Two Serpents Rise

by Max Gladstone

“If you lived a century ago, you would have been prepared for the experience,” Temoc said. “Gods are not so common today as once they were.”

  “Fine by me,” she replied.

  * * *

  Mal stood on air like a bride on an empty dance floor, waiting for the groom to emerge and the band to play.

  Most days, downtown airspace was a muddy mess of airbuses and optera, Warden mounts and skyspires and flying machines. Every few hours a dragon passed overhead, beating three-hundred-meter wings on its journey to the Shining Empire. Dresediel Lex had an anthill for a sky.

  Today, though, the sun shone at the apex of a bare blue vault, cut with smoke. Optera retreated to their nests. Skyspires fled. No private citizen would fly today, and the Wardens were busy.

  She closed her eyes and saw Dresediel Lex as a sprawling web of power and Craft, the human stain wiped away to reveal the bent lightning at the city’s root. But this too was a mask, a deception—a way she had been taught to see.

  She touched glyphs at her wrist and temples, and looked down, through basements, pipes, sewers, tunnels, caves, to the beating, blinding red heart of the planet, where two serpents quaked with unpleasant dreams.

  Her pocket buzzed: a warning from the Craftsmen back at Heartstone. The Serpents’ hunger outstrips our power to contain them.

  She opened her hands and waited for the eclipse.

  * * *

  Caleb, Teo, and Temoc approached the pyramid. No one challenged them. Teo glanced about, wary of security demons, but they were not attacked.

  They left the parking lot and walked down a paved path flanked by topiary. Unconscious revenants sprawled in the loam between sculpted trees, sheers and clippers fallen in the shadow of shrubbery globes and pentagrams. When Mal attacked, the undead workers would have been near the night shift’s end.

  He touched Teo’s hand. “Hey.” His voice sounded small.

  “Hey,” she answered. Their footsteps were the only sound in the garden, beneath the Canter’s Shell.

  “Are you all right?”

  “All right?” She laughed. “No. What do you think?”

  “I’m sorry. I was an idiot back there, in the crowd.”

  “Usually you only hurt yourself. I don’t like being part of your collateral damage.”

  “Hells.”

  “Relax. I was kidding.”

  “I deserve it,” he said. “This is my fault. All of it. If I hadn’t got mad at Temoc, I wouldn’t have let go of his arm. We wouldn’t even be here if I’d put the pieces together about Mal. If I’d pressed her about that pendant, about Allesandre. I think she was trying to tell me, but I didn’t listen. I spend my life evaluating angles, but as soon as my feelings get involved, it all goes to hell.”

  “Don’t think like that. Blaming yourself for everything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Mal’s crazy. And your father, he’s helping us, but he’s crazy, too. We all are. You can’t hold yourself responsible for people’s actions. Even if Mal made you a bit stupid, you aren’t the one who came up with her plan. You aren’t the one who set her on this road. She’s her own woman, and she did this for her own reasons. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Sam will be okay.”

  She didn’t answer.

  They reached the wide, flat front steps of the pyramid. Caleb’s gaze swung to Temoc, and kept swinging. “Where’s my dad?”

  “I thought he was behind us.”

  The grass rustled in a light breeze, but there was no breeze.

  Bushes to their right crashed and parted. Temoc stumbled out, wearing a gardening zombie’s jumpsuit. The revenant had been shorter, and larger around the waist, than Caleb’s father. Cuffs of trousers and shirt rode up on his calves and his thick wrists.

  Temoc lurched as he walked, and held one of his arms akimbo. Light twisted in his grip, and trailed on the ground behind him. Caleb blinked, and the rainbow confusion resolved into many-jointed limbs, a barbed tail, and a chitinous body. A triangular head with serrated mandibles lolled at a broken angle from the neck clutched in the crook of Temoc’s arm.

  Temoc let the demon fall. It struck earth, twitched once, and blurred to match the grass.

  “I thought,” he said, “a uniform might let the building recognize me as one of its own. It seems your lawn is well defended.” He joined them at the steps, and ushered Teo toward the revolving door.

  She climbed the steps, extended her hand, and touched the door. Glass glowed red beneath her fingers. She pulled her hand back. Nothing happened. She did not die.

  She touched the door again, and this time it recognized her. She pressed, and it moved.

  “Follow me,” she said, and stepped into shadow.

  43

  Crystal lamps hung lifeless above RKC’s dark lobby. No sun shone through the doors. Faint ghostlights set into floor and baseboard runners were the only source of illumination; they traced a branching red labyrinth that connected elevators and stairwell to the entrance. Bas-reliefs glowered from the walls—gods in agony, the King in Red triumphant, hearts torn from chests and altars split to shards.

  Demons wandered through the foyer, their footsteps like glass on stone. They took many forms: a looming silent shade whose five arms ended in scalpel forests, a spider with legs six feet long. A bus-sized centipede tasted the air with tremulous antennae.

  Caleb’s lungs and stomach tried to squeeze into his throat. Teo cursed in High Quechal.

  The demons did not attack, or seem to notice them. Nor did they intrude on the labyrinth. A giant spider crossed one crimson path, but it lifted each leg well clear of the red lines and did not step between them.

  Simple enough. Stay on the path, and remain safe. Stray, and be devoured. Strange to have a security system that posed no danger to any intruder with eyes.

  Caleb stepped forward, but Temoc gripped his arm like a vise. “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “There are demons here.”

  “I can see that.”

  “They haven’t attacked yet. We don’t know what might set them off.”

  “It looks like we’ll be fine if we stick to the path.”

  “What path?”

  “That path.” Caleb pointed to the floor, to the red ghostlight lines—the red ghostlight lines, which cast no shadows. Oh. “You can’t see any light on the floor, can you?”

  “I see a small red circle around us. You were about to cross the circle’s edge.”

  “Ah. What about you, Teo?”

  “I see green lines.”

  “Damn.”

  “Exactly. My lines turn left after five feet.”

  Caleb’s red path remained straight for ten feet, then curved sharply to the right. “So there’s a safe path for you, and a safe path for me, and none for Temoc.”

  “Makes sense. It can tell that we’re supposed to be here, and he isn’t.”

  “RKC has fed upon both of you for years. The beast knows your taste, and hungers for fresh meat.”

  “You’re a creepy man,” Teo said.

  “This,” Temoc said, indicating the demon-filled room with a wave of his hand, “is your office building.”

  Caleb tried not to think about teeth and claws and legs and pincers. “Dad, I don’t suppose you can fight them off?”

  “This would not be a battle,” Temoc said. A thing like a crystal mantis scuttled up to the edge of the red circle, and stared at them with mirror eyes. “I would disappear under claw and fang.”

  “Can you climb the pyramid from outside?”

  “Perhaps. But there will be defenses outside as well.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll carry you.”

  “You’ll carry me?”

  “If the demons can’t cross my path, we have to make it so they can’t attack you without attacking me.”

  “Your carrying me will not solve that problem.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Another si
lence of legs and claws. “No.”

  “So we do it this way. Straight to the lift.”

  “Not the lift,” Teo said. “The stairs.”

  “You want us to take the stairs up twenty-nine floors?”

  “If the lobby looks like this, do you trust the lift?”

  “Stairs it is.” He bent his knees and surveyed his skeleton. “Watch my ribs. I think I broke one earlier, or bruised it. Breathing hurts.”

  Temoc grunted, grabbed Caleb’s shoulders, and lurched onto his son’s back.

  In that first moment, struggling to balance Temoc, Caleb almost stumbled into demon-haunted dark. The world pitched and righted itself, heavier. Temoc was muscle, sinew, and bone, nothing light or soft. Caleb’s first step fell so heavily he feared it would break the marble tiles. Temoc kept his muscles tight, at least, which made him easier to balance.

  They crept into the labyrinth.

  The first ten steps were the hardest, except for the next ten, and the ten after that. His father’s living weight pressed him into the floor. Demons writhed half-seen about them, enraged by Temoc’s scent, repelled by Caleb. In a paradox of obligations they gathered, champing teeth and flicking long tongues. Teo walked her own path with ease. Caleb felt a pang of envy that broke his focus, weakened his arms, bent his knees. The horrors of the night drew close.

  The floor was dark as the inside of Mal’s mouth.

  Caleb shook.

  “You know,” Temoc said with a conversational air, “there’s a Telomere legend about this.”

  “About—” Caleb sucked in breath. His arms burned, and his back trembled. “About what?”

  “The Empire of Telomere traced its origins to a city near the mouth of the Ebon Sea. When that city was destroyed, the future founder of the Empire fled his enemies through the burning wreckage, bearing his father on his back. That father, too, carried the gods of their people.”

  Two more turns, and ten feet. “Nice story, Dad.” Gods, how much did this man weigh? Did being a priest-king make your bones more dense? Were outlaws’ muscles heavier than those of normal people?

  “Take strength from the story. Stories give us direction.”

  Turn. His hip twitched, and his hand slipped on Temoc’s left leg. He lost time struggling for a better grip. “This hero’s father—did he weigh as much as you?”

  “I do not think so. The man in the story was old, and frail.”

  “Encouraging, thanks.” I bet his gods were more helpful, too, Caleb thought, though he didn’t say it. If Temoc started an argument about religion, Caleb might buck him into the demons, and to hell with Dresediel Lex and the Serpents.

  He took the last curve with arms and legs of molten rubber. His lungs ached, and his ribs felt as if they might break through his skin. Mal—no, Mal wasn’t there, that was Teo, opening the stairwell door. Blinding light streamed through. The concrete steps beyond were free of demons. He lifted a silent prayer of thanks for office health and safety rules: in an emergency the stairs had to be safe to travel, no matter the security risk.

  He staggered the last three steps across the threshold, tripped, and fell to his knees. Temoc pitched to one side and slammed into a wall. Caleb’s burned right hand struck the floor. The world shimmered with pain. He tried to breathe, and choked.

  Teo closed the lobby door. The scuttle of demon claws dwindled to a crinkle of torn paper. Caleb sank against the wall, let his lungs fill with air, expelled it all, and let them fill again.

  Time passed. How much time, he did not care. When the world settled, Temoc was waiting. Caleb read no sympathy on his face.

  “Are you all right?” Teo asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, more to reassure himself than her. “I’m fine.”

  “Good.” Temoc glanced up the gap at the heart of the turning staircase. “We have nine hundred steps to climb.”

  “Hells.”

  “The trouble with atheism,” Temoc said, “is that it offers a limited range of curses.”

  Caleb ignored him, and started climbing.

  * * *

  Heavy footsteps echoed up and down the stairwell. No doors opened or closed. Caleb, Teo, and Temoc climbed alone.

  After the tenth story, they rested, though not for long. Teo’s watch read quarter past eleven. The eclipse was due shortly after noon. Temoc claimed he could draw fossilized souls from the altar in ten minutes. On schedule. Barely.

  Caleb swayed. Teo draped his arm over her shoulder. At first he tried to walk on his own, but around the fifteenth floor he trusted her with his weight. She bore it without complaint or comment, and they climbed together. Temoc sprinted each flight of stairs alone, and waited at the landing for them to catch up.

  “Not much of a team player, is he,” Teo asked when Caleb’s father was out of earshot.

  “He had a team,” Caleb replied. “Most of them died.”

  “He could at least act like we’re on the same side.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Maybe you’re not.” Teo grunted as Caleb’s leg gave out and she took his full weight. “He’s trying to save our lives, which puts him on my side.”

  “No. It puts you on his side, for the moment.”

  At the twentieth floor they allowed themselves another short rest. Caleb sat on a step and leaned against the cool railing. He had slept in beds less comfortable. Teo crouched beside him. Temoc did not sit. Tensed like a spring, he scanned walls, ceiling, and lower floors for threats.

  Temoc broke the silence.

  “You know,” he said, “these stairs weren’t a part of the original pyramid design.”

  “What was here earlier?” Teo asked.

  “An empty shaft descending into the sub-basement.”

  Don’t ask what they used it for, Caleb begged Teo with his eyes.

  “How would they use something like that?”

  “We threw bodies down the shaft,” Temoc said, “after the sacrifice. There was a fire at the bottom, for the corpses.”

  Teo looked as if she might reply, but did not. Caleb stood, and turned from Temoc to the steps.

  They climbed the rest of the way without speaking.

  44

  Potted ferns lined the broad dark hallway on the twenty-ninth floor, like soldiers supervising an execution. Faint inhuman laughter hung on the still air.

  “If we survive this,” Caleb whispered to Teo, “I am never coming in on a weekend again.”

  They reached the conference room’s mahogany doors without incident. Caleb’s skin wanted to crawl away and leave his meat and bones to fend for themselves. Veins popped on Temoc’s thick forearms and the backs of his slab hands; he squared his shoulders and stood strong, but his eyes flicked restless about the passage. Teo waited by the doorframe, lips tight, silent.

  Caleb opened the doors, and light flooded the hall.

  “Hello,” said a voice like honey poured off a razor.

  A many-legged horror filled the doorway: thorns and thin-spun glass, steel and barbs and blue lightning, clustered multifaceted eyes, and a mouth like a child’s, above a maw that brimmed with ichor-wet fangs.

  “Hello,” the demon repeated with its child-mouth. Its maw shrieked torn metal.

  Temoc punched the demon in the face.

  It tumbled backward, arms flung out for balance. One of its eight hands slammed into the conference table; knife-claws gouged long streaks from the wood. The child-mouth wailed.

  Temoc did not wait for the creature to recover. He became a silvered shadow and leapt on his adversary. The demon swatted him to the ground with a flailing paw, and followed with a kick. Falling, Temoc grabbed the demon’s knee and barbed ankle and wrenched the joints in opposite directions. Chitin cracked like crystal. Temoc struck the floor, and rolled between scrabbling claws to his feet.

  Caleb pulled Teo into the room, and closed the door behind them.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted.

  “The fight might draw others. You think we can hold off m
ore of those things?”

  Caleb’s father danced with the demon. A talon slashed Temoc’s side, and he staggered but did not fall. He had grown large in shadow, scars shining. He wrenched one of the beast’s arms sideways, and tore it from the shoulder. Two mouths screamed, and scythe-claws swung, but Temoc was already moving.

  Crystal limbs and teeth clashed. Liquid light dripped from the demon’s wounds, and smoked where it fell. Temoc was a dark blur, leaping from table to floor, taunting his opponent in High Quechal. The demon cursed him in its broken tongue, all pretense of human speech gone.

  They circled each other around the table, slow enough at last for Caleb to comprehend the demon’s shape: a round scorpion-jointed back, six clawed legs gripping the floor, one of its eight arms gone and two more limp.

  Between cries of pain, the demon laughed like thunder.

  “I think it’s enjoying this,” Teo whispered.

  Temoc was the first to slow, and the demon pressed him until it slowed in turn and Temoc fought back with maniacal ferocity. The silver scars on his face twisted, and by their light Caleb saw, for the first time in sixteen years, his father smile.

  The demon leapt onto the conference table and landed with a heavy, hollow sound. Temoc circled, and it scuttled to face him. It hissed, and he was silent; roared, and he showed no fear.

  The beast sprang, a storm of teeth and sharp edges. Temoc dove into and through the claws, and wrapped his arms around its body. Knives scraped the corded muscles of his back; jaws snapped inches from his face. His grip tightened, and cracks appeared in chitin. Temoc stepped under his opponent’s center of gravity, and swiveled his hip to the left.

  The demon’s left legs gave way, but Temoc did not let go. As it fell, he twisted its torso back to the right.

  The snap of the demon’s spine should have been too soft to hear. Somehow, it overcame all other sound.

  Thorned legs went limp, but the upper body fought on. Temoc rolled with the demon on the floor. Soon, they lay still.

  Temoc rose. Fading shadows hung from him in tatters. His skin was a mess of welts and bruises. Thin, shallow cuts crisscrossed his back and legs and arms, broken by the protective network of his scars.