Seth

Seth put his foot on the empty seat beside Ra.

The gold bent beneath his heel.

“Is this mine?”

“The prow is yours,” said Ra.

Behind them, the last gate of the western horizon closed. Its two leaves met with a sound Seth felt in his teeth. Ahead lay a black channel, narrow enough that he could have thrown his spear from bank to bank. The sun boat moved without a sail. Light ran down its sides and vanished in the water.

Seth kept his foot on the seat.

All day the gods had made room for Horus. They had stepped aside for him, lifted the crown over him, lowered their faces when he passed. The son of Osiris had looked directly at Seth only once.

He had killed the father. The son had made him stand and watch the coronation.

“I did not ask where you wanted me to stand.”

Ra rested both hands on his knees. The disk above him had dimmed to the color of metal cooling in a furnace.

“There is a spear at the prow.”

“I brought my own.”

“Then you have what you need.”

Seth pulled his foot away. A deep print remained in the gold. He walked forward, letting the butt of his weapon strike each plank, and looked into the channel.

Something passed beneath the boat.

He followed its movement until his gaze reached the far bank. It was still passing.

Then the water dropped.

The prow struck bottom hard enough to throw him against the rail. Behind him, Ra’s seat groaned. Water slid away on both sides, sucking at the hull, and the boat settled crookedly in a bed of pale silt.

Seth braced his spear and listened.

Ahead, in the dark, something swallowed.

The Empty Kingdom

He jumped down beside the prow. The silt closed around his ankles, warm and fine. He drove his spear into it until the point struck something solid, then leaned his weight against the shaft.

The solid thing moved.

A ridge rose across the channel. Silt poured off it in sheets. Farther ahead another ridge lifted, and beyond that another, each broader than the boat. Seth had been standing between the coils.

He pulled his spear free.

“Apophis.”

A sound traveled along the dry bed: scales dragging over stone.

Seth climbed back onto the prow. From there he could see a pale curve ahead, low against the darkness. It divided slowly. The upper half rose until the mouth behind it was taller than the mast.

The water was in there. He could hear it.

“Well?” Ra asked.

Seth looked back. The sun god had risen, one hand closed around the edge of the canopy. His light reached the prow but no farther. The steersman at the stern was pushing an oar against the bottom; the blade sank uselessly into silt.

Seth laid his spear across the rail.

“Send for your king.”

The steersman stopped.

“Have Horus come down here,” Seth said. “Let him lift us. Let him open that mouth.”

Ra’s fingers tightened on the canopy.

“You can hear what is coming.”

“I could hear the gods cheering him, too.”

A coil brushed the hull. The boat shifted beneath Seth’s feet, then stopped. He glanced down. Dark scales pressed against the gilded wood.

He had imagined the moment often, through all the long arguments over Osiris’s throne: the others silenced, some danger too great for their cleverness, every face turned toward him. In his imagining they had understood without needing to be told.

“Give me what you gave him.”

“No,” said Ra.

The answer came so quickly that Seth lifted the spear.

Ra did not step back.

At the stern, the steersman tried his oar again. It broke with a sharp report. Seth heard the smaller piece fall, strike the scales, and slide away.

Then a voice came out of the mouth ahead.

“Let the boat go dark.”

It was quiet. Seth had expected a roar.

“No one will kneel to Horus.”

The words reached him with the damp smell of the stolen river. He looked toward Ra, but the voice continued.

“No fields. No offerings. No father to avenge. Stay here, Seth. Keep everything that remains.”

The coil tightened. A seam opened in the deck behind his heel.

For an instant he saw the kingdom the serpent offered: the banks without reeds, the canal beds split by heat, the temple doors standing open because there was no one left to shut them. Horus would never wear his crown in sunlight.

Nor would Seth ever tear it from his head.

He gripped the spear until the binding cut his palm.

“You think I have fought this long for an empty room?”

The mouth opened farther.

Seth vaulted the rail.

A Passage for the Sun

He landed on the coil against the hull and drove his spear down between two scales.

The body heaved. He dropped to one knee and held on as the boat lurched beside him. Gold tore away from its side. Under his spear point, the scales spread, slick and cold, and a fold of flesh rose around the shaft.

He wrenched the weapon loose before it could be trapped.

The blow had hurt the serpent. It had also drawn the coil tighter.

Behind him, wood cracked.

Seth ran along the rising body toward the head. The surface rolled underfoot. Once he slipped and caught himself with his free hand, his fingers scraping across scales too broad to grip. He drove the spear sideways into the flesh, hauled himself upright, and kept going.

The boat’s light shrank behind him.

Apophis turned to meet him. Its lower jaw rested in the channel like a fallen wall. Between the teeth, the swallowed water churned.

Seth sprang from the coil and struck the soft floor of the mouth.

The spear sank deep.

Water burst around it.

He had time to plant one foot against a tooth before the first rush hit him. It tore his other leg out from under him and flattened him against the jaw. His shoulder wrenched. He clung to the shaft with both hands while the river poured past, carrying silt and broken reeds and the shattered end of the steersman’s oar.

Behind him, the boat lifted.

He heard its hull scrape free.

Then he saw where the current would take it.

Apophis had curled across the channel in a great loop. The returning water struck that living bank, wheeled, and drove straight back toward the open mouth. The barque swung broadside. Its prow came around toward Seth.

He had freed it into the serpent’s teeth.

“Turn her!” he shouted.

The steersman thrust the broken oar over the stern. The current snatched it flat against the hull.

Seth pulled at his spear. It did not move. The wound had closed around the blade, and the shaft bent as the lower jaw began to rise.

He looked up.

A long tooth hung above him. Beyond it the roof of the mouth descended, slow and heavy. He could jump now. The barque was close enough. He could catch its rail, land beside Ra, and spend his strength dragging them both clear of the wreck.

The boat struck a tooth. Its prow slewed sideways.

Ra stood beneath the canopy, still holding the upright. He was watching Seth.

Seth turned his back on him.

He dragged the spear shaft across the tooth above his shoulder and wedged its butt into a crease in the upper jaw. The blade remained buried below. When the mouth closed another hand’s breadth, the weapon held it open.

For a moment.

The wood began to split.

Seth set both feet against the lower tooth and pushed. The shaft pressed into his shoulder. He forced it upward, using the tooth as a fulcrum, trying to turn that enormous head.

Nothing moved.

The bow of the boat struck the jaw again. A strip of rail snapped off and vanished beneath the water.

Seth drew breath. He could taste the silt. Somewhere beyond this dark there were mouths waiting to breathe the morning air, and somewhere among them his nephew waited with a crown that should have been his.

He pushed again.

The cry came out of him before he could shape it into a curse. It struck the roof of the mouth and rolled through the channel. His feet slipped. He found purchase lower down and drove himself upright, every muscle pulling against the spear.

The head turned.

Water struck its outer cheek. The current changed, dragging the boat away from the teeth, and its gilded side slid past him close enough to touch.

Ra reached out.

Seth could not free either hand.

“Go!”

The stern cleared the mouth.

For three heartbeats he watched the light moving away.

Then the spear broke.

The Next Watch

The flood took him under.

He struck something hard, rolled over it, and reached for the bottom. His fingers found only moving water. He still held half the spear. It dragged at his arm, the blade caught somewhere below him, drawing him back toward the closing jaws.

He would not leave his weapon in the serpent.

He hauled on it once.

Pain ran from his wrist to his shoulder. The current turned him face down. Through the water he saw the light stretch thin and distant, and he knew how little longer his grip would matter.

Seth opened his hand.

The river flung him clear.

He broke the surface against the boat’s stern. A loop of rope struck the water beside his face. He caught it, missed the rail with his other hand, and went under again.

The rope tightened.

When he came up, Ra was leaning over him. The steersman had wound the other end around the mast. Together they dragged him high enough to catch the edge.

Seth climbed aboard on his knees.

For a while there was only the noise of water running from his clothes onto the deck. He spat silt between the planks. His hand closed involuntarily around the missing spear.

Ra put a fresh shaft beside it.

“The one from the prow,” he said.

Seth looked along the boat. The canopy leaned. One side of the rail was gone. Beyond the bow a narrow opening shone between the gates of the eastern horizon.

“You came back.”

“You were still in the water.”

Seth picked up the spear. It was lighter than his own. He tested its weight, then rose carefully, keeping his injured shoulder still.

Below the opening, the first fields were becoming visible. Water lay in the irrigation channels. A man stepped out of a doorway carrying a basket and lifted his face toward the approaching light.

Seth watched him until the boat carried them past.

Behind them, far down the dark channel, a great body moved.

He went to the prow and planted his feet apart.