The Python of Caspia

by Michael Green

  Andy nearly stumbled on the stairs. She saw this and stopped, allowing him a moment to breathe.

  “You regret the ryle being in control of my world?”

  Pythia sighed. “Yes. I regret not doing more, when I had the chance. I was just…”

  “It’s true then. The ryle, the creatures like Dr. Ropt, Zeezee—” Andy was cut off as Pythia laughed and smacked him on the brow.

  “None of that now. Don’t even whisper that nickname or it could mean war. Probably not—he needs me—but still, he’d make it impossible to be diplomatic.”

  Andy looked annoyed. “Whatever the hell he likes to be called; his species conquered the surface—my world?”

  “Centuries before you were born.” Pythia’s face saddened, and she had difficulty meeting his eyes for a moment. When she did finally look his way, Andy didn’t like it. He didn’t know why, but he almost felt like a zoo animal, behind glass.

  They continued up the stairs in silence.

  My whole world—everything—is run by them. Even down here they hold so much power. That sign outside Ropt’s office—something about wards, and it had his ryle name. I saw it. But how could this be true? We would know—if they ran everything—we would know by now.

  They reached the last step and walked out into a colossal gallery. Andy forgot the crumbling ruin of his life and gazed up at the towering columns. Each was thoroughly embellished with detailed sculptures carved from something strange.

  “Is that antler? Maybe ivory?” Andy asked, not wanting to know the answer.

  “The sculptures are bone,” Pythia said, reaching out and touching a column.

  Andy’s mouth dropped as he looked down the length of the hall. Tens of thousands of worked bones covered every surface in the hall.

  “Human?” Andy asked, shuddering.

  Pythia ignored him, bent down, and ran a nail over the floor. Andy hadn’t noticed until now, but the floor shone in a strange way. He bent over for a closer look and saw what reminded him of overlapping fish scales. The scales were pale gray. Many were cracked, but they all bent ever so slightly, giving the floor an uneven feel underfoot.

  Andy felt his stomach clench as he shot back up to his feet.

  “This way,” Pythia said, an odd tone in her voice, before stepping resolutely forward.

  Andy followed, trying to keep steady as he walked. He felt sick and sensed that his eyes were straining, but he couldn’t see what was causing it. He forced himself to look at the endless scenes of sculpture twisting up and down the columns. They were carved in high relief, and depicted acts of war, moments of argument, and ranks of heroes arrayed in ancient arms and armor. The work was frenzied and strained, the bones bent, but none had splintered.

  Andy felt a shiver running up his spine. His eyes jumped from column to ceiling and even to the floor, but everywhere he looked there was something terrible. He felt the marble in his pocket rumble, but he couldn’t look away. There were symbols carved next to life-sized figures on the walls and columns. He recognized the Infiniteye.

  He thought the other symbols might have been the noble crests or heraldry associated with nearby figures.

  “Who made this place?” Andy whispered, slowing down. He was overwhelmed by a battle circling one column. Exaggeratedly vicious brutox and ryle, with serrated claws the size of swords and barbed tentacles, fought outnumbered humans.

  “Your ancestors.” She reached out and grabbed his arm, before urging him on. “Keep moving.”

  Somehow, the work reminded him of what he had seen at Caspia. He felt his spine run with shivers, but he shook his head to relieve the feeling, and wrenched his arm from Pythia’s grip. She didn’t even look back when he did so. She was walking, but she moved at such a pace that Andy was quickly left behind. He jogged to keep up.

  Andy tried to catch a glance of her face, but she looked away. “Oh, stop running!” She reached out to smack him.

  “I can’t keep up,” he said, dodging the open palm.

  “Don’t be stupid!”

  She slowed.

  She’s terrified. But how—I’ve seen what she can do. Andy’s stomach turned and his feet wobbled. He realized that he had felt safe with her, despite her nature.

  Andy didn’t want to ask the question, but his anxiety insisted, “Is this what we wanted to find? Is this the history you wanted to see?”

  She ignored him. She was trembling and her eyes were downcast. What could she fear?

  Ahead, Andy saw an end to the hall. A pair of tall, narrow doors were crisscrossed with fine interlocking brass gears. The facade surrounding the doors was a riot of protruding bones. He could make out human shapes, but many were pierced by weapons or giant claws.

  Pythia nearly walked into the wall. “Stop!” Andy called to her.

  She stopped just short, her shoe pulling on the hem of her dress. She backed away, turned around and clasped her hands in frustration before looking at him. “Don’t take long. I can’t stand it.”

  “What?” Andy asked, frustrated and confused, “What am I supposed to do?”

  She crossed her arms and angrily brushed away a tear, but in doing so she ripped a gash across her face.

  Oh, God! Andy instinctively reached forward, but in an instant the wound was gone, as if it never existed.

  Pythia took Andy’s hand. “I’ll be fine, just get to work.” She gestured at the door without looking and then pushed his hand violently away.

  Andy stepped back and felt his glance drift up to the door and wall. They towered above him, easily five floors high. He took a deep breath and felt a swirling mix of emotions clamor away in his head. He nearly stumbled before his thoughts cleared.

  I must open the door.

  “Use the Silversight—take the Argument into your vision. I was going to aid you, but it’s all I can do to stand here. You must be committed, or else you wouldn’t even be able to breathe.”

  Silversight, committed again, Andy thought, remembering the words.

  I have to look into the marble. But I’ll be alone. Last time I had Martin and Clang, they helped, but she might run away at any second.

  Andy tried to make sense of the mechanism on the doors. His eyes picked a spot at random and followed lengths of gears and axles, but were soon lost amid the countless connecting parts.

  It’s like untying thousands of knots on one string, when you can’t even see half of it. There is no way I can do this without the Argument. I can’t even see how the door is sealed.

  Andy stepped away from the doors and into the center of the hall. He turned in a slow circle, his eyes moving from macabre face to face until they rested on a figure holding thumb and forefinger out just above the hollowed eye.

  Andy sighed and reached for the Argument. This is the only way. He pulled it free and felt it rumbling in his grip. He held tightly.

  He looked into its silver surface and saw a man high on the column holding a marble up to his eye. He looked closer and saw that the marble was both purple and silver. One color washed into the other, and it reminded him of a religious symbol he had seen once.

  He tensed his fingers and realized that his marble was gone, and his arm was no longer solid, but wireframed.

  Andy’s eyes pulled back and he saw dozens, and then hundreds of people. The figures on the columns and walls were alive. His vision buzzed, and his eyes widened in shock.

  Warriors locked in combat with juggernaut sized brutox, and others fought beasts that were massive jumbles of tentacles and bladed purple flesh.

  All the bones, everything from before—it’s all here—fleshed out and alive. But how?

  Andy saw the wireframe world he remembered from before on the ceiling, but the columns and walls were vibrant with figures that seemed whole.

  Andy felt his breath catch and he reached out to stop himself falling. A cold hand grasped his. He looked and saw a woman with silver eyes staring at him.

  Andy gasped and pulled away, tripping and falling onto the
floor, which shone bright with writing he couldn’t understand.

  He gazed up at the figure with the silver eyes. She resumed her pose and was still. Andy scrambled backwards, terrified and still feeling the cold grasp on his hand. His skin crawled as he realized the figures only seemed still.

  They’re moving, but it’s faint.

  He struggled to his feet. This isn’t how it looked before! When I was with Martin—it wasn’t anything like this!

  Andy heard crying. He saw a swirling confluence of ocher colors forming the shape of a woman crawling on the floor. She appeared to exist only as a woman-shaped glow, interrupting his sight.

  Pythia. She doesn’t look like anything else. It’s like she almost isn’t there.

  She reached out and grasped his ankle, before pointing up at the wall surrounding the door.

  Heroes and their symbols adorned the wall. Tall and resplendent, armed and arrayed, some with the weapons and claws of their enemies still piercing their frames. Their haunted faces were slick with blood yet were no less noble. Andy felt his heart stop when he realized that the faces were looking at him. Scores of violet eyes glowered at him from under their stern brows. One raised an arm and he felt Pythia’s nails dig into his leg as it did so.

  Burning letters appeared in the air before him. He had the vague sense these letters were used in mathematics, but at a level far higher than he had ever learned.

  “Pythia!” Andy bent over and grabbed her by her shoulders to pull her up.

  She resisted. “No! Please!” her voice came to him as if through a fog, but he focused and found it clearer as he did so.

  “Look!” Andy insisted, “I need you to try to read those letters.”

  He couldn’t make out her features. There was just the vague form of a woman. He saw movement, and thought she was looking up. “There are no letters!” she moaned, “It’s just pointing at us!”

  Andy felt panic rising. I’ll never get another chance, I know it! The letters burned, but the glow coming from them was softening.

  “I see letters! They have math symbols in them, I don’t know the language.”

  “It’s probably Greek,” she said hurriedly.

  Andy’s mind shot back and forth. How do I explain the letters to her? What can I—my knife!

  Andy felt at his waist and found the knife Clang had given to him. He pulled it free and got onto his knees.

  “What are you—” Pythia stared as he tried to carve letters into the floor. “No!” She knocked the knife out of his hand.

  She ran her fingers over the floor and found it smooth.

  “What? I have to do something! Should I carve it on my skin?”

  “Nothing is surer to get us killed than vandalism. Why do you think the ryle closed off the way into this hall?”

  The letters were growing duller by the second.

  “Here!” Pythia pulled tight on her dress and made a taught surface out of a piece. Andy’s eyes tensed and he struggled to see the dress, all he could make out was the glow coming off Pythia.

  “Cut a piece off for me,” he handed her the knife, “All I can see is you—I can’t see the dress.”

  Andy wasn’t sure if his eyes were seeing clearly, but he got the impression that Pythia tightened her limbs, as if shielding nakedness.

  “Damn it—I can’t see you naked—just an amber spot. Now cut a piece off that dress, please!”

  Andy felt a sharp slap across his cheek.

  Without a word, she set to work cutting out a piece. He heard the sounds of fabric shearing.

  When the noise stopped, Andy reached out and grasped the cloth. He held it close and finally saw its shape. Laying it on the floor, he set about carving the letters into the fabric.

  Pythia read as he carved: “Chi—Omega—”

  Carving the letters calmed her. Andy scoffed at his shaking hands.

  “Everything I see is different with the marble—the Argument.”

  “It’s called Silversight,” Pythia said, “It’s been so long since I’ve seen it, I’ve forgotten what it does to the Seer. I never liked the eyes.”

  Andy wanted to stop and ask his hundred questions. Silversight? And she’s seen it before—that shouldn’t surprise me. She’s far older than even a hundred. What’s worse is that she’d probably answer every question without a fight, right now. But I can’t take the time, I have to carve this damn fabric. He worked as swiftly as he dared, often making mistakes, and then running an X through them. The cloth felt like it was slowly ripping into pieces. He wanted to slow down, but the letters were now barely readable. Any undue haste, and the knife would tear the sheet to tatters.

  “There!” Andy delicately held the cloth out to Pythia.

  “Is it classical? No, it’s Byzantine. Hmm.” Pythia studied the cloth. “Quite a few mistakes here.”

  “Sorry, I was in a rush—and I’ve never written with a knife before.”

  She huffed at him, mumbling the words as she worked down the lines of script.

  “A beloved traitor among us—in bone columns astride—born to see violet eyes.”

  “And?” Perplexed, Andy tried to get a gauge of her expression, but still could barely make out the vaguest features of her face.

  “That’s all,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “What?” Andy considered the ancients on the wall.

  Their hardened and bloodied brows gave nothing away.

  “I think they want us to find this traitor,” Pythia said.

  The room was covered in countless scenes. There were possibly thousands of events long lost to history. The faces and names, the deeds and glorious deaths all unknown to him.

  “How can I possibly know the traitor?”

  Andy got to his feet and picked a column. He cast his eyes as high as they would see, and started at the top. The scene featured men with slings and bronze swords hiding among rocks on a hillside. One was flanked by the Infiniteye, and the other featured a heraldic crest, a sea star among a field of upturned crescent moons. Andy turned to the wall surrounding the door, and among the dozens of faces and crests he found the sea star among crescents.

  There he is.

  The hero looked down on him with glowing violet eyes, his body pierced with half a dozen severed claws, the smallest of which was as long as Andy’s arm.

  He must have died in this fight.

  Andy looked back to the column and saw the story of this man’s fight against a caravan of ryle and their servants. These ryle didn’t look like the one he had seen so far. Their brutox servants seemed far more cumbersome. They had spear-like claws and uncharacteristically slender frames.

  The ryle were leading hundreds of chained people before an ambush by the heroes struck. One of the chained at next to a crest, a hand clasping daggers. Andy looked back and saw her, missing an eye, and bound by ropes.

  Further down the column he saw the first hero succumb to his wounds and pass his Argument to the woman.

  She had lost her eye to a rogue bolt, but went on to lead the warriors in another engagement that ultimately freed more Seers. Still further down, she was attended by a doctor who attempted to treat her eye. The column ended.

  Andy found the next one, nearly tripping over Pythia in the process.

  “There.” He spotted the doctor from earlier, bowing before a lord.

  The lord had a jagged symbol carved next to him. Ryle script? The lord’s eyes glowed with a purplish hue, and his symbol was not present on the wall. Further down, the hero without an eye was captured, bound, and thrown into a lake. The doctor watched, crying, from behind a tree.

  It’s the doctor, the doctor is the traitor. Even if he is repentant or was forced to speak by the ryle, he is the traitor.

  Andy jumped ahead to the next column. There! He saw another hero fall prey to what seemed like dizziness, only to be treated by a different doctor.

  “Fear physicians of the eye,” Andy said, remembering a certain painting and walking ahead to anoth
er column.

  “Yes—that is one of their schemes to capture your kind. The most successful,” Pythia whispered, from not far behind.

  “I know the answer—but what do I do with it?” Andy asked.

  She was silent.

  Andy returned to the tall set of double doors that stood beneath the heroes. He looked for the traitor on the wall, but found nothing.

  Is there a switch? Maybe something leads to the locking mechanism from inside the hall? He focused on the mechanism, hoping to see what he saw before at the gate in the cave. What he saw was hundreds of times more complex.

  Andy found a random array of mechanisms and followed it through the walls and floors onto a column. It terminated in a lever that was dangerously close to the face of an ancient brutox fighter.

  “There are levers hidden among the scenes,” He whispered.

  He focused his vision at the same height behind the characters on another column and quickly spotted another lever, this one was right next to a hero’s crest.

  Each is next to an answer. They are all choices. But I must find the lever next to the optometrist.

  Andy rushed from column to column, hunting for the traitor.

  “Are you on to something? You know what to do?” Pythia asked, an excited tremor in her voice.

  “I think so.”

  After a few more minutes they were back down the hall. He couldn’t make out the wall and tall doors from this far away, but he knew what he was looking for.

  “Is this the one?” Pythia asked.

  Andy could discern her features more clearly than before. He was almost sure that she had a smile on her face.

  “Well?”

  “Oh—sorry.” He approached and saw a curious looking character inspecting a prisoner’s eyes. He bent over the prisoner, one hand holding a glass lens, the other behind his back, grasping a concealed dagger.

  “There it is,” Andy said, spotting the lever.