I watched with rapt attention. What made it respond to them differently, and could I find a way to make it respond to me like that?
Imagine how far you could go in the Far Stones – how much you could do! – if you didn’t have to constantly battle the land!
We hiked for hours through the tangled mess. The path – if there even was a path – wove in and out and up and down through such thick, swirling landscape that I was lost within the first hour. Even the sun didn’t seem to behave as I expected. It should be midmorning by now, and yet it hadn’t moved at all.
I was starting to grow more concerned, when my captors stilled for a moment, looking up and I followed their gazes to something rising out of the tangle of Forbidding before us.
Four stone snakes rose, tangling together in a spiral tower as they reached an apex where their carved heads split out in four open-mouthed images, each looking in a different direction.
We began to move again, and the twisted ground parted, revealing steps upward to what must be the Cobra Temple. Snakes formed the steps in coils. They lay one on top of the other so that the stairs wound around the building, sometimes forming strange S curves rather than a straight flight of steps.
All these snakes left a creepy feeling under my skin. Snakes would think differently than birds. Where a bird would choose a direct path, a snake would choose a twisted oblique approach.
It was long moments before I realized that some of the carved snakes decorating the steps leading up to the open-sided temple were not snakes at all, but more masked people wearing light scale armor and belts of snakeskin banded across their chests.
I tried not to stare as we were led up the steps, but the sense of being squeezed was becoming more and more powerful as I ascended. It was all I could do not to panic.
Just like with the underground cathedral, the snakes across the steps were carved in such sharp relief that they seemed to almost be alive. Shadows rippled deep and dark between the carved snakes so that it seemed as if we were walking up steps of snakes instead of stones.
Zayana stumbled beside me and we shared a brief worried glance. Whatever came next couldn’t be good. Ice flowed down my spine, settling into my belly.
When I fought the Forbidding all those years, had there been people like this hiding within it? Did they watch as I lit fires in their tangled mess? The Forbidding was more my enemy than anything else – more than Juste Montpetit and the Winged Empire even. It had been fighting me since before my first steps. I’d always thought it was a mindless entity, like thorns or wildfires. What if it wasn’t? What if it had something to do with these people?
When we reached the last few steep steps and could see the top of the platform, I froze. Osprey and Ivo – still unconscious – had been lashed to two of the snake-pillars, encased from neck to feet in wrapping spirit snakes which were longer and thicker than any snake I’d ever imagined. They glowed a light green and the one resting his head almost lovingly on Osprey’s chest seemed to wink at me.
Not good. Of all of us, Osprey and Ivo were the most powerful. And there was no way they could escape from that kind of confinement even if they were conscious.
Which meant I needed a plan. A plan to use my bees to get us all out of here.
And I needed it quickly. They set Zayana up against a pillar and the warrior closest to her went slack suddenly, his eyes rolling back in his head and then a spirit snake rolled out of his mouth and down to the ground where it began to wind around Zayana’s feet, moving slowly upward as it bound her to the pole.
Did all of them have snakes? That would make each of them equivalent to our Wings. I’d have to fight or evade all of them to escape.
Sweat slicked Zayana’s forehead. She stared straight ahead, trying not to flinch but she couldn’t stop a small moan of terror from rippling from her lips.
“If you think I’m going to let you do that to me, you can think again,” I said, scrambling backward. I hit a hard wall and spun. One of the guards was right behind me.
I could call my bees – and risk losing Juste Montpetit’s life – and then Osprey would kill me when he came to – if he came to. Or I could try to run and risk being beaten into unconsciousness. Or I could submit and hope that if I did that, they would spare me.
Too many ifs.
“Come,” I called to my bees and the buzz in my chest rose powerfully. I felt them gathering and moving. It left a sensation of satisfaction rippling along my skin. I held my breath, anticipating their return to me.
There was a cry from the other side of the temple and a woman in a high-collared scale armor suit leapt up to the temple level waving her hands.
“Which one pulled the bees away? The Adder is bleeding out!”
“I did,” I said calmly, as my bees buzzed toward me, encircling me in a friendly cloud.
“Send them back,” she ordered.
“I won’t be tied up,” I said grimly.
She looked down the steps on her side and then back at us.
“Untie her. She won’t go anywhere. Release the bees to heal the Adder, girl, or you will be slaughtered over a long seven days. We shall start by showing you how we can twist your very flesh from your bones like the twisting of the land.”
I clenched my jaw and whispered, “Return to him. Heal his wound.”
Loss flooded over me as my bees obeyed, streaking out from me and back toward my enemy. No bees, then. But at least I wasn’t tied up. Perhaps I could steal a weapon.
Hands clamped down on my arms.
“Don’t even think about defying them, property,” a cultured voice drifted to me.
Shocked, I looked to see Juste Montpetit stepping up over the edge of the steps to the temple platform. Sweat slicked his forehead and fresh blood stained his coat around his middle, though my bees buzzed in his belly. He walked slightly hunched, both hands clamped around his middle. His eyes glittered with hate when they met mine.
Chapter Seven
“THE ADDER,” REVERENT gasps echoed around me as the rest of the snake-masked people climbed the steps and circled the platform. They formed rings around the platform on the top two steps and on the very edge of the platform, leaving the center of it open.
A long moment passed as if they were waiting for something. Juste Montpetit looked around at them, swallowing as he held his belly together with both hands. His snake materialized, poking its head out from his eye and slithering down to ring his shoulders like a scarf that had slipped.
There was a hiss, and then the crowd parted slightly and a figure in high-collared gold scale armor stepped through. He towered above the rest and his snake mask had a hood around it – like the hood of a cobra. Snakeskin belts crossed and re-crossed his chest and hips. His polearm ended in a long, serrated blade that curved in a way that made me think of snakes. Its handle, similarly, was a long ripple like a snake in motion.
He ripped his mask off.
It must have been a signal. The moment the mask was gone those around me ripped their own masks off, dropping so suddenly to one knee that their armored knees made a clatter against the stone steps and platform.
A chill shot through me. These people were so organized. They’d materialized out of nowhere. They wore snakes as their sign. This could not be good.
The snake man nearest me tried to pull me down with him, but I kept my feet, fighting his grip. I would not bow to them. Just like I would not bow to Juste Montpetit.