SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne (22 page)

“You! Forward! Move!” barked a split-faced man with snow-white hair. Teal’c watched the spittle froth up over his lower lip. The split in his face was more than a trick of the light. The Jaffa had almost mistaken the birthmark for shadow but as the shove in the back staggered him forward he saw it for what it was, a big angry raw welt that covered more than half of the man’s face. “Take him to Kelkus!” the guard barked, turning on his heel. He was gone before Teal’c was halfway across the gravel.

Another shove prodded him forward.

They drove him toward a small facility annexed to the main building. There were bars on the windows but no glass. Glass offered some indication of the technological advancement of a society — if it was fine blown and clear they had learned certain purification techniques, if it ran with streaks and was impossible to see through, it was a reasonable assumption that they were still technologically stunted. The rusted bars gave nothing away. Teal’c looked around, taking stock of the soldiers on the walls and the muzzles aiming down from the turrets as much as he did the men policing the square.

Servants in rags shuffled about their business. At the door of the facility he saw stick-thin women forming a line. They clutched tin bowls and wooden spoons and wore the same beaten-down sadness. They might have been pretty in another life. Teal’c smelled the abuse on their skin. He looked at them one at a time, committing their faces to memory. There would be a reckoning before he left this place. He promised himself and he promised them.

“In here. Kelkus is expecting you.”

“Old rat-face has taken an interest in you, man,” his guard gloated. “He picked you out from all of the new arrivals. You should be flattered.”

Teal’c said nothing.

He did not need to.

He walked with his head high, hoping the women saw his silent defiance and drew some little solace from it. He had been both guard and prisoner often enough to know strength was found in the little things.

The room they left him in was empty. They slammed and bolted the door behind him. Teal’c paced the room once then settled in the far corner, back pressed up against the wall. It was no more than five paces across, seven long. The floor was scuffed hardwood, the walls smeared with some sort of lime composite that smelled of old death. Teal’c was in no doubt
that the room had been used for both torture and murder in its
time. Death rooms had a certain ambiance. This was a death room. He noticed a series of scratches around the base of the wall. Names. He crouched down low and looked. Some were so old and faded he could barely read them others could have been carved that morning. There were thousands of them. Tiny names scratched into the lime, the only proof that the prisoners had ever been here, and for many the only proof they had ever lived. Using his thumbnail Teal’c scratched his own name into the soft lime, adding it to the wall of remembrance for the next prisoner to read. It was another one of those little things. There was strength in a name.

But there was so much pain in a thousand of them, and all the untold stories trapped in the stone.

He was still on his knees when the door opened.

The rat-faced newcomer smiled as he closed the door behind him. He did not bolt it. Teal’c had no doubt that he could kill the man. He decided not to. Later perhaps, if the need arose, but for now it served no purpose other than to vent his mounting anger. He looked up.

“No need to worship me,” the man said, his nose twitching ferally as he offered Teal’c his hand. “Oh, okay, but only if you must.”

Teal’c’s right hand snaked out and snatched the man’s arm. His grip was merciless. He pulled Kelkus down until they were eye to eye. “You are presumptuous, old man. I do not worship anyone.”

The man’s smile was disgusting. “But you will, you will.” There was no fear in his eyes.

Teal’c pushed him away.

“Perhaps now that the anger is out of your system we can get on with things?”

“What do you want from me?”

“You interest me. You are plainly neither Kelani nor Corvani, so the logical extrapolation of that thought is that you are by necessity something else. I know only one ‘other’ so I am trying to decide whether you are a god like him, or something else entirely. I do not believe you are a god — ”

“And I do not believe he is a god,” Teal’c said matter-of-factly.

“ — so that makes you something else again. A treasure, of sorts, no? Perhaps Iblis will reward me if I deliver you to him… what do you think?”

“I am no treasure,” Teal’c said.

Kelkus smiled his wretched smile again. “No, perhaps not. But that makes you a problem, my tattooed friend. Because that means you came from beyond the stars. Tell me, how did you come to be here? Why this place of all the worlds?”

Teal’c stared at the little man, but said nothing.

“Oh, come on, there is nothing to be gained by being inscrutable. Talk to me.”

Teal’c merely furrowed his eyebrows.

“Fine. I had hoped you would see reason, but it is not something I shall worry myself over. You present me with a problem, stranger. Perhaps I should just kill you and have done with it? What do you think?”

“You are not strong enough to kill me.”

“Ah, death does not require brawn my thick-necked friend. Sometimes all it requires is a tiny little pin-prick.” He mimed delivering a lethal injection.

“Then perhaps you are suitably equipped.”

Kelkus burst out laughing at the insult.

“I like you, it would be a pity to have to kill you.”

Teal’c looked around the room, “There is no pity in death.”

With that, Kelkus left him. The bars on the door weren’t pulled back for another day. He sat with his face turned to the stars. They were yesterday’s confetti in the sky, thrown away by a billion careless lovers. Dawn came slow and red. Who would remember the coming day, Teal’c wondered to himself, because for so many there would be nothing remotely memorable about it. He would remember it though, he had decided that already.

Kelkus came to him a little after dawn, before the small cell was filled with light. There were six black and silver clad soldiers with him. “Help him up,” Kelkus told them. And to Teal’c, “It’s time for you to meet your new god, my talkative friend.”

Teal’c rose slowly. Judging the relative strength of his captors was instinctive: these few were more formidable than yesterday’s men, but still barely a match for his explosive aggression should he choose to unleash it upon them. The thrill of anticipation itched through his right hand. He clenched his fist. Smiled. “There are no gods, only lies. I do not believe in lies.”

“Ah, but there are truths as well. Glorious truths. Come with me and I will show you.”

As they walked through the narrow passageways, rifle muzzles prodding him in the back, Teal’c looked at these so called truths and saw more lies barely concealed beneath the flaking concrete. They reached a set of stairs that led up. Kelkus nodded. Teal’c climbed slowly, counting each one. One hundred and twenty seven steps later they reached the first and only door. It was a humble gateway — that was the only way the Jaffa could describe it. Where other doors in this place had been banded with iron or decorated with unnecessary ornamentation, this single door was bare blond wood. There was no knocker and no handle. No, Teal’c realized quickly, there was a pressure sensitive plate set into the stone beside the door. Kelkus pressed his hand flat to it, allowing the device to scan his print. The door opened. Teal’c frowned.

The simple act of opening the door changed everything.

The hand sensor wasn’t homogenous technology — it had been brought in from outside. It could have been a leftover from the time of the Goa’uld, but he doubted it.

Kelkus pushed him inside.

“Here he is, master,” the man fawned, scraping his sandaled feet across the floor as he shuffled in to the room. Ever the warrior, Teal’c’s instinct was to take stock of this new environment. The room seemed disproportionately large given the narrowness of the stairs. It was a curiously clinical chamber, all sharp angles and sterile surfaces that were not in keeping with the rest of the rooms in Corvus Keen’s folly — it wasn’t a castle or a keep or palace or dungeon, municipal block or any other kind of habitat. It was just a sprawl of adjoining rooms with no rhyme or reason to the build. Teal’c tried to place this new room according to the impression of the interior he had pieced together in his mind, but the place was a sprawling mess of architecture of which there was no sense to be made.

He could guess the general vicinity in terms of towers and the annexed prison, but there was no way of knowing where he was for sure without looking out of the chamber’s single window.

The light was almost radiant as it filtered through the flawless glass, so pure he could see the dust motes hanging in the air.

Wearing a medical face-mask that covered all but his black eyes, the creature that called itself Iblis stood in the center of the room. He leaned forward, hands braced on the side of a
steel-topped bench. Blood dripped down a steel tube beside his
head. Teal’c heard the buzzing of flies. He did not know what he had expected to find up in the tower room, but a Goa’uld surrounded by medicinal drips and monitors was not it.

“Bow down in the presence of your god,” Iblis said, that cold metallic arrogance rusting through his voice as his eyes flared silver.

“I would rather die,” Teal’c said.

Kelkus rammed a fist into the base of his spine, meaning to drive him to his knees. Teal’c did not flinch. He turned slowly to face the weasel-faced man, arching his eyebrow. Kelkus stumbled back a step, his hands coming up instinctively to ward off the anticipated blow. Teal’c did not give him the satisfaction. He turned back to Iblis.

“Is this your doing?”

The white linen mask hid the Goa’uld’s expression but not the delight in his eyes. He took a delicious moment before answering. Teal’c did not know whether he could believe Iblis or not when he promised: “No, no, no, this is all their doing. Humans are so creative when it comes to hurting each other. Have you not learned that in your servitude, Jaffa? Leave them alone and they will drive themselves to extinction. It is their way. I am merely an observer, a set of eyes off the stage watching this Grotesque Theater unfold. It is fascinating, though. Beyond that, it is rewarding. Only the fool believes he knows all the pain there is to know. These cattle are opening my eyes to suffering I could never have imagined. So tell me, First Prime, what brings you to my world? Are you looking to serve a new master?”

“That is no secret, Goa’uld. I came here to kill you,” Teal’c lied, thinking of O’Neill. It was the kind of thing the Colonel would say to throw his opponent off balance. The words came easily to him.

“Have I become so legendary that Apophis would send his First Prime to dispatch me?” There was genuine amusement in his voice at the prospect. Iblis shook his head. Teal’c could tell he was smiling beneath the mask. It was a curious thing for a Goa’uld to wear.

“Apophis is dead.” As always, Teal’c took immense satisfaction in the declaration — and in the brief shock Iblis could not mask.

“You do not lie well, Jaffa. I shall consider the fact that you are capable of deceiving your god, but now is not the time for that punishment. The truth this time?”

Teal’c said nothing.

Iblis waited.

“Silence will not save you, Jaffa. I can make you talk, and believe me, I will not be gentle.” Iblis raised his right hand. The jewel in the heart of his palm glowed a dull red then turned angry as Iblis spread his fingers wide. “Do you enjoy pain, Jaffa? Do you think there is nobility in suffering? Let me assure you, there is not. But if you wish to suffer as atonement for your failure, pain is the very least I can offer you.”

The pulse of raw energy slammed into Teal’c’s chest and hurled him across the floor. He hit the edge of the doorframe and sprawled whorishly in the center of the doorway as the blazing light sizzled its way up over the muscles of his chest before fastening on his face. In seconds a mask of crackling energy engulfed his gasping lips. The bright energy bristled with a life all of its own, splinters of angrier scarlet darting into Teal’c’s eyes and up through his flared nostrils, invading and invasive.

In a supreme feat of will, Teal’c bit down on the screams, refusing to give the Goa’uld the satisfaction of seeing his pain.

That only served to infuriate Iblis, and intensify the fury spitting fire from his palm. The Goa’uld stood over him, the smile completely removed from his eyes as he drove the rage of the hand device deeper into the Jaffa’s skull.

Blood dribbled from Teal’c’s mouth as he forced his head forward.

His eyes rolled up inside his skull but Iblis would not allow him to collapse.

“The truth, Jaffa.”

“Apophis is dead,” Teal’c spat through the pain, baring his teeth. “I betrayed him. To the Tau’ri.”

The Goa’uld stood over him, pulling the white linen mask down so that Teal’c could see him properly for the first time. Iblis’ face was as much a mask as the white cloth. His eyes blazed with intolerable cruelty. “You sicken me, Jaffa. Do you really believe someone as weak as you could kill Apophis? You are not worthy of the air you breathe. I should tear the symbiote from your gut and leave you to rot in regret as you mourn yourself, the life leaking out of your limbs hour by hour until there is only betrayal to cling to as you slide slowly into that endless winter night where your god will be waiting for you to torture you throughout the afterlife.”