The Serpent in Shadow

Malika, Queen of Meru, lay coiled on the heaped cushions of her bedchamber, and she waited for night to fall. Curtains screened away the light of the fading day, and she was glad of it. She had been born a woman, but now she was something other, half-changed in her shape, and her blackened eyes no longer loved the light of the sun. It was Utuzan who had unmade her when she tried to defy him. He had stayed his hand from killing, and instead he had twisted her mortal form into the travesty she now wore.

From her waist upwards she was as a woman, save with skin as pale as frost. Below she was a tremendous serpent, pearl-scaled and strong as iron. Utuzan, the Black Flame, had transformed her when she turned upon him, and now she bided her time. She awaited the night, she awaited the moment, and she believed it had come.

Lanterns always burned in her darkened chambers, day and night. She watched as the last light of day blazed down beyond her walls, sun setting in fire over the endless desert, and then the chill of night came creeping in on silent feet. She heard insects sing in her garden outside, frogs calling out in the waters of the pool, and she waited, for she knew her lover would soon arise.

It was not long before the waters began to move, and she heard them surge and wash against the alabaster sides of the pool. She slithered to the archway and flung back the curtains, glad to feel the breath of night on her skin. She tasted the smoke and life of the city of Shendim on her tongue, she scented blood and the salt of skin, the mud and rot of the river, and then she saw the waters move again.

The lilies parted and he rose from his cool place of shelter below. Kardan, once a great slave-warrior of Ashem, now a beast like her, made into something other than human by the sorcery of Utuzan. Merged with a terrible crocodile spirit, he was a hulking shape of muscle and scales, his head massive and heavy, teeth like daggers in his jaws. His tail churned the waters as he came to the steps and climbed up from the pool.

The skin of his head and body was marked now by scars, the scales cracked and malformed where they had healed over. He had done battle with a hideous iron devil out of legends, and had nearly died of it. Utuzan had sent her beloved back on a slow barge, almost beaten to death, and she laid that as another crime she would have vengeance for.

She rose to meet him, pressed her body against his, feeling the strength in his iron muscles, the sheathing of his scaled armor. He had recovered from his wounds, and now came the moment she had awaited. “My warrior, you are whole again, and now we must begin the work I have sought.” She stroked his head. “Word has come that Utuzan has been laid low by some fell venom, and even now he lies weak and unmoving. Shedjia has gone to her master to try and revive him, but she has not his wisdom or his arts. She will not be able to save him. He lies senseless, as one dead, and now we shall go forth and I will fell him with my own two hands.” She held up her white hands, the nails long and black as obsidian. “Tonight we leave for the city of Mutun, and we must reach there swiftly, for I would slay the Black Flame.”

They embraced there in the dark, and she felt her blood quicken as it always did when he touched her. She drew him down to her bed, coiling herself around his strange, bestial body. They would take a moment before they left the city. Before their mission of death, a moment for the love that arises between flesh.

o0o

Utuzan lay on his canopied bed in the high hall of the palace, and the cool breezes of dawn blew through the silken hangings. It had been days since his awakening, and yet he was still weak in his body. He felt as though he were worn away, thin as threadbare woven flax. The strength of his mind and his spirit burned unabated, but the weeks he had lain as a dead man had left him without strength. Even when he had risen from his long sleep within his tomb, he has not felt such an ebbing of his vitality.

He rose, carefully, and made his way to the balcony where he could look down on the waters around the island. The dark, muddied surface of the Nahar was thick with riverboats, and more gathering. He was mustering his armies to invade the north, and this time he would move them on barges so they might go more quickly. He knew word of his conquests would travel swift as any falcon, and he would come as close behind the warnings as a shadow.

Shedjia came into the light, coming to stand close to him. “You still need rest, master. Let me bring you something to eat.”

He waved her back. “Your concern is valued, but not needed. I will see to my own recovery. I was fool enough to be stung by the queen of High Ashem, I shall pay the costs of it.” He looked down at the river, the thin green lands that surrounded it, and the desert beyond, hard and barren. “Such a strange country. To live upon the sufferance of the river, within such a narrow compass.” He turned to the table beside the window, where a map of the lands was spread out in the growing light, the edges of the papyrus stirring in the wind.

“Ashem,” he said, touching the shapes with his finger. “High Ashem here in the uplands, the larger kingdom of Greater Ashem in the north beside the sea.” He turned to her. “Have you ever seen the sea?”

“I have not, master. I have lived all my life in the waste lands.” She looked at the map as well, the names of places she had never seen, only heard tell.

“You will see it soon. We will take the cities that dream there beside this new sea, and we will forge this land into one kingdom. An empire fit for me to rule.” He looked at the place marked in the desert lands to the north and east. Kadesh. “And I shall deal with these barbarians as well. They can be useful. Barbarians are men who have not forgotten the taste of blood.”

“The nomads grow restless, here in the heart of a civilized land,” Shedjia said. “They will be glad to go to war again.”

“It will not be easy for them, this time,” he said. “The land northward is cut by many river channels. Horses will not take us everywhere we must go.” He touched the map. “The fortress of Hamun, here, will be our first stroke, and we must approach by water. The scouts and informers have told me the land north of it is swampland, the land west desolate and rocky, all but impassable. The fortress guards the river passage, and so we must take it.”

“Your power will be equal to it,” she said. “It will break.” She turned as a servant bowed in the doorway, and then she went and listened to a whispered message. Utuzan waited.

She came to him and bowed. “There are official ambassadors from Greater Ashem here, and they await you.”

“Indeed,” he said. “I had wondered when they would come. I will hear what they have to say, and then my judgment shall be made.” He beckoned. “Come, help me to gird myself.”

o0o

Slaves bore Utuzan down to the throne hall on a sedan chair draped with silks and golden cloth. He wore a hooded black robe, a veil drawn across his face so they would not see his features. Once the chair was set on the polished floor, the slaves left, and only Shedjia saw him rise with shaking hands and climb to the throne with a slowness that worried her. In his hand the Heart of Anatu glowed with strength, but that strength was not his now. Now he moved like an aged man.

He seated himself on the golden throne of Ashem and twitched his robe around his legs. The Heart pulsed on his grasp, half-hidden in folds of black cloth, and a single white hand grasped the arm of the seat. He nodded and beckoned. “Send them in to me.”

Shedjia called for the guards and nomads entered the room, standing on the edges of the room with hands on their swords. Slaves came and scattered flower petals on the floor and sprinkled incense in the braziers, and then she faded back into the shadows and watched as Ashemi guards in golden armor brought in the embassy from the northern kingdom.

When she saw them, she thought there had been some lie, for they were not Ashemi. There were two men, and they had pale olive skins and dark eyes, but they wore bright iron armor over red tunics, and their sandals were laced high and studded with brass. They carried plumed helms under their arms and had short swords laced at their sides, and they looked around the room with an arrogance that angered her. These were Varonans, she realized, and though she had never seen them before, she had heard stories of them. They were a warrior people from across the sea to the north. They had conquered many nations, and their armies were feared.

They made perfunctory bows toward the throne when they were halted well away from where Utuzan sat. “Apologies, we had thought to greet King Khumu, but now we find another upon his throne.” The man smiled with tight lips. “I am Sectus Amilius, ambassador from Praetor Dekenius, who has taken over protection and administration of Greater Ashem. Who might I have the honor to address?”

Utuzan breathed silently, the gauze over his face fluttering. “Speak what you have been sent to speak, and I shall listen,” he said. His voice sounded hollow, as though it came up from beneath the earth.

Sectus looked displeased, but he nodded. Shedjia found it strange to see men with clean-shaved faces. It made them look unpleasant.

“I have been sent by the Praetor to say that he will gladly extend his protectorate over all of Ashem, and that such protection would be wise to accept.” He drew forth a folded parchment. “I have here a written agreement for the lawful ruler of High Ashem to sign in accord with this, so that the alliance may be codified into law, so none may doubt it.”

“Lies,” Utuzan said. “You come to spy and to threaten war. You have already sent messengers back to your master with news of the preparations for war you have seen here. Those messages will not be given.” He gestured with his white hand, and bloodied nomads came forward and cast three severed heads upon the floor.

The man Sectus looked down at them and at last a shadow of fear passed over his face. “There was no cause for such treachery, or such violence. We are ambassadors, not sent for anything save to deliver –”

“Enough,” Utuzan said, and he gestured again. Now the nomad guards converged on the Varonans, and steel flashed in the lantern light. The guards seized one man, but Sectus broke free and rushed the throne, his short iron sword in his hand. He hurled his helmet against the men who tried to catch him, and he flung himself toward Utuzan.

Shedjia flickered through the shadows and was upon him, but before she could strike, the Black Flame surged to his feet, and his white hand caught Sectus by the throat. Men stared as Utuzan drew up to his full height, lifting the man off his feet effortlessly. The short sword struck and splintered against Utuzan’s pale arm, sparks trailing from the place of the blow.

“You come in your arrogance,” Utuzan said. “You come bearing commands from one who does not wear the name of king, and does not even know who he opposes. You think it does not matter, that your strength will make you master of the world, but your hour is ill-chosen.” He held up the Heart of Anatu, and the blazing red light set fire to his veil and burned it away, revealing his terrible white face. The Varonan tried to scream, but his throat was caught in an iron grasp.

Utuzan spoke a word that made the mortals in the room shy away as though it hurt them, and then Sectus’s eyes exploded in a spray of black blood and streaming fluids. He screamed, and even as he did his throat filled with blood and it vomited forth from his mouth. The crimson did not spatter the floor or pour down over his armor; instead it flowed through the air like a river and poured into Utuzan’s mouth.

The other ambassador cried out as he saw his companion devoured. The flesh drew away from his bones, leaving his skin loose and hollow. He shrank and collapsed in upon himself, his struggles ceasing, until he hung like a skin sack from Utuzan’s grasp. The Black Flame flung him down to the floor, where he rattled like dry sticks. Shedjia gazed upon him and was glad, for she saw his own vitality being restored, his strength flaming again within him.

“Now your master shall learn who he crosses swords with, but he shall not learn it from you. I will teach him fear with my hands at his throat, when my armies crush his walls and cast him down in fire.” Utuzan’s voice had grown, and Shedjia felt it shudder in the stone beneath her feet again. He held forth his hand and beckoned, and the nomads dragged the other Varonan forward, heedless of his screams.

o0o

It was the deep of night when Utuzan walked again in the dark halls of the palace. He felt again his old strength, returning once more from the shadowlands where his spirit had walked while his body lay near death. He knew the stolen life he had fed on would be a trap if he was not wary of it, for such strength would fade, and leave only the craving for more. If he used such ways too often he would become as a demon – a devourer of life and nothing else. Now he felt again the wind from the riverlands and smelled the decay of leaf and flesh, and he understood, in a small way, how men might love this land.

When he came to his bedchamber he went and stood at the balcony, looked forth into the dark where thousands of fires kindled below, and he wondered what he might do to transform this place. Once his powers were not needed for conquest, might he loose the rains upon this barren land? Might he cause the earth spirits to create lakes and new rivers, or even a new inland sea, as of old. The Sea of Xis might live again under his hand. He did not know what might limit the reach of his power. He could create this land anew.

He heard the shift in the shadows behind him, and he turned slowly, knowing what it must be. He saw the pallid, beautiful face, and then Malika emerged from the shadows. The rising moonlight glimmered on her white skin and her opalescent scales, and it pleased him to see her. He could have killed her, could have worked some more terrible punishment for her attempt on his life. But she was only a child to one so old as he, and had no more chance to slay him than if she had been a newborn. He had been lenient.

“My lord,” she said, and he heard the coldness in her voice. She moved closer, her serpentine body sliding over the stone floor. “I heard terrible news that you had been laid low. Glad I am to find that it was not true.”

“Indeed, you hastened to my side, to be certain I was dead.” He spoke without rancor. “You thought to find me weakened, and I am, yet I am not so weak that you may complete my destruction.” He smiled. “Those far greater than you have sought my life since before your race was born. Do not be foolish.”

Slowly, deliberate, Malika revealed a black iron blade in her hand. “It’s true, I did come here seeking to make certain you did not arise again. How could I not bear that wish, when you twisted me into this mockery of what I was? I would see you dead, for though you speak sweet words you are a usurper, and a thing of evil. You come like a revenant from a time long-dead, and you would work your will upon the world that has no need of you. I came to end your cruel game of conquest, and though I find you restored, I will not grovel and beg. Still I will strike you down if I can.”

“You cannot,” he said. “But I see your courage, and I know you shall try. I shall give you one stroke. Only one.”

“I shall have two,” she said, and she surged forward, her coils looping over themselves as she swept toward him. He lifted his hand to ward off her futile blow, but instead she caught his left arm in her lashing tail and wrenched with all the strength he had given her. Caught by surprise, he stumbled and the Heart of Anatu fell from his grasp and rang upon the floor, flaring bright as a star.

“There is my first blow,” she snarled. “And my second is this – that I did not come alone!” She bore him back with her weight until they were both pressed against the stone parapet, leaning out over the darkness below, and in the moment came the sound of an unearthly bellow from the river.

o0o

Shedjia was close to the river, keeping watch for spies and others who might lurk in the darkness near the gathered riverboats. She heard screams, and then men were shouting and running. The sound of splintering wood came through the dark, and then she heard something bellow like a demon from a cursed age. She ran through the narrow ways beside the harbor until she came free into the wide riverfront, lights reflecting on the sullen waters.

She saw something heave beneath the surface, and then one of the war-barges rose up as though lifted by the hand of a god. Wood planks cracked and split apart, and then the entire length of the boat broke in two and a blackened form burst through, scattering splinters and burning lamp oil across the surface of the river. By the light of rising fire she saw the inhuman, ferocious shape of Kardan – the man who had been a warrior unmatched, then made into a living engine of war.

Now he rose from the river, water sheeting from him, firelight reflecting in his golden eyes. He opened a mouth filled with deadly teeth and bellowed, the sound so loud it made the waters tremble and ripple around him. His tail threshed side to side and swept a boat aside, crashing it into another with a sound like an axe-blow.

Men cast spears at him, showered him with arrows, but his iron-hard scales turned aside the bronze points easily, and he turned to rush upon them, sending them fleeing. Men fell into the waters and he caught them. Shedjia heard them scream as the great, clawed hands rent them apart and threw the pieces aside. Blood mixed with the sullenly burning oil on the muddy waters of the Nahar.

Shedjia slid her hands down over her arms and drew forth the smoky, insubstantial daggers that now lived inside her skin. Kardan had been an unstoppable warrior before he had been gifted with strength and teeth and almost invulnerable skin. Now he was a creation of dark magic and elder spirits from beyond the dark – and now she must face him and stop him.

She ran down the long shore and then leaped onto the deck of a ship. They were all moored close together, and so as Kardan wrecked them one after another, leaving fire and blood in his wake, she approached him from the other side, leaping unseen from ship to ship.

When she was near to him she hesitated. She had nursed him when Nokh had wounded him almost to death. She had fed him and comforted him while he lay weak and broken. Now he had turned upon her master, and now she had to stop him, and yet she paused, unwilling to simply strike. She wanted to call out to him, but she knew he could not speak, could not answer her. She leaped closer, saw the water sluice from his broad, scaled back. He roared as he tore through wood and bone, and she had to choose.

Shedjia shouted aloud a poisoned word in the ancient speech, and she saw him recoil from the power of it, saw his skin blacken and the water steam on his flesh where her power had heated it. He turned to face her, and she saw one of his fast golden eyes, and then she gathered her legs beneath her, and she leaped like a hunting lioness.

o0o

Utuzan caught Malika’s arm as the knife descended, and he held her back with his ancient strength. “Is this what you choose?” he hissed. “To be a queen no more? To cast away all that you could have been?

“To be a slave queen?” she snarled in his face. “To be a monster made to serve you? Rather would I die and be done with it all. Rather would I have died a thousand times than fall beneath your sway!” She brought her coils around him, crushing him with terrible strength, and he knew he could not match her. He saw the Heart pulsing where it lay on the floor, and he reached for it, but she wrenched him away from it and the parapet splintered under their weight and together they fell, tumbling through the dark to crack the stone in the courtyard below.

Utuzan spoke a phrase in the words of venom, but she was serpent now, and venom did her little harm. She spat the taste from her mouth and wrenched her arm free, drew back with an exultant cry and stabbed down with all her strength.

The iron blade struck his cheek and tore the skin, sparks showering as it dragged along his face, the edge flaking away, until it skipped free and shattered on the stone beneath him. “No iron blade will kill me,” he said, grinding his teeth as he sought to throw her off. She was bigger than he, and stronger, and her body coiled around him, crushing him down as she put her hands on his throat.

“I am no iron blade,” she said, her teeth white in the dimness of the waning moon. “I shall break you with my own hands.” Her strength was around him, unending and pitiless, fueled by her rage.

o0o

Shedjia landed on Kardan’s armored back and struck with both her shadow blades, feeling them sink through his scales and bite into his flesh. He roared and twisted, almost throwing her off, but she held her place and struck again and again, until blood coursed down his sides and sizzled in the water. His hands clawed for her and she leaped away, landed on the deck of a ship and ran, leaped to the next one as he smashed through, roaring. Now the smell of blood was in her nostrils as he came in her wake, furious and terrible.

She reached the shore and turned at bay, waiting for him as he battered his way through the ships. Shedjia closed her eyes and called up the words Utuzan had taught her, and fire leaped up in a wall across the shore, water and wood burning as one, and Kardan drew up before the barrier, hissing in fury. She held up her blades and she shouted another poisoned word, so that the flames turned green for a moment and rushes died in the shallows, lilies turning black. Kardan recoiled from the invocation, his blood burning as it ran from his wounds.

“Do not!” Shedjia shouted, her shadow daggers crossed before her in warding. “Do not force me to fight you! Why have you turned upon the one who made you mighty? Why have you betrayed our master? Stop, for I would not shed more of your blood.”

Kardan slid back in the water, and she saw his golden eyes reflecting the dancing wall of fire. He breathed in and then he let forth a long moan as of pain. He reached for the fire, and thrust his hand into it, groaning as the flame blackened his skin, and Shedjia stared at him, wondering if he had gone mad, broken by the spirit fused with his mortal form.

Suddenly, he heaved himself through the flames, water and blood boiling off his skin as he rushed toward her, jaws wide and slavering for her, and she slipped aside, flickering through dark and shadow so that his teeth closed on air, and she put her blade to the soft underside of his white throat. “Do not,” she said, breathing fast. “Please. Do not force me.”

He shuddered, and was very still, and then he bowed down upon the mud, stinking of blood and smoke, and he covered his face and wailed. He shook and clawed at the soil, gouging up the reeds, and Shedjia took her knives away and came closer to him. He did not turn to her, and she came within reach, but he was empty of rage, and at last she put her hand upon his shoulder and gentled him like a beast in the dark.

o0o

Utuzan strained against the strength of his creation, of the girl he had made a queen, and then into a monster. He felt a rage boiling up inside him. Had he crossed a sea of time and survived the death of all he had loved to die like this? The Heart was not all his strength, he was more than artifacts and crude forces of destruction. He reached up and caught her face, feeling her cool flesh, her teeth where they tried to sink into his skin, and he called upon the knowledge he bore of ancient ways and forbidden sorceries. He twisted his face away from her hand, and he called out words of power.

They smote on her like the blows of a hammer, and she screamed. He felt her strength ebb away, felt her twist and writhe as she tried to escape him, but now he held her fast. She was limned with white light, and then her scream transformed and became no human sound, became only the rush of air through a delicate neck. He held her as she was changed, shrinking, vanishing, until he gripped a cobra in his hands, her scales as white as alabaster, her eyes like black stones.

The snake writhed and set her fangs to his skin, but she could not pierce it. He held her fast and stood up as she knotted about his arms, striving to be free. “You have disappointed me, little queen,” he said as he carried her inside the palace. “And yet still I shall be merciful to you. Yet still I shall give another chance for you to become wise.”

He carried her inside, and there he found a great silver urn, and he thrust her inside and slammed the lid shut, hearing her strike and writhe within, her hissing like the slash of arrows. “Think upon your failings, Queen of Meru. Remember what you have been, and what you might be one day again.” He did not understand why he let her live. Why he felt heavy-hearted to trap her like this. He carried her up the stairs to his chamber, and he took up the Heart once more, feeling the strength it poured into him. No betrayal, no failing would turn him from his path of empire, and that was a burden he bore within. A weight he could not set aside.