The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  I could have fried them both. The boy had attacked me, after all. But I saw the terror writhing in his eyes and could not bring myself to roast him in Ra’s wrath. Instead, I struck Hafez’s head with the staff. He staggered backward, and his grip on Other Khalid loosened. The boy broke free and got out of my way.

  In a panic, Hafez reached out for Apep’s aid, and the floor shook from a frenzied earthquake. I lost my footing, and he charged, reaching for the staff.

  His fingers were inches away when Ceridwen’s cat, big enough to resist the earthquake, lashed out at Hafez with one of its giant claws, knocking him back into the wall.

  The cat tried to pounce on the wounded pharaoh, but slippery as the snake he worshipped, he managed to dodge, and the cat thudded into the wall. Enormous cracks inched outward from the point of collision.

  I expected Hafez to head for the door, and he feinted that way, but instead, he dashed in the opposite direction, toward the cauldron. Ceridwen, whose allegiance seemed to change by the hour, tossed a spell in his direction, but it sizzled past him harmlessly.

  The cat lumbered after him, but its movements were slower than before. I saw blood dripping from the spot on its head that had struck the wall. Hafez grabbed Morfran off the floor. He was considerably heavier than Khalid, and dead weight at that, but somehow the pharaoh managed to pull him up to block the cat’s attack. The creature hesitated. Ceridwen had implied she controlled its movements. She would not risk Morfran, not even to get to Hafez.

  “Traitor!” he screamed at the witch. “Your betrayal will not go unpunished.”

  Despite Hafez’s weakness, I could feel him summon magic. It was faint, but something about it made me uneasy. What hope did he have of overcoming such a powerful witch with such a weak spell?

  His smile chilled me. I didn’t want to find out what dark trick he was about to play. I shot him with a blinding flash of sunlight. I didn’t hurt Morfran, but it caught Hafez by surprise. His intended attack on Ceridwen dissipated, and he staggered backward, still clutching at Morfran. He tried to aim what magic he had left at me, but he couldn’t see well enough to aim.

  Ceridwen’s face was grim but immobile as stone. “You have no escape route, and if you hurt Morfran, I will punish you in ways that will make your twenty-year imprisonment of me look like a banquet with your gods.”

  Again I felt that faint magic I didn’t recognize, and I started sending small bursts of heat in his direction. Hafez couldn’t move very fast encumbered by Morfran’s weight, but he was still using the brave knight as a shield, making it impossible for me to finish him. I did keep him off-balance enough to prevent him from focusing on Ceridwen.

  “Amenirdis, you cannot kill me.” He was so out of breath that his voice was little more than a shaky whisper. “I have many allies who will avenge any harm that comes to me. And if you think the only ancient secret I drew from the sands of Egypt was the staff, you are much mistaken.”

  “We, too, have allies,” said Ceridwen. I heard running footsteps, and then the door flew open. She had released the sleep spell that bound the rest of Tal’s group. They must have realized how much time had passed and suspected the worst.

  Why had Ceridwen so tangled the straight line of my plan? Her abrupt change of sides had compensated for Hafez resisting me better than I thought he could have. Yet now I faced many other possible opponents, none of whom would allow me to do what must be done.

  I weighed the staff in my hands. Even combined with own power, it did not retain enough might to subdue so many. My only hope lay in deception.

  Amun was not called the hidden one for nothing. I drew his power around me like a mist. I strove for subtlety. What I needed was to conceal my true nature even from someone like Tal. He had to see me as Amy. They all had to. Otherwise, my plans would be undone.

  “The snakes will strike your friends if you attack,” Hafez yelled to the newcomers. Stay right where you are.

  Looking confused and startled, they obeyed—superficially. Hafez might not have been able to tell because of all the magic radiating from Ceridwen’s cauldron, but I could see tendrils of magic reaching out from Carla, seeking each of the snakes’ captives.

  “This standoff can end in only one way,” said Ceridwen. “You can hold these threats over our head for very much longer. You have little power left, and the protections on this house should suffice to keep any of your supposed allies from intervening until it is too late.”

  This time, Hafez didn’t try to launch an attack on Ceridwen, though he glared at her as if her death was what he craved most. Instead, he turned his attention to Tal’s warriors.

  “Those I threaten in this room are only the smallest part of those I can threaten. Ceridwen may not care about what you call collateral damage, but I know you do. Those of you with magic must have sensed the aura around New Karnak.”

  “There was background magic, barely perceptible,” said Tal. His voice sounded weak, unconvincing. “What of it?”

  “It is a weapon of last resort that I crafted long ago for just such an occasion as this. It is inert currently, but if I perish, it will rise to deadly levels and explode outward, covering all of the Santa Maria Valley. Every resident will die, as well all those tourists even now crowding New Karnak and the Lost City Amusement Park. The power of Apep will fill every last one of them with snake venom. Just for good measure, the power of Set will transform the whole area into a lifeless desert.”

  “That doesn’t keep us from taking you prisoner,” said Gordy.

  “Except for the fact that I must use the staff every few days to keep the spell in its current state. If I do not, the reaction will be the same as if I had died.”

  “That sounds like a bluff to me,” said Stan, sounding as weak as Tal.

  “You know how masterfully I have manipulated events until now,” said Hafez. “My seer helped me anticipate possible problems.”

  “Except for the fact that Ceridwen wasn’t really on your side,” said Michael.

  “Even that I prepared for,” said Hafez, but I didn’t believe him. The look of shock on his face when the cat attacked him was too genuine. Magnus’s refusal to help him had also caught him off guard.

  “So, what’s it to be?” he asked. “Will you let a couple hundred thousand people die?”

  “Knock him out.” Tal’s voice was barely above a mutter, but his friends responded instantly. The snakes holding him and the others disintegrated as Carla’s subtle magic struck too fast for Hafez to counter. The new arrivals surged toward Hafez.

  “Get any closer, and Morfran—” he began. Morfran’s eyes flew open so fast he must have been awakened the same time the others were and was just feigning sleep. With one flex of his arms, he broke Hafez’s unprepared grip. A quick punch in the face, and Hafez was down and out.

  “Ceridwen, you got any of your magic handcuffs around?” asked Shar. “He may not be out long.”

  “Right here,” she said.

  “Wait a minute,” said Magnus, swaying back and forth unsteadily on his feet. “Are we sure we can trust her? This is what, now? The third change of sides? The fourth? I’ve lost track.”

  “Stay where you are,” Carla said to her wounded friends. “I sense you’ve all lost far too much blood. Sit down and let me do some healing before you get yourselves all worked up.

  “All right—but my question still stands.” Ignoring Carla’s advice, Magnus did his best to stand up straight and grip the lyre. The effect was hardly threatening, but it was the best he could do for the moment.

  “You are entitled to ask it,” said Ceridwen. “I will do my best to answer in a way that will satisfy you.

  “What I told you when you freed me from the cell was all true. I may have had some lingering traces of my hatred for Taliesin in my heart. You saw as much under the influence of Ceridwen’s spell. But I had resolved to forget my desire for revenge. Even had I not, being held prisoner for more than two decades by Hafez made me hate him far, far more t
han I had ever hated Taliesin.

  “However, when you came to my cell, I could see that some of you didn’t trust me. I also knew Hafez was spying on us by magical means. For those reasons, I could not then tell you the whole truth.

  “You were right to think Hafez had manipulated you into finding me. Before you arrived, Hafez had come to me and offered me a deal—my freedom and a cure for Morfran’s curse in exchange for my help against all of you. In particular, he wanted my aid in securing what he wanted from Amenirdis.

  “I would sooner have been trampled by wild horses than help him in any way—but I had no other way to escape. I pretended to go along with him. In his arrogance, he accepted the appearance of agreement without trying to bind me by oaths. But he was powerful—I had to plan carefully to catch him off guard. He kept a constant eye on me, so I had to appear to help him, even though I was, in fact, plotting his downfall.”

  “But you avoided being bound by us,” said Magnus, eying her suspiciously.

  “Because I couldn’t have helped you if I’d done that. Hafez would have known what had happened. He was watching, remember? He actually threw some distractions at you to keep you from pressing the point when you first freed me, and afterward, I deliberately took you to a spot in Annwn where I knew Gwynn would find me, embroiling you in more complications in the process. By the time we arrived back here, even you, the most suspicious member of your group, had forgotten the issue.

  “Clever,” Magnus conceded, though he sounded unconvinced.

  “I had to lie to Creirwy, and—once I was reunited with him, Morfran—about what I was doing. He, in particular, would have wanted to kill Hafez right then and there, but we were not strong enough to attempt that yet. So I lied—really, I told them the partial truth. I was your ally, just as I told them, but I had to pretend to be Hafez’s secret ally as long as possible.

  “But we’d already defeated him,” said Magnus. “You had no need—”

  “Except that he wasn’t completely defeated. You captured the staff but let him escape. That left me with a huge problem. I couldn’t afford to have him lurking around, waiting for a moment to strike. I suspect him of possessing other magical treasures besides just the staff, and I’m not sure he’s bluffing when he speaks of allies. He would eventually have discovered the truth about me. Fortunately, when you and Taliesin helped me rebuild the protections around the house, you didn’t see the problem with identifying every member of your party, so that any of you could come and go without hindrance or alarms.

  “What I knew, and did not bother to remind you, was that the spells couldn’t distinguish your Khalid from our Khalid. I got word to our Khalid, who sneaked in and stole back the staff without any of you noticing.”

  “That makes no sense at all,” said Tal. “If you were worried about Hafez, why give the staff back to him, making him again too powerful to take on?”

  “I had no choice if I wanted to allay his suspicions and draw him out. While you possessed the staff, he would have hesitated to make a move. Only if it appeared you were about to leave this universe with the staff would he have struck at such a disadvantage. However, you had no way to use the staff once it became apparent that Amenirdis was not to be trusted. Therefore, he could have waited as long as he needed, marshaling his forces and whatever resources were required.

  “Besides, the staff was not at full power. I had seen enough of your abilities to know that you could overcome him in such a condition. I had seen enough of his arrogance to know that he would not wait for the staff to be fully recharged before attacking—despite all he knows of you. No, he struck without allowing the staff to reach full strength and without proper planning.

  “The story our Khalid fed you about Hafez threatening your counterparts was designed to keep you away from here for a while, just as Magnus suspected. I allowed that to happen, and I allowed Hafez back into Awen while everyone else here slumbered. I took that risk to ensure that Hafez attacked when I could control at least some of the circumstances.

  “You cannot deny my plan worked. Because he still trusted me, my summoning of creatures like the Adar Llwch Gwin and the Cath Palug, supposedly to support him in the upcoming battle, didn’t trouble him. Either one of them could overcome Hafez once he had been sufficiently weakened. You drained Hafez enough to make him vulnerable, just as I knew you would. Since I was the one who put the rest of your group under a sleep spell, I knew I could lift it, providing reinforcements as needed.”

  “Risky,” said Magnus. “The ambush might have succeeded. It very nearly did, in fact. It would have—if not for Amy.”

  I was surprised he would give anyone else that much credit. Ceridwen was surprised, too, but she shook her head.

  “Amenirdis’s current incarnation performed well, but even without her, my magic was not nearly as depleted as Hafez’s. I would have found a way to overcome him.

  “As far as risk is concerned, yes, what I did was risky. But there was no risk-free path to take, assuming you all wanted to return home unharmed. Now you have the staff and Hafez. Without my plan, how would you have achieved such a result?”

  “You may have changed during your imprisonment,” Magnus said slowly. “However, I can’t believe your motives were that altruistic. Hafez was a threat to you, and you needed us to help eliminate him.”

  “I never denied that I benefitted from my plan as well. I make no apology for that. Hafez was a threat to all of us. Now he is defeated. May I go ahead and handcuff him before he somehow contrives to escape again?”

  “Carla, take a minute and check the handcuffs out, will you?” asked Tal.

  “My mother would never—” began Morfran.

  “No disrespect intended, but you slept through your mother’s little act. She did a persuasive job of convincing us she was betraying us. Her convoluted explanation of how she was really on our side was far less persuasive.”

  “They have reason to doubt me,” said Ceridwen. “I welcome any inspection they choose to make.”

  Carla frowned at having her healing interrupted, but she did as Tal requested.

  “You know, you can use my cauldron to heal your friends,” said Ceridwen.

  “Thanks,” said Carla, looking closely at the handcuffs. “We have…bad memories of your cauldron from our experiences with its counterpart in our world.”

  “Amenirdis, can you tell us whether or not Hafez was bluffing?” asked Ceridwen.

  Tal looked at her as if she had sprouted extra arms. “That’s Amy…isn’t it?”

  “You may have been too groggy to realize this, but she used the power of Amun to attack Hafez,” said Ceridwen. “Could Amy have done that?”

  “Amy asked me to free Amenirdis,” said Magnus. His voice was much quieter than usual. “At the time, we didn’t know Ceridwen might be on our side. That seemed like the only move we had.”

  Tal blinked his eyes as if he were trying to banish a hallucination. “After what Amenirdis did before? You should have—”

  “What? Asked you first? No, I have it—asked everyone to vote. That would have been exactly the right move when all of us were wounded or unconscious and facing almost certain death.”

  “Now is not a good time for bickering,” said Viviane, looking at me with narrow eyes as if expected me to attack any moment. Tal shook his head as if Magnus was a lost cause and turned slowly in my direction. I had to act quickly if I were to have any chance of controlling the situation.

  “I’m Amy. Amenirdis is…confused at the moment. Her shame over the agony she inflicted on you was amplified by seeing your heroism yet again. She doubts herself. That’s why she relinquished control.”

  “In that case, let me use Arianrhod’s spell to—”

  “As long as she is willing to cooperate, let’s take advantage of that. Right now, she seems willing to feed me information. We need to know what she knows, right?”

  Tal raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it’s because I’m so tired, but I’m having a hard tim
e getting a clear reading from you. I can’t tell which personality is dominant.”

  “If it makes you feel better, why not take the staff?” I offered it to him, and once he had it in his hands, he seemed less nervous. He didn’t seem able to grasp why I would surrender the staff if I were Amenirdis.

  That’s because there was no reason—except that I had no choice. He and the others would have doubted me unless I did something to allay their suspicion.

  “I’ll reactivate the spell if I see any sign of trouble, but for now, it sounds as if everything is OK.”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re too trusting?” asked Magnus.

  “Yeah, you—about seven or eight times a day,” said Tal. “But considering you’re the one who freed Amenirdis again, you’re the last person who should be complaining about that. Carla, how do the handcuffs look?”

  “Like they’ll do what they’re supposed to,” she replied, handing them back to Ceridwen, who manacled the unconscious Hafez.

  “So, back to the question Ceridwen raised earlier,” said Tal. “Does Amenirdis have any ideas about the credibility of Hafez’s threat.”

  “She can’t be sure,” I said. “Even the staff lacks the power to do that much damage all at once. However, if Hafez had built up the spells over several weeks, maybe months, she thinks he could have reached a power level that would support that kind of mass destruction.”

  “It will take torture to loosen his lips,” said Ceridwen.

  “Here, here!” said Magnus. “We finally agree on something.”

  “We don’t as a rule use torture,” said Tal. I couldn’t understand why, but Amy could, so I held my peace. Even one ill-advised remark could reignite their suspicions.

  “I know you can read minds, but his will is strong,” said Ceridwen. “You are unlikely to get the information that way.”

  “There is another possibility,” said Tal. “We have a spell we call the blood double spell. It can turn one of us into such an exact copy of Hafez that no one could tell the difference between the duplicate and the original.”