Two Serpents Rise

by Max Gladstone

He retreated from the demon’s corpse, and slumped against the pitted remains of the conference table.

  Caleb ran to his father. Temoc held up one hand, motioning him back, but Caleb ignored him.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Temoc said between breaths. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll worry about you if I want.”

  “No time. Others have heard the fight. They will come soon. Find the door.”

  Caleb wrapped one arm around his father, counted to three, and lifted him off the table. The old man swayed, but steadied on his feet, and spat blood to the floor. “Find it.”

  “Fine.” Caleb stepped back, and examined the room. There was, of course, no door in the wall through which Kopil had led him on the night of the Seven Leaf crisis. No door, and nothing that could hide a door: no bookcase, no trophy stand, no glyphs Caleb could see. The room was blank and featureless, its walls an even grey.

  He closed his eyes, but saw no trace of Craft. “I walked through this wall.”

  Teo prodded the blank stone with her hands, and struck it with a broken chair leg. The wall did not sound hollow. “Nothing’s hidden here. You’re sure this is the right place? I can think of twenty rooms in the pyramid that look just like this.”

  “Of course it’s the right place.”

  “I’m not calling you a liar. Relax.” She paced around the demon’s corpse, over puddles of sizzling blood. “It must be here. Otherwise why set a demon to guard this room? To defend the table?”

  “More demons are coming,” Temoc said. “Up the stairs.”

  “They can use the stairs,” Caleb said, then checked himself. “Of course they can use the stairs. Do you see any controls anywhere?”

  “Only the usual ones, for the lights. You say you walked through this wall? In this conference room?”

  “Yes.” In the hall outside, he heard a sound like the world’s largest centipede crossing a tile floor.

  “The door will hold them,” Temoc said. “But not for long.”

  Could Kopil have opened a gate between two points in space, and closed it, just to disorient Caleb and save himself an elevator ride?

  No. Kopil was a miser. He didn’t like to fly—too wasteful. He barely left the RKC pyramid. He wouldn’t go tearing holes in the world for his own amusement. Any passage he built for himself would be reusable.

  “We should leave,” Temoc said. “There must be other ways to the altar.”

  Something much larger than a dog scraped at the conference room door.

  Caleb’s mind caught the end of a thread. “Teo, what did you just ask me?”

  “I asked you if you were sure this was the right room. If that was the right wall.”

  “I don’t think it is. I don’t think there was a wall there to walk through.”

  “What?”

  The scraping grew louder and insistent. Wood splintered beneath hooked claws and bladed fingers.

  “You said this looked like any other room in the pyramid, but it doesn’t. Even my little office has carvings and decorations all over the place. These walls are blank stone.”

  “So they redecorated.”

  “They did more than that. When I was here, I never saw any walls. And no one but Mal entered or left by the door.”

  Temoc’s eyebrows rose.

  “Teo,” Caleb said. “Turn off the lights,”

  “What?”

  “The overheads. Turn them off. There should be one light on the center of the table, that’s all. One light so bright you can’t see the walls.”

  “Caleb—”

  “Do it. Please.”

  A heavy weight struck the doors, which shuddered but held firm. A demon’s cry scoured the air.

  Teo ran to a bank of dials on the wall, and turned them at random until the lights dimmed.

  “More!”

  Lights flickered, flared, cut out. Caleb could still see the wall. “Make the center light stronger.”

  Her fingers flew. Twice more demons struck the doors. Wood splintered near the latch. “Here!” Teo spun the second-smallest dial clockwise. The table’s spotlight brightened to surgical brilliance. The world twisted.

  The walls vanished.

  The doors broke open. Beyond, ranks of eyes burned with ruby fire.

  “Teo!”

  She leapt over the dead demon’s claw, sprinted toward him, and grabbed his hand as he grabbed Temoc’s. Together, they ran into the dark. The fiends followed after.

  45

  The demons pursued on many legs—distortions in darkness, closing at an insectine gallop.

  Caleb, Teo, and Temoc fled through shadows beneath the universe. They should long since have reached the King in Red’s apartment, but the farther they ran, the closer night drew around them.

  The path was closed, apparently, on the far end. Caleb tried to remember what Kopil had done to open the way on the night the water ran black, but his memories blurred together.

  The conference room’s walls existed as long as he could see them. Maybe the other door could not open while he knew it wasn’t there.

  The demons’ footsteps grew louder.

  “Close your eyes,” Caleb shouted.

  “What?” Teo snapped back.

  “Close them. Close them, or we’re stuck here.”

  Their grips on his hands tightened.

  Caleb closed his eyes.

  Space was a net of flame; universes hung like water droplets at its intersections. The net spun and warped. Worlds merged, broke, reformed in fractal patterns.

  Caleb let go of his father’s hand, reached out, and touched a smooth brass doorknob. He turned the knob, the latch gave, and he tumbled onto a red carpet.

  Temoc and Teo staggered into the room after him. Demon footfalls pursued from the darkness beyond the door.

  Caleb slammed the closet shut. He waited for a few heartbeats, then opened it again. Suits, robes, shirts, ties and expensive shoes had replaced the void.

  “So this is where the monster sleeps,” Temoc said.

  The room looked as Caleb had last seen it: round bed unmade, books stacked beside the armchair, piles of paperwork teetering on end tables.

  “This doesn’t look like a monster’s room,” Teo said once she found her breath. “Doesn’t look like his, either. I don’t know what I would have pictured. Something cleaner.”

  “He’s a busy man,” Caleb said. “Skeleton. Thing.” He wiped sweat from his eyes. “You want him to spend his days cleaning?”

  “Or get maid service. A team of zombies could scour this place in five minutes.”

  Temoc pursed his lips, and turned away.

  “What?”

  “You would rather exploit another’s body than dirty your own hands with work,” Temoc said. “I find that interesting.” He wandered away into the kitchen.

  “Caleb,” Teo said, when Temoc was out of sight.

  “Hm?”

  She had flushed red, and her brows drew low over glaring eyes. “Your father.”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “And a murderer. And he just saved our lives, which, I know, doesn’t excuse the rest of it.” He leaned against the door, fighting exhaustion.

  “Are you okay?”

  Kopil’s empty unmade bed looked more comfortable than any he had seen in years. He wanted to lie there and vanish. “I’m tired. And I keep thinking about Mal.”

  Teo sank into the red armchair. Neither of them spoke. She wove her fingers together, unwove them. “If she comes, and tries to stop us, what will you do?”

  “I … I’ll fight her,” he said. “And I’ll die. She’s stronger than you can imagine. She’ll kill me.”

  “What if she doesn’t, though? What if you win?”

  He looked away.

  She walked to him. In her eyes he saw himself reflected, a cutout shade, barely human.

  In the kitchen, wood splintered, china broke, cutlery clatter
ed on stone. Temoc appeared at the threshold, dignified and calm. “I have found the entrance to his office.”

  * * *

  The moon rose, and rising lost its light. Black sphere in a dusky sky, it stalked the sun.

  Mal sat cross-legged above the city. Her mind moved with the serpents, turning in uneasy slumber. They whispered to her in High Quechal and tongues older still, brutal cries from the birth pangs of the world. Their dreams surrounded her like gallowglass tendrils, and they burned.

  Where was Caleb? Somewhere safe, she hoped, and doubted. He was not the type to hide.

  At Andrej’s on the day of the Heartstone acquisition, the day Kopil betrayed himself with a kiss, she had danced with Caleb on an empty floor. They danced without touching: she wrapped him in Craft and he grabbed her by those same ties. They were dancing now. How he thought to stop her, she could not imagine, but he would try.

  She hoped she was wrong—hoped he would hide and wait, and she could find him later, when the battle was won, and explain herself, and all would be well.

  And she hoped she was right. She hoped he was marshaling forces against her even now.

  She felt the familiar lightning thrill of touching knifepoint to skin, before the small sharp movement of the wrist that let blood flow free.

  Craft threaded through the Serpents’ diamond brains, through their pulsing hearts of molten rock. By itself, each of Heartstone’s systems served a purpose: channeling the Serpents’ hunger, dulling the edge of their sleeping minds, drawing them to the surface of the lava to be tamed.

  Together, those strands wove the reins of the world.

  With a small sharp movement of her wrist, she called the Serpents to her.

  * * *

  The stairs from Kopil’s kitchen were long, straight, and rough-hewn, so narrow Temoc had to climb them sideways.

  “That apartment,” he said as they rose, “was once a vestry room. Priests prepared there for the ceremony. Divining stones were cast, chants sung, days named. They shed their own blood and prepared to shed the blood of others.”

  “And that,” Teo said, “is why you broke the King in Red’s cabinets?”

  “There used to be beautiful murals on those walls, depicting the triumph of the Twins, the sacrifice of Ili. Gone now. Replaced by porcelain and cutlery.”

  The gray sliver at the top of the stair grew, and through it Caleb saw the curve of Kopil’s office dome.

  They emerged through a thin opening that vanished behind them. The office had changed little since his first visit: carpet, plants, low bookshelves and chairs, and of course the altar-desk. The hospital bed was gone.

  Kopil lay sprawled atop the desk, a mug of spilled coffee by his hand. His skull rested on a thick sheaf of papers.

  Caleb ran to him, Teo close behind.

  The King in Red did not move as they approached. Caleb knelt and lifted the skeleton’s hand. Somehow his bones clung together, as if bound by invisible rubber strings. Hand and arm were lighter than he expected, and clattered as he set them down.

  “He’s gone,” Teo said, wondering.

  “Can’t be. He’d have taken most of the pyramid with him. Deathless Kings go out in flames.” He rolled up the red robe’s sleeve. Glyphs glowed blue and silver against bone. “He’s alive, or whatever they call it. Unalive. Must be sleeping.”

  “More like comatose.” Teo slid the papers out from under the King in Red’s head. His skull struck glass with a dull, dark sound. She fanned the pages, and froze. “Caleb. This is the Heartstone contract.”

  “What? The original? The one that’s seventy thousand pages long and carved into stones from here to Alt Coulumb and back?”

  “This is the signature page. The keystone. See, here. That’s his signature, and Alaxic’s, and the witnesses’. If this is destroyed, the contract starts to unravel.”

  The King in Red must have woken early that morning, if he ever slept. Sipping his coffee, he felt Qet Sea-Lord die, felt the Serpents suck the marrow from his bones.

  “He knew what was happening. And he tried to stop it.” Caleb laid Kopil on the floor beside the altar, arms crossed over his chest.

  “This changes nothing,” Temoc said. He circled around the altar toward them. “We have no time. We must begin.”

  “It changes everything. If we break this contract, the King in Red might wake up. RKC could break free of Heartstone. The board—”

  “Their heathen Craft will be useless against the Serpents, as would your master’s if he wakes. Besides, he would see me, and try to kill me. We have no common cause.”

  “You do now.” Caleb took the signature page from Teo, and held it up so his father could read the scrawled ink. “If he wakes up, he’ll see that you’re not part of Mal’s plot, that you’ve risked your life to stop her. You have a chance to make peace with him—to keep him from blaming this madness on every religious Quechal in the city.”

  “What I have done today will change nothing in his eyes. We are old enemies, he and I.”

  The picture in the silver frame stood on the desk, two men smiling, their eyes sepia-black. Caleb remembered Kopil’s voice: everyone thinks they’re on their own side, until the time comes to declare war.

  “He might not like you, but he’ll fight beside you.” Caleb searched the desk, and found a letter opener, three pens, a coffee mug long since dry. Nothing that looked like it could dissolve contracts. “Teo, do you know how to break one of these things?”

  “There’s usually a mess of protective Craft, but it looks like Kopil got rid of that already. Rip it. If that doesn’t work, try fire. Here, let me…”

  “No,” Temoc said.

  Teo’s shoes scraped against the floor, and Caleb looked up to see if she had tripped.

  Temoc stood behind her, squeezing her throat in the crook of his elbow. Her eyes screamed. She clawed at his father’s arms, his hands, his face. Her mouth gaped for air. Her hat fell to the floor. She jerked her head back, but Temoc tightened his grip.

  Her eyes rolled white, and drifted closed. Her body hung limp in his father’s arms.

  Caleb leapt at Temoc.

  His father turned faster than Caleb’s eye could follow. One fist swept around in a blurred half circle.

  Darkness consumed the world.

  46

  Temoc looked down on his fallen son, and shook his head. He was a brave boy, to bear his father on his back, to grow to halting manhood with only a mother’s hand to guide him.

  He was weak, but he lived in a time of weakness. The God Wars flayed the world and hung it on a cross. The strong fell and the craven thrived. No wonder Caleb’s generation retreated into despair and compromise. No wonder the children of the Wars drank and fornicated, gambled and danced and wondered, after long days smeared drunkenly into night, why their lives seemed meaningless.

  An obsidian knife hung from Temoc’s belt. In seventy years he had used the blade twice. Ten years old, at his initiation into the priesthood, he carved the gods’ signs into his chest with hands blood-slick from the wounds his teachers gave him. The second time was the night the barricades rose in Skittersill; he knelt over his son and cut the same symbols into his flesh.

  Temoc had never wondered about his purpose. His purpose was the point of that knife.

  He lowered his son to the floor beside Teo, and turned to the King in Red. Kopil’s round skull glistened. Six decades before, peals of laughter had rung from that grinning mouth as he scattered the Quechal priesthood and broke their gods. He had impaled Temoc on a thorn of ice, and left him writhing to die.

  Temoc set his foot on the skull and pressed down. The bone did not yield.

  He stomped. Bone bounced against the floor, but did not chip or shatter. He roared and leapt on the skull with both feet, but it rang like iron and he stumbled back. The shadows of Kopil’s face mocked him.

  Above, the moon broke the circle of the sun. Time enough for vengeance—later. He had a world to save.

  Temoc lifted
his son’s friend, the girl who had never known a man’s touch, the altar maid, the offering who confessed her willingness to die. He placed her on the altar.

  He bowed his head, and drew his knife, and began to sing.

  * * *

  Mal and the moon opened their mouths and breathed in fire. The moon swelled and darkened as it consumed the sun’s body. Mal too devoured flame and was transformed.

  Shadows fell upon the earth. She worked her Craft through the slumbering course of the Serpents’ minds. From deep dreams they whispered to her. They knew her name. The eclipse came, and the stars called them to battle.

  “Come,” she whispered, taking hold of the Serpents’ reins. “This is your moment. Rise, and be my weapons.”

  The earth trembled. Buildings shivered, pyramids shook. Another tremor came, stronger than the first.

  Wake, she willed. The sun dies. Stars circle like starving vultures, and sup on the light that bleeds from its husk. As it dims they shine.

  Come forth.

  A stillness passed over the surface of the earth. Mal’s eyes snapped open.

  Beneath the world’s shell, the Serpents stirred, and stretched, and woke.

  * * *

  Balam laughed at the first earthquake. Other protesters screamed, farther back in the crowd on Sansilva Boulevard before the Canter’s Shell: newcomers to the city’s struggles. The masters and Wardens of Dresediel Lex used their power to cow resistance. They shook the ground and burned the sky to spread fear, but they rarely killed. Hardened protesters trembled only at Couatl claws and lightning. Or they feared nothing, for Craftwork weapons moved faster than human eyes could follow or human ears detect, and to fear those was to live in fear.

  Balam did not fear. Decades of cliff running and riots had burned the emotion from him.

  And if this was no plan of the Wardens’, and the ground was trembling of its own accord, well, then, Dresediel Lex was a city on the ocean’s edge, and sometimes the earth shook beneath its weight. The crowd surged against him, acres of sweaty skin, stinking of meat and leather and rage.

  “Is that the best you can do?” he shouted at the sky, at the pyramid sheltered behind its shield.

  When the second earthquake came, he did not laugh.