The Serpent’s cool eyes dwelt on this, unmoved. And then another voice spoke. “Great One,” it said, “Lord—”
The Four turned their attention to the source of the voice. It was Ith. He stood now, gazing at the Serpent with an odd intensity.
Ah, my son,said the Old Serpent’s voice.Now that the other is gone, we may speak freely, you and I.
Thisshould be fun,said Aaurh silently to the others.
Pay no heed to the strange violence you have seen done here,said the Old Serpent softly.These creatures are our ancient enemies, and need have nothing further to do with our kind or our power. Our kind have different needs, different desires.
“Lord,” Ith said, “the Sun. The world above…”
None of our kind can live in that light without My help,said the Old Serpent, slow, persuasive, reasonable.It is fair, but it kills. Nor would they, would you, be able to find food enough for all. You will die there unless you are ruled by one who is wise, who knows time and the worlds. Long I have ruled you, to your advantage. It shall be so again. Andyoushall be My Sixth Claw, this time. You have won the right. You have proven Haath flawed, and that flaw would sooner or later have done your people, My people, great harm. Now you shall rule in his stead, and order all things for Me.
Ith swayed, looking up into the great, dark, wise, forgiving eyes. The others watched him.
They will bow before you like a god, a true god… not like these upstarts. But you must in turn surrender yourself to Me, to be filled with the power. This you must see and do.
A pause.
“… No.”
The Lone One’s eyes suddenly went much darker. “But this Idosee,” Ith said, and paced slowly over to stand straight and still beside sa’Rrahh, or Arhu in her shape, now flowing with fire both dark and bright. “Our kinship with these others is greater than You claim. He came into my heart, the one You say is my enemy, and tried to save me. And I saw intohisheart, and his mind. He had pain like mine, loneliness like mine, and anger. But he rose up again, through them, and tried. Death and hunger came to him, but he did not give in to them, did not cast himself in the fire. His clutchmates all died, but he lived, andkeptliving, though the pain pierced like a claw. And when we met, he felt pain for me, and did not run away, but bore it This ishisGift. To try again. We tried once and failed… and never tried again, for You told us that trying was no use. But gifts can be passed on to others who need them, even when the others are old enemies; and choices can be remade.They can be remade!”
It was a roar, and slowly the Mountain began to shake with it, a huge sympathetic tremor, like fear in a heart finally decided.
“I choose!” Ith said. “7 choose for my people! We will walk with the light, in the sun, in the free sun that You cannot control; we will walk with these others who struck us down only when there was need, rather than for pleasure or for power. And if we die of the light, of our own hunger freely found, then that was still worthwhile. For we would have owned ourselves for that little time, and an hour’s freedom in our own bodies, our own lives, under the sun, is worth a thousand years as slaves, even pampered slaves, in the dark under the ground, or killing other beings under strange stars!”
The Old Serpent was hissing softly to Itself now, while still slowly unwrapping Itself from around the Tree.Fool,it said—again that soft voice, the anger never overt—fool of a race of fools: too true it is that you have overstayed your time in this world. You shall not overstay it much longer—
“Too late for that, Old Serpent,”said Rhiow, said Iau.“The Choice is made.”
And already things were shifting. The landscape looked less rocky; the catenary looked less like a restlessly bound energy flow, but more than ever like a river, and one in which fire flowed like water. Rhiow, within Iau, rejoiced at the sight of it, for now she saw that this was where the River of Firebelonged—at the roots of the Tree: at the scene of the battle, where the souls of all felinity would at one time or another pass through the place of Choice, of the Fight, the gaming-ground that was the mother of all bouts ofhauissh.All would see it and remember, or be reminded between lives, of the incomplete Choice, of the business still to be attended to, not in the depths of time behind them, but in the depths of time yet to come. Except that time was not as deep as it had been, anymore…
“The Change is upon them now,”said Aaurh, moving slowly forward.“You might destroy this whole race, and still they would find possibilities they would never have known otherwise because of this their Son, their Father, Who Chose them a different path. They will go their own way now.”
They will die!the Old Serpent hissed.
“And whose fault isthat?They will pass,”said sa’Rrahh, “but to what, You will not know for aeons yet. And meantime You have a passage of Your own to deal with.”
“Old Serpent,”cried Iau then,“stand You to battle; this is Your last day… until we fight again!”
The Serpent reared away from the Tree, and Rhiow realized belatedly that Its withdrawal had been strategic only. Now It threw Itself at them, Its whole terrible mass coming down at them like a falling tree, lightnings flailing about it—
What started to happen after that, Rhiow had a great deal of trouble grasping. All the Four threw themselves upon the Old Serpent; claws and fangs blazed, and blinding tracks of plasma burned and tore where Urrua’s claws fell; fire spouted and gouted from Aaurh and sa’Rrahh, blasting at the Lone Power. As Haath had, It healed itself. The Four kept attacking, with energies that Rhiow was vaguely certain would have been sufficient to level whole continents, if not to devastate the surfaces of some small planets. Rhiow fought as she might have in her own body, clutching and biting, feeling fangs slash at her and find their mark: But the terrible pains she suffered still had triumph at the bottom of them, like blood welling up in a wound; and the violence she did, and sensed all around her, had a stately quality to it. They had done this many times before, and would do it again—though this time there had been minor changes in the ritual.
But then came one change that was not so minor; it particularly attracted her notice. Suddenly there was a Fifth among them; and sa’Rrahh laughed for joy and plunged anew into the battle beside that Fifth one; and the others cried out in amazement. For it was another Serpent, a bright one, as great as the Old Serpent, and its scales glittering like diamond in the light of their own fires. It thrust its mighty head forward and sank fangs like splinters of star-core into the great barrel of the Old Serpent’s body, just behind the head; and the bright Serpent wrapped its coils around the Old Serpent’s coils, and they began to strive together—
Rhiow suddenly thought of the twined serpents on the staff of theehhifgod above Grand Central.Haw did they know,she thought,how did even theehhifsuspect, and we never—
—and in their battle, the bright Serpent began to get the better of the Old Serpent, and started to crush the life out of It, so that It writhed and thrashed and made the world shake. And the Tree began, ever so slightly, to lean.
“Quick,”cried the bright Serpent,“the wound, it must be healed!”
“Once more the Serpent’s blood must flow,”said Urrua, and Rhiow in Iau looked, and saw him rearing up on his hind legs and holding, in his huge paw, the sword. At least anehhifa long time ago, seeing it or hearing it described, might have taken it for a sword. It was a hyperstring construct, blindingly bright to look at, but a hundred times narrower than a hair.“Just hold It there, Ith,”he said,“this won’t take long. Yeah, right there—”