William King - The Serpent Tower

Once the creature sensed with certainty that he had understood this, Rik’s point of view became general again. It flickered back and forth across the surface of the world, revealed as a vast sphere, showing other civilisations, other nations.

He saw that the Serpent Men were not alone in their new world. Other alien races swam in its seas, burrowed beneath its surface, rode through the air in weird living machines. There was a sense of enormous activity, of the meeting of many civilisations, of trade and rivalry and growing tension and hatred. He saw that the Serpent Men were not alone in trying to recruit humans to help them.

He saw the buried cities of the Spider Folk, where many castes of strange arachnid beings scuttled through the dark. He saw humans with living weapons grafted to their flesh, and not just weapons. Men were hooked into massive things like monstrous scorpions, living machines that augmented their strength and allowed them to lift huge burdens in the modified pincers.

Enormous squid like creatures swam through the ocean, the motherships of the Quan, disgorging their smaller children into the seas to harvest fish and the resources of the deep, building huge pearl-domes beneath the waves, monuments to their sinister gods. He saw the largest mothership of all, a kraken-like creature vast as an island, its outline visible in the depths of the ocean, as if he were viewing it from one of those flying ships he had witnessed earlier.

He became aware that he was seeing an actual memory of the being with whom he was linked, and he sensed approval as it noticed his understanding. Slowly a sense of wonder grew within him. He was seeing the world as it had been aeons before the Terrarchs came, through the eyes of one who had actually been there.

He saw tensions mount between the races as they fought for resources and for slaves. He saw skirmishes lead to battles and battles lead to wars. He saw great engines of sorcery unleashed and mighty weapons deployed. He saw the Towers of the Serpent Men besieged by the spawn of Uran Ultar. Great armies did battle. Moth-like flyers assaulted the flying needles of the Serpent Men. Monstrous acid spewing beasts attacked the fortresses. Great mushroom clouds rose over massive explosions that turned fertile land to deserts of glass, and churned the boiling seas. Death rained down from the skies. Clouds of poison gas depopulated cities.

The Elder Races fell into barbarism. The thinking caste of the Ultari Spider Folk succumbed to madness and disease. The Ocean Queens of the Quan went insane or devolved back to being barely sentient. The Serpent Men retreated within their Towers, their sorcerer priests taking to their sarcophagi, determined to sleep until the world was healed. He saw this Tower being sealed, and then attacked with those awesome ancient weapons. He felt the damage to the Tower as agony within his body. He knew that the systems meant to protect the sleeping Serpent Priests had been damaged, perhaps irrevocably.

Blankness. Static. A sense of emptiness, of sleep filled with strange slow dreams. Suddenly the Tower was brought back to life when Ilmarec entered it and found this vault. He awakened this last surviving Serpent Priest, promised it aid; Ilmarec would help it rejoin its brethren and return to the stars. When he discovered the Serpent Priest’s true weakness, Ilmarec used spells to enslave it.

He felt the Serpent Man’s fury as he was bound by sorcery to Ilmarec’s will after an epic battle of mind and souls. The Serpent Man was awake now, but bound within its coffin, still linked to the Tower in strange ways, but unable to affect it. It could not move now from its crypt but it gave Ilmarec its talisman of command, taught him its secrets.

More scenes danced through Rik’s imagination, all of them views of the inside of the Tower, all of them from strange angles, as if the structure itself had eyes within it and he was looking through them. He saw Ilmarec performing experiments, finally learning how to partially heal the Tower, and communicate with its chained intelligence.

Rik saw recent events start to unfold.

He saw Jaderac come. He saw the Foragers and Asea and Sardec on their recent visit. He saw Kathea trapped in her chambers.

He saw himself as he appeared to the Serpent Man now, as he stood in the tomb. He knew he was seeing himself as the creature saw him. He sensed something else. To the Serpent Man he had a mind that could be barely touched or grappled with. He wondered if the truth was not that he was having difficulty understanding the Serpent Man because he was alien, but that the Serpent Man could barely touch his mind to communicate.

A wave of understanding passed between him and his captor then. It was trying to communicate with him. It needed him. He tried to listen, to receive, to empty his mind although he was not sure exactly what he was doing.

A sense of imminent danger grew within him. As it did so, he saw Ilmarec standing in the central chamber of the Tower performing some ritual. Awareness that the Tower itself was a quasi-living thing with its own senses, capable of perceiving things at hundreds of leagues away, flowed into him.

More images flickered into Rik’s mind along with more strange knowledge. He saw that Ilmarec had awakened something deep in the Tower’s heart, the trapped heart of a god, a thing that generated enough energy to hurtle the Tower into the sky and back through the cold gulf between stars.

He saw too what the Serpent Man knew and Ilmarec did not, or could not. The God’s heart was damaged. If Ilmarec continued to draw on its power, to use it to provide ever higher levels of magical energy, then the heart would break. It would explode and the unleashed energy of a million barrels of gunpowder would scorch the earth beneath it, destroying everything for hundreds of leagues around. Everyone and everything that fell beneath the shadow of the vast rising mushroom cloud would die.

Rik knew now what the Serpent Priest wanted. He wanted Ilmarec stopped and the Talisman of control returned to him. He was willing to offer alliance to Rik and his people, to aid them in getting rid of Ilmarec, and free the Princess.

Rik did not trust this creature. He was not sure he wanted it in charge of the Tower any more than he wanted Ilmarec to be.

More feelings flowed from it, of deep sadness mixed with calculation. The Serpent Man would not interfere in this war. The Tower was crippled. It wanted to repair it and depart to find its brethren among the stars.

Rik was adrift here. He was not Asea or Jaderac. He was in no position to bargain with the Serpent Priest as an equal. It was far older and possessed of far greater knowledge than he. He had only one advantage. If it allowed him to, he could move where it could not. It could do things he could not. He did not even know what it could offer him, other than his life, as its side of the bargain. As if responding to his confusion, it withdrew for a moment considering.

More images flickered into his mind. He saw the location of the Princess Kathea, and the way to get there. He saw the chambers in which Ilmarec waited. He saw all the sorcerous engines and defences and traps that lay between them. He saw how to overcome the old fail-safes. More and more knowledge, and alien thoughts flowed into him. He felt like screaming but within moments it was over, and he slumped forward, all contact broken with the Serpent Man.

He knew what he must do. At that moment, the whole Tower began to shake.

Sardec’s eyes were drawn to the Tower as if by some magnetic force. It seemed like a trapped sun burned there, and Sardec half-expected the green death to come raining down on Morven.

The mansion quivered beneath his feet, like the pre-shock of an earthquake. It was like being trapped in the belly of some great beast as it writhed in its death agonies. A smell of ozone filled the air. In the distance he heard things crashing down. Sardec offered up a prayer to the god of his childhood for his own safety and the safety of the others.