The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  Her companions were fast becoming as statuelike as Magnus, their minds drawn by Set toward the acting out of all their hidden darkness, while their wills fought with all the fury they possessed to keep that darkness locked within.

  Jimmie was still in Eva’s arms but no longer felt them. Instead, he imagined himself drifting away from her, unworthy of her, a failure in her eyes, an abomination—for such the Greek god of the dead had called him—whose return had blighted his friends and family. He longed to send himself back to the death from which he had somehow escaped before. Yet he also longed to stab his sword through the heart of Magnus, who continually pointed out the magnitude of his failure.

  As for Eva, she was as oblivious to his arms as he was to hers, wishing with all her heart to flee from the ambiguity of her weirdly twisted romantic entanglements. She cared for Jimmie and cursed herself for it. Deep beneath that caring, her heart pulled toward others—toward Taliesin, even toward Magnus. She loved them all. She hated them all. She hated herself for hating them. She hated Tal for not somehow holding onto her when she drifted away from him, but she also hated him for clinging to his love for her, holding her prisoner to his unspoken feelings. She hated Jimmie for his haunted eyes and desperate hands whose very gentleness demanded a love she was not sure she had. She hated Magnus for being attractive to her despite his darkness—or perhaps because of it. She hated the web that enmeshed them, even as she feared that she herself was the spider.

  Every time I thought the misery howling in my mind was as much as I could bear, it intensified. I tried again to rip out the connection, but it was now more like twenty iron spikes than one, and I could not budge it.

  The staff. It could undo what it had done, but I had dropped it. Where was it?

  My vision was blurry. Was I going blind? No, it was just the tears.

  I had to find the staff. But if I did, wouldn’t undoing the spell use up the power I needed to escape? What of my duty to Amun? How could I fail him like that?

  “You know what you have to do.”

  That voice—who was it? Taliesin? No, as in control as he seemed on the surface, the sands of Set had sought out his ancient wounds and gouged them open. His blood ran like frozen rivers as he thought of how he lost Eva. Churning beneath the ice was the memory of how he had almost forced Eva back into his arms by dark magic, how he had tried to use that dark magic to save Carla from Alcina, only to release Dark Me and put everyone in jeopardy.

  I knew the part of that story about Carla and Magnus, but seeing it in his heart-chilling memories was like living it myself. I felt every moment of his sense of inadequacy, his shame at how he had let the group down.

  And then I relived with him how hurt he had been when Carla had tried deception to get him into her arms, how unforgiving—and how his anger at her had pushed her into the unspeakable.

  That story I had not heard before. I knew only that Carla had dated him, not that she too was entangled in a love geometry so beyond a triangle that it would have made Pythagoras weep in despair.

  Carla. Was it she who had spoken to me? No, for when I tried to pull her thoughts out of the maelstrom of anguish, they were as tortured, as paralyzing as any other.

  Rejected by Tal, cut off even from friendship, she had sold her soul for an undetectable love spell—and nearly destroyed everyone she cared about in the process. Part of the deal had been for her to forget what she had done, but she remembered eventually. She remembered now as well, and those memories were eating into her mind like acid, erasing any thought of the forgiveness Tal and the others had given her.

  “You know what you have to do,” the voice repeated again, more insistently this time.

  I managed to look at Viviane, still barely holding her own against the sandstorm. She was not the one who had spoken, either.

  Was there anyone else in the group not overcome by the past? Anyone who could have spoken to me?

  Gordy, often the butt of Magnus’s jokes when they were younger, was struggling against the insatiable urge to take off Magnus’s head with one stroke of the sword. Shar was fighting the urge to beat Alex to death in vengeance for the beating Alex had given Khalid when Ares had been manipulating his reincarnated son. Alex was trying to strangle the urge to wreak terrible vengeance on all of them for not initially letting him into the group when doing so would have saved him from Ares. At the same time, he fought the shame of the deeds he had done for the sake of that blood-doubled deity. He saw again the blood on his hands, blood that could never be washed away, even by the forgiveness of the group. In between those titanic forces, his will fought desperately to a steer a course between murderous rage and suicidal despair.

  Shar and Alex were too close together. If either one lost his internal battle for even a second, the other would die.

  Great Amun, what had I done? How had my magic gone so wrong?

  I looked in vain for anyone who could intervene to save them all from my folly. Michael and Khalid were drowning in tears of despair born of their childhood fears that their unique natures would make them outcasts. Nancy was suffocating in self-loathing for some conflict with her parents that remained unresolved at their death.

  Ceridwen, at whom I had not even aimed the spell, burned beneath her cold exterior, burned to cast aside forgiveness and revenge herself on Tal as she had once planned.

  Like Viviane, Creirwy had managed to shield herself with magic, but all her attention was absorbed by her own defense and by preventing her mother from lashing out at the others.

  Morfran would have been safe had he still held the sword of Shar, but he had let go of it after Hafez had left, wrapped in Morfran’s curse. Now he was on all fours hunting for it while the inner demons he had accumulated over the centuries hunted him. His brave eyes were clouded with fear.

  I saw the look in Stan’s eyes and knew that he was David, but even the King of Israel had not resisted my spell. His mind had slid back three thousand years, where he was shrouded in the guilt of his adultery with a woman named Bathsheba and all the horrors that followed upon it. He had her husband’s blood upon his hands. Later, he had the blood of his own son, and many, many others. Now that blood was all he was seeing.

  Lucas! Lucas would surely have retained his wits.

  No, he had not. When I focused on him, I saw that he was trapped in memories of the time before he knew his own origin. Those had been days of fear, for he could not explain his own abilities and knew that someone was bound to discover how much a freak he was. Like Michael and Khalid, he envisioned a future of loneliness so profound that he might as well be the only living human on the planet.

  I called out to him. At least, I think I did. I may have whispered. I thought he looked in my direction, but his eyes were sightless, staring inward at the raving panic that was chewing on his heart like a jackal.

  Umbra was looking at me, dark dagger drawn, but like Lucas, she did not appear to see me. Her eyes were nailed to her assassin past, to the feeling that she was a failure—and later, to the feeling that she could not escape that past enough to ever truly fit into human society.

  “Amenirdis, for God’s sake stop this! Stop it now, before they’re all destroyed.”

  Destroyed? I had only meant a tiny diversion while I escaped.

  “Pick up the staff!”

  Tal’s mind, so cleverly woven from the past life personas that had almost overwhelmed him, was coming undone as the spell ripped away at him. I would not have thought such a thing possible.

  “Amenirdis!”

  “Who…who are you?”

  “Amy! Who else would be riding around in your head?”

  Shame. Shame at what I had done. That was fast becoming all I could think of, all that my head could contain.

  “Maybe the damage can be reversed. Pick up the goddamn staff!”

  The staff had fallen near me, but, as in a nightmare, the distance seemed to be elongating. Now the staff lay the length of the room away. Soon it would be a thousand
miles away.

  My mind was so shredded that Amy, whom I had thought so much weaker than I, surged within me, and for a moment she took control. But once she was back in command, she became vulnerable to the sands of Set, and, overwhelmed by guilt at what she had allowed me to do—as if she had any choice—she quickly lost her grip.

  I did not at once reclaim the body. My shoulders were not strong enough to bear such weight. Amun himself would reject me. I was unworthy. I had wreaked all this havoc. I had squandered my only chance to escape and do his will.

  It was not just the magically twisted thoughts of the others that led me to the realization of how totally I had failed. Too late, I understood that letting go of the staff had made me vulnerable to the dire magic I had unwittingly unleashed. The sands of Set were confused by my link to the others and by the presence of Amy. The tiny grains bored into every crevice in my mind. They were filling my lungs. They were burying me. I would die—and no one would mourn my passing.

  Morfran had found the sword. He rose triumphantly and held it above his head.

  “Break the spell!” yelled Viviane. Morfran looked around, confused. He expected to see Amen Hafez, but that villain was nowhere in sight.

  He did not recognize the villain right in front of him. Nor did anyone else. My luck still held—and by that very luck would I be doomed.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Amy, apparently out of the spell’s reach as long as she lay beneath the surface of my thoughts, had revived.

  Magnus took a step toward Jimmie. Shar reached for Alex. The violence was about to rend bodies as it had already rent minds.

  “Together,” said Amy. “You saw how Tal’s mind is constructed.”

  “That mind is falling into ruin.”

  “But it is not there yet. He has drawn strength from the many past lives within it. You could draw strength from me, or I from you, or each from the other. Together we can do what individually we could not.”

  Morfran tried to hold the sword against Nancy, but it did not break the spell. As soon as he withdrew the blade, it sunk its teeth into her again.

  “Give it to me,” said Viviane. “I might be able to reverse this if I don’t have to use all my energy defending myself.”

  In my heart, I knew she would fail. The poison of Set was too far into everyone else’s heart.

  Morfran tried to move in her direction, but the air seemed to solidify as he tried to move forward. Set’s magic? No, leakage from the other spellcasters as their control eroded. The air was twisted by that rogue magic just as the minds that produced it were twisted.

  The escaped power was not overtly hostile. Even in their incoherent condition, Tal, Magnus, Carla, and Ceridwen still struggled for control. None of them were far from the edge, though. Any of the might tumble off any second.

  Morfran struck at the rogue magic with the emerald blade. The misbegotten energy exploded away from the blade, and the sorcerers screamed in eerie unison.

  “I can’t get to you,” said Morfran, looking around frantically.

  “I’ve only got one choice, then,” said Viviane.

  I watched helplessly as she lowered her defenses and flung a spray of healing lake power in all directions. Her face twisted in alarm as the might of Set wormed its way into her mind, but I could feel a subtle change in the atmosphere. She had energized the will of the others. That might not be enough, but for a blessed moment, the mystic sandstorm raging around us paused, uncertain of how to cope with the subtle change.

  Viviane’s watery power did not long protect us, but Amy took the opportunity to seize the body and make a grab for the staff. At first, I did little more than bite back her screams as the sands of Set scraped against her mind.

  I remembered her earlier words, though. I tried to reach into the arm, not to take control, but to lend my strength to hers.

  She had been right. Together, we could reach far enough to clutch the sacred wood before the magic overcame us.

  The wood was dead in our hands. It recognized me, but not some combination of Amy and me. While I held it, though, the spell no longer attacked us. That didn’t erase the damage it had already done, but it gave me some small hope that I could finally bring this horror to an end.

  “I have to do the rest alone.”

  “Just make sure you do,” said Amy as she relinquished her control of the body. At first, I had thought her weak, but I had been wrong.

  I had not been wrong about the staff, however. I could withdraw the power of Set or open a portal back to my universe. The staff could not do both, and I lacked the strength to lend it any further power.

  Ashamed as I was of the agony I had inflicted, I hesitated to end it. The rawness within my soul was but a foretaste of an infinitely worse pain if I abandoned my efforts to free Amun.

  “Amenirdis!”

  Amy tried to take control again, but with the staff in my hand and Set’s power no longer battering me, she did not quite have the strength.

  Still writhing on the horns of my dilemma, I stalled the sandstorm in its tracks. That much I could do and still escape—but would it be of any use to anyone?

  Some of Viviane’s Lady of the Lake power still resonated among the others. It had not really freed any of them, but its quick splash had whispered sanity to them, reinforcing their resistance.

  I could still make it out the door and leave them to finish freeing themselves.

  “This isn’t us!”

  Eva’s voice was hoarse and low, but it carried through the links the way her original mingled love and hate had.

  “We’re better than this. Some spell is warping us, but we can beat it.”

  Even as she spoke, the sands of Set churned around her, drying out the water of the Lake.

  I felt her strain her entire will against my magic. She had no special power to reinforce that will. Had someone like Tal freed himself as much as she had, he might just have broken completely free. Eva’s effort was brave but doomed.

  I held the magic back again. I had to find some way to allow her to succeed without having to betray Amun. Surely, there was a middle path if I could but find it.

  “Listen to me!” said Eva. “Fight! We all have to fight. We have to regain…”

  Her voice trailed off as the magic of Set pressed harder against her. Again, I pulled at it, but like a wild horse, it balked at being reined in. It would obey me if I dispelled it, but my ability to managed it precisely was limited. Whether that was due to its own nature or to my inexperience with it, I couldn’t tell. In the end, it mattered little which was true.

  The rogue magic had become a little less volatile, but Morfran didn’t attempt to hack his way in Viviane’s direction. Instead, he dodged and weaved through a somewhat less obstructed path—a path toward Eva.

  All would be well. I turned toward the door with Amy screaming at me, but Morfran would free Eva, and one by one they would free the others. That had to be what happened.

  I took a step. Amy shifted from yelling to pleading. I would take the remaining steps out the door. I would return home. I would free Amun. So it must be. So it would be.

  I might have made it, too, if only I had not looked back one last time.

  Lucas was looking at me. I was numb by now to the uproar pouring into me from the link, but though he looked torn by sorrow, he also looked more alert.

  He looked as if he knew what I had done.

  Shame crawled across me like a swarm of cockroaches hidden by midnight darkness.

  I looked back at Eva. She had the sword now. She and Morfran were both grasping the hilt.

  Freed from the corrupting effects of Set’s sandstorm, Eva tried to free the others by sheer force of will. Instead of the mass of jumbled emotions she had been projecting before, she somehow managed to send pure love streaming through the network. Her lack of magic hindered her, but she did not let it stop her.

  I knew in my heart that she would prevail. I also knew it might be too l
ate for some of her companions. Tal and Magnus, in particular, were hanging by threads. The turmoil within them had driven them to the very edge of sanity. For ones so mighty in magic, it is hard to break their minds, but if one does shatter, putting the pieces back together might be beyond even the staff at full power.

  Praying to Amun for forgiveness, I tried to right the wrong I had done. Even with the help of Eva’s uncanny concentration, I would now need to do more than just cancel my original spell. I would need to heal the damage.

  The staff did not contain the power to do what I required, but, belated though my change of heart was, I would not be denied. I drew what little magic I had left, shaped it into sunlight, and let it shine upon the staff, which drank it eagerly. Not content with that, I soaked in as much of the love Eva was projecting in my direction as I could, then sent its warmth into the staff as well.

  That was still not enough. I looked to Viviane, but she was lost in the sands of Set far enough that she could no longer help me.

  That left Creirwy. She was still restraining Ceridwen’s wrath, but it burned not quite as intensely as it had before.

  “Morfran, Eva, go to Ceridwen and free her from the spell. Creirwy, come to me as soon as your mother is free.”

  I had no right to ask anything of any of them, but Morfran and Eva rushed to Ceridwen’s side the moment I made my request. Somehow, they managed to keep a little grip on the sword hilt while forcing it into Ceridwen’s fingers, and the ancient grudge against Taliesin faded from her mind.

  It would take her time to recover from the ravages of the desert magic, but Creirwy had been protected the whole time—and she knew how to power share. She could help me redeem myself.

  As soon as she ran to me, I told her what I needed. She could not directly lend power to the staff, for the respective magics were too different. However, she could channel it to me, and, thus filtered, it could pass to the staff in the way I had learned to do it.

  She gave as much as she safely could, but I still had not quite enough, and there was no one else nearby from whom I could draw.