Two Serpents Rise cs-2

by Max Gladstone

  He laid the deck in the center of the silk, and Four touched it with the first finger of her right hand; the Warden beside her followed, and after him another, and then Mal. With each touch, the designs brightened. The players gave shreds of themselves, their hearts, minds, lives, loves, patches of the dust and lightning that formed them.

  The light detached from the deck, and, rising, assumed a woman’s form, half-turned away: a tempting and inviting figure, a face that would be beautiful if Caleb could see it fully. The goddess sprinted beyond her worshippers’ reach, teasing them with gifts withdrawn at their moment of greatest need.

  She hovered over the makeshift table in the wilderness, small and perfect as a porcelain doll. At Andrej’s late in the evening, where kingdoms were won or lost at hazard, she towered, glorious, a green light at the end of a long pier that he might pursue and embrace to drown.

  Caleb dealt the first two cards to each player, and waited as the betting began with Four. He glanced at his cards—two of swords and eight of wands. Just as well. A bad hand was a fine way to open the evening. Ease in.

  The goddess assumed their features as they bet: Mal’s taunting smile, the square solidity of Four’s shoulders, one Warden’s back, another’s delicate wrist, a third’s laugh. Caleb folded, and watched.

  Four won the first hand, with twos full of jacks. Mal had a nine and a seven, and grinned as the power left her. Had she meant to lose the hand, to make the Wardens bold?

  He shuffled and dealt again.

  Time stopped for them, though the blue sky darkened to black and a jeweler’s dusting of stars emerged. The goddess grew, all things in turn to her worshippers, demanding, cajoling, reprimanding. The fire burned so low Caleb had to squint to see his cards.

  Play was a simple matter of calculating odds and finding tells: Four touched her chin when a card turned to her advantage. Eight, jovial and immense, flexed his cards between his fingers when he held a strong hand. Mal was hard to read. She played with reckless abandon, yet seemed to win important hands and lose meaningless ones.

  Once he crossed with her, riding king-queen in swords, and she followed him in a rising spiral of raises. They pressed against each other with the game as a thin cotton sheet between them, disguising nothing though it covered all.

  He won, with a straight to her two pair. She laughed savagely as the goddess ripped her from herself.

  They all had won and lost enough for one night. The game broke, and with a sigh the goddess dissolved, relinquishing the scraps of her divinity to the players.

  Caleb closed his eyes as she entered him. Lightning danced through his blood, burned through his nerves. He would live forever, deeds resounding through legend.

  He opened his eyes as if for the first time in years, so fresh did the world seem, and so raw.

  The cards lay like inert slips of stiff paper on wrinkled silk.

  Silence echoed in the mountain heights—not an absence of noise, but a presence in itself, a medium that endured human intrusion as the sea endures the passage of a ship. Before the ship came, there was the sea; as the ship passes, the sea rolls against the hull. When the ship is gone the sea remains. Without the sea, there could be no ships. Without the ships, there could be no sea, Caleb thought, not knowing what that might mean.

  He listened to the silence above the Drakspine in the dark, beside the dwindling fire.

  The players wandered off. The Wardens relieved the watch or took their rest, and Mal faded into the night while Caleb stowed and purified the cards.

  Searching the campsite after his rituals were done, at first he could not find her. The Wardens stood guard or slept; those who acknowledged him did so with curt, quiet nods. He thought about Four, by the fireside, and about duty.

  He was about to call Mal’s name, when he looked up.

  She sat on the edge of the magisterium stump, her profile lit by campfire and stars. She watched the sky.

  She must have heard him climb the tree’s gnarled roots. But when he stood beside her, hands scraped and arms aching with exertion, she did not look away from the stars and mountains. Couatl slept behind them in a coiled heap, wings furled over winding bodies. Long crocodile-toothed heads rested against cold, pliant scales.

  “I never took you for a religious man,” she said, lost and faint as if she wandered beyond the horizon of a dream.

  “I’m not.” He waited for her to turn, but she did not. “My father’s the last of the Eagle Knights, a priest of the old gods, and I work for the man who kicked his gods to the curb. More religion is the last thing I need in my life.”

  “Yet you follow a goddess.”

  He laughed, but she did not, so he stopped. “I wouldn’t call that a religion.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “The Lady of the Cards,” and he heard the capitals and wished he could unsay them, “lives between the players of a game. She’s their souls mingled, and has no power save over the game. The game ends, and she leaves. Not much of a goddess.”

  “Yet you worship her.”

  “Not really.”

  “You observe her rites and rules in the dealing of a hand or the shuffling of cards. You worship her, sure as a ballplayer sixty years ago worshipped the Twins or Ili of the Bright Sails or Qet Sea-Lord or Exchitli. For you, at least, the card game never ends. You’re an occasional priest—pledged to a goddess who only exists occasionally.”

  “You’re philosophical tonight.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  She faced north, toward a palpable darkness on the horizon, where the curtain of stars faded and failed.

  “Looks like Craftwork,” he said.

  “That’s Seven Leaf Lake. We’ll reach it before noon tomorrow.” She spoke with a measured tone that could have been excitement or fear or anger masquerading as control.

  “Good.” Starshine was a potent source of power for Craft, rawest of all raw materials: starshine filtered through human mind became the stuff of souls, and Craftswomen could use it to accomplish wonders and great blasphemies. Whatever force had seized Seven Leaf, it would be less powerful at noon, with the stars hidden, than at any other time of day.

  “That blot must be miles across. Is Seven Leaf supposed to pull down so much light?”

  “No. The station’s drawing more power than it was designed to use. That narrows the possibilities. Narrows them down to one, actually: someone is inside, working against us.”

  “Not someone,” he said after a while.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Our enemy isn’t faceless, is he? Pushing the station beyond its limits like that takes real Craft.”

  “There are many trained Craftsmen in the world. They’re not all good people.”

  “Sure.” The dark spot bled into the sky, growing as he watched. “But this one took over your station without raising a single alarm. This is an inside job. I’d wager a tenth of my soul you know who did it, or can guess.”

  Her legs dangled over the edge of the stump. Her feet were bare, long and narrow, their bones slender. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “What if I do?”

  “Tell me.” He sat down beside her. Tree frogs sang a senseless throbbing song.

  “I tell you, and you tell the King in Red.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will.”

  “Fine,” Caleb said. “Trust me, or don’t. I’m going to bed.”

  He was about to climb down and abandon her to the stars and sleeping serpents, but she put out a hand and stopped him.

  “Her name is Allesandre Olim,” she said. “Allie. She was the strongest Craftswoman at Seven Leaf. She was eager for the assignment. I guess now we know why.”

  That name floated back to him through time, from tunnels and caves and a lake of lava. “Allesandre. Alaxic’s aide?”

  “Yes.”

  “I met her once. She didn’t seem insane at the time. Precise, dangerous, yes. But this…”

  “I know.” She pointed again
to the corruption of the stars. “But there it is. She was the best Craftswoman at Seven Leaf by far. A genius. No one else in the station could have overcome her, or done this.”

  “Can you reason with her? Talk her down?”

  “I doubt it. She’s gone too far. That blot’s larger than a living Craftswoman could handle without going mad. If people want to use more, they have to die, like your boss.”

  “Maybe she died.”

  “Death takes time. There are classes, support groups, premortem exercises. Allie’s alive, but her mind is a splinter caught in a tornado. She’ll tear through anything in her way, but she has no control.”

  “That doesn’t sound good for us.”

  “We’ll be outmatched when we reach Seven Leaf, and overpowered.”

  “So we call for backup. The King in Red’s forces can be here by morning.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You heard your boss, in that meeting. If I succeed, Heartstone’s safe. I’m safe. If I call your boss, I admit failure, and everything that goes with it. He already blames us for this mess. He’ll take his revenge, scour Heartstone from the foundations up. None of my friends and colleagues will survive.” She tore strips of moss from the trunk, and threw them over the side: centuries of decomposition undone by a fingernail scrape. “It’s better this way. I succeed, if I can. If not, the King in Red and his armies can be here in hours, and ride to the city’s rescue.”

  “But you’ll die.”

  “I don’t care,” she said in a monotone as striking as a scream.

  “I do.”

  In the dark her eyes deepened.

  “Yes,” she said. “You do.”

  “You’re not worried for yourself. You’re worried for me.”

  “Worried,” she said, and laughed at the word’s poverty. “The Wardens knew what they were getting into when they took the job. You heard Four down there. I know why I’m here. But you didn’t ask for this.”

  “I knew what I was getting into.”

  “Whatever you thought chasing me would bring you, this is worse. I don’t know what weapons Allie will throw against us. The Wardens are scared. I’m scared. You’ve never been in a war of Craft before. You’ll die, if you’re lucky, and dying hurts.” She looked away from him. “I don’t want you to die, Caleb.”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised by that.”

  The uncertainty left her voice. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have let you come.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Oh,” she said with a small laugh like bells. “Can you.”

  Blue flames flashed from her eyes, and he froze. His hand refused to twitch, his chest to rise or fall. Sweat stung his eyes, but he could not blink.

  “This is a taste of what she’ll use against us tomorrow,” she said. “You see why I’m worried. I want to protect you. If I must, I’ll knock you out and leave you here, warded and sleeping, until this is settled.”

  His starved lungs spasmed. Time beat slow. Air pressed against his palms: air subtly ribbed like the surface of a plank of wood. Her Craft had bound him in strong cords woven spider-fine.

  But he could feel the cords. What he could feel, he could touch, and what he could touch, he could seize.

  A chill spread through his scars. He closed his fists, and the paralysis broke. He held two fistfuls of stinging nettle, but the relief of being able to blink and breathe was so strong he forgot the pain. Her Craft glimmered in his grip.

  He looked up. Mal had recoiled into a fighting crouch, her eyes wide.

  “What” was all she could manage.

  “Well,” he said, “did you expect me to let you strangle me for my own good?”

  “You,” she said when she tried to speak again.

  “I’m coming with you. I might die. I’m okay with that.” As he spoke he realized he was not lying. “I like the thought of standing beside you. Whatever happens.”

  “You,” she repeated.

  “I have your Craft, yes.” The scars on his fingers bent the blue light of her power like lenses. “I didn’t think you would be surprised. I’ve done it before. Remember the bar? Dancing?”

  “You’re glowing.”

  He looked down. Cerulean lines twisted about his torso. They shone through his shirt like moonlight. “That’s a hell of a lot of power to use just to knock someone out.”

  “Those aren’t Craftsmen’s glyphs.”

  “They aren’t glyphs at all. Like I said at Andrej’s. They’re scars.”

  “High Quechal.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re an Eagle Knight.” He heard awe in her voice, and it sickened him. “Your father—”

  “My father’s an Eagle Knight, and a priest, and a terrorist, and a bunch of other things I’m not.” He unbuttoned his shirt. Scars glowed from his skin, curving and intricate: Qet Sea-Lord bleeding the oceans, Exchitli the Sun falling into the Serpents’ fangs to seal the bargain that made the world. The Hero Twins blazed above his heart.

  He released her Craft.

  Darkness bloomed purple. He closed his eyes, and waited alone in the dark for a slow count of ten. A warm pressure settled against his chest. He recognized her calloused fingers, and the hiss of her breath when she touched his scars.

  “Eagle Knights,” he said with eyes still closed, “used the gods’ power in battle. My father’s the last. When he was ten, he knelt at the peak of the pyramid where I work today, and carved the symbols of their order into his skin. Last step of the initiation. Some of his blood’s still in the altar stone there.”

  “Gods, Caleb. What did he do to you?”

  “When I was ten.” He opened his eyes. Her face was inches from his, but distant as the moon’s. “Well—” He tried again, and again stopped. Words laced with acid formed in his stomach. They hurt rising to his tongue. “When I was ten, he left my mother and me. But he didn’t want me unprotected.” He grimaced. “So he gave me the most powerful gift he knew. He drugged me at our last dinner, and came for me in the night with a black glass knife. Mom found us as he was finishing. Blood everywhere.”

  One of her hands clutched his shoulder; the other cupped his ribs. She did not draw him to her, but her strength creaked his bones.

  “He thinks he did right by me. I think he’s a fanatic. But the scars give me strength. They let me touch Craft, grab it, bend it. I’ve never liked to use them in my work, because I didn’t want to owe him anything. Until now. Until you. My father’s madness has never brought me anything, but at least it’ll let me stand at your side.”

  The river rolled south. Sentinel stars stared down.

  “Say something,” he whispered.

  She could have walked away, as she had done so many times before, as he might have himself under the same circumstances. He wouldn’t have blamed her. Worse was for her to stand, hands on his shoulders, watching him with that wasteland expression between concern and fascination and terror, as if he were a traffic accident or a shark-gnawed carcass on a beach.

  But terror receded, and fascination. Her mouth closed, her shoulders sagged, the corners of her eyes and her grip on his body grew soft. He saw himself in her eyes; she saw herself in his.

  A shell closed over that silence, sealing it away. She stepped back, cupped her chin in her hand, and said, “I have an idea.”

  26

  Morning was cold and overcast, the trees mist-haunted. A caul of fog covered river and earth, transforming the black magisterium stump into a dour promontory. Couatl woke and stretched their wings.

  The Wardens moved in simple, straight lines, breaking camp, packing tents and bedrolls. They hung weapons near their saddles: wicked hooks on long chain, barbed javelins, automatic crossbows, razor-edged silver discs of many sizes. The weapons whispered sharp words when Caleb drew near: flay, flense, shatter, twist.

  Even Mal was grim this morning. “Are you ready?” he asked her as they settled into the gondola. She shook hers
elf back from a distant lonely place to answer: “As ever.” She gripped his arm through his jacket. He set his hand on hers; at an unseen signal from Four, the Couatl surged skyward.

  The morning pall did not retreat before the rising sun. The shadow dome, their destination, grew larger on the horizon with each wingbeat.

  All morning they traveled up a narrow ravine between snow-edged ridges. Two plates of the earth’s crust jutted against each other here, buckling and crushing down slow generations. A river ran along the cleft, fed by the falls from Seven Leaf Lake, and their flight traced the river to its source.

  The shadow-dome was miles across and just as high. It curved immense ahead, surface mottled like different oils mixed. Dark currents twitched within as they approached. “Why does it look different colors?” Caleb asked.

  “Allie can’t watch everywhere at once,” Mal said. “She sees her world in pieces. When she peers at a section of the dome, it darkens.”

  “You still think she’s the one we’re fighting?”

  “Yes.”

  After a pause, he asked: “Why do they move randomly? It’d be safer for her to have a system.”

  “She probably thinks she does. Her mind’s warped, trying to contain all that power.”

  “So we’re fighting a mad, almost omnipotent sorceress.”

  “Yes.”

  “Great.”

  “For what it’s worth, madness tends to be a disadvantage in this sort of thing.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  She sat in fierce profile, watching.

  Caleb pondered his current predicament. A beast sacred and profane bore him north, with a beautiful, terrifying woman, to defend a city wonderful in its horrors. He lived in contradiction, and in fear.