Iblis watched the poor man gather his clubs with everyone staring at him, willing him to fail. A few fingers would put Keen in the right kind of mood to be amenable to the idea the Goa’uld was going to plant in his mind later.
Corvus Keen’s hand snaked out and tugged at the wolfhound’s ear, causing the dog to bark angrily as it looked around for the source of the unexpected attack.
The first club sailed into the air, followed along its arc by the second. The juggler caught the first in his left hand even as the he tossed the third with his right. It was a simple pattern but there was no need for anything elaborate, the threat of lost fingers added spice enough to the game as it was. The clubs flew hand over hand for six passes. He almost dropped one twice but recovered. Keen stared intently at the man. The sores around his lips and chin glistened with saliva.
The fool managed two more passes before he dropped the first club. He crumbled inward after that, whimpering and pleading for the dog to bark even as he fumbled another club and then another.
He dropped five clubs before the dog barked again.
“You owe me a hand, Fool,” Keen said, picking at the dirt beneath his fingernail disinterestedly. “But I am in a good mood,” Keen smiled gregariously. “I think I shall spare you.”
Relief swept over the juggler’s face.
It was short lived.
“I am a man of my word. I will just take the fingers; three from your right hand, two from your left, I think. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind and take both of your hands.”
Two of Keen’s loyal Raven Guard dragged the juggler away kicking and screaming every step of the way. The court was silent for a moment, not shocked by the decree so much as savoring it. Of course, every one of them knew that but for the grace of Keen there they themselves went.
Iblis smiled at the cruelty of it. It was such a petty thing, this human condition, but there was much amusement to be had watching them play at being gods.
“Perhaps I might have a little of your time? In private,” Iblis bent low and whispered into Corvus Keen’s ear. The fat man nodded, and pushed his hefty bulk up out of the bird throne.
“Talk as we walk, my friend,” Keen wheezed after barely three steps. His belly spilled out over the top of his bursting trousers.
Kelkus fell into step behind them, the shadow’s shadow. The three swept through the corridors of Corvus Keen’s Raven Tower, and up the three hundred and twenty-one winding steps to the privacy of the roof top aviary where Keen kept his birds.
Iblis took perverse delight in making the fat man huff and puff and struggle up the winding stair.
“Kelkus, make sure we are not overheard. My words are for the Great Keen alone. It would not do for pricked ears and wagging tongues to be party to our conversation.”
“As you wish, my lord — ” Iblis cut him off with a stare. It would not do for Kelkus to call him God before Keen. The corpulent tyrant’s ego wouldn’t stand for it. Kelkus bobbed his head and shuffled off, shooing the birds up into flight as he walked among them. Before he reached the tower door the air was a swirl with cawing ravens and cackling crows. There were so many more species up here in the aviary, but Keen’s Raven Master kept them caged.
Iblis looked down upon the city.
There was a curious beauty to the sloping roofs and the twisting spires. They came together as a whole, like some great tapestry of life laid out beneath him. Still, for every beautiful old spire there was a modern steel chimney belching factory smoke into the air. For every red clay rooftop there was a corrugated iron one where function was more important than form. Most noticeable of all though were the graveyards and the crematorium fires that burned through the night. These were Iblis’ greatest achievement. The paranoia had always festered away at the back of Keen’s mind. The man was a half-breed, that was his dark secret. He looked at the Corvani and saw perfection; they were strong, the embodiment of the Divine Principle, angular, aquiline, beautiful. He looked at the Kelani and saw a primate three rungs down the evolutionary ladder.
Prejudice made him malleable.
It was a short step from being different to being demonized.
“So why the secrecy, my friend?” Keen asked.
“Because this is for your ears only, Great Keen,” Iblis said, pandering to the man’s vanity. It was a tricky game this flattery. Keen was no fool, and it would be a mistake to think of him that way. The man was sharp. He had an uncanny gift for knowing when he was being spoon-fed platitudes and had a habit of playing the bluff incompetent when he wanted to gauge the loyalty of those around him.
The idea of feigning weakness was alien to Iblis, but watching Corvus Keen he had begun to see just how advantageous it could be, if played right. It took a certain finesse to pull it off. It was all about playing up the clichéd expectancy of the bloated greedy megalomaniac. The secret was to keep it as close as possible to your true nature. Keen did crave power. The man was corpulent but the slovenly manners were an act, as was the unremitting cruelty. He enjoyed the air of bloodlust his random acts of violence fostered among his followers so he nurtured it and pretended at capriciousness.
Unlike so many humans Iblis had encountered throughout the galaxy, Keen’s thirst for power was almost Goa’uld-like in its capacity and arrogance, but beyond that, the thing that had excited Iblis the most about this human monster was the guile and cunning he displayed on a daily basis in pursuit of it.
It went against Iblis’ nature to lurk in the shadows, to lie, cheat, and steal, but being with Keen was teaching him that there was an entirely new way to wage a war. That was exciting. There was no other word for it. It opened up a slew of possibilities that promised to be amusing. And that, as far as Iblis was concerned, was the great fallacy of war. It wasn’t merely about winning or losing, it was about playing the game with style. It was about the beauty of taking aim on a victim, not just about pulling the trigger. Anyone could kill, but genocide was an art form.
“Go on.”
“Look up and tell me what you see.”
“What foolishness is this?”
“Just do it.”
“I see the sky. It is neither the night sky nor the day sky, simply the sky.”
“Oh but it is so much more than that, Keen, so much more. That is just such a banal way of looking at the world. You aren’t that simple, I don’t believe it for a minute.”
“Which is why you wanted this conversation alone. I understand.”
“Indeed. What if I told you there were worlds out there, thousands upon thousands of them waiting to be conquered, what would you say then?”
“Then I would say I see opportunity,” Keen said. “But you are talking absurdities, my friend. There is no life on other worlds. Life revolves around Banak and Thrace. The twin moons regulate the tides and provide the unique balance we need for life to flourish. That is just the way it is. Without them our world would wither and die. You might as well try and sell me the idea that the world is flat. Every rational thinking man knows it is not.”
“And every rational thinking man is wrong, my friend. There are worlds out there. Humans like you are scattered across the galaxy.”
“Like us,” Keen corrected, absently.
“Like you,” Iblis repeated.
“Are you trying to tell me you are not one of us?”
“I was not born under this sky, if that is what you are asking.”
“Rubbish. Have you looked in the mirror, my friend? Your bone structure, your coloring, your eyes, even the aquiline shape of your nose is classical Corvani. There are a thousand statues that could have been sculpted with your face as their model. Stop playing foolish games. My patience is wearing thin. You wouldn’t want to wear it through,” he inclined his head meaningfully. Iblis followed the look, and the inference. It was a long way down.
“Humor me, Keen,” he said, and then lowered his gaze. If Keen was half as aware as Iblis gave him credit for, the man would realize this was the firs
t time since Iblis had come into his service that he had ever averted his gaze. When the Goa’uld raised his head again a peculiar golden tint suffused his eyes. His voice, when he spoke was different, too. Metallic. Cold. “I have such violent delights to show you if you have the strength to stand at my side, human. Such pains. I have walked a hundred worlds.”
“But that’s impossible,” Keen said. He stumbled back a step, his certainty already eroded. Iblis smiled, the humorless smile of a man who delighted in unpinning the certainties that anchored the listener’s world in all the realities he thought he knew.
“Is it? I could talk to you of the frozen gardens of Kabul, one of the wonders of the universe I am sure. Every plant, tree, every shrub there is frozen into an unchanging vista that catches the light and turns it into diamonds in the air. I could describe the still waters of Tania and its submerged city where the man-eating sharks swim through the crystal hive of tunnels that make up the sunken city. I could talk to you of Mitko or Paribas where evolution has twisted humanity in duals, where brother and sister inhabit the same flesh and war for dominance. There is so much you haven’t seen or even dared imagine, Corvus Keen.”
“Shut up, shut up, you are making this nonsense up. Shut up unless you want me to take your tongue, Iblis.”
“These places all have one thing in common, Keen. They are places where my people once ruled. My people, Keen. The Goa’uld. We were your gods, Keen. Can you comprehend the power we had? We owned the suns and the moons and the stars. We oversaw the worlds and you worshipped us.”
“Impossible. That is not how it was. The scripture says — ”
“And who penned those precious scriptures? The humans my kith and kin scattered throughout the galaxies. Your people were slaves.”
“Why tell me this?” Keen asked, shaken and obviously unwilling to believe.
“Because I can. Because it serves my purpose. Because I believe, finally, I have found a human worthy of the knowledge. Because the worlds are out there waiting for you to conquer. Because this world is yours and it is not enough, is it? Because you are not thinking.”
As shocked as he was by Iblis’s revelations, Keen bristled instinctively at the insult. Iblis could not help but smile.
“Then prove me wrong, man. Think. The Corvani and the Kelani are different. This is fundamental to your core beliefs, is it not? But ask yourself: why are they different? Because we brought you here from different worlds. That is your answer. Yes, you are both strains of humanity. Like vermin, humans flourish no matter how filthy the conditions of their existence.”
“You brought us here?”
“Yes,” Iblis said.
“But how?” Keen stared at him. Iblis could hear the thoughts running blindly through his mind. They all returned to the same one: but how? How when you appear so young? How could you colonize a world when it was young? How could we not know? And the truth was they did know. The deep-seated loathing that existed between the two species the Goa’uld had transplanted to this world ran deeper than anyone could explain, and went further back than any would have believed. It wasn’t merely one man’s fear of difference. And then something changed in Corvus Keen’s expression, as though the servos powering the muscles had suddenly failed. The skin slipped. The brightness in the eyes failed. The sharpness of his cheeks softened and his jowls sagged. Each change was subtle, but seen all at once the effect was stunning.
It took a full minute for Keen to recover, but when he did he looked up at the sky, not at Iblis. “So where is this gateway to the stars?” It was the obvious question.
“In the arctic northlands.”
“Why there? Why so far away from civilization? Why not here? Somewhere central where we could come and go at will? Why hide such a great treasure?”
“Because it was never meant for the humans we left behind,” Iblis said. It was an answer that made sense. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not.
“Do you know where it is?”
“It has been a long time since I traveled through the Chappa’ai, but before my people left this place they took measures to hide it. It is almost certainly not where it was the last time I traveled between worlds. So in answer to your question, I know where it is, but not where it is.”
“Then we must find it!”
“Yes. I think we must.”
“And,” Keen said, the cunning sliding so gracefully back into his voice, “if the Kelani are not like us, we owe it to ourselves to understand their nature do we not? Their physiognomy, the stresses and strains their body might withstand in comparison to Corvani flesh. And not merely how they are different, but how they are the same.”
“That would be wise,” Iblis agreed. Yes, Corvus Keen was malleable. Pliant even. “We have the old factories out at Remoulade and Rabelais. I am thinking these might serve as facilities.”
“Ah, so I see you have thought about this.”
“No more than I consider any of your other interests, Great Keen,” Iblis said smoothly.
“Then tell me what you have in mind.”
“It is simple, really,” Iblis began, outlining cruelties that alone even Corvus Keen could never have imagined.
Chapter Nine
Into The Fire
Samantha Carter was the last one through the gate.
She watched Teal’c’s back as the event horizon swallowed him whole. Its skin rippled, and then he was gone. With one last backwards glance at the window of the control room, she stepped into the blue.
The sensation of stepping out into nothing, of becoming nothing, was every bit as unnerving as it had been the first time she had traveled through the Stargate. It wasn’t instantaneous; there was a lag as the wormhole carried her across vast expanses of empty space. The pull of forces on her mind was more distressing than the corresponding pull on her flesh. And then, even as her breathing came in harsh ragged gasps and her mind’s eye swirled with the punishing kiss of the vortex, she finished that last step on earth and made her first in hell.
The heat hit her hard, even through the protective layers of the evac suit. In a matter of seconds, she felt the linen of the vest beneath the suit soak through with perspiration. The first trickle ran in a lazy curve along the line of her spine. Sam managed three uneasy steps before the sting of the fire in the sky burned through the helmet’s visor. There was no way the suits could shield them from the intense heat for any length of time.
She closed her eyes, fumbling with the sensors on the helmet’s cuff to activate the visor’s tint. The filter glazed across the screen. It did nothing to reduce the painful brightness. Horizon to horizon the sky was ablaze, the firmament rippling with flares as pockets of oxygen ignited. It was all Sam could do not to stare. O’Neill’s voice crackled in her ear. “So I guess there is no point in telling everyone not to look at the sun.”
For all the facetiousness, he was right, of course. Staring at the sky for even a few moments would be enough to damage their unprotected retinas irreparably. Even with the UV protection of the visor it hurt to look at the sky for more than a few moments at a time. She forced herself to look down at her feet. The earth was scorched black, the dirt like a fine dusting of charcoal scattered over the ground. Heat seared up through the soles of her boots. Sam took two more steps away from the gate and turned to look back at it. Black hills lined up on the horizon, too far away for them to possibly reach before the heat tore through their suits and burned them up.
“Nice place,” she said.
Fissures ran red through the black earth where the rock beneath had smelted down to its core components.
“Okay, let’s try and do this quickly. Send the drone up, let’s see if we can find the needle in this flaming haystack.”
It was easier said than done; the drone went up but even before it had climbed a dozen feet above their heads the fire wormed its way through the cracks in its shell, undermining its integrity. It began to smoke as its internal wirings melted, and by the time it was one hu
ndred feet above them it was a ball of flame.
Sam shook her head. “Nothing. The drone burned up before it registered any signs of life.”
“See the world through the old man’s eyes,” Daniel said.
“What?”
“It was something Selina Ros said: see the world through the old man’s eyes. She said she hoped it would make sense to us when we came through the gate. Nyren Var’s last transmission suggested she had located the Mujina in a subterranean grotto. I’m guessing that looking through the old man’s eyes is how we’re going to find our way down into the caves.”
“Makes sense,” Jack said. Then a moment later, “No, really, it does. I’d have preferred a GPS reference, but turn left at the old man’s nose works for me. So can anyone see an old man?”
Sam scanned the horizon. There was nothing, no one. She had been doing nothing but look for the few minutes since they stepped through the gate. It was unlike any place she had visited. The reader from the drone registered nothing, not a single sign of life beyond their own biometrics. There was no way anything could survive in this place. It wasn’t a prison. It was an execution chamber. The Ancients had banished the Mujina here knowing full well it could not possibly survive for any length of time — they had as good as murdered the creature but without getting their hands dirty. Yet it had survived, which meant there had to be signs — it needed food, water, shelter, and it left behind feces and other waste. Nothing could exist without leaving a trace, a sign that it had been there, so that was what they had to be looking for: signs.
“So much for that idea,” Jack said. “Anyone else?”
She looked back at the gate and then down the steps toward the DHD. There had to be some sort of clue. The Tok’ra agent had found the creature, of that they were certain. There was no other reasonable explanation why she’d been forced to flee the planet. She had found the Mujina and the Goa’uld had in turn found her. Question was, had the Goa’uld found the creature or was it still hiding amid the fire and brimstone?
SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne Page 5
