The tower stood in a walled garden filled with palms and orange trees and small, spiky shrubs. A white-stone path wound through the vegetation. More lanterns hung from the trees, attracting moths in clouds. The gate was unlocked.
Caitlin caught Sophie’s arm. ‘Let’s go carefully.’
‘Why? Guard dogs?’
‘I’ve heard some strange things. The one who lives here might be dangerous. There are stories about him…’ She caught herself. ‘Let’s just be careful.’
‘Do you want me to go first?’
‘I’m not a complete invalid,’ Caitlin snapped, instantly regretting her tone. ‘I’m sorry. All this… I’m on edge.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Sophie smiled, but she was growing increasingly concerned about Caitlin’s desire to make amends for her perceived mistakes.
The tower was constructed from ivory, glass and gold, each element merging into the other with a delicate architectural sensibility that instilled a quiet wonder. The path led to a mahogany door covered with iron studs. A bell-pull hung beside it. Caitlin hesitated and then grabbed the pull to announce their presence.
For a long minute there was no reply. Then, gradually, a rhythmic hissing rose up from the vegetation on either side of the path. As Sophie and Caitlin waited with thumping hearts, snakes slithered on to the path and headed towards them. The serpents glowed so brightly that the women couldn’t be sure if they really existed or if they were constructed of green and red light.
Sophie removed her spear from the harness on her back, though she wasn’t at all sure it would have much effect on the snakes if it came to it.
The snakes moved quickly along the path and then split into two groups, curving around on either side of Caitlin and Sophie. They continued up the sheer, slick walls of the tower and came together over the top of the door, where they began to crawl into each other’s mouths. The serpents merged, becoming larger, until finally one huge snake undulated down to bring its eyes on a level with Caitlin and Sophie’s. They glittered red with a disturbing intelligence.
‘Speak your business,’ the snake said with a soft sibilance.
‘A Sister of Dragons and a Fragile Creature are seeking the wisdom of Math,’ Caitlin said.
There was a brief pause before the serpent replied, ‘That name has not been heard since the days of the tribes.’
‘But it still holds, does it not?’ Caitlin persisted. ‘Math, great magician, brother of the goddess Don. He was a friend to Fragile Creatures in times past.’
‘There are no times past,’ the snake hissed. Another pause. Then: ‘Enter, and prove yourself worthy to stand before the Seer of the Seven Worlds.’
With a fizz, the snake dissolved into tiny balls of light that drifted away on the breeze. A second later, the studded door swung open, releasing a heady aroma of incense.
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Sophie whispered.
‘Nor me. When they’re not being pompous, these gods are more than a little sneaky.’
Caitlin stepped over the threshold and made her way to a staircase that wound upwards around the inside of the walls. It was lit intermittently by tiny lanterns, but there were still many troubling pools of shadows. The silence that filled the tower was not peaceful; it felt as if some loud bell was just about to toll.
Caitlin and Sophie moved hesitantly up the stairs, each trailing a hand along the cool wall for support. When they had reached what they guessed was the halfway mark, the atmosphere became oppressive.
‘Can you feel it?’ Sophie asked. ‘Something’s coming.’
A sound like the wind through leaves echoed softly at first from further up the tower, drawing closer. Caitlin and Sophie waited with mounting apprehension, until the first signs of something approaching were indicated by undulating shadows cast by the flickering lanterns.
‘More snakes,’ Caitlin said. ‘Lots of them.’
As they rounded the next bend in the stairway, Caitlin and Sophie saw that these weren’t the light-snakes they had encountered at the foot of the tower, but hard-scaled, sharp-fanged serpents that were undoubtedly real. Yet they had an otherworldly ambience that made them even more menacing. Several were as broad as Sophie’s body, their tails lost in the dim recesses of the upper tower, but the majority ranged from the width of an arm to barely larger than a finger, shimmering greens and scarlets and golds, with strange black patterns along their skin that resembled runes. There were so many snakes that they filled the stairway up to Sophie’s waist, a slow-moving tidal wave that would easily engulf the two women.
Sophie grabbed Caitlin’s arm. ‘Come on. We have to go down.’
‘We can’t,’ Caitlin said desperately. ‘This is our one chance. If we go down, he’ll never let us back up again.’ She turned to Sophie, her face hard and determined. ‘You go. You don’t have to do this.’
‘You’re insane! Look at them.’
The nearest snake had the hood of a cobra, but strange alien growths like mushrooms lined its back. It reared up to bare its fangs, venom sizzling where it splashed on the steps.
‘You’ll never survive one bite,’ Sophie pressed.
Caitlin surveyed the mass of writhing bodies, almost close enough to touch now. Then she said firmly, ‘It’s a test. Math wants to see if we’re up to the honour of meeting him.’
‘Yes, dead or alive, it would seem.’
The nearest snake moved within striking range. Caitlin made her decision and then lay flat on the stairs.
‘What are you doing?’ Sophie said incredulously.
‘He said we had to prove we’re worthy. He wants us on our bellies, supplicating.’
‘You’re mad.’ Sophie looked from Caitlin to the snakes and then back down the stairs. Then she recalled what she and Mallory had had to go through in the temple beneath Cadbury Hill and knew that Caitlin was right. Cursing under her breath, she threw herself down. ‘If I survive I’m never going to forgive you for this.’ She closed her eyes and pressed her face hard into the cold ivory of the steps.
The serpents reached her a second later, a writhing mass pressing down so hard that Sophie felt she might suffocate. The sensation of constant movement above her made the bile rise in her throat. Their skin was dry against her face, forcing their way through her hair, wriggling past her cheeks, under her nose, forcing her lips apart with their tiny bodies, pressing against her eyes.
A minute later she was drowning beneath a sea of serpents, her face crushed into the hard steps, blood on her lips, in her mouth. In a desperate attempt to distract herself from the horror of what was happening, she grunted rhythms in her throat, made up tunes in her head, anything that might take her mind away.
And then the claustrophobia set in and she began to choke, but the weight above her was so great that she couldn’t have lifted herself up from the steps if she tried. Panic rammed rational thoughts aside and she knew, in that instant, how easy it would be to go insane.
The snakes continued to come for what felt like hours, until Sophie couldn’t believe there were so many snakes in all the worlds. Just when she thought her last breath was about to give out, the mass above her grew lighter, and then quickly receded.
Finally, she was on her knees, choking and spitting, unable to believe that she hadn’t received one bite. Caitlin was beside her in the same state, yet strangely smiling. She grabbed Sophie’s arm and indicated down the stairs in the direction the serpents had gone. Sophie looked around, but there were no snakes to be seen anywhere.