Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone Read Free Book Online Page A

noon, then warm as a baker’s oven. Dim red light illuminated wall carvings of the Hero Sisters, eagle-headed gods, and of course serpents: the ancient Quechal who dug this passage had etched a double bar of stylized scales under each graven figure.
    “This,” Caleb said, “is a strange place to work.” The Quechal carvings reminded him of childhood, of nights listening to his father chant holy tales of blood and murder. He remembered some of these designs from the walls of his father’s temple in the Skittersill, before it burned. “You don’t see carvings like these anymore.”
    “The bas reliefs are authentic,” Allesandre said. “Five hundred years old, give or take a century.”
    Caleb lifted his hand from the wall. “Trying to save on real estate?”
    “Hardly,” she replied. “Sites like this are vital to our work.”
    When he first heard the voices, he took them for wind through fissures in the rock. Deeper, deeper he followed Allesandre, and the whisper rush resolved to words in an obscure form of High Quechal, a jumble of nouns, adjectives, and verbs from which he caught snatches of meaning: Serpent. Flame. Lost. Burn. Make. Mold. Crush.
    Stinging sweat ran down his cheeks, the line of his jaw. His shadow and Allesandre’s, melded, stretched long and thin behind them, a road into the darkness from which they had come.
    The passage opened onto a broad, black stone ledge on the lip of a vast cavern. Light from the depths cast the world crimson. Stalactites hung jagged overhead, twined round by metal pipes. Chant braided with the rhythm of machines.
    Men and women crowded the ledge. They wore loose white linen, and tool belts girded their waists. They worked at stone altars and plinths, adjusting bee-carved dials, pulling levers shaped like snake’s heads. Burning motes danced in the air before their faces. The technicians chanted as they worked, heads bobbing to keep time.
    The words and carvings were High Quechal, but this place lacked the trappings of ceremony: no priest, no priestess with bone flute, no Mat-Keeper with blade upraised. Modern, angular Craftsman’s glyphs glowed from every surface.
    An ancient man in a black suit stood by the railing at the platform’s edge. Hands behind his back, he stared down into the cavern. Scraps of thin white hair clung to his scalp. His body stooped, as if it could no longer bear his strength.
    The white-robed crowd parted for Allesandre. Caleb followed in her wake. She stopped behind the old man, and said: “Sir, I’ve brought Caleb Altemoc, from RKC. Caleb, this is Mister Alaxic.”
    Caleb swallowed, for reasons that had nothing to do with the heat.
    “Altemoc,” said the old man, chewing the syllables of the name. His voice was high and spare. “Not Temoc’s boy by any chance?” There was no question which Temoc he meant.
    “Yes, sir. My father and I aren’t close.”
    “Hard to be close with a wanted felon.”
    “I don’t approve of his life choices, and he doesn’t approve of mine. We have an equitable arrangement.”
    Alaxic did not turn. “Strange that the most stalwart of the True Quechal would give his son a foreign name.”
    “When I was born, he thought there was a chance for peace. He and my mother chose my name as a sign of that peace.”
    “You were born before the Skittersill Rising.”
    “Yes,” Caleb said.
    “Dirty business.” Though Alaxic’s hands remained clasped behind his back, his fingers worked and twitched as if playing an invisible instrument. “Men standing to defend their rights. Killed by Wardens who should have protected them.”
    “That’s one way to put it.”
    “And the other?”
    “I’d be less generous.”
    “Humor me. Speak freely.”
    “I’d say the rioters were fanatics who wanted to sacrifice their neighbors to bloody-minded gods.”
    “You don’t share your father’s faith.”
    “I don’t respect murderers, as a rule. However they try to justify themselves.”
    “Ah.” Alaxic turned