Let them eat cake, O’Neill thought, as he took the plate and started down the hall again. He’d missed breakfast, and the cakes were good, with some kind of cherry filling that wasn’t too sweet. He remembered an archway out of the Gate room that was framed in a mosaic of writhing snakes. That must be the Hall of Serpents. Rearranging the remaining comestibles, he moved as fast as possible without attracting attention, pausing only to glance at the traffic in the central Hall. There was no sign of Daniel.
Nekhmet’s chamber had the distinction of being a private suite, with an entry chamber, a sleeping room, and a curtained-off bathing room off to one side. It was empty when he arrived. He set the tray on an enameled table and looked through every room, checking the tops of the delicately carved furniture for discarded jewelry or, failing that, some kind of weapon.
No such luck, naturally.
He was about to toss the drawers in the sleeping room when he heard voices in the hallway and faded back into the bathing area. Nekhmet entered with two companions, who exclaimed with pleasure at the sight of the cakes. The three of them settled immediately to stuff themselves, meanwhile exchanging gossip about no one O’Neill had ever heard of. Pressing himself back against the wall as hard as possible, he twitched the curtain open with his little finger and risked a glance into the room. Yes; Nekhmet was still wearing the leather brace. He blew out a long, silent breath and kept very, very still.
Marvelous things.
Gold everywhere: gold leaf on the pillars, in the patterned ceilings, on the furniture. Gold, most especially, lining the portrait. Gold catching the light and throwing it back and hurting the eyes, so much that Daniel slipped his glasses off in self-defense and tucked them into his shirt. He moved around the side of the room, keeping to the walls like Chundra the rat, pausing every few steps to look at something new or to dodge a slave or a Jaffa. They ignored him. He barely noticed.
The furniture was carved, the arms and legs representing lions’ paws, the backs supporting bas-relief landscapes and portraits. He saw a lamp—or at least a round, glowing globe—with a wax cone atop it. As the wax melted, heavy perfumes were released into the air.
Statues, three times life-size, representing pharaohs—or Goa’uld—striding forward, hands lifted, ribbon weapons embracing their arms, lined the walls. They reminded him of the Assyrian sculptures in the British Museum as much as of the heroic statuary of the Egyptian kings. The statues were painted and gilded, with skin tones ranging from flat black to pearl white, and every shade in between. The faces, he noticed with some peering, were identical under the identical headcloth-and-uraeus, as if the individual features were irrelevant. The kilts were real cloth, pleated to a knife edge, starched into immobility. The oversized sandals were real leather, embedded with gems and more gold.
At the head of the room was a large platform. On it were three empty thrones, the arms in the form of lions, the legs in the shape of lions’ paws, all gilded; the Eye of Horus marked the back of each of them. The largest was slightly behind the other two.
Behind the empty thrones were the fan slaves, waving massive fans of ostrich plumes to keep the thickly scented air moving. It made the feather portrait of Apophis tremble, as if it were alive. Even without his glasses he could see the sweat glistening on their faces. They wore feather headdresses, too. The Goa’uld had the technology to air-condition the entire place, he was certain. But air-conditioning just didn’t have that groveling odor associated with it.
Off to one side of the thrones, shockingly out of place, was evidence that the aliens could dispense with mere humankind if they wanted to. A large globe, hovering in midair, stood waiting for power; a Goa’uld communication device. It was blank at the moment. Daniel shook his head as if in denial and moved on, slowly circling the room, sometimes sneaking his glasses back on for a quick focus and then putting them away again in an attempt to alleviate the ferocious glow.
The paintings on the walls were of hunting scenes, the same scenes he would have expected to find in a well-preserved tomb in the Valley of the Kings, except that these pictures were vibrant and fresh. And interspersed with the images of Egyptian kings riding chariots in pursuit of lions and antelope were scenes of those same kings pursuing creatures that had never evolved on Earth, creatures with odd joints and sideways jaws and manes like cilia. The pictures of hunters on the river using cats to retrieve showed the animals bringing not only ducks but strange fragile orange butterfly-looking things to their masters. The figures were not merely the animal-headed Egyptian gods, but alien in their entirety; and the figures following after the kings wore the helmets of the Serpent Guards, the cartouches of the Jaffa, and the crossed slits in their bellies were clearly defined.
He could spend the rest of his life here, he thought deliriously, studying, recording, analyzing. He could reconstruct the contact with the Earth of ancient Egypt, stretching from the predynastic era to at least the Eighteenth Dynasty, see the effects of Egyptian culture on that of the Goa’uld—
A little smile played over his lips. So much for the impact of ancient starfarers on his homeworld; from the looks of it, cultural diffusion had osmosed in very much the opposite direction. The art, clothing—even the music, the sounds of flute and sistrum and soft drumming—could have come straight from the souks of Alexandria, barely changed over the millennia.
Shouts coming from the arched entryway finally pulled his attention away from the wall paintings. A team of Jaffa marched in, carrying a body on a bier. The courtiers gasped; the servants pressed back against the walls, trying to be invisible; even the fan bearers froze in place. They’d found the dead Serpent Guards.
You do what you need to do, okay? Whichever of us gets through to bring them back—back to the guardroom, okay? We’ll rendezvous there if we have to.
Daniel Jackson adopted the bearing of the midservants, the ones between the lowliest slaves and the aristocracy of service. He found an empty tray on a table, picked it up and kept his head down. A cup set into a wall niche provided another prop. The excitement caused by the discovery of the body had rippled out from the Throne Room, driving him deeper and deeper into the Goa’uld palace.
On the one hand, it was still a wonderful opportunity for a scientist to explore. On the other, he had to find Nekhmet, or someone else with a bracelet, to operate the Gate.
On the third hand, the Gate was probably very heavily guarded right now.
On the fourth hand, that gave him a great excuse to probe deeper, to see if he could find any sign of Sha’re.
The only trouble was that he only had two hands, and this was exactly the kind of thing O’Neill had warned him against. He had to focus on the team getting back home again.
A squad of Jaffa, their expanded helmets making them look like two-legged cobras, marched by double-time, their energy staffs held out before them, ready for use. Daniel pressed himself into the wall to let them go by, his fingers white against the gold of the tray; the cup upon it rattled.
He had tried several times to circle back, but each time the Jaffa were there before him, blocking the way. None of the human slaves were allowed access to the Gate room. Several times he thought the Serpent Guards followed him suspiciously as he tried again and again to get past them. Once he found himself hiding in the Great House’s feather room, desperately trying to keep from sneezing as the Guards pushed around huge baskets of feathers with their energy staffs. It really was too much like the Marx brothers. And all of it for nothing; he couldn’t find Nekhmet, much less Sha’re or Apophis or even a larval nursery.
Eventually even the strain of hiding, a mouse in a clowder of serpent-headed cats, couldn’t overcome the need for rest. He found himself back in the feather-storage room, staggering from sheer stress-induced exhaustion. Nobody seems to come here, he thought foggily. Surely he could sit down for just a moment, behind this gigantic woven basket, and lean his head against…
He woke with a jolt, some undetermined time later, a yellow pinfeather tickling his nose. F
rom deep within the building came an eerily familiar wailing. Blinking, he stood up and caught the woven basket before it fell. No, this was—this wasn’t Egypt, nor was it Abydos, but that wailing was exactly the same. He shuddered with a sudden chill at the thought of the sounds of desolation, of mourning echoing not just across deserts of sand but of stars as well. Someone had died.
He wondered momentarily what had happened to the tribute, then forced himself to stop worrying about it. Those kids—and kids they were, after all—weren’t his responsibility; they’d had the chance to change their minds and had elected to be part of their world’s sacrifice anyway. His worry was his own team.
And, of course, Sha’re, the voice in the back of his mind pointed out, however far beyond his reach she might be.
The feeling of circling aimlessly, unable to return to the Gate, unable to locate either Nekhmet or the nursery where Sha’re would be, overwhelmed him for a moment. Maybe this wasn’t the Goa’uld homeworld after all. Maybe it really was all for nothing.
Who had died? Apophis? He shook his head. Nothing would be that easy. Someone important, though. That kind of mourning was reserved for chiefs, leaders.
Voices?
Had O’Neill succeeded?
It would fit the circumstances.
If so, he’d better get back to the guardroom. He couldn’t just stand here; he’d better start being decisive.
Although even being decisive wasn’t going to do either him or O’Neill a heck of a lot of good if the Stargate was being guarded by Serpent Guards.
What would O’Neill do?
Make some smart-aleck remark, no doubt. And then create some diversion that would save the day.
Another squad of snake-helmed Jaffa came by, and he executed a swift right-face and entered yet another supply room filled with row upon row of pure white wax candles and several large jars that sloshed when he jostled them.
Candles. And oil. Now there was an idea. If only he could be sure its time had come…. The Gate room wasn’t that far from the storage areas. He made his preparations and headed back to see if he could tell what was going on.
The Hall of the Gate was frothing with activity, so much that it spilled out into the halls leading away. Daniel had to push his way past excited servants.
The Gate abruptly began to move, and the panicked operator at the console was yelling at a senior Guard that it wasn’t his fault, someone must be operating a remote, the system was already engaged and he couldn’t break in. Daniel couldn’t spot Jack anywhere, but a squad of Serpent Guards was being hastily assembled to stand watch over the Gate—presumably if someone was operating it, that meant it was supposed to be used. The inner ring slid smoothly back and forth. Daniel pushed closer, hoping to be able to find Jack, to make a break for it when the colonel did, and then paused.
If the Jaffa had the sense to watch the Gate’s destination being dialed in, they could identify it. They would follow Jack and probably destroy M’kwethet. A distraction was required right now, and he didn’t have time to get back to his little booby trap.
He whipped off his glasses and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Fire! Fire in the Throne Room! The Great One’s portrait is burning!”
The servants surrounding him jerked around to stare in shock. He pointed and ran back toward the hall that led to the room with the feather portrait. Someone else—a woman—picked up the cry.
In moments dozens of people were repeating the alarm, surging back to the perimeters of the room and then out again to the hall. Even the senior Serpent Guard’s helmet looked momentarily indecisive, and as he gave contradictory commands the Gate spun, back and forth and back again. Someone else shrieked that they had lost track of the chevrons.
One of the squad lined up on either side of the Gate shouted that he would find out where the Gate led. He sounded very heroic and self-sacrificing. The other Guards clearly thought he was nuts; Daniel could hear one say something about “the Emptiness.”
Daniel was getting dangerously near the edge of a knot of people, too close to open space. He looked about for some place to blend in.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he spun around, his belly suddenly a lump of ice.
“You are mad,” Mafret said. “But it is a strong, strange madness. Come.”
“They’re gonna find out the feathers aren’t burning any second now,” Daniel whispered. “We’ve gotta give him time—”
“Ah, but the feathers do burn,” she said, barely moving her lips. “A wonderful idea. Come quickly.”
Behind them, the Gate billowed open, and the volunteer threw himself through just as the console operator regained control and shut it tightly behind him.
This time, as Jack O’Neill tumbled through the M’kwethet Gate, the first thing he did was to take off the helmet he had retrieved. The second was to look for the DHD. It still wasn’t there.
This time, though, he had a DHD of his very own. The damn thing weighed as much as a medium barbell, but it worked. He’d managed to manually rotate the inner dial, exactly like a combination lock, and once he’d pushed the right button on top, the thing had actually worked. Based on the way the Jaffa had formed up to guard the Gate, though, he wasn’t going to have that kind of luck on the way back. Daniel wouldn’t cut and run for Earth until he knew the others were all right. If only the kid had been where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there—but whatever that distraction had been had worked beautifully.
And the mini-DHD not only worked, but it brought him to the right place. That remark about the Emptiness was a little scary, in hindsight, but before him stood a very small contingent of M’kwethet citizens finishing up their daily shopping, alerted to his entrance by the characteristic plasma roar of a wormhole being established. This time they recognized him immediately.
It was twilight on M’kwethet, and most of the shops in the little square were closed and shuttered for the night. He could still see the remains of the bunting and banners that marked the recent ceremonies, smell the spicy scents of the evening meal being prepared.
The M’kwethet made no effort to take him captive, to alert guards. They simply stared at him, passive, resentful. No one even asked him about the sons and daughters he had accompanied to Saqqara.
He was, he decided, thoroughly fed up with M’kwethet. He wanted to find Carter and Teal’C and get the hell off this world that was so committed to appeasing the monsters that fed on it.
Unfortunately, Carter and Teal’C were not conveniently in sight, waiting to be shuttled back to the necessary intermediate stop on the way home. And no one was stepping up to volunteer their location.
Well, if anyone would know, he’d bet on the Council, the Rejected Ones. And if they didn’t tell him, he would show them what being rejected was really all about. Jumping down lightly from the platform, he headed across the square to the banquet hall.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Of all the inhabitants of M’kwethet, only Alizane Skill-keeper had a hope in hell of impressing Jack O’Neill. At least she wasn’t afraid to lose her temper.
And she was doing so, spectacularly.
“You are,” she announced, “a lying, thieving, murdering monster. Your people stole our children. They stole our hope of peace.”
She was facing him across the table, leaning forward on her hands, bristling with fury. He advanced to the other side, forcing her to stand up straight in order to look at him. It didn’t do anything to help the situation.
It was the same room they’d used earlier. Looking around it, at the little group of huddled teenagers standing protectively around Carter and Teal’C, at the tiny contingent of strong-arms backing up the red-clad Council, he couldn’t help but compare it to Saqqara. Even the servant house of Ahmose was bigger than this, and in better repair. The servant house, for example, wouldn’t dare have a stain on the ceiling betraying a leak in the roof, or chips out of the marble columns.
He hadn’t particularly noticed those t
hings before, or if he had, they’d lent the place a certain charming antiquity. Now, having seen the Goa’uld world, he realized this place looked shabby and poor.
He wondered if Alizane felt that way about her home-world, having spent almost two years on Saqqara.
He doubted that was uppermost in her mind at the moment. As soon as he entered the Agora, Jareth had spotted him, escorted him into a back room. Shortly thereafter Alizane and Karlanan had arrived, followed by five teenagers and his missing teammates. None of them looked bruised, at least, but Carter’s face was wooden and she kept blinking hard. Teal’C didn’t have his staff—he must have given it up voluntarily. He looked subtly unhappy, too.
Alizane was still talking. “And now you say the Great Ones are unhappy with their tribute. Whose head do you think their wrath will fall upon?”
He waited out her rage. She was the spokesman for the Council; both Jareth and Karlanan hung back, the older man wringing his hands with distress while the younger one sulked like the bully he was.
“You claim to have the good of our children at heart, but look at them. There were six who fled their sworn duty, their honor to be candidates for tribute. Now there are only five. Where is Maesen?”
“I don’t—” he began.
Carter cleared her throat. “Um, ma’am—”
They turned in unison to look at her, Alizane glaring, O’Neill inquiring.
Carter faced O’Neill, standing at attention. He saw the sick look in her eyes and knew what had happened before she even began to speak.
“Sir, I regret to inform you that one of the individuals under my care and protection became ill. We think she—she caught cold. Despite all our efforts Maesen apparently developed pneumonia, and she died. Because of the unusual nature of the illness I felt it prudent to bury her on site rather than transport her body back to the city.”
Got sick.
Died.
Of all the stupid things to happen on this mission, to have a kid catch cold and die was the stupidest.
02 - The Price You Pay Page 17
