False Gods

Vaddon nodded and turned to his work, leaving Loken to find Kyril Sinderma

As always, the archives were quiet, but now there was a deeper sense of desolation. Loken strained to hear anything at all, finally catching the scratching of a quill-pen from deeper in the stacks of books. Swiftly he made his way towards the sound, knowing before he reached the source that it was his old mentor. Only Kyril Sinderma

Sure enough, Loken found Sinderma

'Garviel,' said Sinderma

'No,' replied Loken. 'At least I don't think so. Not yet anyway.'

Sinderma

'You don't think so?'

'I haven't seen him since I saw him on the apothecaries' slab,' confessed Loken.

'Then why are you here? It surely can't be for a lesson on the principles and ethics of civilisation. What's happening?'

'I don't know,' admitted Loken. 'Something bad I think. I need your knowledge of… things esoteric, Kyril.'

'Things esoteric?' repeated Sinderma

'The Legion's quiet order has taken the Warmaster to the Temple of the Serpent Lodge on Davin. They've placed him in a temple they call the Delphos and say that the "eternal spirits of dead things" will heal him.'

'Serpent Lodge you say?' asked Sinderma

'What is?'

'Serpents,' repeated Sinderma

'Then how did it get to Davin?' asked Loken.

'It's not difficult to understand,' explained Sinderma

Sinderma

'Here, you see it here quite clearly.'

Loken looked at the pictures, seeing images of naked tribesmen dancing with long snake-topped poles as well as snakes and spirals painted onto primitive pottery. Other pictures showed vases with gigantic snakes winding over suns, moons and stars, while still more showed snakes appearing below growing plants or coiled above the bellies of pregnant women.

'What am I looking at?' he asked.

'Artefacts recovered from a dozen different worlds during the Great Crusade,' said Sinderma

Sinderma

'Immortality?'

'Yes, in ancient times, men believed that the serpent's ability to shed its skin and thus renew its youth made it privy to the secrets of death and rebirth. They saw the moon, waxing and waning, as the celestial body capable of diis same ability, and of course, the lunar cycle has long associations with the life-creating rhythm of the female. The moon became the lord of the twin mysteries of birth and death, and the serpent was its earthly counterpart.'

'The moon…' said Loken.

'Yes,' continued Sinderma

'Is that what this is,' breathed Loken. 'A rite of initiation?'

Sinderma

'Tell me,' snarled Loken. 'I need to hear all you know.'

Startled by the power of Loken's urging, Sinderma

'Yes, yes…' he muttered, flipping back and forth through the well-thumbed pages. 'Yes, here it is. Ah… yes, a word for serpent in one of the lost languages of old Earth was "nahash", which apparently means, "to guess". It appears that it was then translated to mean a number of different things, depending on which etymological root you believe.'

'Translated to mean what?' asked Loken. 'Its first rendition is as either "enemy" or "adversary", but it seems to be more popularly transliterated as "Seytan".'

'Seytan,' said Loken. 'I've heard that name before.'

'We… ah, spoke of it at the Whisperheads,' said Sinderma

'Do you believe that?' asked Loken. 'That Samus was a spirit?'

'Of some form, yes,' said Sinderma

'And what about this serpent as Seytan?'

Sinderma

'Chaos?' cried Loken. 'No!'

'Yes,' went on Sinderma

Loken tried to hide his horror at Sinderma

'A passage from the Book of Atum,' said Sinderma