The Serpent Bride. Sara Douglass
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of the Tyranny of Isembaard themselves could be difficult at this time of the year, while the FarReach Mountains beyond were not well known for their winter bonhomie. Nonetheless, Ba’al’uz was looking forward to the experience. As much as he loved DarkGlass Mountain and Kanubai’s whisperings, there was also knowledge to be gained and trouble to be caused in the Northern Kingdoms, and Ba’al’uz couldn’t wait for either.
Isaiah and Lister might well think Ba’al’uz was laying the ground for their invasion, but in reality Ba’al’uz meant to prepare the ground for Kanubai.
But all that lay in the delectable future. For now Ba’al’uz was merely glad to remove himself from his brother’s company. Ah, that Isaiah! Strutting about wrapped in his muscles and jewels and black, black braids, thinking himself lord of all, sneering behind Ba’al’uz’ back.
Ba’al’uz could not wait to see Isaiah ground into the soil under Kanubai’s heel.
Isaiah had always been irritating, but Ba’al’uz had discovered new depths of loathing and resentment towards his brother at the arrival of Axis SunSoar.
Axis’ arrival dismayed Ba’al’uz, because, firstly and most importantly, Ba’al’uz had no idea how Isaiah had managed it. Isaiah was a tyrant, and he was a warrior, but surely he had not the skills or powers of a priest.
Yet no one but a priest, or the most remarkable of magicians, could have pulled Axis SunSoar from the Otherworld into this one.
Isaiah should not have been able to do it.
The fact that he had appalled Ba’al’uz, because it meant that Isaiah was harbouring secrets from him, and secretive power.
Axis’ arrival dismayed Ba’al’uz for a second reason — it meant that Isaiah meant to replace Ba’al’uz as his most intimate advisor.
Ba’al’uz loathed his younger, prettier brother, and the only thing that had made their close relationship bearable was the fact that Isaiah needed Ba’al’uz as his advisor and weapon within the volatile politics of Isaiah’s court.
Now Isaiah had Axis and Ba’al’uz’ jealousy and bitterness festered deeper with the passing of each hour.
Now he would do anything to ensure Isaiah’s downfall.
With Kanubai’s aid and the power of DarkGlass Mountain, then who knew? With Isaiah dead, then who knew …?
The tyrant throne would be empty, and who better to sit it, eh, than Kanubai’s best and most loyal friend?
Five days after his conversation with Isaiah and Axis, Ba’al’uz set out for his adventure in the kingdoms beyond the FarReach Mountains. He did not travel alone — Ba’al’uz had no intention of warding off brigands by himself, or of cooking his own lonely roadside meals — but with an escort of eight men, all of whom he had handpicked from the shadowy underworlds of Isembaard’s cities. Ba’al’uz trusted them completely, for he had purchased their souls with bribes and obscene gifts many years ago. They were his factors, his apprentices in the arts and crafts of deception and treachery.
Ba’al’uz would have need of them in his journey. He called them his Eight, and he regarded them with an almost brotherly affection.
From the palace of Aqhat, Ba’al’uz and the eight took a riverboat north and then east along the mighty Lhyl. They stopped each night, either at a riverside village or town, to commandeer the best accommodation and food possible, or to make their own encampment on the fertile floodplains of the river, setting up tents and comfortable beds, and roasting river lizards on spits beside cheerful camp fires. There, at night, Ba’al’uz would entertain the eight with twisted tales that sprang from the whispers in his mind.
Within days the eight were more devoted to Ba’al’uz than ever. Their journey might be dangerous, and deceitful in the extreme, but the rewards at its successful conclusion were … entrancing.
The journey along the Lhyl was deceptively pleasant; Ba’al’uz knew that conditions would deteriorate from the moment they left the river. Normally, if he took the river journey north and then east with Isaiah to Isembaard’s capital, Sakkuth, they would disembark where the Lhyl turned north once more so they could continue the journey to the city on horseback. Ba’al’uz liked Sakkuth. The city was a viciously immoral place and seethed with opportunity for such as Ba’al’uz. Indeed, he had found five of his Eight within its depraved depths. But on this journey Ba’al’uz embarked into the unknown, for he did not leave the river and ride east for Sakkuth at all, but continued on the river, drawing ever closer to the FarReach Mountains.
This far north the river journey was no longer. pleasant In its lower reaches the Lhyl was a broad, serene waterway, but close to its source the river narrowed and became an ever more unruly travelling companion. The travellers swapped their initial broad-beamed riverboat for a narrow and much smaller vessel, which depended on both sail and the raw brute force of rowers to enable them to continue against the current. There was little room, with both travellers and rowers crammed onto benches, and Ba’al’uz had to put up with the indignity of having the stench and grunting of the rowers in his face twelve hours a day.
It was a relief finally to disembark, pay the riverboat captain, and continue their journey by horseback.
After almost three weeks on the river, Ba’al’uz and his companions were now in the very north of the En-Dor Dependency, itself the northernmost of the Tyranny’s dependencies. Directly north rose the foothills of the FarReach Mountains, and beyond them the soaring pink and cream sandstone snow-tipped peaks of the mountains themselves. Ba’al’uz faced many days on horseback across a dry and barren landscape to reach Hairekeep, Isaiah’s northernmost fortress which guarded the entrance to the Salamaan Pass in the FarReach Mountains.
Once they’d left the Lhyl water was hard to come by, and they needed to carefully plot each day’s travel to ensure that they reached the next water source alive. The travel was a strain on both men and horses, and Ba’al’uz was heartily relieved to finally reach the fortress at the dusk of a particularly hot and uncomfortable day.
The fortress of Hairekeep had been built almost three centuries ago by one of the Isembaardian tyrants to control travel through the Salamaan Pass, which connected the lands of the Tyranny to the kingdoms north of the mountains. For travellers — apart from braving the treacherous sea passage between Coroleas and the Tyranny, or sailing down the Infinity Sea to the east (and in both cases there were no large ports on the Tyranny’s coastlines at which trading vessels could dock) — the Salamaan Pass was the only dependable passage between the north of the continent and the south, and the soldiers stationed at Hairekeep ensured that it remained closed to all but the very few who had the necessary permissions.
Ba’al’uz thought the fortress resembled nothing less than a massive stone block rising vertically out of the rock-strewn landscape. For almost twenty paces from ground level there were no windows in those walls, then only slits for a further ten paces, and only after forty paces did windows punctuate the stone to allow light inside. The walls continued vertically for another fifty paces to parapets that commanded magnificent views, not only of the Pass to the north, but of all the surrounding countryside. Despite its forbidding aspect, the fortress was stunning: built out of the sand and rose-coloured stone of the FarReach Mountains themselves, it glowed with an almost unearthly radiance in the twilight, reminding Ba’al’uz of the small glass pyramids Lister had given himself and Isaiah.
The fortress commander was expecting them, and treated them to a good meal and the promise of an evening of good company.
But Ba’al’uz was tired, and impatient to retire to his quarters, so he made his excuses as politely as he might, and made his way to his chambers set high in the fortress.
Here, having fortified himself with a glass of wine, and washed away most of the grime of his journey, Ba’al’uz unwrapped his own rosy glass pyramid that he’d carefully stowed in his pack.
Ba’al’uz sat, fingering it for some time.
He didn’t like Lister. He was