Scion of the Serpent Read online

  His father’s head sagged, his hands clasped tightly together. He took a deep breath, and let it escape slowly through his barely parted lips. “You are old enough to know, Sekhemar, that there was little love between your mother and me. Ours was a marriage of convenience, a business alliance as much as a marriage. I would never otherwise have taken a bride of pure Stygian blood, even a no blewoman. Still, she was the mother of my son, and I would have died to save her, and you, that day. I did not run. I fought with all my heart and soul, but it was not enough.”

  “I’m sorry, father. I should never have mentioned it.”

  His father looked up at the full moon just climbing above the towers of the city, and Sekhemar was shocked to see that his eyes were wet.

  “No, it is well past time we talked of this, Sekhemar. You should know what happened that day. I did not have the skills to save you both, and she pushed you into my arms. ‘Save him,’ she said to me. ‘Leave me and save him.’ ” He nodded. “In that final moment, I knew your mother’s true heart, and in that last moment, I came to love her. But then it was too late. She took up a sword from a fallen camel driver and covered our flight into the desert. I heard her cry as she fell. She called your name.”

  There was silence for a time. “I am sorry this pains you so, father. But don’t you see? This is all the more reason I must be a skilled fighter.”

  His father turned and looked at him, his eyes moist, but filled with hot rage. “That is all the more reason you must avoid battle. I did not save you in the desert, your mother did not pay for your life with her blood, so that you could die fighting some fool in an alley.

  “You’ve lived most of your life in this compound. You cannot truly appreciate what lies beyond this wall. Stygia is a cursed land, its soil and its people tainted by ancient evil. We have lived here because, for now, we must. But a day will come when we will return to my father’s land of Aquilonia. Only then will you be safe. Only then may you live the quiet and happy life that you were meant to live, a life that I have denied myself and that I wish for you instead.”

  He stood and placed his hand on Sekhemar’s shoulder. “Come. It’s late, and the night grows chill. Leave the armor for the servants. But bring the blades.”

  Sekhemar gathered up the weapons from the table and followed his father through an arched doorway into his library. It had been daylight when they left the house to begin their practice, but before their return the servants had lit the ornate oil lamps that hung from the walls. At either end of the room, wooden shelves ran from floor to ceiling stacked with scrolls and parchments. In the center, a scribe’s desk, with its own work lamp, stood, its surface covered with half-filled sheets of parchment, records of his father’s trade business.

  The far wall of the room was covered with weapons: swords, knives, axes, spears—some utilitarian, some ornate and exotic. The weapons were not just for display. They hung from metal hooks, easily taken down for use at a moment’s notice, in the unlikely event the compound was ever attacked by bandits or invaders. Several sets of hooks hung empty, until Sekhemar replaced the weapons, one by one, in their rightful places.

  Lastly, he replaced the practice swords that he and his father had been fighting with. Each practice blade, dull of edge and point, hung next to a deadly twin, having the same dimensions, heft, and balance, but honed to a razor edge. Sekhemar lingered for a moment, his fingers brushing over the scabbards holding the twins to his practice swords. He longed for the day he would be trusted to wear them.

  He turned back to his father. “If this place troubles you so, why do we not leave? I would prefer anyplace where I could walk the streets freely and not be trapped behind these walls.”

  “I would wish no less for you, my son, but I have obligations that you cannot yet understand. Promises made by my father, and my father’s father, and on back a dozen generations. I have hopes that those obligations will soon be met, that we can be free of this place, and that I will never need to pass this family burden to you. That is my fondest hope. But not today, and perhaps not tomorrow.”

  His father slid onto the stool in front of the desk, uncorked a clay bottle of ink, and picked up a quill. He repositioned the desk lamp to better illuminate the sheet of parchment in front of him, then set to work as he did every night.

  Sekhemar turned away from his father so only the shadows could see the look of unhappiness on his face. The scrolls and maps in the room, tales told by his father and the household staff, what he could see of the city from the compound’s protective towers, these were virtually all he knew of the world beyond the walls.

  Often he had removed the map of Khemi from the shelf and imagined walking the streets beyond the walls of the compound, even beyond the walls of Akhet, the city within a city where non-Stygians such as his father and their servants were grudgingly allowed to live.

  He imagined strolling the Great Marketplace, where vegetables and meat were sold side by side with mystic artifacts of ancient power. He imagined walking the narrow alleys that separated the great black palaces and temples of the inner city, where sunlight barely penetrated on the brightest of days. He even imagined visiting Odji, the waterfront slums where freed slaves and other Stygians of impure blood were allowed to live, where allegedly every pleasure and vice was available for the right price.

  He longed to see all those things with his own eyes, and even more. To travel beyond the city to the great desert, or to the River Styx and the northern lands beyond Stygia, or to the vast Western Ocean just beyond the city’s harbor. But for now, they were only dreams, and he wondered if the day would ever come when that would change.

  In later days, he would come to curse this moment, as if his wish had somehow brought about everything that happened next.

  From the front of the house, the door gong, a hanging cylinder of forged iron, sounded its long, deep note.

  His father looked up from his desk. “Who would be calling this late? It’s a full moon. Only a fool travels the streets on the night of the full moon.” He put down the quill and capped his ink. He watched the doorway to the rest of the house expectantly.

  After several minutes, the gaunt figure of Hericus, the chief house servant, appeared in the door, a scrap of folded parchment in his hand. “Master, there are visitors. They asked me to give you this.”

  He passed over the parchment, which Sekhemar’s father promptly unfolded and read. His brow furrowed, but Sekhemar was sure he was hiding some stronger emotion.

  “I have unexpected business to attend to. It is late. Retire to your room, and we will speak again in the morning.” He glanced at the wall of weapons and seemed to hesitate. He reached for the deadlier counterpart to Sekhemar’s first practice sword and took it down from the wall, passing it to Sekhemar. “You are old enough now to keep this in your room.”

  Then he hesitated only a moment more, before reaching for the twin of Sekhemar’s second sword. He pressed it into his Sekhemar’s hand without another word.

  Sekhemar blinked in surprise, but his father was already hurrying to his business. “Go to your room. Good night, my son.”

  He climbed the curved stairs to the house’s second floor, but paused halfway down the hallway leading to his room and looked at the swords he carried in his hands. On another day, under other circumstances, he would have been pleased, even honored, at this gift, but not tonight. He had no sense that his father had given him the weapons because he deserved them.

  No, his father suspected their late-night visitors represented a threat, and Sekhemar intended to find out who those visitors were. He looked around carefully and, seeing none of the servants or guards in sight, slid behind a tapestry hanging from the west wall. He slid his fingers under the edge of a decorative column and pushed against a hidden metal bar until he heard a soft click. The false column swung out smoothly on cunningly designed hinges, and he slipped into the dark passageway beyond, pulling the column shut behind him.

  The passage was dark. Eng
raved grooves ran along the walls, marked with carved patterns that could be identified by feel. They allowed him to navigate with complete confidence. He slid his finger down the wall until he found a groove carved in a spiral pattern, like the coils of a rope, and followed it into the darkness.

  The house was one of the oldest in Akhet, only a little newer than some of the ancient castles and temples that towered in the center of Khemi. Built by the ancients, its design possessed both a sinister beauty and great cunning. A series of ducts in the walls and ceilings connected to open towers above and cool underground chambers dug below the foundations. During the day, the natural flow of air would bring cool air from below and exhaust hot air through the towers, keeping the house comfortable.

  But just as importantly, a series of hidden doors, discovered by his father and later shown only to Sekhemar, allowed entry to those passages from many locations in the house. Through the same panels of marble grillwork that allowed passage of air, it was possible to spy on the common rooms without being observed. In addition, a bolted door in the chambers far below connected to the sewers, providing an emergency escape route from the compound.

  The large central passage Sekhemar was traveling reached a junction with several smaller air shafts spreading out through the house. To avoid unintentionally making noise, he stashed his swords in a corner of the junction room, where he could easily find them again, even in darkness.

  The air passage leading to the entry hall was much smaller than the central passage, enough so that Sekhemar had to travel on hands and knees. The floor was covered with a fine, powdery dust that felt like talc beneath his hands and bare knees.

  In the darkness he felt the hard, dry touch of a house scorpion as it scrambled across his fingers. Other than remaining still for a moment until it passed, he ignored it. Though the species was fairly venomous, he was less sensitive to their poison, like most people of even mixed Stygian blood. In addition, he had been stung so many times climbing up the secret ways as a child, that he had developed some immunity.

  There was occasional light here, shining up from the rooms below through the ornate air grills, casting strange patterns on the roof of the passage. He was careful to crawl around the grills, not only to avoid being seen, but because he questioned whether they would support even his boyish weight.

  Finally, he reached the entry hall. He heard male voices below and crawled stealthily to the edge of the grill, where he lay on his chest. Careful not to push dust through the grill, he peered through the hand-sized openings to the room below.

  Three men in dark silk robes stood talking with his father just inside the bolted door. He did not recognize the visitor’s voices, and the robes had hoods that hid the men’s faces from view. Through there were no raised voices or threatening gestures, even from his hiding place Sekhemar could feel the tension in the air. His father’s expression was grave, his skin pallid in the lamplight.

  In a way, he would have preferred yelling, as they spoke in low voices that made it impossible for him to pick out more than a word or two. He heard one of the hooded men, one who seemed to be the leader, say “Ibis,” the name of an outland god rarely spoken of in Stygia, and “heretic,” but not much more.

  Then there was a moment of silence. Sekhemar thought that perhaps the conversation was over, the men would leave.

  Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

  The leader’s hand moved, a small gesture. Only on later reflection would Sekhemar recognize it as a silent command to his companions. After that, things moved quickly.

  One of the men stepped behind his father. He was very fast.

  Before Sekhemar realized what was going on, before he could draw breath to shout a warning, the man’s hand was over his father’s mouth.

  The leader produced an ornate dagger from under his robe, and plunged it into Sekhemar’s father’s chest with practiced skill. At once, his father’s legs buckled, and the man holding him let him slide into a heap on the entry rug.

  Sekhemar watched in helpless horror. He wanted to cry out in rage and grief, but his instincts kept him quiet, pushed his emotions into some dark side passage of his mind, distant from his pounding heart. He felt his body become as cold as the stone on which he lay.

  At the edge of his field of vision, another figure entered the room, Hericus. He gasped at the sight of his fallen master, but that was all he had time for. One of the hooded men grabbed him from behind and twisted his neck violently until there was a snap of parting bone.

  Hericus fell to the floor with a heavy thud.

  One of the men rushed to the door, lifting the bolt and throwing it open.

  Immediately, a dozen men, also hidden by robes, dashed into the house.

  The leader spoke, his voice now distinct. “Search the house. Kill everyone you find, servants, slaves, wives, children, livestock, dogs—anything that lives. They all carry the taint of Ibis! Then fill your satchels with anything of value and return. Quickly!”

  The men vanished, and he could hear them moving all around him, through the corridors below, up the stairs, into the rooms around him, and on the roof above. He heard some fighting, the clashing of blades and the breaking of household objects, and one by one he heard the cries of the household staff as they fell.

  He counted them, recognizing some of the voices. The cook, the baker, one of the chambermaids, the gardener, the scribe. The two house guards fought the longest and hardest, but they were outnumbered and overwhelmed.

  All too quickly, the sounds of combat and death were replaced by those of hurried looting and vandalism.

  The commotion below covered the sounds of Sekhemar’s movements as he scrambled through the hidden passages. He watched as his father’s treasured scrolls were thrown on the floor and trod beneath heavy feet. The men grabbed the finest of the weapons from the study wall. One of them cried in triumph as he noticed a loose tapestry, pulling it back to uncover a hidden door. Unable to find the secret latch, the largest of the men set in upon it with a war axe, slamming it down again and again until the heavy wood splintered and cracked. They ripped the rest of the shattered door aside, exposing his father’s cache of gold and trade-gems.

  With hoots of delight, the men rushed in like hungry dogs to meat, sweeping the gleaming treasure into their bags. In moments, a lifetime’s accumulation of wealth was gone.

  He could hear the men moving back to the front of the house, and he followed, back to the grill over the entryway, where the leader and a lone underling stood waiting over his father’s body.

  The men assembled in front of their master.

  He addressed them, “Are they all dead?”

  The men shouted in the affirmative.

  “Then burn this place! Let nothing remain!”

  Again, the men fanned out, taking lamps from the wall and pouring the oil onto anything burnable: tapestries, rugs, pillows, furniture, scrolls. The house below dimmed as, one by one, the lamps were extinguished.

  Sekhemar remained above the entry, staying as close as he could to his father. He chewed his lip until he could taste his own blood. It was all he could do to contain his rage. Again and again he pushed it off to that distant place, and each time more welled up to take its place.

  Then, a miracle.

  His father moved.

  Just a twitch, a slight movement of his limbs, but he still lived!

  Sekhemar was not the only one to notice the movement. As his father’s foot had moved, the edge of his sandal had scraped slightly against stone, making a small, dry, sound.

  The underling turned. “I heard something. Are you sure this one is dead?”

  The leader made a sound of annoyance. “I’ve killed a hundred or more on the altar, fool. My blade is sure.”

  Sekhemar felt something crawl across his bare arm. Scorpion!

  He quickly grabbed the creature by the tail, ignoring the pain as the stinger punctured his finger and began to pump its poison into his hand. He dropped
the animal through a grate opening to the floor below, where it landed with a dry crack, and began to scamper across the rug.

  The leader watched the scorpion as it scuttled toward a dark corner of the room. He reached out with his foot and crushed the thing, laughing contemptuously. “There’s your noise. Even the scorpions serve Ibis in this house. Even the scorpions will pay the price.”

  The men were returning, filing out the front door burdened with pilfered loot.

  The leader watched them pass. Then he took a last lamp from a table near the door. He stepped to the threshold and paused, looking back into the house.

  “For Set,” he said, and flung the lamp across the room, where it struck a hanging tapestry, which burst into flame.

  Sekhemar could feel the heat, and black smoke began to roll up through every opening. If he stayed here, he would cook in minutes.

  Sekhemar scrambled back to the central chamber, guided by touch, trying not to cough, lest his presence be detected by any straggler. He recovered his weapons, useless though they now seemed, and found his way to a vertical shaft leading down to the first level.

  He climbed down a hidden ladder, no longer able to control his coughing. The heat coming up the shaft was almost unbearable. Reaching the bottom, he found a hidden latch, and a panel in the entry wall popped open, allowing him to clamber out on hands and knees, keeping low to stay under the layer of black smoke.

  All around the room, the tapestries were burning, as was the edge of the very rug on which his father’s upper body lay. Sekhemar reached his side, grabbed his arms, and tapping some hidden reserve of strength, pulled his father away from the spreading flames.

  He lifted his father’s head, looking down on his face, orange in the flickering light of the flames. His father’s eyes fluttered, the lids parting slightly. “Sekhemar, my son. This day has come too soon.”

  “I will save you, father. I’ll pull you outside.”

  Sekhemar started to move, but his father’s hand grabbed the front of his tunic with surprising strength. “No! I am already dead. The blade only nicked my heart, because I have been told by healers that it is on the wrong side of my body, but I am still dead. I save my last breath for you, my son.”