Read Online Dreamsnake by Vonda D. McIntyre - Free Book Online Page A

imprinted on her and would stay near and even follow her. Neither had much
aptitude for learning beyond the imprinting, which the healers had bred into
them, but Mist and Sand would return when they felt the vibration of her hand
slapping the ground.
    Snake relaxed against a boulder, cushioned by the desert robe Arevin’s people
had given her. She wondered what Arevin was doing, where he was. His people were
nomads, herders of huge musk oxen whose undercoats gave fine, silky wool. To
meet the clan again she would have to search for them. She did not know if that
would ever be possible, though she very much wanted to see Arevin once more.
    Seeing his people would always remind her of Grass’s death, if she were ever
able to forget it. Her mistakes and misjudgments of them were the reason Grass
was gone. She had expected them to accept her word despite their fear, and
without meaning to they had shown her how arrogant her assumptions were.
    She shook off her depression. Now she had a chance to redeem herself. If she
really could go with Jesse, find out where the dreamsnakes came from, and
capture new ones—if she could even discover why they would not breed on
earth—she could return in triumph instead of in disgrace, succeeding where her
teachers and generations of healers had failed.
    It was time to return to the camp. She climbed the low rise of jumbled rock
that covered the mouth of the canyon, looking for Mist. The cobra was coiled on
a large chunk of basalt.
    At the top of the slope Snake reached for Mist, picked her up, and stroked
her narrow head. She was not so formidable unexcited, hood folded, narrow-headed
as any venomless serpent. She did not need a thick-jowled head, heavy with
poison. Her venom was powerful enough to kill in delicate doses.
    As Snake turned, the brilliant sunset drew her gaze. The sun was an orange
blur on the horizon, radiating streaks of purple and vermilion through the gray
clouds.
    And then Snake saw the craters, stretching away across the desert below her.
The earth was covered with great circular basins. Some, lying in the path of the
lava flow, had caught and broken its smooth frozen billows. Others were clearer,
great holes gouged in the earth, still distinct after so many years of driving
sands. The craters were so large, spread over such a distance, that they could
have only one source. Nuclear explosions had blasted them. The war itself was
long over, almost forgotten, for it had destroyed everyone who knew or cared
about the reasons it had happened.
    Snake gazed over the ravaged land, glad to be no nearer. In places like this
the effects of the war had lingered visibly and invisibly to Snake’s time; they
would persist for centuries beyond her life. The canyon in which she and the
partners were camped was probably not completely safe itself, but they had not
been here long enough to be in serious danger.
    Something unusual lay out in the rubble, in line with the brilliant setting
sun so it was difficult for Snake to see. She squinted at it. She felt uneasy,
as if she were spying on something she had no business knowing about.
    The body of a horse, decaying in the heat, lay crumpled at the edge of a
crater. The dead animal’s rigid legs poked grotesquely into the air, forced up
by its swollen belly. Clasping the animal’s head, a gold bridle gleamed scarlet
and orange in the sunset.
    Snake released her breath in a sound part sigh, part moan.
    She ran back to the serpent case and urged Mist inside, picked Sand up and
started back toward the camp, cursing when the rattler in his mindlessly
obstinate way tried to twine himself around her arm. She stopped and held him so
he could slide into his compartment, and started running again while she was
still fastening the catch. The case banged against her leg.
    Panting, she reached the tent and ducked inside. Merideth and Alex were
asleep. Snake knelt beside Jesse and carefully pulled back the