The Serpent Bride. Sara Douglass

LAKE JUIT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

      Lake Juit, as old as the land itself, lay still and quiet in the dawn. The sun had barely risen, and broad, rosy horizontal shafts of soft light illuminated the gently rippling expanse of the lake, and set the deep reed beds surrounding the lake into deep mauve-pocked shadow.

      A man poled a punt out of the reed beds.

      He was very tall, broad-shouldered and handsomely muscled, with a head of magnificent black tightly-braided hair that hung in a great sweep to a point mid-way down his back. He wore a white linen hipwrap, its simplicity a foil to the magnificent collar of pure gold and bejewelled links that draped over his shoulders and partway down his chest and back.

      He was Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, and the lake was surrounded by ten thousand of his spearmen, while on the ramshackle wooden pier from where he’d set out waited his court maniac, the elusively insane (but remarkably useful) Ba’al’uz.

      Ba’al’uz narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched his tyrant. One did not expect one’s normally completely predictable tyrant to suddenly decamp from his palace at Aqhat, move ten thousand men and his maniac down to this humid and pest-ridden lake, saying nothing about his motives, and then get everyone up well before dawn to watch their tyrant set off by himself in a punt.

      Ba’al’uz had no idea what Isaiah was about, and he did not like that at all.

      Isaiah poled the punt slowly and steadily forward. He did not head out into the centre of the shallow lake, but kept close to the reed beds. Occasionally he smiled very slightly, as here and there a frog peeked out from behind the reeds.

      As Isaiah got deeper into the lake, he watched the dawn light carefully, waiting for the precise moment.

      He poled rhythmically, using the regular movements of his arms and body to concentrate on the matter at hand. What he was about to do was so dangerous that if he allowed himself to think about it he knew he would turn the punt back to the wharf and the watching Ba’al’uz.

      But Isaiah could not afford to do that. He needed to concentrate —

      At one with the water.

      — and he needed to focus —

      On the Song of the Frogs.

      — and he needed to draw on all the power he contained within his body —

      And allow it to ripple, to wash, and to run with the tide.

      — and he needed today to be successful, because without that which he’d come for, Isaiah knew the task of the Lord of Elcho Falling would be nigh to impossible, and the land itself would fail.

      Besides, he knew this would annoy Ba’al’uz, and annoying Ba’al’uz always brightened Isaiah’s day.

      Above all, Isaiah was here because he needed something from the lake very, very badly, and he did not think the world would survive if he did not get that for which he’d come.

      The sun was a little higher now, and nerves fluttered in Isaiah’s belly, threatening to break his concentration. His hands tightened fractionally on the pole, and he forced himself to focus.

      The air, clear a few minutes ago, was now damp with mist seeping out from the reed banks.

      Frogs began to sing, a low, sweet melody, and one or two of them hopped onto the prow of the punt.

      Isaiah closed his eyes briefly, overcome with the sweetness of their song.

      Then, hands tightened once more, eyes opening, he drew down on the deep well of power within himself.

      Isaiah spoke the words that were needed, and the moment the last one dropped from his mouth the air about the entire lake exploded in sound and movement as millions of pink- and scarlet-hued juit birds rose screaming into the dawn light.

      On the wharf, Ba’al’uz crouched down, arms over his head, and shrieked together with the birds.

      About the lake, ten thousand men thrust their spears into the air, and screamed as one with Ba’al’uz.

      On the lake, Isaiah poled into the reed banks, into magic and mystery, and into the strange borderland between worlds. Then, while the air still rang with the harsh cries of bird and man, as the frogs screamed, and as the sun suddenly topped the horizon and flooded the lake and reed beds with light, Isaiah dropped the pole, reached down into the water, and lifted a struggling, naked man into the punt.

2

       BARON LIXEL’S RESIDENCE, MARGALIT

      The journey to Margalit took almost three weeks, longer than expected. The winter was closing in, and drifts of snow had forced Ishbel and her escort to spend long days idle in wayside inns, waiting for the weather to improve enough that they might continue their journey.

      Ishbel had spent most of the idle days praying that the weather would close in so greatly she’d be forced to return to Serpent’s Nest. Of course it hadn’t happened. The snow had always cleared in time for her to move forward, and, by the time they reached Margalit, she had managed to convince herself that no matter the trials ahead, she would manage.

      Ishbel hoped only that this Maximilian was tolerable, and that he would be kind to her, and that the Great Serpent had not lied when he’d said that she would return to Serpent’s Nest, and that it would be her home, always.

      She would be strong, because she had to be.

      And, damn it, she was the archpriestess of the Coil, no matter how much she might hide that from Maximilian. She had courage and she had ability and she had pride, and she would endure.

      Despite her carefully constructed shell of determination, it was a black moment for Ishbel when she first saw the smudge of Margalit in the distance. For an instant all the terrifying fear of her childhood threatened to swamp her, but Ishbel managed to bite down her nausea and panic, and maintain a calm exterior as they rode closer and closer to the city.

      Then she took a deep breath, called on all her training and courage, and the moment passed. Margalit held no horrors for her now. All that was past.

      Ishbel was to stay with Baron Lixel, Maximilian’s ambassador to the Outlands, in his house in Margalit. The house sat in one of Margalit’s more desirable quarters. It was a large, spacious house, single-storey like most of the Outlanders’ buildings, with thick walls, high ceilings, and decorative woodwork around doors and windows. Lixel had rented the property from the Margalit Town Guild when he’d first arrived in the city, and Ishbel had no reason to suppose that Lixel knew that the house was, in fact, one of the properties in her not inconsiderable inheritance.

      Baron Lixel was there to greet Ishbel on her arrival, and he was not what Ishbel had imagined. Her fears had led her to expect a stern, forbidding man, uncommunicative and dismissive, but Lixel proved exactly the opposite. He was a pleasant man in middle age, very courtly, courteous, attentive without being fussy and with a charming habit of understatement in conversation, and Ishbel hoped it foretold well for Maximilian.

      Ishbel spent a pleasant evening with him. Lixel seemed to intuit her anxiety and, surprisingly, managed to put Ishbel at her ease with his charming conversation and easy manner.

      On the morrow Maximilian’s party was to arrive, and the negotiations for the contract of marriage to commence.

      Lixel knocked on the door of Ishbel’s chamber at mid-morning, and bowed as she opened it. “Maximilian’s delegation has arrived,” Lixel said, offering Ishbel his arm. Then, as she took it, he added, “They won’t eat you.”

      Ishbel gave a tense smile. “I feel very alone today, my lord.