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

from the ledge. He was not wrinkled, but worn, skin stretched thin and drum-tight. One eye stared white and sightless from his face, and a puckered, twisting scar bent the right side of his mouth into a smile. His remaining eye glittered, cold, black, and sharp. “A modernist.”
    “I suppose.” Stop this conversation, he told himself. Don’t let yourself get dragged in. “I don’t imagine you asked me here to talk politics.”
    “Politics and security,” Alaxic said, “are two sides of the same parchment.” He raised his hands, and tried to spread them. His fingers crooked in like claws, and quivered. “Dark writing on one side may be read from the other. Once, we sacrificed men and women on Quechaltan to beg rain from the gods. We do the same today, only we spread the one death out over millions. We no longer empathize with the victim, lie with him on the slab. We forget, and believe forgetfulness is humane. We fool ourselves. Your organization is founded on that foolishness.”
    Don’t chase the bait. “Sir. The Bright Mirror infestation is an isolated incident. We’re studying what went wrong, so we can guard against it.”
    Alaxic shook his head. “You don’t understand why you’ve been called here. You think your purpose is to soothe me to sleep. To convince me to sell my life’s work to your master.”
    The engines of Caleb’s caution thrilled to motion. He felt as if a careful player had just glanced at his cards, then raised. “Why am I here?”
    “Yesterday, Red King Consolidated sent me more documents about Bright Mirror Reservoir than I could read in a thousand years. But papers can lie. I want someone to stand with me face-to-face, and tell me I can trust your master.”
    The air pressed close, heavy with chant and heat. “What do you mean?”
    Alaxic beckoned him to the railing. “Look down, son of Temoc.”
    Caleb almost refused on principle, but principle had no place on company time. He stepped to the platform’s edge, leaned out, and looked down.
    Liquid fire filled the pit, rolling, burning, boiling, red and yellow, orange and white and blue. A tremor traveled from one side of the fire to the other, like a twitch on a horse’s flank.
    Following that tremor, Caleb saw the eye.
    What he had mistaken for an island in the molten rock was in fact an enormous eye ringed by scales of lava—an eye bubble-lidded like a snake’s, if a snake were large enough to swallow worlds.
    A serpent lay coiled beneath them, a serpent larger than the cave, larger than the pyramids of Sansilva. Its immensity shattered all concepts of size. Uncoiled and rearing to strike, this creature would cast a long shadow over Dresediel Lex.
    Sweat chilled on the back of Caleb’s neck.
    That serpent had a sister. Caleb knew their names.
    “That’s Achal,” Alaxic said. “Aquel’s in the depths now. They turn and move in their slumber, as we do. They’re bigger than we are, though.”
    “Guard and shield us from the fire,” Caleb whispered in High Quechal. The words came unbidden to his lips.
    “Well.” Alaxic smiled. “I see you have some religious sentiment after all.”
    “That.” He tried again to speak. “Do you have any idea what that is?”
    “We know exactly what she is. Better than anyone in history.” Alaxic stared down into the pit. “At the beginning of time, the earth trembled and split, and many men and gods died. The twin daughters of the Sun descended into the depths, seeking the cause of the tremors, and found two massive serpents, larger than mountains, older than the earth. Once, they had slithered between the stars.
    “Demons danced around the serpents, inciting them to tremble, to riot. The sun’s first daughter tore her heart from her chest, and threw it into the first serpent’s mouth; the serpent gained her wisdom, and her name—Aquel. The demons tried to prevent the sun’s second daughter from doing the same, but she threw her heart over them into the second serpent’s