Sara Douglass - The Serpent Bride

But they had had separate bedrooms, and Maximilian suspected that his mother only spent a handful of entire nights with his father, and those, perhaps, only at the very beginning of their marriage.

Generally, she had preferred to sleep elsewhere than at her beloved husband’s side.

Maximilian’s lover had been wrong. It was not the Veins that had imbued Maximilian with his darkness, but something far older, and deeply embedded within the Persimius blood.

Maximilian sighed, finally admitting he could not sleep. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He looked at his desk for a long time, then rose and walked over, lighting a lamp and scattering the documents regarding Ishbel Brunelle across the desktop with his fingers.

He paused as the folded map slid into view.

“By the gods, Vorstus,” Maximilian muttered, “my life would be so much simpler without you.”

Then he picked up the map and unfolded it.

At first glance the map was innocuous, showing the Central Kingdoms and the Outlands. Maximilian traced a finger over the Outlands, looking for Serpent’s Nest. He knew it was a mountain, and had supposed it was one of the summits within the Sky Peaks which ran down the western border of the Outlands.

He frowned as his initial scan of the map failed to reveal Ishbel’s home.

Then, increasingly irritated, he looked further afield, and finally spotted Serpent’s Nest on the very eastern seaboard of the Outlands.

Maximilian dropped the map and stepped back from the desk, staring at the desktop as if it contained the most vile of monsters.

Serpent’s Nest was what he knew as the Mountain at the Edge of the World.

It took Maximilian some minutes to bring his breathing back under control and to still his racing thoughts.

A coincidence, nothing more, surely. The Mountain at the Edge of the World must have been abandoned for thousands of years, it was not so strange that some others may have taken occasion to inhabit it.

But to be inhabited by an order devoted to a serpent god?

Maxel? said the Persimius ring. Maxel? What is the matter?

“Nothing,” Maximilian said automatically, still staring at the desk.

Is it about Ishbel? said the ring.

“No,” Maximilian responded, but wondered what it meant that this bride was coming to him from within the Mountain at the Edge of the World, now associated with a serpent.

No, no, surely not …

Maximilian turned on his heel and walked to one side of his bedchamber, which was clear of furniture. He stood, looking at the floor, then he leaned down.

As his hand approached the floorboards a trapdoor materialised. Maximilian hesitated, then grabbed the iron pull ring and hauled the door open.

The Persimius Chamber lay directly under Maximilian’s bedchamber. He rarely came here: several times when he was a boy and his father had been inducting him into the mysteries of the Persimius family; once, six months after he’d been restored to the throne and he’d felt he needed to check to ensure that all was still safe after seventeen years (Vorstus had told him Cavor had not been informed about the chamber); and once about a year ago, when some marriage negotiations had looked as though they might actually mature into fruition, and Maximilian had come to look at the mate to the ring he wore on his left hand that any wife of his would wear.

No one else ever came here. Only the king, his heir, and the Abbot of the Order of Persimius knew of its existence.

The Persimius Chamber was oval in shape, and relatively small. It contained two chest-high marble columns, each at opposing ends of the oval. Each column held a cushion, and each cushion cradled an object.

Maximilian walked first to the column at the western end of the oval chamber. It held an emerald and ruby ring, worn by the wives of the Persimius king.

My lover, said Maximilian’s ring, and Maximilian sighed, part in irritation and part in resignation, and, taking off his ring, laid it beside the emerald and ruby ring so they could chat for a while.

The Whispering Rings they were called, but only someone of Persimius blood could ever hear them, which Maximilian supposed was a good thing, as he knew his own cursed ring tended to mutter the most uncomplimentary things at the worst of moments.

What it murmured about StarWeb tonight, right at the peak of their lovemaking, had very nearly distracted Maximilian completely.

He looked at the rings, tuning out their whispering as he thought.

Ishbel came to him from the Mountain at the Edge of the World now called Serpent’s Nest. What did that mean? Coincidence? Or something deeper? Darker?

Maximilian knew the ancient legend of Kanubai, and he knew also, from his father’s teachings, that Light often assumed the shape of the serpent, just as Water sometimes assumed the shape of the frog. He hadn’t immediately connected the name of Serpent’s Nest with Light, simply because then he had not realised that Serpent’s Nest was the ancient Mountain at the Edge of the World.

The ancient home of the Lord of Elcho Falling, who had once allied himself with Light and Water in the battle to imprison Kanubai.

Finally, unable to ignore it any longer, Maximilian turned and looked at the other column.

Its velvet cushion held an object so ancient, and so cursed, that Maximilian felt slightly ill even looking at it.

It was the crown, simply made of three thick entwined golden bands, of a kingdom and a responsibility so ancient that its name had been forgotten by all living people, and which had never been recorded in any history book.

Living darkness writhed among the golden bands.

Very slowly, every step hesitant, Maximilian walked over to it. He had never touched it, and hoped he never had to. His father had never touched it, nor his father before him.

If ever Maximilian had to lift that crown to his head, then it meant that the end of the world had risen, and was walking the land.

To Maximilian’s profound relief, the crown looked just as it had every other time Maximilian had studied it. The darkness (that same darkness which writhed through the Persimius blood) lived, yes, but it did not seem aware, or awake. It merely waited, as it had been waiting for thousands of years.

Maximilian allowed himself a sigh of relief, his shoulders finally relaxing.

Perhaps Ishbel’s connection with the Mountain at the Edge of the World and its current association with a serpent, was coincidence merely. He should not worry.

But he should, perhaps, be highly careful.

Maximilian turned his back on the crown, and collected his ring preparatory to leaving the chamber.

But just before he climbed back into his bedchamber, Maximilian turned and looked once more at the dark crown. He frowned, something stirring in his mind.

Cavor had never been inducted into the mystery of this chamber.

Why not? Everyone had believed Maximilian dead, so why hadn’t Cavor been inducted into this mystery?