CHAPTER ONE
The Peevish Snake
Six Months after the fall of Ecbatana
Cimree didn’t need torches to traverse the dark underground tunnels. She’d memorized most of them and the glowing markings indicating tunnel passages helped her to navigate. Since the golem had twisted her physical body into an abomination, she didn’t need to graft with serpents to have their abilities. Not only had her hair become a nest of snakes, allowing her to see in every direction at once through their shared vision, but her fingernails secreted venom when she felt threatened or in danger or hungry. She padded softly through the maze of tunnels, on one of many paths she had memorized and was using to forage for food at night in the crumbling city of Ecbatana.
Cimree paused at the junction of the corridor and found the familiar symbols carved near the ceiling. They revealed that she was about to reenter the ocher district from her foraging mission in the blue. When she and the angel sworn had first arrived in Ecbatana, there had been seven colored walls surrounding the innermost part of the city, each section designated for various functions. The outer white marble wall had been totally destroyed by the gévaudan and kobolds breaking through, and every market stall in the souk had been obliterated. The onyx wall, where the craftsmen had lived, had been breached next and the kobolds were in the process of forcing the humans they’d enslaved to break the wall down. Just as Captain Odeon had said had happened with the angel sworn fortress of Montheron. The survivors of Ecbatana had rallied at the red wall. After the murderous night following the death of Lord Roque, the fractious nobles of Ecbatana had entered an unsteady truce and cordoned off the innermost part of the city, agreeing to defend themselves from the coming threat of annihilation.
It had been six months since that night. And they hadn’t stopped trying to kill her since. But they feared her immensely. They didn’t know that she could sense them because of the little tremors their bodies produced on the ground, so she often just went another way and avoided them entirely. But others were more persistent. Of course, they would be, considering the sizable rewards offered to kill a creature that could kill them with a look.
Cimree continued into the ocher section and turned the corner where there were stone statues crowded in the corridor. Their various poses showed the fear permanently etched into their faces, their limbs frozen in postures of action. But these were not carvings done by master craftsmen. These had all turned to stone upon seeing her. She thought often of this group that had ventured into the tunnels to hunt her.
She had no control over her power. It didn’t even require staring at her victims to turn them into stone. Every time a transformation occurred, she tasted salt in her mouth. The golem had not only bound her to serpents, but it had bound the power of the coptic fruit to her as well, which could turn someone who had eaten a bite into stone. She’d had that fruit in her possession when the golem had caught her and transformed her.
Cimree paused at the effigies before her. Their clothes, weapons, anything they’d been touching or was on their person had turned to stone at the curse of looking at her. She peered at the vacant eyes, the mouths forever contorted as if screaming. Some only had time to be merely startled, so that expression had been the one permanently sealed on those faces. The variety of emotions intrigued her, the subtle revelations that existed in the frown of an eyebrow, the slightly raised lip of a sneer.
Are you feeling morose again, I wonder? It’s not as if any of these were your fault.
She heard Iddawc’s thoughts in her mind, just a featherlight touch. Iddawc was a spider-tailed horned viper. But he was more than just an ordinary serpent. He was the only creature in Ecbatana that wasn’t afraid of her and had become a sort of companion to her in her long solitude since Azra had taken the other angel sworn to Tirich Mir.
I was the one who turned them to stone, she answered in her mind. The two had a free sharing of thinking. She wasn’t sure whether it was because Iddawc was as old as the world and had learned to communicate telepathically or the Tanaquil amulet she’d been bonded to under orders from the Queen Mother made it possible.
Technically they turned themselves into stone by looking at you. If you are going to descend into another bout of self-loathing, I’ll go take a nap.
Cimree smiled at the serpent’s distinctive and often unhelpful commentary. She missed human interaction. Well, the nonviolent kind.
I was just pausing to examine their expressions again, Cimree thought.
How boring.
What have you been up to, Iddawc? Hunting? She recognized the serpent had a penchant for devouring birds. The little appendage at the end of his tail resembled a spider and lured birds with the thought that they’d get an easy meal, only to become a meal themselves. Iddawc hardly had to work at all to get food.
Lord Mithrin bribed a blind man to venture down here to kill you. I came to watch. Thought it might be amusing.
A blind man? Cimree thought in return. Where is he?
That would ruin all the fun if I told you. But, alas, he’s incompetent and blind and making an enormous ruckus. He was promised quite a fortune if he slayed you.
Any form of companionship was better than none, but sometimes the serpent’s devious forked tongue revealed much about his true nature. He was, after all, Asmodeus’s serpent.
Cimree used serpents to guard the place where she slept, which she had to change each time the Ecbatanans figured out where she’d moved to. Somehow this new threat had wandered past her guards and gotten lost in the tunnels. What they didn’t seem to understand is she had no desire to destroy any of them. But they were incapable of just leaving her alone. That was the genius of the golem’s use of her as the destroying angel of this people. It knew their greed and distrust and that they would destroy themselves by trying to destroy her. All while the kobolds brought down the walls, section by section.
Cimree left the statues behind and adjusted the strap of her bag across her shoulder. She had provisions to last for several days. Since her transformation, she was rarely hungry. Serpents gorged and then went without for weeks at a time eating nothing. The Ecbatanans guarded the gardens in the center of the city, which was really their primary source of food since trade had become impossible. The gévaudan roamed outside of the city, and caravans had stopped arriving months earlier. Food was becoming scarce. Although the winters of Ecbatana were reportedly mild, it would take a new season before the trees produced more fruit. How many would survive until then?
She hadn’t ventured much farther before Iddawc’s warning was realized. The tiny vibration of steps revealed a single person. Then she heard the fearful whimpers of the man ahead. She crept closer until the night vision from her eyes revealed him in a vibrant slash of color. He had no blindfold, and she could tell by his vacant stare that he could not see. He clenched a spear in both hands, using it to test the ground and walls as he approached. The spear was an impressive weapon, not a makeshift one. The head was tapered and very sharp, the point meant to pierce a shield or armor. She smelled his nervous sweat.
Unfortunately, there was not room enough to slip past him because of the way he was maneuvering the spear.
He stopped suddenly, his nose twitching. “What’s that smell? What’s that smell?” he said to himself in a panting voice.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cimree said.
He yelped in surprise at her words and adjusted his grip on the spear, aiming the point directly at her. She stepped to the side, and he tracked her movement. His hearing was exceptional. She typically slung her boots over her shoulder so that she could walk more quietly in the tunnels.
“Y-You’re the monster,” he stammered. His fear had turned to terror. She watched sweat trickle down his brow.
“Go back where you came from,” Cimree said. She had her dirk at her belt, but she felt confident she could wrench the spear from him unarmed because Azra had taught her how to fight. Her loneliness grew as she thought of him, though she could feel their connection, even with him hundreds of leagues away.
“They’ll kill me,” the man said. “I have to…do this.” He swallowed and pressed forward, jabbing the air with the spear.
Will you kill him? It’s hardly worth your while. I could bite him for you.
Please don’t, Cimree told the snake.
He’s starving. They sent him down here with no food. Let me put him out of his misery.
“If you put down your spear, I will give you food,” Cimree offered.
I wasn’t suggesting that! You are so irrational.
“You h-have…f-food?”
“I do. Put down your spear. I won’t harm you.”
He’s going to try to trick you. Surely you know that.
“How do I know you do? Can you prove it?”
Cimree pulled the pack off her shoulder and opened it. She didn’t need to look directly at him to see him, for her head of snakes was eyeing him warily. One of them was stretching particularly far, using its tongue to smell him.
After digging into the pouch a little, she produced a persica fruit. It was one of the many varieties of stone fruit that grew in the gardens in the center of the city. This one had smooth skin, delicious yellow flesh, and a wrinkled pit in the center. She drew her dirk and slit into the fruit, cutting a wedge shape from it. And she ate it.
The man sniffed, advancing a little closer. “It that a p-persica?”
“Yes. You can tell by the smell?”
“I can. And you’ll…let me have it?”
“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
“Too long,” the man said. “Since I’m blind, I’m not helpful. They won’t give me rations. My family’s starving. If I do this, they get to eat.”
So he sacrificed himself for his family. He wasn’t expecting to survive.
“What is your name?” she asked him.
“Ramesh.”
“You can have the fruit if you put down the spear, Ramesh,” Cimree said.
She saw his leg muscle flex. That was her only warning.
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