...

Sirikana stood by his wife and children for much of the day, following their usual routine of gathering river water, milking goats, tending to their patches of barley, and joining Mohar in the daily tribal prayer. As the sun began to set, Sirikana began to venture out alone into the desert.

"Where are you going?" Liyahara asked him as he departed.

"To speak with God." Sirikana replied.

The man bit his tongue at such a blasphemous reply and silently asked for forgiveness but nevertheless he was single-minded in his goal to spend time with Salamanca. The Dunelander walked the same great distance that he did the previous night. He could barely make out the shadow of the long-tailed, long-haired figure in front of him.

"Salamanca...we meet again..." Sirikana said solemnly.

<Human filth!> said a harsh male voice in the serpentine language.

Serotolo, Salamanca's scorned husband, slithered forward, quickly wrapping his tail around Sirkana's body, intent on slowly crushing him to death.

<I'll make you suffer!> Serotolo shouted through angry tears.

Sirikana writhed in pain and desperation. His skin began to turn blue and he could no longer speak.

Forgive me, Sun Father. Sirikana prayed, Let me live and I will never see Salamanca again.

Sirikana then felt himself released from the serpent's grasp and struggled to regain his breath, collapsing in the dirt. As if in ironic answer to his prayer, Sirikana heard Serotolo snarl as Salamanca grabbed her husband and bit him on the ear, drawing blood.

<Unfaithful whore!> Serotolo screamed.

<Pathetic shrew!> Salamanca shot back.

Husband and wife clawed and bit one another, swiping at each other with their tails. Sirikana at first considered defending his lover but then thought it better to run away. As the Duneland man fled, he soon ran into a large group of his own people, most of them being other men with curveblades. Sirikana's jaw dropped in horror as he noticed Mohar, Liyahara, and his two children among them.

"Sirikana! Be still!!" Mohar shouted.

Sirkana could not help but freeze in his tracks and collapse to his knees.

Liyahara, now wearing a hood to cover her hair, walked up to her husband, her face a grim expression of disappointment. She wiped her own tears from her eyes but found she could not make them stop.

"Is it true, my husband?" the woman sobbed.

"It is true." was all Sirikana could say.

"You know the penalty for adultrey." Mohar announced.

Two swordsmen took Sirikana by his arms and dragged him on ahead as the rest of the group followed behind. Even Sirkana's two captors had sad faces, as he was known and respected by the tribe.

The Dunelanders soon reached the two quarreling serpentines and surrounded them. Salamanca and Serotolo's skin was awash in cuts and bruises that they had given each other.

<What is this?!> Serotolo demanded.

<The humans.> Salamanca realized, <They have found us.>

"Justice will be swift." Mohar declared, "Stone them!"

The two swordsmen shoved Sirikana in front of the serpentines and the other men began to gather large rocks. Salamanca snarled as she realized what was happening, but she did not have her own swords, and even she and her husband together could not overpower so many at once.

"Wait!" Liyahara pleaded, "He is my husband! The children need their father!"

By this point, Bihali and Madiji were bawling in fear and confusion. Bihali at least was mature enough to understand her father's infidelity.

"I cannot...make an exception." Mohar struggled to say, "It is the Sun Father's will."

Mohar recalled the last time a man had been stoned. It had been three years ago, for murder. The man had slew a rival farmer who had ruined his crops. The man's wife had also pleaded for leniency but the murdered man's wife had insisted on blood. Also, Mohar wondered what kind of leader he would be if he pardoned only his own family.

The Duneland men began pelting the three outcasts with rocks, making no point of the fact that Serotolo had not actually violated Duneland tribal law. Serotolo growled in pain and swiped his tail but could find no avenue of escape.

"Papa! Papa! Papa!" Madiji sobbed as he ran through the men and over to his father.

Liyahara gasped in anguish as Mahdi clung to his father and was struck with a stone himself.

"My son!" she called out as she ran over to him, shoving one of the men to the ground.

Liyahara examined her son's collapsed body and screamed as she saw he was bleeding from the forehead.

"Stop!!" Mohar shouted, "Enough!!"

The men beside him gradually dropped their stones and looked to him in sorrow and confusion.

"What now?" one of the men asked.

"Only kill the snake demons!" Mohar relented.

"But Sirikana is guilty." another man insisted.

"The snake demoness tempted him." Mohar decided, "It is not cause to leave my grandchildren fatherless."

"My son, my son, my son..." Liyahara whispered as she cradled the boy.

Sirkana put a hand on his wife's shoulder but she angrily brushed it away.

"You caused this!" Liyahara accused, "You, that snake whore, and your lies!"

"Sirikana!" Mohar interrupted, "You may yet find forgiveness. But you must destroy the source of your sin, the temptress behind you."

"Salamanca?" Sirikana questioned, "You want me to stone her? No. If you want to kill her, then do it yourself."

"Liyahara, my sister." Mohar instructed, "You must carry it out then and restore your family's honor."

Liyahara nodded and handed Madiji to his sister, Bihali. Bihali wiped the blood from his brow and struggled to wake him. A man handed Liyahara a large rock and she flung it at Salamanca. The serpentess hissed in pain as the rock struck her forehead, making it bleed, but not knocking her out.

"Monster! Whore! Demon!" Liyahara screamed as she attempted to pelt Salamanca with more stones.

Serotolo suddenly came to his wife's defense and lunged at Liyahara, trapping her with his six arms and plunging his fangs into her neck. Liyahara gasped and began convulsing as her veins were filled with Serotolo's poisonous venom. The scorned serpentine let go of the woman and she fell in the dust, still shaking and sputtering.

<Serotolo, you fool!> Salamanca shouted, <She'll die!>

<Let her die.> Serotolo decided, <I was defending you.>

<I did not want this.> Salamanca admitted.

The serpentess slithered over to her now dying adversary and sunk her own fangs into the bleeding holes in Liyahara's neck. Salamanca began to extract the venom and spit it on the ground. She then replaced it with her own sedative and Liyahara slowly stopped shaking and fell asleep.

<She will live.> Salamanca assessed.

Mohar briefly considered whether he should show gratitude to the woman who had just saved his sister's life but then decided that a serpentine had almost killed her.

"Stone them!!" he ordered, "The snake demons! Sirikana may li-"

Mohar's words were cut short as he began shaking himself and collapsed to the ground. Behind him was a green skinned serpentess, Saphirina, wielding a strange golden staff tipped with a purple crystal between her top and bottom arms. As chieftess of the Dunefang tribe, it was a symbol of her authority and primary weapon. The crystal could project short bursts of energy that painfully subdued Saphirina's enemies.

<Drop your weapons!> Saphirina commanded, <All of you!>

The Dunelanders were surrounded by male and female serpentine warriors, many of them wielding curveblades in all six arms. The human swordsman started to drop their own swords and stones until Mohar slowly struggled to get up.

"Fear not their numbers!" he announced, "The sun shines upon us this day!"

The serpentines present just barely outnumbered the Dunelanders, who now rushed at the snake people with their swords. Mohar himself retrieved a curveblade to face Saphirina.

"Tell your men to stand down, old man!" Saphirina warned in Mohar's own tongue, "Do not make me wipe your tribe out!"

"It is you who will face the sun's wrath!" Mohar asserted as he nearly decapitated the serpentess with a large swing of his sword.

Saphirina tilted her head just in time, Mohar's sword cutting a few strands of her hair. Her staff met Mohar's own blade and the two struggled. Saphirina's six arms easily overpowered the two armed human and Mohar collapsed again, dropping his sword. Without warning, Saphirina impaled Mohar through the stomach with her staff, who gasped and coughed up blood. She then wrapped her tail around his body, squeezing until she broke his spine in two and finished the man off by biting into his throat and ripping out a chunk of his flesh.

Blood spurted from Mohar's exposed veins and he quickly perished. Saphirina released him and Mohar's body crumpled over. The serpentine wiped the blood from her lips and hissed in victory. She looked around her and gave a cruel laugh as she noticed most of the Duneland men being cut to shreds by her warriors' swords.

<MOHAR!!> Liyahara screamed, as the violence had startled her awake.

The Duneland woman sobbed in agony at the loss of her brother as well as her husband's betrayal. Both Sirikana and Salamanca tried to comfort her but she angrily brushed them away and ran off into the desert by herself. In the confusion, Madiji finally awoke, bloody and bruised, but alive.

"It is only a cut." Bihali observed, wiping the blood from her brother's brow, "The Sun Father be praised."

"I want...Mama..." Madiji said weakly.

Both children screamed as a large blue snake's tail surrounded them and they were coiled up by Serotolo.

<Your father stole my wife, so now I take you.> he explained.

The serpent man clutched the two children in the end of his tail as he used the rest of it slink away back to his cave.

Sirikana was too distracted by the bloodshed and his wife's flight that he had now knowledge of his children's abduction. He was also distracted by the several swords now pointed at his chest and neck, wielded by serpentines. Saphirina slithered up to the captive man and gave a mocking hissing laugh.

<So you are Salamanca's lover.> she surmised, <How delightful. The Duneland tribe is now mine. You are now under my command.>

<You killed Mohar.> Sirikana replied in what he could manage of the serpent's tongue, <Are you going to kill me as well?>

<I just hate it when humans try to speak our language without a forked tongue.> Saphirina noted, <It grates the ear.>

<You did not answer my question.> Sirikana continued.

<And you are in no position to give orders, human.> Saphirina warned, <Besides, if I kill you now, Salamanca would be moody about it and useless to my purposes.>

<What purposes?> Sirikana asked.

<None of your concern, human!> Saphirina said, <Now take your family and get out before I change my mind.>

Sirikana felt two tails sling him aside. He coughed up some dust and soon realized that not only his wife but now his children were gone.

"Madiji! Bihali!" he called out, "Come here!"

The children were nowhere in sight and Sirikana started to wonder if they had been killed. He stumbled around and gagged in horror and disgust as he stepped in some blood, seeing as it belonged to what was now half of a Duneland swordsman.

Sirikana fell backward, right into Salamanca's six arms, who tried to embrace him.

<I'm sorry, my love.> she whispered, <I'm so sorry.>

<Where are my children?> Sirikana demanded, <Where are my children?!>

<I do not know.> Salamanca said, as she looked around, <Wait, they are not here. Perhaps...yes...Serotolo took them!>

<Where? Where?!> Sirikana yelled.

<Back to our cave, most likely, our home.> Salamanca realized.

<Take me to them at once!> Sirikana ordered.

Salamanca, being a proud serpentine, would normally have slapped Sirikana for daring to bark orders at her but she thought better of it.

<Let us depart.> Salamanca said as she slithered away and Sirikana walked angrily behind her.