I leapt up and stumbled backward. The embers of my campfire flared as my feet kicked into them, and heat seared through the soles of my boots. I stepped clear and reached for my weapon.
The snake hissed, sounding as surprised as I was. Though its fang-lined maw did not move, it was clearly the source of the strange voice. “No, hold still,” it muttered.
“You can talk?” I asked aloud. My hand found my spear in the darkness, and I levered the point between the snake’s eyes. In the fading light of the remains of my fire, I could see the scar on its neck where I had injured it earlier in the day. The scales there had already begun to knit together. It was healing, and fast—too quickly to be anything but magic. This was no ordinary beast.
The snake’s yellow eyes turned toward my spear. “Don’t like that,” it said. “Big fang, don’t like it.”
Did it speak under its own power, or was it an effect of the same spell that allowed me to speak with Kala and the grandmothers? It would not answer the question if I had asked it, but it did understand the language of steel. I took my spear in both hands and feinted a thrust over the snake’s head.
It hissed again and slithered backward into the night, leaving a trail through the underbrush. I could not follow more than a few steps, as dark as it was.
I banked my fire again and fed it the last of the dry branches I had gathered. Every breath of wind was a hiss in my ear, and every movement in the brush sounded like the snake returned to devour me as soon as I drifted off again. Silently, I cursed the priestesses for encouraging me not to slay it and be done with it. I did not sleep for the remainder of the night.
Morning came in a blaze of golden light over the emerald sea. I smothered the fire and gathered my bedroll and the remaining boar meat—all that I could carry, at least—and I set off down the trail that the snake had left through the wood. I would do my best not to harm it, I decided, but I would not allow it to continue stalking the path up the mountain and posing a danger to Kala. This was a test, I was certain of it, and I could only hope that the priestesses would approve of my actions.
The snake had carved a hollow space through the earth, winding away from the path as it curved upward toward the summit of the volcano. Forest gave way to jutting spires of black rock. Though the wind coming from the sea was cool, these stones were hot to the touch, lying in the open sun—the perfect place for a reptile to bask. Between the spires, thin fissures in the side of the mountain exhaled slow trails of steam.
I saw the snake before it saw me, its bulk wrapped in loose coils and draped over a wide, flat stone. I approached with slow, careful steps, heat pressing through the thin soles of my boots as I made my way over the rocks. Taking my spear in both hands, I lifted the shaft up and aimed the point at the snake’s exposed neck.
I would have one chance. If I failed, the snake would attack me, or worse—it would slither away across the rock, leaving no trail by which I could follow, and return to the path later to swallow young Kala in one bite.
The point of my spear touched the rock with a soft, metallic ring. Its left-hand wing, a bar of steel the length of a hand jutting out from the shaft, pushed down into the back of the snake’s neck, just behind where its mighty jaw widened. Its eyes opened at the touch of cold metal, and it unwound its coils to flee, but it was trapped.
Its dark, slitted pupils found me, and it hissed.
“You can’t run away now,” I said. “If you try, I’ll cut your head off. I don’t know how you can speak, but I know you can listen to me. I am the world-treader; I have fought your distant kin upon the icy waters of the North and lived to tell the tale; and I have traveled untold leagues to reach this island. It is now under my protection, and I will slay you if you threaten the people here.”
It wriggled its head, but I placed my full weight on the spear shaft. “What do you want, big-fang?” the strange voice said.
“Stay off the path. The girl, especially, is forbidden to you. There are plenty of boars to eat.” Keeping my eyes on the snake, I reached into my pack with one hand and found a cut of the meat. I held it out before the snake’s nose.
Its forked tongue darted in and out of its mouth, and its eyes focused on the roasted flesh in my hand. It gave another hiss.
“Smells good, doesn’t it? I have more, but only if you swear by all the gods of this island and the volcano on which you bask that you will stay away from the path.” I lifted the meat away from the snake’s curious nose. “Do you promise?”
“Yes, yes, good meat, good for eating,” the snake muttered.
Inch by inch, I lifted my spear from its neck. It gathered its body up, coiling its length behind its head. Its tongue tasted the air twice more before it struck.
Quicker than lightning, the snake’s immense muscles tensed and released all at once. Its mouth opened wide, and wider still, until it could have swallowed my arm up to the shoulder.
I flinched back. The snake’s jaws closed on the meat, sparing my fingers by a hair’s breadth. I brought my spear to bear as the beast swallowed its meal whole, coiling back up onto the rock.
“I threw a harpoon into the soft mouth of the lind-worm,” I said. I could not say for certain that I had slain it, but I would let this snake draw its own conclusions. “I can do the same to you—or we can come to an agreement. I have more meat where that came from.”
Transparent lids blinked across cunning amber eyes. “Yes, yes,” the snake hissed.
“Do you swear?”
“Yes, yes, by sun-god and world-worm, I stay off the human road.” It lifted its head and turned, fixing one eye upon me. “Do you keep your promise, big-fang?”
I kept my spear in one hand and used the other to swing my pack from my shoulder. From there I produced one of the boar’s legs. “I’ll keep my promise,” I said. “And I’ll know if you break yours.” I tossed the meat to the snake.
The haunch was too large for the snake’s mouth. I assumed it would use its sharp teeth to tear off chunks of meat, but it opened its jaw, showing an expanse of pale flesh. The mouth stretched into a flat plane and clamped down on the widest part of the boar’s leg, and scales distorted and muscles worked as the snake’s skin stretched out. I watched, stomach turning in fear and disgust. I had no doubt that, had it set its mind to it while I had been sleeping, the snake could have swallowed me.
I returned to the path and continued my climb. My hunt for the snake had taken most of the day, and I was forced to make camp again as night fell once more on the slope of the volcano. I remained alert, but true to its word, the snake did not trouble me again.
When I awoke, I found vines of white-petaled flowers surrounding my bed and climbing the nearby trees. I had failed to see it in the darkness. I gathered it in handfuls, winding the stems carefully and wrapping the whole bundle inside my bedroll.
Beneath my feet, the volcano slept. The lip of its vast crater was only a short climb above my head, and the day was young, the sky a soft blue and the sun still touching the sea. In the distant lands of my birth, mountains like this one rose in jagged peaks from the ocean, spitting fire and ash into the clear winter sky. They were too dangerous to approach, and too steep to summit, should one have had the courage to take up the challenge. We warned our children and young warriors not to make the attempt, even if the mountain in question had not erupted in a lifetime, for it could wake again at any moment. I decided I would climb this quiet, gentle grandfather of a mountain—I had come most of the way already—and see the crater for myself.
The trees grew sparse, and the volcano’s crown of clouds settled over me, coating my skin in cold mist. I found a path through the black rock, carved by human hands, though the presence of more climbing vines and thick lichens in russet orange and a spectrum of greens suggested that human feet had not tread it in some time. The sun drove away the clouds, and the sky cleared at midmorning, when at last I pulled myself up to the mouth of the volcano.
A vast, hollow space stretched out before me, circular like a bowl and painted in green foliage. A lake lay at the bottom, as brilliant blue as the morning sky and so clear that I could see down to the black rock below, riven with fissures. The slope was too steep, and the lichen provided no handholds. No living person had touched that lake since the volcano had last awoken an age ago. I may have been the first to see it in a hundred years.
Thus satisfied, I made my way back down to the priestesses’ village, to inform them of the success of my quest: both in finding the necessary plant and in deterring the great snake from the path without slaying it.
Luana took the herbs and placed them in a round basket, and she listened to my account of the time I had spent on the slope without speaking. She did not express surprise that I had conversed with the snake. Her silence unsettled me. I wanted some confirmation that I had done well, and proved myself worthy of her aid, but she provided none.
“The herbs will need to dry,” was all she said when I had finished. “Tomorrow night is the new moon, and that will be the best time for the ritual. You should eat, and rest, and gather your strength.”
I concealed my sigh of relief. I had her approval, and she would help me.
As I shared a meal with Kala and the three grandmothers, and after I had regaled the girl with a tale of my negotiation with the snake, I asked of the stars that hung above this sea. I knew the constellations of the North well, and those that guided travelers across the steppe, but I could see none of those beacons now.
“There is a tale,” said the third priestess, Malea, “one that our children learn before they set sail from their home islands for the first time. It is a story of Nashurru, the goddess of the sea and the places between—the goddess who made the Dreaming Eye. It is a story of love, and of betrayal. You should hear it, before you undergo the ritual, though I am not sure you will like it.”
“I will decide that,” I said. “I want to be prepared to see the Dreaming Eye, and I wish to know how to navigate these waters.”
“Very well,” said Kani, the second priestess. “This story was passed down from my grandmother, and I told it to my children and grandchildren, and to Kala. Now I tell it to you. Once, very long ago, when gods swam in our waters and walked on our shores, and magic was as easy as breathing, there lived a girl upon an island. Around that island swam a monster of the deep.”
Back to Chapter VII: The Slope of Ewandar
Forward to Chapter IX: The Temple Under the Mountain
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