Dreamsnake

Chapter 12

The cultivated fields and well-built houses of Mountainside lay far behind Arevin at the end of his third day’s travel south. The road was now a trail, rising and falling along the edges of successive mountains, leading now casually through a pleasant valley, now precariously across scree. The country grew higher and wilder. Arevin’s stolid horse plodded on.

No one had passed him all day, in either direction. He could easily be overtaken by anyone else traveling south: anyone who knew the trail better, anyone who had a destination, would surely catch and pass him. But he remained alone. He felt chilled by the mountain air, enclosed and oppressed by the mountains’ sheer walls and the dark overhanging trees. He was conscious of the beauty of the countryside, but the beauty he was used to was that of his homeland’s arid plains and plateaus. He was homesick, but he could not go home. He had the proof of his own eyes that the eastern desert’s storms were more powerful than those in the west, but the difference was one of quantity rather than kind. A western storm killed unprotected creatures in twenty breaths; an eastern one would do it in ten. He must stay in the mountains until spring.

He could not simply wait, at the healers’ station or in Mountainside. If he did nothing but wait, his imagination would overpower his conviction that Snake was alive. And if he began to believe she was dead: that was dangerous, not only to his sanity but to Snake herself. Arevin knew he could not perform magic any more than Snake could, magical as her accomplishments might appear, but he was afraid to imagine her death.

She was probably safe in the underground city, gathering new knowledge that would atone for the actions of Arevin’s cousin. Arevin reflected that Stavin’s younger father was lucky he did not have to pay for his terror himself. Lucky for him, unlucky for Snake. Arevin wished he had good news to give her when he did find her. But all he would be able to say was, “I have explained, I have tried to make your people understand my people’s fear. But they gave me no answer: they want to see you. They want you to go home.”

At the edge of a meadow, thinking he heard something, he stopped his horse. The silence was a presence of its own, all around him, subtly different from the silence of a desert.

Have I begun imagining sounds, now, he wondered, as well as her touch in the night?

But then, from the trees ahead, he heard again the vibrations of animals’ hooves. A small herd of delicate mountain deer appeared, trotting across the glade toward him, their twig-thin legs flashing white, long supple necks arched high. Compared to the huge musk oxen Arevin’s clan herded, the fragile deer were like toys. They were nearly silent; it was the horses of their herders that had alerted him. His horse, lonely for its own kind, neighed.

The herders, waving, cantered up to him and pulled their mounts to flamboyant stops. They were both youngsters, with sun-bronzed skin and short-cut pale blond hair, kin by the look of them. At Mountainside Arevin had felt out of place in his desert robes, but that was because people mistook him for the crazy. He had not thought it necessary to change his manner of dress after he made his intentions clear. But now, the two children looked at him for a moment, looked at each other, and grinned. He began to wonder if he should have purchased new clothes. But he had little money and he did not wish to use it for what was not absolutely necessary.

“You’re a long way from the trade routes,” the older herder said. His tone was not belligerent but matter-of-fact. “Need any help?”

“No,” Arevin said. “But I thank you.” Their deer herd milled around him, the animals making small sounds of communion with each other, more like birds than hoofed creatures. The younger herder gave a sudden whoop and waved her arms. The deer scattered in all directions. Another difference between this herd and the one Arevin kept: a musk ox’s response to a human on horseback flailing their arms would be to amble over and see what the fun was.

“Gods, Jean, you’ll scare off everything from here to Mountainside.” But he did not seem perturbed about the deer, and in fact they reassembled into a compact group a little way down the trail. Arevin was struck again by the willingness to reveal personal names in this country, but he supposed he had better get used to it.

“Can’t talk with the beasties underfoot,” she said, and smiled at Arevin. “It’s good to see another human face after looking at nothing but trees and deer. And my brother.”

“Have you seen no one else on the trail, then?” That was more a statement than a question. If Snake had returned from Center and the herders had overtaken her, it would have made much more sense for them all to travel together.

“Why? You looking for someone?” The young man sounded suspicious, or perhaps just wary. Could he have met Snake after all? Arevin, too, might ask impertinent questions of a stranger in order to safeguard a healer. And he would do considerably more than that for Snake.

“Yes,” he said. “A healer. A friend. Her horse is a gray, and she has a tiger-pony as well, and a child riding with her. She would be coming north, back from the desert.”

“She’s not, though.”

“Jean!”

Jean scowled at her brother. “Kev, he doesn’t look like anybody who would hurt her. Maybe he needs her for somebody sick.”

“And maybe he’s friends with that crazy,” the brother said. “Why are you looking for her?”

“I’m a friend of the healer,” Arevin said again, alarmed. “Did you see the crazy? Is Snake safe?”

“This one’s all right,” Jean said to Kev.

“He didn’t answer my question.”

“He said he was her friend. Maybe it’s none of your business.”

“No, your brother has the right to question me,” Arevin said. “And perhaps the obligation. I’m looking for Snake because I told her my name.”

“What is your name?”

“Kev!” Jean said, shocked.

Arevin smiled for the first time since meeting these two. He was growing used to abrupt customs. “That is not something I would tell either of you,” he said pleasantly.

Kev scowled in embarrassment.

“We do know better,” Jean said. “It’s just all this time out here away from people.”

“Snake is coming back,” Arevin said, his voice a little strained with excitement and joy. “You saw her. How long ago?”

“Yesterday,” Kev said. “But she isn’t coming this way.”

“She’s going south,” Jean said.

“South!”

Jean nodded. “We were up here getting the herd before it snows. We met her when we came down from high pasture. She bought one of the pack horses for the crazy to ride.”

“But why is she with the crazy? He attacked her! Are you sure he was not forcing her to go with him?”

Jean laughed. “No, Snake was in control. No doubt about that.”

Arevin did not doubt her, so he could put aside the worst of his fear. But he was still uneasy. “South,” he said. “What lies south of here? I thought there were no towns.”

“There aren’t. We come about as far as anybody. We were surprised to see her. Hardly anybody uses that pass, even coming from the city. But she didn’t say where she was going.”

“Nobody ever goes farther south than we do,” Kev said. “It’s dangerous.”

“In what way?”

Kev shrugged.

“Are you going after her?” Jean asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. But it’s time to make camp. Do you want to stop with us?”

Arevin glanced past them, southward. In truth, the mountain shadows were passing over the glade, and twilight closed in toward him.

“You can’t get much farther tonight, that’s true,” Kev said.

“And this is the best place to camp in half a day’s ride.”

Arevin sighed. “All right,” he said. “Thank you. I will camp here tonight.”

Arevin welcomed the warmth of the fire that crackled in the center of camp. The fragrant burning wood snapped sparks. The mountain deer were a dim moving shadow in the center of the meadow, completely silent, but the horses stamped their hooves now and then; they grazed noisily, tearing the tender grass blades with their teeth. Kev had already rolled himself up in his blankets; he snored softly at the edge of the firelight. Jean sat across from Arevin, hugging her knees to her chest, the firelight red on her face. She yawned.

“I guess I’ll go to sleep,” she said. “You?”

“Yes. In a moment.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

Arevin glanced up. “You’ve already done a great deal,” he said.

She looked at him curiously. “That isn’t exactly what I meant.”

The tone of her voice was not quite annoyance; it was milder than that, but enough changed that Arevin knew something was wrong.

“I don’t understand what you do mean.”

“How do your people say it? I find you attractive. I’m asking if you’d like to share a bed with me tonight.”

Arevin looked at Jean impassively, but he was embarrassed. He thought — he hoped — he was not blushing. Both Thad and Larril had asked him the same question, and he had not understood it. He had refused them offhandedly, and they must have thought him discourteous at best. Arevin hoped they had realized that he did not understand them, that his customs were different.

“I’m healthy, if you’re worried,” Jean said with some asperity. “And my control is excellent.”

“I beg your pardon,” Arevin said. “I did not understand you at all. I’m honored by your invitation and I did not doubt your health or your control. Nor would you need to doubt me. But if I will not offend you I must say no.”

“Never mind,” Jean said. “It was just a thought.”

Arevin could tell she was hurt. Having so abruptly and unwittingly turned down Thad and Larril, Arevin felt he owed Jean, at least, some explanation. He was not sure how to explain his feelings, for he was not sure he understood them himself.

“I find you very attractive,” Arevin said. “I would not have you misunderstand me. Sharing with you would not be fair. My attention would be… elsewhere.”

Jean looked at him through the heat waves of the fire. “I can wake Kev up if you like.”

Arevin shook his head. “Thank you. But I meant my attention would be elsewhere than this camp.”

“Oh,” she said with sudden comprehension. “I see now. I don’t blame you. I hope you find her soon.”

“I hope I have not offended you.”

“It’s okay,” Jean said, a little wistfully. “I don’t suppose it’d make any difference if I told you I’m not looking for anything permanent? Or even anything beyond tonight?”

“No,” Arevin said. “I’m sorry. It’s still the same.”

“Okay.” She picked up her blanket and moved to the edge of the firelight. “Sleep well.”

Later, lying in his bedroll, the blankets not quite keeping off the chill, Arevin reflected on how pleasant and warm it would be to be lying next to another person. He had casually coupled with people in his and neighboring clans all his life, but until he met Snake he had found no one he thought he might be able to partner with. Since meeting her he had felt no desire for anyone else; what was even stranger, he had not noticed that he was not attracted to anyone else. He lay on the hard ground, thinking about all that, and trying to remind himself that he had no evidence but one brief touch, and a few ambiguous words, that Snake felt any more than casually attracted to him. Yet he could hope.

For a long time Snake did not move; in fact, she did not think she could move. She kept expecting dawn to come, but night remained. Perhaps North’s people had covered the crevasse to keep it in the dark, but Snake knew that was ridiculous, if only because North would want to be able to see her and laugh at her.

As she was considering darkness, light glimmered above her. She looked up, but everything was blurs and shadows and strange noises that grew louder. Ropes and wood scraped against the crevasse wall and Snake wondered what other poor cripple had found North’s refuge, and then, as a platform sank smoothly toward her, lowered on pulleys, she saw North himself descending. She could not hold Melissa tighter, or hide her from him, or even stand up and fight for her. North’s lights illuminated the crevasse and Snake was dazzled.

He stepped from his platform as the pulley ropes drooped down to its corners. Two of his followers flanked him, carrying lanterns. Two sets of shadows flowed and rippled on the walls.

When North came close enough, the light enveloped both of them and Snake could see his face. He smiled at her.

“My dreamsnakes like you,” he said, nodding toward her feet where the serpents coiled around her legs, halfway to her knees. “But you mustn’t be so selfish about them.”

“Melissa doesn’t want them,” Snake said.

“I must say,” he said, “I hardly expected you to be so lucid.”

“I’m a healer.”

North frowned a little, hesitating. “Ah. I see. Yes, I should have thought of that. You would have to be resistant, would you not.” He nodded to his people and they put down their lanterns and came toward Snake. The light illuminated North’s face from below, shadowing his paper-white skin with strange black shapes. Snake shrank away from his people, but the rock was at her back; she had nowhere to go. The followers walked gently among the jagged stones and the dreamsnakes. Unlike Snake they were heavily shod. One reached out to take Melissa from her. Snake felt the serpents uncoiling from her ankles, and heard them slide across the rock.

“Stay away!” Snake cried, but an emaciated hand tried to ease Melissa from her arms. Snake lunged down and bit. It was the only thing she could think of to do. She felt the cold flesh yield between her teeth until she met bone; she tasted the warm blood. She wished she had sharper teeth, sharp teeth with channels for poison. As it was, all she could do was hope the wound became infected.

North’s follower pulled back with a yelp, tearing his hand away, and Snake spat out his blood. There was a flurry of motion as North and the others grabbed her by the hair and by her arm and by her clothes and held her while they took Melissa away from her. North twined his long fingers in her hair, holding her head back against the wall so she could not bite again. They forced her out of the narrow end of the crevasse. Fighting them, she staggered to her feet as one of the followers turned toward the platform with Melissa. North jerked her hair again and pulled her backward. Her knees collapsed. She tried to get up but she had nothing left to fight with, no more strength to overcome exhaustion and injury. Her left hand around her right shoulder, blood trickling between her fingers, she sagged to the ground.

North let go of Snake’s hair and went to Melissa, looking at her eyes and feeling her pulse. He glanced back at Snake.

“I told you not to keep her from my creatures.”

Snake raised her head. “Why are you trying to kill her?”

“Kill her! I? You don’t know a tenth what you think you know. You’re the one who’s endangered her.” He left Melissa and came back to Snake, bending down to capture several serpents. He put them in a basket, holding them carefully so they could not bite.

“I’ll have to take her out of here to save her life. She’ll hate you for ruining her first experience. You healers flaunt your arrogance.”

Snake wondered if he was right about arrogance; if he was, then perhaps he was right, too, about Melissa, about everything. She could not think properly to argue with him. “Be kind to her,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry,” North said. “She’ll be happy with me.” He nodded to his two followers. As they came toward Snake she tried to rise and prepare herself for one last defense. She was on one knee when the man she had bitten grabbed her by the right arm and pulled her to her feet, wrenching her shoulder again. The second follower held her up from the other side.

North leaned over her, holding a dreamsnake. “How certain are you of your immunities, healer? Are you arrogant about them, too?”

One of his people forced Snake’s head back, exposing her throat. North was so tall that Snake could still watch him lower the dreamsnake.

The fangs sank into her carotid artery. Nothing happened. She knew nothing would happen. She wished North would realize it and let her go, let her lie down on the cold sharp rocks to sleep, even if she never woke up. She was too tired to fight any more, too tired to react even when North’s follower relaxed his hold. Blood trickled down her neck to her collarbone. North picked up another dreamsnake and held it at her throat.

When the second dreamsnake bit her, she felt a sudden flash of pain, radiating from her throat all through her body. She gasped as it receded, leaving her trembling.

“Ah,” North said. “The healer is beginning to understand us.” He hesitated a moment, watching her. “One more, perhaps,” he said. “Yes.”

When he bent over her again, his face was in shadow and the light formed a halo of his pale, fine hair. In his hands, the third dreamsnake was a silent shadow. Snake drew back, and the grip of North’s followers on her arms did not change. The people who held her acted as if hypnotized by the black gaze of the serpent. Snake lunged forward, and for a moment she was free, but fingers like claws dug into her flesh and the man she had bitten snarled in fury. He dragged her back, twisting her right arm with one hand and digging the nails of his other into her wounded shoulder.

North, who had stepped away from the scuffle, came forward again. “Why fight, healer? Allow yourself to share the pleasure my creatures give.” He brought the third dreamsnake to her throat.

It struck.

This time the pain radiated through her as before, but when it faded it was followed with her pulsebeat by another wave of agony. Snake cried out.

“Ah,” she heard North say. “Now she does understand.”

“No…” she whispered.

She silenced herself. She would not give North the satisfaction of her pain.

The followers released her and she fell forward, trying to support herself with her left hand. This time the intensity of the sensation did not fade. It built, echoing and re-echoing through the canyon of her body, reinforcing itself, resonating. Snake shuddered with every beat of her heart. Trying to breathe between the agonizing spasms, she collapsed onto the cold hard rock.

Daylight filtered into the crevasse. Snake lay as she had fallen, one hand flung out before her. Frost silvered the ragged edges of her sleeve. A thick white coat, of ice crystals covered the tumbled rock fragments of the floor and crept up the side of the crevasse. Fascinated by the lacy pattern, Snake let her mind drift among the delicate fronds. As she gazed at them they became three-dimensional. She was in a prehistoric forest of moss and ferns, all black and white.

Here and there wet trails cut the traceries, throwing them abruptly back into two-dimensionality, forming a second, harsher pattern. The stone-dark lines looked like the tracks of dreamsnakes, but Snake knew better than to expect any of the serpents to be active in this temperature, active enough to slide over ice-covered ground. Perhaps North, to safeguard them, had taken them to a warmer place.

While she was hoping that was true, she heard the quiet rustle of scales on stone. One of the creatures, at least, had been left behind. That gave her comfort, for it meant she was not entirely alone.

This one must be a hardy beast, she thought.

It might be the big one that had bitten her, one large enough to produce and conserve some body heat. Opening her eyes, she tried to reach out toward the sound. Before her hand could move, if it would move, she saw the serpents.

Because many more than one remained. Two, no, three dreamsnakes twined themselves around each other only an arm’s length away. None was the huge one; none was much larger than Grass had been. They writhed and coiled together, marking the frost with dark hieroglyphics that Snake could not read. The symbols had a meaning, of that she was sure, if she could only decipher them. Only part of the message lay within her view, so, slowly and stiffly, she turned her head to follow the connecting tracks. The dreamsnakes remained at the edge of her sight, rubbing against each other, their bodies forming triple-stranded helices.

The serpents were freezing and dying, that must be it, and somehow she had to call North and make him save them. Snake pushed herself up on her elbows, but she could move no farther. She struggled, trying to speak, but a wave of nausea overcame her. North and his creatures: Snake retched dryly, but there was nothing in her stomach to come up and help purge her of her revulsion. She was still under the effects of the venom.

The stabbing pain had faded to a deep, throbbing ache. She forced it back, forced herself to feel it less and less, but she could not maintain the necessary energy. Overwhelmed, she fainted again.

Snake roused herself from sleep, not unconsciousness. All the hurts remained, but she knew she had beaten them when she forced them away, one by one, and they did not return. She was still free, and North could not enslave her with the dreamsnakes. The crazy had described ecstasy, so the venom had not affected Snake as it affected North’s followers. She did not know if that was because of her healer’s immunities, or because of the resistance of her will. It did not really matter.

She did understand why North had been so certain Melissa would not freeze to death. The cold remained, and Snake was aware of it, but she felt warm, even feverish. How long her body could sustain the increased metabolism she did not know, but she could feel her blood coursing through her and she knew she did not have to fear frostbite.

She remembered the dreamsnakes, active beyond possibility on the frost-jeweled ground.

That all must have been a dream, she thought.

But she looked around, and there among the dark hieroglyphics of their trails coiled a triplet of small serpents. She saw a second triplet, then a third, and suddenly in pure astonishment and delight she understood the message this place and its creatures had been trying to give her. It was as if she were the representative of all the generations of healers, sent here on purpose to accept what was offered.

Even as she wondered at how long it had taken to discover the dreamsnakes’ secrets, she understood the reasons. Now that she had fought the venom off, she could understand what the hieroglyphics told her, and she saw much more than the many triplets of dreamsnakes copulating on the frigid stones.

Her people, like all the other people on earth, were too self-centered, too introspective. Perhaps that was inevitable, for their isolation was well enforced. But as a result the healers had been too shortsighted; by protecting the dreamsnakes, they had kept them from maturing. That, too, was inevitable: dreamsnakes were too valuable to risk to experimentation. It was safer to count on nuclear-transplant clones for a few new dreamsnakes than to threaten the lives of those the healers already had.

Snake smiled at the clarity and simplicity of the solution. Of course the healers’ dreamsnakes never matured. At some point in their development they needed this bitter cold. Of course they seldom mated, even the few that spontaneously matured: the cold triggered reproduction as well. And finally: hoping mature serpents would meet each other, the healers followed tedious plans to put them together… two by two.

Isolated from new knowledge, the healers had understood that their dreamsnakes were alien, but they had not been able to comprehend just how alien.

Two by two. Snake laughed silently.

She recalled passionate arguments with other healers in training, in classes, over lunch, about whether dreamsnakes might be diploid or hexaploid, for the number of nuclear bodies made either state a possibility. But in all those passionate arguments, no one had been on the side of the truth. Dreamsnakes were triploid, and they required a triplet, not a pair. Snake’s mental laughter faded away into a sad smile of regret for all the mistakes she and her people had made for so many years, hampered as they were by lack of the proper information, by a mechanical technology insufficient to support the biological possibilities, by ethnocentrism. And by the forced isolation of earth from other worlds, by the self-imposed isolation of too many groups of people from each other. Her people had made mistakes: with dreamsnakes, they had only succeeded by mistake.

Now that Snake understood, perhaps it was all too late.

Snake felt warm and calm and sleepy. It was thirst that roused her to wakefulness; thirst, then memory. The crevasse was perhaps as bright as it ever got, and the stones Snake lay on were dry. She moved her hand and felt heat seep into it from the black rock.

She eased herself upright, testing herself. Her knee hurt but it was not swollen. Her shoulder merely ached. She did not know how long she had slept, but the healing had already begun.

Water dripped in a tiny quick rivulet through the other end of the crevasse. Snake stood up and went toward it, bracing herself against the rock wall. She felt unsteady, as if she had suddenly become very old. But her strength was still there; she could feel it gradually returning. Kneeling beside the stream, she cupped water in her hand and drank cautiously. The water tasted clean and cold. She drank deeply, trusting her decision. It was exceedingly difficult to poison a healer, but she did not much care right now to challenge her body with more toxins.

The near-freezing water ached in her empty stomach. She put thoughts of food aside and stood up in the center of the crevasse, turning slowly to inspect it in daylight. The walls were rough but not fissured; she could see no toe or fingerholds. The edge was three times higher than she could leap even if she were not injured. But, somehow, she had to get out. She had to find Melissa, and they had to escape.

Snake felt lightheaded. Afraid she would panic herself, she breathed deeply and slowly for a few long breaths, keeping her eyes closed. It was difficult to concentrate because she knew North would return, perhaps any second. He would want to gloat over her while she was awake, since he had overcome her immunities and affected her with the venom. His hatred must wish to see her groveling like the crazy, begging until he obliged her and growing weaker each time he did. She shivered and opened her eyes. Once he realized its true effect on her, he would use it to kill her, if he could.

Snake sat down and unwrapped Melissa’s headcloth from her shoulder. The material was caked and stiff with blood, and she had to soak away the layer next to her skin. But the scab on the wound was thick and she did not begin to bleed again. The wound was not exactly clean: the scar would be full of dirt and grit unless she did something about it soon. But it would not become infected and she could not take any time over it now. She ripped a couple of narrow strips off one edge of the square of cloth and gathered the rest into a makeshift bag. Four big dreamsnakes lay languorously on the rocks almost within reach. She captured them, put them in the sack, and looked for more. The ones she had were certainly mature, at that size, and perhaps one or two were even forming fertile eggs. She caught three more, but the rest of the dreamsnakes had vanished. She walked across the stones more carefully, looking for any sign of lairs, but found nothing.

She wondered if she had imagined or dreamt the mating scene. It had seemed so real…

Whether she had dreamt it or not, there had been many more dreamsnakes in the crevasse. Either their holes were too well concealed for her to find without a more careful search, or North had taken all the rest of the serpents away.

A green motion at the edge of her vision drew her around. She reached for the dreamsnake and it struck at her. She pulled her hand back, glad to see that even after all that had happened her reflexes were quick enough to avoid the fangs. She was not afraid of the bite of one of the serpents: her immunity to the venom would be extremely high right now. Each time she was exposed to it, it would take even more to affect her the next time. But she did not want to experience a next time.

She captured the last big dreamsnake and put it in her bag, tied the cloth shut with one strip of material, and tied the whole thing to her belt with the other, leaving a long tether.

Snake could see only one way to escape. Well, there was another way, but she doubted she had enough time to build herself a ramp of fragmented stone and stroll out. She returned to the far end of the crevasse, to the narrow space where the walls came together, where she had held Melissa.

Something tickled her bare foot. She looked down and saw the eggling dreamsnake gliding away. She bent down and picked it up, gently so as not to startle it. The horny tissue had fallen away, and the scales beneath were pale pink all around its mouth. In time they would turn scarlet. The tiny serpent tasted the air with its three-pronged tongue, butted its nose against her palm, and flowed around her thumb. She slipped it into the breast pocket of her torn shirt, where she could feel it moving only a layer of material away. It was young enough to tame. The warmth of her body lulled it.

Snake braced herself in the narrow space. Leaning back, she pressed her shoulders and her spine against the rock. The wound had not yet begun to hurt again, but she did not know how much stress she could stand. She set herself not to feel the injury, but exhaustion and hunger made concentration difficult. Snake put her right foot against the opposite wall and pushed, bracing herself. Carefully, she placed her other foot on the wall and hung suspended between the two faces of the crevasse. She pushed with both feet, sliding her shoulders upward, pushing back and down with her hands. She slipped her feet a little higher and pushed again, creeping upward.

A pebble came free beneath her foot and she slid, falling sideways. She scratched at the wall, scrabbling to keep herself in position. Rock tore at her elbows and back. She slammed down, landing hard and badly. Struggling for breath, Snake tried to rise and then lay still. Down and up reversed and shimmered. When they finally steadied, she drew in a long breath and pushed herself to her feet again. Her bad knee trembled slightly with the strain.

She had not, at least, fallen on the dreamsnakes. She put her hand to her pocket and felt the little one moving easily.

Gritting her teeth, Snake leaned back against the wall. She pushed herself upward again, moving more carefully, feeling for broken stone before she put any pressure on a new spot. Rock scraped her back and her hands grew slippery with sweat. She kept herself going; she imagined being able to look over the edge of her prison and she imagined hard ground and horizons.

She heard a noise and froze.

It’s nothing, she thought. One piece of stone hitting another. Volcanic rock always sounds alive when it clashes against itself.

The muscles in her thighs trembled with strain. Her eyes stung and her vision sparkled with sweat.

The sound came again. It was no clattering rock but two voices, and one of them was North’s.

Nearly sobbing with frustration, Snake slid back into the crevasse. Going down was just as hard, and it seemed to take an interminable length of time before she was far enough to jump the rest of the way. Her back and her hands and feet scraped against stone. The noise was so loud in the enclosed space that she was sure North would hear it. As a rock clattered down the side of the crevasse, Snake flung herself to the ground, curling her body around the sack of dreamsnakes. She froze there, by sheer will concealing the tremors of fatigue. Needing desperately to pant for breath, she forced herself to breath slowly, as if she were still asleep. She kept her eyes nearly closed, but she saw the shadow that fell over her.

“Healer!”

Snake did not move.

“Healer, wake up!”

She heard the scuff of a boot against stones. A shower of rock fragments rained down on her.

“She’s still sleeping, North,” Snake’s crazy said. “Like everybody else, everybody but you and me. Let’s go to sleep, North. Please let me sleep.”

“Shut up. There isn’t any venom left. The serpents are exhausted.”

“They could give just one more bite. Or let me go down and get another, North. A nice big one. Then I can make sure the healer’s really sleeping.”

“What do I care if she’s really sleeping or not?”

“You can’t trust her, North. She’s sneaky. She tricked me into bringing her to you…”

The crazy’s voice faded away with his and North’s footsteps. As far as Snake could hear, North did not bother to reply again.

As they left, Snake moved only enough to put her hand over the pocket of her shirt. The eggling was, somehow, still all right; she could feel it moving slowly and calmly beneath her fingers. She began to believe that if she ever got out of the crevasse alive, the tiny dreamsnake would too. Or perhaps she had the order reversed. Her hand was shaking; she drew it away so it would not frighten her serpent. Turning slowly over on her back, she looked at the sky. The top of the crevasse seemed an immense distance from her, as if each time she had tried to scale the walls they had risen higher. A hot tear trickled from the corner of her eye back into her hair.

Snake sat up all at once. Getting to her feet was slower and clumsier, but finally she stood in the narrow space between the walls and stared straight ahead at the face of the rock. The scraped places on her back rubbed against the stone, and the wound in her shoulder was perilously close to tearing open. Without looking upward, Snake put one foot against the wall, braced herself, wedged herself in with her other foot, and started up again.

As she crept higher and higher, she could feel the cloth of her shirt shredding beneath her shoulders. The knotted headcloth rose from the ground and scraped up the wall beneath her. It started to swing; it was just heavy enough to disturb her balance. She stopped, suspended like a bridge from nowhere leading nowhere, until the pendulum below shortened its oscillation. The tension in her leg muscles increased until she could hardly feel the rock against her feet. She did not know how near the top she was and she would not look.

She was higher than she had got before; here the walls of the crevasse gaped wider and it was harder for her to brace herself. With every tiny step she took up the wall she had to stretch her legs a little farther. Now she was held only by her shoulders, by her hands pushing hard against the rock, and by the balls of her feet. She could not keep going much longer. Beneath her right hand, the stone was wet with blood. She forced herself upward one last time. Abruptly the back of her head slipped over the rim of the crevasse and she could see the ground and the hills and the sky. The sharp change nearly destroyed her balance. She flailed out with her left arm, catching the edge of the crevasse with her elbow and then with her hand. Her body spun around and she snatched at the ground with her right hand. The wound in her shoulder stabbed her from spine to fingertips. Her nails dug into the ground, slipped, held. She scrabbled for a toehold and somehow found one. She hung against the wall for a moment, gasping for breath and feeling the bruises over her hipbones where she had slammed into the stone. Just above her breast, in her pocket, squeezed but not quite crushed, the eggling dreamsnake squirmed unhappily.

With the last bit of strength in her arms, Snake heaved herself over the edge and lay panting on the horizontal surface, her feet and legs still dangling. She crawled the rest of the way out. The torn headcloth scraped over stone, the fabric stretching and fraying. Snake pulled it gently until the makeshift sack lay beside her. Only then, with one hand on the serpents and the other almost caressing the solid ground, could Snake look around and be sure that she had climbed out unobserved. For the moment, at least, she was free.

She unbuttoned her pocket and looked at the eggling, hardly believing that it was unharmed. Rebuttoning her pocket, she took one of the baskets from the pile beside the crevasse and put the mature serpents in it. She slung it across her back, rose shakily to her feet, and started toward the tunnels circling the crater.

But the tunnels surrounded her like infinite reflections, and she could not remember which one had let her in. It was opposite the single large refrigeration duct, but the crater was so large that any one of three exits might have been the one she wanted.

Maybe it’s better, Snake thought. Maybe they always go in through the same one and I’ll get another that’s deserted.

Or maybe no matter which one I take I’ll meet someone, or maybe all the others lead to dead ends.

At random, Snake entered the left-hand tunnel. Inside it looked different, but that was because the frost had melted. This tunnel, too, held torches, so North’s people must use it for something. But most of them had burned to stubs, and Snake crept through darkness from one vague, flickering point to another, trailing her hand against the wall so she could return if this did not lead her outside. Each new light had to be the tunnel’s mouth, but each time she found another fading torch. The corridor stretched onward. However harried she had been before, however exhausted she was now, she knew the first tunnel had not been this long.

One more light, she thought. And then — ?

The sooty smoke drifted around her, not even revealing an air current to show her the way. She stopped at the torch and turned around. Only blackness lay behind her. The other flames had gone out, or she had rounded a curve that blotted them from her view. She could not bring herself to backtrack.

She walked through a great deal of darkness before she saw the next light. She wanted it to be daylight, made bargains and bets with herself that it would be daylight, but knew it was merely another torch before she reached it. It had nearly died; it flickered to an ember. She could smell the acrid smoke of an ebbing flame.

Snake wondered if she were being herded to another crevasse, one lying in wait in the dark. From then on she walked more carefully, sliding one foot forward without shifting her weight until she was sure of solid ground.

When the next torch appeared she hardly noticed it. It did not cast enough light to help her make her way. The basket grew heavier and a reaction to all that had happened set in. Her knee ached fiercely and her shoulder hurt so much that she had to slide her hand beneath her belt and hug her arm in close against her body. As she scuffed along the untrustworthy path, she did not think she could have lifted her feet higher even if caution had allowed it.

Suddenly she was standing on a hillside in daylight beneath the strange twisted trees. She looked around blankly, then stretched out her left hand and stroked rough tree bark. She touched a fragile leaf with an abraded, broken-nailed fingertip.

Snake wanted to sit down, laugh, rest, sleep. Instead, she turned right and followed the hillside around, hoping the long tunnel had not led her half the hill or half the dome away from North’s camp. She wished North or the crazy had said something about where they had put Melissa.

The trees ended abruptly. Snake almost walked into the clearing before she stopped herself and pulled back into the shadows. Thick low round-leafed bushes carpeted the meadow with a solid layer of scarlet vegetation. On the natural mattress lay all the people she had seen with North, and more. They were all asleep, dreaming, Snake supposed. Most lay face up with their heads thrown back, their throats exposed, revealing puncture wounds and thin trickles of blood among many sets of scars. Snake looked from person to person, recognizing no one, until her search reached the other side of the clearing. There, touched by the shade of an alien tree, the crazy lay sleeping. His position differed from that of everyone else: he was face down, stripped to the waist, and he had stretched out his arms before him as if in supplication. His legs and feet were bare. As Snake skirted the clearing, moving closer to the crazy, she saw the many fang marks on his inner arms and behind his knees. So North had found an unexhausted serpent, and the crazy had finally got what he wanted.

But North was not in the clearing, and Melissa was not there either.

A well-used trail led back into the forest. Snake followed it cautiously, ready to slip between the trees at any warning. But nothing happened. She could even hear the rustling of small animals or birds or indescribably alien beasts as she padded barefoot over the hard ground.

The trail ended just above the entrance to the first tunnel. There, next to a large basket, alone with a dreamsnake in his hands, sat North.

Snake watched him curiously. He held the serpent in the safe way, behind the head so it could not strike. With the other hand he stroked its smooth green scales. Snake had noticed that North had no throat scars, and she had assumed that for himself he used the slower and more pleasurable method of taking the venom. But now the sleeves of his robe had fallen back and she could see quite clearly that his pale arms were unscarred too.

Snake frowned. Melissa was nowhere in sight. If North had put her back in the caves Snake might search futilely for days and still not find her. She had no strength left for a long search. She stepped out into the clearing.

“Why don’t you let it bite you?” she said.

North started violently, but did not lose control of the serpent. He stared at Snake with an expression of pure confusion. He glanced quickly around the clearing as if noticing for the first time that his people were not near him.

“They’re all asleep, North,” Snake said. “Dreaming. Even the one who brought me here.”

“Come to me!” North shouted, but Snake did not obey his commanding voice, and no one at all answered.

“How did you get out?” North whispered. “I’ve killed healers — they were never magic. They were as easy to kill as any creature.”

“Where’s Melissa?”

“How did you get out?” he screamed.

Snake approached him without any idea what she would do. It was true that North was not strong, but sitting down he was still nearly as tall as she was standing, and right now she was not strong either. She stopped in front of him.

North thrust the dreamsnake toward her, as if it would frighten her or bind her with desire to his will. Snake was so close that she reached out and stroked the serpent with the tip of her finger.

“Where’s Melissa?”

“She’s mine,” he said. “She doesn’t belong in the world outside. She belongs here.”

But his pale eyes, flicking sideways, betrayed him. Snake followed his gaze: to the huge basket, nearly as long as she was tall and half that deep. Snake went to it and carefully lifted its lid. She took one involuntary backward step, drawing in a long angry breath. The basket was nearly filled with a solid mass of dreamsnakes. She swung toward North, furious.

“How could you?”

“It was what she needed.”

Snake turned her back on him and slowly, carefully began lifting dreamsnakes from the basket. There were so many of them she could not see Melissa, even as a vague shape. She took dreamsnakes out of the basket by pairs, and, once they could no longer reach her daughter, dropped them on the ground. The first one slid over her foot and coiled itself around her ankle, but the second one glided rapidly away toward the trees.

North scrambled up. “What are you doing? You can’t—” He started after the freed serpents, but one of them raised itself to strike and North flinched back. Snake dropped two more serpents on the ground. North tried once again to capture a dreamsnake, but it struck at him and he nearly fell avoiding it. North abandoned the serpent and flung himself toward Snake, using his height to threaten her, but she held a dreamsnake out toward him and he stopped.

“You’re afraid of them, aren’t you, North?” She took one step toward him. He tried to stand firm but when Snake took a second step he backed abruptly away.

“Don’t you accept your own advice?” She was angrier than she had ever been before: the sane part of her mind, driven deep, watched with shock how glad she was to be able to frighten him.

“Stay away—”

As Snake approached him he fell backward. Scrabbling at the ground he pulled himself away, and stumbled again when he tried to rise. Snake was near enough to smell the odor of him, musty and dry, nothing like human scent. Panting, like an animal at bay, he stopped and faced her, his fists clenched to strike as she brought the dreamsnake closer.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do it—”

Thinking of Melissa, Snake did not reply.

North stared at the dreamsnake, mesmerized. “No—” His voice broke. “Please—”

“Is it pity you want from me?” Snake cried with joy, knowing she would give him no more mercy than he had offered her daughter.

Suddenly North’s fists unclenched and he leaned toward her, stretching out his hands to her, exposing the fine blue veins of his wrists.

“No,” he said. “I want peace.” He trembled visibly as he waited for the dreamsnake’s strike.

Astonished, Snake drew back her hands.

“Please!” North cried again. “Gods, don’t play with me!”

Snake looked at the serpent, then at North. Her pleasure in his capitulation turned to revulsion. Was she so much like him, that she needed power over other human beings? Perhaps his accusations had been true. Honor and deference pleased her as much as they pleased him. And she had certainly been guilty of arrogance, she had always been guilty of arrogance. Perhaps the difference between her and North was not of kind, but only of degree. Snake was not sure, but she knew that if she forced this serpent on him now, while he was helpless, whatever differences there might be would have even less meaning. She stepped back, dropping the dreamsnake on the ground.

“Stay away from me.” Her voice, too, trembled. “I’m going to take my daughter and go home.”

“Help me,” he whispered. “I discovered this place, I used its creatures to help others, don’t I deserve help now?” He looked pitiably at Snake but she did not move.

Suddenly he moaned and lunged for the dreamsnake, grasping it in one hand and forcing it to bite his other wrist. He whimpered as the fangs sank in, once, again.

Snake backed away from him, but he no longer paid any attention to her. She turned toward the huge wicker basket.

The dreamsnakes had begun to escape of their own accord now. One slithered over the basket’s side and fell to the earth with a soft thud. Several more peered over, and gradually the weight of the whole mass of them bulged out the wicker and tilted the basket. It tipped over, and the serpents squirmed out in a writhing pile.

But Melissa was not there.

North swept past Snake, oblivious to her, and plunged his pale blood-spotted hands into the mass of dreamsnakes.

Snake grabbed him and pulled him around. “Where is she?”

“What — ?” He strained feebly toward the serpents, his translucent eyes glassy.

“Melissa — where is she?”

“She was dreaming…” He gazed at the dreamsnakes. “With them.”

Somehow, Melissa had got away. Somehow, her will had defeated North, the venom, the lure of forgetfulness. Snake looked around the camp, searching again, seeing everything but what she wished to see.

North moaned in frustration and Snake let him go. He grabbed at escaping serpents as they slid away into the forest. His arms were a mass of bloody pinpricks, and each time he recaptured another of his creatures he forced it to strike at him.

“Melissa!” Snake called, but there was no answer.

Suddenly North grunted; then, after a moment, he made a strange moaning sound. Snake looked over her shoulder. North rose slowly, a serpent in his bloody hands, thin trickles of blood flowing from a bite in his throat. He stiffened, and the dreamsnake writhed. North fell to his knees and balanced there. He toppled forward and lay still, and his power drained away from him as the alien dreamsnakes escaped back into their alien forest.

By reflex, Snake went to him. He breathed evenly. He was not hurt, not by such a gentle fall. Snake wondered if the venom would affect him as it affected his followers. But even if it did not, even if his dread of it caused him to react badly, she could do nothing for him.

The dreamsnake he still held squirmed and flailed itself from his grasp. Snake caught her breath in memory and sorrow. Its spine was broken. Snake knelt beside it and ended its pain, killing it as she had killed Grass.

With the taste of its blood chill and salty on her lips, she fumbled for the strap of her small wicker basket and hoisted it across her shoulders. It did not occur to her to look for Melissa anywhere but on the trail leading down the hill, toward the break in the dome.

The tangle-trees cast a deeper, darker shade here than in the first place Snake had passed among them, and the opening through them was narrower and lower. With chills on her back, Snake pushed herself as fast as she could go. The alien forest that surrounded her could harbor any sort of creature, from dreamsnakes to silent carnivores. Melissa was completely unprotected; she did not even have her knife anymore.

When Snake had begun to believe she was on the wrong trail, she reached the rock outcropping where the crazy had betrayed her. It was a long way from North’s camp to the ledge, and Snake wondered how Melissa could have got this far.

Maybe she escaped and hid herself, Snake thought. Maybe she’s still up near North’s camp, sleeping, or dreaming… and dying.

She went a few steps farther, hesitated, decided, and plunged ahead.

Stretched out on the trail, her fingers digging into the ground to pull her even a little farther, Melissa lay unconscious just around the next turn. Snake ran to her, stumbled, fell to her knees beside her.

Snake gently turned her daughter over. Melissa did not move, and she was very limp and cold. Snake searched for a pulse, now thinking it was there, now certain it was not. Melissa was in deep shock, and Snake could do nothing for her here.

Melissa, my daughter, she thought, you tried so hard to keep your promise to me, and you nearly succeeded. I made promises to you, too, and they’ve all been broken. Please let me have another chance.

Awkwardly, forced to use her nearly crippled right arm, Snake wrestled Melissa’s small body up on her left shoulder. She staggered to her feet, nearly losing her balance. If she fell she did not think she would be able to rise again. The trail stretched before her, and she knew how long it was.