Read Online Serpent Mage by Margaret Weis - Free Book Online

around at those gathered on the terrace. The humans of Phondra are a dark-skinned race. Unlike the El-mas, whose emotions run skin-deep, so the saying goes, the Phondrans do not blush in shame or pale in fear or anger. The ebony of their skin often masks their inner feelings. It is their eyes that are most expressive, and the chief's eyes smoldered in anger and bitter, helpless frustration.
    “Not war. Murder.”
    “Murder?” It took Eliason a moment to comprehend the word that had been spoken in human. The elves have no term for such a heinous crime in their vocabulary. “One hundred and twenty people! But… who? What?”
    “We weren't certain at first. We found tracks that we could not explain. Could not, until now.” Dumaka's hand moved in a quick S-shape. “Sinuous waves across the sand. And trails of slime.”
    “The serpents?” said Eliason in disbelief. “But why? What did they want?”
    “To murder! To kill!” The chieftain's hand clenched. “It was butchery. Plain out-and-out butchery! The wolf carries off the lamb and we are not angry because we know that this is the nature of the wolf and that the lamb will fill the empty bellies of the wolf's young. But these serpents or whatever they are did not kill for food. They killed for the pleasure of killing!
    “Their victims, every one, even the children, had obviously died slowly, in hideous torment, their bodies left for usto find. I am told that the first few of our people who came upon the village nearly lost their reason at the terrible sights they witnessed.”
    “I traveled there myself,” said Delu, her rich voice so low that we girls were forced to creep nearer the window to hear her. “I have suffered since from terrible dreams that haunt me in the night. We could not even give the bodies seemly burial in the Goodsea, for none of us could bear to look upon their tortured faces and see evidence of the agony they had suffered. We magi determined that the entire village, or what was left of it, be burned.”
    “It was,” added Dumaka heavily, “as if the killers had left us a message: ‘See in this your own doom!’”
    I thought back to the serpent's words:
This is a sample of our power.
…
Heed our warning!
    We girls stared at each other in a horrified silence that was echoed on the terrace below. Dumaka turned once again and was staring out to sea. Eliason sank down in his chair.
    My father struck in with his usual dwarven bluntness. Pushing himself with difficulty out of the small chair, he stamped his feet on the ground, probably in an attempt to restore their circulation. “I mean no disrespect to the dead, but these were fisher folk, unskilled in warfare, lacking weapons …”
    “It would have made no difference if they had been an army,” stated Dumaka grimly. “These people were armed; they have fought other tribes, as well as the jungle beasts. We found scores of arrows that had been fired, but they obviously did no harm. Spears had been cracked in two, as if they'd been chewed up and spit out by giant mouths.”
    “And our people were skilled in magic, most of them,” Delu added quietly, “if only on the lowest levels. We found evidence that they had attempted to use their magic in their defense. Magic, too, failed them.”
    “But surely the Council of Magi could do something?” suggested Eliason. “Or perhaps magical elven weapons, such as we used to manufacture in times gone by, might work where others failed—no disparagement to your wizards,” he added, politely.
    Delu looked at her husband, apparently seeking his agreement in imparting further bad news. He nodded his head.
    The wizardess was a tall woman, equaling her husband in height. Her graying hair, worn in a coif at the back of the neck, provided an attractive contrast to her dark complexion. Seven bands of color in her feathered cape marked her status as a wizardess of the Seventh House, the highest rank a human can attain in the use of magic. She stared