“Dananana,” Leely caroled, giving Mitigan’s arm several wet kisses.
“Me,” said Snark. The wound she’d sustained during the Kachis birthing was also inflamed. Leely kissed the bite marks. Lutha had seen dogs lick wounds like that, in old nature chips. She shook her head, ashamed. She had known about Leely’s healing ability the day before. She should have told Snark. And Mitigan.
Saluez noticed her pain. She took Lutha’s hand, peered into her eyes. “Lutha. Lutha, sister.” Her eyes filled and Lutha turned away, unable to bear her compassion. By the Great Gauphin, Lutha didn’t want anyone to share her feelings. Her feelings were her own, singular, unique!
Which was bosh. They were the world’s woes, as Mama Jibia used to say. No matter what the world, the woes are the same. Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can’t.
Lutha felt Leelson reaching for her, and shook him off, surprising on his face a reflection of her own. He felt miserable. She’d planned his misery, but she hadn’t realized she’d be in it with him.
And why should it be so upsetting? She’d guessed the biggest part of this. What had changed since then? Nothing, except the knowledge that she was as responsible as Leelson. Leely himself was as he had always been. Only her hopes had changed. Her hopes and whatever was out there at the edge of the world. The trembler. The world shaker.
She took Leely from Snark, settling him on her hip. It was time they went back to sleep. If they could sleep.
Leely patted her face, opened his dreadful mouth, and said quite clearly, “Lutha Lutha Tallstaff Lutha sister mother love.”
It was a person’s voice, totally unfamiliar, not a child’s voice.
Silence. Shock. Indrawn breaths.
Leelson cleared his throat, a scritch like iron dragged on stone.
Leely turned, cocked his head, said, “Leelson Leelson Famber damned Fastigat darling.”
No one even breathed.
Leely said, “Saluez of the shadow. Snark love Laluzh. Mitigan Mitigan of the Asenagi.” He smiled. “Ex-king ex-king of Kamir Jiacare Lostre. Leely baby Leely love Leely yourson myson.”
“He’s naming things,” said Leelson in a hollow voice.
“Pee—peeeple,” said the ex-king, awed into virtual incoherence. “People.”
Lutha had been holding Leely pressed against her, but now she felt it was safer to set him down.
“Lutha Tallstaff Lutha Lutha sister mother love,” he said, making a mirror likeness of her on the skin of his chest and belly. He showed her as she was, dressed in her gray-green overall.
“Why now?” cried Leelson in petulant, almost horrified surprise. “Why now!”
“He’s never been out among people before,” whispered Saluez. “Not since he was a baby.”
It was true. From the time Leelson had left them, they’d lived almost alone. Those who came and went were seldom repeat visitors. Those who came to see Lutha often did not see Leely. Only since this trip began had Leely heard Lutha’s name used by this one, that one. She recalled Leelson’s outraged, “You’re his mother.” So now she was Lutha Tallstaff Lutha Lutha sister mother love.
“When he made the pictures back to the Rottens!” she exclaimed. “That’s when he made the connection. They have color titles. We have verbal ones.”
“That’s a title?” Leelson bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Leelson Leelson Famber damned Fastigat darling?”
“Hush,” she hissed, pointing through the tilted arch at the shaggies floating against the stars. “Leelson, damn it, don’t yell at me. It’s not my fault; I didn’t do it; I’m not responsible for it. Will everyone just please remember where we are and shut up.”
As they did quickly enough, for they felt once more that tremble in the core of the world, heard once more, though briefly, that flattened sound.
Even Leely was silent as Lutha sat down upon her blanket, cradling the child against her. He looked thoughtful. Mitigan and Leelson whispered together, but Lutha was too drained to care what they were talking about. Joy and hopelessness and fear were all fighting for supremacy. If something had harmed Leely as he had been, she would have grieved. But, oh, to be in this danger with him changed! Now if something happened to him! Her child, her son, if anything happened to him now!
“You always said he would talk,” Saluez reminded her.
Yes. She had. She had thought he would say Mommy and Daddy and the other things babies say. She had not thought he could tremble worlds with his voice.
All such thoughts were cut short. She saw Mitigan’s head come up, alertly, swiveling as he listened, his hands going to his weapons belt. They all heard it then, a sound like rain, like a pouring of sand, an endless hissing. They twisted, searching for the source….
Which slid onto the sand of the cavern like a runnel of dark blood, scaled from its gaping mouth to the darkness in which its body was still hidden, serpent king, snake lord, mighty monster, thick through as Mitigan’s body, and all around it, its children, its kindred, the small ones of its kind, striped and mottled and jewel-marked, sinuous and horrid.
“Out,” cried Mitigan, something very like panic in his voice. “Out!”
They stumbled to their feet and ran, out and away, Saluez supported on either side by Lutha and Snark, Leely running beside his mother. Mitigan’s voice shouted battle cries while Leelson and Jiacare urged him to run. They did run, with snakes all around them, striking from crevices, dropping from holes, slithering across their feet as they struggled on, bruising themselves on the jutting rocks, scraping themselves on the rough stones until they came out under the sky. Leelson erupted from the rock pile, dragging the ex-king behind him. He had thought to bring one of the survival packs with him, and a lamp.
“Mitigan?” cried Snark.
“Coming,” said Leelson, dragging the ex-king toward us. “Here, Jiacare’s been bitten!” Lutha stood stupidly, not realizing what he wanted.
“Leely,” Leelson cried. “Come see the bite.”
The ex-king pulled up a trouser leg, displaying
