Dreamsnake
by Vonda McIntyre

Description:
They summoned the healer Snake and she traveled the blasted landscape to save a sick child. With her she carried two serpents from whose venom she distills her medicine--and a third, even more precious, the alien dreamsnake, whose bite can ease the fear and pain of death.

But when her dreamsnake is killed by the primitive ignorance of those she had come to help, her powers as a healer are all but lost. Now Snake's only hope of finding another dreamsnake lies in a treacherous journey to the far-off Center City, where she'll be persued by two implacable followers--one driven mad by love, the other by fear and need.