Serpent's Reach Read Free Page B

sure that Lia knew her own age. She would on no account make a day of Lia’s life unhappy; and on no account would she let Lia know the reason of her attitude.
    It’s part of growing up, her mother had told her. The price of Immortality. Azi and betas come and go, the azi quickest of all. We all love them when we’re young. When one loses one’s nurse, one begins to learn what we are, and what they are; and that’s a valuable lesson, Raen. Learn to enjoy, and to say goodbye.
    Lia offered her the cloak of Colour, and she decided it was proper to wear it; she fastened it and let Lia adjust it, then walked to the window, where the first light of dawn showed the landing.
    One aircraft still remained. It was not over.
    She went out into the corridor and down, past the council room where a few of her elder cousins and relations lounged disconsolately. They were not in the mood to brief a fifteen year old, be she heir-line or not; she sensed that and listened, heard voices still talking inside.
    She shook her head in disgust and walked on, thinking of breakfast, though she rarely ate that meal. Lessons, at least, were still suspended, but she would have traded a week of holidays to have Ruff and their friends out of Sal’s vicinity. She recalled the three Halds and wondered whether they were still occupying the porch.
    They were not. She stood on the porch with her hands on her hips and breathed deeply. The area was clear and the azi were heading out to fields as they did every morning. A golden light touched the candletrees and the hedges at this most beautiful hour, before alpha Hydri showed its true face and scorched the heavens.
    There was only the single aircraft befouling the landscape.
    And then she saw movement at the corner of the house.
    An azi, sunsuited at this hour.
    “What are you doing there?” she shouted at him. And then she saw shadows skittering in a living wave across the lawn, tall, stiltlike forms moving with eye-blurring speed.
    She whirled, face to face with an armed azi, and cried out.

BOOK TWO
i
    Raen stumbled, skidded, came to a halt against a projecting rock. Pain shot through her side. The cloth clung there. The bum had broken open; moisture soaked her clothing. She felt of it and brought away reddened fingers, wiped a smear on the rock which had stopped her, fingers trembling. She kept climbing.
    She looked back from time to time, on the lowlands, the forest, the lake, on all the deceptive peace of Kethiuy’s valley, while her breath came short and balance nigh failed her on the rocks. They were all dead down there, all her kin: all, all dead—Ruil-sept held Kethiuy for its own, and Sul-sept bodies were everywhere. Only her own was missing from the tally, and that from no act of wit, nothing of credit: burned, she had fallen, and the bushes by the porch had sheltered her.
    They were all dead, and she was dying.
    There was no relief from the sun up here; it burned in a sky white with heat, blistered exposed skin, threatened blindness despite her cloak that she had wrapped about her face. Stones burned her hands and heated the thin soles of her boots. Her eyes streamed tears, seared by the dryness and the glare. Her chance for shelter was long past, at the beginning of the climb. If Ruil sought her, they would find her. She left a trail for any groundsearch they might care to make, smeared on the rocks from her hands and her side. And from the air, Ruil might well manage heat-sensors for night tracking. There was no hope of shaking them if they wanted her.
    She kept running, climbing, all the same, because there was no going back, because it was less her Ruil cousins she feared than red-hive, the living wave that had poured over her into Kethiuy, spurred feet trampling her among the bushes, deadly jaws clashing. There were deaths and deaths, and she had seen them in plenty in recent hours, but those dealt by majat were cruellest, and majat trackers were those she most feared, swift beyond any