Riding the Serpent's Back

By Keith Brooke

With his health failing, the great mage Donn has chosen to pass on his Talents to a new generation: an old era is drawing to a close, a new era about to begin. But with change comes instability. War looms and a rogue church leader threatens to set loose the wild powers of the First City. Donn’s children must oppose this man but, also, they must contend with Donn himself: the old mage has not finished with his children yet.

On the run from the religious repression of the mainland, Leeth Hamera joins a group of outcasts on the Serpent’s Back, a continually changing island continent in the middle of a lava sea. Leeth has never lived up to the expectations of his wealthy merchant family and his only magical skill is the lowly Talent of bonding with animals. But, as he learns, the greatest Talents can sometimes be the slowest to emerge.

The leader of the outcasts is Chi, son of Donn and the greatest healer of his generation. Chi is in exile for breaking the Embodied Church’s edict against intervening in the natural order: many years ago Chi used his skills to revive his son from the dead. That son, Lachlan Pas, is now a church leader tortured by the guilty knowledge of what his father had to do to return him to life. When he learns Chi is still alive, he orders his execution, determined that his secret should never be exposed.

Until now, Chi has been content to live in exile but now he knows that his son’s insane and cruel rule must be stopped. Chi summons his half-siblings from throughout the inhabited lands of the Rift valley. The need for action is confirmed when one of them reveals that Lachlan and his mage, Oriole, are rebuilding the ancient city of Samhab – an act which will release the powers of the earth with unforeseeable consequences.

Welcome to the magical island city of Zigané, endlessly adrift in the southern lava sea; the searing soda plains home of the Morani warriors; the impenetrable Zochi jungle, full of illusion and hidden hazard; the charmed fortress-like City of the Divine Wall; and Samhab, the fantastic First City of the True, built at the geographical centre of the Rift, where the magical powers of the earth rise up to be set free by the earth-charmers and mages. The novel’s cast of shape-changers, earth-charmers, healers and illusionists must battle to save civilization from the evil rule of Lachlan Pas and his followers.

For whoever controls the power of Samhab controls the future of the world.

“Keith Brooke’s prose achieves a rare honesty and clarity, his characters always real people, his situations intriguing and often moving.” World Fantasy Award-winner Jeff VanderMeer

“A progressive and skilful writer.” Peter F Hamilton, author of the Night’s Dawn trilogy

“Keith Brooke is a wonderful writer. His great gift is taking us into worlds we never imagined, looking through the eyes of people a lot like us.” Kit Reed

“In the recognized front ranks of SF writers.” Locus

• Language: English
• Publisher: infinity plus
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502226198

Book preview

Part One

The Serpent’s Back

1. Riding the Serpent’s Back

The two men sat slightly apart from the rest of the ragged group, darkness gathering around them.

And you? asked the younger of the two. Why are you hiding out here on the Serpent’s Back?

The older man buried a hand in his thick beard and scratched at his jaw. It seemed that he would not reply, then, softly, he said, I killed my son.

His companion swallowed. And so you fled, he said, unsure how to handle the situation, suddenly wishing he had not tried to force this conversation in the first place.

No, said the older man. First of all I brought him back to life again.

~

Leeth Hamera had travelled with the nomads for five days, but until now Chi had shown little sign of accepting him. Instead, he had been gruff, uncommunicative, naturally wary of the young newcomer from the north.

Earlier that evening, most of the group had settled around the fire, the others retreating into the darkness. Progress is slow, said Leeth, trying to make conversation. Today they had covered a distance no more than a hundred standard paces, barely enough to stay in the same place on the ever-moving Serpent’s Back. After a late start, they had been delayed by Chi’s insistence that they seek the least destructive path through the jungle, even though in a few years’ time these trees would be incinerated in a sea of molten lava. Such care seemed futile to Leeth’s young mind.

Silence stretched lazily and the sun grew heavy on the horizon, a huge ball of fire subsiding into the new lands ahead. Somewhere beneath them the world groaned; Leeth realised he had become so accustomed to the Serpent’s seismic din that he rarely noticed it any more.

Progress? said Chi eventually, turning to face Leeth so that the feathers tied into his long blue-grey hair danced briefly across his shoulders. The concept still exists in your part of the world?

This hostility was not what Leeth had hoped to provoke. I’ve left all that behind, he said, defensively. I told you. I never fitted in. He wanted so much to win this charismatic nomad’s trust that it was only later that he understood that Chi’s attacks were really veiled attacks upon himself.

Pointedly, Chi gestured at Leeth’s smart clothes and boots, his little tent lying unassembled a short distance away through the trees, where his courser snored fitfully. Leeth had led a sheltered existence for most of his nineteen years; when, finally, he had broken away from his stifling life in the north he had merely been sensible and equipped himself for survival in the wilderness as best he could afford. Now Chi used his preparedness as yet another means to taunt him: he was only a rich brat out for kicks; survival on the Serpent’s Back could only ever be a game for the likes of Leeth.

Clearly satisfied that he had hurt Leeth, Chi chose to isolate him in a different way now. Cotoche, here, he said, nodding towards a young woman who lay asleep on a mat by the fire, her position made awkward by the heavy swelling of her belly. My little apprentice. I’ve taught her all that I know and yet she has never even been able to set foot on the mainland. Out here we are all non-citizens: most of the people are, like Cotoche, without a traceable ancestry and so are automatically marginalised. She could even be imprisoned, simply because of her dead parents’ religion. So she has spent all her life wandering the Burn Plain.

Born to freedom, Leeth said, with adolescent determination not to be quieted.

Chi narrowed his eyes, about to argue, then held himself back. Jaryd and Bean, he said, gesturing towards a fiftyish couple who lay, limbs entangled, across the entrance to their tent.

Leeth looked away, embarrassed – as ever – by the more liberal social mores these travellers displayed. It was not so much the sex that disturbed him, but the knowledge that they were not of the True Families and so such intimate contact with a cousin should have been repugnant to them.

Chi smiled. If they ever returned to the Shelf they would be arrested and imprisoned. And not for the reason you might assume.

Leeth glanced again at the two to demonstrate the openness of his mind. He had to look away immediately. Why? he managed to ask, fighting his discomfiture.

One day in the Square of the Anointed in Broor, a newly instated troop of city guards decided to assert their authority by rounding up a few lowly criminals and giving them a beating. When Jaryd returned from some errand or other he found that Bean had been seized for begging.

What did they do to her?

She was lucky: Jaryd found her before more than three of them had raped her. The troops weren’t so lucky because Jaryd had brought some friends with him. They’ve been on the run ever since.

Leeth looked across at the pair again. Both were short and thickset, with dirty, stained skin and Charmed rats’ tails tied twitching in their hair. On the few occasions he had spoken to Jaryd he had struck Leeth as one of the most peaceable individuals he had ever met.

Leeth blinked hard, resenting – all over again – his privileged, shielded upbringing. He had known that the travellers must have rough backgrounds, as had most of the people who chose the hard life of the Burn Plain. He was painfully aware of how much he stood out in this company yet, perhaps perversely, he was still convinced that in his heart he had more in common with these people than he had ever had with the claustrophobic, censorious society he had left behind. Chi’s attempts to intimidate him and mark him out served only to reinforce his stubborn resistance.

The others? he said, in conversational tone. Are they all running from something? Chi’s group numbered about twenty then, although even in Leeth’s short time with them, two loners had moved on and one family of five had joined.

Chi shrugged, as if suddenly bored with his games. He returned his gaze to the dying sun. We all have our reasons for choosing this life, he said. We’ve all opted for the frontier.

And you? asked Leeth. Why are you hiding out here on the Serpent’s Back? And so it was that he learned the nature of Chi’s crimes.

~

Back at the start of the year, Leeth had thought he had won his battle with his parents. He should have known better.

He came from a family of successful merchants in the northern city of Laisan, and it had always been assumed that, as the eldest child, Leeth would take over the business in due course. He had never been suited to such a destiny, never equal to the struggle of following his schooling in the various trade codes of the Rim and the cities of the lakes and the two rivers. He had never been even faintly interested in the machinations of the Merchantry Council, or the place on the city Senate he would inherit with the business. His failure had been that he was too adept at role-playing: he always did what was required to hide his shortcomings, always feigning interest and enthusiasm with such glib ease that it deflected criticism of his technical deficiencies. His growing distress at his increasingly straitjacketed future was the first reason for the confrontation with his parents.

The second reason was the religious obligations they were imposing upon him. His father, Gudrun, was born to a line clearly traceable back to the True Families, the clans first entrusted by the gods with the lands of the Rift; his mother Cora’s line was nearly as strong. With such ancestry it was inevitable that his parents should become members of the True Church of the Embodiment. Cora was always a little distanced from this, but Gudrun was an enthusiastic promoter of the sect’s reactionary religious politics – as Gudrun came from such a strong line, the Embodiment’s emphasis on noble ancestry and the One Religion could only benefit his business and political ambitions. It had always been assumed that, regardless of his own political or religious views – if he was even permitted to have any – Leeth would meekly adopt the family line, preaching at the festivals, paying financial tribute to the Church, and so on. This had been easy to accept as a boy, when it had all been far in the future, but as his move into this stultifying world drew ever closer Leeth had realised he would have to make a stand.

His third reason for confronting his parents’ assumptions had been the realisation that they wanted him to marry his cousin, Ellen. Marriage between first cousins was forbidden outside the True Families, but within these ancient lines it was promoted as the best way to reinforce the revered blood. Ellen was a spotty thirteen year-old, with the snotty manner of a lot of True Family children of that age. It was not simply that he found the proposition inconceivable – when his parents announced their intentions the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place: his future, decided, plotted out, controlled.

Gudrun had been angry when Leeth told him he wanted to go away to college in Tule. Cora had taken a different line. I’m not angry with you, she had told him. Just dismayed. Why couldn’t you say something about this before? Yet it was Cora who smoothed things over, Cora who negotiated with her husband to allow Leeth his two years in college. The small city of Khalaham, on the banks of the Hamadryad, was not quite the sprawling, vigorous metropolis of Tule, but Leeth seized the opportunity with gusto.

It was not until he arrived at the tight cluster of college buildings and saw the students – the men in their grey serge suits, their hair as tightly cropped as his own; the women in identical pinafore dresses and poke bonnets – that he realised he had been betrayed. He had wanted to learn about the wonders of modern industry, along with some history, some biology. But this was an Embodied college where all they taught was theology, ancestry, doctrine.

He had given the place three weeks, in the hope that at least some of his fellow students might think like him, but every one of them was prosaic and narrow-minded; most were church votaries already, and all seemed to want either a future within the bureaucracy of the Embodiment itself, or to promote its reactionary brand of politics from the various senates and councils of their home regions.

Like a rock, plunging down through the depths of the lake, Leeth became increasingly aware that his future remained unchanged: the business, the Senate, the responsibility to the Church, a loveless marriage with either Ellen or one of the numerous dull-witted young women of the college.

Now, as he watched the last sliver of sun go down over the Serpent’s Back, Leeth felt his first doubts about the path he had followed. He recalled the posters spread through Khalaham – Charmed into life in much the same way as the twitching rats’ tails in the hair of Jaryd and Bean – from which the printed face of one of the Embodiment’s leading Ministers would catch the eye of a passer-by and harangue him or her with the latest holy decrees. Lachlan Pas, or maybe Sandos or Schortzer, his deputies in the city of Tule, would yell passages from the Scriptures and demand that all good citizens must report any deviancy in public morals in their neighbours and colleagues.

Chi’s crime – his deviancy – was to delve too deeply into the arcane arts which were governed by strict edicts drawn from the great cyclical texts. To kill his son was bad enough, but it was still a normal crime; to do whatever had been required to steal him away from the great underworld of Michtlanteqez by bringing him back to life was a moral and religious crime of the highest order. Leeth had always hoped that he had an open mind, but even to him such interference in nature was shocking, even horrific.

Leeth had to fight the instinctive suspicion that he must be seated next to a demon.

~

He spent that night in the open, curled up against the bulky body of Sky, his courser. The beast had been bonded to him since Leeth’s sixteenth birthday and now he found the familiar feel of her rough wing membranes and her little sleeping movements very reassuring. Buckled into his harness on Sky’s back, the two of them could cover a distance of 500 leaps in a day. Now, as they lay semi-conscious together in the night, Leeth was aware of the dim surge of activity in the beast’s mind and he wondered again how Sky sensed her own end of the empathic bond. Did she have any kind of understanding, he wondered? Did she simply respond out of dumb instinct to the promptings that reached her brain, regardless of their origin? Was she even aware that they were not her own thoughts?

Eventually, Leeth managed to settle. He would never admit it, but one reason he chose to sleep in the open with his courser was that the beast’s intermittent snores and grunts and eructations served to disguise the subterranean grumblings and cracking sounds which always seemed so much louder at night. The animal noises, so close to his ear, protected Leeth from the paranoid fear that he might somehow sleep so long the Serpent would deposit him in the infernal depths of the Burn Plain. Before coming to this wild place he had been prepared for the frequent seismic tremors as the thin continental crust rode its molten substrate, but the unanticipated loudness of the place had disturbed him deeply. It was the noisiest place he had ever lived.

The Serpent’s Back – before his break for freedom he had called it by its official name of the Dependent Territories, but now it would always be the Serpent’s Back – was a great tongue of land, spread across the sea of molten lava known as the Burn Plain. Said to be some 8000 leaps from east to west, this enormous island was divided across its midriff by the Michtlan Ridge, a great fault in the earth’s surface, running north to south for a thousand leaps. The Ridge spewed out fresh lava and debris from its central gash, replacing and displacing the ground to either side in a continuous process. The newly formed continent rolled east and west at a rate thought to be about a hundred paces a day, or a standard leap every ten days – a perpetually moving landmass. The western half of this rolling island continent was a violently unstable wasteland; the east, by some geophysical quirk, was stable enough for human settlement. Four thousand leaps to the east and west of the Michtlan Ridge the continent broke up into islands, drifts, rock floes, which were eventually swallowed up by the Burn Plain.

For Leeth that was the great romantic attraction of this continually regenerating landmass: its sheer lack of permanence. In little more than a hundred years everything was gone, replaced by the new.

On the Serpent’s Back you have to keep walking just to stay where you are, and as you do so the whole continent passes you by.

~

The next day, Chi was stalking about the encampment earlier than usual, exuding the arrogance Leeth now saw as a carefully cultivated part of his veneer. Come on, come on, he kept saying, harrying his lethargic followers. Let’s get ourselves moving.

Why the hurry? Leeth asked. After the previous day’s slow progress he found the urgency unsettling, another example of Chi’s erratic mood swings.

We’re going to make up some ground today, said Chi. The forest is more open here, we’ll be on the plains before long. I decided last night that we should take the opportunity to get back to where we were three months ago.

The other travellers weren’t so keen, but nobody challenged Chi’s decision. Leeth was packing his things into Sky’s harness when he sensed from the beast’s thoughts that someone had joined them. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the pregnant one, Cotoche. He struggled to put out of his mind the noises she had made with Chi in the night, the two of them adding to the earth’s groans.

Apart from the abdominal bulge, Cotoche was a slight woman of about Leeth’s age. Her skin was dark, her eyes a jade green that would be highly prized in some of the more primitive settlements along the Hamadryad. From their very first encounter, Leeth had found her immensely attractive.

Without preamble, Cotoche said, I used to ride on coursers when I was little. Before they killed my father. Is Sky strong enough to carry two adults?

Of course, said Leeth, his heart surging. Travelling such short distances each day, he had taken to sending Sky off to soar alone while he walked with the others, struggling through the jungle growth with the horses and pack-mokes as he tried to get to know the people of Chi’s group.

Today they would fly. He set about reconfiguring the harness.

A short time later they were ready to go. Chi had set off earlier, riding his black horse with old Karlas Herckle mounted behind him. Already, they were lost to sight in the thinning jungle.

Will you be all right? asked Leeth. With the...baby, I mean?

Cotoche nodded, and then waited as Leeth helped her onto the crouching courser’s back and strapped her in. When she was secure, he straddled the beast’s shoulders behind her and tightened his own belts. With his arms around Cotoche he could feel the squirming movements of the seven-month foetus in her belly.

He gave Cotoche a reassuring squeeze and then thought the command-shape into Sky’s mind. Fly.

Sky grunted, straightened, heaved her wings into a V until they caught the irregular breeze that swirled in the small clearing. Then, with a single downward sweep, the courser lifted into the air. For a few seconds they were jerked roughly from side to side, up and down, as Sky struggled to lift through the gaps in the overhanging trees. And then there was a sudden change in the air – a new crispness replacing the dank humidity of the forest – and they were twenty, thirty paces up, lifting clear of the trees. Cutting across the breeze at an angle, Sky relaxed into a steadier rhythm of lazy wing-beats, interspersed with short, stiff-winged glides. In a short time they were beating their way over Chi and Karlas and then they were out in front of the group of travellers.

Cotoche whooped and yelled down at Chi and the others, and Leeth settled back a little, aware that he had been holding her more firmly than necessary.

Sky was coping easily with the extra weight and Leeth felt proud of the beast. He thought more commands into Sky’s head, taking them up higher so that the travellers appeared as tiny as termites, the trees like diminutive clumps of moss.

How did you learn that you had the Talent? asked Cotoche, leaning back into his embrace. There aren’t many people who can fly like this.

I was twelve, said Leeth, distractedly. He reached up to move a strand of her dark hair out of his mouth and smoothed it back against her head, only for the wind to lift it free again. "Playing alone on the Senechal Terrace in Laisan – the Terrace overlooks a bay full of lobster-rearing cages and fish farms. It was one of my favourite games: watching the gannets flying out over the bay, picking on one and trying to will it to stop and dive. I thought it was sheer chance, that I was playing a kind of gambling game with myself: will it or won’t it?

One time, I picked out a bird and sure enough it broke its flight as if it was about to dive, but then it turned and flew in towards me. I watched, fascinated. It came closer and closer, directly towards me. So fast! I never knew they flew so fast. Then suddenly I could see the yellow staining on its neck, those squinting little black and blue eyes, that dagger-like beak. I realised it was coming straight at me and I threw myself to the ground. I felt the rush of air as it passed over me, and then a sharp stab of pain as its beak raked a fine scratch across my bare shoulders and then it was gone.

Cotoche had twisted towards Leeth as he spoke, her eyes fixed on his. Why did it do that?

Leeth smiled. It had no choice, he said. When I looked up there was an old man watching me with a peculiar smile on his face. His name was Muranitharan Annash and he had flown coursers for sixty years before his body became too frail. He had seen me before, playing my game, and realised that I had the Talent. That day when he saw me again he decided to train me to refine my empathies. The gannet was his little demonstration. He paused, then went on. My parents...my parents didn’t approve at first. They are True Family and bonding is usually a commoner’s Talent.

What happened?

Muranitharan was determined – to save a dying art, he said. He ingratiated himself with my father, convincing him that Annash was derived from the True name Hanesh. Then we put on a demonstration, in which Muranitharan cheated outrageously on my behalf. It’s the only argument I’ve ever won against my parents.

Cotoche settled farther back against him and he became aware again of the gentle pressure of her body against his, the smell of her hair, the steady, rhythmic pumping motions of Sky’s flight – even the wind, tugging at their clothes, stirred him. Suddenly he was acutely aware of his own arousal.

Leeth gasped as Cotoche wriggled a little to get more comfortable. He didn’t know what to do.

She had to be aware of what was happening to him.

There was no way he could move to make space between them without endangering their lives, yet he didn’t know what would happen if he stayed like this for much longer.

He realised he was holding her tight again and he eased his grip. The movement, as he did so, sent a shudder through his body. If she had been unaware of his state before, then she must feel it now, he thought.

Slowly, she twisted towards him, forcing him harder against her as she moved. She was smiling, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. She put a hand on his arm.

Thank you for letting me fly with you, she said.

Now, he met her look, and there was no reproach in it, no embarrassment. Just a friendly smile, her cheeks flushed with a deep bronze glow from the rushing of the air. It’s...my pleasure, he said, awkwardly.

She turned away again, the movement of her body giving him another spasm of pained joy.

It must be very special, she said, to be in touch with another mind.

Hmm. He tried to focus. It’s how it is, he said. I don’t know what it’s like not to be like this.

"Yet I don’t know what it is like, said Cotoche. There’s such a gulf between us all, don’t you think?"

Hmm.

Cotoche leaned across Sky’s shoulder to look down. We’re making good progress today, now the jungle is thinner.

The gently rolling hills below them were dotted with scrubby trees. Why do you have so much ground to make up? he asked.

Cotoche’s reply shocked Leeth so much that Sky sensed his reaction and was momentarily confused, her rhythm faltering.

Brown Ague, she said. She paused, as Leeth soothed Sky and their flight levelled again. Jaryd, Lucy, Digger and Sunshine fell ill. Me as well.

Brown Ague was a deadly disease, occasionally reaching plague proportions in some of the poorer districts of the Rift. Its symptoms were a deep fever with intense pains in the joints; its main threat was that it lowered the body’s resistance and in the majority of cases the victim died of some otherwise harmless secondary infection.

Leeth peered at what he could see of Cotoche’s face from over her shoulder. No one died? he asked.

She hesitated, then shook her head. She lifted one of Leeth’s hands and put it flat on her swollen belly. Only the little man, she said. But Chi woke him up again. He would never let any of us die.

Leeth worked saliva into his mouth. Under his palm the baby wriggled. Naively, he had not considered the likelihood that Chi must still practise his dark healing arts out here in the wilds.

Just then, Cotoche squeezed his hand. Look, she said.

Below, a snake-like procession of travellers on horses and the reptilian mokes was climbing a steep fold in the continental crust. Ahead of them, the tattered remains of the jungle became even more patchy and scrubby, perhaps an indication that they were making progress towards the Michtlan Ridge and so down the gradient of ecological complexity and progression.

Cotoche was pointing ahead, beyond the lip of the hill the travellers were climbing. She had spotted a town, an ugly grey scar on the next roll of hill, coughing the black smoke of industry into the sky like some great, malignant fumarole.

Leeth didn’t know if this was good news or not, but he thought a command-shape at Sky and they side-slipped and swept in a wide circle back towards the rest of the group.

~

The travellers gathered just below the crest of the hill to decide what to do. Most favoured skirting around the town – supplies of food were high and they had stocked up with water only the previous day.

Chi, as was his way, changed everything. You’re being very sensible, he said, in a thickly sarcastic tone. He swung his drink canister so that an arc of spiced brandy sprayed out. But why should we slope around in the shadows, afraid to show our faces? Why are we here, on the Serpent’s Back? Because it’s a free place. No regulations, no holy decrees yelled at you from the latest poster on the wall. If we have no freedom here then there’s nowhere left for us to go. Even when he was drunk, Chi could win any argument with ease.

Leeth chose to walk with the others, sending Sky out to roam. He had no wish to draw undue attention to himself or to the travellers.

As their ragged procession approached the settlement, Jaryd said, through his thick tangle of beard, Mining town. Maybe a hard time ahead, you hear me? From the increased twitching of his tailed hair, it was clear that he was worried.

Most settlements on the Serpent’s Back were agrarian trading centres where the widely dispersed farming communities came for supplies, and to trade their produce with the agents of the northern city-states. This town was larger, its buildings uniform and blocky, all erected together according to a grid street-plan instead of casually cast in the ramshackle disorder of the market towns. Clusters of slag heaps and mining gantries were spread around the fringes of the settlement, large ironworks and processing plants huddled either side of the street as the group passed through. The Serpent’s Back was a rich source of iron, copper, gold and all sorts of minerals used by industry and agriculture, most of which was processed and transported to the cities of the Rift valley in the north. The mines were scattered across the continent’s surface, but occasionally, as here, an entire town would be constructed on a particularly rich site and it would become a centre for processing raw materials from the entire region.

Fifteen years, I’d say. Jaryd was referring to the age of the settlement: fifteen years ago, this plot of land would have been 550 leaps closer to the Michtlan Ridge, at about the edge of the region where the land became more stable and so inhabitable. The town would ride the Serpent’s Back for another eighty or ninety years and then all that could be removed would be transplanted to a virgin site near to the Ridge and the remainder would be abandoned to fall unwanted into the Burn Plain.

Jaryd was muttering to himself. He had been the last to back down in the debate about whether to avoid the town or not. He saw no sense in crossing what he saw as enemy territory, and was too pragmatic to care whether any abstract ideas of freedom were challenged by a simple choice to avoid possible conflict.

Although he had not contributed to the debate, Leeth, too, felt uncomfortable as this town swallowed them up. All the straight lines, the square buildings, the numerous temples with their red and gold friezes of serpents and eagles and painted statues of Habna, Samna, Qez, Michtlanteqez and the rest of the pantheon...the people, stopping to stare at the ramshackle procession, the men in their sturdy overalls and serge suits, the women with their faces shielded beneath the peaked brims of their bonnets...Leeth couldn’t help but think of the Scrips, the district around his college in Khalaham.

This was a Church town, a toehold for the Embodiment on the island continent of the Serpent’s Back. Leeth had not realised, until that point, quite what a powerful force the new evangelism had become, to penetrate so far south.

The travellers dispersed, leaving Jaryd and Bean watering the horses and mokes from a barrel bought from a reluctant trader who charged an additional one-tenth tributary tax for his local temple.

Leeth tagged along with Chi and Cotoche, revelling in the curious looks this wild-looking couple received as they walked along the busy streets, past all the busy people. His own looks were still remarkably conventional and, alone, he was sure he would have passed unnoticed.

What do we do? he asked, hurrying to catch up.

Chi half-turned, and it was then that Leeth saw how tense he had become. We push the limits, he said, his dark eyes narrowed. Then he grinned. But first of all we’re going to buy some liquor.

A few traders had stalls in the street, but their wares were of no interest to Chi. Shortly, they found a building with a sign that declared its proprietor was a general trader, licensed by the Governor’s Office. I didn’t know the Serpent’s Back had a Governor, said Cotoche.

Chi just grunted. He pushed through the swing doors and approached a man standing behind a counter. A case of rye, and two of gin, he said. How much?

The man looked at him, his eyes passing down the traveller’s dusty clothes and then back up again until he met Chi’s eyes. Leeth guessed the two of them were probably close in age – mid-fifties – but they had little else in common. Chi was dirty, lean, fit, with wild hair and beard and his eccentric ornamentation of feathers; the trader was clean, bald, with a belly even rounder than Cotoche’s.

You have a card? asked the man, in an incongruously deep and musical voice. You are registered for labour?

Chi leaned over the counter towards him. Make that two cases of rye, he said. I’m thirsty.

The trader stepped back, shaking his head. I’m afraid, sir...

Chi slammed his purse hard onto the counter. There was movement in a doorway at the back of the shop and Leeth saw a teenaged boy’s anxious face peering out.

I’ll put your order aside, said the trader. You can go to the Town Hall and register and then I shall serve you. But not before then.

Cotoche went to stand at Chi’s side and put a hand on his arm. He rounded on her as if he was about to lash out. Then Leeth saw Chi meet Cotoche’s eyes and then follow her sideways glance. The boy hiding in the shadows of the backroom had levelled an army musket, holding it steady against the doorframe.

Cotoche picked up Chi’s money and guided him out of the shop.

There was a poster outside on a wall: another reminder of Khalaham, another new intrusion into life on the Serpent’s Back. As they drew near, a printed face leapt into a crudely animated semblance of life. Praises be to Habna, for He created all that is our world. Praises be to Samna, sustainer and preserver. Praises be to the Embodiment of the Gods which is all that we are, all that—

Chi snatched at the poster, tearing it from the wall. He scrunched it up into a ball and rammed it into his mouth. For a few seconds, a muffled evangelical voice came from his closed lips, and then silence.

A middle-aged woman in greys and a batik shawl portraying the big-nosed god, Samna, barged past Leeth. You can’t—

Her words were cut off abruptly as Chi turned towards her and spat the chewed wad of paper into her face. She was left behind, spluttering her disapproval, as Chi marched away, trailed by Leeth and Cotoche.

Cotoche couldn’t match the pace he set and a gap opened up. Leeth thought that was probably just as well. As they walked he kept a cautious eye out for any sign of pursuit, but there was none. Why does he get like that? he asked, after a time. He’s so changeable. Is it his drinking? Is that the reason? He watched Cotoche’s face as she thought about her answer. He was secretly savouring the guilty pleasure of being alone with her in this strange town.

He’s a little boy, she said, although Chi must have been three times her age. He gets frustrated. He bottles everything up and then has to let go in some way. It’s a way of denying that the rest of the world can still make any kind of difference to him. She thought a bit more, then added, It’s in us all: our divided nature. Only Chi has more extremes. It’s like your gods: simultaneously good and bad, creating and destroying with the same stroke. Her choice of words – your gods – underlined the differences between them, fracturing their brief spell of intimacy.

Eventually, they caught up with Chi and together the three made their way slowly back to where the animals were tethered. They found Sunshine Chopal scrubbing around the wing-stubs of her moke, singing a soft song as she worked. Sunshine was a heavily built, middle-aged woman, who had actually lived for a time as a prostitute in Khalaham. She had been driven out ten years ago by the priests who had once numbered among her best customers.

Leeth joined her. He scratched at the mule-sized beast’s slender neck and it pushed its craggy face affectionately into his. Although mokes were flightless cousins of coursers, their thoughts were shapeless and dull; Leeth could never form a bond with a moke – he would have to concentrate too hard, doing all the work himself.

No good, huh? said Sunshine, breaking into his thoughts.

Leeth shook his head.

Work registration cards, huh?

He nodded. Chi didn’t take it too well.

At least they didn’t arrest him, she said. "They held me for most of an hour. They wanted to see my card, wanted to know what I do for a living. I told them I travel, do odd jobs, which is the truth. They were so patronising. She said it as if it was the worst thing that had ever been done to her. They wouldn’t even let me buy a maize cake, for the sake of Habna!"

Leeth told her about Chi’s dispute with the trader. I thought he was going to get himself shot.

I expect one day that’s just what he’ll do, said Sunshine. He says he’s pushing back the limits. I say he’s tempting fate. We don’t always agree, the two of us. I tell him he needs a good woman of close to his own age. She pouted, coquettishly. But I ain’t got a butt like Cotoche has got a butt.

Leeth flushed, his colour deepening even further when he saw that Sunshine had noticed and was chuckling. But I tell you something, she added, leaning towards him across the moke’s back. I could show you a trick or two no little girl like her could show you. She blew at his cheeks in an age-old come-on, and Leeth backed away awkwardly.

He felt helpless. He would never understand the ways of these people. He was foolish to even think that he might.

When the rest of the travellers had returned it became clear that Chi’s experience was a common one: no trade without proof of registration – which was out of the question for anyone wanted by the police, or not qualified by birth for citizenship. Only one or two people had been able to find someone willing to sell water or food without official clearance. Soon we’ll be needing a card even to breathe, said Bean, to general agreement.

As they trailed despondently out of the town, Leeth asked Chi if it was really as bad as everyone made out: couldn’t one or two register and trade on behalf of the others? He was sure the authorities would have neither the resources nor the desire to send out arrest squads for every criminal wandering the Serpent’s Back.

Chi turned to him, wearily, all his earlier anger dissipated. That depends on who you are, he said, and turned away.

~

They made good time in the few hours that remained of daylight. Nobody liked the idea of lingering too close to a Church town.

Why can’t you return to the north? asked Leeth, as he sat with Chi that evening. You’d have all of the Rift to travel through. I’m sure you could find somewhere quiet to settle. He didn’t know why Chi had suddenly taken to his company. He suspected that it was not so much his novelty as what he represented: the land Chi had left behind, the world he had rejected.

Why should I want to? asked Chi, defiant with drink again. What does it hold for me that I don’t have for free out here?

Cotoche and most of the others were splashing about in a hot pool nearby, but Chi was too drunk to join them and Leeth was still too reticent, still the nervous outsider.

Is your crime so bad? Leeth had come to see as sheer paranoia Chi’s fear that the authorities would pursue him for a crime committed so long ago – so much had changed since that time. And he must be suffering from a persecution complex if he thought anyone would know – or perhaps even care – what dark arts he had practised out here in the wilderness.

Think about what I did, said Chi, struggling to contain his anger. "Lan was fifteen, and as rebellious as fifteen year-olds can be. I was perversely proud of his rebellion, even if I could not understand the form it took: he declared for the True Church of the Embodiment, and quickly became a votary. He spent all the time he could trying to convert his family to his archaic beliefs. I think he saw me as a challenge: I was a politician and atheist, yet I was of True Family descent with a limited Talent for healing, so I should, theoretically, sympathise with his creed.

One day while I was away at Senate he made his grand move. He burnt all my books – some of them handwritten copies of texts dating back to the beginning of our Era. He daubed religious symbols throughout our house, nailed wooden figurines of the gods across every door and window and as I returned he started to chant arcane gobbledygook right in my face.

He thought you were possessed.

Chi nodded. He thought if he could drive out the demons I would fall into his arms and thank him for saving my damnable soul. Chi began to cry now, as he spoke. He stood there with his arms spread wide to welcome me, a sick grin plastered across his face. I hit him so hard the blood formed clots in his brain and he was rendered comatose.

Chi swallowed before continuing. I used what Talent I had mastered at that time to keep the spark of life going in him: every time his brain shut down – seven times! – I managed to haul him back from the edge. I spent the ensuing months seeking out those healers who worked outside the law, and as they helped me sustain Lan they also helped me refine my Talent until it had become greater than any of theirs. My wife, by then, was unable to bear more children, so I paid one of our servants to bear a child on our behalf and I used my gift to move Lan’s life force into the unshaped brain of the baby. When he was born, we passed Lan off as our own but he always knew the truth. I rebuilt him from scratch and he has hated me for it ever since, as if that hatred was somehow ingrained by the very act of his rebirth.

Leeth had never had to deal with a man’s tears before, and he was at a loss as Chi came to the end of his story. With his own schooling in the ways of the True Church, he could see why the boy would resent his new form so much. Putting aside his father’s attack, Lan’s new body had half the blood of a servant woman: in his new form he was only half True Family. But in his first existence, Lan had made a name for himself proclaiming the divine rights of the True: by those very arguments, if in his new life he admitted his lowly physical origins then he would deny himself a place in the Church hierarchy. The alternative was to go along with Chi’s cover-up and keep the secret to himself.

Chi’s tears did not last long. Soon, he was on his feet, poking at the fire with a stick.

Leeth still struggled to understand exactly why Chi should be banished to the Burn Plain. He had explained his son’s hatred for him, but by his story the authorities should know nothing of his abuse of his healing Talent, yet that was the reason he had given for his exile: not the murder, the bringing back to life.

You fled, said Leeth, slowly. Not from the law, but from your memories, from your conscience.

He left home as soon as he was old enough, said Chi. Couldn’t bear the sight of me: it just reminded him of what he was. My wife left soon afterwards. I had become impossible to live with, by then. The Embodiment had been in effective control of the city for a number of years already and I suddenly felt sick of life in perpetual opposition. I couldn’t bear what I had become. One night I got drunk, burned down my house and fled.

Suddenly it was as if the Serpent’s Back had given a mighty lurch, but it had not: the upheaval took place entirely inside Leeth’s head. He stared hard at Chi. It was an old story, from maybe thirty years before, repeated by Church teachers to illustrate the shabby decline of the old order. They told of an atheist Senator with no respect for the sacred blood that flowed through his veins: he had murdered his son and covered it up for years before descending into drunkenness, ultimately to die in a house fire of his own causing.

His name had been Chichéne – on the Serpent’s Back it had been shortened and given the hard southern ch: the northern she-shen had become kye out here in the wilds.

But... said Leeth. You died in that fire...

Chi was shaking his head. History is all lies, he said. I didn’t die. Money and loyalty are powerful tools – I used both to buy my freedom.

Your son, said Leeth, finally recalling all of the details of Chichéne’s story. This man’s second son had gone on to be true to his ancient heritage, which could be traced back through both mother and father to the True Families.

Chi looked at him bleakly. You’ve seen the posters, he said. The young Minister from Tule, whose face leapt out from posters the length and breadth of the Rift...Chi’s reborn son was Lachlan Pas.

~

Ten days later they came to another settlement. They had left the jungle behind by then, and the hills through which they passed were blanketed with scrub and pasture, populated by the continually migrating pastoral families and their enormous herds of sheep, goats and mokes, being fattened for the northern trade.

The difference between this settlement and the last was marked: this town was young and friendly, set up by a loose commune of former travellers who had decided to try their hand at a little scavenge-mining. Coco Guderan, one of the leaders of the town, had even travelled with Chi back in the early days before she had chosen to settle down.

This is how it should be, said Chi, one time. This is how it once was, too: common resources shared and utilised by the people on behalf of the people. In the Rift all the land is marked off and shared amongst the elite.

It’s an inevitable consequence of industrialisation, argued Coco. When everyone moves to the cities there’s nobody left to perpetuate the ancient land rights.

It’s the fault of the Church, countered Chi. They see an opportunity and take it. It’s the corruption of power.

They stayed in the settlement for some time, doing casual work, enjoying the change from relentless travel. It was a peaceful time, a time when Leeth suddenly realised that the travellers were us and we rather than them and they. In a fit of belonging he allowed Jaryd to bleach his hair a harsh white-blonde, and he bought a patchwork kilt he had often admired on Cotoche. She had grown too large for it now, but it fitted Leeth well. For the first time since early adolescence he began to feel comfortable with the person he was, able to feel more open about how he felt he should look and sound.

Leeth was tending to his courser when Coco came looking for Chi. He took her up on Sky to look, and they soon spotted Chi and Cotoche racing horses madly through the swampy run-off from a recent storm. He took Sky in low, and Chi waved as they approached.

He and Cotoche rode across to join them when the courser had landed. Bad news? he said, reading Coco’s expression.

She nodded, then said, I’ve just heard some news. Police squads are coming out from the Junction, maybe as soon as tomorrow. Coming to check us for registration of the workforce, they say.

Any names they’re after?

The town leader nodded. Just the one.

~

In a short time they were on the trail again, their number down to fourteen as two families had decided to stay behind and work the mines.

He’s taking this seriously, Leeth said to Jaryd, who was riding ahead of him on Sky. The others were on horseback, having left the slower mokes and goats behind in their haste to make ground.

You would too, said Jaryd, twisting fingers deep in his beard. Leeth tried to ignore the rat-tails thrown back by the draught into his face. You ask me, our leader left something behind when he put the brains back in the skull of that son of his.

You think they’d really send squads from across the Burn Plain just for Chi? The Junction was a sprawling trading settlement on the mainland, the Embodiment’s largest stronghold to the south of the Rift.

Think on it, boy, said Jaryd. "Pas is a minister in both Church and city government. His face is on all those posters telling us what is and what ain’t. In his own eyes he’s an abomination, a blasphemous creation! He despises what he is, and where he’s from. And if he’s found out his daddy isn’t as dead as he thought he was then he won’t settle until he’s found him, I tell you. You don’t believe me, then you ask Chi what happened to his wife, what happened to the entire family of that servant woman who carried him for nine months, and what’s almost certainly happened to her if he ever found her!"

He’s killed them?

Jaryd nodded. "Chi’s the only one left who can expose him – what if he decides to come out of exile and stir up some opposition again? He could easily do it, there are people just waiting for it. Lachlan Pas is scared of him, I tell you. People like him only know one way to deal with opposition like Chi."

So Chi just runs away?

Jaryd sighed, as if it was hopeless to argue any more. Chi doesn’t know what to do, he said. He’s had, I guess, twenty years down here. Twenty years of freedom, of having responsibility only for the people he chooses to be around. After the life he’d had you can see how good that must have seemed. He’s started his life again, I tell you. Reborn, if you like. And then, about a year ago, it leaked out that he was still alive, and now it’s all thrown back in his face. You watch him closely, boy, and you try and see if he’s really up to all this again. Ask me and I tell you, he just doesn’t want any of it, just wants to keep it in the past like he has all these years. He tells me so many times: he’s done his bit, he’s not going back.

Jaryd spread his arms, held them stiff like Sky’s outstretched wings. He’s not running, boy, he’s soaring like the eagle, and he just wants to keep on flying, you hear?

~

Several weeks later, things had settled a little.

They found a routine, with the sun rising at their shoulders and setting up ahead. They covered maybe seventy or eighty leaps in a good day, fifteen when the going became harder again. They’d left the scrub behind and now even the grassland could only establish itself where the rock-breaking roots of some of the Burn Plain’s specialist plants had created drifts of thin soil; everywhere else there was only bare, smooth basalt. The land was young now, barely thirty years old. They were still about a thousand leaps short of the Michtlan Ridge, yet earthquake activity was almost constant and they had to pick their course carefully to avoid the volcanoes and deep rifts of this precarious new world. Whenever he was not flying, Leeth kept expecting the land to suddenly open up beneath the group’s feet and swallow them all without trace.

When Leeth learnt to master his fear, he began to find it exhilarating simply to be in such a place and he lived for much of the time on an excess of adrenalin. As the terrain became ever more hostile, their progress slowed, but Chi stuck relentlessly to his westward course.

One day, incredibly, they came to another incipient settlement. It looked as though it was going to be a mining town: the prefabricated building units lay stacked up where they had been hauled in by courser and moke, the main forms of long range transport across the Serpent’s Back – the steam-power revolution was yet to cross the Burn Plain on any scale. All that had been constructed were a few low buildings and a small rock pyramid with a wooden temple at its squared-off summit.

Arguments erupted in what remained of Chi’s group when the settlement was first sighted.

We should turn back, said Bean, looking old and tired all of a sudden. We’ve never been so far west before. It’s crazy. There’s nothing for us here.

Sunshine Chopal thought it might be worth sending scouts out to the settlement to test the response.

But it’s a Church town! cried Bean. We can see that from here!

Chi just stared ahead, his eyes following the course of the sun. It was probably then that Leeth first began to understand what might be happening in Chi’s mind.

I’ll do it, Leeth said quickly. I’ll go into town and see what they’re like. Maybe they’ll welcome some casual labour. Maybe we can trade for food and water. That last was the winning point: apart from the acrid, discoloured Burn Plain mizzle, there had been no real rain since that downpour back at Coco Guderan’s settlement. Without most of the pack animals they were limited in what could be carried – Leeth knew how low their supplies had become.

He went down the next morning, riding a horse leant to him by Karlas Herckle.

Policemen in tin hats stopped him at the perimeter fence. Leeth nodded at them and forced himself to smile, as if he was genuinely pleased to meet some fellow humans out in the wilderness.

Slowly, two of them levelled their muskets. Leeth abandoned his attempt to look friendly. What’s wrong? he demanded. I—

A man seized his arm and hauled him down from his saddle. Leeth sprawled on the bare rock floor of the encampment.

Reluctantly, he got to his feet. With a flick of his head, one of the policemen indicated that Leeth should enter one of the buildings.

You can’t do this! Leeth kept saying, in his most petulant tone. Let me go!

A senior officer sat at a desk. He was a small man in green police uniform, with the bronze necklet of a Church votary. A long ceremonial dagger lay conspicuously beside him on the table. With a brief gesture he made the policemen release Leeth and go to stand by the door.

Immediately Leeth was on the offensive. What’s this all about? What way is this to treat a person? With more courage than he had expected to find he leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the man’s desk so that he loomed over him. I warn you now, he said. I am a student of the Embodied College of Khalaham. I am of True Blood – Truer than anyone else in this room, I dare say – and my father sits on the Senate at Laisan. When he learns of my treatment...

The officer raised both hands and Leeth stopped, fearful that he had overplayed his hand. 

Please, the man said, and Leeth knew his petulant outburst had convinced him. He had plenty of experience at the spoilt rich brat role, after all. "My men are over-cautious. This is brigand country. Dangerous for a young...man...on his own, no? True blood alone will not protect us from the sort of people who live down here in the Dependent Territories."

Leeth shrugged and smiled, as if taking the words as praise for his bravery and not a slight at his ragged, androgynous appearance. I can cope, he said. I haven’t had any trouble yet. Until I met your men, that is.

I apologise, said the officer smoothly. On my own behalf, and on behalf of the True Church.

Leeth put a hand obediently across his chest, as any devout young coward would do in that position.

May I ask a few questions before you depart?

Leeth nodded.

As I say: this is dangerous territory for the lone traveller. Why are you here? There was a menacing edge to his voice which Leeth tried hard to ignore.

Leeth shrugged again. Because it’s here, he said, as if only considering the reason for his trip for the first time now. I’ve travelled the entire length of the Territories. I suppose I want to see how close I can get to the Michtlan Ridge. Foolish, I know, but...

He knew the man despised his brash posturing almost as much as the snobbery he had affected, but he seemed convinced by the act.

We’re looking for one man in particular, the officer added then. A dangerous criminal. He pulled a sheet of paper from a tray on his desk and turned it over to face Leeth. A printed picture leapt into animated, Charmed life: a younger and plumper Chi, his hair short and unadorned. The image was talking animatedly, but there was no sound. Have you seen him on your travels?

Leeth shook his head, a helpless, goofy smile plastered across his face. The police officer gave him a long, contemptuous stare, then replaced the poster upside down in his tray and dismissed him with a brief gesture to the guards.

~

Leeth took a circuitous route back to where he had left the rest of the travellers. When he found them it was clear from their faces that they had been arguing. When he told them what had happened the situation became rapidly worse.

Jaryd and Bean wanted to stay and fight – it was a Church town and this time there weren’t many guards – but most of the others wanted to turn back, fearful of conflict, fearful of the backlash that was inevitable if they inflicted any serious damage.

We could make ground, lose ourselves in the hills, said Cotoche, through her tears. They’re northerners – they’d never find us out here.

Finally, Chi joined the argument. I’m going on, he said. All the way to the Michtlan Ridge. In his stubborn refusal to deviate Leeth saw clearly Chi’s resentment at this intrusion into the life he had led peacefully for so long. That they should chase him out here was not just a personal thing, it illustrated a larger truth: the inevitability that the outside world would try to extend its grip in territories that had always been free. The police squad on Chi’s trail was a small-scale representation of the Embodiment’s plans for stamping its authority on all the disorganised communities of the Serpent’s Back.

He saw then that Chi was going to destroy himself.

He tried to intervene. Cotoche is right, he said. We could be thirty leaps away by dark.

Chi turned on him, his anger fuelled by drink. You! he yelled. "Why should we listen to you? How do we even know whose side you’re on? You could be a spy, for all we know – what little messages is your courser carrying while you bravely walk with us? Your skirts and your hair don’t fool anybody."

Leeth turned away. He knew it was only anger and perhaps fear speaking, but Chi’s distrust – after so long – hurt deeply nonetheless.

Chi wouldn’t stop. Why don’t you all just clear off? he cried, staggering unevenly about the gathering. Just clear off and leave me. I’ll go on alone.

Cotoche approached him and raised a hand to touch his arm.

Chi lashed out so that she had to sway out of his reach, stopped only from falling when Jaryd caught her by the shoulders.

"Go