Sara Douglass – The Serpent Bride – DarkGlass Mountain Book 1

But the instant Ishbel tried to put weight on her legs she collapsed to the floor, unable

even to shriek as agony of incredible magnitude encircled her body.

At DarkGlass Mountain, the black bands encircling the pyramid throbbed and glittered,

as if they rhythmically expanded and contracted.

“What?” said a voice. “Has someone managed to get in before me?”

Ishbel thought she vaguely recognized the voice. She managed to roll over, toward the

voice, grateful that someone was here, then gasped once more, this time in mingled pain and

horror and shock.

Ba”al”uz stood a few paces away.

She almost didn”t recognize him. His clothes hung in dusty tatters, and likewise his

skin—as if the man had been exposed to so much sun his skin had dried and then shredded away

from his face and the exposed parts of his limbs.

There appeared to be an ugly cur skulking about his heels, but surprised as she was to see

Ba”al”uz and in such a state, Ishbel gave it no notice.

Already in shock from the continuing viselike bands of agony contorting her abdomen,

Ishbel”s mind couldn”t quite make sense of what she was seeing. Ba”al”uz? Here? Why? And

what had happened to him to—

More viselike agony, and Ishbel screwed her eyes shut and moaned.

“Are you giving birth?” Ba”al”uz asked, quite pleasantly.

“I need help,” Ishbel said. “Can you fetch me aid, please. I beg you, Ba”al”uz, please, I

need—”

“I am the only aid you will ever see,” said Ba”al”uz, “and even that not much aid at all, I

think.”

Indescribable pain gripped her. Ishbel wanted to scream. Her mouth hung open, but even

breathing was impossible with this much agony consuming her, and to make a sound was utterly beyond her.

The fingers of one hand scrabbled desperately at the cold floor.

She felt the baby shift within her.

She heard Ba”al”uz laugh, softly and pleasantly, and mutter something, as if he were

talking to someone else in the room.

Then she heard the unmistakable sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard, and

she looked up.

“What do you mean, not an Icarii?” Isaiah said. “You have just finished telling me

that—”

Axis made a gesture of frustration. “It looked like an Icarii—but there was

something…wrong. Something different. Gods, Isaiah, I saw him for an instant only, and that

from a distance. I can”t give you anything more than that. I”m sorry.”

“You are of little help to me, Axis.”

“I am trying my best for you, damn it!”

“What I need, Axis, is—”

Right at that moment the Goblet of the Frogs, sitting on the low table in the center of the

chamber, screamed in formless terror.

Isaiah heard it, and Axis sensed it, and both felt it to the core of their beings.

Isaiah stopped midsentence, staring at Axis.

Then he blinked.

“Ishbel,” he said, and ran for the door.

Ishbel supposed she had managed to rack in a little air, for otherwise she should now be

dead, but breathing was of little matter to her now.

The baby was being born too rapidly for her body to cope. She was rendered virtually

soundless save for the occasional gasp, and incapable of moving save for her desperate writhing.

All Ishbel wanted to do was to get away from the frightful apparition of Ba”al”uz, now

standing over her, his eyes gleaming, his sword held ready. All she wanted was for someone to

rush in and discover her, and save her, and make this pain stop, make this pain stop, oh, gods,

make this pain stop…

She tried to reach out for the Great Serpent, tried to use the power of the Coil, but Ishbel

had not so much as thought about either the Coil or the Great Serpent for what seemed like

weeks now, and in her current extremity both seemed very far away, and untouchable.

Then, suddenly, the baby was being born, and Ba”al”uz was reaching down.

At DarkGlass Mountain, the bands of black encircling the pyramid now raced for the

shafts which fed light into the Infinity Chamber.

Within moments, every one of the bands of black blood had slithered into the shafts, and

were sliding toward the Infinity Chamber.

Isaiah didn”t even pause to order the armed men waiting outside his chamber to follow

him. He ran, using every particle of strength and speed and agility he commanded, through the

corridors toward Ishbel”s chamber.

Axis was a step behind him, and then a bare step behind Axis came the dozen or so

armed men whose commander”s desperation had been order enough.

Isaiah reached Ishbel”s chamber in a matter of moments. There was a guard standing

outside, clearly alarmed by the sudden arrival of Isaiah, Axis, and the soldiers.

“Your sword, fool,” Isaiah snapped, then snatched it from the guard without pausing to

wait for him to react.

Then he was inside, and staring at a tableau that, for the rest of his life, he would never be

able to forget.

Ba”al”uz—a terribly disfigured Ba”al”uz, but Ba”al”uz nonetheless—straightening up

from a bloodied Ishbel sprawled on the floor, a baby in one hand and a sword in the other.

A dog at his heels, an ugly street cur, baying and yapping as if it wanted the baby for its

own.

Isaiah ran for him, but it seemed as if every step he took was in slow motion.

He took one step, and Ba”al”uz raised the child before him.

He took another step, and Ba”al”uz lifted his sword.

He took yet another step, hearing a distant roaring, which he only very dimly realized

was himself, and Ba”al”uz took the baby”s head off with one clean sweep of the sword.

Another step, and Ba”al”uz was turning toward him, an expression of half surprise, half

pleasure on his face.

“I did it,” he said. “Kanubai is born.”

And then Isaiah took his final step, and he raised his own sword, and he smote Ba”al”uz”

head from his shoulders with such force it flew across the room and smashed against a far wall.

Isaiah took off the dog”s head with the return swing of the sword.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DarkGlass Mountain, Isembaard

The Infinity Chamber rang with blackness and death and blood. Manic shadows writhed

about the shattered chamber, and as, firstly, Ba”al”uz” sword struck, then the two strikes from

Isaiah”s sword, blood spattered in great, terrible gouts across the walls of the chamber.

There came a roaring, as if a giant, far, far below, was taking a massive intake of breath

in order to bellow.

The room began to stink. Gaseous fumes and malodorous clouds billowed through the

chamber, and the blood staining the walls appeared to thicken and then coagulate, before

slumping to the floor in sickening, gelatinous masses.

Then, from far below, the giant bellowed, and the crack opened into a rent, and the abyss

opened into the Infinity Chamber.

In the River Lhyl, the frogs cowered, and Isaiah, bending over Ishbel in his palace,

looked up briefly, the tragedy deepening in his eyes.

The shadows continued to writhe, gaining strength and thickness with every frenzied turn

about the Infinity Chamber. The formless, soundless bellow came once more, this time stilling

the shadows.

As one, they fell to the floor and were absorbed by the masses of coagulated blood.

All was still.

Then, something…

The separate pools of blood were now one, and now were no more.

Instead, there lay on the floor of the darkened Infinity Chamber the form of a dog-headed

man.

Kanubai.

He rolled over onto his back, still weak, but far, far stronger than he had been in an

infinity of time.

And flesh! Flesh! The blood of the child, the dog, and Ba”al”uz had all combined, and

Kanubai was now infused with the matter and power of all three.

Best of all, most delicious of all, he was now made flesh with the blood of his enemy, so

that he could become his enemy, and his enemy could no longer have any power over him.

Kanubai raised his muzzle, and sent a thin howl shrieking about the chamber.

Thousands of leagues to the north, the Skraelings heard, and wept for joy.

Kanubai whispered to them, and his whispers were magic, and the Skraelings began to

alter.

About Kanubai, as he lay on the floor of the Infinity Chamber, the glass mountain

gloated.

Finally, it had the tool of its revenge.

Many leagues to the north, Maximilian suddenly awoke from his sleep. He stared into the

night, riddled with cold and shock.

Kanubai had just risen.

Maximilian had been fast asleep when something in the Twisted Tower shifted, fell over,

and shattered. It had been a simple glass vase, but Maximilian had learned that it was an object to

be feared.

Its death would herald Kanubai”s rise.

Gods, Maximilian thought, how can I ever manage? How can I ever be what is needed

to defeat Kanubai? And where are my helpers, my servants? Where Light, and Water?