Chill

levels. The structure ahead gave no indication of life support, no hope of sanctuary. There was only the rust-black stone, hulking in its cage, and the Enemy on every side.

Arianrhod raised her eyes across the gulf, and with her cold tongue shaped a word that had no air to carry it. 'Leviathan.'

16 blackest kinslaughter

Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.

--Job 41:11, King James Bible

Gavin was ready, even expectant, when Tristen dropped away beneath him like a splash of falling water. He dared not close his talons hard--they might pierce the Prince's armor--and so he could not ease Tristen's fall. But he could spread his wings, cup air, and beat up out of the writhing mass of black-and-cream serpents that swallowed the fallen knight. The swarm of cobras heaved, shuddering, so Gavin knew that, under their weight, Tristen convulsed from the venom.

The basilisk hovered, churning air, and extended his neck to give vent to the hiss of a snake ten times his size. He would have done it alone, but Mallory stepped up beside him, an ally suddenly terrible with snapping eyes and a cloud of storm-black hair.

'Priestess,' Mallory said, 'Lady of the Edenites. Call back your creatures, or this necromancer will see to it that nothing here leaves this Heaven alive.'

Dorcas remained before them, impassive as a queen, hands at her sides in the folds of her gown. Gavin reared back, crest flaring. 'I'd listen to the wizard if I were you, Lady.'

She cocked her head, seeming fearless. 'By whose authority do you speak, familiar beast?'

'By my own,' Gavin said. 'By the authority of light.'

A thin crack, only. The barest sliver of vision, enough that he caught a glimpse of her face, her form, as something other than a sensory shadow. Enough to let slip a sizzling fragment of light and smoke the dais between her feet.

He'd hoped to make her yelp and scuttle back. Instead, a serpent lunged for him. He felt it coming, the machined whisk of scales on scales, the nigh-invisible speed of fangs that could slice armor like butter. Gavin sideslipped, cranked his head around, and sizzled it in midstrike. He flapped up through air threaded with the rankness of burning mechanicals as the cobra thumped limply back among the bodies of its brethren draped over Tristen's seizing form.

My Prince, Gavin thought, I seriously question your judgment.

'The wizard meant it,' Gavin said to Dorcas. 'Call them off.'

Her throat worked as she swallowed. He felt the way the atmosphere flexed around it, the accelerating beat of her heart. But neither her gestures nor her stance betrayed fear.

'Do you disregard your master's command so easily?'

'He is not my master,' Gavin replied. He felt Samael behind him, closing up the gap between. Mallory stepped forward, graceful and martial as a cat, body surrendered for the moment to the control of some long-dead fighter. The warding ring of serpents had collapsed; nothing would hold Mallory back now.

'This is your third warning,' Mallory said, as if Gavin and the necromancer spoke from one mind.

Her chin lifted. 'Very well,' she said, and raised her hand again.

The cobras rose with it, as if on marionette strings--an alien and unified motion. They swayed together, forward and back like stalks of wheat tossed in a circulation current, and flowed back to pool, hissing, around Dorcas's feet.

Dorcas shrugged as if it were all the same to her. 'We have done what was needful, in any case. I will have refreshments brought, and you may stay with him for the time being. Or, if you prefer to leave him and continue on your quest--which I understand to have been of some urgency--we will make arrangements to allow you to pass beyond our lands. If you remain, and if he emerges from his trial, we shall discuss this further.'

Dorcas had already turned and was taking the first step away when Mallory interrupted. 'If he emerges from his trial?'

The priestess paused. 'Many choose not to, having faced what awaits them.'

Gavin backwinged to settle on Mallory's shoulder and felt Mallory bear up under it. He would have preferred to drop by Tristen's side and give the stricken First Mate his closer attention, but he did not feel that this was the time to sacrifice the advantage of height.

'Choose?' Mallory said.

At Samael's mismatched feet, Tristen convulsed again, a long, shocking extension of his legs and spine. Samael crouched, his immaterial hands passing through Tristen's armor as if it were the hologram.

Dorcas smiled. 'Of course,' she said. 'We are the Woodsmen of the World, we Edenites. We are not executioners. We are only followers of the true path. We are not God. We cannot know a man's heart: that is between himself and what is divine. Whose judgment do you think he faces, if not his own?'

She stared down at them for a moment, but Gavin pointedly turned his head away. It didn't matter. He wasn't watching her with his eyes, but the message was unmistakable. A moment later, Dorcas raised her hood and stepped away, vanishing among the shapes of her followers.

'He's alive,' Samael said from the earthen floor, his hands still buried in Tristen's chest, flakes of unidentifiable substances swirling where the bones of his wrists should be. 'But that's one hell of an inducer virus. Psychotropic nanotoxin.'

'Inducer virus?' Mallory asked. 'What's it induce? Not a ghost personality?'

The Angel of Biosystems shook his head. 'To a first approximation, I'd say it's just about the opposite. It's a tailored memory trigger, with an autoextinction function.'

Gavin flipped his wingtips one over the other, a tense scissoring that left him feeling no more comfortable. Around them, the Go-backs had withdrawn to the outside walls of the pavilion, but they were still present--and observing. 'So you're saying, what, it inhibits his colony's life-extending functions? He's about to crumble into the dust of a Mean five hundred years dead?'

'No,' Samael said. 'I'm saying it makes it possible for him to wish himself dead.'

A pause for the sharing of worried glances followed. Samael drew back his hands, wiping them on immaterial trousers. 'She wasn't lying.'

'Yeah,' Mallory said. 'We gathered that. What now?'

'Go on without me,' Gavin said. 'The two of you. I'll wait here with the First Mate. You keep tracking Arianrhod, and we'll catch up when Tristen is recovered.'

'If he recovers,' Mallory said gently. 'No. Too risky.

I can't fight Arianrhod, birdy. And Samael certainly can't, in his current condition.'

The necromancer glanced apologetically at the angel; the angel dismissed it with a hands-spread shrug of acceptance.

'It's only the truth. We need you, Gavin. And we need Prince Tristen.'

'So what are we going to do?'

One-handed, Mallory gentled the basilisk's wing, then scratched under his crest. Gavin lifted the feathers to allow better access, stretching into the caress. 'We're going to wait,' the necromancer said.

Every breath Tristen drew was one less, Gavin told himself, that they had to worry about. One breath closer to survival. One breath closer to resuming their quest.

One breath further behind Arianrhod.

Dozens of cobra fangs pierced armor, pierced skin, punctured flesh, and left their venom in Tristen's blood.