There was still almost all the Year-Without-A-Leader before any decision about the Chair of Chieftains would be made. Thewson decided that there was a remote chance he could find the Crown of Wisdom in that time, or kill himself trying, or find somewhere else in the world which would be more appealing than the Lion Courts would be if ruled by someone else. He decided to have a try at the great falls first, and if he survived that but did not find the Crown he would go to the place of Crossing the Waters and take the first ship heading anywhere. He had carved ivory and gold beads to pay his way. Custom dictated that he go empty-handed except for the tall spear bearing his own basilisk-skin banner and a money pouch and a cloak of skins. That is the way that he went.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAER
Year 1165
The tower stood at the edge of the plateau, fronted by a paved courtyard and surrounded by a wall with battlements. It needed no battlements, for it was protected by devices both wonderful and terrible; still the battlements were there, grey in the heat of the southern winds. Behind the tower, the land sloped away gently through open pastures of high grass and scattered groves of gnarled grey trees which annually burst into fountains of crimson blossom. The rest of the time they looked like bundles of dusty feathers and smelled little better. Tree ferns grew there, and the ubiquitous ow grew among them, up, down, sidewise through every possible opening until the whole became a single tangle through which few beasts could go. Birds liked the ow thickets, and Jaer hunted along the thicket edge with nocked arrow.
Beyond this rolling, open land, the plateau dropped eastward into canyons and rough land, heavily wooded and shrouded in cloud. To the north the plateau cupped a sizeable lake which drained away over the cliff in a thousand feet of plunging rainbows. To the south the land went up into the high peaks and marshes of the Falling Water Mountain where it rained forever and the traveller walked through bogs and giant mosses and, chances were, never came out. Westward was the valley with the huddle of village houses and the river which flowed further westward through the steep canyons to the seas. Beyond that, Nathan said, the ocean surrounded all the land, and northeast was another land, and beyond that another, the same south-west, a whole chain of them slanting across the Outer Sea and called, for that reason, the Outer Islands. Though, Nathan said, the sea was not really Outer at all, merely less inner than the Sea of Thienezh which was called the Inner Sea. As for the island they were on, it had no name now. With the Separation, names for places were falling into disuse except among traders. The island had been called Taniela at one time. It still had one port town, called Candor.
Nathan said, also, that past the islands and the sea was another land so huge that it surrounded the sea. On a clear day Jaer had seen from the top of the tower the vast plane of water stretching in all directions and the low cloud far to the northeast which Nathan said hung over the great land. He traced the way to it on the map, asking about this and that and accepting that someday he would go there. For the time being, however, Jaer, at age twelve, was content to do what needed to be done each day. Hunting was one of those things, if they wanted meat for the pot, and it was while hunting that Jaer met the Serpent.
He had penetrated into an ow thicket by winding over, under, and around the network of trunks in pursuit of a wingshot bird with Jaer’s arrow still in it. He would have given up, but it was his favourite arrow. A curtain wall of leaves gave way, and he fell through onto soft turf in a clearing improbably bright with sun. The Serpent was reclining on a rock outcropping in the centre of the clearing. Inasmuch as the Serpent had arms and a not-too-snaky face, Jaer thought at first it was a person. His education, though both broad and deep, had not covered what one does when one meets a person. Jaer’s usually raccoony mind went into a frantic pattern of freeze/flee/ faint while his eyes froze onto the being. It, in turn, looked Jaer over from head to heel and flickered a tongue remarkable for both its length and sinuosity before remarking, ‘You don’t have to be frightened. I’m not hungry, and I wouldn’t eat anything your size anyhow.’
Jaer didn’t move. Though ears had registered sound, mind had failed to deal with it. The Serpent looked amused. After a long, silent moment, it said, ‘What… is … your … name?’
Jaer, jerked into consciousness, closed his hanging jaw with a snap, swallowed painfully, and said, ‘Jaer. I’m Jaer.’
‘Jaer. I am not dangerous. I am not hungry. Do you understand what I am saying?’
Jaer shivered all over. ‘Yes. It’s just-you surprised me. I was looking for a bird.’
The Serpent’s coils flowed over one another in glinting ovals, wandering spirals, the upper body rearing back to display a belly and throat of pale armour, a triangular line of jaw pointed to the sky. The Serpent yawned. ‘I ate your bird. I removed your arrow first. I wasn’t hungry, but it was flapping about….’
‘It was a bad shot. A hasty shot.’
‘Now you’ll have it all to do over.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s getting late.’ He stared at the being in frank curiosity. ‘I don’t know who … what you are?’
The Serpent’s laughter was slithery, a scaly cascade of sound which raised the hairs on Jaer’s neck. ‘What do you
