It could kill him if it so chose. Or it thought it could.
‘So shy,’ he whispered. ‘So powerful.’
The most venomous in the forest, he thought, but that was still to be determined for sure.
‘Will you help me, I wonder? I will not hurt you, I promise.’
The taipan relaxed its posture; its head moved back to the forest floor. It nosed into the leaf litter. Takaar came very slowly to a crouched position. The snake ignored him for the moment, intent on some prey or other.
‘But that will have to wait, deadly friend.’ Takaar chuckled. ‘First a test for you.’
Takaar rustled a handful of leaves. The taipan was poised in an instant, no more than four feet from him. The pair stared at each other, the taipan’s body moving slowly beneath it. Takaar moved his body gently from side to side, noting the mirror movement of the snake’s raised neck.
‘Good,’ said Takaar. ‘Now then…’
Takaar twitched his body. The taipan struck, head moving up and forward with astonishing speed. Takaar’s right hand shot out. His fist closed around the snake’s neck, right behind its head. Its jaws opened and shut, scant inches from Takaar’s face. Its body coiled and jerked, furious at its capture. Takaar held on. The snake coiled hard around his arm, squeezing.
Takaar pressed his fingers against the hinges of the snake’s jaws, forcing them open. The taipan’s fangs were not long, less than an inch. Not hinged like some vipers he had examined. The inside of the mouth was pink and soft. So much death contained within. Takaar smiled.
‘You’re a fierce one, aren’t you? I’ve been wanting one of you for a long, long time, you know that? Hmm.’
Takaar turned and walked back to his shelter, which lay a short distance inside the edge of the rainforest where the trees met the cliffs overlooking the glory of the delta at Verendii Tual. The air was fresher here, beyond the suffocating humidity deep under the canopy. His shelter had become a sprawling affair. Part skin bivouac, part thatch and mud building. He headed for the building, next to which stood his third and best attempt at a kiln. A few trial pots rested on a rack next to it.
The taipan had relaxed, its struggles ceasing. Takaar could feel its weight on his arm. A fascinating creature. He glanced down at it. Those eyes stared where he determined, his grip on its head as firm as in that first moment. Takaar ducked his head and entered the building. It was dark inside but his eyes adjusted very quickly.
Shame you didn’t choose to let it bite you. Why do you continue this pathetic charade?
‘If it was any of your business, which it isn’t, I would explain in greater detail. But suffice to say that the mind must be active or the inevitable descent to madness begins.’
Begins? For you that journey is a fading memory.
‘Madness is subjective. All of us exhibit the signs to a greater or lesser extent. I have some. So do you. It is the way of things. At least I am building something useful. What is it that you will leave behind you?’
Your corpse being devoured by the beasts you worship.
‘I will leave truth.’
And you have been so diligent in constructing your own truth, haven’t you?
‘Can we talk about this later? I’m a little busy.’
I just fail to see why you pursue this folly. How can you leave a legacy in a place where no one will ever find it? That is why you’re here, right? To make sure no one ever finds you, alive or dead.
‘You miss the point of my penance.’
I miss the point of your continued existence entirely.
Takaar focused back on his task. There was a table along one wall of the building, the result of a number of experiments in binding legs to tabletops. The surface was a little rough and uneven, cut from a fallen hardwood tree, similarly the legs. They were notched and grooved to slot together and then bound with liana and some young strangler vine. The table rocked a little but it served.
The tabletop was tidy. Obsessively so, said his tormentor, but it did not do to be confused about what lay in each of the small, wood-stoppered clay pots. They stood in rows down the left- and right-hand sides, leaving space in the centre for new work. He had etched a symbol into each stopper representing a particular herb or animal extract. He recorded the code, carving into pieces of hardwood he’d polished for the purpose.
A single clay pot half the size of Takaar’s hand sat in the middle of the table. Across it was stretched and tied a circle of cloth from Takaar’s dwindling supply of fine fabric. He picked up the pot, forced open the jaws of the taipan and hooked its fangs over the lip of the vessel. The cloth triggered the bite reflex and the taipan released its venom against the side of the jar. Impossible to see exactly how much, but he carried on milking until the snake tried to withdraw.
‘There, my friend. No pain. You are one of Tual’s denizens and I have no wish for you to come to harm.’
I doubt it feels the same way about you.
Takaar ignored the comment. He ducked outside the hut, walked away forty or so yards and released the reptile back into the forest, watching it slide quickly and effortlessly away, disappearing beneath the deep undergrowth and leaf fall.
‘Now then. To work.’
Takaar had eaten well that morning. Fish from the tributary of the River Shorth that ran not three hundred yards from him, spouting into a fabulous waterfall down the cliffs a little way to the south. He would need all the strength of that last meal in the hours to come, if his suppositions were correct.
Going back into his hut, Takaar glanced around at the walls and table as he always did.
‘Should I die today, what will be the judgement of the elves when my work is found?’
That you are a filthy coward who has researched a thousand ways to die and yet has not the courage to use any of them on purpose. The fact that your death was an accident would be the final insult.
‘Why do I listen to you?’
Because deep down in the dying embers of your sanity and morality, you know that I am right.
Three hundred pots sat on rough shelves around the walls. Each one marked and named on the carved wood hanging at the right-hand end of each shelf. Too few had detailed descriptions of properties, effects and the more complex notes on mixing and various cooking methods, but even if he did die today, if was a start. A bright TaiGethen or Silent priest could take it on.
Takaar pulled his fine knife from his boot. He’d spent day upon day honing the blade to little more than a spike with a needle tip. He took the cloth lid from the venom pot and looked inside. The taipan had yielded a decent amount of the toxin. More than enough to kill him a hundred times over.
Takaar dipped his knife point into the pot and withdrew it, assessing the small teardrop glistening on it. It was mid-sized in his terms. A gamble given what he’d seen out in the wild. He did his last equipment check. Saw the food, the water, the cloths and the hollowed-out log bucket. They sat next to a hammock raised three feet from the ground between the two tree trunks around which he’d built the hut.
Takaar pricked his skin with the blade point, just on the underside of his wrist. He breathed very deeply. This was the time when he felt exhilaration and empowerment. The time to join with nature in a way no TaiGethen, no elf, had ever done. To survive was to understand more. And to find another weapon to use against the Garonin.
Are you really so deluded? Actually, I suppose you are. The Garonin are gone. You ran away from them and slammed the door in their faces, remember? Or does that not fit with your convenient truth?
‘Now there you really are wrong. You never escape the Garonin. Trust me. They’ll be back.’
Trust is not something anyone will have in you ever again.
‘That is part of my penance. Now shush. I have symptoms and reactions to feel.’