Raymond E. Feist - Serpentwar 1 - Shadow of a Dark Queen

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BOOK 1

Erik's Tale

Days, when the ball of our vision

Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;

When the grasp on the bow was decision,

And arrow and hand and eye were one;

When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,

Came heaving for rapture ahead, Invoke

them, they dwindle, they glimmer

As lights over mounds of the dead.

- George Meredith

'Ode to Youth in Memory'

PROLOGUE

Deliverance

The drums thundered.

Warriors of the Saaur sang their battle chants, preparing

for the struggle to come. Tattered war banners hung

limply from bloodied lances as thick smoke shrouded the

sky from horizon to horizon. Green faces marked with

yellow and red paint watched the western skies, where

fires cast crimson and ocher light against the black

shroud of smoke, blocking the vanishing sun and the

familiar tapestry of the western evening stars.

Jarwa, Sha-shahan of the Seven Nations, Ruler of the

Empire of Grass, Lord of the Nine Oceans, could not tear

his gaze away from the destruction. All day he had

watched the great fires burn, and even across the vast

distance the howls of the victors and the cries of their

victims had carried through the afternoon. Winds that

once carried the sweet scent of flowers or the rich aroma

of spices from the market now carried the acrid stench of

charred wood and burned flesh. He knew without looking

that those behind were bracing for the coming trial,

resigned in their hearts that the battle was lost and the

race would die.

'My lord,' said Kaba, his Shieldbearer and life

companion.

Jarwa turned to his oldest friend and sayetched

faintly around his eyes. Kaba wmask

to all but Jarwa; the Sha-shaba

shaman reads a lore scroll. '

'The Pantathian is here.'

Jarwa nodded, but he remained motionless. Powerful

hands closed in frustration over the hilt of his battlesword,

Tual-masok - Blood Drinker in the ancient tongue - far more

a symbol of office than the crown he had worn only on rare

state occasions. He pushed its point down into the soil of

his beloved Tabar, the oldest nation on the world of Shila.

For seventeen years he had fought the invaders as they had

driven his hordes back to the heartland of the Empire of

Grass.

When he had taken the sword of the Sha-shahan while

still a youth, warriors of Saaur had passed in review, filling

the ancient stone causeway that spanned the Takador

Narrows, the channel connecting the Takador Sea and the

Castak Ocean. One hundred riders - a century - side by side,

rode past, one hundred centuries to a jatar: ten thousand

warriors. Ten jatar to a host, and ten host to a horde. At the

height of his power, seven hordes answered Jarwa's battle

horns, seven million warriors. Always on the move, their

horses grazed the Empire of Grass, while children grew to

adulthood playing and fighting among the ancient wagons

and tents of the Saaur, stretching from the city of Cibul to

the farthest frontier, ten thousand miles distant; it was an

empire so vast that teams of horses and riders, never

stopping their gallop, would take a full turning of the moon

and half again to ride from the capital to the frontier, twice

that from one border to the other.

Each season, one horde rested near the capital, while the

others moved along the frontiers of the great nation,

ensuring the peace by conquering all who refused tribute.

Along the shores of the nine great oceans, a thousand

cities sent food, riches, and slaves to the court of the

Shashahan. And once a ten-year, the champions of the

seven hordes gathered for the great games at Cibul, ancient

capital of the Empire of Grass. Over the span of centuries,

the Saaur had gathered all of Shila under the Shashahan's

banner, all but the most distant nations on the far side of

the world. It was Jarwa's dream to be the Shashahan who at

last realized the dream of his ancestors, to bring the last city

into the Empire and rule the entire world.

Four great cities had fallen to Jarwa's hordes, and another

five had surrendered without a struggle, leaving fewer than

a dozen outside the Empire. Then the riders of the Patha

Horde had come to the gates of Ahsart, City of Priests.

Soon disaster followed.

Jarwa steeled himself against the sounds of agony that

carried through the twilight. The cries were of his people as

they were led to the feasting pits. From what those few able

to escape had said, the captives who were quickly

slaughtered were perhaps the fortunate ones, along with

those who had fallen in battle. The invaders, it was said,

could capture the souls of the dying, to keep them as

playthings, tormenting them for eternity as the shades of

the slain were denied their final place among their ancestors,

riding in the ranks of the Heavenly Horde.

Jarwa looked down upon the ancient home of his people

from his vantage atop the plateau. Here, less than a half day's

ride from Cibul, the ragged remnants of his once-mighty

army camped. Even in this the darkest hour of the

Empire of Grass, the presence of the Sha-shahan caused his

warriors to stand tall, throw back their heads, and look

toward the distant enemy with contempt. But no matter the

posture of these warriors

their Sha-shahan saw something in their eyes no

of the Nine Oceans had ever seen before in the

countenance of a Saaur warrior: fear.

Jarwa sighed, and turned without whis tent. Knowing full

well that no he hated to face the alien. Pau!z;

Jarwa said, 'Kaba, I have no faith in this priest from

another world.' He spit the word.

Kaba nodded, his scales grey from years of the hard life

on horseback and from serving his Sha-shahan. 'I know

you have doubts, my lord. But your Cupbearer and your

Loremaster concur. We have no choice.'

'There is always a choice,' whispered Jarwa. 'We can

choose to die like warriors!'

Softly Kaba reached out and touched Jarwa on the

arm, a familiarity that would have brought instant death

to any other warrior of the Saaur. 'Old friend,' he said

softly, 'this priest offers our children haven. We can fight

and die, and let bitter winds sing away the memory of the

Saaur. There will be no one left to chant remembrance to

the Heavenly Horde of our valor, while fiends eat our

flesh. Or we may send our remaining females and the

young males to safety. Is there another choice?'

'But he is not like us.'

Kaba sighed. 'There is something ...

'This one's blood is cold,' whispered Jarwa.

Kaba made a sign. 'The cold-blooded are creatures of

legend.'

'And what of those?' asked Jarwa, motioning to the

distant fire engulfing his capital.

Kaba could only shrug. Saying nothing more, Jarwa

led his oldest friend into the Sha-shahan's tent.

The tent was larger than any other in camp, in reality a

pavilion of many tents sewn together. Glancing around

the interior, Jarwa felt cold grip his heart. So many of his

wisest advisers and his most powerful loremasters were

missing. Yet of those who remained, all looked to him

with hope. He was Sha-shahan, and it was his duty to

deliver the people.

Then his eyes fell upon the alien, and again he wondered

which choice was wiser. The creature looked much

like the Saaur, green scales covering arms and face, but

he wore a deep-hooded robe that concealed the body,

rather than the armor of a warrior or robes of a

loremaster. He was small by Saaur standards, being less

than two arms' span in height, and his snout was too

long by half, and his eyes were all black, rather than red

iris upon white as were the eyes of the Saaur. Where

thick white nails should have been, black talons

extended from his fingers. And his speech contained a

sibilance, from the tongue that forked. As he removed

his battered helm from his head and handed it to a

servant, Jarwa voiced aloud what every warrior and

loremaster in the tent thought: 'Snake.'

The creature bowed his head, as if this were a greeting

instead of a deadly insult. 'Yes, my lord,' it hissed in

return.

Several of Jarwa's warriors had hands upon weapons,

but the old Cupbearer, second only to Kaba in importance

to his lord, said, 'He is our guest.'

Long had the legends of the snake people been with

the Saaur, the lizard people of Shila. Like the hot-blooded

Saaur, yet not, they were creatures invoked

by mothers to frighten naughty children at night. Eaters

of their own kind, laying eggs in hot pools, the snake

people were feared and hated with racial passion though

none had been seen in the longest memory of the loremasters

of the Saaur. in the legend it was said that both

races were created by the Goddess, at the dawn of time,

when the first riders of the Heavenly Horde were

hatched. The servants of the Green Lady, Goddess of the

Night, the snakes had remained in her mansion, while

the Saaur had ridden forth with her and her godbrothers

and god-sisters. Abandoned to this world

by the Goddess, the Saaur had prospered, but always

the memory of the others, the snakes, remained. Only

the Loremaster knew which tales were history and

which were myth, but one thing Jarwa knew: from

birth, the Sha-shahan's heir was taught that no snake

was worthy of trust.

The snake priest said, 'My lord, the portal is ready.

Time grows short. Those feasting upon the bodies of your

countrymen will tire of their sport, and as night deepens,

and their powers grow, they will be here.'

Ignoring the priest for a moment, Jarwa turned to his

companions and said, 'How many jatar survive?'

Tasko, Shahan of the Watiri, answered. 'Four and but a

part of a fifth.' With a note of finality in his voice, he said,

'No jatar remains intact. These last are gathered from

remnants of the Seven Hordes.'

Jarwa resisted the impulse to surrender to despair.

Forty thousand riders and part of another ten thousand.

That was all that survived from the Seven Great Hordes

of the Saaur.

Jarwa felt blackness grip his heart. How he remembered

his outrage when word came from the Patha Horde

of the priests' defiance and refusal to pay tribute. Jarwa

had ridden for seven months to lead personally the final

attack against Ahsart, City of Priests. For a moment he

felt a stab of remorse cut deep into his soul; then he

silently chided himself: could any ruler have known that

the insane priests of Ahsart would destroy everything

rather than let the Saaur unite the world under one

ruler? it had been the mad high priest, Myta, who had

unsealed the portal and let the first demon through.

There was small comfort in knowing that the demon's

first act was to capture Myta's soul for torment as he

ripped his head from his body. One Ahsart survivor had

claimed a hundred warrior priests had attacked the one

demon as it devoured Myta's flesh, and none had survived.

Ten thousand priests and loremasters alongside more

than seven million warriors had died holding the foul

creatures at bay as they battled from the farthest border

of the Empire to its heart, in a war spanning half a world.

A hundred thousand demons had died, but each one's

destruction was paid for in dear blood, as thousands of

warriors threw themselves fearlessly at the hideous

creatures. The loremasters had used their arts to good

effect at times, but always the demons returned. For

years the fighting had continued, a running battle past

four of the nine oceans. Children had been born in the

Sha-shahan's camp, grown to young adulthood, and died

in the fighting, and still the demons came. The loremasters

looked in vain for a means of closing the portal

and turning the tide of battle to the Saaur.

From the other side of the world they had fought their

way back to Cibul, as the -demon army poured through

the portal between worlds, and now another portal was

being opened, offering hope for the Saaur: hope through

exile.

Kaba pointedly cleared his throat, and Jarwa forced

away regret. Nothing would be gained from it; as his

Shieldbearer had said, there was no choice.

'Jatuk,' Jarwa said, and a young warrior stepped forward, '

Of seven sons, one to rule each horde, you are the

last,' he said bitterly. The young warrior said nothing.

'You are Ja-shahan,' pronounced Jarwa, officially naming

him heir to the throne. The youth had joined his

father but ten days before, riding out to his father's camp

accompanied by his personal retinue. He was but eighteen

years of age, barely more than a year from the

training grounds and a veteran of only three battles since

coming to the front. Jarwa realized that his youngest son

was a stranger, having been only a crawling infant when

he had left to bring Ahsart to her knees. 'Who rides to

your left?' he asked.

Jatuk said, 'Monis. birth companion.' He indicated a

calm-looking young man who already bore a proud scar

along his left arm.

Jarwa nodded. 'He shall be your Shieldbearer.' To

Monis he said, 'Remember, it is your duty to guard your

lord with your life; more: it is your duty to guard his

honor. No one will stand closer to Jatuk than you, not

mate, not child, not Loremaster. Always speak truth,

even when he wishes not to hear it.'

To Jatuk he added, 'He is your shield; always heed his

wisdom, for to ignore your Shieldbearer is to ride into

battle with an arm tied to your side, blind in one eye, deaf

in one ear.'

Jatuk nodded. Monis was now granted the highest

honor given to one not born of the ruling family;

he could speak his mind without fear of retribution.

Monis saluted, his balled right fist striking his left

shoulder. 'Sha-shahan!' he said, then looked at the

ground, the sign of complete deference and respect.

'Who guards your table?'

Jatuk said, 'Chiga, birth companion.'

Jarwa approved. Selected from the same birth crache,

these three would know one another as they knew

themselves, a stronger tie than any other. To the named

warrior Jatuk said, 'You shall give up your arms and

armor and you shall remain behind.'

The honor was mixed with bitterness, for the honor of

being Cupbearer was high, but giving up the call to battle

was difficult for any warrior.

'Protect your lord from the stealthy hand, and from the

cunning word whispered over too much drink by false

friends.'

Chiga saluted. Like Monis, he was now free to speak to

his lord without fear of punishment, for in being

Cupbearer he was pledged to protect Jatuk in all ways as

much as the warrior who rode on the Ja-shahan's shield

side.

Jarwa turned to another figure, his Loremaster

surrounded by several acolytes. 'Who among your company

is most gifted?'

The Loremaster said, 'Shadu. He remembers everything.'

Jarwa addressed the young warrior priest. 'Then take

the tablets and the relics, for you are now chief keeper of

the faith. You will be Loremaster to the People.' The

acolyte's eyes widened as his master handed the ancient

tablets, large sheaves of parchment kept between board

covers, and written upon with ink nearly faded white

with age. But more, he was given the responsibility to

remember the lore, the interpretations, and the traditions,

a thousands words in memory for each word

drawn in ink by an ancient hand.

Jarwa said, 'Those who have served with me from the

first, this is my final charge to you. Soon the foe comes a

last time. We will not survive. Sing your death songs

loudly and know that your names will live in the

memory of your children upon a distant world under an

alien sky. I know not if their songs can carry across the

void to keep the memory of the Heavenly Horde alive, or

if they will begin a new Heavenly Horde upon this alien

world, but as the demons come, let every warrior know

that the flesh of our flesh shall endure safely in a distant

land.'

Whatever the Sha-shahan might feel was hidden

behind a mask as he said, 'Jatuk, attend me. The rest of

you, to your appointed places.' To the snake priest he

said, 'Go to the place where you work your magic, and

know that should you play my people false, my shade

shall break free from whatever pit of hell holds it and

cross the gulf to hunt you down if it takes ten thousand

years.'

The priest bowed and hissed, 'Lord, my life and honor

are yours. I remain, to add my small aid to your rear

guard. In this pitiful fashion I show my people's respect

and wish to bring the Saaur, who are so like us in so

many ways, to our home.'

If Jarwa was impressed by the sacrifice, he gave no

hint. He motioned his youngest son outside the great

tent. The youth followed his father to the ridge and

looked down upon the distant city, made hellish in the

demons' fires. Faint screams, far beyond those made by

mortal throat, tore the evening,. and the young leader

pushed back the urge to turn his face away.

'Jatuk, by this time tomorrow, on some distant world,

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BOOK1Erik'sTaleDays,whentheballofourvisionHadeaglesthatflewunabashedtosun;Whenthegrasponthebowwasdecision,Andarrowandhandandeyewereone;WhenthePleasures,likewavestoaswimmer,Cameheavingforraptureahead,Invokethem,theydwindle,theyglimmerAslightsovermoundsofthedead.-GeorgeMeredith'OdetoYouthinMemory'PROL...

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Raymond E. Feist - Serpentwar 1 - Shadow of a Dark Queen

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