The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  The pain distracted him long enough for me to tighten my grip on the staff and dissipate Wedjat’s protection so that anyone could strike him. He tried to pull it away from me but failed. What Amy would have called adrenaline filled me with desperate strength.

  I could feel Hafez call on the power of Amun. It was said that Amun had once given Rameses II the strength of a hundred thousand men in battle, but I blocked Hafez from receiving a similar gift. The strength surged in the wood but remained trapped there, unable to emerge as long as my Amun-blessed hands retained their grip.

  Hafez’s eyes widened in surprise, and his mouth hung open. He could not understand how his status as pharaoh did not enable him to overrule the will of a god’s wife of Amun. He should have taken more time to study its construction.

  My hands could read the truth in the wood. I sensed the craftiness of the priests flowing in its grain. They had known grief at the hands of pharaohs before. Though they could not refuse to make the staff successive rulers ordered them to make, they had crafted it to be as responsive to them as it was to him.

  Hafez roared in frustration, and his arm muscles tightened as he tried to pull the staff away from me. I kicked him again and again. I didn’t always strike my mark, but the need to evade me kept him off balance.

  Without Hafez feeding them reinforcements, the lions were finally getting the worst of the battle. That left Morfran, still looking like a god made flesh, free to charge in my direction. He sped toward me, glowing emerald blade raised. Hafez glanced in his direction, and the glow filled his eyes.

  When Hafez let go of the staff, I wasn’t prepared. I fell backward and hit the floor. Morfran would have trampled me had he not slowed.

  Hafez dived at me, grabbing the staff from my stunned fingers, and rolled away from me. I sat up as fast as I could, but I was too late to do more than gawk at Apep’s servant.

  Morfran should have easily overcome him, but the strength of Amun, no longer restrained by my touch, flowed into Hafez. He jumped to his feet. Mofran was moving fast, but he was moving faster.

  Hafez swung the staff. The strength of many men propelled it through the air with such force that I feared it would crush the gallant knight in one blow. Morfran, who must have feared the same, thrust his borrowed sword forward to parry the blow. Hafez might have known of its anti-magic properties, but it was too late for him to restrain the swing.

  The two artifacts met with explosive force that was both blinding and deafening. Even my magic perceptions failed me for a moment. Had both sword and staff been destroyed? And what of Hafez? What of Morfran and the others? I wasn’t dead, but I hadn’t been as close to the blast as they had.

  My hearing returned first. I caught the sound of a sword hacking into the floor very near me. Morfran? Yes, I could see a blur that could be him. Another blur was likely Hafez stumbling away. Neither one of them was moving very fast. They were probably both still recovering their vision.

  “Duck!” shouted Viviane. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I dropped to the floor.

  I felt something dark, twisted, and powerful shoot over me fast as lightning. The curse! Was it seeking out Morfran? Had he let go of the sword?

  My vision snapped back into focus just in time to see the black, slimy mass of evil crashing into Hafez. He dropped the staff and screamed. The sound of his voice became scratchy, as Morfran’s had been. His face began to twist as dark, coarse hair covered it.

  Rising awkwardly from the floor. I threw myself at the staff. Hafez reached down for it but had to fall backward to avoid another one of Morfran’s swings. However, Morfran still moved as if he were partially blinded, and Hafez managed to grab the staff on the second try. He almost dropped it again as Morfran stumbled after him, swinging his blade as he went.

  Those of Tal’s warriors that were not too badly wounded charged in Hafez’s direction.

  Hafez raised the staff, but at first, nothing happened. I could sense that the magic within it had not been destroyed by the collision, but it had been disrupted in a way that the staff’s creators had never anticipated. Power churned unevenly within it, but at such a weak level I could barely feel it.

  Morfran, blinking and uncertain, swung again but missed Hafez by a couple of feet. The others were stumbling as if their vision had not fully recovered, either.

  What was left of Hafez’s face was hard to read, but his rapid breathing suggested panic. The way he moved told me he could see clearly. He had to know that Morfran and the others could recover their vision at any moment, and then the servant of Apep would be finished.

  If I could get to the staff again—but I could not, at least not quickly. I managed to get up, but my legs felt shaky, and the most I could do was stagger toward Hafez.

  He still held the staff, but his arm shook almost as much as my legs. A tiny amount of power dribbled from it—the power of Set.

  Hafez must have wanted an earthquake. What he got was a small tremor, but it was enough to knock me off my feet and throw the others off balance. Hafez himself was shielded from the impact by the staff.

  He tried again and gave the house a bigger jolt, enough to knock everyone but him off their feet. The floorboards creaked in protest, and another crack inched its way across the ceiling.

  Taking advantage of whatever few moments that tiny tremor gained him, Hafez turned and raised the staff again. The power was flowing more freely now, and from the staff radiated knotted cords, emblems of Seshat, the goddess who set boundaries. Over them passed the shadow of Apep, he who breaks boundaries, and the cords lashed at the space in front of them, tearing through the barrier between parallel worlds.

  My legs were feeling better, and I managed to get to my feet. So did Morfran, but he was too far away unless he threw the sword. The curse might have flown back to him if he had done that, though. He raised his arm but did not make the throw.

  Less inhibited, I lunged at Hafez as he was about to step through his portal and got my hands on the staff. All I needed to do was maintain a grip for a few seconds, and I could close his escape route.

  Morfran was charging, and the others were on their feet. Having a better idea of what I was capable of in this body, Hafez pulled more effectively, and I felt the staff slipping away. Its response to me was sluggish, so I couldn’t immediately close the portal. That didn’t matter, though. I would delay him long enough for Morfran to reach us.

  To my surprise, Hafez let go of the staff and threw himself into the tear he had created. With his will no longer motivating the staff, the cords disappeared, and the hole in reality sealed itself before Morfran or I could follow.

  Well, if Hafez wanted to escape that badly, let him. Cursed and alone in another world from which he no longer had the means to escape, he would be well punished for his allegiance to Apep.

  I had the staff. It would need time to replenish its nearly drained strength, but then I would have the power to free Amun.

  I looked around the room. Morfran was looking in shock at where the tear had been. Nancy was alive and presumably stable. Viviane rushed from her to Shar, who still wasn’t moving. Carla and Taliesin hastened to examine the wounded. Magnus stood near the far end of the room, the lyre held loosely in his tired hands.

  No one with magic was paying any attention to me. Except for Morfran, no one was close enough to intervene physically—and, unlike Taliesin’s group, he didn’t know there was any reason not to trust me. He continued to stare at empty air as if his contemplation would open a door through which he might pursue Hafez.

  If I acted swiftly enough, I could escape from them—escape with the means to do what must be done.

  Fault Lines

  I had seen and felt how Hafez opened a barrier. I ran my hands over the staff. It was more responsive to me now. I wasn’t sure it had enough power left to do what I needed.

  I raised the staff slightly, but I stopped just short of invoking its power. If I tried and failed, someone might notice, and I would never get a
chance again.

  I glanced around the room. Viviane looked in my direction, but I signaled her I was unwounded, and she focused all her attention on Shahriyar. Morfran also glanced at me. As soon as he saw I was unharmed, he rushed over as well as his overtaxed limbs would allow to check on Nancy. When Ceridwen and Creirwy spotted him, they hurried to him to make sure the curse had left no lingering effect. Everybody else was either wounded or tending to the wounded in the methodical way Taliesin’s group always did.

  Once the most urgent problems were addressed, I would have minutes at most before someone thought about the fact that I was all alone with the staff. I needed to escape before that could happen.

  The haze of Thoth had faded, but struggling against it had weakened me more than I realized. I could use the power Amun had given me, but I wasn’t sure how well. I kept turning the staff over in my hands, feeling the faint throb of mystic energy. I still couldn’t tell how well that would serve me, either.

  Physically, I was unharmed, and my first thought was to run as fast and as far as I could. The staff would regenerate its power, and soon enough I could flee back to my own world. However, the moment anyone realized I was gone, at least one of the sorcerers would start looking for me. Their magical search might be weak, but so might be my efforts to conceal myself from it. They would surely find me before I could get very far.

  No, I needed a way to disable them before I fled. I loathed the idea of killing them—misguided as their religions were, they were honorable in their own ways, certainly more so than Hafez ever dreamt of being. Even had I wished them harm, I could think of no magic that the weakened staff or I could deploy that would render all of them helpless fast enough. Some of them would have time to react, time to defeat me. I could not risk that.

  Wait! While I had been using Amy as a mask, I had learned enough of the shared past of Taliesin’s warriors to see the cracks beneath their familial façade. With a little magic, I could widen those cracks just enough to divert their attention, leaving me free to make my escape.

  I reached into the staff for the power I needed. The wood shuddered in my hands, but the magic I requested did not come forth from it.

  I looked around again. No one gave any sign of noticing, but such luck would not always be with me. I had to make my next attempt succeed.

  Perhaps my overly trusting allies had given me the means to undo them. I had seen them use what they called a network. I had seen them share power. If I could figure out how to initiate such a process, I could unite my power with the staff’s. Such a combination might just provide enough magic to do what I must.

  Keeping one eye on them, I felt the wood with more than just fingers, reaching into its essence. The priests had transferred mystical energy into it for decades. If I could discern how they had performed such a feat, that knowledge might help.

  Unfortunately, though I could learn much about the nature of the staff, the secret of its construction eluded me. My function as god’s wife had not required me to enchant objects, and I was but one servant of Amun. The priests who crafted the staff were many, and their work spread over generations. Who was I to think a few minutes of study would enable me to unravel their secrets?

  Shahriyar, one of the most seriously injured, tried to sit up. How much time had I lost in pondering the staff? Too much, surely.

  Taliesin had connected to me in case he needed me for power sharing during the curse removal. Fearing to draw his attention, I felt for that magic as gently as I could. It was still there, forgotten but intact.

  I tried to use Amun’s power as god of the hidden to recreate Taliesin’s unfamiliar magic, but I failed at that as well. I could not master such new power without more study.

  Desperate now, I stared at the hieroglyphs as if I could give them the power to speak to me. They remained dumb, or I remained deaf—it mattered not which it was.

  I reached into the staff one last time. It had some of the power of the gods, not the gods themselves, within its wood. Yet I had heard that objects endowed with powerful magic possessed a kind of intelligence of their own. The staff knew somehow who was entitled to wield it. That wasn’t by any means full sentience, but perhaps the staff knew other things as well. Along with the magic had come some echo of the minds of the gods, some little whisper of their sacred knowledge.

  Thoth or Isis would have known how to perform the feats Taliesin performed. I knew I was grasping at straws now, but I had no choice. I had squandered even the slight hope that running away might have given me.

  My mind spiraled through the wood grain, searching every particle of the staff, searching so hard that for the first time, I could feel the very tree from which the staff was carved, a sycamore like those that were said to stand at the eastern gate of heaven from which Ra emerged each day.

  “Tell me how to unite my strength with yours.” Part devout prayer and part frantic demand, my words resonated in the wood, but it gave no response beyond an almost imperceptible fluctuation in what little magic it had left.

  Something Taliesin had told me earlier flashed through my mind. “Magic is partly a question of what the caster can visualize.” Could the answer be so simple? I knew as well as he that a caster must vividly perceive the details of what he or she wishes to accomplish. He had broadcast to me the way in which the air might be purified, and because I was able to visualize it with his help, I was able to do it. But without anyone’s help, could I visualize something I had never done before and bend my magic to accomplish it?

  Nancy had opened her eyes, and Morfran had bent over to talk to her. Most of the others were stirring. Someone could look in my direction any second and wonder what I was doing with the staff.

  I closed my eyes, and with all the focus I could muster, I visualized my magic strength flowing into the staff, energizing it, warming it as Ra’s sun once warmed the sycamore from which it was carved.

  At first, the light of my magic sparkled on the surface of the wood as if the wood were stone, dead and impenetrable.

  Then, just as I was about to give up, the stone became living wood, receptive to the sunshine of my power, nurtured by it until it was no longer a simple staff but a tall tree, shading me with its branches, whispering encouragement to me in the wind.

  The staff was nowhere near being fully recharged, but it held enough power to do what I planned—cast a spell upon Taliesin and his warriors, then open a portal back to my world as soon as they were too preoccupied to stop me.

  I looked at the others and saw that my luck had held. A combination of preoccupation and fatigue had kept anyone from noticing what I was doing.

  I raised the staff, but again I hesitated. Perhaps I could just slip away, open a portal, and be gone. Perhaps there was no need—

  Gordy glanced in my direction. His eyes looked blank. I wasn’t sure he was really seeing me, but I couldn’t take the chance.

  Tightening my grip on the staff, I invoked the power of Set, brother-murderer, creator of desolate wastelands, and the power poured out with the weight of all the sand of the desert, but subtly, one grain at a time, so that in their drained condition, they would not notice it. It would blow into their past wounds, inflame them, infect them, make them bleed anew with hatred or fear.

  Most of their wills were strong enough that I could never have worked such magic had they been fresh and rested. But tired as they were, the malice of Set had those old wounds oozing in seconds.

  The spell worked all too well. The first to show the signs was Magnus, whose wounds ran deepest. Jimmie was embracing Eva nearby, and as Magnus watched them, his discontent swelled into pure hatred. He had murder in his eyes, so much so that he frightened me. I wanted merely distraction. Had I summoned mayhem instead?

  Magnus rose, gripping the lyre with pale, shaking fingers. The shaking spread through his whole body.

  The power sharing connection Taliesin had made with me began to throb painfully. Magnus—no, not just him, others as well—had been pushed into s
uch emotional turmoil that their raw feelings were feeding back through the network, pouring into each other…pouring into me.

  When I realized what I had done, I screamed and tried to rip away the connection as I had done before, but it was no longer the gentle thread it had been. Charged with anger, hatred, sorrow, and despair, it was like a metal spike driven through my skull. I could no more tear it loose than I could undo what I had unleashed among the others.

  The staff nearly slid through fingers that shook as badly as Magnus’s. Unused to such an emotional barrage, my own thoughts became disjointed. Screaming at the collected agony that burned them like the fires that devour the hearts of the sinful dead, they hurtled toward madness. Summoning what will I had left, I tried to master my thoughts, but even such a simple-sounding task was beyond me. The most I could achieve was a stalemate that left me paralyzed, forced to watch the evil I had wrought but incapable of intervening to stop it.

  As if the network had given me Taliesin’s gift of mind-reading, I saw into the tormented hearts of those around me. I had been the inadvertent torturer, but now I became the tortured.

  Like me, Magnus was so enmeshed in emotions that he was unable to act. The fire of his hatred for Jimmie was held back only by the ice of his self-discipline. Far removed from this steaming conflict, deep inside of him, sorrow stabbed his heart like a thousand daggers. It was the sorrow of the man who loves but knows that his love will never be returned.

  “We’re under attack!”

  Viviane was yelling, but I barely heard her. She had managed to wrap around herself the waters of the Lake, and with them, she kept the sands of Set at bay. Weary from healing, that was the most she could do. She tried to help the others, but their distress was too deep, their pain too dire. She watched with a helplessness that echoed in my own heart.