SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne by Steven Savile Read Free Book Online Page A

as sycophantic as Kelkus’s.
    What have I become?
he asked himself. He didn’t know the answer.
    He pushed open the door to the throne room. The light streamed down in bright unbroken beams from the dozen sky-light windows around the high ceiling. Dust motes danced their dervish swirl, trapped in the beams. It was a solitary thing of beauty in a place of ugliness.
    Iblis had no time for beauty.
    Corvus Keen sat in the center on his chair of dead birds, his wolfhound at his feet. The man was a bloated slug, folds of fat oozing across the arms of his ostentatious chair. Iblis had to stifle the urge to laugh at the pomp with which the man dressed his world. From a distance it almost looked majestic but as he moved closer the grease and the fat stains became more noticeable. The throne was fashioned from the skulls and wings of hundreds upon hundreds of crushed and broken ravens. It was a vile construction and it stank as only carrion could. Keen sat there, drumming his fat fingers on the tiny skulls of the birds. He was surrounded on all sides by his cronies bowing and scraping and telling him what he wanted to hear. Behind them huge black velvet drapes were emblazoned with a silver sigil, Corvus Keen’s wing-spread bird. He had taken to calling himself the Raven King recently. It was an aspect of the man’s psychosis that Iblis nurtured. He seemed to truly believe that he was evolving into something greater than human. Keen wore a cloak of feathers. The gore still clung to the tips of some. It was decidedly primitive beside the crisply tailored black and silver uniforms of his soldiers.
    The chamber was full. Iblis tasted tension in the air. This was good. Keen was nothing if not unpredictable, which made for curious entertainments in his domain. Iblis wondered what little delight the man had in mind for today? Torture probably. It usually was.
    The crowd melted away from Iblis, allowing him to walk slowly toward the throne. He stopped at the foot of the dais and knelt, slowly, but without bowing his head, and rose. It pained him to pretend loyalty to any human. No, pain was too prosaic a term; it burned him to bend the knee. He was Goa’uld. He was no mere toady. But he could bury his nature a while longer and wear the mask of follower while it suited him. He had plans. Such plans. Keen owned these souls. Iblis owned Keen. He could live without their devotion for now.
    The secret was in the game itself. Iblis was patient. He had laid out a long game. In the year since he had awoken and taken this host he had mapped out an immaculate strategy. He would not fail. When the time came he would snap Corvus Keen as easily as he would one of the human’s brittle birds. There was no rush. At least not while Keen was useful to him.
    The fat man was being entertained by a nervous juggler. Everything stopped as Iblis approached the fat man. Iblis inclined his head and smiled wryly. “Please, do carry on,” he muttered, and all eyes turned on the sweating fool as he coughed slightly and shuffled his feet.
    “What are you waiting for? You heard the man, entertain us.”
    The fool hurled his clubs up into the air above his head and scrabbled to catch them. Too high, and too hard, their arc took them out of easy reach. Sweat beaded on the fool’s face. Iblis enjoyed the look of rapture on Keen’s features as he watched the perspiration run into the fool’s eyes.
It will all end in tears
, Iblis thought rather smugly, but then tears were Corvus Keen’s preferred currency when it came to settling debts, so that was hardly surprising. A wooden club clattered on the marbled floor. As one, Corvus Keen’s hungry court of vultures sucked in their breath. The huge wolfhound at Keen’s feet looked up at the sudden absence of sound. Seeing nothing worthy of its attention it settled down to doze again. Like its master, the dog’s fat jowls dribbled spittle as it breathed. Keen scratched the dog between the ears. It was curious how the man