Princess Phillipi's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

They rode two days south before Phillipi heard the second set of hooves behind them. She pulled up on a ridge above the pit road and looked back. One rider in council colors, riding hard, alone but fast. She knew the shape of that saddle. If he caught her, no port would matter. The elders would drag her back and press her hand to the contract with the lord who had waited in the hall. Alaric slowed his horse beside her. He said the pit mouth was just below the ridge. He said if he went down now with the staff, he could still bring the queen's token up and buy them a clean pass through any council checkpoint on the coast road. Phillipi looked at the rider on the plain and at the dark hole in the rock and understood she had one move. Alaric dismounted and started down the slope with the serpent staff in his hand. Phillipi watched him reach the lip of the pit. Below him the queen coiled on her stone floor, green hair moving on her shoulders, snakes braided around her arms and waist. He raised the staff. Phillipi stood in her stirrups, filled her lungs, and screamed his name across the open rock. The sound cracked off the cliff face. The rider on the plain turned his horse toward the ridge at a gallop. Alaric's head snapped up. She pointed past him at the dust cloud coming. He understood in one breath. He turned back to the pit and drove the staff down against the stone rim. The queen's head lifted. Her green eyes fixed on the staff and then on him. Her mouth opened and she bowed her shoulders to it. Alaric spoke one word Phillipi could not hear. Every snake in the pit poured up the walls at once, a rope of scales climbing over the rim in a hissing sheet. Alaric pointed at the rider. The snakes broke across the rock toward the plain. A cloud of small blue birds burst up from the brush where they had been feeding, purple fire trailing from their beaks, scattering ahead of the wave. The council rider's horse screamed and reared. He went off the saddle backward. The snakes covered him before he stood. Alaric ran up the slope. Phillipi caught his wrist and pulled him onto her horse behind her. His hand closed over hers on the rein and did not whiten, did not stiffen, did not pull away. She kicked the horse south. Behind them the pit queen watched from her stone, the staff still in her keeping now, her snakes still working on the man in council colors. No rider would carry word back before nightfall. Phillipi felt Alaric's chest against her back, warm through the mail, and rode for the coast.