Scion of the Serpent Read online

  The back was engraved with a kind of writing Anok had never seen. Though he’d never shown the object to anyone else, he had taken a rubbing of the symbols, using papyrus and charcoal, and taken that to the Temple of Scribes. There, after offering a suitable tribute of gold coins, he’d been referred from one puzzled scribe to another until finally he’d been led to a high tower, where an ancient scribe sat hunched over his sloped desk, reed pen in hand.

  The old man had taken the papyrus and squinted at it for a moment. Then his eyes widened, and a look of alarm came over his face. He quickly held the papyrus over his lamp and burned it before Anok could stop him. “It is an ancient language, written by the giants who ruled Stygia long before true-men came. A lost tongue should remain so. No good can come of it.” Then he’d ordered that Anok’s gold be returned and had him removed from the temple under guard, with instructions never to return.

  Anok recalled the day well. It was when he’d finally given up hope of ever finding his lost sister and fulfilling whatever mission his father had set him upon. He’d sealed the medallion—Scale—into its hiding place and tried not to think about it.

  Until now. Had his father been killed over this—trinket? A mystic trinket to be sure, but to Anok’s mind that only made it worse. Everything he had ever learned from his father, everything he had seen in his years on the streets of Odji, had taught him that nothing good ever came of sorcery. What were power and riches if they came at the cost of madness and corruption of the body and spirit?

  Angrily he threw the Scale back into its hiding place. He was just pushing the stone back into position when he was startled by her voice.

  “Anok?”

  He turned to see Sheriti holding open the curtain, a look of concern on her beautiful face. “I worried when you failed to return. You seemed troubled, brother. Would you speak of it with me?”

  “I thought you were sleeping,” he said, casually sliding back on the bed so that his body blocked any view of the Scale’s hiding place. “Or that you were angry at me and simply wished me gone.”

  She smiled slightly. “Because you had a lustful dalliance with a wild woman? I have no claim on you, Anok. Your petty adventures are your own business.”

  “You don’t like her much, do you?”

  “I don’t know her well enough to dislike her, Anok. But I don’t trust her either, and men are such fools to allow themselves to be led around by their nether parts. You’re lucky she didn’t put a knife in your back the moment you had your kilt down.”

  He smiled just a little in return. “How do you know I didn’t have it up, instead?”

  She grabbed a pillow from the end of the bed and threw it at him. By the time he’d ducked it and looked back, she had slipped past him and was sitting in the room’s lone chair. She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her thighs, fingers knitted together, her expression suddenly serious again.

  “I worry about you, Anok. I was worried about you before this adventure, and I worry more about you since.”

  He felt his face harden, and he turned away from her. “Leave. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “You do, Anok, admit it or not. You need to talk of it, but your misplaced pride won’t let you.” She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Your love of us won’t let you speak of it, will it?”

  “That’s foolishness.”

  She put her hand softly on his knee. “Time is like sand, Anok. If you don’t move with it, it will bury you. We have had amazing years together. Wonderful adventures. Shared a bond of trust and blood that few will ever understand. But we’re no longer bold children who can be useful to those more powerful than we. For a time, we played as kings and queens of our tiny realm, but those days are gone.”

  She stood and paced the short length of the room. “We are adults now, Anok, and the rules have changed. The street gangs and warlords who once found our services convenient now see us as threats, potential competitors to their enterprises. They can’t stand still for that. Very soon now, one of them is going to give us a choice. Join them, or die.”

  “What do you care? You’ll be well away from here, as will Teferi. Dejal is already gone.”

  “I care about you, brother Raven.”

  “Then care not. I’ll join them willingly. I’ll live by the strength of my arms, and the cut of my sword, just as I do now.”

  She shook her head sadly. “You will for a time. You’re a dangerous man, Anok Wati, but you have qualities that would never let you survive that life. There is still in your heart a capacity for mercy, for kindness, for honor. Soon, very soon, you would have to cross blades with those you claim to serve. Your blades are swift and sure, but you’re one, and they are many.” She looked away into a dark corner of the room. “I would not care to mourn over your funeral pyre, Anok. But that is the only place where this future leads.”

  “Then what would you have me do? I have no place but this one, no life but this one.”

  “Come with me to the Temple of Scribes. If I can gain admittance simply from what you’ve taught me, you should be able to—”

  He thought of his long-ago visit to the temple and the warning not to return. Perhaps the old scribe was dead, but that was the problem with scribes. It wasn’t that they had long memories. It was that they wrote everything down.

  “That way was closed to me long ago, Sheriti. I wish you well there, but it isn’t for me.”

  “Then go with Teferi on his adventures.”

  “Teferi tells great tales, but the only adventure he truly seeks is a plot of land, a cow, and a fat wife to pop out babies. It’s just that he wants that plot to be anywhere but Stygia. I would only be a hindrance to him in his quest.”

  She sat next to him on the bed and took his hands in hers.

  “There must be a future for you, Anok. A destiny. You simply have to find it.”

  “I had a destiny once. My father passed it to me. But I lost my way. I am off the path, and I’ll never find my way back.”

  “You dwell on the past, Anok. We were talking of the future.”

  He threw her hands away in anger, stood, and turned his back on her. “You don’t know what’s in my past, Sheriti. You don’t know anything about me.”

  She was silent for a time. Then said, “No, I don’t. I know you’re an orphan, that your father was Aquilonian, and that your mother was Stygian. But beyond that, you have been very private about such matters, and I’ve respected that. I know your heart, Anok. I don’t need to know your past if you don’t wish to tell it.”

  He stared at the blank wall. He’d always kept his secrets, not for lack of trust in his companions but out of concern that the knowledge might endanger them. It was still true. Evidently the acolytes of Set still sought the golden Scales for some purpose of their own, and they would not hesitate to kill to get them.

  Yet the secrets weighed heavy on his shoulders like a yoke. After these long years, could he finally share his burden with another?

  She was silent for a long time. Then he spoke a single word. “Sekhemar.”

  “What?”

  “Sekhemar. It’s my name. My real name. The one my father gave me. Strange, because I don’t even think of myself any more as anything other than Anok Wati.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  “It’s time I did.” He recounted for her that terrible night when his father had been killed. How many times had he relived those events in his head? Thousands? More? But he had never spoken of it, not even once, but somehow this was different. It was like picking back an itchy scab. It was a great relief to do it, but what it exposed was raw, painful, and ugly. Sometimes it bled.

  The words poured out, but he left his little room behind. He was back in the walled enclave of Akhet, in the compound of his father; the pain, the fear, the anger, were fresher than they had been in years. It seemed as though he were exhuming his own grave, pulling out his dried corpse and somehow shaking it awake.

  He
ended the tale with him stumbling through the sewers, fleeing unknown and unseen pursuers, plunging into a darkness from which, he now realized, Sekhemar had never emerged. Something else had crawled from the sewers and struggled to survive on the streets of Odji, something that was not Sekhemar. Sekhemar was only a memory, one that had faded with time.

  Finally, he pulled the Scale of Set from its hiding place and showed it to her.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “May I hold it?”

  Her admiration surprised him. He’d thought of the object in many ways, but never as beautiful. Absently he handed it to her.

  She cried out and dropped the Scale on the bedding. “It burns!”

  Cautiously, he touched the Scale. It was cool, and he picked it up, feeling only the familiar tingle. “It must be the magic,” he said, quickly returning the Scale to its hiding place. “I’ve always thought it was evil.”

  He was puzzled. Why did it burn her and not him? He’d never let anyone else touch it. He’d never even seen his father touch it directly, and the iron of his father’s medallion seemed to contain its effects.

  He held her hand, examining the palm. There were red marks, as though she’d held something hot from the fire. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have thrown it away years ago. I’d melt it down, but perhaps the gold itself is cursed. I don’t want to risk that.”

  “It’s all you have from your father, Anok.”

  “I don’t think it was my father’s possession, it was his burden. Now it’s mine, and I don’t even know why. I want to be rid of it. I’m lost, Sheriti, and I’ll never find my path until I’m properly free of the thing.”

  “What do you mean to do?”

  “Teferi once told me his tribe has a ritual they call ‘Us afiri.’ It means something like ‘journey.’ A young warrior, taking no food, water, or weapons, walks into the wilderness until he can go no farther or until a vision tells him to return.”

  Sheriti frowned. “That doesn’t sound like you, Anok. Do you believe in such things?”

  “Visions?” He shrugged. “But if I walk far enough into the sand, and throw this damned thing as far as I can, I will be rid of it forever. They say the sand swallows all things, and that I can believe.”

  6

  ANOK FLINCHED AS Teferi rubbed foul-smelling white paint on Anok’s face. “What’s in this stuff?”

  “The fat of a new calf, herbs, galeha, bat guano—”

  Anok pushed his hand away.

  Teferi grinned. “I was only kidding about the bat guano.”

  Through the Nest’s small windows, Anok could see the orange light of sunrise. Teferi insisted that Usafiri must begin at dawn, and only after ritual preparations. He’d seemed delighted when Anok had asked him about Usafiri. “Usafiri is just what you need to put you on your proper path, Anok. By rights, you should have had yours years ago, when you first reached manhood, as I did.”

  But along with that delight came all these rituals and preparations. Anok went along with them to humor his friend, but he didn’t have to like them.

  Anok frowned and let him continue with the painting. “Is this necessary?”

  “You want to go on Usafiri? You must have the face paint, or Jangwa, wise god of the empty places, will not speak to you. What good would that be?”

  “I don’t believe in your god, Teferi.”

  Teferi laughed. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in a god. What matters is, does he believe in you?” He stopped for a minute and critically inspected his work, then dipped his fingers back into the shallow dish filled with paint.

  “Worse, without the face markings, false gods and evil spirits may seek you out and steal your soul. I paint your face to look like a skull. This frightens the false gods and evil spirits, but Jangwa is wise and not afraid. He knows you by your bones as well as your flesh, and he respects the seeker who shows his inner self.”

  “I will keep an eye out for evil spirits just the same.”

  Teferi gave him a disapproving glance. “You scoff, and yet your Usafiri takes you toward the Black Pyramid. You may not believe in my gods and devils, but all who live in Khemi fear the Black Pyramid.”

  Anok had never seen the Black Pyramid, though it was said to be not far east into the desert. Some said it was a day’s ride by camel. Others said it was just out of sight of the band of hills, groves, and farmlands that separated the city from the desert. He’d even heard it suggested that the Pyramid moved, or that it appeared out of nowhere, like a mirage. It was said to be ancient beyond measure, built by the Giant Kings who ruled Stygia before the coming of true-men. It was said that it contained treasure beyond reckoning but that no man had ever entered it and returned.

  “I have no business at the Black Pyramid. I’d like to see it, yes, but I promise to steer well clear of its walls.”

  “There,” said Teferi, dabbing at Anok’s forehead, “it is done.”

  A basin of water sat on the table next to them, and Anok bent down to look at himself. White covered his forehead and surrounded his blackened eyelids. His nose, too, had been blacked out, and a band of white extended from the corner of each eye, down across his cheekbones, to his chin. Narrow black lines drawn outward from his lips suggested exposed teeth. It was indeed fearsome, and he wondered what people would think as he walked through the streets.

  Teferi looked him over one last time and nodded. “Are you ready to depart?”

  Anok patted the front of his tunic, feeling the medallion hanging there, the Scale of Set safely sealed inside. “I’m ready, I suppose.” He looked around the Nest one last time, his eyes drawn to the narrow stairs leading up to the brothel and the closed trapdoor at the top. “Where is Sheriti? She said she’d come to see me off.”

  Teferi grunted. “I told her not to come. Only males must attend to a male going on Usafiri. It would be bad luck for her to be here. I asked Rami to come, but he couldn’t be bothered to awake before noon unless there was gold in it.”

  Anok chuckled as they stepped out the door, and he closed it after them. Hidden latches clicked shut, so only one who knew their secrets could open the door. He patted his palm against the solid wood of the door, as though testing its strength. He hesitated for just a moment, telling himself that he’d likely be back before sunset, minus his father’s burden. Yet he felt strangely as though he were leaving forever, as though it was the last time he would ever see the place. It made his stomach knot.

  Teferi stared at him, concern on his face. “Are you all right?”

  Anok nodded. I don’t believe in this. He started walking.

  Teferi walked alongside him. “I will walk with you to the edge of the city, but from there, you must travel alone. I’ll wait at the Nest until you return.”

  As they proceeded down the street, he glanced back over his shoulder at the brothel. It was too early for the whores to be plying their wares, and the curtains were drawn across the large windows where naked women often lounged, beckoning passers-by. He thought for a moment that one of those curtains fluttered back and that he saw someone looking through at him. Sheriti.

  But then the curtain fluttered closed, and he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it had only been the wind and his overactive imagination.

  His face paint drew stares and strange looks from the people they passed. Small children hid behind their mothers, shopkeepers closed their doors as he passed, and strangers gave him wide passage on the street. That didn’t bother him, but he felt exposed and naked without his swords and knife.

  Unconsciously he must have been reaching for his missing swords, and Teferi noticed. “You must trust,” he insisted, “that Jangwa will provide what you need in your travels.”

  “I told you, I don’t believe in Jangwa.”

  “Then believe in yourself, that you will find or make what you need.”

  They traveled east through Odji, past the white walls of Akhet and the black walls of the inner city, until the buildings became lower and were spaced farth
er apart. There were fewer people, and more livestock, and he could smell growing things. Looming over them, the inland hills were covered with groves of olive trees, dates, black mulberries to feed the silkworms, and carefully tended patches of tilled and irrigated land.

  Only a narrow strip of land between desert and sea was suitable for agriculture, so every square foot of arable land was put to use producing food, fuel, wood, or silk. It was true of all of Stygia. Only on a little land along the coast, and along the fertile banks of the Styx and its tributaries, could food grow. Without extensive trade, via ocean, river, and desert caravan, Stygia would starve, which was why traders such as his father were tolerated within the otherwise closed and reclusive state.

  Several times before reaching the outskirts of the city, he was passed by camel caravans bound across the desert for points unknown, possibly as distant as Iranistan, or the banks of the Vilayet Sea. A few of the drivers were known to Anok from his years working around the Great Market, and he waved as they passed. When one of them stopped on the road just ahead of him to readjust a camel’s load, he approached a familiar driver and asked for a drink of water. The man passed over his water bag and allowed Anok to drink his fill, but the expression on his face told the story. He was staring at Anok’s face markings and wondering what sort of fool would head out into the desert without water.

  Anok thanked him and continued on his way without explanation. He wasn’t sure he could explain what he was doing even if he had wanted to. He wasn’t sure he knew himself. But he was formulating a plan.

  He would walk into the desert, to where the great and shifting sand dunes began. Then he would walk a bit farther into the sand, to the point where he could just see solid land behind them. There, he would take the Scale of Set and throw it as far as he could. Then he would return to the city. He doubted it could be done before nightfall, but with luck, he would be able to find another friendly caravan and secure water. Perhaps he could even share their encampment for the night. He would return to the city in the morning, rested, free of his burden, and possibly with a new clarity of purpose.