. Why he was not lying dead in an alley somewhere, he did not know. At least he was no longer chained.

Sitting up slowly, pausing when movement dizzied him, he looked around. He heard footsteps in the corridor, jumped to his feet, stumbled, and pulled himself up to look out through the bars on the tiny opening in the door. The footsteps receded, running.

“Is this how you treat visitors to your town?” Arevin shouted. His even temper took a considerable amount of perturbation to disarrange, but he was angry.

No one answered. He unclenched his hands from the bars and let himself back to the floor. He could see nothing outside his prison but another stone wall. The window was too high to reach, even if he moved the heavy-timbered bed and stood on it. All the light in the room was reflected downward from a vague sunny patch on the wall above. Someone had taken Arevin’s robe, and his boots, and left him nothing but his long loose riding trousers.

Calming himself slowly, he set himself to wait.

Halting footsteps — a lame person, a cane — came down the stone corridor toward his cell. This time Arevin simply waited.

The key clattered and the door swung open. Guards, wearing the same insignia as his assailants of the night before, entered first, cautiously. There were three of them, which seemed strange to Arevin since he had not even been able to overpower two the night before. He did not have much experience at fighting. In his clan, adults gently parted scuffling children and tried to help them settle their differences with words.

Supported by a helper as well as by the cane, a big darkhaired man entered the cell. Arevin did not greet him or rise. They stared at each other steadily for several moments.

“The healer is safe, from you at least,” the big man said. His helper left him for an instant to drag a chair in from the hall. As the man sat down Arevin could see that he was not congenitally lame, but injured: his right leg was heavily bandaged.

“She helped you, too,” Arevin said. “So why do you set upon those who would find her?”

“You feign sanity well. But I expect once we watch you for a few days you’ll go back to raving.”

“I have no doubt I’ll begin raving if you leave me here for long,” Arevin said.

“Do you think we’d leave you loose to go after the healer again?”

“Is she here?” Arevin asked anxiously, abandoning his reserve. “She must have got out of the desert safely if you’ve seen her.”

The dark-haired man gazed at him for some seconds. “I’m surprised to hear you speak of her safety,” he said. “But I suppose inconsistency is what one should expect of a crazy.”

“A crazy!”

“Calm yourself. We know about your attack on her.”

“Attack — ? Was she attacked? Is she all right? Where is she?”

“I think it would be safer for her if I told you nothing.”

Arevin looked away, seeking some means of concentrating his thoughts. A peculiar mixture of confusion and relief possessed him. At least Snake was out of the desert. She must be safe.

A flaw in a stone block caught the light. Arevin gazed at the sparkling point, calming himself.

He looked up, nearly smiling. “This argument is foolish. Ask her to come see me. She’ll tell you we are friends.”

“Indeed? Who should we tell her wants to see her?”

“Tell her… the one whose name she knows.”

The big man scowled. “You barbarians and your superstitions — !”

“She knows who I am,” Arevin said, refusing to submit to his anger.

“You’d confront the healer?”

“Confront her!”

The big man leaned back in his chair and glanced at his assistant. “Well, Brian, he certainly doesn’t talk like a crazy.”

“No, sir,” the older man said.

The big man stared at Arevin, but his eyes were really focused on the wall of the cell behind him. “I wonder what Gabriel—” He cut off his words, then glanced at his assistant. “He did sometimes have good ideas in situations like this.” He sounded slightly embarrassed.

“Yes, mayor, he did.”

There was a longer and more intense silence. Arevin knew that in a few moments the guards and the mayor and the old man Brian would get up and leave him alone in the tiny squeezing cell. Arevin felt a drop of sweat roll down his side.

“Well…” the mayor said.

“Sir — ?” One of the guards spoke in a hesitant voice.

The mayor turned toward her. “Well, speak up. I’ve no stomach for imprisoning innocents, but we’ve had enough madmen loose recently.”

“He was surprised last night when we arrested him. Now I believe his surprise was genuine. Mistress Snake fought with the crazy, mayor. I saw her when she returned. She won the fight, and she had serious abrasions. Yet this man is not even bruised.”

Hearing that Snake was injured, Arevin had to restrain himself from asking again if she was all right. But he would not beg anything of these people.

“That seems true. You’re very observant,” the mayor said to the guard. “Are you bruised?” he asked Arevin.

“I am not.”

“You’ll forgive me if I insist you prove it.”

Arevin stood up, intensely disliking the idea of stripping himself before strangers. But he unfastened his pants and let them fall around his ankles. He let the mayor look him over, then slowly turned. At the last moment he remembered he had been in a fight the night before and could very well be visibly bruised somewhere. But no one said anything, so he turned around again and put his pants back on.

Then the old man came toward him. The guards stiffened. Arevin stood very still. These people might consider any move threatening.

“Be careful, Brian,” the mayor said.

Brian lifted Arevin’s hands, looked at the backs, turned them over, peered at the palms, let them drop. He returned to his place by the mayor’s side.

“He wears no rings. I doubt he’s ever worn any. His hands are tanned and there’s no mark. The healer said the cut on her forehead was made by a ring.”

The mayor snorted. “So what do you think?”

“As you said, sir, he doesn’t talk like a crazy. Also, a crazy would not necessarily be stupid, and it would be stupid to ask after the healer while wearing desert robes, unless one was in fact innocent — of both the crime and the knowledge of it. I am inclined to take this man at his word.“

The mayor glanced up at his assistant and over at the guard. “I hope,” he said, in a tone not altogether bantering, “that you’ll give me fair warning if either of you ever decides to run for my job.” He looked at Arevin again. “If we let you see the healer, will you wear chains until she identifies you?”

Arevin could still feel the iron from the night before, trapping him, enclosing him, cold on his skin all the way to his bones. But Snake would laugh at them when they suggested chains. This time Arevin did smile.

“Give the healer my message,” he said. “Then decide whether I need to be chained.”

Brian helped the mayor to his feet. The mayor glanced at the guard who believed in Arevin’s innocence. “Stay ready. I’ll send for him.”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The guard returned, with her companions and with chains. Arevin stared horrified at the clanking iron. He had hoped Snake would be the next person through that door. He stood up blankly as the guard approached him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She fastened a cold metal band around his waist, shackled his left wrist and passed the chain through a ring on the waistband, then locked the cuff around his right wrist. They led him into the hall.

He knew Snake would not have done this. If she had, then the person who existed in his mind had never existed in reality at all. A real, physical death, hers or even his own, would have been easier for Arevin to accept.

Perhaps the guards had misunderstood. The message that came to them might have been garbled, or it was sent so quickly that no one remembered to tell them not to bother about the chains. Arevin resolved to bear this humiliating error with pride and good humor.

The guards led him into daylight that momentarily dazzled him. Then they were inside again, but his eyes were misadjusted to the dimness. He climbed stairs blindly, stumbling now and then.

The room they took him to was also nearly dark. He paused in the doorway, barely able to make out the blanket-wrapped figure sitting in a chair with her back to him.

“Healer,” one of the guards said, “here is the one who says he’s your friend.”

She did not speak or move.

Arevin stood frozen with terror. If someone had attacked her — if she was badly injured, if she could no longer talk or move, or laugh when they suggested chains — He took one fearful step toward her, another, wanting to rush to her and say he would care for her, wanting to flee and never have to remember her except as alive and whole and strong.

He could see her hand, limply dangling. He fell to his knees beside the shrouded form.

“Snake—”

The shackles made him awkward. He took her hand and bent to kiss it.

As soon as he touched her, even before he saw the smooth, unscarred skin, he knew this was not Snake. He flung himself backward with a cry of despair.

“Where is she?”

The shrouded figure threw off the blanket with a cry of her own, one of shame. She knelt before Arevin, hands outstretched to him, tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please forgive me—” She slumped down, her long hair hanging around her beautiful face.

The mayor limped out of the darkness in a corner of the room. Brian helped Arevin up this time, and in a moment the chains clattered to the floor.

“I had to have some better assurance than bruises and rings,” the mayor said. “I believe you now.”

Arevin heard the sounds but not the meanings. He knew Snake was not here at all, not anywhere. She would never have participated in this farce.

“Where is she?” he whispered.

“She’s gone. She went to the city. To Center.”

Arevin sat on a luxurious couch in one of the mayor’s guest rooms. It was the same room where Snake had stayed, but try as he might, Arevin could feel nothing of her presence.

The curtains were open to the darkness. Arevin had not moved since returning from the observation point, where he had looked down upon the eastern desert and the rolling masses of storm clouds. The killing winds turned sharp-edged sand grains into lethal weapons. In the storm, heavy clothing would not protect Arevin, nor would any amount of courage or desperation. A few moments in the desert would kill him; an hour would strip his bones bare. In the spring no trace of him would be left.

If Snake was still in the desert, she was dead.

He did not cry. When he knew she was gone he would mourn her. But he did not believe she was dead. He wondered if it were foolish to believe he would know if Snake no longer lived. He had thought many things about himself, but never before that he was a fool. Stavin’s older father, Arevin’s cousin, had known when the little one was ill; he had come back a month early with one of the herds. His ties with Stavin were ties of love and of family, not of blood. Arevin made himself believe the same abilities would work in him.

Someone knocked on Arevin’s door.

“Come in,” he said reluctantly.

Larril, the servant woman who had pretended to be Snake, entered the room.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like some dinner?”

“I thought she was safe,” Arevin said. “But she’s in the desert and the storms have begun.”

“She had time to get to Center,” Larril said. “She left in plenty of time.”

“I’ve learned a great deal about that city,” Arevin said. “Its people can be cruel. Suppose they would not let her in?”

“She even had time to come back.”

“But she isn’t back. No one has seen her. If she were here, everyone would know.”

He took Larril’s silence as acquiescence and they both stared morosely out the window.

“Maybe—” Larril cut herself off.

“What?”

“Maybe you should rest and wait for her, you’ve been searching so many places—”

“That isn’t what you planned to say.”

“No…”

“Please tell me.”

“There’s one more pass, to the south. No one ever uses it any more. But it’s closer to Center than we are.”

“You’re right,” he said slowly, trying to reconstruct the map precisely in his mind. “Might she have gone there?”

“You must have heard these words so often,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But I thank you,” Arevin said. “I might have seen it myself when I looked at the map again, or I might have given up hope. I’ll leave for there tomorrow.” He shrugged. “I tried to wait for her once and I could not. If I try again I’ll become the crazy you all feared me to be. I’m in your debt.”

She looked away. “Everyone in this house owes you a debt, one that can’t even be paid.”

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s forgotten.”

That seemed to give her some comfort. Arevin looked out the window again.

“The healer was kind to me, and you are her friend,” Larril said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” Arevin said. “Nothing.”

She hesitated, turned, and walked away. After a moment Arevin realized he had not heard the door close. He glanced over his shoulder just as it swung shut.

The crazy still could not or would not remember his name.

Or maybe, Snake thought, he comes from a clan like Arevin’s, and he doesn’t tell his name to strangers.

Snake could not imagine the crazy in Arevin’s clan. His people were steady and self-possessed; the crazy was dependent and erratic. One minute he thanked her for the promised dreamsnake, the next he wept and moaned that he was as good as dead, for North would kill him. Telling him to keep silent made no difference at all.

Snake was glad to be back in the mountains where they could travel by day. The morning was cool and eerie, the trails narrow and fog-laden. The horses waded through the mist like aquatic creatures, tendrils swirling around their legs. Snake inhaled deeply until the cold air hurt her lungs. She could smell the fog, and the rich humus, and the faint spicy tang of pitch. The world lay green and gray around her, for the leaves on the overhanging trees had not yet begun to turn. Higher on the mountain, the darker evergreens looked almost black through the fog.

Melissa rode right next to her, silent and watchful. She would not stay any closer to the crazy than she had to. He was audible but not visible, somewhere behind them. His old horse could not quite keep up with Swift and Squirrel, but at least Snake did not have to stand for riding double anymore.

His voice grew fainter and fainter. Impatiently, Snake reined Swift in to let him catch up. Melissa stopped even more reluctantly. The crazy had refused to ride any better animal; only this one was calm enough for him. Snake had had to press payment on the horse’s owners, and she did not think the young herders had tried to refuse to sell it to her because they were not glad to get rid of it or because they wanted a higher price. Jean and Kev had been embarrassed. Well, no less was Snake.

The horse shambled through the mist, eyelids drooping, ears flopping. The crazy hummed tunelessly.

“Does the trail look familiar yet?”

The crazy gazed smiling at her. “It’s all the same to me,” he said, and laughed.

Snapping at him, cajoling him, threatening him did no good. He did not seem to be in pain or in need anymore, since being promised a dreamsnake, as if the expectation were sufficient to maintain him. He hummed and muttered contentedly and made incomprehensible jokes, and sometimes straightened up, looked around, exclaimed “Ever southward!” and subsided into tuneless songs again. Snake sighed and let the crazy’s broken down old horse pass them so the crazy could lead.

“I don’t think he’s taking us anyplace, Snake,” Melissa said. “I think he’s just leading us around so we have to take care of him. We ought to leave him here and go somewhere else.”

The crazy stiffened. Slowly, he turned around. The old horse stopped. Snake was surprised to see a tear spill from the crazy’s eye and drip down his cheek.

“Don’t leave me,” he said. His expression and his tone of voice were simply pitiful. Before this he had not seemed capable of caring so much about anything at all. He gazed at Melissa, blinking his lashless eyelids. “You’re right not to trust me, little one,” he said. “But please don’t abandon me.” His eyes became unfocused and his words came from very far away. “Stay with me to the broken dome, and we’ll both have our own dreamsnakes. Surely your mistress will give you one.” He leaned toward her, reaching out, his fingers curved like claws. “You forget bad memories and troubles, you’ll forget your scars—”

Melissa jerked back from him with an incoherent curse of surprise and anger. She clamped her legs against Squirrel’s sides and put the tiger-pony into a gallop from a standstill, leaning close over his neck and never looking back. In a moment the trees obscured all but the muffled thud of Squirrel’s hooves.

Snake glared at the crazy. “How could you say such a thing to her?”

He blinked, confused. “What did I say wrong?”

“You follow us, you understand? Don’t go off the trail. I’ll find her and we’ll wait for you.” She touched Swift’s sides with her heels and cantered after Melissa. The crazy’s uncomprehending voice drifted after her.

“But why did she do that?”

Snake was not worried about Melissa’s safety, or Squirrel’s. Her daughter could ride any horse in these mountains all day and never put herself or her mount in danger. On the dependable tiger-pony she was doubly safe. But the crazy had hurt her and Snake did not want to leave her alone right now.

She did not have to go far. Where the trail started to rise again, turning toward the slope of the valley and another mountain, Melissa stood beside Squirrel, hugging his neck as he nuzzled her shoulder. Hearing Swift approach, Melissa wiped her face on her sleeve and looked around. Snake dismounted and went toward her.

“I was afraid you’d go a long way,” she said. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“You can’t expect a horse to run uphill just after he’s been lame,” Melissa said matter-of-factly, but with a trace of resentment.

Snake held out the reins of Swift’s bridle. “If you want to ride hard and fast for a while you can take Swift.”

Melissa stared at her as if trying to perceive some sarcasm in her expression that had been absent from her tone. She did not find it.

“No,” Melissa said. “Never mind. Maybe it would help, but I’m all right. It’s just — I don’t want to forget. Not like that, anyway.“

Snake nodded. “I know.”

Melissa embraced her with one of her abrupt, self-conscious hugs. Snake held her and patted her shoulder. “He is crazy.”

“Yeah.” Melissa drew back slowly. “I know he can help you. I’m sorry I can’t keep from hating him. I’ve tried.”

“So have I,” Snake said.

They sat down to wait for the crazy to come at his own slow pace.

Before the crazy had even begun to recognize the countryside or the trail, Snake saw the broken dome. She looked at its hulking shape several moments before she realized, with a start, what it was. At first it looked like another peak of the mountain ridge; its color, gray instead of black, attracted Snake’s attention. She had expected the usual hemisphere, not a tremendous irregular surface that lay across the hillside like a quiescent amoeba. The main translucent gray was streaked with colors and reddened by afternoon sunlight. Whether the dome had been constructed in an asymmetrical form or whether it began as a round plastic bubble and was melted and deformed by the forces of the planet’s former civilization, Snake could not tell. But it had been in its present shape for a long, long time. Dirt had settled in the hollows and valleys in its surface, and trees and grass and bushes grew thick in the sheltered pockets.

Snake rode in silence for a minute or two, hardly able to believe she had finally reached this goal. She touched Melissa’s shoulder; the child looked up abruptly from the indeterminate spot on Squirrel’s neck at which she had been staring. Snake pointed. Melissa saw the dome and exclaimed softly, then smiled with excitement and relief. Snake grinned back.

The crazy sang behind them, oblivious to their destination. A broken dome. The words fit together strangely. Domes did not break, they did not weather, they did not change. They simple existed, mysterious and impenetrable.

Snake stopped, waiting for the crazy. When the old horse shambled up and stopped beside her, she pointed upward. The crazy followed with his gaze. He blinked as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing.

“Is that it?” Snake asked.

“Not yet,” the crazy said. “No, not yet, I’m not ready.”

“How do we get up there? Can we ride?”

“North will see us…”

Snake shrugged and dismounted. The way to the dome was steep and she could see no trail. “We walk, then.” She unfastened the girth straps of the mare’s saddle. “Melissa—”

“No!” Melissa said sharply. “I won’t stay down here while you go up there alone with that one. Squirrel and Swift will be okay and nobody will bother the case. Except maybe another crazy and they’ll deserve what they get.”

Snake was beginning to understand why her own strong will had so often exasperated the older healers, when she was Melissa’s age. But at the station there had never been much serious danger, and they could afford to indulge her.

Snake sat down on a fallen log and motioned to her daughter to sit beside her. Melissa did so, without looking up at Snake, her shoulders set in defiance.

“I need your help,” Snake said. “I can’t succeed without you. If something happens to me—”

“That’s not succeeding!”

“In a way it is. Melissa… the healers need dreamsnakes. Up in that dome they have enough to use them for play. I have to find out how they got them. But if I can’t, if I don’t come back down, you’re the only way the other healers will be able to know what happened to me. And why it happened. You’re the only way they’ll know about the dreamsnakes.”

Melissa stared at the ground, robbing the knuckles of one hand with the fingernails of the other. “This is very important to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Melissa sighed. Her hands were fists. “All right,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

Snake hugged her. “If I’m not back in, oh, two days, take Swift and Squirrel and ride north. Keep on going past Mountainside and Middlepass. It’s a long way, but there’s plenty of money in the case. You know how to get it safely.”

“I have my wages,” Melissa said.

“All right, but the other’s just as much yours. You don’t need to open the compartments Mist and Sand are in. They can survive until you get home.” For the first time she actually considered the possibility that Melissa might have to make the trip alone. “Sand is getting too fat anyway.” She forced a smile.

“But—” Melissa cut herself off.

“What?”

“If something does happen to you, I couldn’t get back in time to help, not if I go all the way to the healers’ station.”

“If I don’t come back on my own, there won’t be any way to help me. Don’t come after me by yourself. Please. I need to know you won’t.”

“If you don’t come back in three days, I’ll go tell your people about the dreamsnakes.”

Snake let her have the extra day, with some gratitude, in fact. “Thank you, Melissa.”

They let the tiger-pony and the gray mare loose in a clearing near the trail. Instead of galloping toward the meadow and rolling in the grass, they stood close together, watchful and nervous, their ears swiveling, nostrils wide. The crazy’s old horse stood in the shade alone, his head down. Melissa watched them, her lips tight.

The crazy stood where he had dismounted, staring at Snake, tears in his eyes.

“Melissa,” Snake said, “if you do go home alone, tell them I adopted you. Then — then they’ll know you’re their daughter too.”

“I don’t want to be their daughter. I want to be yours.”

“You are. No matter what.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is there a trail?” she asked the crazy. “What’s the quickest way up?”

“No trail… it opens before me and closes behind me.”

Snake could feel Melissa restraining a sarcastic remark. “Let’s go, then,” she said, “and see if your magic will work for more than one.”

She hugged Melissa one last time. Melissa held tight, reluctant to let her go.

“It’ll be all right,” Snake said. “Don’t worry.”

The crazy climbed surprisingly quickly, almost as if a path really did open up for him, and for him alone. Snake had to work hard to keep up with him, and sweat stung her eyes. She scrambled up a few meters of harsh black stone and grabbed his robe. “Not so fast.”

His breath came quickly, from excitement, not effort. “The dreamsnakes are near,” he said. He jerked his robe from her hand and scuttled up sheer rock. Snake wiped her forehead on her sleeve, and climbed.

The next time she caught him she grabbed him by the shoulder and did not let go until he sank down on a ledge.

“We’ll rest here,” she said, “and then we’ll go on, more slowly and more quietly. Otherwise your friends will know we’re coming before we’re ready to have them know.”

“The dreamsnakes—”

“North is between us and the dreamsnakes. If he sees you first will he let you go on?”

“You’ll give me a dreamsnake? One of my own? Not like North?”

“Not like North,” Snake said. She sat in a narrow wedge of shade, leaning her head back against the volcanic rock. In the valley below, an edge of the meadow showed between dark evergreen branches, but neither Swift nor Squirrel was in that part of the clearing. It looked like a small scrap of velvet from this distance. Suddenly Snake felt both isolated and lonely.

Nearby, the rock was not so barren as it appeared from below. Lichen lay in green-gray patches here and there, and small fat-leaved succulents nestled in shady niches. Snake leaned forward to see one more closely. Against black rock, in shadow, its color was indistinct.

She sat back abruptly.

Picking up a shard of rock, Snake leaned forward again and knelt over the squat blue-green plant. She poked at its leaves. They closed down tight.

It’s escaped, Snake thought. It’s from the broken dome.

She should have expected something like this; she should have known she would find things that did not belong on the earth. She prodded it again, from the same side. It was, indeed, moving. It would crawl all the way down the mountain if she let it. She slipped the rock’s point beneath it and lifted the plant out of the crevice, rolling it upside down. Except for the bristle of rootlets in its center, it looked just the same, its brilliant turquoise leaves rotating on their bases, seeking a hold. Snake had never seen this species before, but she had seen similar creatures, plants — they did not fit into the normal classifications — take over a field in a night, poisoning the ground so nothing else would grow. One summer several years before she and the other healers had helped burn off a swarm of them from nearby farms. They had not swarmed again, but little colonies of them still turned up from time to time, and the fields they had taken over were barren.

She wanted to burn this one but could not risk a fire now. She pushed it out of the shadows into sunlight and it closed up tight. Now Snake noticed that here and there lay the shriveled hulls of other crawlies, dead and sun-dried, defeated by the barren cliff.

“Let’s go,” Snake said, more to herself than to the crazy.

She chinned herself over the edge of the cliff to the broken dome’s hollow. The strangeness of the place hit Snake like a physical blow. Alien plants grew all around the base of the tremendous half-collapsed structure, nearly to the cliff, leaving no clear path at all. What covered the ground resembled nothing Snake knew, not grass or scrub or bushes. It was a flat, borderless expanse of bright red leaf. Looking closer, Snake could see that it was more than a single huge leaf: each section was perhaps twice as long as she was tall, irregularly shaped, and joined at the edges to neighboring leaves by a system of intertwining hairs. Wherever more than two leaves touched, a delicate frond rose a few handsbreadths from the intersection. Wherever a fissure split the stone, a turquoise streak of crawlies parted the red ground cover, seeking shadow as deliberately as the red leaves spread themselves for light. Someday several crawlies at once would overcome the long sloping exposed cliff face and then they would take over the valley below: someday, when weather and heat and cold opened more sheltering cracks in the stone.

The depressions in the surface of the dome retained some normal vegetation, for the crawlies’ reproductive tendrils could not reach that far. If this species was anything like the similar one Snake had seen, it produced no seeds. But other alien plants had reached the top of the dome, for the melted hollows were filled randomly, some with ordinary green, others with bold, unearthly colors. In a few of the seared, heat-sunken pockets, high above the ground, the colors warred together, one not yet having overcome the other.

Inside the translucent dome, tall shapes showed as shadows, indistinct and strange. Between the edge of the cliff and the dome there was no cover, nor was there any other approach. Snake became painfully aware of her visibility, for she was standing silhouetted against the sky.

The crazy clambered up beside her. “We follow the path,” he said, pointing across the flat-leaves that no trail parted. In more than one place dark veins of crawlies cut the line he indicated.

Snake stepped forward and put her boot carefully on the edge of a flat-leaf. Nothing happened. It was no different from stepping on an ordinary leaf. Beneath it, the ground felt as solid as any other stone.

The crazy passed her, striding toward the dome. Snake grabbed his shoulder.

“The dreamsnakes!” he cried. “You promised!”

“Have you forgotten that North banished you? If you could just come back here, why did you look for me?”

The crazy stared at the ground. “He won’t like to see me,” he whispered.

“Stay behind me,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”

Snake started across the barely yielding leaves, placing her feet cautiously in case the wide red sheets hid a crack the blue creepers had not yet taken over. The crazy followed.

“North likes new people,” he said. “He likes it when they come and ask him to let them dream.” His voice grew wistful. “Maybe he’ll like me again.”

Snake’s boots left marks on the red flat-leaves, blazing her path across the outcropping that held the broken dome. She only looked back once: her footsteps lay in livid purple bruises against red all the way back to the cliff edge. The crazy’s trail was much fainter. He crept along behind her, a little to one side so he could always see the dome, not quite as frightened of this person North as he was attracted by the dreamsnakes.

The oblong bubble was even larger than it looked from the cliff. Its translucent flank rose in an immense and gentle curve to the highest point of the surface, many times Snake’s height. The side she approached was streaked with multicolored veins. They did not fade to the original gray until they reached the far end of the dome, a long way to Snake’s right. To her left, the streaks grew brighter as they approached the structure’s narrower end.

Snake reached the dome. The flat-leaves grew up along its sides to the level of her knees, but above that the plastic was clean. Snake put her face up close to the wall, peering between a stripe of orange and one of purple, cutting off the exterior light with her hands, but the shapes inside were still indistinct and strange. Nothing moved.

She followed the intensifying bands of color.

As she rounded the narrow end, she saw why it was called the broken dome. Whatever had melted the surface had a power Snake could not comprehend, for it had also blasted an opening in a material she believed indestructible. The rainbow streaks radiated from the hole along buckled plastic. The heat must have crystallized the substance, for the edges of the opening had broken away, leaving a huge, jagged entrance. Globs of plastic, fluorescent colors glowing between the leaves of alien plants, lay all over the ground.

Snake approached the entrance cautiously. The crazy began his half-humming moan again.

“Sh-h!” Snake did not turn back, but he subsided.

Fascinated, Snake climbed through the hole. She felt the sharp edges against her palms but did not really notice them. Beyond the opening, where the side wall, when intact, had curved inward to form the roof, an entire archway of plastic was slumped to barely more than Snake’s height. Here and there the plastic had run and dripped and formed ropes from ceiling to floor. Snake reached out and touched one gently. It thrummed like a giant harp string, and she grabbed it quickly to silence it.

The light inside was reddish and eerie; Snake kept blinking her eyes, trying to clear her vision. But nothing was wrong with her sight except that it could not become accustomed to the alien landscape. The dome had enclosed an alien jungle, now gone wild, and many more species than crawlies and flat-leaves crowded the ground. A great vine with a stem bigger around than the largest tree Snake had ever seen climbed up the wall, huge suckers probing the now brittle plastic, punching through to precarious holds in the dome. The vine spread a canopy across the ceiling, its bluish leaves tiny and delicate, its flowers tremendous but made up of thousands of white petals even smaller than the leaves.

Snake moved farther inside, to where the melting, less severe, had not collapsed the ceiling. Here and there a vine had crept up the edge, then, where the plastic was both too strong to break and too slick to grasp, dropped back to earth. After the vines, the trees took over, or what passed for trees inside the dome. One stood on a hummock nearby: a tangled mass of woody stalks, or limbs, piled and twisted far above Snake’s head, spreading slowly as it rose to shape the plant into a cone.

Recalling the crazy’s vague description, Snake pointed toward a central hill that rose almost to touch the plastic sky. “That way, hm?” She found herself whispering.

Crouched behind her, the crazy mumbled something that sounded affirmative. Snake set out, passing beneath the lacy shadows of the tangle-trees and through occasional areas of colored light where the dome’s rainbow wounds filtered sunlight. As Snake walked she listened carefully, for the sound of another human voice, for the faint hissing of nested serpents, for anything. But even the air was still.

The ground began to rise: they reached the foot of the hill. Here and there black volcanic rock pierced the topsoil, the alien earth for all Snake knew. It looked ordinary enough, but the plants growing from it did not. Here the ground cover looked like fine brown hair and had the same slick texture. The crazy led on, following a trail that was not there. Snake trudged after him. The hillside steepened and sweat beaded on her forehead. Her knee began to ache again. She cursed softly under her breath. A pebble rolled beneath the hair plants she stepped on and her boot slipped out from under her. Snake snatched at the grass to break her fall. It held long enough to steady her, but when she stood again she held a handful of the thin stalks. Each piece had its own delicate root, as if it really were hair.

They climbed higher, and still no one challenged them. The sweat on Snake’s forehead dried: the air was growing cooler. The crazy, grinning and mumbling to himself, climbed more eagerly. The coolness became a whisper of air running downhill like water. Snake had expected the hilltop, right up under the crown of the dome, to be warm with trapped heat. But the higher she climbed, the colder and stronger the breeze became.

They passed through the area of hill-hair and entered another stand of trees. These were similar to the ones below, formed of tangled branches and compact twisted roots, with tiny fluttering leaves. Here, though, they grew only a few meters high, and they clustered together in small groves of three or more, deforming each other’s symmetry. The forest thickened. Finally, winding between the twisted trunks, a pathway appeared. As the forest closed in over her, Snake caught up with the crazy and stopped him.

“From now on stay behind me, all right?”

He nodded without looking at her.

The dome diffused sunlight so nothing cast a shadow, and the light was barely bright enough to penetrate the twisting, knotted branches overhead. Tiny leaves shivered in the cold breeze blowing through the forest corridor. Snake moved forward. The rocks beneath her boots had given way to a soft trail of humus and fallen leaves.

To the right a tremendous chunk of rock rose up out of the hillside at a gentle slant, forming a ledge that would overlook the larger part of the dome. Snake considered climbing out on it, but it would put her in full view. She did not want North and his people to be able to accuse her of spying, nor did she want them to know of her presence until she walked into their camp. Pressing on, she shivered, for the breeze had become a cold wind.

She glanced around to be sure the crazy was following her. As she did, he scurried up toward the rock ledge, waving his arms. Startled, Snake hesitated. Her first thought was that he had decided again to die. In that instant Melissa dashed after him.

“North!” he cried, and Melissa flung herself at his knees, hitting him with her shoulder and knocking him down. Snake ran toward them as Melissa fought to keep him from getting up and he fought to free himself. His single shout echoed and reechoed, rebounding from the walls and melted undulations of the dome. Melissa struggled with the crazy, half-tangled in his emaciated limbs and his voluminous desert robes, fumbling for her knife and somehow managing to keep her hold on his legs.

Snake pulled Melissa away from him, as gently as she could. The crazy lurched around, ready to scream again, but Snake drew her own knife and held it beneath his chin. Her other hand was clenched in a fist. She opened it slowly, forcing her anger away.

“Why did you do that? Why? We had an agreement.”

“North—” he whispered. “North will be angry with me. But if I bring him new people…” His voice trailed off.

Snake looked at Melissa, and Melissa looked at the ground.

“I didn’t promise not to follow you,” she said. “I made sure of that. I know it’s cheating, but…” She raised her head and met Snake’s gaze. “There are things you don’t know about people. You trust them too much. There are things I don’t know, too, I know that, but they’re different things.”

“It’s all right,” Snake said. “You’re right, I did trust him too much. Thank you for stopping him.”

Melissa shrugged. “A lot of good I did. They know we’re here now, wherever they are.”

The crazy began to giggle, rolling back and forth with his arms wrapped around him. “North will like me again.”

“Oh, shut up,” Snake said. She slid her knife back into its sheath. “Melissa, you’ve got to get out of the dome before anyone comes.”

“Please come with me,” Melissa said. “Nothing makes any sense around here.”

“Someone has to tell my people about this place.”

“I don’t care about your people! I care about you! How can I go to them and tell them I let you get killed by a crazy?”

“Melissa, please, there isn’t time to argue.”

Melissa twined the end of her headcloth in her fingers, pulling it forward so the material covered the scar on the side of her face. Though Snake had changed back to her regular clothes when they left the desert, Melissa had not.

“You should let me stay with you,” she said. She turned around, shoulders slumped, and started down the trail.

“You’ll get your wish, little one.” The voice was deep and courteous.

For an instant Snake thought the crazy had spoken in a normal tone, but he was cowering on the bare rock beside her, and a fourth person now stood on the trail. Melissa, stopping short, started up at him and then backed away.

“North!” the crazy cried. “North, I brought new people. And I warned you, I didn’t let them sneak up on you. Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” North said. “And I wondered why you disobeyed me by coming back.”

“I thought you’d like these people.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure?” The courteous tone remained, but behind it lay great pleasure in its taunting, and the man’s smile was more cruel than kind. His form was eerie in the dim light, for he was very tall, so tall he had to hunch over in the leafy tunnel, pathologically tall: pituitary gigantism, Snake thought. Emaciation accentuated every asymmetry of his body. He was dressed all in white, and he was albino as well, with chalk-white hair and eyebrows and eyelashes, and very pale blue eyes.

“Yes, North,” the crazy said. “That’s all.”

Heavy with North’s presence, silence lay over the woods. Snake thought she could see other movement between the trees, but she could not be sure, and the growth seemed too close and heavy for other people to be hiding there. Perhaps in this dark alien forest the trees twined and untwined their branches as easily as lovers clasp hands. Snake shivered.

“Please, North — let me come back. I’ve brought you two followers—”

Snake touched the crazy’s shoulder; he fell silent.

“Why are you here?”

In the last few weeks, Snake had grown wary enough not to tell North immediately that she was a healer. “For the same reason as anyone else,” she said. “I’ve come about the dreamsnakes.”

“You don’t look like the kind of person who usually finds out about them.” He came forward, looming over her in the dimness. He glanced from her to the crazy, and then to Melissa. His hard gaze softened. “Ah, I see. You’ve come for her.”

Melissa nearly snarled a denial: Snake saw her start with anger, then forcibly hold herself calm.

“We’ve all three come together,” Snake said. “All for the same reason.” She felt the crazy move, as if to rush toward North and fling himself at his feet. She clamped her hand harder around the bony point of his shoulder and he slumped into lethargy again.

“And what did you bring me, to initiate you?”

“I don’t understand,” Snake said.

North’s brief, annoyed frown dissolved in a laugh. “That’s just what I’d expect from this poor fool. He brought you here without explaining our customs.”

“But I brought them, North. I brought them for you.”

“And they brought you for me? That’s hardly sufficient payment.”

“Payment can be arranged,” Snake said, “when we reach an agreement.” That North had set himself up as a minor god, requiring tribute, using the power of the dreamsnakes to enforce his authority, angered Snake as much as anything else she had heard. Or, rather, offended her. Snake had been taught, and believed very deeply, that using healers’ serpents for self-aggrandizement was immoral and unforgivable. While visiting other people she had heard children’s stories in which villains or tragic heroes used magical abilities to make tyrants of themselves; they always came to bad ends. But healers had no such stories. It was not fear that kept them from misusing what they had. It was self-respect.

North hobbled a few steps closer. “My dear child, you don’t understand. Once you join my camp, you don’t leave again until I’m certain of your loyalty. In the first place, you won’t want to leave. In the second, when I send someone out it’s proof that I trust them. It’s an honor.”

Snake nodded toward the crazy. “And him?”

North laughed without cheer. “I didn’t send him out. I exiled him.”

“But I know where their things are, North!” The crazy pulled away from Snake. This time, in disgust, she let him go. “You don’t need them, just me.” Kneeling, he wrapped his arms around North’s legs. “Everything’s in the valley. We only need to take it.”

Snake shrugged when North glanced from the crazy to her. “It’s well protected. He could lead you to my gear but you couldn’t take it.” Still she did not tell him what she was.

North extricated himself from the crazy’s arms. “I am not strong,” he said. “I don’t travel to the valley.”

A small, heavy bag landed at North’s feet. He and Snake both looked at Melissa.

“If you need to be paid just to talk to somebody,” Melissa said belligerently, “there.”

North bent painfully down and picked up Melissa’s wages. He opened the sack and poured the coins out into his hand. Even in the dim forest light, the gold glittered. He shook the gold pieces up and down thoughtfully.

“All right, this will do as a beginning. You’ll have to give up your weapons, of course, and then we’ll go on to my home.”

Snake took her knife from her belt and tossed it on the ground.

“Snake—” Melissa whispered. She looked up at her, stricken, clearly wondering why she had done what she had done, her fingers clenched around the handle of her own knife.

“If we want him to trust us, we have to trust him,” Snake said. Yet she did not trust him, and she did not want to trust him. Still, knives would be of little use against a group of people, and she did not think North had come alone.

My dear daughter, Snake thought, I never said this would be easy.

Melissa flinched back as North took one step toward her. Her knuckles were white.

“Don’t be afraid of me, little one. And don’t try to be clever. I have more resources than you might imagine.”

Melissa looked at the ground, slowly drew her knife, and dropped it at her feet.

North ordered the crazy to Melissa with a quick jerk of his head. “Search her.”

Snake put her hand on Melissa’s shoulder. The child was taut and trembling. “He need not search her. I give you my word that Melissa carries no other weapons.” Snake could sense that Melissa had controlled herself nearly to her limit. Her dislike of and disgust for the crazy would push her farther than her composure would stretch.

“All the more reason to search her,” North said. “We’ll not be fanatic about the thoroughness. Do you want to go first?”

“That would be better,” Snake said. She raised her hands, but North prodded her, turned her around, and made her reach out and lean forward and grasp the twisted branches of a tree. If she had not been worried about Melissa she would have been amused by the theatricality of it all.

Nothing happened for what seemed a long time. Snake started to turn around again, but North touched the fresh shiny puncture scars on her hand with the tip of one pale finger. “Ah,” he said, very softly, so close she could feel his warm, unpleasant breath. “You’re a healer.”

Snake heard the crossbow just after the bolt plunged into her shoulder, just as the pain spread over her in a wave. Her knees swayed but she could not fall. The force of the bolt dissipated through the trunk of the twisted tree, in vibrations up and down her body. Melissa screamed in fury. Snake heard other people behind her. Blood ran hot down her shoulder blade, down her breast. With her left hand, she fumbled for the shaft of the thin crossbow bolt where it ripped out of her flesh and into the tree, but her fingers slipped and the living wood held the bolt’s tip fast. Melissa was at her side, holding her up as best she could. Voices wove themselves together into a tapestry stretching behind her.

Someone grabbed the crossbow bolt and jerked it loose, wrenching it through muscle. The scrape of wood on bone wrung a gasp from her. The cool smooth metal point slid from the wound.

“Kill her now,” the crazy said. The words came fast with excitement. “Kill her and leave her here as a warning.”

Snake’s heart pumped hot blood down her shoulder. She staggered, caught herself, and fell to her knees. The force hit the small of her back, vibrating with the pain, and she tried but failed to cringe away from it, like poor little Grass writhing with a severed spine.

Melissa stood before her, her scarred face and red hair uncovered as she tried clumsily, blinded with tears, whispering comfort as she would to a horse, to wind her headcloth over the wound.

So much blood from such a small arrow, Snake thought.

She fainted.

The coldness roused Snake first. Even as she regained consciousness, Snake was surprised to be aware at all. The hatred in North’s voice when he recognized her profession had left her no hope. Her shoulder ached fiercely, but without the stabbing, thought-destroying pain. She flexed her right hand. It was weak, but it moved.

She struggled up, shivering, blinking, her vision blurred.

“Melissa?” she whispered.

Nearby, North laughed. “Not being a healer yet, she hasn’t been hurt.”

Cold air flowed around her. Snake shook her head and drew her sleeve across her eyes. Her sight cleared abruptly. The effort of sitting up made her break out in a sweat that the air turned icy. North sat before her, smiling, flanked by his people, who closed the human circle around her. The blood on her shirt, except immediately over the wound, was brown: she had been unconscious for some time.

“Where is she?”

“She’s safe,” North said. “She can stay with us. You needn’t worry, she’ll be happy here.”

“She didn’t want to come in the first place. This isn’t the kind of happiness she wants. Let her go home.”

“As I said before, I have nothing against her.”

“What is it you have against healers?”

North gazed at her steadily for a long time. “I should think that would be obvious.”

“I’m sorry,” Snake said. “We could probably give you some ability to form melanin, but we aren’t magicians.” The frigid air flowed from a cave behind her, billowing around her, raising goose bumps on her arms. Her boots were gone; the cold stone sucked heat from the bare soles of her feet. But it also numbed the ache in her shoulder. Then she shivered violently and pain struck with even more ferocity than before. She gasped and closed her eyes for a moment, then sat very still in her own inner darkness, breathing deeply and shutting away her perception of the wound. It was bleeding again, in back where it would be hard to reach. She hoped Melissa was somewhere warmer, and she wondered where the dreamsnakes were, for they needed warmth to survive. Snake opened her eyes.

“And your height—” she said.

North laughed bitterly. “Of all the things I’ve said about healers, I never said they didn’t have nerve!”

“What?” Snake asked, confused. She was lightheaded from loss of blood, and in the middle of replying to North. “We might have helped if we’d seen you early. You must have been grown before anyone took you to a healer—”

North’s pale face turned scarlet with fury. “Shut up!” He leaped to his feet and dragged Snake up. She hugged her right arm to her side.

“Do you think I want to hear that? Do you think I want to keep hearing that I could have been ordinary?” He pushed her toward the cave. She stumbled into the wind but he dragged her up again. “Healers! Where were you when I needed you? I’ll let you see how I feel—”

“North, please, North!” Snake’s crazy sidled out of the crowd of North’s emaciated followers, whom Snake now only perceived as vague shapes. “She helped me, North, I’ll take her place.” He plucked at North’s sleeve, moaning and pleading. North pushed him away and he fell and lay still.

“Your brain’s addled,” North said. “Or you think mine is.”

The interior of the cave glittered in the dim light of smoking torches, its walls flawed jewels of ice. Above the torches sooty stone showed in large round patches. Melt-water trickled into pools of slush that spread across the floor and ran together in a rivulet. Water dripped everywhere with a cold sound of crystal clarity. Every step Snake took jarred her shoulder again, and she no longer had the strength to force the sensation away. The air was heavy with the smell of burning pitch. Gradually she became aware of a low hum of machinery, felt rather than heard. It crept through her body, into her bones.

Ahead the tunnel grew lighter. It ended suddenly, opening out into a depression in the top of the hill, like the crater of a volcano but clearly human-made. Snake stood in the mouth of the icy tunnel and blinked, looking stupidly around. The black eyes of other caves stared back at her. The dome above formed a gray, directionless sky. Across from her the cold air flowed from the largest tunnel, forming an almost palpable lake, drained by the smaller tunnels. North pushed Snake forward again. She saw things, felt things, but reacted to nothing. She could not.

“Down there. Climb.” North kicked a coil of rope and wood and it clattered into the deep crack in the rock in the center of the crater. The tangle unrolled: a rope ladder. Snake could see its top but its lower end was in darkness.

“Climb,” North said again. “Or be thrown.”

“North, please,” the crazy moaned, and Snake suddenly realized where she was being sent. North stared at her while she laughed. She felt as if strength were flowing into her, drawn from the wind and the earth.

“Is this how you torture a healer?” she said. She swung herself down into the crevasse, clumsily but eagerly. One-handed, she lowered herself by steps into the freezing darkness, catching each rung with her bare toes and pulling it outward so she had a foothold. Above, she heard the crazy break down in helpless sobs.

“We’ll see how you feel in the morning,” North said.

The crazy’s voice rose in terror. “She’ll kill all the dreamsnakes, North! North, that’s what she came here for.”

“I’d like to see that,” North said. “A healer killing dreamsnakes.”

From the echoes as the rungs clattered against the walls of the crevasse, Snake knew she was nearing the bottom. It was not quite dark, but her eyes accustomed themselves slowly. Damp with sweat and shivering again, she had to pause. She rested her forehead against cold stone. Her toes and the knuckles of her left hand were scraped raw, for the ladder lay flush against stone.

It was then, finally, that she heard the soft rustling slide of small serpents. Clutching the ropes, Snake hung against the stone and squinted into the dimness below. Light penetrated in a long narrow streak down the center of the crevasse.

A dreamsnake slid smoothly from one edge of darkness to the other.

Snake fumbled her way the last few meters, stepping to the floor as cautiously as she could, feeling around with her numb bare foot until she was certain nothing moved beneath it. She knelt. Cold jagged chunks of stone cut into her knees, and the only warmth was the fresh blood on her shoulder. But she reached out among the shards, feeling carefully. Her fingertips brushed the smooth scales of a serpent as it slid silently away. She reached out again, ready this time, and caught the next one she touched. Her hand stung at two tiny points. She smiled and held the dreamsnake gently behind the head, by habit conserving its venom. She brought it close enough to see. It was wild, not tame and gentle as Grass had been. It writhed and lashed itself around her hand; its delicate trident tongue flicked out at her, and in again to taste her scent. But it did not hiss, just as Grass had never hissed.

As her eyes became more and more used to the darkness, Snake gradually perceived the rest of the crevasse, and all the other dreamsnakes, all sizes of them, lone ones, clumps of them, tangles of them, more than she had ever seen before in her life, more than her people could gather together at the station, if all the healers brought their dreamsnakes home at the same time.

The dreamsnake she held grew quiet in the meager warmth of her hand. One drop of blood collected over each puncture of its bite, but the sting of its venom had lasted only an instant. Snake sat back on her heels and stroked the dreamsnake’s head. Once more she began to laugh. She knew she had to control herself: this was more hysteria than joy. But, for the moment, she laughed.

“Laugh away, healer.” North’s voice echoed darkly against stone. “We’ll see how long you laugh.”

“You’re a fool,” she cried with glee, with dreamsnakes all around her and in her hand. She laughed at the hilarity of this punishment, like a child’s story come true. She laughed until she cried, but for an instant the tears were real. She knew that when this torture could not harm her, North would find some other way. She sniffed and coughed and wiped her face on the tail of her shirt, for at least she had a little time.

And then she saw Melissa.

Her daughter lay crumpled on the broken stone in the narrow end of the crevasse. Snake moved carefully to her side, trying not to injure any of the serpents she passed, nor to startle those that lay curled around Melissa’s arms, or coiled together against her body. They made green tendrils in her bright red hair.

Snake knelt beside Melissa and gently, carefully plucked the wild serpents away. North’s people had taken Melissa’s robe, and cut her pants off at the knees. Her arms were bare, and her boots, like Snake’s, were gone. Rope bound her hands and feet, chafing her wrists raw where she had struggled. Small bloody bites spotted her bare arms and legs. A dreamsnake struck: its fangs sank into Snake’s flesh and the creature jerked back almost too fast to see. Her teeth clenched, Snake remembered the crazy’s words: “It’s best if they strike you all over at once…”

With her own body, Snake blocked the serpents away from Melissa and freed her wrists, fumbling left-handed with the knots. Melissa’s skin was cold and dry. Snake cradled her in her left arm as the wild dreamsnakes crawled over her own bare feet and ankles. Once more she wondered how they lived in the cold. She would never have dared let Grass loose in this temperature. Even the case would have been too cold: she would have brought him out, warmed him in her hands, and let him loop himself around her throat.

Melissa’s hand slid limply against the rocks. Blood smeared in streaks from the puncture wounds where her skin rubbed cloth or stone. Snake managed to get Melissa in her lap, off the freezing ground. Her pulse was heavy and slow, her breathing deep. But each new breath came so long after the last that Snake was afraid she would stop altogether.

The cold pressed down around them, pushing back the ache in Snake’s shoulder and draining her energy again. Stay awake, she thought. Stay awake. Melissa might stop breathing; her heart might stop from so much venom, and then she will need help. Despite herself, Snake’s eyes went out of focus and her eyelids drooped; each time she nodded asleep she jerked herself awake again. A pleasant thought insinuated itself into her mind: No one dies of dreamsnake venom. They live, or they die of their illness, in peace, when their time comes. It’s safe to sleep, she will not die. But Snake knew of no one who had ever been given such a large dose of the venom, and Melissa was only a child.

A tiny dreamsnake slid between her leg and the side of the crevasse. She reached out with her numb right hand and picked it up with wonder. It lay coiled in her palm, staring toward her with its lidless eyes, its trident tongue tasting the air. Something about it was unusual: Snake looked closer.

It was an eggling, just hatched, for it still had the beak of horny tissue common to the hatchlings of many species of serpents. It was final proof of how North obtained his dreamsnakes. He had not found an offworld supply. He did not clone them. He had a breeding population. In this pit were all sizes and all ages, from egglings to mature individuals larger than any dreamsnakes Snake had ever seen.

She turned to lay the hatchling down behind her, but her hand knocked against the wall. Startled, the dreamsnake struck. The sharp stab of its tiny fangs made Snake flinch. The creature slid from her hand to the ground and on into shadows.

“North!” Snake’s voice was hoarse. She cleared her dry throat and tried again. “North!”

In time, his silhouette appeared at the rim of the crevasse. By his easy smile Snake knew he expected her to beg him for her freedom. He looked down at her, noting the way she had positioned herself between Melissa and the serpents.

“She could be free if you’d let her,” he said. “Don’t keep her from my creatures.”

“Your creatures are wasted here, North,” Snake said. “You should take them out into the world. You’d be honored by everyone, particularly the healers.”

“I’m honored here,” North said.

“But this must be a difficult life. You could live in comfort and ease—”

“There’s no comfort for me,” North said. “You of all people should realize that. Sleeping on the ground or wrapped in featherbeds, it’s all the same to me.”

“You’ve made dreamsnakes breed,” Snake said. She glanced down at Melissa. Several of the serpents had insinuated themselves past Snake. She grabbed one just before it reached her daughter’s bare arm. The serpent struck and bit her. She put it and the others behind her with stinging hands, ignoring their fangs. “However you do it, you should take the knowledge out and give it to others.”

“And what’s your place in this plan? Should I bring you up to be my herald? You could dance into each new town and tell them I was coming.”

“I admit I wouldn’t care to die down here.”

North laughed harshly.

“You could help so many people. There was no healer when you needed one because we haven’t got enough dreamsnakes. You could help people like you.”

“I help the people who come to me,” North said. “Those are the people who are like me. They’re the only ones I want.” He turned away.

“North!”

“What?”

“At least give me a blanket for Melissa. She’ll die if I can’t keep her warm.”

“She won’t die,” North said. “Not if you leave her to my creatures.” His shadow and his form disappeared.

Snake hugged Melissa closer, feeling each slow, heavy beat of the child’s heart through her own body. She was so cold and tired that she could not think any longer. Sleep would start to heal her, but she had to stay awake, for Melissa’s sake and for her own. One thought remained strong: defy North’s wishes. Above everything, she knew she and her daughter were both lost if they obeyed him.

Moving slowly so the work of drawing pain from her shoulder would not be undone, Snake took Melissa’s hands in her own and chafed them, trying to bring back circulation and warmth. The blood on the dreamsnake bites was dry now. One of the serpents wrapped itself around Snake’s ankle. She wiggled her toes and flexed her ankle, hoping the dreamsnake would crawl, away again. Her foot was so chilled she barely felt the serpent’s fangs sink into her instep. She continued to rub Melissa’s hands. She breathed on them and kissed them. Her breath plumed out before her. The dim light was failing. Snake looked up. The slice of gray dome visible between the edges of the crevasse had turned nearly black with gathering night. Snake felt an overwhelming sensation of grief. This was how it had been the night Jesse died, lacking only stars, the sky as clear and dark, the rock walls surrounding her just as steep, the cold as exhausting as the desert’s heat. Snake hugged Melissa closer and bent over her, sheltering her from shadows. Because of the dreamsnakes, she could do nothing for Jesse; because of the dreamsnakes, she could do nothing for Melissa.

The dreamsnakes massed together and slithered toward her, the sound of their scales on fogdamp stone whispering around her — Snake came abruptly awake out of the dream.

“Snake?” Melissa’s voice was the rough whisper she had heard.

“I’m here.” She could just see her daughter’s face. The last diffused light shone dully on her curly hair and the thick stiff scars. Her eyes held a faraway dazed look.

“I dreamed…” She let her voice trail away. “He was right!” she cried in sudden fury. “Damn him, he was right!” She flung her arms around Snake’s neck and hid her face. Her voice was muffled. “I did forget, for a little while. But I won’t again. I won’t…”

“Melissa—” Melissa stiffened at the tone of her voice. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. North says he won’t hurt you.” Melissa was trembling, or shivering. “If you say you’ll join him—”

“No!”

“Melissa—”

“No! I won’t! I don’t care.” Her voice was high and tight. “It’d be just like Ras again…”

“Melissa, dear, you have a place to go now. It’s the same as when we talked before. Our people need to know about this place. You have to give yourself a chance to get away.”

Melissa huddled against her in silence.

“I left Mist and Sand,” she said finally. “I didn’t do what you wanted, and now they’ll starve to death.”

Snake stroked her hair. “They’ll be all right for a while.”

“I’m scared,” Melissa whispered. “I promised I wouldn’t be any more, but I am. Snake, if I say I’ll join him and he says he’ll let me be bitten again I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to forget myself… but I did for a while, and…” She touched the heavy scar around her eye. Snake had never seen her do that before. “This went away. Nothing hurt any more. After a while I’d do anything for that.” Melissa closed her eyes.

Snake grabbed one of the dreamsnakes and flung it away, handling it more roughly than she would have believed she could.

“Would you rather die?” she asked harshly.

“I don’t know,” Melissa said faintly, groggily. Her arms slipped from Snake’s neck and her hands lay limp. “I don’t know. Maybe I would.”

“Melissa, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it—” But Melissa was asleep or unconscious again. Snake held her as the last of the light faded away. She could hear the dreamsnakes’ scales on the damp slick rocks. She imagined again that they were coming closer, approaching her in a solid aggressive wave. For the first time in her life she felt afraid of serpents. Then, to reassure herself when the noises seemed to close in, she reached out to feel the bare stone. Her hand plunged into a mass of sleek scales, writhing bodies. She jerked back as a constellation of tiny stinging points spread across her arm. The dreamsnakes were seeking warmth, but if she let them find what they needed they would find her daughter as well. She shrank back into the narrow end of the crevasse. Her numb hand closed involuntarily around a heavy chunk of sharp volcanic rock. She lifted it clumsily, ready to smash it down on the wild dreamsnakes.

Snake lowered her hand and willed her fingers open. The rock clattered away, among other rocks. A dreamsnake slid across her wrist. She could no more destroy them than she could float out of the crevasse on the cold, thick air. Not even for Melissa. A hot tear rolled down her cheek. When it reached her chin it felt like ice. There were too many dreamsnakes to protect Melissa against, yet North was right. Snake could not kill them.

Desperate, she pushed herself to her feet, using the crevasse wall as support and wedging herself into the narrow space. Melissa was small for her age, and still very thin, but her limp weight seemed immense. Snake’s cold hands were too numb to keep a secure grip, and she could hardly feel the rocks beneath her bare feet. But she could feel the dreamsnakes coiling around her ankles. Melissa slipped in her arms, and Snake clutched at her with her right hand. The pain shot through her shoulder and up and down her spine. She managed to brace herself between the converging rock walls, and to hold Melissa above the serpents.