The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  I started looking down at the landscape over which we flew to make it less obvious how intently I was studying his people. I knew from Amy’s memories that this land was far different from the Egypt in which I had lived, but seeing it was more vivid than experiencing it through borrowed recollections. Vegetation grew here far from major river banks, and the buildings, whose design was strange to me, varied a lot more than those of an Egyptian city. What did Amun think of all this?

  As we flew on in silence, the others made little attempt to converse. They were probably communing mentally, leaving me out. They flew relatively close to each other but more distant from me, which reinforced that impression. Well, what of it? My alliance with them was a means to an end, not an effort to recruit companions. I would have plenty of company once the world was set right.

  I did find myself glancing at Lucas occasionally, but that was just a reflex left over from Amy. Or was it? Being god’s wife of Amun did not preclude my taking a mortal husband. Like the priests, gods’ wives rotated every three months and were required to abstain from sex only when it was our turn to serve in the temple. Of course, I should be wedded to a pharaoh, or at least a pharaoh’s close kin, but Lucas was like me—the vessel of a god. Perhaps Amun would approve such a match.

  We were much slowed by those party members who could not fly on their own, and it was well past midnight by the time we arrived in Summerland, the town in which Amen Hafez was said to live. Taliesin brought us down in front of Hafez’s house, concealing us with magic while we plotted our next move.

  The house was a modest dwelling for such a powerful and wealthy man, though it was clearly not the hovel of some peasant. Bordered by a neatly trimmed hedge and surrounded by trees, one of them a palm, the beige structure stood two stories tall—three if one counted a cellar level that extended above the ground. It was built in a style Amy would have called Victorian, but with some later additions, including a front porch with columns that reminded me of the Greeks.

  The most amazing thing to me was all the windows. We Egyptians had not thought to use glass in this way, though it would have been inconvenient in a palace—too many potential entry points. I was surprised Hafez had not had them bricked over.

  “What are the defenses like?” Shahriyar asked Taliesin.

  “I’d say not as strong as what we have in Santa Brígida,” said Tal. “Hafez will definitely know when we enter, but I’m not seeing any strong barrier. I’m not used to analyzing Egyptian magic, though. Amenirdis, what do you think? Is there anything about the house we need to prepare for?”

  I focused on the building with my Amun-given sight. “I knew there was something strange about the axexes. This place stinks of the magic of Apep.”

  “We saw his hieroglyph in Orcutt before we were brought into this world,” said Carla.

  “Yes, I see that in Amy’s memories,” I replied. “Apep is determined to destroy all order in the universe.”

  “I thought that was Set,” said Stan.

  I restrained myself from laughing. “Set was the killer of Osiris, but even his evil pales in comparison to that of Apep, who would devour the sun itself if he could. He would destroy the universe if he could.”

  “So Hafez is in league with this Apep? Why would anyone ally with someone whose only goal is destruction?” asked Viviane.

  “Why do people ally with Satan?” asked Carla. “Because they have been deceived. I ought to know.”

  Looking closely, I could see that Carla had been touched by darkness, but only a faded afterimage of it remained. If she had dealt with someone like Apep, she had managed to overcome him.

  “Is there any way to disarm whatever magic guards the place?” asked Tal.

  “I do not see any traps. Hafez does not appear to have anticipated an attack.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Shahriyar. “He must have anticipated we’d show up here sooner or later. He’s surely visited our world and observed us enough to know we’re pretty formidable enemies. Yet his own home isn’t fortified against us? I’m not buying it.”

  “It does seem overly convenient,” said Stan. “Can we tell if he’s home?”

  “The interior is…fuzzy to me,” said Carla. “He does have what seems like an anti-snooping charm operating.”

  I squinted at the building. “Yes, there is something. I can perceive the magic, but everything else is a blur.”

  “In that case, this is a long-shot, but do you see any indication of the presence of his staff?” asked Taliesin. “It would be very powerful. I’m sensing something deep below ground, but I can’t identify it.”

  “I cannot tell what it is either,” I said. “If he uses the staff often, though, why would he bury it in the earth?”

  “Perhaps it isn’t buried,” said Lucas. “Perhaps he did some…remodeling. Could this be a level far below the cellar?”

  “Since we don’t seem to be able to see the interior clearly, it’s possible,” said Carla.

  “Well, we don’t have much choice,” said Taliesin. “We have to find Hafez and the staff to get back home. Let’s move in cautiously, weapons ready. Magnus and I will sing up what protection we can.”

  The group moved forward in a way that suggested they were used to this kind of clandestine approach. I followed cautiously, still unable to discern who or what the house might contain.

  When we reached the front door, Khalid picked the lock despite the presence of protective magic. The door swung open silently, and we crowded through.

  “Yup, definitely remodeled,” said Lucas. I did not know what the original Victorian interior might have looked like, but the room into which we stepped reminded me of home. The walls were covered with murals that would have done credit to a temple of Amun or a pharaoh’s tomb. Artifacts, some of which seemed authentic, were displayed in the way Amy’s memories told me was typical of a museum. There was even a sarcophagus in the corner.

  “Are there mummies here?” asked Michael, looking fearfully in that direction. Unbidden, images of strange things called movies bubbled up from Amy’s memories.

  “There is no Egyptian magic intended to reanimate the remains of the dead,” I told him.

  Jimmie winced. “There are ghosts here, though—quite a lot of them. I can feel them all around me.”

  “In our world, this house is supposed to be haunted,” said Gordy. “Maybe this one is the same.”

  “Definitely,” said Jimmie. “And the ghosts…aren’t happy.”

  “Earthbound spirits usually aren’t,” said Viviane. “As I recall, Summerland was founded as a spiritualist community. Efforts to communicate with spirits might have drawn more of them than usual.”

  “But these are more unsettled than the ones described in our world’s ghost stories. I think…I think Hafez is using them somehow, drawing on their energy to augment his own power.”

  I frowned. “Never have I heard of such a thing.”

  “You lived something like 2800 years ago, though, didn’t you?” asked Taliesin. “Like everything else, magic evolves over time. Hafez has probably come up with a few new tricks. I must admit, though, that I don’t know of any magic that could draw power from ghosts, either. Their energy is too different—”

  Eva gasped. The others must have been on edge, because they all jumped a little.

  “Look over there,” she whispered, pointed toward the corner next to the sarcophagus. Even by the moonlight coming in the nearest window, it was obvious there was a body over there.

  Someone had been slain in the house of Amen Hafez.

  The Twisting of the Serpent

  Viviane and Carla rushed over, followed by the others.

  The corpse was that of a well-dressed man in his middle years. A large, curved dagger was protruding from his chest. From the amount of blood and the pallor of his skin, I could have told he was dead without magic.

  “He’s been dead about two hours,” said Viviane.

  “Why would Hafez leave a body lying
around like this?” asked Shahriyar. “If he killed someone, why wouldn’t he dispose of it right away?”

  “If the pictures I’ve seen on my phone are accurate, this is Hafez,” said Stan.

  “And again, I’m not buying that,” said Shahriyar. “A powerful sorcerer dies in his own home, without any sign of a struggle. That can’t really be Hafez.”

  “There is magic on the body,” I said. “It is strange to me, though. I cannot divine its purpose. I regret not studying the evil ways of Apep more.”

  “This is definitely a human body,” said Viviane. “If Hafez wanted to fake his own death, he could easily have transformed the appearance of the corpse. Sorcerers usually can’t fake DNA, but, without an authentic sample to compare, I can’t be sure whether this if Hafez or not.”

  “Jimmie, are any of the ghosts here Hafez?” asked Taliesin.

  “Not that I can tell. He could hide from me, though.”

  “To what end?” asked Shahriyar. “And if he were just murdered, he certainly wouldn’t have moved on that quickly.”

  Tal turned to Magnus. “Since we know sorcerers can’t spell cast in the human world without a body, if Hafez was murdered, he could well be looking for one. We should set up an anti-possession spell—better safe than sorry.”

  “Shouldn’t we…call someone?” asked Michael.

  “Right impulse, wrong time,” said Stan. “We’ve no way to explain who we are to the police, who are bound to suspect us. In fact, is there a way to erase any trace of us after we leave? The last thing we want to do is accidentally frame our counterparts in this world for Hafez’s murder.”

  “I’m sure Tal could work up a spell to do what you want,” said Viviane.

  “I sure can, but let’s wait until we’re ready to leave.” Taliesin and Magnus sang up a spell to guard against possession. The method was unlike anything I’d ever seen, but it seemed to work. I felt their magic around me like a warm blanket, shielding me from the cold fingers of the dead.

  “What’s our next move?” asked Gordy.

  “Do we have enough information to make one?” asked Shahriyar. “Not knowing whose body that is, or what Hafez is up to—if he’s still alive—makes it difficult to make intelligent choices.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” said Tal. “We need to get back to our own world somehow. That means finding Hafez’s staff and figuring out how to use it. I did sense something deep below the house, so that’s where we need to start.”

  “Even standing in the house, I can’t feel any way to get down that deep,” said Carla. “If the staff is down there for safekeeping, whatever access there is has been cloaked pretty thoroughly.”

  “Those of us with magic should pool our senses and amplify them with the lyre,” suggested Magnus. “We could see something we’d miss otherwise.”

  Tal, Viviane, and Carla quickly agreed. I was surprised at first that they didn’t ask me to join their efforts. They probably didn’t trust me well enough to link mentally with me. I didn’t really trust them, either.

  “Cellar,” said Taliesin after a few minutes. “Or rather, the stairs leading down beneath the cellar.”

  “There’s nothing like that in our world’s version of this house,” said Lucas.

  “Exactly! Hafez has done a little remodeling downstairs. It’s well camouflaged, but there’s definitely a stairway leading down to an even lower level. If the staff is hidden somewhere, it’s likely to be there.”

  It didn’t take us long to find the stairs down to the cellar, which was mostly crammed with storage crates. I couldn’t see anything unusual, but from the earlier probe, Taliesin knew exactly where the trapdoor leading to the stairway was hidden. Opening it, however, proved to be much harder than finding it.

  After almost half an hour of futile spellcasting, Taliesin said, “I guess we’d better resort to brute force. Shar, you think Zom can get this open?”

  “If it’s magic, Zom can break it.” Smiling, Shahriyar drew his sword, which glowed a deep emerald green.

  “The sword was designed to protect the wielder from magic, but it can also break spells it can touch if they don’t regenerate too fast,” said Khalid. It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, glancing at him. From his expression, I could see he’d forgotten for a moment that I wasn’t Amy. I didn’t know why, but his uneasiness when he remembered who I was upset me.

  Shahriyar tried tapping the trap door, but the spell wasn’t that fragile. He brought the blade down as hard as he could. Emerald sparks flew when it hit, but the obstacle remained in place.

  “Regenerating?” asked Stan.

  “A little,” said Shahriyar. “The wood does at least. See, there’s hardly a mark on it. The magic also shifts itself beneath the surface when I strike so that I can’t break it.”

  “It’s almost as if someone prepared it to resist your sword specifically,” said Viviane.

  “It could have been modified to do just that,” said Tal. “After all, Hafez did bring us here. He must have studied us beforehand, which means he knows something about our weapons.”

  “Amenirdis, can you help out with this?” asked Stan. “None of us have anything like your knowledge of Egyptian magic.”

  “If this power were derived from Amun, I would know exactly what to do. Alas, I have no idea how to manipulate spells cast through the power of Apep.”

  “Perhaps I can help.” The voice was Stan’s, but the tone was that of the King of Israel within him. He raised his sword, which glowed whitely in his hands, and brought it down with a crash upon the trapdoor. The wood didn’t break, but now there was a visible crack that closed very slowly.”

  “Let’s try together,” said Shar. They struck repeatedly, almost blinding me with the white and green explosions each blow produced. By the time they were done, the trap door was reduced to splinters.

  “It’s hard for dark magic to overcome the combined might of the swords of David and Solomon,” said Shahriyar. I wondered if the power of those weapons was anything like the power Moses had used to defeat the pharaoh’s sorcerers.

  How would I handle these people when we returned to our own world? Would they allow me to bring back Amun and set the world right? It did not seem so. It also seemed they were powerful enough to be a threat.

  Taliesin looked down at the narrow stairs that descended into the darkness. “I’m not sensing any traps, but let’s proceed with caution. If the staff is down here, I doubt the spells on the trapdoor are its only protection. Magnus and I will lead the way. Stay close together.”

  Taliesin and Magnus sang protection around us as we descended. Rough stone walls hemmed us in on both sides. My power to summon a wind would have little scope in such a confined space, but I had no trouble conjuring power from the sun to light our way.

  “This is deeper than I expected,” said Lucas after a while. “We must be something like three stories down—and, judging by the angle of the stairs, we’re not even below Hafez’s property anymore.”

  “He probably bought up the mineral rights in the area at some point,” said Eva. “He couldn’t have risked hiding an artifact with this much power in an insecure area.”

  The farther down we went, the more apparent was the power of Apep. The very stones of the walls were slick with its unholy venom. If I touched the wall, I could feel the force squirming snakelike just beneath the surface.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs and found ourselves in a large, manmade cavern. There was no sign of the staff for which we searched.

  “I’m not sensing whatever I could feel from the surface,” said Tal. “I’ve never seen a concealment spell before that became stronger the closer one got to it.”

  “It is Apep’s way,” I said. “Nothing is as it seems.”

  “In which case, the staff may not be here at all,” said Stan. “This may be a diversion—or a trap.”

  “Magnus and I will keep reinforcing our protection,”
said Taliesin. “We can’t just retreat without being sure the staff isn’t here.”

  I tried to have faith in Amun and not worry, but fear gnawed at me like rats. We were far below the surface and surrounded by tons of rock. I doubted the gifts I had received from Amun could save me in the event of a sudden collapse. The power of these others was formidable, but had they ever faced such a peril?

  “There are four different tunnels branching off from this chamber,” said Carla. “Should we split up?”

  “No,” I said, though I knew the question had not been directed to me. “The power of Apep is strong here. If there are traps, a smaller group might be too vulnerable.”

  “Agreed,” Taliesin said. “We stick together. Let’s start with the north tunnel. That leads back under the house, which would be a safer place to stow the staff, mineral rights or not.”

  “Don’t worry,” Khalid said quietly to me as we started to move toward the north tunnel. “We’ve faced worse than this before—far worse.”

  “I’m not worried, child,” I lied. “But surely you could not have faced someone as powerful as Apep.”

  “I’m not a child,” he replied, but his words were without anger. “As far as Apep is concerned, I’ve never met him, but we’ve beaten Olympians, faerie kings, archdemons—to name a few.”

  Was this child—young man—just boasting? It was hard to tell.

  “Olympians?” I asked. In my day, I’d known quite a bit about the supernatural realms, but things seemed to have changed.

  “Inhabitants of the Olympian plane…uh, you know, the former Greek gods.”

  “Former? Is not a god always a god?”

  “They were never actually gods,” said Khalid, who seemed to have forgotten his earlier discomfort around me. “Allah, the only true god, created them for a specific purpose, but they set themselves up as gods instead. To keep them from messing with people, Allah made it impossible for them to leave the Olympian plane and very hard for people to reach there. Don’t look at me as if I’m crazy—Hestia, one of the elder Olympians, told me the story herself. The others confirmed what she said.”