Page 53 of King of Serpents

“As if waiting,” she whispered.

Alex shivered. She was giving herself goosebumps. Not because it was scary, but because there was that haunting sadness that touched her profoundly.

Laughter burst from her, and she shook her head. “I never considered myself a particularly imaginative sort, and yet here we are.”

Talking to herself.

Shoving her hands into the worn pockets of her flight suit, she resumed humming, allowing the somewhat off-key musical sound to fill the empty space around her. The corridor extended on, winding in a pattern not unlike that of a conch shell, with multiple chambers extending from it until at last it terminated at a massive and elaborately carved doorway. Craning her head back, she peered up at the relief at its summit. Two figures, their tails entwined in a looping pattern as they turned to face each other. The Seshanamitesh on the right she expected, and she recognized by its wide, carved wings, but the large fins on the other gave her pause.

“What is an Uralial doing in a Seshanamitesh palace?” she murmured. “Very strange.”

Alex studied the carved pair as she drew closer, her head bending back to keep them in view as long as possible as she passed through the doorway. When she finally lost sight of them, her gaze drifted back to what lay directly ahead of her, only to come to an abrupt stop as her mouth dropped open in awe. In a word... it was impressive.

It was a massive chamber, probably three times larger than the royal nest, with a high, cathedral ceiling that provided plenty of room for the four spouts that opened on either side of where two walls met. There were two spouts on each side of the corner, each formed in the likeness of some kind of monstrous head of a creature she was unfamiliar with but almost dragon-like with its quasi-reptilian features. The four waterfalls emptied into a massive, deep pool that took up most of the room except for a wide ledge that overhung it and the space where a wall was erected that extended halfway to the ceiling. It appeared to be in the fashion of a levee from what she could tell. What lay on the other side was a mystery from her current vantage point.

The question was—which way first? Unlike following the main corridor down, there was no singular main route to go because just within the doorway the floor branched and continued on in two directions that circled to the left and right of the pool. To the right, it meandered around the edge of the wall and disappeared. The left side rose into a sloping ramp that rose alongside the wall to the far ledge overlooking the pool. She squinted at the ledge. Was it her imagination, or did there appear to be some kind of little structure up there? Her curiosity deciding her, Alex turned in the direction of the ledge and began making the climb up the ramp.

Despite its width, the ramp climbing up to the ledge was surprisingly daunting. Perhaps it was the lack of safety handrails as it rose higher and higher into the air and the way the rush of disturbed air from the falling water made her feel slightly off balance. It wasn’t the height. As a pilot, she never felt anxious about being high. It was more that she was suspended precariously with few safety measures in place that made her nervous. Perhaps a larger Seshanamitesh wouldn’t have felt as ill-at-ease, but there were several times that she flattened herself against the wall and bent her knees to rest and re-stabilize herself before continuing on. She was debating turning around before she lost her nerve completely and simply froze in the middle of the ramp, incapable of moving any further, when the ramp suddenly smoothed its incline before terminating at the nearest rear side of the ledge.

Casting one last nerve-wracking glance at the pool below, Alex swallowed and thrust herself forward as she scurried from the ramp onto the ledge. Thankfully, the ledge was nowhere near as narrow as it seemed from a distance, and her breath exited her all at once in a sigh of relief as she took in her surroundings. From above, everything was laid out in an almost magical fashion. Maintaining a safe distance from the edge, she looked down, her eyes skimming over the view below. Naturally, she still couldn’t quite see over the wall, but she hadn’t expected to since the ledge sat at roughly the same height. Her eyes skimmed along the wall and down to the stretch of bright blue water. Like many bodies of water within the deep caverns, the mico-organisms present made it glow a pale icy blue. She would have assumed that it was just as frigid as the cave air, except that she saw what appeared to be faint trails of steam rising off the surface of the pool and billowing up thicker where the descending water met it.

That looked like signs of heat if she wasn’t mistaken.

“Fuck. What I wouldn’t give for a proper bath.” The pool within the royal chamber wasn’t bad. It was warm enough. But it wasn’t a nice hot bath either. The rising steam looked so inviting that she momentarily struggled to ignore her desire to be fully submerged within it before refocusing and forcing the analytic part of her brain to the fore. “I wonder what the source of the heat is? And why have this ledge overlooking it?”

It all seemed purposefully scenic and atmospheric rather than just a simple utilitarian disposal of water.

“Curious.”

Slowly turning in place, Alex turned her attention to the ledge itself. The ledge itself appeared rather unremarkable, except that there was a table on the far side beside the wall with several faded cushions arranged in front of it and a handful of objects laid out intentionally across its surface. It was clear that someone had once sat there—but to what purpose? Although the table sat facing the edge a bit closer than she liked, and there was a lingering sourness that clung to the air the closer she got, Alex didn’t hesitate to approach it for a better look. And why not, since she was already up there?

Seeing anything there at all, compared to the relative emptiness of the palace, was intriguing. It was like someone had been interrupted and left it abandoned, perhaps with intention of returning. It was the only sign that she’d yet to see of a living presence that once inhabited the elder palace. The one place in the elder palace that was void of complete emptiness. Her heart beating with excitement, she drew closer to the side of the table but paused in surprise.

Her eyebrows rose as she scrutinized the items spread across it. This was no ancient scribbling that had been left abandoned. A small, squat pot and the writing stylus preferred by the Seshanamitesh were both covered with a fine layer of dust that spoke of only a few years passing rather than generations. Even the bowls that sat opposite them on the long table were crusted with a layer of whatever had rotted and decomposed in them, as if a meal had been abandoned there not too long ago. Alex ran a finger along the edge of one bowl, noting that it too only had a light layer of dust on its surface, but it was the scrolls tucked against the wall that captivated her attention.

She didn’t know what she expected to glean from it. She didn’t understand Seshanamitesh characters, and without a working comm she had no hope of even attempting to decipher it. And yet, when she unrolled it, there was something about the painted image within that reached far beyond the script that filled the bottom half. The image of a female Seshanamitesh entwined with a male Uralial was nearly as unmistakable as their intimate embrace, as they seemed to be caught in a moment of sensual frenzy that she recognized all too well. Despite the sensual nature of their embrace, the way their faces were turned toward each other captured a longing that made her swallow thickly with emotion, even as it made her mind whirl in confusion.

It didn’t make sense. Seshanamitesh purposely segregated themselves from Uralial, and not peacefully from the sound of it, from what Bousoa said. The sort of relationship illustrated on the scroll would have been expressly prohibited. True, there were known instances of Seshanamitesh hunters crossing the boundary to mate in secret with Uralial females—such as the case with Ehsash’s parents—a female Seshanamitesh taking up with an Uralial male would have been explicitly taboo if not illegal.

Alex shook her head in wonder at the sheer daring of whoever had left the scroll behind. “Who do you belong to?” she whispered. “And what story do you tell?”

If only it could speak and just tell her without keeping its secrets contained within its script.

“I guess I’m now going to have to pester Therxian into teaching me to read if we are doing this mates thing,” she muttered, her mouth curling despite the note of complaint in her words. She wouldn’t admit aloud that she was looking forward to the challenge of the new life she was embarking on. A strange trajectory in life path for a pilot and mechanic, but it brought a feeling of excitement and of real purpose that she didn’t dislike.

For now, she would just have to ask her mate to help her decipher it.

Smiling to herself, she rolled the scroll back up and tucked it under her arm in preparation for the nerve-racking descent back down from the ledge. Somehow, the ramp was ten times worse going down than it was going up, but it didn’t stop her from hurrying around to explore the other side of the wall once she was once more on level ground.

Perhaps a little too eager, since she came dangerously close to the lip of a massive pit that opened before her. Thankfully, this time there was a large railing that offered some kind of a barricade that offered sufficient warning that she was able to put on the brakes in time to come to a stop just behind it.

Eyes wide, Alex leaned forward against the railing and peered down into the pit. From what she could tell, it wasn’t just a pit but a bottomless exit tunnel into which the levee of the wall released small, regulated streams of water in a ceaseless flow from the pool. Lips pursing, she whistled quietly to herself. This was it. It was exactly what she had thought. Water was provided from some point above and traveled through the palace before flowing out of it. It was fabulous. Why would they have ever abandoned it? She studied the depth for several long minutes, listening to the quiet echo of the water dispersing through it. She could see why the wall was high enough to block off the view of that side of the chamber. As fascinating as it was, it certainly didn’t have the cultivated ambiance the other side possessed.

“Damn, that’s some drop,” she observed.

“That it is,” a familiar voice hissed behind her. “But my question would be why my mate is hanging dangerously over it instead of in the queen’s nest where I left her?”

Chapter 38