healers never had any message from Jenneth. Perhaps the crazy slumping before Snake had leapt on her in a dark alley somewhere, and killed her for her dreamsnake.
“Well?” Snake asked sharply.
The crazy started. “What?” He squinted at her, struggling to focus his eyes.
Snake kept her temper. “Where are you from?”
“South.”
“What town?” Her maps showed this pass, but nothing beyond it. In the mountains as well as in the desert, people had good reason to avoid the extreme southern lands.
He shrugged. “No town. No town left, there. Just the broken dome.”
“Where did you get the dreamsnake?”
He shrugged.
Snake leaped to her feet and grabbed his dirty robe. The cloth at his throat bunched in her fist as she pulled him upright. “Answer me!”
A tear trickled down his face. “How can I? I don’t understand you. Where did I get it? I never had one. They were always there, but not mine. They were there when I went there and they were there when I left. Why would I need yours if I had some of my own?” The crazy sank to the ground as Snake slowly unclenched her fingers.
“ ‘Some’ of your own?”
He held out his hands, raising them to let the sleeves fall back to his elbows. His forearms, too, at the inside of the elbow, at the wrists, everywhere the veins were prominent, showed the scars of bites.
“It’s best if they strike you all over at once,” he said dreamily. “In the throat, that’s quick and sure, that’s for emergencies, for sustenance. That’s all North will give you, usually. But all over, if you do something special for him, that’s what he gives you.” The crazy hugged himself and rubbed his arms as if he were cold. He flushed with excitement, rubbing harder and faster. “Then you feel, you feel — everything lights up, you’re on fire, everything — it goes on and on.”
“Stop it!”
He let his hands drop to the ground and looked at her, blank-eyed again. “What?”
“This North — he has dreamsnakes.”
The crazy nodded eagerly, letting memory excite him again.
“A lot of them?”
“A whole pitful. Sometimes he lets someone down in the pit, he rewards them — but never me, not since the first time.”
Snake sat down, gazing at the crazy yet at nothing, imagining the delicate creatures trapped in a pit, exposed to the elements.
“Where does he get them? Do the city people trade with him? Does he deal with the offworlders?”
“Get them? They’re there. North has them.”
Snake was shaking as hard as the crazy. She clasped her hands hard around her knees, tensing all her muscles, then slowly making herself relax. Her hands steadied.
“He got angry at me, and he sent me away,” the crazy said. “I was so sick… and then I heard about a healer and I went to find you, but you weren’t there and you took the dreamsnake with you—” His voice rose as the words came quicker. “And the people chased me away but I followed you, and followed you and followed you until you went back into the desert again, I couldn’t follow you there anymore, I just couldn’t, I tried to go home but I couldn’t, so I lay down to die but I couldn’t do that either. Why did you come right back to me when you don’t have the dreamsnake? Why don’t you let me die?”
“You aren’t about to die,” Snake said. “You’re going to live until you take me to North and the dreamsnakes. After that whether you live or die is your own business.”
The crazy stared at her. “But North sent me away.”
“You don’t have to obey him any more,” Snake said. “He has no more power over you, if he won’t give you what you want. Your only chance is to help me get some of the dreamsnakes.”
The crazy stared at her for a long time, blinking, frowning in deep thought. Suddenly his expression cleared. His face grew serene and joyful. He started toward her, stumbled, and crawled. On his knees beside her, he caught her hands. His own were dirty and callused. The ring that had cut Snake’s forehead was a setting that had lost its stone.
“You mean you’ll help me get a dreamsnake of my own?” He smiled. “To use any time?”
“Yes,” Snake said through clenched teeth. She drew her hands back as the crazy bent to kiss them. Now she had promised him, and though she knew it was the only way she could get his cooperation, she felt as if she had committed a terrible sin.
Chapter 11
Moonlight shone dimly on the excellent road to Mountainside. Arevin rode late into the night, so immersed in his thoughts that he did not notice when sunset burned daylight into dusk. Though the healers’ station lay days behind him to the north, he still had not encountered anyone with news of Snake. Mountainside was the last place she could be, for there was nothing south of Mountainside. Arevin’s maps of the central mountains showed a herders’ trail, an old unused pass that cut only through the eastern range, and ended. Travelers in the mountains, as well as in Arevin’s country, did not venture into the far southern regions of their world.
Arevin tried not to wonder what he would do if he did not find Snake here. He was not close enough to the crest of the mountains to catch glimpses of the eastern desert, and for that he was glad. If he did not see the storms begin, he could imagine the calm weather lasting longer than usual.
He rounded a wide curve, looked up, and shielded his lantern, blinking. Lights ahead: soft yellow gaslights. The town looked like a basket of sparks spilled out on the slope, all resting together but for a few scattered separately on the valley floor.
Though he had added several towns to his experience, Arevin still found astonishing how much work and business their people did after dark. He decided to continue on to Mountainside tonight: perhaps he could have news of Snake before morning. He wrapped his robe more tightly around himself against the coldness of the night.
Despite himself, Arevin dozed, and did not awaken until his horse’s hooves rang on cobblestones. There was no activity here, so he rode on until he reached the town’s center with its taverns and other places of entertainment. Here it was almost as bright as day, and the people acted as if night had never come. Through a tavern entrance he saw several workers with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing, the contralto slightly flat. The tavern was attached to an inn, so he stopped his horse and dismounted. Thad’s advice about asking for information at inns seemed sound, though as yet none of the proprietors Arevin had talked to had possessed any information to give him.
He entered the tavern. The singers were still singing, drowning out their accompaniment, or whatever tune the flute player in the corner might have been trying to construct. She rested her instrument across her knee, picked up an earthernware mug, and sipped from it: beer, Arevin thought. The pleasant yeasty odor permeated the tavern.
The singers began another song, but the contralto closed her mouth quite suddenly and stared at Arevin. One of the men glanced at her. The song died raggedly as he and her other companions followed her gaze. The flute melody drifted hollowly up, down, and stopped. The attention of everyone in the room centered on Arevin.
“I greet you,” he said formally. “I would like to speak to the proprietor, if that is possible.”
No one moved. Then the contralto stumbled abruptly to her feet, knocking over her stool.
“I’ll — I’ll see if I can find her.” She disappeared through a curtained doorway.
No one spoke, not even the bartender. Arevin did not know what to say. He did not think he was so dusty and dirty as to stun anyone mute, and certainly in a trader’s town like this one people would be accustomed to his manner of dress. All he could think of to do was gaze back at them and wait. Perhaps they would return to their singing, or drink their beer, or ask him if he was thirsty.
They did nothing. Arevin waited.
He felt faintly ridiculous. He took a step forward, intending to break the tension by acting as if everything were normal. But as soon as he moved everyone in the tavern seemed to catch their breath and flinch away from him. The tension in the room was not that of people inspecting a stranger, but of antagonists awaiting an enemy. Someone whispered to another person; the words were inaudible but the tone sounded ominous.
The curtains across the doorway parted and a tall figure paused in the shadows. The proprietor stepped into the light and looked at Arevin steadily, without any fear.
“You wished to speak with me?”
She was as tall as Arevin, elegant and stern. She did not smile. These mountain people were quick to express their feelings, so Arevin wondered if he had perhaps blundered into a private house, or broken a custom he did not know.
“Yes,” he said. “I am looking for the healer Snake. I hoped I might find her in your town.”
“Why do you think you’d find her here?”
If all travelers were spoken to so rudely in Mountainside, Arevin wondered how it managed to be so prosperous.
“If she isn’t here, she must never have reached the mountains at all — she must still be in the western desert. The storms are coming.”
“Why are you looking for her?”
Arevin permitted himself a slight frown, for the questions had passed the limits of mere rudeness.
“I do not see that that is any of your business,” he said. “If common civility is not the custom in your house, I will ask elsewhere.”
He turned and nearly walked into two people with insignia on their collars and chains in their hands.
“Come with us, please.”
“For what reason?”
