by J. F. Penn
He had to be sure.
He brushed away the remaining dead snakes that hung on the edge of the sarcophagus, and then scraped the stone free of algae along the top half. There were indentations along the edge, carvings reminiscent of cuneiform and underneath, what looked like Greek.
He scraped the pelagic sediment from the front of the sarcophagus, needing to be sure. The Roshite scriptures told of a seal that would unlock the burial chamber. He pulled a small ebony box from his pocket, carved with the whorls of a coiled snake. It had been passed down for generations, believed to be the seal. He opened it and lifted the amulet out, checking the carvings on it with those on the sarcophagus.
His heart beat faster and a smile spread across his lips as he found, with relief, that they were the same. This was indeed the resting place of the Serpent of Serpents.
But as he brushed away the remnants of the deep, Sam found that there were seven indentations in the stone, each with a separate carving.
He had only one seal. So where were the others?
He headed inside to call Krait. It was time for the next phase.
BBC News Report
The spate of extreme weather conditions across the globe continues this morning. The most powerful hurricane to hit Florida in living memory made landfall last night, leaving hundreds of thousands with no power and several hundred people dead.
In Taiwan, a super-typhoon lashed the coast, destroying property and causing chaos at airports.
In New Zealand, aftershocks continue to pummel the North Island after an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale occurred deep off the northeast coast.
In Ecuador, a double earthquake has left thousands dead and many thousands more homeless as aid workers scramble to reach those affected. And in Great Britain, more than one hundred flood warnings have been issued as torrential rain and flooding pummel the country.
Some are taking the strange weather as a sign of the times, pointing to the imminent End of Days. Pastor Louis Masterson of Tallahassee stood on the steps of his church in ankle-deep water, palm trees whipping about his head, as he spoke to reporters. "As Luke's gospel, chapter twenty-one says, there will be strange signs in the sun, moon and stars. And here on earth, the nations will be in turmoil perplexed by roaring seas and strange tides."
As politicians call for calm, scientists explain the confluence of freak weather events as being due to a series of super moons combined with an incredibly rare lunar cycle.
7
Ouidah, Benin.
Morgan shielded her eyes against the bright sun as the zemidjan motorbike-taxi sped through the outer limits of the city. Tamarind and jasmine trees lined the streets. People walked along the dusty roadside, deftly avoiding the motorbikes and stray dogs as they headed for the central market. Only a few days ago, she and Jake had been back in Africa, further east in Rwanda, and now they were both in this sliver of a country in French West Africa.
Here in Ouidah, the landscape was marked by a dark past. The oldest area of the city was filled with the elegantly crumbling architecture of empire, the relics of wealth built on the backs of slaves. They passed an eighteenth-century Portuguese fort built to administer the slave trade, and several grand Afro-Brazilian houses built by emancipated slaves. Those lucky few who made it back from the Americas.
"This was once the Route des Esclaves, the Slave Route," the taxi driver explained, clearly used to ferrying tourists around. "You can still trace the final walk made by thousands of slaves to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. There was once a Tree of Forgetfulness here. The slaves would walk around it nine times in order to forget their old life and family, so they could be happy in their new life across the ocean."
They drove on to a desolate beach fringed by palm trees on the edge of the Gulf of Guinea, where a gigantic arch stood in shades of ochre, black and white.
"The Door of No Return," the driver said. "The last stage of the journey to slavery."
Morgan felt an urge to look at the monument more closely. "Can we stop a minute?" she asked.
"Of course, it is a sacred place."
The driver pulled over and waited as they got out. Jake wandered away, silent with his own thoughts. Morgan took off her shoes to feel the sand under her feet as those chained would have done before boarding the ships. So many died on the way over, the rest dying across the ocean, far from those they loved. She looked up. On the top of the arch, chained slaves marched towards stylized ships with heads bowed. On each side of the memorial, voodoo gods stood to welcome the souls of dead slaves back to their homeland.
Morgan looked out at the ocean, the waves turquoise in the shallows and darkening towards the horizon. The air smelled of salt and fish caught and processed further down the coast. Tears pricked at her eyes as she considered the many thousands taken from here to bleed and die on foreign soil.
Of course, it was unthinkable to unravel how history might have panned out if the evil of the slave trade had not happened at all. Like much of man's inhumanity to man, once events had been set in motion, the resulting effects echoed through history. The Shoah – the Holocaust – had the same resonance for Jews. Without Hitler's abomination, would there be a modern state of Israel? Without the slave trade, would there have been a black President of the USA?
Morgan felt an echo of her own history here, a people uprooted from their homes and treated like animals across the seas. But when she returned to Israel, she felt it was her home. She wondered how the diaspora Beninese felt when they came back generations after slavers took their ancestors to the Americas. There had also been native people here who were complicit in the slave trade, tribes raiding other tribes for slaves to trade with the westerners. Like the capos, Jews who helped guard the death camps. Just as in the rest of life, there was good and bad on both sides. No race came out with completely clean hands.
One of the resulting effects of the slave trade had been the transplant of voodoo beliefs to Haiti and Brazil, and Morgan felt the throb of those vibrant cultures here. Voodoo was the state religion in Benin, followed by sixty percent of Beninese. In Haitian voodoo, Damballa, the creator loa, was represented by a serpent and there were water loa in serpentine form. Morgan wondered what they would find in the city of Ouidah.
They got back in the taxi and drove into the town. They passed Zomachi, the Remembrance monument, built in 1998, part of a ceremony to ask forgiveness from God for the sins of the ancestors who aided in slavery.
Eventually, they stopped on the edge of the market. Morgan leaned out as they passed a voodoo stall to look at a pile of ritual objects. The air reeked of decomposition and a musty dryness. She tried to work out what she was looking at.
Suddenly, Jake screwed up his nose. "Oh, no. That's a hippo foot. Gross."
Once she realized they were animal parts, Morgan could make out a dog's head, what looked like a pickled chameleon, and a crocodile snout, all used in voodoo ceremonies.
"But no snakes," Morgan noted. "We have to go further."
They finally arrived outside the entrance of the Python temple. Morgan had been expecting something grand and ornate, like the Indian Hindu temples, but the bricks were plain, a muted pink with white panels. Temple des pythons was painted in blue and red over the metal doorway, and she could see simple huts with straw roofs inside the compound.
The driver pointed behind the temple to trees beyond.
"Hundreds of years ago, King Kpassè of Ouidah was defeated in a war and he fled to the forest to escape those who came to capture him. The Royal Pythons saved him and in their honor, he built the temple here and another beyond in the forest. The python represents the voodoo god Dan, and people here will not kill a python for fear of bad luck striking them." He smiled and waved them towards the gate. "I will leave you here. May the blessings of the Great Serpent be upon you."
Morgan and Jake paid the driver and walked into the compound. Three huts with painted doors flanked a central open area, each door propped open to provide
a glimpse of the snake pits within. In the center was a sacred Iroko tree, under which a couple of pythons curled, languid in the heat of the day. A man sat in the shade of one of the huts, relaxing under a straw awning that kept the strong sun off his head.
And off the python curled around his shoulders.
He looked up at them with curiosity in his eyes as they entered, but he didn't move. He just nodded and Morgan returned his greeting with a smile. The man fingered a set of Fa beads, threads of eight wooden disks, just as a Catholic would count his rosary. But Morgan knew that the Fa beads could be cast and the positions read to interpret the will of the gods. Mediums channeled spirits here in Benin, and possession was almost normal during worship. The supernatural was part of everyday life.
They walked into one of the round huts. It was dark and smelled musty. The sound of slithering over straw came from the pit in the center. As Morgan's eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see the pythons that lay on the steps around them, a few on the top levels and more in the pit below.
Jake stayed near the door.
"They look pretty chilled," he said. "So what exactly are we looking for?"
"Something that looks similar to the image from the Ishtar Gate." Morgan walked around the outside of the pit, her hands running over the smooth walls. Jake walked in the opposite direction, both of them checking for any hidden niches. But the walls were plain and smooth. There wasn't even an altar. Perhaps they offered food directly to the snakes, Morgan thought, glancing into the pit.
She wasn't scared of snakes particularly, but she had no desire to get any closer if they didn't have to. They walked back round to the doorway.
"Perhaps we should –"
Morgan's words were interrupted by voices shouting from outside.
A gunshot. A sharp howl of grief.
They ducked down and Morgan looked around the edge of the door. In the courtyard, four men stood with guns trained on the old man who sat in the shade. One of the pythons lay unmoving before him, blood seeping from its body.
The leader of the group was the man with the snake tattoo she had seen in Berlin.
And there was no way out of this room.
"Where are they?" the tattooed man said, his voice brusque as he addressed the old Beninese in English, then in French. "Qui est là? Où se cachent-ils?"
"He's asking where we're hiding," Morgan breathed in Jake's ear, and she saw his own concern matched hers.
They only had seconds before they were discovered.
A snake caught Morgan's eye as it moved within the deep pit, writhing over the others. There were holes in the sides of the pit, cool alcoves for the serpents to hide in when the sun became too high.
"Are you really sure that you're over your snake phobia?" Morgan whispered.
Jake followed her gaze to the pit of snakes. "I guess we're going to find out."
They heard the old man talking as they clambered down into the pit. "Je pourrais savoir. Je pourrais pas savoir." I might know. I might not know.
Then the sound of the Fa beads cast upon the earth. Morgan realized that he was asking the spirits for direction.
In her concentration on the sounds, she narrowly missed putting her hand on a python's head. It hissed, flickering its tongue at her, tasting her passing.
Jake placed his feet gingerly between the coils, heading for one of the alcoves out of direct sight of the door. He seemed to be doing OK so far, but then he wasn't lying in a confined space with the snakes yet. Morgan was acutely aware that he had almost died the last time she'd gotten him involved with snakes. She hoped he was right about being healed in New York.
A moment later, the old man's voice came again.
"Il n'y a personne pour vous ici."
There's no one here for you. He wasn't giving away their position, but it was a small compound and the men could still find them soon enough.
Moving slowly so as not to disturb the snakes too much, Morgan knelt down and then lowered herself to lie flat, curling around the serpents that were already down there. Jake was in the alcove next to her, his face white, sweat pooling on his brow. His eyes were wide. All the hallmarks of fear.
"They're pythons," she whispered. "They shouldn't bite you."
"Just squeeze me to death." He mouthed the words and Morgan smiled. He was clearly managing.
They both lay flat, easing into the alcove as the sound of men searching came from above. Morgan heard footsteps. Then the sound of breathing from the lip of the pit.
8
Morgan imagined the man looking down into the pit. If he caught a glimpse of them, they'd be easy targets.
And if Jake freaked out, they'd be caught for sure.
"A lot of damn snakes, but there's no one in here," the man called from above, his voice getting softer as he walked away towards the door. Then the scuff of boots as another man joined him.
"Samael will be properly mad if we don't find the second seal. It must be here somewhere."
Morgan frowned. The second seal? That implied they had one already and there were more to be found.
"Il y a un autre temple." The voice of the old Beninese filtered down from the courtyard. "Dans la foret. Là bas."
He must be pointing them to another temple in the forest behind. She and Jake would have time to escape if the men went looking.
Moments later, the footsteps receded. The men were gone.
Morgan and Jake slid from their respective alcoves. Jake wasn't sweating any longer, and he even stroked one of the pythons with a bemused smile as they clambered out. Morgan wondered anew what had happened in New York, but it seemed that whatever it was, it had worked. And for that, she was grateful.
They tiptoed to the edge of the hut and peered around. The courtyard was empty except for the old man sitting in the shade, looking down at the Fa beads in the dirt in front of him.
He turned his head and beckoned to them, the other hand still stroking the python that curled around his shoulders.
"Les esprits me disent de vous montrer quelque chose. Viens."
"He says that the spirits have told him to show us something," Morgan said, as they walked back across the courtyard.
The old man pulled himself upright and lifted the serpent from his shoulders, laying it gently on the ground in the shade. He shuffled ahead of them to a scruffy prefab building, what looked like a maintenance shed in the corner of the compound.
He pushed open the door and beckoned them again.
They followed him in and he pointed to the corner of the dirt-floored hut.
"Creuser," he said, motioning a digging action.
Jake raised an eyebrow at Morgan and picked up a spade that stood propped against the wall. After digging down a few inches, he struck metal. He looked up for permission. The old man nodded.
Jake dug his fingers into the soft dirt and pulled out a metal box. Something rattled inside.
He opened it to reveal a round stone carved with intertwined snakes.
"The seal?" Morgan lifted it out, judging its weight. It matched the markings from the Ishtar Gate. It was just three inches in diameter, the perfect size for sealing important documents … or a sarcophagus.
"Les esprits disent que vous devez prendre cela et aller." The old man glanced behind him at the forest. "Maintenant, et rapidement."
The spirits say to take this and go. Morgan turned to him, the seal in her hand.
"Are you sure? This must be precious to your people."
The man must have understood her expression, if not her words. He put one hand on her head as if to bless her, and with the other, he curled her hand around the seal.
"We should get going," Jake said. "The others will be out of that forest soon if they can't find anything."
"Thank you," Morgan said as they passed the old man at the doorway.
He nodded. As they walked away, Morgan heard him whisper, "Ne me remerciez pas, ma fille. Le sceau est une malédiction et non une bénédiction."
As they left the compound, Jake turned to Morgan.
"What did he say as we left?"
She clutched the seal more tightly as they hailed a taxi. "He said not to thank him. The seal is a curse, not a blessing." She looked up at Jake. "I think this is only the beginning."
As soon as they reached the airport, Morgan and Jake found a quiet corner and called ARKANE HQ.
As they recounted what had happened at the temple and the man's words, Marietti paled, the color draining from his cheeks. "The Seven Seals. It must be."
"What do you mean?" Jake asked.
"The book of Revelation talks of Seven Seals at the End Times," Morgan said. "As each one is broken, they release terrible things upon the earth, including the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Most would say they are allegory, but perhaps they are actually real."
"The seals open the sarcophagus," Marietti said, his voice faint. "The rumored resting place of the Great Serpent, bound for a thousand years."
"But all seven are needed to open it, right?" Jake noted. "So let's get the rest and destroy them before this serpent crew have them all."
Marietti nodded, and then shook his head as if to clear it. "You're right. I was forgetting myself. For so long, we have tried to keep these prophecies from coming true. But in the end, we are but pawns in the long game of eternity. Martin, do you have any leads on the other seals?"
Martin tapped away on the screen. "I've got the database running now, looking for images from ancient civilizations that relate to serpent gods. There are so many, so I'll need to narrow them down."
"Start with those that are closer to Babylon physically," Morgan said. "The Australian Aboriginal people have a creation snake but I can't think that a seal would be hidden so far, millennia before the continent was discovered by westerners."