The Sun and the Devil. Kyra. Part II
Then Kyra was sailing through the gates of sunset, alone.
No noise but the croaking of frogs and the lapping of the water. She slid through an eternity of black and silver in the moonlight and starlight.
The moon set, and with it, the shadows. There was only the faint glow of starlight for illumination. It was peaceful, narcotic, soothing.
Then the frogs quieted. A ripple eased past the boat. Then someone was gasping her from behind, by the throat, pinning her arms.
"All hail Ra," the voice said, an ironic rumble from the underworld.
She knew that voice, knew those hands. Riddick. But it came out as "Set."
"Set," he breathed into her ear. His hands were exploring her, curiously. She was frozen. "I like the new flesh." At long last he dipped his mouth to her ear again "Did my sister," he lingered on the words in an unbrotherly fashion, liking their taste enough to repeat them, "did my sister do this, grandfather?"
She tried to pull away, she tried to kick, tried to throw him off balance. She might as well been a kitten in its mother's mouth for all of the difference it made.
"I'm not your grandfather."
He chuckled, low. "Then what are you doing in grandfather's boat?"
She shook her head, her courage returning despite his hands. "She sent him home. My job today."
He was utterly enchanted. "My sister sent you?"
Kyra was suddenly proud. "I'm hers until I grow up."
His lips were impossibly close to her ear. "And then?"
The defiance faded slightly. "Her husband's. So leave me the fuck alone."
He shook his head slowly. She could feel his face against the back of her neck. "My sister's husband," he said, low and sweet, his breath shivering down her spine. "My brother. The Lord of the Dead." Remembering the skeletal man behind the throne, she nodded.
"My sister's husband," he repeated, with that unbrotherly intonation. "Osiris." He drew the name out. "I killed . . . my sister's husband. Sealed him alive a coffin I built for him. Threw him into this river."
Kyra shuddered. She somehow saw the sarcophagus sliding into the water.
"She cried for him," he remembered distantly. "She sobbed and she searched for his body. I watched her." Kyra was Isis, mourning, searching, with a grief that overwhelmed all light.
"She found his corpse in a living tree. It smelled so good. She cut it down. She washed his corpse with her tears, dried it with her hair. I watched her." Kyra found the body, and loved it.
"She brought him back. I watched her." She saw Isis kissing the corpse, the girl stepping off the gallows laughing, the husband rising out of his coffin.
"I watched. I waited. Then I killed him again."
He paused, and his hands became strangely gentle, almost loving. "I dismembered him and scattered the pieces." And in the dream, Kyra saw it, the dying god dying at the hands of his brother again.
"She looked for the pieces. I watched her. I went to her, while she was alone."
Kyra was in a swamp, searching on hands and knees, in sudden panic as Set, as Riddick, stood above her, a spear in one hand and a net in the other.
He turned her around and smiled down at her. "She found . . . most of the pieces. He stayed dead this time."
"God killer," she whispered, understanding.
"Set," he agreed, the word a wind that lifted her into the air and threaten to dash her into sharp rocks. She shrunk into his arms, which tightened in a parody of tenderness.
"She didn't find . . ." he picked his words with great deliberateness, like he was picking just the perfect ripe strawberry. "She didn't find the piece that makes babies."
"You matter to my sister's husband?" he said, one hand slow and heavy on her throat, his eyes deep into hers, his other hand running down her spine. Two deadly hands.
But even Set wants the sun to rise, she thought. "I am the sun," she replied, as if remembering a sacred ritual. "Kill me, the sun won't rise."
He sighed, and it was the sigh of flies swarming over a rotting corpse; of a crocodile's glide towards a swimming child.
"You are the sun," he agreed. "Kill you, and the sun does not rise." His hand on her throat was less heavy. "But you won't always be."
Silence.
"And I'm not just a killer."
"Rapist," she whispered.
He nodded, slow. "My sister kissed you," he said, and there was longing in his voice. He began running his fingers over her face in delicate spirals. His long fingers found her forehead, circling until they rested on the spot on her brow the Empress – Isis – had kissed.
He kissed it rapturously, like he was kissing the lips of his beloved. Then his fingers started again until he found her eyes. He kissed them gently. She tried to pull away. She tried the best moves she'd practiced for years and years, moves that had thrown her instructors across the floor. He did not seem to notice.
Finally he pulled back, looked at her with amused and oddly gentle eyes. "As nice as it is to feel you . . . moving against me, you'll end up straining something," he murmured. "And if you hurt yourself enough, you can't pilot the boat. The sun won't rise."
"Just let me go."
"Later . . ."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Gods do what they want," he said, as if passing on a deep secret. And for an instant, it was Riddick's silver eyes looking down on her urgently, as if he was telling her something important he was afraid she wouldn't understand. Then Riddick was gone, and it was just the god wearing his body. "Relax. My sister will do things to you that I'd never dream of doing . . . you are safer with me than you will ever be in her service." He began to slowly nuzzle the side of her face.
This is just a dream, something said. You're trying to process the fact that you are madly in love with this guy you also think of as your brother, who walked out on you without a backwards glance. So you're reversing your desire on to him. Relieving the guilt.
Right. I'm having a dream about being the Sun sailing down an ancient river because I want to fuck Riddick. My unconscious is Jungian.
Not sailing. Piloting. Johns told Fry that Riddick killed a pilot. Oh god. This can't get more disturbing.
He pulled back, looked deep in her eyes. "Don't tempt me, kid."
Damn. Gods can read minds? No, this has to be a dream.
He smiled, slowly, strangely sweet. "Dream or god, I'll be which ever you want me to be." Then he was lowering her to the bottom of the boat.
She managed to untangle her tongue from the rising terror; seize what dignity she could. "If you asked nicely, I might even say yes."
He chuckled low. "Maybe." He lowered his head to her throat languidly. "Maybe next time." And then he was perfectly still.
"Stay in the boat," he whispered. For an instant, it was Riddick's eyes again. He leapt out. Silence, not even a splash. Then there was a roar like a thousand volcanoes, and a mouth bigger than a palace swallowed the river, and the boat, and her. She screamed as she slid down the gullet of a monster.
She was suffocating in blood and bile. But at the same time she was in a labyrinth, and able to take a breath. At the same time she was in a grave, suffocating in the earth. Like reality could not decide how to show itself. "Which one?" something asked.
"Labyrinth," she replied, and reality fixed into utter darkness, silence, and merciful air. For a moment, she panicked in the blackness. Then she remembered that she was the sun.
Right. Sun. How the hell was that helpful?
I am the Sun. A golden ball of gas . . . golden balls . . .
She'd seen someone conjure golden balls. Could she do that?
She found she could make one, with effort. It hovered in front of her, and the darkness fled. She could see where she was now, in the boat between straight stone walls and deep flowing water. She poled down the channel, somehow knowing she was in the digestive tract of the night itself. She found many dead ends, many corpses.
But one end she kept coming to. It felt like it should be a door. And finally she realized why. Water was flowing through the stone. She laid her hands on it, and it was solid. She couldn't get through. What tools did she have? A boat, a stick, a glowing ball.
Glowing ball. Energy. Huh.
She placed the little sun on the stone wall, concentrated on contracting it as small as she could. With some effort, it collapsed into a pin point, taking the light with it.
Close your eyes, something said. She did. Even so, she was nearly blinded by the light that penetrated the eyelids as the shock flattened her and flung the boat back.
The wall was gone. She was exhausted, but the wall was gone.
She generated another miniature sun and sailed through the night of another portion of the belly of a monster until she found the next place where the water flowed through the wall. Again, she contracted the light into the seed of a nova; again she created a door in the wall. But now, she was utterly spent, barely able to lift her head let alone muster another burst. And there was one more wall. Water did not flow through it. But it felt like it should be the way out.
Wall. It doesn't have to be a wall. She was inside a living monster. If it was just flesh again, maybe she could gather enough energy to cut through. And that wasn't transformation, that was perception. She struggled to her feet, put her hands on the wall. Monster, she thought.
Then she trapped by quivering flesh. Terror gave her strength. She punched the flesh, and felt it give. Something roared, and the world trembled. She punched it again. There was no light, no air, nothing but blood and flesh and darkness. Then she sensed something – some one -- on the other side. She stumbled back just in time, as the flesh was sliced open, sliced open again. The churning water roared through, and she rode a river of bile out of the body of the monster.
Riddick -- Set – was standing on the riverbank with a bloodied scythe in his hand. He saluted her ironically, blew her a kiss, and then was gone.
The burst of energy faded, and she could not get air back in her lungs for a long time. Then the river slowed back into the slow ooze it had started. Eventually, her heart slowed. Eventually, the night calm returned.
The old man was waiting up river from the pink and golden gates in the dim predawn, holding hands with the infant boy. "Hail" he said, gruffly.
"Hi," she said. She poled over to the riverbank. "Sorry about getting your boat bloody. And the smell."
"Old Mesektet looks good from here." He smiled at her, and suddenly the boat was new again, and she was clean and cool and dry. "Still got a few tricks. Here." He handed her the child, then let her help him into the boat.
She poled them away from the shore. He looked at her, and she was surprised to see grudging respect in his eyes. "You did good, kid. That old poisoner did good picking you." He gripped her shoulder in a comradely manner.
"Thanks," she said, and meant it. They floated on towards the gates in silence. Finally, she asked, "If I didn't make it back, would the sun really not have risen?"
He sighed. "We think it wouldn't. We don't want to find out."
The rode on in companionable silence.
"It was hard," Kyra said.
"Yeah. First time always is." He looked at her with sharp eyes. "Not the first time for you, was it?"
"No," she said softly. "Not really."
They sailed through the pink and golden gates, and the sun rose with them. And with the sunrise, surprisingly, despite it all, she felt new, and happy, and strong.