Serpent's Reach Read Online Free PDF

diminishing sanity. “Help. Help me.” Her voice was unused, her ears so long assaulted by majat-song that human words sounded alien in her hearing. “Worker. tell Mother that I want to speak with her. Take me to her. Now.”
    “No,” said the Worker. It sucked up more air and expelled it through chambers, creating the illusion, if not the intonations of human voice. Other sound fell away, Workers pausing to listen. Worker harmonised with itself as it spoke, the chambers all working in intricate combination. “Unnecessary. Mother knows your condition, knows all necessary things.”
    “Mother doesn’t know what I intend.”
    “Tell. Tell this-unit”
    “Revenge.”
    Palps swept her face, her mouth, her body, picking up scent. Worker could not comprehend. Majat individually had their limits. A Worker was not the proper channel for an emotional message and Raen knew it, manipulated the Worker with confusion. She had been cautioned against it from infancy, Workers going in and out of the labs, near at hand: never play games with them . Again and again she had beard the dangers of disoriented majat. It might call Warriors.
    It drew back abruptly: she suddenly missed that particular touch. Others filled the gap, constantly feeling at limbs and body.
    “It’s gone for Mother?”
    “Yes,” one said. “Mother.”
    She stared at the blind dark, hard-breathing, euphoric with her success. She moved her hand with difficulty past the hindering limbs and palps of Workers, felt of her wounds, which were slick with jelly…tested her strength, moving her limbs.
    “Are there,” she asked, “azi within call?”
    “Mother must call azi.”
    “I shall stand,” she declared, rationally, firmly, and began to do so.
    Workers assisted. Palps and chelae caressed her naked limbs and urged her, perhaps sensing new steadiness, conscious direction of her movements. Leathery bodies, Chitin-studded, pushed at her. She trusted them, despite the possibility of pain. Their knowledge of balance and leverage was instinctive, none truer. With their support she stood, dizzied, and felt about her in the featureless dark. The floor of the chamber was uneven. Up and down seemed confused in the blackness. Her ears were still numbed by their voices; bet hands met jointed palps and the hard spines of chelae. The Workers moved with her, never overbalancing her, supporting her with unfailing delicacy as she sought a few steps.
    “Take me to Mother,” she said.
    The song grew harsh and ominous. “Queen-threat,” one translated. Others took up the words.
    They feared for Mother. That was understandable: she was female, and of females, the hive held only one. They continued to groom her, wishing to feed her, to placate her. She turned from their offerings, distressing them further. She was in pain and her legs trembled under her. The burn on her side had opened in the exertion of rising. They tended this, keeping it moist, and she could not fend them from it. The touches on raw flesh were familiar agony. She had time to reckon what might come of an intruding female, that there would be no welcome: she refused to think it. Mother must control all that happened here. Mother had tolerated her this far.
    Then Worker must have returned; she reckoned so from the commotion that had broken out in the direction of the principal draft. “Bring,” a voice fluted, human language, of courtesy. “Mother permits.”
    Raen went toward the voice, guided by delicate touches of bristling forelimbs, feeling to one side and the other in the blackness, following the currents of moving air. The tunnels were wide and high…must be, to afford passage to the tall Warriors. And once, when the right-hand wall vanished suddenly at a steep climb, she fell, in great pain, her body abraded by the hard earth. Workers chittered alarm and lifted her at once, steadied her more carefully as she climbed. The air began to be close and warm. Sweat ran on her bare skin, and distressed