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THE SERPENT’S CURSE
1920—Chicago
Night fell from above, obscuring the confusion around her, and stars swirled around Esta until she found herself standing in an open chamber with stone-carved walls the color of sand. If she focused hard enough, she could almost look through the illusion and see the world as it was—the people still frozen in her hold of time and Jack lying nearby—but only just. And it was so difficult to focus beyond the illusion for very long. It was far easier to give in to it.
Above, the sky glimmered with an endless swath of stars, and along the edges of the room, flames climbed from great curved cauldrons of iron. Standing before Esta, a woman with hair coiled like snakes around her face and eyes like obsidian waited. Seshat.
“You came to me,” Seshat whispered, anticipation thick in her papery voice. “You came to me again. As I knew you would.”
Esta took a step back. She felt panic climbing inside her as she looked around the room, trying to see through the illusion Seshat had created, to find Harte. Even now he could be dying.
“I didn’t come for you,” she told Seshat. “I came for him.”
Seshat reached out for Esta, as though she hadn’t heard. “Take my hand, and together we will awaken the true heart of power, unleash the possibilities of chaos, and begin again. Together, we can unmake this world—all of its meagerness and hatred—and realize our fate.”
Esta shook her head. “I don’t want any of that. And neither do you.”
“You think you know my heart?” Fires flashed in the depths of Seshat’s eyes as her hand dropped to her side in a fist. Suddenly she looked nearly inhuman in her rage. Esta had seen visions before; she’d seen Seshat in the throes of hope, but now the ancient goddess looked broken and twisted.
“Look what he’s done to you,” Esta whispered, unable to keep the horror and sorrow from her voice. “Look at what Thoth’s made you into—”
“He’s done nothing to make me. All I am I’ve claimed for myself.”
“No,” Esta protested, desperate to reach Harte. “You’ve allowed him to twist you and your plans into something else. You want to take your revenge on Thoth, fine. Take it. Death—worse than death—it’s only what he deserves. Jack as well. But the whole world?” Esta’s voice broke at the thought of it. She thought of Maggie, who would be waiting for North, not knowing what had happened. She thought of Everett, who’d been willing to risk everything and had lost even more. She thought of Viola and Jianyu—of all the Mageus in the city and across the land who would be destroyed by Seshat’s anger. And the Sundren as well—deserving of such a fate or not. They were not hers—or Seshat’s—to judge. To condemn. “The world doesn’t deserve your wrath.”
“Does it not? Once I felt as you do now. But can you not hear the cries of the people around you?” Seshat asked, her eyes narrowing. “You must see their hate here in this place, clear as the night above us. Do you not feel their loathing, hot and thick in this room, as they demand your end? And still you would save them?” There was a note in her voice, Esta realized. Anger, yes, but also something more. Something that sounded strangely like confusion. Maybe even curiosity. “They would kill you—each and every one of them would gladly take your life if given the chance.” There was a question hanging in the air between them.
“Maybe they would,” Esta admitted, still trying to sense Harte beneath the nearly impenetrable illusion Seshat had spun. “But this one room isn’t the entire world. There are those who would stand by me, those who would give their lives to fight next to me—to protect me. North did. Just tonight he gave himself so others might live. He gave up everything for a chance at a different future. If you rip the world apart, his sacrifice was for nothing.”
“What do I care of the sacrifice of one man?” she sneered.
“Why did you do it, then?” Esta asked, pleading. “I’ve seen your heart as well. I know that you were trying to save magic. Why do any of that if you only meant to tear the world apart in the end?”
“Because I did not understand until it was too late. There is no saving magic,” Seshat said, her eyes flashing dark and eternal. “I thought to preserve the promise of the old magic through writing. By stabilizing its power, I thought to protect it from time’s devouring jaws, but I only succeeded in weakening the old magic further—faster—instead. Magic was always destined to die away, but by taking a part of it, I made everything worse. Just as taking the affinity of a Mageus to create an object of power can destroy a person, taking a part of magic’s own heart only served to hasten the end of everything—chaos and order, magic and reality alike.”
“But you made the Book,” Esta pressed, refusing to believe that this could be true. “You used your affinity to create an object outside of time to protect the beating heart of magic.”
Seshat’s eyes glinted, and something like sadness—maybe even regret—shadowed her expression. “But it did not work. Because of Thoth, I could not finish what I had started—I could not complete the ritual, could not reinsert the protected piece of magic back into the whole of creation, and those failures left the last piece of pure magic even more vulnerable. To time. To weak and craven souls who would use the power for their own. Maybe long ago, I could have corrected my mistakes. Now it is too late. Now there is only one answer. To preserve magic, we must destroy time. It is the only way.”
But destroying time meant destroying reality itself. “Maybe it’s magic that should die,” Esta realized, her heart clenching at the thought. “Maybe it should simply fade away, and the world could keep spinning.”
“Do you really think it’s so easy?” Seshat scoffed. “You have seen the image of the serpent devouring its own tail.…”
“The ouroboros,” Esta said. It was the symbol Dolph had taken, and the Antistasi as well.
“Yes. It’s a representation of balance, but such balance comes at a price. It is the serpent’s curse to continue on for infinity, devouring itself and holding all that is—and all that is not—in perfect equilibrium. Now it is my burden as well. You see, I disrupted that balance when I created writing, and in doing so, gave time a victory over the power of magic. My actions caused the old magic to die even faster. I created the Book because I thought I could replicate the balance of the ouroboros. I believed that if I took a piece of pure magic outside of time’s grasp, then magic could not die.”
“The Book,” Esta realized. “Thoth showed me what it could do, the way it could hold the dagger. He said that the dagger existed and yet didn’t all at once—that it was outside of time and reality.”
“Yes,” Seshat said. “I thought I could hold back time’s fanged jaws with the creation of the Book, because I knew even then how essential the old magic was to the very existence of the world. Everything in the world—the sun and the stars and even time itself—it all begins and ends with magic. I knew that if the old magic dies, time is doomed as well, and the world with it. And it will not be an easy death. It will be a slow and terrible unmaking that will spare no one and nothing.”
Esta thought she might understand what Seshat meant. Hadn’t she herself felt the horror of being pulled out of time? Of nearly being unmade by time? But what Seshat was describing would be far larger, far more terrible. “But you stopped it by creating the Book. You did preserve that piece of pure magic. Why destroy everything, when we could destroy Thoth instead?”
“You still don’t understand, do you, child?” Seshat’s expression darkened, her eyes shuttered. “My creation of the Book was a mistake. By taking a piece of pure magic, I weakened the whole, and when Thoth stopped me from completing the ritual—when he destroyed the stones I had created to hold my fractured power—he made it impossible for me to return the heart of power to the whole. If I could have completed the ritual, I would have been able to protect magic without destroying time. If I had completed the ritual, time would no longer have had the power to touch magic, and all would have been preserved. Instead, both time and magic are at risk. If Thoth brings that piece of magic back into time’s reach, it will die… and so will the whole. So, too, will time, and it will take the world with it.”
It was like the Brink, then—they’d discovered not long ago that it couldn’t be destroyed because it contained the affinities of all the Mageus it had killed. Bringing down the Brink would destroy magic itself—and if Seshat’s words were true, then it would destroy the world as well. But maybe it’s never been about destroying the Brink. Maybe they should have been trying to fix it instead.
“Do you see now?” Seshat pressed. “It would be a mercy to end this world compared to what will happen if time has its way—or if Thoth does. With my power, he would be able to use the beating heart of magic without risking time’s wrath. Whatever power he gains over the part, he will have over the whole, and all I have done—all I have sacrificed—will have been for naught.” Seshat leaned her face close so that Esta could feel the warmth of her breath, could smell her perfume, a scent like jasmine and old parchment and ancient books. “But if we destroy time… perhaps magic can begin again. Perhaps everything can begin again.”
