The Snake Charmer's Daughter

The Snake Charmer’s

Daughter

Prequel to A Dragon’s Guide to Destiny

C.M. Barrett

Rainbow Dragon Press

Copyright (c) 2017 by C.M. Barrett

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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Rainbow Dragon Press

http://www.cmbarrett.com

Cover design by Mnsartstudio via fiverr.com

Prologue

My son, the Guardian of Oasis, has asked me to write a memoir.

You’d inspire today’s youth with your heroic deeds, and they might cease their lazy and self-indulgent behavior and become worthwhile citizens.

His request to make my private life public irritated me. I told him that if I hadn’t spent the first part of my youth in a remote Etrenzian village training to become a snake charmer and the second part as a harem slave in Tamaras, I, too, would have taken every opportunity to indulge myself.

He stormed out of my house, and I don’t blame him. I haven’t even written the memoir, and I’m already lying.

I wouldn’t have taken a single opportunity to indulge myself. My father had so thoroughly trained me in the superiority of mind over base emotions and sensations that I considered self-indulgence a criminal act. And I convinced an entire country to agree with me.

They have suffered for it, and so have I.

If I do write a memoir, it will be in the hope of undoing some of the damage I did. My Last Testament (which my son knows nothing about) will have some effect, but an honest account of at least my early life may also help by dispelling the mystique of my heroism.

Oasis can expect no lectures thinly disguised as the story of my greatness. I don’t intend to write about Zena, Heroine of the Revolution. The truth is not quite so magnificent.

Oh, yes, it is.

I ask D’zara what gives her the right to read over my shoulder.

You might be writing about me in your memoir.

This is not my memoir, and I haven’t yet agreed to write it.

She sighs. D’zara has a full range of sighs for my behavior, but her favorite is the exasperated, I know you better than you know yourself, version. In the early days, I heard it every time I doubted myself, which was so often that she regularly got a healthy dose of oxygen in her blood.

Because you always deny that you were heroic, you need to remind yourself by writing the memoir. Besides, the people have the right to know the truth.

The people do not; it’s nowhere in the Constitution. I know because I wrote it.

Once D’zara gets a conviction between her teeth, she acts like one of those little dogs so popular in Tamaras that growl and snarl if you try to take away a treasured toy.

First, she pretends to compromise. You could insist that it not be published until after your death.

Or read, I say, knowing she’ll have her hands on it before my flesh has cooled, if not sooner. However, I can prevent that. I made a binding spell for the Last Testament. It won’t be found until this country has matured enough to understand and adopt its principles, and only the person best suited to present it to the people will discover it. That may happen hundreds of years from now.

I’ll do the same with the memoir. D’zara will curse me while I’m living, and she’ll try to find it, but I never taught her the sorcerer’s methods. In the Etrenzian tradition, a parent passes such magic only to a chosen family member. I chose my granddaughter, to my son’s eternal annoyance.

D’zara, sensing my partial surrender, pushes on for full victory. "Don’t you want people to know you were more than the Founder’s wife and helpmeet?"

She never forgave me for marrying him. "After I’m dead, I won’t care what people think of me. People know who ran Oasis after Nathan’s death, and many know who really ran Oasis before he died. I’d be more interested in correcting some of the misconceptions about the slavery days."

Not so much lies as exaggerations, she says. We both know that you didn’t march out of your miserable village determined to become the heroine of your people. And you weren’t nearly the sex slave that the tabloids make you out to have been. You prove my point. The truth will help those who feel they can’t accomplish great things because they aren’t fearless and selfless like the immortal Zena. Maybe they’d appreciate knowing that you were more like them.

Sometimes D’zara reminds me of a scorpion. Her stings are poisonous and painful. This barb has embedded itself in my tender pride. I don’t want to be known as the ultimate heroine, but I also don’t want to be remembered as Zena the Cowardly, who sometimes thought she would soil her pants with terror.

I was that Zena.

However, clever D’zara has provided me with a compelling reason for writing a memoir. If I hope for great leaders to continue the work I began, maybe they need to know that leaders can be as uncertain and fearful as any other human being.

That possibility resigns me to the knowledge that the only way for me to have any peace will be to write the damned thing. I give in.

D’zara is too wise to show her satisfaction. Where will you begin? I think it should be the day everything changed.

That was the worst day of my life.

That’s why you should start there.

All right. Now go away. I want to write in peace.

But peace does not live in these memories.

Chapter 1

The Tamarans were coming. For years they’d raided both Etrenzia and neighboring Dolocairn to feed their appetite for slaves and raw material, but now they aimed for total conquest.

Though high mountains protected Dolocairn, the Tamarans had virtually conquered them. For weeks, tribal drums had sent stories of slaughter and slavery—and a surprising degree of struggle. Those soft, fleshy people who worshipped dragons and mysterious priestesses had put up a better fight than we’d expected. In the end only the sheer numbers of the Tamaran army defeated them.

Now the army expected to defeat us, and almost everyone knew that they would. Although the gods we worshipped were as harsh and fierce as Etrenzian warriors, and we were much tougher than our neighbors, we were both fewer in number and lacking the protection their mountains had given them.

The village leaders had decided that we should hide in nearby caves. It would mean sharing those spaces with fire dragons, who threatened us less than the prospect of defeat in open battle.

Because I was a year short of eighteen, the age of adulthood when people could speak their minds, I kept my opinions to myself. Still, I thought that hiding would only delay the inevitable defeat. No one was talking about the possibility that they might find our caves. If they didn’t, we’d inevitably run out of food and haul our starving selves outside.

We’d already heard that the Tamarans had great patience for waiting out sieges (probably because they were so lazy that doing nothing had great appeal for them). They could easily rest for a few weeks, and by the time we emerged, we’d be in no condition to defend ourselves. They’d either kill us or make us slaves.

My father and a few other elders nurtured the delusion that all the Etrenzians who hid in caves would re-emerge to form a great army that would overwhelm the Tamaran army. I thought goats would fly first.

Still, I did my assigned work, hauling basket after basket of lentils, rice, and other foods into the caves. When we were finished, people began to file inside, but I couldn’t go in there without bathing.

Although desert air produces little sweat, and we are for the most part an odorless people (if you don’t count pungent spices and proximity to goats), any smell reminded me that I had a body, and I preferred to forget that. If I was going to die today, I wanted to die clean.

My mother, who was used to my peculiarities, gave me permission with reluctance. Be quick about it, Zena. We roll back the stone soon.

I knew they would whether or not I returned in time. Disobedient children were obliged to fend for themselves, even against vast armies.

I ran to a secluded stretch of the river, stripped, and plunged into the water, still cool from the mountain snow that fed it. The village, an oasis, never experienced drought, but like all Etrenzians, the people saved every fresh drop of rain and recycled every used drop of water. Only in the river could I stop worrying about wastefulness.

I floated, paddling a little, feeling small fish brush against my legs, and tried, as my father had taught me, to take in the hugeness of this eternal moment. I succeeded for only seconds at a time before that part of my brain attuned to danger took over.

What would I do if they captured me? A knife lay hidden in a pocket of my trousers. Etrenzian women died before they submitted to rape or imprisonment. If the Tamarans found our hiding places, many of them would also die.

Maybe my father would conjure up a miracle. Although I, like all Etrenzians, valued reason and logic I also believed in magic, knowing that when practiced by a calm mind, it worked on scientific principles.

At that moment, mine was not a calm mind. Floating in the river, I looked up at the sky. It had never appeared so huge nor the distant mountains so like the sharp teeth of a murderous grin. I was alone and unprotected in an immense world. No miracles seemed imminent. Fear washed over me with more force than the water. I needed to be with my parents right away.

I got out of the river and dressed, making sure to put on my protective amulet. When I tried to run to the cave, my feet wouldn’t move. I wondered in panic whether one of the tiny and highly poisonous river snakes had bitten me. That would be a painful way to die.

I was searching for the possible puncture when my head spun around, and I saw an enormous red dragon on the other side of the river. His equally red eyes held mine with the kind of hypnotic stare we used on the snakes when we charmed them.

In my mind, I heard my mother calling my name and saw the cave entrance sealed by a boulder. I tried to lift my feet again, but they remained frozen. I glared at the dragon, who